Zed's World (Book 3): No Way Out

by Rich Baker

  Three

  “Carmen?” he asks, raising the volume of his voice above that of the noise from the running water.

  The door pulls open, and Carmen’s face peeks around it.

  “Hi!” she says, beaming. “I’m taking your advice and getting a shower while we still have water pressure. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, um…” he stammers, “that’s fine. Good idea, while we have hot water like you said.”

  “Great!” she says. Her head disappears behind the door as she closes, but doesn’t latch it. The door eases itself partway open, almost as if Carmen deliberately wants D-Day to see her. He looks at the door, past it, into the bathroom. Carmen drops her towel and stands next to the shower. D-Day takes in her form, starting at her feet, working his way up her calves, the backs of her muscular legs, over her toned round ass, her back, and the side of her left breast, just visible under her arm as she reaches for the shower door. He realizes that she’s not moving, and it’s then that he locks eyes with her. She turns so he can see her fully from the front, her nipples hardening in the center of her c-cup breasts, the muscles in her tight stomach twitching.

  “Do I need to send you an invitation?” she asks him.

  “No!” he replies and starts stripping off his gear while she steps into the shower and under the water, wetting her black hair and arching her back as she runs her fingers through her dark locks.

  D-Day steps into the shower, putting a hand on her back and drawing her close. She runs a hand over his chest, tracing a path on his skin with her finger, down his stomach and lower, finding him standing at attention.

  “I figure, who knows what’s next,” she says, her voice sounding urgent. “We’re going after a killer, and there’s a city of the dead on the other side of the doors. I decided I wanted to ensure that if the worst happens, I have something happy to think of in those last moments. I don’t want to waste time with foreplay, or playing hard-to-get. I want you. Now.”

  D-Day kisses her on the neck, working his way up to her ear and pulling her earlobe into his mouth. She draws in a breath in a hiss, pressing her hips toward him. Their lips meet, and they kiss like they might not have another chance. Carmen grinds against him, lifting a leg and hooking it around him, pulling him tight. He presses her against the tile, the cold porcelain making Carmen gasp. She lifts her other leg and D-Day holds her aloft, kissing her with a passion that surprises him.

  They make love like time is running out, and when they finish, he says nothing but pulls her tighter to him. She nuzzles his neck, and they just stand in the hot water for a few minutes. Finally, she releases her grip and grabs the bar of soap from the dish. He looks at her, and she smiles, rubbing the soap on his chest, building a good lather.

  “We should do what we came in here for, right?” she says. “I’ll do you if you’ll do me?”

  “I think we just did that,” he says.

  “I meant to wash my back, genius,” she says, flashing her bright white smile.

  They lather, rinse, and repeat, then take their time ensuring they’ve washed all the suds from their bodies. After they’ve dried each other and gotten dressed, Carmen takes a serious tone.

  “D-Day, about before…”

  He looks at her but says nothing, waiting for her to finish the thought.

  “I don’t know if this will make sense to you, but I don’t make it a habit of sleeping with someone I’ve known for a day, especially hours after I’ve had to shoot my estranged husband because he turned into a zombie. Maybe it’s the world ending, and I’m not thinking clearly, but I feel a connection with you. I’m glad you took the bait and came after me.”

  He looks at her for a long second. “You’re unlike anyone I’ve known before,” he says. “I feel completely at ease with you, and it’s not easy for me to let people in. I can count on two fingers the number of women who have made me feel this way.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, and if I’m honest, I’m the same way. It’s hard for me to let my guard down like that, and I’m happy I did. You were amazing,” she says, giving him a knowing look.

  There’s an awkward silent moment before Carmen says “Well, shall we go catch a killer?”

  D-Day shakes his head. “This is such a weird day, even at the end of the world. Yeah, let’s gear up. And if you’re up for it, maybe you can show me how strong our connection is later tonight,” he says, dangling the invitation for her to return to his apartment when they’ve finished their sleuthing.

  “You might regret that offer when I’m through with you,” she says, holstering the pistol D-Day hands to her. She’s wearing an evil grin. “This was just a quickie. I have serious plans for later.”

  “I’m really scared and a little turned on…or a little scared and really turned on.” D-Day jokes. He checks the spare magazines in his tactical vest. “Let’s get this over with and get back here.”

  “The quicker, the better,” she says, smiling, the vulnerable girl disappearing and the motorcycle riding badass returning. “I’m already getting hot.” She slaps his butt, laughs and walks past him into the hallway.

  “I may be in over my head,” D-Day says to himself, and follows Carmen into the living room.

  They consult the building roster that her parents have been working on updating. Mike Upham’s apartment is one level down on the 9th floor. Since the murder weapon has his initials on it, they decide to start there. Next, D-Day brings Carmen up to speed on what he found on Cheryl’s body.

  “So not only was she murdered, but someone turned her into one of those things on purpose?” she asks.

  “I’m no CSI tech, but it looks that way to me,” D-Day says.

  “But why would someone do that? It makes no sense! It’s not like you can control these things – whoever did it, it could attack them as easily as anyone else,” she says. “It’s suicidal.”

  “I don’t know what would motivate someone to do that. Maybe it was just to see if they could, to see if it would work? Who knows?” D-Day says. “But remember, they also stabbed her in the neck with a monogrammed letter opener, so they’re not exactly in a rational state of mind from the outset. And that’s assuming the killer is the same person who gave her the injection. They may not be related, though I think that would be a pretty big coincidence. And network TV police dramas have taught me that there’s no such thing as a coincidence.”

  “How would they have something to inject people with to infect them anyway?” Carmen asks. “Who has syringes laying around?”

  “Don’t know that either. Add it to the list of things we need to figure out,” D-Day replies. “Shall we get a move on?”

  “Let’s do it,” she says.

  Four

  They exit D-Day’s apartment, head to the east stairwell and walk down to the ninth floor. The hallway is quiet. According to the building roster, there are only twelve apartments occupied on this floor after the consolidation they did right after the outbreak. They creep down the hall to Mike Upham’s apartment.

  D-Day stops short of the doorway and whispers to Carmen.

  “Listen, we don’t know what we’re going to find in there. Upham may have a gun and start shooting, or he may have a knife or another syringe with zombie potion in it…”

  “I get it,” Carmen interrupts. “We don’t know what we’re going to find.”

  D-Day purses his lips for a minute then continues. “Right. I’m going to knock first and see what his state of mind is. I want you on the hinge side of the door and crouching down. If he shoots, he’s not likely to aim there. If he opens the door, I’ll hit it hard and take him down. If I have to unlock it, and we go in, keep your pistol aimed low, scan the side opposite me and keep your finger off the trigger until you have something to shoot at.”

  “You’ve done this before,” she says.

  “Yes, but always with a trained squad,” he says. “And never less than three people per room, and always with spotters on the rooftops. Are
you sure you’re up for this?”

  “Hey, life ain’t going to get any easier for us. May as well get tough now, right?” she says. She realizes that she’s nervous and that her answer sounded weak, so she adds “No, I’m good. Let’s get this done.”

  He nods, and they take positions on either side of the door, Carmen crouching down as D-Day instructed. He points at her and makes a thumbs-up thumbs-down motion. She returns a thumbs-up. D-Day nods and pounds on the door hard; three times.

  “Mike, it’s D-Day,” he says at a volume short of yelling. “I need your help with something.”

  He counts off the seconds, One. Two. Three, he hears nothing, no movement, no voice responding to his… Four. Five. Six, still nothing… Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.

  D-Day pounds on the door and calls out again. “Mike! Are you in there?”

  Again, he counts to ten. Nothing. He crouches down and holds out the master key card. He points to it, then to the lock, then indicates when they go in he’ll be sweeping the right side, and she should sweep the left.

  Carmen nods and gives him a thumbs-up. Her stomach is doing flips. She checks her pistol, ensures the safety is off and lines her finger along the slide, well clear of the trigger. Her heart is pounding, and her mouth goes dry. She watches in slow motion as D-Day runs the key card through the reader, hears the beep and sees the light turn green. He looks at her and gives her a slight nod, then turns the knob and explodes into the apartment, throwing the door open hard enough that it breaks the door stop and wedges against the wall.

  The layouts of all of the apartments are similar, varying when it comes to the number and size of bedrooms and bathrooms. This one is the “One Bedroom Plus;” meaning it has a half bath near the entry for guests and a full bath off of the bedroom. D-Day sweeps the right side of the entry which covers the dining area and guest bathroom. Carmen goes in behind him and covers the left, which is the kitchen and breakfast bar. Finding nothing in these areas, D-Day shuts the door, and they move to the living room. No sign of Mike Upham. They advance down the hallway toward the bedroom. He motions for Carmen to open the hallway closet door. His 300-lumen flashlight leaves no doubt the closet is empty. The half-bath is likewise empty.

  That leaves the bedroom left to search. Since there has been no sign of life so far, D-Day decides against knocking on the closed door. They follow a similar procedure as before. He throws the door open and goes right; she goes left. They check the bedroom, the bathroom, the linen closet, the walk-in closet, and even under the bed. No Mike Upham.

  “Well, this is anti-climactic,” Carmen says, her heart rate approaching normal.

  “Second best outcome,” D-Day replies.

  “What’s the first?”

  “Finding him inside lying face down, hands clasped behind his head saying, ‘I did it!’ That would be ideal,” D-Day says. “Let’s look around for anything that might help us.”

  D-Day checks the messy desk that takes up wall space in the dining area, but he doesn’t find anything that says, ‘murder plan’ in big bold letters.

  “I’m not even sure what I’m looking for,” he says.

  From the kitchen, Carmen says, “Hey - this is interesting.”

  “What is?” D-Day asks as he walks in her direction.

  “You said you found a syringe mark, right?” she asks.

  “That’s what it looked like to me,” he replies.

  Carmen opens the refrigerator door wide. “Well, Mike should have access to them,” she says, gesturing to a row of insulin vials.

  “Nice work, Bustamante,” D-Day says. “I wouldn’t have thought to look in the fridge.”

  “You can tell a lot about a man by what’s in his fridge,” she says with a grin.

  “You checked out my fridge, didn’t you?” he asks, feigning surprise.

  “Maybe,” comes the reply.

  “What a violation of trust!” he says. “And what did you learn about me? Did I pass your sneaky little fridge test?”

  “You found me naked in your bathroom. You do the math,” she says, her devilish grin returning.

  “Ok, we need to get this over with and get back to my place,” he says, returning to the business at hand. “Mike’s monogram was on the murder weapon. We think that Cheryl was injected with something that turned her into a zombie. And Mike has easy access to syringes. So far I’d say all evidence points to him.”

  “I agree. Of course, if this were a TV show that means he didn’t do it because he’s obviously being framed,” Carmen says. She gestures around the kitchen. “For instance, there’s insulin in the fridge, but no syringes.”

  D-Day furrows his brow. “Yeah, that is odd. Maybe they’re in his room? Or bathroom?”

  They search the apartment again, this time with a defined purpose, but find no sign of the syringes.

  “Ok, this is officially odd,” D-Day says. “Now you have me questioning the evidence.”

  “Why don’t we check out Cheryl’s apartment,” Carmen says, looking at the building roster. “It’s just down the hall. Maybe there are some clues there as to why someone would want to kill her and turn her into one of those things.”

  They exit Mike Upham’s apartment and walk three doors down to Cheryl’s doorway. They execute the same entry even though they both agree her place is probably safer than Mike’s. Still, they also agree, better on the safe side.

  Before they even go about clearing the apartment, they see the box of 100 syringes on the counter. Carmen glances into the kitchen.

  “Blood!” she calls out.

  D-Day follows her gaze and sees smeared blood on the kitchen tile. He points to a pan in the sink. It has blood and what looks like a clump of hair stuck to it.

  “What were we just saying about this apartment being safer than his?” D-Day asks. He points toward the family room and tells Carmen to go clear that area while he clears the bathroom and bedroom. He creeps down the hall, and as he nears the bathroom, he hears a noise. He recognizes the sound from his time in Iraq. It’s the sound of someone trying to talk with duct tape over their mouth. The bathroom door is ajar, so he steps toward it and gives it a kick, and then recoils at what’s inside. He has his rifle raised but doesn’t pull the trigger.

  “Hey Carmen,” he calls out. “I found Mike Upham.”

  Five

  Carmen walks over next to D-Day and stares into the bathroom with her mouth hanging open, not believing what she is seeing. Mike Upham sits on the toilet; his torso duct taped to the tank, feet, and hands bound by the sticky gray tape. A length of rope wraps around his neck, the other end tethered to the towel bar above the toilet. A piece of tape covers his mouth. A syringe sticks out of his leg with the plunger depressed all the way. His gray face has the familiar traces of black spider webs under the skin.

  The towel bar squeaks as the undead lawyer moves his head and pulls against the rope. Drywall dust falls from one side of the towel bar, a sign that the screws holding it in place are being pulled free. The jaw works in vain, trying to break free of the tape. Malevolent black eyes bore into D-Day and Carmen.

  “Hey D-Day,” Carmen says, “I don’t think any of our theories are right.”

  “It would seem there are some big holes in them, wouldn’t it?” he replies. He draws his pistol and fires a single shot, the loud pop sounding the end of Mike Upham. The hallway smells of spent powder and the foulness of the black ooze that leaks from the slumped head of the ex-lawyer.

  D-Day and Carmen walk back to the kitchen, and for a couple of moments, neither of them speak.

  “Ok, so Cheryl was stabbed and injected and turned into a zombie,” Carmen says, breaking the silence. “All signs pointed to Mike Upham, who it now appears was, what – ambushed in Cheryl’s apartment, knocked out with a frying pan, strapped to the toilet and injected with something, also turning him into a zombie. His arms are taped to his sides, so he didn’t strap himself to that toilet. So – what? Cheryl ambushes him, turns him gray, then offs herself bec
ause of the guilt?”

  “No, she was stabbed in the neck and back. Even if she’s crazy enough to stab herself in the neck and inject herself with the mystery zombie potion, there’s no way she stabbed herself in the back. Plus, there was no syringe anywhere around there. She couldn’t have injected herself, disposed of the syringe, then stabbed herself in the neck and the back. And the big question would be why on earth would she do that? It makes no sense. If she was guilt ridden, she could have just killed herself here. I think we have to have a third party in play here, but I have no freaking idea who it would be. Who hates these two enough to kill them both? And why?”

  “My gut says it was probably a love triangle,” Carmen assets. “Think about it - she’s murdered and zombified; he’s killed and zombified in the murder victim’s apartment. If it’s not a murder-suicide, then someone else killed them. Love triangle.”

  “Ok, that’s a common motive for murder. And again, if I’ve learned anything from TV crime dramas, the person has most likely tried to insert themselves into our investigation, such as it is,” D-Day says. “Meaning we’ve already talked to the killer.”

  They think in silence for a minute, and at the same time both of their faces light up.

  “Melissa!” Carmen blurts out. “That nosy bitch has been all over this thing, complaining about our every move and getting all up in our business. Er, your business.”

  “No, it’s our business. You’re in this as much as me,” D-Day says. “Where’s her apartment?”

  Carmen consults the building roster.

  “She’s on eight,” Carmen says.

  “Well then, I guess we’re going down,” D-Day says, chuckling at his double-entendre.

  “What do we do with…you know, the body?” Carmen asks, jerking a thumb toward the bathroom.

  “Leave it for now. It’s not like the person who lived here is going to mind,” D-Day says.

  Carmen nods as if to say, ‘that’s true.’ They take another look around, make sure they have all their gear, and exit the apartment. Once more, they go to the east stairwell and then navigate down to the eighth floor of the building. Carmen checks the building roster again and starts looking at the apartment numbers.