Death Squad (Book 3): Zombie Nation

by Dalton, Charlie

  How much time?

  She wore new clothes. A uniform of basic white trousers and matching shirt. They were baggy, with no buttons or zips.

  Nothing that could be used as a weapon.

  The material consisted of some kind of paper material. Strong, fibrous. Not easy to tear chunks out of.

  Whatever this place was, it was not somewhere she was meant to escape. Her legs shook, struggling to support her weight. She stumbled a couple of steps but did not fall. She braced herself on the wall. The room swayed. She shut her eyes again. The lines swirled about her. She waited for the world to stop spinning, a little sick to her stomach.

  She moved to the door at the front of the room. It was large and metal with no gaps around the edges. She knocked on it.

  “Hello?” she said. “Is anybody there?”

  She rapped a little harder. Again, there was no response. That was probably a good thing. She turned back to the bed and took a seat.

  Now that she was here, what was she supposed to do?

  SHINK!

  A bowl of stew slid through an opening at the foot of the door.

  Sam sprinted over to the bed. Two strides and she was there. “Hello? Please, wait! I think there’s been some mistake!”

  The window slid shut and heavy footsteps moved away. No more than one or two steps before the thick door swallowed the rest.

  Sam hammered on the door with her fist. She shouted and screamed, the sound bouncing back at her. She listened but no one returned.

  She was starving hungry and the bowl of stew did smell good. The bowl came with a small wooden spoon with a short handle. Difficult to make use of it as a weapon or a digging implement. She paced up and down the room as she tucked into the meal. The next time they came to give her food, what was she supposed to do? How could she use the situation to her advantage?

  Once she finished her meal, she placed the bowl before the door. She thought better of it and moved it into a corner. If there was no bowl for them to refill, they would have no choice but to speak to her.

  Hunger sated; her thoughts turned to Tommy. She wondered where he was, whether he was still alive. He’d been in the plane that crashed. Chances were, he didn’t make it.

  Then again, she’d thought that before. Now that he had become this new creature, it was more likely he’d survived. He could take any kind of punishment and not feel the effects. So long as his brain remained intact, he would live to tell the tale.

  Thank God there was something to be grateful for.

  Tap tap. Tap tap.

  She felt something on the soles of her feet. A gentle throbbing.

  Odd, she thought. It was if the room had its own heartbeat. It’s probably coming from the door. One of the guards might be listening to music.

  As she approached the door, the throbbing weakened. She pressed her hands to the door but couldn’t feel the sensation. She moved back to the middle of the room. Once again, she felt it.

  Was it a pipe beneath the floor? Rapidly cooling or heating temperatures could have that effect. But the tapping wasn’t continuous. It happened at irregular intervals.

  She bent down and placed the palms of her hands on the floor. The throbbing was distant, like someone shouting at the end of a long dark tunnel. She crawled along the floor, searching with her hands. The pulse grew louder until she reached the wall on the opposite side of the room. She worked her hands up and down it. The strongest signal came at shoulder height. The rhythm repeated itself. She recognized it.

  Tap code.

  Someone was trying to communicate. She pieced the words together, her tap code skills a little rusty.

  The same three words were being repeated over and over again:

  “Is anybody there?”

  * * *

  Tommy taught Sam tap code in what felt like a whole other lifetime. The system was simple enough. A series of knocks based on a five by five grid.

  A single knock signified a letter from the first row. A second knock identified one of the first five letters of the alphabet. One knock followed by another represented the letter A. One knock followed by two more presented the letter B. Two knocks followed by one represented the letter F. As there were twenty-six letters in the alphabet, the square containing the letter C doubled up with K. To avoid confusion, each word was then separated by a short pause.

  Sam was a little slow and unsure at first, asking her conversation partner to repeat certain words. After a couple of hours of practice, she was tap coding as fast as he was. And she learned a great deal about her conversation partner.

  His name was Felix. He was forty-two years old, from Germany. He’d been at a seminar in Austin when a man approached him with a business proposition. The man accosted him in his hotel room. He smelt the sweet aroma of chloroform and found himself in his cell.

  Sam paused for thought when he revealed he’d been in this place for three years. How was that possible in the modern world? Her heart went out to him. No doubt he had friends and family worried about him.

  But it wasn’t all bad news. The man kidnapped him in Austin. That suggested they were close by or located within the same city. It made her feel a little grounded, at least. After all, she could have been floating around anywhere.

  The first thing Felix wanted to know was who’d won the Super Bowl each year. It was only thanks to Tommy’s addictive viewing habits that she knew the answer.

  “Damn,” he said. “My bet won. How long are they valid for?”

  Felix was a pre-eminent scientist in the field of biology. He researched viruses evolving the ability to jump from one species to another.

  “In fact,” he said, “I’m continuing the research even now.”

  “What do you mean? You have instruments in your cell?”

  “No. Often, I’m taken to a room to conduct research. They tell me what to work on via a computer terminal.”

  “They? How do you know it’s not just one guy?”

  “I get the sense I’m talking to different people. They use different vocabulary, grammar, syntax. Expressions. Idioms. Some are very direct, others more flowery with their language.”

  A lull parted their conversation. Sam hesitated before tapping her next sentence. But she had to ask. She had to.

  “Do you think you’ll ever get out of here?”

  Another lull ensued.

  “I don’t know. They won’t release me until they get what they need until my research is complete.”

  If they haven’t gotten it from you for the past three years, what makes them think they’re going to get it from you now? Sam’s knuckles floated an inch from the wall’s surface. She couldn’t bring herself to ask the question.

  Felix responded first. “I have a question of my own. Has something changed on the surface?”

  Sam had put off telling Felix about the virus. It didn’t help their situation. But now that he’d asked. . .

  She explained about the virus taking hold of the city and the government locking it down. She was thankful he couldn’t hear the emotion in her voice when she told him about the trap that’d been set up to kill as many soldiers as possible, and that some emerged from the ruins changed. Due to his expertise, the evolution of the virus was the most interesting thing to him. He barely let her finish before asking a follow-up question.

  “What are the virus’s chief characteristics?” he asked.

  “Can it pass from human to animal or vice versa?” was another question.

  “Where do you think it came from?” was his tenth question.

  Sam answered to the best of her abilities. “I’m sorry. There’s a lot we don’t know about it yet.” She yawned and glanced at the bare walls. Impossible to tell the time in this place. “I think I’m going to call it a night.”

  “Wait.”

  He typed out a bunch of frantic messages and warnings. He did it so fast Sam mixed up some of the spellings, but the general gist was clear.

  “Don’t try to escape,” h
e said. “There is no escape. If they catch you—and they always do—they will hurt you. It doesn’t matter how valuable your research is. Injury makes living here much more uncomfortable. I’m not saying this to make you lose hope. You can’t escape. It’s not worth even trying. I don’t want you to repeat my mistakes.”

  Sam wondered what kind of injuries he’d taken during his three-year penance.

  “Please. Learn from my mistakes. Do not try to escape.”

  The news had shocked her. She believed in her heart all problems could be resolved with the right idea.

  “These cells are a small part of a much larger underground system. One day, they will take you to a research room. Keep your head down and focus on your work. Perhaps, someday, they might let you go free.”

  Sam wasn’t a big fan of blind hope, not without a dash of practicality and control on her side. If Felix had been there three years and they still hadn’t let him go, what chance was there they would ever let her go?

  “Have you spoken to anyone else before?” Sam said.

  Felix’s response was slow. “Yes.”

  “Did they escape?”

  “Yes, but not in the way they expected.”

  Death. He meant death.

  Sam licked her lips, suddenly dry, and slipped beneath the sheet on her bed. The last thing she recalled was the Architect taking control of her research team. If he had a part in this, it could only ever end one way. They would all escape—via the same path the others found.

  Despite the threat, Sam knew herself. Nothing could prevent her from making the attempt. She couldn’t stay there.

  She had to escape.

  4.

  HAWK

  The needle pierced Hawk’s flesh and Dr. Archer dabbed at the dark blood that streamed from the pale skin of his arm. Hawk looked away. He couldn’t bear to watch.

  “Squeamish?” Dr. Archer said.

  “I hate needles.”

  “When we found you, you had more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. Most of them self-inflicted.” Her eyes flicked up at him. She dared him to tell her she was wrong. Patients often lied. Most easily to themselves.

  “I don’t mind doing it to myself. But who likes other people stabbing them?”

  He grimaced as Dr. Archer slid a needle into his other arm. It was the fifth she’d administered. Or maybe the sixth? Hawk couldn’t remember. He didn’t want to remember. He didn’t want to check either. The sooner this process was over, the better.

  The doctor fiddled with the needle a little more before finally releasing it.

  “There. All done.”

  Hawk relaxed. He would have sighed with relief if he was capable of breathing.

  “You don’t need to be so nervous, Hawk. I know what I’m doing.”

  “That’s part of the problem. You look young. Have you done something like this before?”

  The doctor washed her hands in the sink. “Something like this? Many times. Something exactly like this? Never.”

  “It’s always good to be first at something, I suppose. Do you really need to remove my blood?”

  “Oh yes. Your blood is very. . . unique. I’ve only ever seen anything like it in the morgue.”

  “Not much of a surprise, considering I’m dead.”

  Dr. Archer wiped her hands dry. “I’m going to remove your blood now. It might feel a little weird.”

  “Weird? Now that’s something I’m used to.”

  * * *

  A machine rumbled and the engine hummed. There was a decidedly ugly sucking sound like something you’d hear at the dentist. The first drops of blood entered the clear tubes. The thick globule mass didn’t look particularly healthy.

  The doctor wrinkled her nose and waved a hand in front of her face to dispel the stink. Then she affixed a mask to her face.

  Well, that’s nice. . .

  Hawk couldn’t feel the blood evacuating his system, but he could sense its effect. He felt weak and empty, like a football without enough air.

  Dr. Archer glanced at Hawk over her mask. “There’s something else. When you were unconscious, a change came over you every four hours or so. Have you noticed it before?”

  If Hawk hadn’t been as pale as a ghost already, he would have turned a similar hue now. “Yes. I’m aware of it.”

  “At first, we weren’t sure what we should do. After all, we’d never witnessed this before. You shivered and shook. We thought you were having a fit. Then you opened your eyes and you weren’t yourself anymore. You were. . .”

  “Undead.”

  “Yes. You acted like they do.”

  She nodded in the direction of the zombie cage.

  “It’s a hell of a night out.” Hawk’s joke fell flat. Even he didn’t find it funny.

  “You became stiff and fought against your restraints. You groaned and screeched. Some of my co-workers wanted to put you down. I stopped them.”

  Hawk didn’t look up. “Maybe you should have let them.”

  Dr. Archer placed a hand on his cheek. “You are not like them,” she said. “You are special. We gave you some fresh blood. It calmed you. The change happened in reverse and you returned to normal. Have you always been like that?”

  Hawk looked into her eyes. Chained and helpless. He never thought anyone could look at him the way she was now. “Ever since I died. We take a vial of blood every four hours or so. It’s our version of a vitamin pill. When we don’t take it. . . Well, you saw what happens.”

  “It must be terrible.”

  Hawk’s chest swelled with emotion. “It’s a nightmare. Imagine your consciousness slipping from you. Imagine having no control over your body. Your memories fade. You know it’s coming. And there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. Except take that small vial of blood.”

  The doctor rested her hands on her hips. “Then maybe it’s time we did something about it.”

  Hawk looked up. “The hammer?”

  “Something a little less drastic.”

  “A bullet?”

  Despite herself, she laughed. “We can’t reverse it. Not until we know more about it, at least. But we can install a device that’ll give you your shot at regular intervals. It means you can sleep without waking up in the middle of the night. You can live a normal life. Relatively.”

  “What if it runs out?”

  “We’ll fit a light to it, something that makes a noise when it’s running low. If we pack it tightly enough, it could last a month or more. Then all you need to do is refill the device and slot it back into place.”

  It was music to Hawk’s ears. “You may be the greatest gift I ever had.”

  Dr. Archer winked. “Not so fast. You haven’t had me. Now, how about we get our new blood into you?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “When I do this, don’t be surprised if it seeps out of your old wounds. I haven’t fixed them all yet.”

  “I’d be surprised if you had.”

  “You’re a patchwork quilt of a man. The blood will enter your body slowly.”

  Hawk grinned. “Pump me, doc.”

  The last of his blood left his system and slid—with some resistance—through the tube.

  * * *

  The doctor typed at the keyboard and hit the red button again. The synthetic blood entered a second tube. It was more viscous than his old blood and flowed more easily.

  Hawk recalled something in a report he’d been given about his condition. “Where is this blood from? If it’s human blood, I’m not sure I should take it.”

  “It’s synthetic and doesn’t belong to anyone. We made it in the lab.”

  “In the lab? You mean, it’s not natural?”

  “Synthetic blood is as natural as human blood. We simply edited it for our own purposes. May I continue?”

  Hawk eyed the liquid uncertainly. He focused his attention on the good doctor. It all came down to whether or not he trusted her.

  He nodded.

  Dr. Archer pressed a button and th
e liquid continued sliding through the tubes. Hawk watched it until it disappeared inside his body.

  I’m dead. What harm can a little synthetic blood do me now?

  He didn’t feel a thing. As promised, the new blood seeped out of his wounds and down his body in fat globules. The doctor came over with a staple gun, wiped the blood away, and stapled his chest shut. Once the process was complete, she removed the needles.

  “Try moving around,” she said. “Tell me if you notice any difference.”

  He did as she suggested.

  “Wow,” he said.

  “Better?”

  “Much. Everything seems lighter.”

  The freedom of movement was incredible. He’d been a rusty old machine badly in need of a fresh drop of oil.

  The doctor tucked the needles away. “It should. This is synthetic blood we made specifically for you. Your blood will clot now. But you still won’t heal. When we give you your injection every four hours, it should have a stronger effect. This is the first stage of your evolution. Soon, you’ll be as improved in every other way too.”

  If this first step was any indication, Hawk believed her. He grinned. Maybe he could never return to normal life, but with the doctor’s help, perhaps he could become the best version of himself. For the first time in a long time, Hawk began to hope.

  5.

  TOMMY

  Together, Tommy and Guy severed the last chunk of entangled metal from Emin’s back. They eased it slowly so as not to wrench Emin’s limbs from their sockets.

  Emin wheezed as the weight was released from her chest. None of the team could breathe, so the oxygen that squeezed from her lungs must have been forced out of them earlier. They laid her carefully on the seats Tommy had placed as Guy’s crash mat.

  Her body was mangled and twisted. Her bones had been snapped in half a dozen places. She’d suffered them all in her attempt to keep Jimmy safe from harm.

  “Emin, are you awake?” Tommy said. “I’d hate to do all this heavy lifting only to find you’re no longer with us.”

  Emin’s eyes flickered open. She raised an extended middle finger.