Radios squawked and hissed with voices that might have come from the netherworld for all Tommy knew. A soldier with an impossibly high hairline scribbled notes on scraps of paper before they were whisked away by boys wearing identical navy-blue uniforms and matching caps.
The twenty-four-hour news cycle jovially flamed rumors concerning the virus infecting livestock and wild animals. It was all lies, and yet he doubted it was a rare farmer who wouldn’t put down every suspect member of their livestock if it meant protecting the rest.
Without livestock, they wouldn’t have enough to sustain themselves. It might even be a ruse originating from the military to encourage farmers to depend on their proscribed rations rather than consume any of their own food supplies.
Tommy and the others passed military units, receiving only a few cursory glances as they made their way toward the tall monuments to capitalism in the middle distance. In a matter of minutes, they had passed the extremes of the military camp and had entered the city proper. No large barricade had been erected, no delineation between military and civilian. They were one and the same.
Tommy’s thoughts returned to Sam, trapped in her prison, within the walls the nation itself had built to keep her safe. She was hundreds of miles distant, and yet he carried her with him wherever he went. Am I making a big mistake chasing this ‘Failsafe’ when I should be working to protect the one I love most? At the beginning, he thought he was protecting Sam by protecting everyone. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
Within twenty minutes they came to the street where the secret base was located. Supposedly.
A dog wandered into the middle of the road, its leash dragging behind it. It eyeballed the gang and pre-emptively wagged its tail. When none of the gang paid it any attention, its tail fell flat and it turned and headed further down the street.
Guy interlocked his fingers on the back of his head. “You guys sure this is the right place? Looks like where my aunt lives.”
Emin pulled an abandoned shopping trolley aside, revealing the street sign. “Gossamer Street. It’s the right place.”
“You don’t suppose there are two Gossamer Streets in Houston, do you?”
Tommy lost his sense of touch, of smell, the day he turned into an unholy monster, and yet he hadn’t lost all his senses. His instincts were as sharp as ever, that distant stomach churning, setting his whole body on edge. “It’s here.”
Emin raised an eyebrow and shrugged her shoulders. “If you say so. It beats me why anybody wants to hide a base here of all places. It looks so. . . normal.”
“That’s exactly why they built it here. Or maybe they designed this part of town to look this normal. There’s no safer place to hide a secret facility than right under everyone’s nose.”
One building had been boarded up. The wood didn’t look new but grey and beaten by the rain from a dozen seasons past. Someone graffitied the walls with poetic sentiments from the streets. Most of the upper reaches had been smashed by hurled stones of adolescence.
The hotel’s name was the Spring Water, a dive that’d never been in the limelight. They climbed the steps and came to a pair of double doors, a chain wrapped about their matching rusty handles. Oddly, no lock to hold them shut. Tommy pushed them open.
The foyer was large, warm and welcoming, chipped black and white mosaic floor tiles. A large reception desk, carved from wood with an owl’s enormous eyes protruding from one corner. Jimmy fingered the eyes and poked at the protruding beak.
A pair of elevators. One appeared to be in working order, its doors open wide and welcoming. A ream of stained paper proclaimed the other as OUT OF ORDER.
Tommy pressed the button for the working elevator. Its lights flickered spasmodically as he stepped on board.
Guy looked the lift over with some concern. “I’m not sure you should stand inside it.”
Emin arched an eyebrow at him. “What do you suggest? Stand on top of it?”
“You know what I mean. It’s not safe.”
Emin took a step on the lift. “What’s the matter? Chicken?”
Guy puffed out his cheeks and expanded his chest. If it was his best attempt at looking like Superman, it was some ways off. He straightened his back and extended his leg to follow her into the death trap.
“Wait outside, Guy.” Tommy didn’t remove his eyes from the display. “We’ll need someone outside in case this thing breaks down. You’ll need to crowbar the door open.”
“Right,” Guy said stiffly. “Just what I was saying.”
“Chicken,” Emin mouthed.
Guy puffed up his chest to respond in kind.
“Jimmy, on or off?” Tommy said.
Jimmy weighed the options, taking careful stock of the state of the elevator’s innards. He shuffled his feet. Off.
“Chicken,” Emin mouthed.
Guy rested his hand on Jimmy’s should. “Clever lad.”
Tommy fingered the cracked buttons. A leaf of paint floated to the floor. The elevator groaned and shivered beneath its weight.
Emin eyed it uncertainly. “Um. . . Are we sure about this?”
Tommy reached inside his shirt and withdrew the key on its chain. He held it in his hand and moved it along the buttons. It was a chunky thing and required a fair-sized keyhole to slip it into. . . If indeed it was a key. He ran his hand over the panel.
“Anything on your side?” Tommy said.
“My side?” Emin said.
“We’re looking for a hole for this key to fit into. It’ll be octagonal. Just shy of the size of a quarter.”
Emin swallowed a handful of sand and ran her hands over the rusty walls. A gentle stroke made the elevator shiver. A prod made it shudder. Emin dusted off her hands. She regretted getting in the square box in the first place. “Nothing here.”
She calmly stepped off the elevator, but even she couldn’t hide the pure sense of relief she felt upon stepping off it.
“Are you sure this is the right building?” Guy said.
Yes, somehow Tommy was sure. Why have a hotel in this part of town? There was nothing special about it. No easy access to public transportation or famous landmarks for tourists to check out. It just didn’t make sense.
Tommy stepped off the elevator and checked the key. It bore no instructions, no hints as to what they ought to do next.
“Maybe burning the documents wasn’t the best decision after all,” Guy said. “Would have come in handy right about now, don’t you think?”
Tommy balled up his fist to pound the rotten hotel wall. It would likely slam through it if he did.
How were they supposed to know what to do now?
Tommy hung his head, defeated.
“Let’s go find somewhere to rest,” Emin said in an upbeat tone. “We might figure something out.”
“What about that one?” Jimmy pointed at the broken elevator.
Emin shook her head. “It’s broken, baby. Even if it was the right place to go, it couldn’t take us anywhere.”
Jimmy strained at Emin’s hand, peering in through a yellowed glass window in the door. “There’s some old stuff in there.”
Emin tapped him on the hand. “It’s an old building.”
“No, I mean really old. Like the black and white movies my grandpa used to watch.”
Emin dragged Jimmy away. They joined Guy at the front entrance. She turned back to find Tommy standing in the middle of the foyer, his legs facing the exit, his torso turned back in the direction of the broken elevator.
“Tommy?” Emin said. “Tommy, it’s time to go.”
Tommy was far away, focusing on a dozen words spoken in the voice of a young boy. Jimmy. Like the black and white movies my grandpa used to watch.
Tommy floated toward the broken elevator as if under some kind of spell. He tore the warning sign off and pulled on the elevator doors. They screeched, rusted with age. He moved to the front desk and kicked at the metal struts that ran along the fringes, ending in a hoop around an owl’s eye. “Excus
e me.”
Tommy kicked the first inch off and tore the rest off with his hands.
“Tommy?” Emin said. “Tommy, are you all right?”
“It’s old!” Tommy slipped the metal strut through the front bars of the elevator’s door. “The inside of the elevator is old because the elevator has always been out of order. It’s never been operational. But I bet you, a few people have used it over the years. A very select few.”
Tommy leaned his weight against it. A loud shriek and a creak, and the bars jolted aside. He shifted the angle and forced the door open further. The gap wasn’t large but big enough for him to squeeze through if he crouched. He turned his head to one side and thrust one limb through the gap at a time.
Emin pressed her face to the gap. “I hope you don’t think I’m following you in there.”
Tommy had eyes only for the panel. And there, at the bottom, he found what he was looking for. A hole about the size of a quarter, a hole in a rough octagon shape. He slipped the key into the lock. A perfect fit.
“You’re going to want to get in if you want to take part in the next part of the adventure,” he said.
“It fit?” Guy said.
“Like a glove.”
Guy and Emin shared the same expression. Neither of them was much in the mood for climbing onto an elevator that might plummet to both their deaths. Or worse yet, they wouldn’t die and remain alive at the bottom of an endless shaft with nothing but each other’s company.
Jimmy climbed onboard first. After his lack of fear, how could they not follow?
They joined Tommy at the panel. The key jutted from it, the chain almost dragging on the floor.
Emin gripped Jimmy by the hand. “Go ahead. Do it.”
“Jimmy, want to do the honors?” Tommy said. “You found it. Without you, we wouldn’t be here.”
By the way Guy eyed the walls, you would have thought pentagrams were etched in goat’s blood on every surface. “Yeah. Thanks, Jimmy.”
The sarcasm was lost on Jimmy. He beamed at Emin as he reached for the key and turned it.
A solid thunk as something somewhere shifted into place. Or out of place. Emin’s grip grew tighter around Jimmy’s digits.
“Maybe one of us should stay outside, just in case—” Guy said.
The doors slid shut. Nothing else happened.
Guy gulped. “Um. . .”
“Maybe we have to press a button?” Emin said.
She pressed each of them in turn. Again, nothing happened.
Guy threw up his hands. “Great. Now we’re trapped.”
The elevator fell a yard. The brakes screamed to a stop. Guy pressed himself to the wall, arms outstretched to either side, eyes shut tight. “I swear God, I’ll never do anything bad ever again. I swear!”
The elevator shunted downward another yard, and another. Their stomachs raced behind them, further and further, faster and faster they fell.
Down. Down. Down.
Falling into the darkness of the abyss below was like falling into the Hunger. Deeper and deeper they went, but they would never reach the bottom. Not for some time, at least.
37.
SAM
The doors creaked open, grinding halfway before becoming jammed. Hawk braced it with his back and shoved it open. He got it halfway before waving Sam through. “Go.”
She hustled through and breathed a sigh of relief when she stepped outside. Hawk rolled aside and let the door snap shut behind him. It immediately descended.
Sam approached an ornate gold-trimmed fountain in the middle of the foyer. Angels spouted water from long trumpets and cherubs watched gleefully from atop floating clouds. Newspaper tumbleweed rolled across the vast parquet plain.
Hawk led the way to the entrance. A blood stain welcomed them, ushering them into the new world in case they’d forgotten. They stepped out onto the raised plinth of a forgotten plaza. The sight took their breath away.
Red splatters decorated the tarmac like a Jackson Pollock painting. Carrion flew overhead, bellies thick and heavy. Dark feathers of smoke tickled the bulbous overhead clouds’ underbelly and tall columns of black charred remains had turned the city of Austin into a dark and sinister portrait.
And there, shuffling aimlessly amongst the backdrop of their brave new world, the undead reigned as kings over their self-inflicted domain. Already a horde turned in Sam’s direction, noses rising high and sniffing the stench of Sam in their upturned nostrils. They grunted and mewed, limping toward this succulent morsel of food.
Pleasant thoughts of having finally escaped the underground compound faded in an instant. They were not free—not yet. They were still trapped inside a city alive with infected. Getting out would not be easy.
* * *
“This way!”
Hawk led them into a large shopping mall. They’d been running for the past twenty minutes. Every time they thought they’d shaken a gang of undead, they stumbled upon another. The creatures were developing gangland territories.
They cut across the ground floor plaza and hastened up a pair of frozen escalators. A middle-aged creature with a bad combover made to chase after them but tripped and smashed his head on the blunt step. A former elderly lady with dainty features crawled over the fallen man and continued up the steps.
A child zombie with its leg crushed inside the escalator flailed an arm at Sam as she leaped over it. Hawk took her by the hand and dragged her away from the danger zone and into the middle of the floor.
More undead descended. A man in a red flannel shirt shuffled from the bookstore while a gang of children approached from the arcade.
“This way!” Hawk yelled, leading them toward the next set of escalators.
Sam skidded to a stop. “Wait!”
“We don’t have time to wai—” He saw what Sam had seen. A flood of undead rolling down the escalator toward them.
They took off in the final direction available to them—unless they fancied tossing themselves over the railing and onto the hard floor forty feet below. But even that direction was blocked off as a family of cinema-goers, popcorn affixed to the front of their bloodied shirts, groaned gleefully.
They were trapped.
To think that after everything they’d gone through, they now found themselves in this situation. . .
“Stay behind me.” Hawk tucked Sam away as if he could cover her human stink with his own stench.
“You can’t fight them all, Hawk. I love that you would try.”
“Ah, I’m trying all right.”
“If you fight too hard, force them into a frenzy, they’ll kill you too. Don’t do this. Find Tommy and tell him what happened to us. Tell him where the Architect is and how to get to him. One of us has to survive. One of us needs to survive. We’ll never stop the Architect otherwise.”
Hawk’s expression was pained, broken. “I can’t stand here and watch you get torn apart.”
“Then don’t. Leave.”
Hawk was torn between his instinct to fight, and what he knew to be right. He hissed through his teeth and pressed the palm of his hand to his eye. It was painful. So painful. He had half a mind to rip it out root and stem. Please don’t make me do this,” Hawk said. But he knew already she wasn’t making him do anything.
“It is the way it is. Tell Tommy I love him, won’t you?”
Hawk nodded his head. The pain intensified as the undead drew closer. He doubled over, clutching his eye.
Sam pressed a reassuring hand to his cheek. “Hawk? What is it?”
“My eye. . . it. . .”
And then he felt it. “Wait.”
“Hawk, we’ve been through this. You have to go. Now.”
Hawk felt sick to his stomach. He bent over and threw up. He wiped the blood off his lips. “I can feel them. I can feel all of them.”
“You can feel who? I don’t understand.”
There was no time to explain. Hawk focused his attention on the nearest creatures before branching out like a giant
spider’s web. He raised a hand and stiffened his deformed muscles.
The closest creatures clutched hands and bleeding stumps to their heads.
Hawk screamed. He’d never felt so much pain his whole life. He was only grateful he didn’t feel the pain directly. Even so, he thought his head might explode beneath the pressure of it.
He gasped as he turned, black smudges obscuring his vision and swayed uncertainly on his feet.
Sam embraced him, holding him upright and in place.
Finally, Hawk gathered his strength and waved a hand, motioning for the creatures to walk straight ahead.
Without questioning his orders, they did so, plunging themselves over the railing and landing headfirst on the hard floor below. An undead waterfall sailing and splattering.
Sam caught her breath and turned to Hawk. He couldn’t tell if she was more relieved or terrified. “What did you do? Hawk? What just happened?”
“They promised to improve me.” He snorted and shook his head. “I guess they did.”
A Gift
I hope you enjoyed Zombie Nation. I’m currently working on the final book, Zombie World. Until then, why not check out the first book in my completed series After the Fall. It follows a group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world forced from the safety of their commune. They embark on a journey that reveals a startling secret that promises to change the fate of the human race forever. Find the opening few chapters below. Details of how to grab the whole book are available afterwards.
THE COMMUNE
AFTER THE FALL | BOOK ONE
-EXCERPT-
CHARLIE DALTON
PROLOGUE
AN ESTIMATED one hundred and fifty million meteorites and asteroids inhabit our solar system. Adrift, aimless.
They’re made of metal, rock or ice, the left-over remnant debris from the birth of our solar system. Some are as large as dwarf planets, others smaller than your fist. They bump and cajole one another in the protective Oort Cloud playschool, disrupting their eternal slumber.
Death Squad (Book 3): Zombie Nation Page 21
