“I suppose your friends will tell me the same thing, right?” Craig challenged him.
“Go ask them,” Jake replied, then rose and pushed past Craig.
Hashim stopped him from leaving, and the old bastard was stronger than he looked.
Jake grunted and pouted near the stove. Some of them whispered, but he couldn't hear what they were saying. He eyed a nearby frying pan and considered fighting his way out.
Craig approached and tried to get him to look into his eyes. “Jake, please. Who was it and what did they promise you? Tell us or we'll—”
“You’ll what?” Jake dared his so-called father figure. “What'll you do if I don't have the answer you want to hear? Ground me? Spank me? It's always something with you. I can't ever do enough, be patient enough, be nice enough. I'm tired of you pushing your lame-ass ideals on me like you have all the answers in the world.”
Craig tried to hold Jake’s shoulders. “I never said I—”
Jake shoved the big, blond joke away. “If you have the answers, then tell me how we do better than this rat trap. Tell me why this all happened to the world. Tell me why God or whatever felt we deserved it.”
Craig’s eyes filled with failure. The guy used to run a lumber shop; what could he know about anything? Still, he held his ground. “Jake, you have to tell us. Lives depend on it.”
Jake rolled his eyes and turned away. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
Craig moved away, and Jake knew he'd won. So Pepe overheard him earlier. Big deal! He knew the others wouldn't talk. That meddling wetback wasn't going to get the best of him. He stole a peek back at the big schlub leaning against the wall with a blank look in his eyes, with Bob and Jerri trying to comfort him. The guy was just out of it. Beaten. Ha!
Then Craig faced him again with a tear in his eye. “Take him to Isolation.”
Jake's eyes widened as Hashim and Bob took his arms and pulled him out of the kitchen. He protested, yanked and thrashed against them, and called for help the whole way. He tried grabbing doorways and hanging like dead weight, but they dragged him away all the same.
*****
Cody surveyed the old house through which the jittery Cynthia led them. Old spider webs laced what few decorations lay about the modest décor. No real signs of damage. It looked like no one had either lived or died in it for a good long while.
They entered the medium-sized kitchen, where a balding man in his late forties tended a woman of relatively equal age on a table. Her breathing was shallow, and her ratty red locks matted to her head and pale shoulders, but she was lucid. No bites or scratches were yet visible. Possible causes included fever, flu, dehydration, or low blood sugar.
“Cynthia, honey, did you find any—” the man asked as he looked up, then froze at the newcomers. “Who are you?”
Cody introduced himself and his companions. “Your daughter flagged us down for help.”
The man looked them each over skeptically, then nodded. “Good. I'm Gary, this is my wife Blanche, and you’ve met our daughter Cynthia.”
“What’s the trouble?”
“My wife’s diabetic. I sent Cynthia to find some insulin. Do you have any?”
Though he had insulin back at camp, he needed to be sure it was safe to say so. He approached and examined the supine Blanche. “I'm afraid not, but I can help.”
“I don't see how,” Gary said. “I'm a doctor, but without insulin, I'm just stretching minutes.”
Cody brightened at possibly gaining a doctor, but stifled his excitement enough to focus on the task at hand.
“Was she bitten?” Didi asked directly.
Gary looked confused. “Bitten? No, no, not at all.”
Blanche suddenly convulsed, her eyes rolling up into her head.
Gary tried to hold her down. “She's going into shock.”
“What do you need?” Cody asked while helping restrain the doctor’s wife.
“I need to get some air in her. There’s a respirator over there.” Gary pointed at the counter, where a ball-cock air mask poked out of a black medical bag.
Cody checked Blanche’s airway and found no obstructions, then rushed to the bag, grabbed the respirator, and went right to work on keeping her breathing.
Gary waved over Didi. “Miss, I need you to monitor her pulse.”
Cody froze. He had no idea how to get his friend out of monitoring a pulse she couldn't feel, and the last thing a shock patient needed was contact with a zombie.
Didi stared at Blanche like a deer in headlights. When the doctor beckoned for her again, she cringed and threw some kind of anxious fit, her hands shaking like a child facing an ax murderer. “No, no, I can't. I can't do it. I just can't.”
Cody rushed Didi and grabbed her shoulders. He publicly reassured her everything was alright, then whispered, “Nice move. I had no idea how we—”
“Something's not right here,” she whispered, still shaking in pretend fear.
“Keep an eye on the door,” he whispered, then said aloud, “This is an emergency situation. We need your help.”
“But I can't,” she played along.
“I understand,” he said aloud, “but I need you to fight through it and focus. Look at me. I'll monitor her pulse while you give her air. How's that?”
Didi's faux-panic attack slowly abated, and she nodded. “Okay.”
“Good,” Cody said with a nod, then led her toward the table.
As Didi took up the respirator and pumped air into Blanche, he took the patient’s wrist and felt for her pulse. Slightly elevated, but not to an alarming or life-threatening degree. He felt her head, but it wasn’t all that warm. She couldn’t have been misdiagnosed by a doctor she was married to. Something was off here.
“Are you okay, Miss?” Gary asked Didi.
“As long as I don't look,” Didi replied with fake dread aimed at the doorways while she steadily pumped the ball cock. Cody had to work hard not to let the double entendre throw his focus.
Finally, Blanche stopped twitching and breathed normally.
“Thank God,” Gary said as he checked Blanche’s eyes. “I don't like these pupils, though. Can your friends help Cynthia search the house for some insulin?”
“How long have you been here?” Didi asked, which stopped Isaac and Rachelle from leaving the room.
“About twenty minutes,” Gary replied. “We drove up from Saint Joseph on our way up to Saint Paul. We’re kind of hoping my brother’s still there.”
Didi frowned at the doctor and put the respirator down. “Did you drive through Sioux Falls?”
“Yeah,” Gary said casually, which made Cody realize what Didi was getting at.
“Let's go look for that insulin,” Cynthia said to Isaac and Rachelle.
“Hold on,” Cody said, then frowned at Gary. “You drove from Missouri without running into anything on the road. How did you avoid the nuclear waste in Sioux Falls?”
“Miraculously,” Gary replied with a hint of tension, which was when Cody noticed that Blanche's pulse rose again, and she stiffened. Gary looked closer into her eyes. “Uh, oh. They're getting pinpoint here. We need to—”
Suddenly, Didi drew one of her pistols and smacked the back of Gary’s head with the grip, startling everyone else as the unconscious doctor hit the ground. All eyes widened, and all jaws had dropped as she cocked her head toward Blanche, who regarded Didi in terror.
“Oh, look, Blanche is all better.” Didi grinned wryly at Cody. “It's a miracle.”
Cynthia tried to run, but Isaac seized her by the back of the neck. “Where you goin’, kid?”
“What’s going on?” Rachelle asked.
“You remember all those classes Cody gave on first aid, right?” Didi asked, to which Rachelle nodded. “Well, if you recall the part about treating shock, you’d know things like elevating the patient’s legs, loosening clothing, and keeping the patient’s temperature down; perhaps with water.” Didi pointed out at least three water bottles s
ticking out of the doctor’s bag. “How does a doctor not know any of this; for his wife, no less? How does their daughter not know what's up with her mother when she was asked to find insulin? This is all a setup.”
Isaac aimed the pointed end of his bat near Cynthia’s cheek. “What kind of setup?”
The scrawny teenager just stared at the tip of Isaac’s weapon.
Cody smiled at Didi. “That was quite a performance. You must’ve been an actress.”
Didi shrugged with a grin. “Fucking wasn't all I did in those movies.”
Several clicks drew everyone’s attention to a lot of armed men filling the room. One guy surprised Didi from another door and stuck his pistol right in her face before she could react. Another man disarmed her, while the rest disarmed Cody, Rachelle, and Isaac.
Cynthia grinned vindictively as she aimed the pointed end of Isaac’s bat at his cheek. “This kind.”
Pat stepped in with his rifle aimed at Didi, planted the barrel against her forehead, and sneered at her. “Say hi to Clay for me.”
“Not yet, Pat,” a familiar voice ordered.
Pat scoffed and backed up.
Kenny stepped in and draped a beefy arm on Cynthia’s shoulder, smiling at Cody. “So, how ‘bout that snort?”
CHAPTER 22
DESPERATION
“He’s been poisoning our youth against us,” Gilda said to the grumbling crowd that tried to get through the Panel. Her back pressed against the Isolation doors and her heart beating wildly, she hadn’t been this scared since the day she met the Death Doll.
Shielding his ward, Brad, Ron snapped at Gilda. “You got one guy’s word against seven. Where’s your proof?”
“We’re talking about a threat to the camp, Ron,” Jerri said.
“All you’ve said is there’s a threat to Didi,” Chuck said while his adopted daughter Leticia tried to peek around him, “and we’re not even sure we want her around here.”
“Yeah, we don’t want that thing here,” Roy yelled, which Lee repeated behind him.
“But she’s done so much for you,” Hashim shouted. “For all of us.”
“We won’t choose a corpse over our children,” Clarissa said while cuddling her baby close.
The crowd roared as they tried to push through the blockade en masse.
A gunshot cracked through the air, forcing them to stop. As dust fell from the ceiling, Hashim aimed his .357 revolver from it to the crowd. Craig, Bob, and Jerri drew their weapons, and the crowd backed off. Gilda prayed none would have to use them.
“You’d all be dead without Didi and Cody,” Hashim said firmly. “She’s been dead the whole time you’ve known her, and she’s still kept you alive.”
“She’s still a threat,” Ron snapped.
“So are all of you, acting like this,” Craig fired back. “Jake, worst of all.”
Roy pointed right at Craig. “I thought you were supposed to protect him?”
“I also protect this camp. He doesn’t want my help; he wants a mutiny. You want proof? Ask him. We’ll force it out of him if we have to.”
“How, torture?” Clarissa’s last comment sparked loud opposition from the crowd.
Craig tried to deny it, but his face betrayed him, and the crowd shouted again.
Hashim and Bob’s attempts to settle everyone down went ignored. Fury burned in their eyes; fury that would soon want blood.
Pepe yelled for everyone’s attention, but the crowd’s outrage was deafening. Gilda pulled him aside and asked what he wanted to say to them. “I have an idea,” he said in her ear.
*****
Didi should’ve feared for her friends’ lives—maybe her own, too—with all the itchy trigger fingers aimed at them, but she was annoyed. Kenny spent at least five minutes looking up and down her sword like each angle revealed something new. The bastard was taunting her. Whatever was going to happen, she wanted him to get on with it already.
“Where did you get this?” he finally asked.
Just to be ornery, she said, “eBay.”
The next thing she knew, she was on the ground with a massive headache. The throbbing rivaled her unending hunger. Two guys quickly yanked her to her feet before she could react.
The smirking Blanche shook her hand like it hurt. “That was for my husband.”
Kenny scoffed and gestured at some guy with a goatee, who walked out. “I had this friend once,” he said, his genteel charm in full force. She had to admit she would've jumped him in nothing flat back in the day. “He tried to use a sword from a department store on the dead when the plague broke out. Want to guess what happened to him?”
“I’m guessing his sword broke, and he got eaten,” she replied as calmly as she could, despite wanting to do the same to the smug bastard with her sword right now.
“That’s right, darlin’,” he said with the same smoothness. “You see, I’ve done metal work on my ranch, so I know what it takes to make durable tools. Let me show you.”
The goateed man returned with a sheathed katana and handed it to Kenny. The big man drew the sword, which was like Didi’s. Exactly like Didi’s, from the silver blade collar to the gray ray skin handle wrapped in black cord. His guard bore a raging bull rather than the sleek dragon on her sword, but both were definitely carved by the same maker. If her jaw dropped, she couldn’t tell.
Kenny smiled at his blade. “Beautiful, ain’t it? One of three in the world made by these here hands; one for me, one for my brother Brent, and one for my sister Peleen. You see, we grew up on all kinds of ninja movies. Brent loved them so much, he married a Jap and took her back to her home country—with his sword. Peleen and I had to use ours to get out of Fort Hood alive with her asshole husband, Chris. She wasn't so lucky,” he added somberly, looking at the floor. He handed his sword back to Mister Goatee and closed in on Didi, raising her sword to her eye level as his cool, blue eyes met hers with a cold fury. “Chris took off on me in the middle of it—with her sword. I tried to stop him, but,” he removed his cap and tossed it aside, revealing a long scar running down the side of his head, “the little prick got the drop on me. So, you can imagine how surprised I am to see my sister’s sword in the hands of a spank booth whore.”
Some of Kenny’s henchmen laughed, especially Pat. Cody objected and got a rifle butt to the head, knocking him to the floor.
Isaac tried to pick him up and got smacked in the back of the head by the buttstock of Pat’s rifle.
The skinny Alabaman shoved the barrel into the big man’s face with a stern, “Please try something. I ain’t killed a nigger in years.”
Isaac’s glare burned against Pat, but he stayed put.
Didi’s head felt like she was in freefall. Her history with her sword started the day she took it from Murphy's corpse and used it on over half the Apocalypse Crew. She never knew where the bastard got it; just that he prized it. Moreover, she couldn't remember ever hearing Murphy's first name or anything about his past. Now that she knew, she feared for her un-life. If she still had a stomach, it would've knotted.
“So, again,” Kenny said with that charming grin as Didi’s blade touched her cheek, “I'll kindly ask you to tell me where you got this.”
She had one trick left. So, she looked up as if to think about it, then said, “Craigslist?”
Kenny's people chuckled again. Kenny shook his head with a big grin. “I admire your spunk, little lady, but then a woman like you would've gotten a lot of spunk. Isn’t that right, Baby Dahl?”
His men laughed at his gauche little double entendre. His women just sneered at her. She waited for her moment.
“No answer?” Kenny prodded softly. “I wonder how I can persuade you.” He moved the blade from her cheek and guided the tip down the length of her face and neck. His eyes followed it.
It was now or never.
Didi smacked away the blade, punched Kenny upside his head, and snatched her sword from his hand. She quickly hacked the nearest bodies, who were too surprised to s
hoot their hostages. The few bullets they fired off hit her in all her non-vital places before she chopped the loonies down.
Cody and Isaac assaulted the last guards and reclaimed their weapons, as did Rachelle when she caught on.
Pat grabbed Kenny’s sword and hot-footed it out, dragging a cursing Cynthia out with him.
By the time Kenny started to get up, Didi had her blade against the nape of his neck. She couldn’t help grinning widely. “How do you like my spunk now, cowboy?”
“Where do you think you can go where I can’t find you, darlin’?” he asked with a smirk. “Your theater?”
Cody stepped up to Kenny and shoved the barrel of his pistol onto the Texan's head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“We have people all over the place,” Kenny replied arrogantly, “including Sibley and all the roads between here and there. You ain’t leaving this house without my say-so.”
Didi knelt behind the muscleman, placed the edge of her sword against his throat, and leaned on his beefy shoulder with her cutest pleading face, wishing she could’ve batted her eyelashes at him for added effect. “Please?”
*****
Jake paced around Isolation with no idea how to get past the guards outside. Pat had somehow yanked out the bars on the projection room window, but that got quickly boarded up as firmly as the outdoor exit. The gunshot he heard a while ago made him hope Didi came back and somebody killed her, but still being stuck in here didn't support that fantasy.
He knew he'd be okay as long as his friends kept quiet. The girls might be blubbery, but the guys would keep them in line. They weren't exactly the top picks of the litter. Rachelle may have started to blossom, but that temperamental bitch wasn’t worth it. No, Dawn was the one.
A creak surprised him, then another. He glanced around and found nothing. Another creak.
The projection room window boards fell off. In crept his angel, looking as beautiful as ever. She waved him toward her. “Come on. We have to move now, while everybody’s still arguing with the Panel.”
The Death Doll Page 16
