The Preston Six Collection: (Book 1, 2 and 3)

by Ryan, Matt

  He took out his gun and pushed the door open. One light shown at the far end of the room, illuminating the variety of medical and office equipment stacked haphazardly around the large room. He shined his flashlight around the room, looking for movement but nothing did.

  “Come on,” Joey said.

  Poly and Samantha entered the room and he slammed the door closed. A grinner thumped against the door. He put his back against the steel door and felt the vibrations of the bodies hitting the other side. He closed his eyes for a second and hoped the floor they were on was devoid of grinners.

  “Let’s stay close and figure out where we are,” Joey said.

  The next room was a huge, long room, filled with cubicles, desks, and papers littering the floor. A few lights blinked and shined light across the room. He shook his head. Every cubicle could harbor a grinner. He couldn’t go back, but he sure didn’t want to go forward.

  “Stay close to my back, Samantha, we’re going to move slow and low. Poly, watch our backs.”

  Samantha walked so close on his heels, she stumbled into him. Poly walked sideways and glanced backward as they moved. He crept up on the first cubicle. A long dead body, mostly a skeleton laid on the floor. Samantha let out a squeak. Poly put her hands on her hips and glared at Samantha.

  “Sorry, I’m not used to seeing this stuff like you all,” she whispered.

  The next five were empty, then he heard a faint sound of scratching on the wall ahead. He moved into the next opening and a grinner walked out. He reactively shot it in the head. The thundering shot echoed throughout the area. Joey closed his eyes and cursed at what he had just done. Poly should be stealth killing these grinners.

  “Sorry, it sort of jumped at me,” Joey explained, breathing hard.

  “I’m glad you killed that thing,” Samantha said.

  “Yeah, but now every Damned one of them will be coming this way,” Poly said on her tiptoes, looking down the train of cubicles.

  “Maybe that thing was the only . . .” Samantha trailed off and turned toward the sounds of rustling chairs and groaning grinners.

  At first it sounded as if it might only be a few, but then it grew and quickly became a horde stumbling out into the aisles, pushing their chairs over and stumbling into the open areas. Joey looked at the ceiling and thought about all the duct escapes he had seen in the movies, but there was only a regular ceiling above. The vent register was big enough for a dog.

  “They’re coming,” Samantha said.

  “We can take them, Joey,” Poly said.

  He looked over the tops of the cubicles and saw the heads of many grinners bobbing in and out of sight. Taking a deep breath, he spoke. “I have an idea.”

  LUCAS HELD THE BOMB IN his hand and watched the ticker countdown to ten seconds. Another grinner walked by, sniffed him and continued on. He twisted the bomb and turned it off.

  A rat fell in from above and the grinners lunged at it. They tore its small body apart and fought for each piece. Lucas grabbed his stomach at the sickening sight. If he had his bow, he might have a chance. He didn’t see any weapons he could use, except chunks of concrete left over from the collapse. Concrete could work.

  He picked up a large piece of concrete and bashed it against the head of the nearest grinner. It fell into the water and floated on top, not moving. Another grinner walked by and he did the same. Noticing his acts hadn’t incited any activity in the remaining grinners, he took a deep breath of exhilaration. He wasn’t going to die, the zombies for whatever reason didn’t see him as food. He could mingle with them.

  It wouldn’t be long before Hank and Julie showed, so Lucas ran around the room killing each grinner. It took only a few minutes. He tossed the gooey concrete chunk into the water. He had done it, he had killed them all.

  Julie and Hank appeared next to the stone. He made eye contact with Julie and relief washed over her face.

  Hank yelled and fumbled to get his gun out of his pocket. He jostled it and ended up tossing it into the dead grinner filled water.

  “What happened?” She used her foot to push a floating grinner away.

  “I don’t know. They didn’t see me, I guess. So, I turned off the bomb and killed them all one by one with a brick.”

  “As in you were all fast, like Joey?”

  “Nope, they just didn’t care I was here, even as I killed every one of them.”

  “Weird,” Hank said.

  Julie ran her hands over his body, inspecting it. “Did any of them bite you?”

  “Nah.”

  She spent a moment looking over the dead grinners and looked as if she might throw up. “Can we get out of this hole?”

  They climbed out on a pile of concrete rubble and silently made their way through the casino, to the front entrance with its gleaming marble floors. Lucas looked up the stairs and saw Hooper’s Top Hats. He thought about getting another tuxedo, but time wouldn’t allow it.

  Walking past their original footprints, it felt like a life time ago since they’d been here last. Daylight shone through the large windows and it heated up the lobby. When they stepped out of the front door, Lucas hoped their Hummer would still be there. It was gone.

  “Dang,” Lucas said.

  “Who would take it?” Julie asked.

  “I bet it was people from that Sanctuary place,” Lucas said. Poly had spotted a building not far down the strip with Sanctuary written on the side.

  “Oh yeah, I remember that from the balcony,” Hank said, looking up.

  Lucas wanted his vehicle. If they had any chance of making it to LA, they needed a car. They wouldn’t last a day walking in the summer heat of the New Vegas desert.

  “What are we going to do?” Hank asked.

  Lucas took a deep breath. “We go to this Sanctuary place and ask for help.”

  Julie protested for a bit, but they had to make quick progress. Lucas felt in his core his friends were in trouble. Wasting just a few minutes might get them killed. Julie conceded to the plan, but didn’t feel good about it.

  They walked down the strip with cars piled on each side of the road. The desert sands covered large sections of the road and weeds grew out of control. A few palms clung to life here and there. When the large white Sanctuary sign came into view, Lucas felt his muscles tense. Something about the way Harris had talked about them. What had he said? They don’t like outsiders? That couldn’t be it, why would they have a huge banner advertising what they were?

  They stood on the road in front of the old casino. A tall, wooden wall reached all the way to the edge of the road and made it impossible to see the entrance to the casino sitting several hundred yards behind it. Lucas scanned the front wall, searching for a way in. “You guys see anything?” he asked.

  “I don’t,” Hank muttered, squinting with a hand over his eyes.

  “Let’s walk the wall, there’s got to be an entrance somewhere.” With Prudence in hand, he walked close to the wall. Was plywood all it took to keep the grinners out? He rubbed his free hand on the old gray wood and bits of it flaked to the ground.

  They worked their way down the wall, moving closer to the casino, inspecting every inch as they did.

  “Stop and place your weapon on the ground,” a man’s voice ordered.

  Lucas froze in place and frantically looked for the person behind them. “We are here only to get our car back.”

  “You have five seconds to place your weapon on the ground.”

  Lucas’s hand shook as he placed his bow on the concrete sidewalk. He unslung his quiver and laid it next to Prudence. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  A section of plywood hinged out like a door and a rough-looking man holding a rifle stepped out. He held his gun at his hip. The man looked at them with a questioning glare, moving his eyes up and down each one of them.

  “We just need a car,” Lucas said.

  The man smiled and shook his head as if it was a ridiculous request. “Just don’t move, he’ll be here in a minu
te.”

  “Who?” Julie asked.

  “The mayor,” the man said.

  Soon, the plywood door opened again and a man in a grungy shirt and tie emerged. He wore a gun on his hip and a large hunting knife on the other side. He smiled at them and walked over with a hand extended. Lucas shook the man’s hand.

  “Welcome,” the mayor greeted. Turning to the guard, he said, “Please, Marty, put your gun down.”

  “Thanks for the welcome,” Lucas said. “We had a car just up the road, a Hummer, we were hoping to get it back and be on our way.”

  The mayor’s head jerked and tilted up. “Hummer? Don’t think I’ve seen anything like that.”

  Lucas sighed. The man was lying to him. A diesel hummer that ran wouldn’t go unnoticed. “If you have any operating vehicles, we would appreciate it.”

  “There’s a million cars, son.”

  “This one had fuel in it.”

  “Now that is something special. Cars with fuel aren’t something we would part with, but if you need a night to stay, you are welcome to come in. You kids look so fresh—”

  “Like shiny pigs,” Marty finished.

  The mayor turned back with a scowl. “Where you come from?”

  “Ferrell’s, a few hundred miles east of here.”

  “Must have been a nice place for you all to look the way you do.”

  “It was alright, if you don’t mind grinners.”

  “Grinners?” the mayor asked.

  Lucas looked around. “That’s what we call the dead people walking around out here.”

  “Oh yes, them.” The mayor took a deep breath. “We control them as much as we can. Speaking of which, we should really get behind the wall before one of them see us.”

  After picking up their weapons, they followed Marty and the Mayor past the plywood door. Marty slung his gun over his shoulder and closed the door. Lucas was taken aback by what he saw beyond the wall.

  In the shadow of the large hotel, women and children worked on their hands and knees in small gardens. Various crops grew, from corn to tomatoes in confined planter boxes, in what looked like dried out fountains spread between the confining wall and the hotel. The strange thing was the quiet way in which they worked. Everyone moved like they were gliding on the ground and no one spoke or clattered a shovel, every motion seemed to exemplify silence. Many looked up as they passed but went back to their gardens after the mayor gave them a sweeping wave.

  “Wow, you have a quiet set up here,” Lucas said.

  “Noises are frowned upon.”

  “And you grow all this stuff?”

  “Veggies and stuff are great, but nothing can truly replace meat.”

  Lucas scanned the farm and noticed they had no livestock. Living off of fruits and vegetables . . . he cringed at the idea.

  “Come with me, I think we have a room available for you.”

  Lucas glanced back at Hank and Julie. Julie raised her eyebrows and opened her eyes wide. It was a look he knew too well, like he was making a mistake. He felt the same way, something about the place seemed far from normal. But Ryjack was anything but a normal world. He thought of the Costco family, living in that building, raising kids, making strange requests to visitors. That was their normal. Maybe living this way was normal for them.

  They walked toward the hotel and passed by a few people. A young girl in an ill-fitting garment, covered in dirt looked up from her digging and stared at Lucas as he walked by. He couldn’t take his eyes from the girl, something about her was trying to tell him something. He thought of asking the girl, but her mom yanked on her hand and she went back to tilling the dirt.

  Closer to the hotel, he saw the top floors of the buildings windows broken out and many trees jutting from their holes. Most of the lower windows were cracked and all of them had a thick layer of dust covering them.

  Much like the Venice hotel, the entrance was the valet parking pull-up area. They left the dirt gardens and entered the greater shade of the entrance canopy. Lucas welcomed the cooler air brushing over his sweating skin.

  At the large glass doors entering the hotel, several men with rifles stood guard. They watched with interest as the mayor ushered them into the main lobby. Lucas didn’t like the way they were looking at Julie and he let her walk in front of him to keep a buffer.

  “It isn’t much, but we call it home,” the mayor said. He extended his arms, presenting the huge lobby to them with a big smile. Lucas tried to look impressed, but failed. The mayor let out a breath of disappointment. He hoped he didn’t offend the man.

  “How many people live here?” Julie asked.

  “Well, some come and go, but usually a few hundred.”

  “And you cleared all the grinners from this place?”

  The mayor looked at the ground. “Not exactly, but who wants to talk about this kind of stuff. Let me get Laura to take you to your room.” The mayor beckoned a woman standing behind a desk at the reception area.

  She jumped at the attention and ran across the marble floors to them. “Hi, the usual?”

  The mayor cleared his throat. “Of course, our usual room for guests.”

  Laura gave an uncomfortable nod. “Yes, right this way, kids.”

  “I have things to attend to,” the mayor said with a small bow.

  “Of course, thanks for the hospitality,” Lucas replied.

  They passed huge displays of stained glass that might have been a stunning sight if hadn’t been broken with dirt covering all that remained. Then, they followed along a narrow path with more crops growing indoors. The room felt humid and had a smell of dirt and mold. The ground looked rich, dark and moist off the path. They kept following Laura and Lucas thought to ask where they were going when they reached a staircase.

  “Just a few flights up,” Laura said.

  They followed her up a few flights, until she opened a door to floor five. A long, soft carpeted hallway appeared.

  “Wonder if they have peep shows,” Lucas whispered to Julie.

  “Shut up,” she said, whacking him in the arm.

  “Laura, will there be any tricycles in today’s entertainment?”

  The woman glanced back but didn’t answer. She walked to the second door down the hall and turned around. “Here’s your room. Do you require anything?”

  “No. Wait, do you know where we can get a car?”

  She shook her head and looked at the floor.

  “You ok?” Hank asked. “They treating you well here?”

  Laura’s hands brushed her pants and shook. “There’s fresh water in the room. I must get going.” She walked at a near run down the hall and into the staircase.

  “Why are we here?” Julie asked and pushed Lucas. “This place is freaky.”

  Lucas turned back from the direction in which Laura had exited. “We need a car. Hello, we can’t make it through the desert on our feet.”

  “I agree, but I get a weird vibe here,” Hank said.

  “Listen, we’re not living here, we’re getting our Hummer back and then we’re gone. They must be stashing it somewhere, can your Pana help us?” Lucas asked.

  “No, unless they start it, I might be able to read its electrical signal.” Julie pulled her Panavice from her pocket and slid her finger around the screen. Lucas held back a laugh because he realized it had been the longest time he had seen her without it in her hands.

  “Why don’t we check out our room, we might see something from the windows,” Hank suggested.

  Lucas shrugged and opened a door marked 532. The room looked like the hotel room he stayed in with his dad when their grandpa died, except it didn’t smell of clean linen and bleach. The bed was made and several bottles of water sat on the dresser.

  “Oh thank God, some water,” Lucas said and grabbed a bottle. The twist cap didn’t have the ring under it. The bottle had been opened before. “They refilled these.”

  Julie picked up a bottle and inspected it in the light of the window. “I don’t kno
w if I would trust anything coming from these people.” She set the bottle of water back on the dresser.

  Lucas stared at his bottle and then twisted the cap back on and set it down. He wasn’t that thirsty anyway.

  “Look at this,” Hank said. He stood next to the window looking down. “There’s a huge parking lot down there.”

  “I bet that’s where they’re keeping the Hummer,” Lucas said. “Come on, let’s check it out.” He walked to the door and turned the metal handle, but the door wouldn’t budge. “The door’s locked.” His heart began to beat faster.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It won’t open.”

  “Back away, let me kick it open.” Hank kicked the door with his feet and created a small dent in the metal door, but it held. He kicked it many times, but the door stayed in place.

  “They locked us in,” Lucas said.

  “Hello!” Julie yelled at the door.

  “Wait, I hear something.” Lucas peered into the peep hole.

  Marty stood in the hallway with another man holding what looked like a big metal pot with smoke coming out of it. A long hose came out of the pot and Marty moved out of view with the hose.

  “Hey, the door’s locked,” Lucas yelled. Marty looked up and smirked. The man next to him had a large bellows he pumped near the door.

  “Who’s out there?” Julie asked.

  “That Marty guy. They have some kind of smoke machine out there.”

  “Guys,” Hank said, pointing to a large grate on the wall. Tendrils of smoke rose from the vent, becoming thicker with each passing second.

  “Crap.” Lucas’s chest pounded and he readied his bow. If they were trying to smoke them out, he’d kill every person who came through that door.

  “Grab that blanket, hold it over the grate. Here, soak it in water.” Julie said and handed Hank the water bottles. He poured it over the blanket. Thick rancid smoke flowed from the grate. Hank stuffed the wet blanket against it and the smoke dribbled out of the sides.

  Lucas breathed in. “Thanks for being the smartest person alive.”

  “Oh no, it’s coming in from the other one.” Julie pointed behind him.

  The room already had a haze of smoke through it and Lucas felt it burning his lungs. It smelled of burnt tires and microwaved farts.