I pause, my exhausted mind spinning. When running, how many times have I faced an unknown? Why should this situation be any different? All I have to do is break it into manageable chunks. That’s what I always did with a long, hard race. Dissected them. Developed tactics for different terrains, weathers, and altitudes.
An idea takes shape in my mind. Alvarez is right. The alphas are a challenge to be overcome. I just need to develop a complex training plan to deal with them.
And I know just how to start.
31
Idea
BEN
When he pads into his room a little after midnight, Ben has the shock of his life.
He flicks on his light and finds Kate curled up on his bottom dorm bunk, her head on his pillow. On the bed beside her is the collected works of Henry James. Her eyes flutter open at the rush of light.
He stands frozen. He’d be a lying sack of shit if he denied daydreaming about this very scene. Except he’s pretty sure her reason for being in his bed doesn’t match up with his fantasy. If that was the case, she wouldn’t be wearing a thick jacket and blue jeans.
She looks like complete shit, though Ben is wise enough to keep this observation to himself. She’s barely slept since Lila and Jesus died. She’s working herself to the bone and popping coffee beans like they’re candy.
He gets it. Sometimes, it’s easier to be exhausted than alone with your own thoughts.
Kate sits up, awakened by the light. If Ben had known she was sleeping in here, he wouldn’t have gone near the light switch.
“I think I fell asleep.” Kate rubs at her eyes. “I was waiting to talk to you.”
He waits in silence, not trusting himself to speak. The last thing he wants to do is to provoke her into moving. He could stare at her in his bed for hours, even if she is dressed like she’s ready to go outside.
That thought brings a frown. Why is she dressed like she’s going outside? It’s the middle of the night.
“I have an idea,” Kate says.
Fuck. He should have known. “And you thought midnight was a good time to work out the details?”
“I don’t want the others to know.” She has the grace to look guilty, though not for long. “I need your help, Ben. I want to capture an alpha.”
He closes the bedroom door so as not to wake anyone. “I don’t think I heard you correctly.” He narrows his eyes at her. “Did you just say you want to catch an alpha?”
She looks him straight in the eye. “Yes.”
There is no response that properly conveys the lunacy of this conversation. Also, he’s pretty sure he’ll wake the entire fucking floor if he opens his mouth.
He does the only sensible thing he can think of. He turns his back on her, shrugs out of his coat, and tosses it across the back of a chair. Then he sits down in the same chair and begins unlacing his boots.
“Ben.” Kate frowns at him. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I’m trying to unhear it, Kate.”
She slips off the bed and comes to stand before him. “Hear me out.”
“No.” His belt comes off and he drapes it over the jacket on the chair back. His Sig and the holster go on top of the desk. The boots go under the desk.
Everything in its place. This brings some semblance of stability to the current situation.
He shoulders past Kate, grabbing the ladder to the top bunk. “I’m going to bed. You can keep the bottom bunk if you want.”
Kate’s arm snakes out, blocking him. “Will you listen to me?”
Two things happen. Her words fan a wildfire within him, heating his carefully tamped anger to an all-time high. Her proximity, coupled with the fact that she’s in his bedroom with the door closed, sends a white-hot spear of arousal through him.
Both emotions are so intense he can’t see straight. He wants to shout at Kate and kiss her at the same. Only his indecision on the matter keeps his feet welded to the floor and his mouth clenched shut.
She must see or sense something, because she drops her arm and steps back.
“I’m sorry, I need to explain. I’ve been thinking about the alpha zoms. They’re a puzzle we need to solve. There are so many things we don’t know about them, but the most important fact is their language. They communicate, Ben. They speak and they organize. We need to learn their language.”
“And how, exactly, do you plan to learn their language?” he demands. “How is capturing one those fucking things going to help with that?”
“I don’t know!” Kate throws up her hands. “I don’t know, okay?”
“Because it’s impossible,” he snarls. “If we bring a dog to Creekside, we’re not going to miraculously learn how to boss it around by barking.”
“But people across time have learned how to communicate with animals. Why should this be any different?”
He’s going to blow a gasket. It’s that simple. He can’t hold it back any longer. The mental image of Kate risking her life to catch an alpha, then subsequently putting herself at risk every fucking day by trying to figure out how to communicate with it, makes him want to break something.
He opens his mouth, anger-fueled words gathering in his throat.
Kate, seeing his face, presses a hand over his mouth. The contact is enough to distract him, giving Kate her opening.
“Before you go ape shit, hear me out. We have to adapt. Three months ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of letting any of you snipe zombies. Now, it has to be done anytime there’s an alpha sighting. We need to learn everything we can about the alphas if Creekside if going to survive.” Her mouth tightens.
God dammit, he knows that look. It’s her the-devil-and-all-the-armies-of-hell-can’t-stop-me look.
The worst part of all this is that she isn’t wrong. They do need to adapt.
He’s known it for a while. But he was thinking more along the lines of extending the perimeter of the dorms to include other parts of campus. Not capturing an alpha and bringing it home like a rabid pet.
“I know it’s a crazy plan,” Kate says. “A lot of my plans are crazy. But I need your help. I trust you to have my back. If I have to do something stupid, I want you by my side.”
Her words take his breath away. His anger is snuffed out in a millisecond, replaced with something else. Unable to digest the sudden onslaught of feelings, he turns away.
“You couldn’t have said all that before I took my boots off?” he grumbles.
“Does that mean you’ll come?”
“Yes.” He grabs his belt, Sig, and jacket, settling them back into place. “No way in hell I’d let you go out there alone. You know that.”
“Thank you, Ben.” The smile she gives him is so bright he has to look away.
“To be honest, I was hoping you’d give up and take the bottom bunk.” He shoves his feet back into his boots.
“You didn’t really think I would, did you?”
“No.” He frowns down at her. “That’s not your style.” He pushes past her, grabbing his headlamp on the way out. The moon is almost full, but having extra light won’t hurt.
The ache in his crotch doesn’t subside until he’s all the way downstairs and has some fresh air in his face. The woman is going to be the death of him in more ways than one.
She, too, dons a headlamp and flicks it on as they head outside. They’re halfway across the compound, heading toward the gate, when a voice stops them.
“Where are you guys going?”
Kate and Ben freeze like two teenagers caught sneaking out of the house at—Ben glances at his watch—12:16 at night.
Eric comes out from the front door of Laurel dorm, a roll of packing tape in one hand.
“What are you doing?” Kate asks.
“Inventorying food in Laurel. I did another sweep and found a bunch more edibles.”
“In the middle of the night?”
Eric shrugs. Apparently insomnia is rampant in this compound.
“So what are you guys doing?” Eric asks ag
ain.
Ben doesn’t even bother trying to answer. This is all Kate’s idea. She can decide what she wants to tell Eric.
“We’re running an errand,” she replies. “We’ll be back in a few hours.”
“An errand?” Eric raises a skeptical eyebrow.
“We’ll be back soon.” Kate attempts to march past him.
Eric isn’t so easily brushed off. “You’re leaving the compound?” he asks, incredulous. “You’re going outside in the middle of the night?”
Ben grunts. This is going about how he’d expected. And Eric isn’t about to be deterred.
“I’m coming with you. Whatever you’re planning, I’ll help.”
“You don’t even know what we’re doing,” Kate replies.
Eric eyes them. “As long as you’re helping Creekside, I’m in. Unless ...” he frowns at them. “You guys aren’t, you know, going out for a romantic stroll of something?”
Once again, Ben decides to let Kate field the question. There’s nothing he can say that won’t make him look like an idiot. Not the least of which is the fact he’d actually consider a stroll outside these walls in the middle of the night if it were with Kate.
“No,” Kate says quickly. “We’re going to catch an alpha zom. We’re going to bring it back and study it.” She delivers these two sentences like a threat, as though they’ll kick some common sense into Eric.
Common sense that Kate herself doesn’t have. Unfortunately, these kids are almost as crazy as their surrogate mother. Eric actually perks up at the idea.
“Good idea,” he says. “I have some extra rope in Laurel. Be right back.”
“Grab the dolly, too,” Kate calls after him. To Ben, she says, “Might as well make use of him if he insists on coming.”
“Dolly? For the alpha transport?” Ben asks.
“Yeah.”
It’s a good idea. Better than him carrying an undead fucker over his shoulder, which is what he assumed he’d be doing until now.
Three minutes later, he, Kate, and Eric exit the compound together with the dolly.
“Where are we going?” Eric asks as they close and lock the gate.
Kate doesn’t answer right away. This puts Ben’s hackles up.
“You know where one is, don’t you?” he asks.
She looks at him. “Yes. I found it a few days ago when I was digging up fencing.”
“Where is it?” From the look on Kate’s face, he isn’t going to like the answer
“It’s down on the freeway. Sandwiched between a few cars and a whole lot of zombies.”
“How do you know it’s an alpha?” Eric asks.
“The way the others react to it. It’s trying to give orders to make the horde move, but they’re in a logjam with all the abandoned cars and bodies.”
“And your plan to get the alpha?” Ben has no doubt Kate has something up her sleeve. Her large backpack has not escaped his notice.
“I have some rope,” Kate says. “I think we can drop the rope around its neck and pull it up.”
32
Carnival Game
KATE
Ben is such a skeptic. If he weren’t so capable, I wouldn’t have bothered to ask him along.
Or at least, this is what I tell myself. The truth is that I feel safe when he’s around. Trusting Ben feels like vulnerability. I don’t like it, yet I can’t seem to separate myself from it.
“It will work,” I tell Ben and Eric.
They hit me with cloned expressions of incredulity.
“You want to drop a rope around an alpha’s neck and pull it up from the freeway?” Eric echoes.
At least my plan was clear. “Yes.” I look at Ben. “If you don’t like it, you have between now and the time we arrive at the overpass to come up with something better.”
He scowls at me. I turn away and keep walking, knowing he’ll follow.
We’ve done a good job of clearing the campus. The university isn’t leak proof yet, but I have ideas how to make it a true safe zone. Just as soon as we bag an alpha and start studying it.
Tonight, the sidewalks and roads are quiet, deserted. I walk with Ben and Eric on either side of me down Granite Avenue. Eric pushes a dolly.
This road has changed so much. No longer littered with bodies of murdered students and subsequently cleared of zombies, it almost looks like it did before the apocalypse. If you can ignore the shattered windows, broken doors, abandoned cars, and a complete lack of ambient light.
The milling horde down on the freeway fills the air with a gentle hum. The farther we walk, the louder it becomes.
When we reach the end of Granite Avenue, I pad up to the chain-link fence that lines the twenty-foot drop to the freeway. The beam of my headlamp casts light on the scene. I take in the tight pack of zombies crammed below. There are several hundred, all of them remnants of the monster horde that came here from Eureka.
For the moment, we’re safe from them. The walls of the freeway keep them penned off.
Even so, they aren’t a problem I plan to ignore. I’ve been thinking of ways to get rid of them. The best idea I’ve come up with so far is to dump some gasoline from the overpass and drop a few matches. The problem with that plan is there’s no guarantee the fire will remain contained. The last time I set something on fire, half of the Arcata Plaza was incinerated.
I’ll figure something out. For now, I need to focus on the task at hand: catching an alpha.
“It’s over there?” Eric points to a red pick-up truck beneath the overpass. A tight cluster of zoms swirls around a center point.
“Yeah. The alpha is there.” If it weren’t dark, they’d be able to see the gray-haired woman in the navy blue sweat shirt.
Ten minutes later, we reach the overpass. Ben has a knife in each hand, eyes flicking up and down the road. It’s clear for the moment, but there are zombies not too far away in downtown Arcata.
I drop my pack to the ground and pull out a coil of rope and a Boy Scout handbook.
“Polishing up your knot-tying skills?” Ben frowns at the Boy Scout book.
“Yeah.” I loosen the noose I’ve tied, creating a large loop to drop over the alpha’s neck.
“What if we accidentally pull off its head when we drag it up here?” Eric asks.
I shrug. “Maybe the head will still work.”
Ben and Eric exchange tight looks. In that single exchange, I can see how much the two of them dislike this whole idea. Well, I don’t like it much, either. If my gut didn’t tell me it was the right thing to do, I wouldn’t even be out here trying it.
“Ben, you keep watch on the overpass. Make sure no zombies sneak up on us. Eric, help me with the alpha.”
Ben takes up position in the center of the overpass. Eric watches me as I pick up the rope. I spread my stance and press my hips against the cement barrier for balance, peering into the mass of zombies below.
I shine the light on the alpha. The woman’s gray hair is a dim smudge beneath the starlight, the navy blue sweatshirt invisible in the dark. The alpha is like the dark center of a flower, the rest of the zoms are like swirling petals of gore around it.
I lower the rope over the side. Unfortunately, the alpha is five feet north of the overpass. Dropping it neatly over its head isn’t an option.
As soon as the rope is fifteen feet down, I begin swinging it. Forward and back, forward and back. I gather slack in my other hand.
The rope sails out, gliding right over the alpha. I release the slack.
My timing is off. The rope misses and swings back, thumping against several zombies as it does. They moan and spin in small circles, arms swiping at the open air in search of whatever it was that brushed past them.
I try three more times and miss.
“This feels like a sick carnival game,” I grumble.
“You mean the ones that are rigged so you never have a chance to win?” Eric asks.
“Exactly.”
Behind me, I hear a moan, followed by th
e now-familiar sound of a skull being crushed.
“Is Ben okay?” I don’t take my eyes from the rope as I swing.
“He’s fine,” Eric replies. “Just took down a straggler. Have you thought about making the noose bigger?”
I decide to try it. Otherwise, we could be out here half the night trying to catch the alpha.
I try four more times with the enlarged noose. On the fifth try, the noose sails neatly over the head of the alpha—and the zombie right next to it.
“Dammit,” I growl. “I was afraid that would happen.” Now I have two zombies.
“Screw it,” Eric says. “Let’s pull them both up.”
I nod in agreement, pulling the noose tight. The alpha and the other zom mash into each other. The alpha immediately starts to hiss and click, sending all nearby zombies into a frenzy. They push and shove in an outward circle, almost as if they’re forming a defensive perimeter around the alpha. Eric and I strain against the rope as our two captives struggle against us.
“Ben,” I call softly. “We need your help.”
He swears when he sees we’ve accidentally lassoed two of the undead. “Fuck me,” he says. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
He and Eric plant themselves on either side of me, both of them grasping the rope.
“On the count of three,” I say. “One, two, three—”
As a unit, we heave. The zombies rise a foot off the ground.
The regular zombie hisses and moans, swiping futilely at the air around it. The alpha lets loose another complicated series of clicks and keens.
The zombies around the alpha double their efforts, pushing outward in a lopsided circle as they attempt to protect their alpha. Several of the cars groan and creak as the zombies slam into them, sliding a few inches across the pavement.
“One, two, three!” I hiss. “One, two, three!”
We throw all we’ve got into pulling the rope upward. The alpha’s commands pick up momentum, its sounds coming faster and more urgently. The monster is halfway up to the overpass, dangling in mid-air above the horde. The zombies below us grow more and more frenzied.
Undead Ultra Box Set | Books 1-4 Page 76
