“Hunter has been with Benjy from just about the start of the outbreak. He’s from Orlando. And Benjy was in South Florida when the initial reports of the outbreak came on the news. Benjy went to check on him and found his whole family had already been infected. He was the only child from his dad, and his other siblings were all step-siblings, so they didn’t have his immunity even though at that point Hunter hadn’t been bitten, and Benjy wasn’t aware of the possible immunity. Before they left, Hunter ended up putting all of them down as they turned. He came here to Benjy’s, and has been his right-hand man ever since. He was bitten about two months after his rescue on a supply run to Tallahassee to check on your family. That was when Benjy found out about the immunity and began searching for all the families from his experiments. He thought at first our blood might hold a clue to a cure, but so far nothing has come from that. Hunter’s an arrogant jerk that likes to throw the fact around that he’s the oldest among us, like it makes him our superior or something. Other than that, I can’t get anything else out of him about his past, but I think they have more of a past than they’re letting on.”
“I get everything you said, and I know Benjy was a part of some kind of secret group,” Hope said. “But how was he able to get around so much, when most of the roads are clogged and his group is supposedly looking for him?”
“I don’t even know where to begin to tell you the resources that man has. First off, he has a plane parked not far from here. Hunter’s a trained pilot, so he usually goes with him on any flying missions. I’ve been to the airfield twice, and it’s well-hidden and camouflaged. He has several big tanks full of fuel for the plane and the trucks. That’s just what he has here. I’ve heard him and Hunter talk about other secret airfields and supply depots he has scattered all over the place. I would bet he has a secret base in just about every part of the U.S. It makes me feel like no matter what happens, if we get overrun or found out here, he has somewhere else for us to go that will be just as safe.”
Hope was about to ask some more questions when she heard the front door of the house swing open. She turned to see her little brother standing there with an empty bowl in his hand and taking a big breath into his lungs. By the time she realized he was getting ready to scream something to them, it was too late to stop him.
“I’m HUNGRY!” he yelled out once before he was joined in the doorway by Melinda and Vince, who quickly joined in his chorus.
Renee and Hope both jumped up and sprinted over to the younger ones and quieted them down before they woke David up. As they lead them towards the kitchen, both girls were very quiet, the both of them soaking in everything they had just learned from Morgan.
Chapter 8
Kane stood at the large window looking out into the night sky over the city of Miami. He was lost in thought, thinking back to simpler times from back before he had changed his view of the world and his place in it. Almost seven hundred years had passed since the day he had his eyes opened to the dangers he and his brothers would face in the ever-changing world. A lot had happened throughout those centuries to reshape him. Currently, gone was the Kane that looked upon the world with wide-eyed amazement and wonder, the man now replaced with something more sinister, something more akin to a child that would pull the wings off a fly simply because he could. A knock at the door snapped him back to the present.
“Sir, the helicopter has arrived,” a voice on the other side of the door rang out.
Kane turned and headed to the door, eager to get on his way. About an hour earlier, he had been notified of a large approaching horde of zombies arriving at the barrier wall in the north. That meant his consorts were soon to be arriving also, and he wanted to see how well the operation went. As he opened the door, he was greeted by a small security detail sent to whisk him off to the roof of the building currently serving as his headquarters. Upon his arrival to the roof, he found Rowland already there, waiting for him in the helicopter.
“It’s time to see if the plan worked as well as you promised it would,” Rowland said as Kane slid into the seat across from him.
“Of that, I have no doubt.”
After almost an hour flight, they arrived at the wall just north of Orlando and found that the waiting military was in full action, firing on the approaching zombies. The flash of guns going off and explosions from the landmines on the unsecured side of the wall illuminated the approaching horde for Kane and Rowland to see.
The zombie horde was like nothing any of the occupants of the helicopter had ever encountered. For the pilots, it was the first time they had seen the horror of a moving herd up close. Even Kane and Rowland were taken back by the sheer numbers of the swarming creatures. Even though the bullets and bombs were cutting into them at a torrential rate, the horde kept advancing until a shot to the head stopped them permanently. They watched in awe as zombies in every imaginable condition kept up the assault on the wall, trying to get to the living on the other side.
Kane imagined the terrible gnashing sound of their teeth as he looked out at the swarming undead, aware that even he and his brothers would not stand a chance against an enemy so ferocious and numerous. He watched one group of zombies get hit by a mortar round, and after the smoke cleared, they continued on their intended path, even though limbs were missing, if not entire lower bodies. Sights such as these made him smile, knowing that the human population didn’t stand a chance before such an unstoppable foe. The only drawback was they still had to eliminate the enemy in front of them, before they could finish enacting their plan of complete subjugation, and ensuring his kind’s continued existence.
“It looks like they were able to draw in quite a few. There must be a couple hundred thousand down there. Are you sure we have a secure enough wall and military presence to eliminate that big of an arrival?” Rowland asked, distracting Kane from witnessing his plan in action.
“I’m quite sure. I repositioned almost the entire military, except for a skeleton crew for security in the city, to the wall for this. Well, at least President Miller did, at my behest,” Kane answered as he leaned over to the pilot and gave him a command.
The pilot turned the helicopter west and headed to a preplanned rendezvous with Kane’s beloved consorts. It took them about fifteen minutes to arrive at a casino’s rooftop in Tampa, where Eva and Tovas were to wait for pickup. As they approached, a green flare went off, indicating that all was clear, and the helicopter went in for the extraction.
Kane slid the door open and found Eva approaching the awaiting aircraft alone. Kane looked out, but didn’t see Tovas or her security detail with her. As she climbed in and shut the door behind her to muffle the sound enough to talk, she looked at her master and handed him Tovas’s golden necklace.
“What does this mean?” Kane asked, confused by the consort’s silence.
“Tovas was lost to us, master,” Eva said as she put her head down in shame.
Kane exploded in anger and grabbed Eva by the throat, pinning her to the door of the helicopter. “Explain,” he said, releasing a little pressure on her neck, allowing her to talk.
“I don’t know how it happened. I found him as a pile of dust, with just this medallion in the middle of it.”
Kane stared. “Are you sure it was his remains?”
“Yes, sir. His clothes were there and everything. I’ve seen before what our remains look like. It broke my heart to find him like that, master.” Eva again choked out through his tightening grip.
“You will tell me everything on our way back. So, talk.” Kane released his grip, letting her take up the seat next to Rowland, who was just as eager to find out how this might have happened.
As the helicopter took the hour-long flight back home, Eva told him everything that had taken place on her mission, starting with the release of her mutated vampires in northeast Georgia, through marching them down the state, and using them as bait to guide the zombies where she wanted them to go. She applauded the maker of the oils that masked their scent from
the zombies. She detailed the many human encampments they either overran with the zombies, or cleaned out personally, and the many daylight hours she had spent sleeping in the blacked-out vehicles, and having her pets bury themselves into the ground at dawn and reemerging in the evening to continue the march south until they arrived at the one camp where everything went bad. She told him of the other two security men she had found with their necks snapped, or stabbed, and how one of them had his tattoo revealed.
Rowland stopped her there and asked her to clarify that some more. As she described the two dead soldiers to them, Rowland looked at Kane and said, “Doesn’t that sound like the two you sent looking for Benjy several months ago?”
Kane nodded. “Yes, it does. This might not bode well if he’s turned against us.” Kane turned back to Eva.
“Or Benedictus, if another of his children has caused us heartache again,” Rowland interjected.
Eva then told how she had watched a vehicle escape the encampment in the middle of a huge storm, but couldn’t follow them due to losing both of her guards to the oncoming zombies. She finished her tale as they arrived back at the headquarters about how she remained on the mission for the last month, guiding the horde all the way to the wall, as she had been commanded.
The helicopter landed and Kane asked Rowland to give him a minute with his consort. As Rowland complied and the rooftop emptied, Eva dropped to one knee at her master’s feet. “Master, please forgive me. If there was anything I could have done to save Tovas, I would’ve.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. You performed the mission perfectly. And now we know we can guide these creatures wherever we want to help us eliminate any opposition in our way. As for Tovas, he was a casualty and will be missed, but with whomever he ran into, he should have been more prepared. If he got lazy and it cost him his life, so be it. The important thing was you made it back, and we can move forward from here.” Kane helped Eva back to her feet.
“Thank you, master. I do have one request, though, if I’m not immediately needed. I would like to take a small force back to the area where those who might’ve murdered Tovas fled, and see if I can find them, and at least exact revenge for his death. I know we often quarreled, but in truth, I did care for him as a brother, and would like to see his murderers paid back.”
“You’re needed here for the time being. I need you to show a few of the other consorts how you control these creatures, so they might soon do the same. You will find we have been quite busy while you were gone. After that, I will entertain your idea, and maybe together we can go and avenge our dear Tovas.” Kane made his way to the rooftop door. “Now go get yourself cleaned up and get some rest. I will send a present up to you shortly that will help you feel better.”
Chapter 9
As the sun set, Benjy made his appearance from the underground lab where he slept during the day, and went to work packing up for his run to Mobile. As usual, Hunter was glued to his hip, helping him pack and trying to convince the man to let him tag along. Benjy stood firm and told Hunter he was needed where he was, right at the camp, in case any more slabs showed up. After his final equipment checks, Benjy walked away with David for a few minutes before leaving. As Benjy’s truck cleared the bridge, David locked down the area and sent the little ones off to bed before he headed in to do the same.
The camp slowly went dark as one by one everyone retired to their rooms for the night, everyone except for Hope. Ever since her awakening from whatever happened to her, she had found sleep less of a necessity and more of a nuisance. At best, she only got about three hours of sleep a day, and that seemed to be more than enough. Usually, she stayed up and read some of the history books in Benjy’s library, which seemed to be about all he had in there. That night, however, she was going to try and catch up on some different reading inside of Benjy’s lab.
Hope slowly made her way over to the shed and quietly slipped within. Once inside, she went to access the underground lair, but found that the code had been changed since the day before. She smiled at Benjy’s attempt to keep her out of there, but quickly realized that there were only 99,999 possible combinations for the five-digit code, and she had at least five days to try every one of them. So, she started keying in numbers beginning with 00000.
Two hours in and she wasn’t even up to 10000 yet, and with her fingers moving at lightning speed, they were starting to wear out from the constant tapping. Hope stopped and growled at the frustrating task she had embarked on. As she sat there and stared at the numbers, she laughed and spoke out loud: “It can’t be that simple.” She leaned down to try one more set of numbers and typed in 99999. The little red light on the pad clicked to green and the trapdoor opened up. She laughed at the thought of Benjy doing that on purpose, knowing she would have the time to run through all the numbers.
Hope descended into the underground lab and quickly made her way to Benjy’s office. Upon arriving, she was stunned again, as she found all of his file cabinets had been removed, and there was nothing in his office anymore but the desk and chairs. Then she spotted the laptop sitting in the middle of the desk. She figured it was at least worth a try to see what might be on there. She flipped up the screen and powered it on only to be greeted by the log in screen. Benjy had a much harder code to get into the laptop with, so he probably figured it was safe to leave it behind. Unfortunately for him, the night before when he was logging in, Hope had watched him key in his password from the reflection in the window, and one of her new abilities she hadn’t told anybody about was a near photographic memory. She punched in the code, hoping he hadn’t changed it, and was greeted by the familiar chime of a Windows program opening up.
“Got ya, old man,” Hope cheered out loud. And she went to work searching through the files on the hard drive. For the first hour, all she ran across were supply lists, financial accounts, and medical journals. Then she comes across a file she couldn’t open.
It was listed as COUNCIL in all capital letters. It had its own password, and after getting it wrong twice, a warning popped up on the screen that read that one more wrong attempt would delete the entire hard drive. So Hope decided not to risk it and closed out of the file. Frustrated, but not deterred, she kept searching until she came across a file titled Juggernaut. That one opened and she started reading through it. According to the documents in the file, Juggernaut was the cure that Mercer had created to eliminate the zombie plague before, and at least one sample of the cure was suspected of being located on each continent, in case it was ever needed again. There were maps with X’s drawn over several dozen locations, and just as many circles without X’s, still unsearched, she assumed. The file didn’t explain what the Juggernaut cure was, but did state that it was a hundred-percent effective when used. She continued reading through Benjy’s notes, detailing his fruitless searches for the cure, but nothing in there concluded that he was any closer to finding it, so she closed the file and continued searching.
As she was about to open the next file on the hard drive, the icon on the bottom of the screen for the Internet connection chimed and started blinking. She paused for a second, hoping she hadn’t been busted by Benjy somehow, before she opened the blinking tab. A conversation window opened and she saw there was a message. Not thinking about the ramifications, she opened it up.
Colorado. Alarm recently tripped, was all it said. She pondered the strange message for a second, until she remembered seeing a circle on the map of Colorado she had been looking at in the Juggernaut file a minute earlier. Then she remembered the map Benjy had showed her the night before. She found the map on the desktop and opened it, and sure enough, she found a little red blinking light on the map near Denver, Colorado. She zoomed in on the satellite image and was shocked by just how close to the ground it let her get. She noted the timestamp in the bottom corner of the map that the image she was seeing was over eight hours old. As she scrolled around at what looked like nothing but a wooded area just on the outskirts of the Denver Interna
tional Airport, she then came across something that looked like a door opened up in the middle of a rock wall. As she squinted to make sure that was what she was seeing, the screen flickered and started to reload. As it did, she looked at the timestamp again, and found that the image loading was only two minutes old. She again zoomed back to the previous spot, and this time found that the door was no longer visible, indicating it had been shut. She leaned back from the computer and contemplated what it all meant, and if she should tell Benjy about it when he returned, knowing that would give her intrusion away, but it seemed important enough that she knew she had to do it.
Figuring she had snooped enough for the night, Hope was about to shut down the computer when the message icon chirped again. I’m already in this deep, might as well keep on digging the hole, she thought as she opened it up again.
The message read: Good chance this is it, need to get there ASAP. Five to seven days tops, then it will be gone again. Respond, if you can go.
Hope froze at the request for a response. She thought back to what Morgan had told her earlier, about there being a plane close by, and of Hunter being a pilot. If this was the Juggernaut cure, then time was of the essence, and Benjy wouldn’t be back until it was too late. She knew what she needed to do, but decided to do the exact opposite.
She clicked on the dialogue bar and started typing: Any chance you can get there? As she waited for a good answer, her heart started to race with anticipation of the reply.
Then the reply came in: Zero, you know that.
Humanity's Hope (Book 2): Juggernaut Page 5
