Live (NOLA Zombie Book 3)

by Zane, Gillian

  After our quick wash, we huddled in the corner in Melinda’s “sleeping area.”

  “The old hag is Telly, that’s actually Brandon Senior’s wife, if you can believe that. The other bikers call her the Old Lady. I think it’s a term of endearment.” Melinda shook her head astounded at the situation. “She’s also Brandon Junior’s mother.”

  So the evil spawn of Satan had a name. They called him Junior, how creative. And now I knew the reason for Telly’s hostility. I couldn’t imagine a world where I was forced to deliver my husband his unwilling sex slave each night. Watching my own kid rape women as if it were second nature.

  Nice life choices for that one.

  There was a loud banging and the doors slammed open, and the son, the devil himself, vice-president to the gang of insane bikers, strode in with a girl over his shoulder. She hung limply and he went to the nearest sofa and threw her on it and then turned without a word and strode out of the room.

  The closest girl to the sofa went to the unconscious girl and touched her, shaking her. The girl shook awake and then began to vomit on the floor.

  I rushed over, even though my mind revolted, screaming a warning. What if she was infected? What if it was some kind of virus?

  The closer I got, the more wrong everything seemed. The vomit didn’t smell like vomit, or food. It smelled acidic and tangy, almost like a vitamin. I could see her glistening with sweat and her eyes were rolling up in the back of her head.

  “She’s overdosing,” Melinda said and pushed past me. The girl was shaking uncontrollably now and Melinda went to her head and tried to stabilize her. But there was no controlling her convulsions.

  “What can we do?” I hovered near the sofa and Melinda only looked up at me and shook her head, still holding on to the girl who was thrashing.

  “I’m assuming he gave her something, probably the meth that they cook. She needs an IV, her stomach pumped or an inhibitor. I have none of that.” Melinda stepped back when the girl suddenly went limp, then bent over her and picked up her wrist, looking for her pulse. “It’s weak, but there.”

  “I wouldn’t think they would give the drugs to the girls. Why would he do that?”

  “Probably for a kick or to make her more pliable. Who the fuck knows with this crowd. If she makes it through this, I’ll be surprised. Meth is a nasty drug. All we can do is make her comfortable and hope her body repairs itself. I think her name is Emily.”

  “It’s Emma,” an older woman called as she walked up to us and looked down at the girl. “Her name is Emma, she’s my sister.” The woman reached out and touched her sister’s hair. “Maybe this is better,” she whispered, then collapsed next to her sister, tears streaming down her face, but no sound emanating from her. These women were trained well.

  I can’t do this. I have to get the fuck out of here now.

  My hands clenched into fists. I concentrated on the pain of my nails digging into my palms and tried to hold back the scream that wanted to break through. I had never felt so helpless in my entire life. I didn’t like feeling helpless. I needed to take action. I needed to do something. Anything. I couldn’t sit here and let things like this happen.

  Melinda walked up to my side and looked over at me. The anger must have been evident because she touched my arm lightly, saying softly, “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I spit in return.

  “They have guns and there are so many of them. What are we going to do? What could you do?”

  “They’re hopped up on drugs and most of them are drunk. What can they do? They probably can’t even aim, especially at night. There is one-night guard at the east door, if he’s distracted we could just slip out. Make our way to freedom and be done with this place.”

  “How would I get out of this room? They padlock it at night. You could maybe leave, but not me, not us.”

  “I’ll handle that. If I can keep the door from locking, could you help and distract the night guard on the last shift?”

  “How?” she asked and I was primed because she wasn’t arguing anymore, there was a glint to her eyes. I might just have her.

  “Pretend like you’re coming out of one of the tarp rooms, lure him away with the hope of sex, it’ll work. They make the guards trade for girls, he wouldn’t turn down a free romp. If you get another girl with you, it would be even better.”

  “None of these girls would go along with that crazy plan.” Melinda shook her head.

  “You know them more than me. See if any of them are up to it. Please, Melinda. We have to get out of here. We can’t keep this up. Soon it will be one of us on that sofa. Do you want that?” She shook her head no.

  “Fine, when?” she asked.

  “I’ll let you know. I have to figure out the lock.”

  Thirty-Three | Martinez

  BLAKE

  I sat there. Just sat there through the whole shit show. Zach fucking chopping off Martinez’s fucking leg. Chopping it off. Zach chopping Martinez’s leg off. I was…I don’t know what the fuck I was because I couldn’t even process the last couple of minutes. All I know, hell, at this point, I don't know anything.

  “Fight it, Martinez!”

  Zach flung me across the room, away from Martinez. Because Martinez was a zombie. He was gray, he was chomping. We let him turn. Jesus, I let Martinez become a zombie.

  Zach was quick. He chopped his leg off. He stabbed Martinez. Martinez wasn’t a zombie anymore. Martinez was dead.

  And all I could do was sit there and watch. I saw it all. The blood. The hunger. Zach ending it. Everything.

  Martinez was dead. He was dead because of me.

  Thirty-Four | The Little Girl’s Room

  ZACH

  No one spoke. We just stared at the ground. At the bloody mess on the floor. My hands were covered in blood. I needed to get it off of me. I couldn’t take this.

  “We should probably find somewhere to bunk down, like the third floor near the north side of the building,” I said quietly and everyone nodded. Everyone except Blake. His eyes were wide, a sign of shock. I grabbed at his arm and he pushed me off.

  I shouldn’t have cut off his leg like that. The others were looking at me like I was off my rocker. Which I probably was. You can’t do what I’ve done, seen what I’ve seen, and come out clean. This mission was officially FUBAR. Fucked up beyond all recognition. Hadn’t been on one of those for a long time. Not since our first special ops mission out of Afghanistan. Now that was FUBAR. Lost most of the unit we were escorting. Got blamed for the bad intel that had us going in the wrong direction. Took two weeks to get out of the shit. Watched a few of my Marines go apeshit as the water and food dried up. Now that was FUBAR.

  It was how Blake and I had met Martinez. He was just a grunt, but he had his shit together and we made sure we had him transferred into our unit the moment we got back to civilization.

  He had been with us a long time. A long fucking time. And now he went out like this. Bitten by a fucking zombie school girl.

  I led the team up the back stairs to the third floor and we settled into a classroom that had a perfect view of the shopping mall below. Two of the walls were covered halfway by windows, the outer glass covered in reflective tint to prevent the rooms from heating up and also block outside from looking in. It was also higher up than the stores across the street, so the bikers would really have to be paying attention to spot any movement up here.

  Just in case though, we set up our living area in the classroom across the hall, the one that didn’t face the stores, and we only posted two at the windows that faced the bikers.

  I needed to clean up and ingest some calories, so I found the bathroom, bringing with me a pack of wet wipes and my small bag of essentials. When I crossed the threshold, I instantly went on alert. The smell of rotten zombie hit my nose. Blood splattered the walls and mirrors. A serious fight had gone on in here. Two zombies, badly torn to bits turned as one and faced me. I drew my blade and went for the
m. The first one went down quick. Right through the brain, done. The other one wasn’t so easy. He was a big old boy, dressed in a suit, bow-tie and even had a little handkerchief in his breast pocket. He fell forward in attack, tripping over his decomposing counterpart. When he fell, he grabbed for me and his arms got tangled in my body armor. I tried to stay upright but he outweighed me and I lost my balance on the slick linoleum floor.

  I had been in this position before, too many times. I felt the hot breath of the zombie on my cheek, the snapping teeth so close to my face. The stench of the rotten breath forcing me to breath out of my mouth as my body’s first reaction was to gag. I managed to get my arm up and my blade was long enough that I pressed it through the bottom of his jaw and hit his brain from the bottom. The blood pooled over my hand and splashed onto my chest, sticky and thick, not like fresh blood, and it dripped down into my shirt.

  I heard the door of the bathroom open and a cursed shout as the bulk of the zombie was pulled off of me and pushed to the side of the room. I sat up, but didn’t get to my feet. I could feel the blood leaking into my collar and down my back.

  Blake sat down next to me and looked over at the fat, dead fucker next to me.

  “That’s a big one,” he said simply.

  “It tripped and fell on me.”

  “No shit.”

  “Didn’t expect to find a zombie teacher in the girl’s room.”

  “Do they have men’s rooms in all-girls school?” he asked.

  “Fuck if I know. The Catholic school girls didn’t want anything to do with me when I was a teen.”

  Blake huffed out a breath, half laugh, half sigh. “Weren’t the charmer you are now?”

  “They ran away in droves.”

  “Somehow I don’t believe that.” He pulled his knees up to his chest and slipped the knife he had pulled back into his boot.

  “I was a skinny kid, had a bit of acne and drove around in an old Toyota. I couldn’t get a date to save my life.”

  “Well, now you got all the teens chasing after you.” His smile faded, the joke a bad taste in his mouth. It was a little too dark of a joke, even for us.

  “None of this shit matters, unless we get Alexis,” I said to change the subject. “We have to get her out.”

  “Damn straight.” He stood and pulled me up, frowning at the blood that I transferred to his hands. “We’re going to get her, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Blake.” I used a wet wipe from the pack to wipe the blood from my hands. I walked over to the stalls and shone my light into the toilet. There was water. Perfect. I grabbed the towel that I had in my pack and stripped off my soiled shirt. Using the towel and the toilet water, I began to wipe at the blood that was all over my chest.

  “No, really, Zach, I have to make this right. I’m the reason Alexis is in this mess. I’m the reason Martinez is dead. It’s all my fucking fault. I knew it was a stupid move to leave. But I left anyway. I knew a mile off the island that I was making a mistake, but I was too stubborn to turn around. I knew I had fucked up. I should have turned around, if I would have turned around Alexis would still be at the compound and Martinez would still be alive.”

  “You made a bad decision, Blake. You aren’t the reason this happened. Who’s to say these motherfuckers wouldn’t have grabbed her at some other time if you wouldn’t have left. Or Martinez might have gotten bit in one of his crazy rescue missions. He was always taking chances, risking his life for others. It was what he did. You can’t blame yourself.” I hoped my words had an impact, but my back was to him and I couldn’t tell if my argument was breaking through. We were all morose after today’s events. I didn’t want him doing anything stupid. Which was par for the course with Blake. I loved the guy like a brother, but he was an emotional wrecking ball, always had been. If he was in a bad headspace, there was no telling what he would do.

  “Yes, I can. And I’ll do anything to make it right,” he responded. Guess I didn’t break through to him.

  “You’ll make it right by getting her the fuck out of there. And getting us all back to the compound. All of us.”

  “Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  Thirty-Five | Box of Biker Bullshit

  BLAKE

  I was never one for inactivity, but we needed intel. We took shifts watching the gang, writing down movements and shift changes. The people they let into their inner sanctum and the ones that weren’t allowed. It was all filed away in the big box of biker bullshit that we would hopefully get to use against them.

  I never once saw a female. Never. They were locked up somewhere and my guess was in the main building, what used to be the grocery store. The civilians weren’t allowed in that area. They were corralled in the gated parking lot and they bunked down in what used to be a thrift store. They spent most of their time in the yard, cooking on pits, chopping wood, and a few times went out of the gates to go on supply runs with bikers as the armed guards. There was also a cheap trailer set up in the far corner of the lot and from the smells coming out of it, this was where the meth was being cooked. Civilians were cooking the meth, they were cooking the food and they were supplying resources to the bikers. What were they getting in return? From what I could tell the civilians weren’t being held against their will. The gates were locked, but weren’t guarded and they were left open during the day.

  The only areas that were actively guarded were the main building, the meth lab and a storefront that used to be a gym. We all deduced that the women were in the main area and the children were being held in the gym. The men were allowed in the gym, but not the main building. They were keeping everyone separate to control the men and the women.

  By the end of the day we decided that we could get away with sending in a team to scout the inner sanctum. Romeo and Alphonso volunteered and Zach and I agreed that they would be the best approach. Romeo’s hair was long and shaggy now and he was too pretty to scream soldier, he was also used to undercover work. Alphonso was a bit rigid, but with a little dirt smudged on his face, we could get rid of his soldier-boy look.

  “We’ll have to procure a vehicle, a truck would be best. Y’all should get it from somewhere in the neighborhood,” Zach was saying as we sat around planning our next move.

  “You should leave from the side of the school along Milne Avenue, stay close to the bushes and go out the back toward the city. Grab a truck from the neighborhood, but not until you pass Harrison. I don’t know if they have bikers watching the main streets, so make it look like you’re coming in from the Interstate at West End. Go tonight and hunker down until afternoon. It looks like most of their trade happens in the early evening. This is when the two of you should make your move.”

  It was a good plan, if they believed Romeo and Alphonso were just passing through. They could access the base for a short time period and get a look around. We had a few bottles of liquor we brought with us for trading purposes and extra handguns just in case. Once Romeo got in, he could request a trade and hopefully get a visual on Alexis. If we knew she was in there and where she was being held, we could go in and kick some ass.

  Now, all we had to do was wait.

  Romeo and Alphonso headed out into the night and the rest of us hunkered down, keeping the biker camp in our sights. Nothing changed. Nothing happened. But soon. Soon, something would happen.

  Thirty-Six | Debauchery and Parasites

  ALEXIS

  Day slipped into night, night slipped into day and nothing changed–the same thing over and over and over again. Drug use, excessive alcohol consumption to bring them down from the high, then more drug use, paired with pills. A break for a little fornication and then back to the drugs. This gang had created their own little base of debauchery and it was a carnival freak show. From outlaw, subculture parasites to rulers of their own Caligula-esque domain, the atmosphere was surreal. One thing I couldn’t deny, life was good for the Southern Clan. Really good, just not good for their entert
ainment, and I was their entertainment.