“He’s already dead, Wyatt. There’s no way he’s going to make it.”
“Get out of my way.”
“I’ll stop you.”
My hands white-knuckle the Onesie, the weapon poised at my hip.
“You can try.”
“Why the hell would you risk your neck for one person?”
“Because he’s my friend and you did it for me, didn’t you?”
A sour smile creases her face. She makes a sound of irritation and then steps aside. I snap on her flashlight and head down into the garage.
In short order I cross the garage and am back near the door that Naia pulled me through. Taking up a position behind the door I press my ear to it. Nothing sounds on the other side.
Clutching my Onesie against my chest, I throw open the door and shoot a look down the passageway. It’s clear but there are sounds coming from out on the street.
I wait for Naia but a stifled cry of distress issues from somewhere out in the blankness. My brain tells me to run in the opposite direction, but my body won’t abide and so I thread down the passageway.
A Dub confronts me halfway through the space and I shoot it down and then another does the same and I spill its diseased brains with a flick of the wrist.
Exploding out of the other end of the passageway, I run on pure instinct, drawing a bead on whatever it is that’s bleating, calling out for help.
The noises resolve into a pack of Dubs that spring into view. They’ve got something, presumably Gus, trapped inside an overturned truck.
Drawing two quick breaths I shout and the Dubs turn and I fire, spraying darts from my gun.
The ghouls topple in stages.
I reach the edge of the truck and spot Gus who manages to dredge up a smile. “Funny meeting you here.”
“How?” is the only thing I can think to ask.
“I did what I do best. I played dumb.”
Gus twists himself out of the truck and we turn to confront the things that twist and toil in the shadows.
“How many are there?” I ask.
“More than enough.”
We linger near the truck for a few heartbeats as Gus hunts in the ground debris, pulling up a piece of rusted rebar to use as a weapon.
The adrenaline that came with my run to the truck seeps away. My head throbs and my muscles ache and my stomach bunches. Gus senses my anxiety and grips my wrist, steadying me.
“Remember that first time they took you out on The Dream Catcher?”
I nod, the Dubs drawing close.
“You were what? All of fifteen?”
“Sixteen.”
“And there you were with Shooter, fumbling around, falling down, slamming against the side of the building. But you kept getting back up. Know what Shooter told me?”
I shake my head.
“The kid ain’t much, but he don’t quit.”
Gus smiles. “How much you have left in the tank?”
“Fumes.”
“Fumes are enough,” Gus says.
The Dubs surge toward us from every quadrant of the city block and Gus begs for forgiveness for what will come next and promises to take no pleasure in the killing of Dubs.
“Don’t worry, Wyatt,” he says, the Dubs crashing down toward us. “If I come back I won’t bite you.”
“You might not have a choice.”
The faintest wisp of a smile comes over his face. “I’ve seen some things,” he whispers. “I think there’s still a little piece of free-will in all of them.”
We hesitate and then charge forward.
I fire out the remaining darts in my gun, making a dent in their ranks and then we’re knee deep in the suck.
The duel cleaver-like blades on my Onesie carve through the Dubs’ flesh, slicing off arms and heads and bisecting rotting torsos that break apart, steam and putrid air billowing out.
Maybe it’s simply survival instinct, but a fury seems to build in Gus.
He meets the incoming tide of Dubs with a sky-shattering scream, kicking and battering them with his two-handed rebar.
He thrusts the rebar through the throat of a female Dub with a maimed face and cracks the skulls of two teenagers before a Dub, a particularly fat-bellied male specimen, overpowers him.
Gus collapses under the Dub’s bulk, holding the thing’s chin up to prevent a bite. I take the top off the Dub’s skull and then Gus and I are running through a gap in the attackers that quickly closes.
We’re surrounded in an ocean of death, the Dubs matching us step for step, drawing closer and then-
There’s a sickening wet crunch as Naia shows herself, a sledgehammer in each hand. She thumps skulls and generally pummels the Dubs, beating a path forward for us.
We rush to meet her and I bob my head in Gus’s direction.
“Naia meet Gus, Gus, meet Naia.”
They exchange tense looks and then the Dubs counterattack, led by a nude, one-eyed monster with a doctor’s stethoscope wrapped so tightly around the neck that it has become one with the flesh.
We stand our ground and brace for the worst, readying to fight back, realizing there’s simply too many of them to defeat.
Sweat and blood weep down my wrists, my hands greasy. It’s nearly impossible to lift my Onesie. Naia looks used up, face slapped red, pearls of sweat clustering on her forehead and neck.
The Dubs charge and Naia bursts forward then-
WONK! WONK! WONK!
A series of bonfire-bright spotlights flash on.
Cones of white light sweep out, turning night to day.
I’m blinded and drop my Onesie. My hands shield my eyes and then engines roar and men shout and the shooting starts.
The three of us drop to the ground and squint, watching as the remaining Dubs are cut down. I still can’t make out who’s doing the shooting, but I have a guess and in seconds dark cutouts are running at us, backlit by the spotlights.
Gus and Naia stand and throw their hands up and in the sweep of light something flashes.
There’s a flash and then a crackle of electricity followed by screams as Gus and Naia drop to the ground, convulsing.
Shouting, I wave my hands while trying to hood my eyes. There are men in goggles and masks. Something jumps at me and I swing my Onesie up and a hand grabs and rips it away from me.
Turning, I peer up into the same battle mask I was so grateful to see back in VC1.
I’m staring at Matthais.
He’s holding my weapon.
“You!” I say and then Matthais punches me in the jaw and my world spins and I crash to the ground.
I drift in and out of consciousness, but rally, able to roll over and see Matthais standing over me.
He’s holding a weapon I’ve seen in magazines before.
A device, a gun, known by its manufacturing name back before the great dying: Taser.
There’s a blue light that shimmers on the end of the thing and then the gun fires and something hits me in the chest and it feels like I’m burning from the inside out.
I rock and quiver and foam gushes from my mouth. The last thing I hear are volleys of laughter and then the world spins and everything goes dark.
Afterword
Villains can often make or break movies and books. There are two primary villains in the VERTICAL CITY books: the zombies (of course) and Odin, the head of VC1, the primary building where most people live and work. In creating Odin, I tried to conjure up a bad guy that was unlike most of the typical villains you find in zombie movies and books. I struggled initially, because I knew I didn’t want Odin to be a military figure. Frankly, that’s been done to death, including, the great 28 DAYS LATER. I also didn’t want a religious fanatic because, I thought that was lazy. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if the world was gripped by a pandemic, the people who’d somehow find a way to stay on top would likely be the bright shiny folks in Silicon Valley. So that’s what Odin is, a technocrat, a Peter Thiel/Elon Musk type (more Thiel than Musk), who realizes t
he end of everyone else’s world is really the beginning of his. But in coming into his own, he demonstrates the truth of the old adage (as you’ll see more clearly in the next book), that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Volume Four
1
Waking to the snarl of an engine, I find myself trussed with nylon cord across the rear of a motorcycle driven by one of Matthais’s longhaired goons.
A whirlpool of light from the bike splashes me and I blink while craning my head.
We’re moving at an incredible rate of speed, knifing over the bridge, slipstreaming between mines and a choker of rusted-out car carcasses and abandoned military machines.
There’s another motorcycle with a single driver trailing us.
The engine whines on the second bike, the driver powering his motorcycle out and around, the man cackling and sharing a fist-bump with the longhair transporting me.
We drop down from the bridge and blur through the city in the blue of night, driving for what seems like hours over main arteries and ghost roads and little lanes of cement slowly being retaken by nature.
The engine thrums and my driver laughs while veering between bunchings of Dubs who bite and swing at me. The rear wheel is only inches from my face, spitting road grit into my eyes. We weave down a main promenade against the howls of the things hiding in the shadows.
I try to block out all of the bad things that have just happened: the confrontation with the Dubs and Odin’s men, the separation from Gus and Naia.
I try to free myself, but my bindings don’t budge. I pass the time by counting off the miles in my head and the tiny fissures that run through the blacktop that we’re motoring over.
Suddenly the motorcycle grinds to a stop, the other bike aside us, the oily-smelling exhaust from the machines hot against my cheeks.
With great effort I lift my head to see that the street in front of us is thronged with Dubs. More than I would’ve imagined at this hour and, based upon his mumblings, more than the goon driving me probably expected.
The laughter and fist-bumps are replaced by worried, knowing looks.
The sounds of the engines obscure whatever plans are being made and then the longhair wheels our motorcycle around only to stop once again.
The road behind us, the direction from which we’ve just come, is similarly blocked with Dubs.
The drivers curse and blame each other and rev their bikes and then I hear the longhair shout “Fuck it!” and wheel around yet again.
We jolt off, my body snapped back, the bike swiggering down the road.
The longhair’s piloting us on a collision course with the Dubs.
And then he slices off and heads toward a section of wooden planking near a sidewalk that was being rehabbed when the lights went out.
We hit the planking head on and go airborne.
Our bike gets some serious air, the two of us flying over the outstretched arms of the Dubs.
We land hard and skid sideways and peer back as the second bike tries to follow our path.
The other driver launches his bike just as we did, but it comes down awkwardly.
The front wheel hits a divot in the road and jimmies hard to the left, the driver overcompensating, the bike locking, the driver catapulted over the handlebars.
He somersaults forward and smacks against the pavement and rolls over several times, his grunts followed by soft moans.
The longhair doesn’t make a move toward him.
Not even after the injured driver pushes himself up on a bum leg and gimp-runs toward us, crying out for help.
The Dubs gang-tackle him and two of the monsters grab his arms and pull him apart like someone making a wish with a chicken bone.
The other Dubs stagger by the carnage and the longhair raises a machine-pistol and fires a few quick bursts. Then he spins our bike around and jets off through the city.
I listen to snippets of conversation between the longhair and someone he’s communicating with via walkie-talkie.
The longhair lies about what’s just happened, claiming he doesn’t know where the other driver is and then he’s silent and nods and tells whomever he’s talking to that we’re coming in.
Later, the sound of motorized doors echo and I’m able to glimpse the rear of VC1 as we rumble around and disappear through a back entrance that I never knew existed.
The motorcycle comes to a stop inside a garage or work bay and I see a half dozen men and women moving toward me. They’re chuckling, twirling batons and cudgels. Most are strangers, but one of them I have seen before, a scarecrow of a brute named Shaw.
Shaw’s a tall buck with an enormous domed head and long, spindly legs like a grasshopper. When I’ve seen Shaw he’s been capering around down on ten and jawing with the other workers even though he never seems to do any real work. He’s missing most of his upper teeth and blows smoke through the gap at me, taking a long drag before holding the glowing cigarette tip a few inches from my right eye.
“You’s a troublesome little mo-fo ain’t ya?” Shaw says. “Done a lot of dirt to Odin and the others what raised you up.”
I spit at the cigarette to extinguish the tip. “Get that away from me.”
“This ain’t nothin’ compared to what the man got planned for you,” Shaw titters.
“Where are Gus and Naia?” I say, struggling with my bindings.
“The dog lover and the bitch have been taken care of.”
“Where are they?”
Shaw kneels and grabs my face and squeezes my cheeks together. “I’ll ask the fuckin’ questions, prole.”
I spit in his face and he punches me so hard two of my back teeth fall out in a gush of gem-bright droplets of blood. A bovine-like woman next to Shaw reaches down and picks up the less than pearly whites and swallows them, gory drool and all.
“That’s what’s gonna happen to you, boy,” the woman sneers. “You gonna be gobbled up whole.”
“Get ‘im up,” Shaw says as the cords around me are loosened and I’m pulled back by my arms.
A knee is planted in my spine and strong hands ratchet around my wrists and I’m shoved forward.
A door flies open to reveal a staircase so narrow only one person can fit inside.
I count the floors as I’m marched up, the figures behind me delighting in sharing stories about all the horrible things that await me.
“We’re supposed to be a free community,” I call out to Shaw.
“Since when?” I hear him reply from somewhere behind me.
“There’s no crime in going outside the wire.”
“It ain’t necessarily what you done, but what you found,” Shaw says.
I’m stopped and my blood freezes when a hand, Shaw’s I assume, wiggles Naia’s thumb-drive near my right eye. The thumb-drive is greasy and slicked with little tendrils of blood and sweat.
At that moment I’d like to scream and confront my guards. Ask them whether they know about the murders of our friends and colleagues; ask them how far back it all goes; ask them whether my father was one of the first victims. Instead, I’m almost too shocked to say anything, but when I do it comes out as barely a whisper.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because in order to maintain a community,” Shaw says, “ya gotta do shit like this.”
The thumb-drive disappears and I’m muscled up near a door at the tenth floor which swings open to reveal a long corridor, a section of VC1 with heavy metal plate welded to one wall that was sealed off from the areas peopled by Burners and the like.
I can only assume this is the place that Brixton alluded to before where folks are taken and never heard from again. The place Del Frisco always said was like something he called The Hotel California: easy to enter, damn near impossible to get out of.
The metal plate on the walls must be shitty at snuffing out sounds, because people are screaming on the other side of a red door in the middle of the corridor marked 101 in dripping black paint.
And the worst thi
ng is that I think I recognize who the screams are coming from.
A man and woman.
Gus and Naia.
2
The door to Room 101 opens and the smell of urine and things I can’t place curls up my nose.
The room is windowless and constructed of unadorned cinderblocks that were probably placed inside of an already existing structure in order to make the spot more sound-proof.
A man and a woman, their faces below their eyes covered by bandanas, are strapped in metal chairs that have been cemented into the ground.
Both of them are red-eyed and weary, appearing to have been worked over by Mercer, a long-haired Prowler who panthers the space between them. Mercer’s part of Matthais’s posse and I’ve often seen following the big man outside on ops.
The man in the chair has a face that’s lumpy and purpled with bruises. His lip is busted and blood has erupted down his shirtfront.
The woman’s cheeks are splotched crimson, her hands pulled tight behind her back, weighted down by iron balls attached to lengths of chain.
Mercer turns to me, naked from the waist up, body oiled with torture sweat and speckled red. There’s a loop of leather around his clenched right fist, threaded between his fingers, which has been stained with so much blood it looks black.
“What the hell are you doing?!” I say.
“Following orders,” Mercer replies.
I cry out to the man and woman, struggling to reach them, as they acknowledge me with soul-battered looks.
A sound behind me arrests my attention.
Turning, a rear wall slides open to reveal Odin, clad entirely in white. He’s flanked by two of his blunt-faced bodyguards and Strummer and beside them are Gus and Naia who are bound, ball-gags strapped across their faces.
Odin begins a leisurely circuit of the room as I turn back, wondering who’s in the chairs.
My eyes find Odin who reaches me and shakes his head, face weary with disappointment. He places a hand on my shoulder and purses his lips, as if I’m a child who’s just spilled a drink on the kitchen floor.
Vertical City Box Set [Books 1-4] Page 26
