Z-Boat (Book 2): Z-Topia

by Suzanne Robb

  “So, you didn’t tell me how things went with Allgood, he didn’t try anything funny with you did he?”

  “No, he wanted to but was able to control himself.”

  “Good, I would hate to have to go and beat the crap out of a dead man.”

  “So, I did good? Made you proud?”

  Richards slowed and looked at her. “Of course I’m proud. I’ll admit you scared the hell out of me when you messaged saying you were in a car with the guy, but you can handle yourself.”

  Janelle stopped walking and pushed him against a wall. “You know the family knows who you really are. It wasn’t hard to figure out. What I don’t get is how you became such a goddamn monster. How can you look at yourself in the mirror knowing the things you’ve done?”

  Richards felt panic rise. She put the prototype down and stared at him with hate in her eyes.

  “Janelle, what are you talking about? Where is this coming from?”

  “A little birdie told me the truth about you, and to be honest I’m not proud of you. You murder, maim, torture, and even used these zombies as a security method. Millions of people are dying and all you cared about was yourself.”

  Richards groaned. “Charlie is the one who let you in on everything. That bastard is the one who pulled you into this.”

  “At least he told me the truth, and by killing you I’m doing the world a favor.”

  Richards felt like a truck hit him. His head drooped and he saw the hole in his chest. Janelle came up to him and lifted his face. Her smile the last thing he saw before his world went black.

  * * *

  Joseph made it back to the other half of their group within minutes. Richards was on the ground with a large pool of blood forming underneath him.

  “Janelle, you need to listen to me. Charlie manipulated you into doing this.”

  She laughed. “My whole life men have been telling me they can help, but you know the only one who actually did was Charlie.” She aimed her gun at him.

  Joseph raised his weapon. “You don’t want to do that.”

  Janelle looked at him and he saw how empty her eyes were. The anger he felt toward Charlie and all the pain he’d caused others expanded in his chest and before he knew it he pulled the trigger. Bits of the girl flew everywhere, mixing with the remains of Richards.

  When they arrived at the ladder Joseph wasn’t sure who he wanted the victor to be. Ally was a domineering control freak who hated him, and Charlie was a psychopath who planned to nuke the world into submission. If he was lucky they would both be dead and he could do whatever the hell he wanted.

  Chapter Twenty-five—

  Ally wiped a hand across her lip ignoring the warm liquid pouring from the gash. Charlie got in a lucky punch, but she knew the jab to his shoulder knocked the breath out of him. They circled one another gauging possible moves and looking for weak spots.

  “Did you know I made sure the Betty Loo was selected for that mission? I knew you’d be able to disarm the bomb since I taught you how,” Charlie taunted.

  “I figured as much, though I never figured you’d be in bed with Williams to decimate the world with this bacteria.”

  “Ooh, smart girl, how did you figure that out? I hid that data stick from you.”

  “Joseph had copies of every communication, it was easy to read between the lines and put all the pieces together. Then again I knew what to look for. You like theatrics, so tying you to what happened to Roark in North Korea was easy. Really? An interview with a world famous reporter and five minutes later she’s dead. Williams was a bit tougher. Though I figured it out when I saw you screwed covering your tracks with the payments you made to the doctor who altered the bacteria to make it stronger.” Ally moved to the left as Charlie took a swing.

  She noticed a glint from something in his hand, time to take out her weapons. She tripped him and he went down with a thud. As she pivoted on her foot to face him but he grabbed her ankle and yanked. Her feet went out from beneath her and she heard the sickening crack as her head hit the concrete floor.

  For a moment stars danced in her vision and she had problems breathing. The air knocked out of her lungs. Charlie straddled her and she let out a hiss as he applied pressure to her broken ribs. The damn things were never going to heal.

  Charlie raised his right hand and with dimming vision she freed her left arm and grabbed his groin and squeezed. He let out a high pitched yelp and his hands came down. One tried to remove her vice like grip, the other to backhand her across the face.

  More stars, her head wobbled from side to side. She needed to get him off of her fast or he would kill her. Ally felt her hand being pulled away and used the diversion to raise her right leg and hook it around Charlie’s neck. She pushed and flipped him off of her. No time for a breather. She pulled out one of the serrated knives with titanium tip, a favorite of hers. On submarines the divers used this to cut through life lines in case of emergencies. Up top they were not too popular, and even lesser known was the fact the tip penetrated body armor.

  With a grim smile she put her left hand on Charlie’s shoulder and pulled him close. She could smell his breath and the tang of blood assaulted her nostrils. He winked at her before she drove the knife into his shoulder in the exact spot she had shot him days ago. “This is for the stunt with the guy pretending to be my father you sick shit.”

  He screamed in pain and crawled away, dropping something in the process. She dragged herself to take a look and saw he planned to shoot her with a one-shot wrist gun popular with assassins and thugs.

  Prick, she thought.

  “Always have to know every last detail. I tried so hard to distract you because I knew you’d be like a dog with a bone. Do you know how much money I spent putting up the Pentagon people? The equipment alone cost millions, not to mention all those survivors we collected. That bleeding heart of yours is an Achilles heel.”

  His breathing was ragged but evening out. Ally forced herself to her feet and prepared to kill this ass or die trying.

  She lunged at him as he raised his right arm to strike and was able to jam three inches of solid steel into his armpit. He grunted with pain and staggered back as he worked to yank it out. Footsteps fast approached.

  “Waste of money. You didn’t bother to make it look lived in nor have boot prints outside indicating people went for food. Not to mention it was a damn fairy tale. Hell, the only thing you got right was the flag.”

  Joseph came to a stop ten feet behind Ally. Charlie glanced at them and seemed to be debating his chances for survival. Ally assumed they weren’t looking too high.

  “Joseph, look for the case. Charlie and I are going to finish this once and for all.”

  Ally heard a tinkling and watched as Charlie leaped into a corridor.

  A decimator, in these close quarters?

  “Get down now!” Ally yelled.

  The explosion ripped through the corridor. Ally’s ears bled and several bits of metal stuck out of her in various places. She felt around her neck and didn’t feel any blood, she sighed, thankful no arteries had been hit. She went to the last place she saw Charlie and found his body in a lagoon of dark liquid. His head lay a few feet away, next to the case.

  She grabbed the metal container and smiled when she saw it was too old and damaged to be of use. She tossed it on the ground and used the prototype to fire a few rounds into it to make sure.

  “Joseph, you still here?” she called out.

  “Yeah.” His moan of pain let her know he’d been hurt in the blast.

  Ally made her way over to him and sat on the ground. She picked out several smaller bits of shrapnel then worked on the more embedded ones. Only two were severe enough to require her to slice some makeshift bandages from her shirt and tie them up until she could do better.

  Joseph’s definition of minor meant he wasn’t dead. A large piece jutted out of his skull at an odd angle and she wasn’t sure how to go about it. Joseph told her to yank, and she did. Only t
wo inches had gone in, but it was enough to know he’d have some brain damage.

  For twenty minutes she worked. Then she heard a noise she’d been dreading: the low moan of zombies. She peered around the area trying to determine how they got in, realizing whoever the last one down the ladder was probably didn’t shut the damn hatch.

  With her head lowered she wondered who she pissed off to be dealing with this. Joseph was fading fast and had yet to utter a word. Without the benefit of body armor the decimator sent dozens of tiny metal fragments into him. He didn’t so much as say “ow” as she pulled them out. She did it with care, but knew it had to hurt like hell.

  He looked up at her and rasped, “What do we do now?”

  “We kill them before they kill us.”

  Joseph didn’t move and Ally pulled him to a corridor. Then she took hold of what was left of Charlie’s body and hauled it a good fifty feet in front of where the ladder lowered.

  Keeping an eye on Joseph, Ally went to the panel on the wall she’d seen Charlie using. It spit out sparks and smoke. Of course it would be shorted out. This was their only exit. Without James they wouldn’t be able to find the entrance they’d came in through. Ally ran down the corridor as far as she dared, unsurprised when she didn’t find any more panels.

  The shuffling sounds increased and in minutes they would be overrun by the undead. She checked her ammo and tried to familiarize herself with the new weapon. In case he came around, she prepped Joseph’s too.

  “The panel’s fried, we’re not lowering the ladder, which means we need to fight our way out of this. You got me?”

  She flipped down her glasses to get an idea of what to expect. Snarls echoed, but the scratching sounds seemed to come from everywhere. Goose pimples rose on her skin. When she got eyes on the horde a small smile crossed her face. The damn things were falling down the opening, using a ladder beyond their ability. Dozens of zombies clawed their way toward her. Their legs dragging behind, broken bones sticking out of rotten stumps, ankles and knees twisted at unnatural angles.

  However a few did walk, slower and with a limp, but they were coming for her. She didn’t have to be told they were “altered.”

  “God dammit.”

  She patted Joseph on the cheek. “You still with me? It’s not as bad as I thought, but the ones coming are tough sons o’ bitches. Okay?”

  He nodded, but the drool running down the side of his mouth made her wonder if she was doomed. Then there was no time left, the horde discovered Charlie’s body. Their satisfied moans bounced off the ceiling and walls. Feeding them was stupid, she knew, but it was the only way to slow them down. She aimed and fired. The first shot so powerful it knocked her off balance. Joseph jerked, saw the zombies, screamed, and then fired.

  Ally picked herself up and joined in making sure to brace herself against the concrete chunk behind her. The prototype was powerful and blew holes the size of bowling balls in body hits and caused the heads to turn into nothing but a mix of dark green and red mist. A few splinters of bone and viscera landed here and there, but for the most part nothing remained of them, at least the ones up front.

  Ally couldn’t believe her eyes when one of them looked at her. Not a glance or a sniff, but a look, an expression of irritation on its face. The thing walked away from Charlie’s corpse. She fired the weapon and the round removed a flap of skin from the side of its face.

  Joseph fired at anything, not aiming, but getting in a few hits here and there. Ally pulled the trigger again deciding she must have hit it with a glancing blow the time before. The zombie stopped a moment as its head rocked back and a crunching sound let her know she broke its nose.

  Wonderful, she thought. This weapon can incinerate the heads of others, but these “altered” ones are almost impervious. A tingle of fear rippled through her. How many of the ones down here were “altered?” There was no way to tell. More were filing in and they hadn’t killed the others yet.

  She fired again hoping a shot to the eye would have some sort of positive result. The round orb popped sending liquid dribbling down its face, but it kept coming. Ally feared the mutated bacteria was adapting and becoming stronger. If this was the case the best thing she could do was make a run for it and find a place to hide.

  Joseph mumbled something and tossed his gun at the approaching horde. From the left, one of the undead tackled Ally causing them both to fall to the ground. The prototype she held caused a large enough gap to prevent the thing from biting her. Her ribs destroyed and a fiery pain ran up and down her left side.

  She wiggled and squirmed but was pinned. Footsteps echoed and she knew it was only a matter of time before she turned into some sort of all you can eat buffet from hell. She reached for the small pistol she kept hidden in a side pocket. She had no problem taking her own life if it meant not turning into one of these things. However, putting the gun in the mouth of the creature and firing was option one. If it turned out to be one of the “altered”, well option two was a given.

  She freed the weapon and managed to force her arm out of the space it was wedged in. Her finger tightened on the trigger when she heard Joseph yelp. Tilting her head as much as possible she glanced over and saw a desiccated corpse shuffling toward him. The clothing it wore in tatters and the bits of body she saw were sloughing off the bone in greasy chunks. The thing must have had a cushy landing, meaning others did as well.

  She fired and blew the back of its skull off. The bone melted away as it sank to its knees. Joseph continued to scream but was in no immediate danger. She, however still had a rather strong one on her. As she brought around the gun to fire she wondered if she’d made the right decision saving Joseph.

  Protecting him had been instinct, but perhaps the kinder solution would have been putting him out of his misery. She pushed the morbid thought out of her head and pulled the trigger. A sigh of relief passed her lips as the thing on top of her stopped moving. She forced herself to roll over despite the pain.

  When she stood the zombie she’d tried to kill moments before was in front of her. One eye intact, the other an empty socket leaking strange purple colored fluids. She scanned the ground for anything moving, a hand or leg, it didn’t matter.

  An arm shot out and grabbed her throat. A scream would be pointless. Joseph had been damaged in the explosion. Rancid breath made its way into her nostrils and she could not stop the contents of her stomach from reappearing if she wanted to. The thing smiled, blackened teeth and tongue covered in pustules. She spit as much of the vomit out as possible but the taste lingered. Mixed with the smell it was a miracle she didn’t pass out.

  She’d managed to hold onto the small gun and raised it halfway before the “altered” grabbed her arm with an icy hand that felt like a vice. Would she become like this one? Smart, strong, hard to kill? Would she be aware? This one seemed to have a basic consciousness, but maybe the stress was getting to her.

  She shut her eyes not wanting to cry out or scream when it bit her. Then she was on her butt with a confused expression. Joseph sat next to her, his legs giving out. In front of them the body of the creature lay, a two foot length of rebar going in one ear and out the other. The gunk Ally saw seeping out of the wounds moved quicker than the normal zombie’s goopy insides.

  She grabbed Joseph by the arm and scooted back with him in tow. She almost let out a hysterical laugh at the thought of having to separate between normal and “altered”. Wasn’t separating the good guys from the bad enough?

  “Thanks.” It was all she could manage. The events of the last few days were bleeding into one another.

  At least she hadn’t chosen to be humane and kill the guy. Though as the sounds of more shuffling feet and groans reached her ears she knew a horrible fate awaited them no matter what she did.

  “What… now?”

  Ally gave Joseph a sad smile. “I’m not sure. We can try and go back to where Rogers was, but I have no idea how the men will react, and with all those survivors I don’t want any
more innocents dying.”

  A crack from above and then the hum of a motor. The ladder lowered. Ally stared at it as if it would bite her. In one direction there were zombies intent on eating them. In the other they had miles of unmapped and unknown dangers in the tunnels. The option above would take them into enemy hands.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ally said.

  “No… choice. I’ll… first.”

  Ally stared at Joseph. He offered to go to certain death. Either he was in severe shock, brain damaged, or things were still going according to some plan he had.

  “The case is useless, Joseph. The nukes can never be launched. James is dead. How do you plan to explain all that before your brain gets plastered to the wall behind you by those guys?”

  Joseph didn’t answer and when Ally glanced at him she realized he was unconscious. The wound to his head as serious as she’d thought.

  She nudged him and sleepy eyes opened. “I think it’s about time we all face reality.”

  Joseph stared into Ally’s eyes. She saw the truth, his fatigue, fear, and his wish for things to be over. She couldn’t blame him. Double crosses were to be expected when you associated with the people he did, but triple ones and dysfunctional family issues could not be predicted. With all the monkey wrenches thrown into what he wanted to happen, Ally was sure the current result didn’t come close to resembling what he’d envisioned for the new America.

  With a critical eye she looked at the man who helped create the chaos the world was in. The man who might be one of the only cogs left in the machine that would most likely lead to the death of mankind. Lastly, she thought about Marcus and how senseless his death was along with the others.

  Walking over to the ladder with Joseph in tow she put his hands on one of the rungs. Then she undid the shoulder strap of the prototype and used it to secure him in place. Joseph grabbed hold, blood-encrusted arms and legs making him wince. When he arrived at the top he was pulled through.