Elements of the Undead (Book 4): Water

by William Esmont

  Isla Perpetua

  A sense of malaise filled Megan in the days following the visit to the shack. And she wasn’t alone. Roman, previously talkative and quick to share a smile, became increasingly insular. He spent the majority of his time either huddled with Sienna or off in the jungle alone for hours at a time. Megan tried to follow him on several occasions, but he moved like a ghost on the narrow trails, and she inevitably lost sight of him. Even Jack, who normally carried enough energy to fuel two people, was affected, retreating to his cot with increasing frequency for hours-long naps from which he always awoke complaining of lingering exhaustion.

  Their existence wasn’t sustainable. Sooner rather than later, she and Jack would receive their work assignments from Purdue. Once that happened, any hope of escape would be lost forever, drowned in the tedium of daily existence. Megan wiped a tear from her cheek. The idea of dying on the island was too much to bear. She had to do something, and soon.

  The sound of an approaching engine shattered the silence of the afternoon. Megan got up from her chair under the dead palm tree and took a few steps into the sun. Purdue’s Hummer emerged from the mouth of the jungle, heading toward the bunkhouse.

  “Oh, shit,” Megan said, leaping to her feet and dashing for the door.

  She found Roman inside, sitting with Sienna and Jack.

  “Stay calm,” Roman said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” The look on his face, however, told Megan he didn’t believe his own words.

  “And what if it’s not?” she asked. “What if they—”

  A low, keening wail erupted from Sienna. Without looking, Roman placed his hand on her shoulder and massaged gently. The noise trailed off, and a content smile reappeared on the girl’s face.

  “Is she going to be okay?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah,” Roman said. “She can tell when people around her are upset.”

  Megan chewed her lip. “So what do we do now?”

  Roman leaned forward. “We wait. Try to act normal.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. The idea of acting normal was preposterous.

  A commotion erupted at the front door. Megan didn’t turn around to look. A man shouted, and Megan winced at the unmistakable sound of a baton striking exposed flesh. A second later, a body slapped against the floor, and a woman began cursing in Spanish.

  “Act normal,” Roman whispered harshly, locking eyes first with Megan and then Jack. “Trust me.”

  Megan gave Roman a discreet nod and fixed her eyes on an indistinct point on the far wall where the puke-green paint of the cinder blocks transitioned to a shit-stain brown.

  “You!” Nick boomed from behind her. “Let’s go!”

  Megan’s face burned. She didn’t know if he was speaking to her.

  “I said, on your feet!”

  She started to stand, but Jack stopped her with a hand on her thigh. “No,” he said under his breath. “He’s not talking to you.”

  Megan sagged with relief. Her gaze shifted to Roman and Sienna. Roman had his chin held high. His eyes glistened, and his lip quivered. Sienna squirmed under his grip.

  “What are you? Stupid?” Nick shouted.

  Booted footsteps clomped across the room. He came to a stop directly behind Megan. Still, she didn’t turn.

  “You can’t have her,” Roman said, standing.

  “Look, Roman,” Nick said, dropping his voice. “You know how he is. When he says he wants something…”

  Roman’s eyes narrowed and grew icy cold. “She’s off limits. Purdue told me so himself.”

  Nick chuckled, the sound like a rusty hinge. “He changed his mind.”

  Roman took a step forward, placing himself between Sienna and Nick. “No.”

  Turning to Megan, Nick put a finger under her chin and roughly tilted her head back until their eyes locked. “Maybe I should take your friend here instead—”

  Megan’s skin crawled at his touch. But before she could devise a retort, an angry voice rang across the room.

  “Nick!” Purdue yelled. “What the hell are you doing in here? Stop fucking around and get the girl already!”

  Nick dropped his hand. “Next time,” he whispered with a leer, before turning back to face Roman and Sienna. “You heard the man, Roman. Hand her over.”

  Roman leaped at Nick, his hands closing like claws on the man’s throat, sending them both tumbling onto the cot next to Megan. The cot collapsed to the floor with a raucous clatter. Roman was no match for the much younger, much stronger man. With a grunt and a heave, Nick rolled over until he was straddling Roman, then started to pummel the older man’s face, slowly at first and then with an increasing ferocity, his fists becoming a blur. Sienna rocked back and forth like an out-of-control metronome, screaming at the top of her lungs.

  After delivering a final punch to Roman’s face, Nick climbed to his feet. Grinning, he yanked a sheet from a nearby cot and used it to wipe Roman’s blood from his fists. He turned to face Megan and Jack. “You’re not going to cause any problems now, are you?”

  Megan looked over at Purdue, who was leaning against the doorjamb. “No,” she said. “We’re not.”

  “Men!” Nick shouted.

  Two soldiers raced to his side.

  Nick nodded at Sienna. “Take her to the truck.”

  “Yes, sir,” the soldiers said in unison.

  Sienna fought like a wild animal, but the men subdued her with little effort. With a parting kick to Roman’s gut, Nick followed them.

  Megan waited until Purdue and his men were gone, then she ran to Roman’s side. Jack helped her roll him over, then she checked his vital signs. Roman’s face was a roadmap of destruction. Both of his eyes were swollen shut. Bright red blood pulsed from his lips, which were split in at least three different places.

  Megan let out a startled gasp when Roman’s eyes fluttered open. His pupils were dilated. His gaze unfixed.

  “Oh, my God!” she said, leaning in close. “Roman!”

  Roman’s lips moved, but no words came out.

  Megan put her ear to his mouth. “What is it? What are you trying to say?”

  “I know how…” Roman stopped to swallow. “I know how to kill Purdue. You can—” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he lapsed into unconsciousness.

  Thirty-six

  Gulf Star Oil Platform

  Chris watched as Doctor Cain depressed the plunger of the syringe protruding from the papery-white flesh of Tinsley’s left arm. Bit by bit, the pale yellow fluid in the syringe vanished into Tinsley’s bloodstream. Cain carefully withdrew the spent syringe and passed it to Marla, who capped the needle and dropped it into a wastebasket. Cain pressed a ball of cotton on the dark globule of blood welling up from the injection point.

  “Is that all?” Luke asked, his voice quavering.

  Cain nodded. “Yeah. That’s it.”

  “When will we know?”

  Cain shrugged. “Not long. A few hours at most.”

  Chris squeezed his eyes shut. Although he was elated the doctor had completed the first batch of serum and had treated Tinsley, the good news still wasn’t enough to pull his thoughts away his own personal tragedy unfolding two stories above. Hines had slipped into a coma during their quest for medical supplies, and Chris knew deep in his gut the end was near for his partner and mentor. The sight of Hines’s wasted body lying still as a corpse in the sick bay bed had triggered a primal response in Chris to begin to disassociate from the tragedy, to withdraw and construct a psychic wall against the terrible pain and anguish to come. That, in turn, had sparked a crushing sense of guilt that gnawed at his insides like a cancer.

  “You should get some rest, Luke,” Cain said. “She’s going to need you when she comes to.”

  “But what if she gets worse? What if—” Luke’s jaw worked as he struggled with the emotions boiling inside him.

  Chris went to Luke’s side, took him by the elbow, and gently guided him to his feet. He gestured at Marla, who stood silhouetted in front of the
window, waiting for the doctor’s next instructions. “Marla will stay with her for a few minutes while we step out. Won’t you, Marla?”

  She smiled. “Of course. I’ll be right here.”

  “Okay,” Luke said tentatively, his voice raw with emotion. “But just for a minute.”

  Chris led Luke out of the room and toward the stairs. Luke walked slowly, as if each step away from Tinsley’s side was his last. Chris couldn’t blame the boy, for there was no guarantee the serum would reverse the course of the disease. Tinsley’s body, the doctor had cautioned them, was potentially already too compromised to respond. The implication of that for Hines and the other people who had fallen sick before Tinsley were impossible for Chris to ignore.

  Chris tried to put these thoughts out of his mind as he opened the door to the main deck and led Luke into the soft yellow light of early morning. The air was still cool, the heat and brutal humidity of the coming day not yet having settled over the platform. The door swung shut behind them with a soft click, and Chris and Luke walked to the edge of the deck. Whitecaps raced across the surface of the gulf as far as Chris could see, an endless wind-driven procession marching to infinity and beyond. The wind gusted, and the sharp tang of salt assaulted his nose. Chris shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “Chris?” Luke said, his voice nearly lost to the breeze.

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks. For everything.”

  Luke’s words caught Chris off guard. He choked up. “It’s—”

  “I mean it,” Luke said. “You didn’t have to let Tinsley go first. I would have understood.”

  In Chris’s mind, he could hear Hines lecturing him on the importance of protecting the future at all costs. No sacrifice, Hines had told him countless times, was too great when faced with the opportunity to reclaim what they had lost. Deep inside, Chris felt something break loose. His guilt receded, carried away by the warm wind caressing his face. He turned to face Luke. “We’re going to be okay. We did the right thing.” For a brief moment, he glimpsed a future in which people like Luke would eventually take back the world.

  “Are you ready to go back inside?” Luke asked anxiously.

  Chris nodded. “Yeah. I’m going to go up and sit with Marlon for a while, though.”

  “Want me to come?”

  “No. Thanks, though,” Chris said, knowing the boy was only being polite. “This is something I have to deal with on my own.”

  Thirty-seven

  Isla Perpetua

  Roman crossed his arms over his chest and fixed Megan in an unyielding stare. “I told you I was going to kill those bastards for what they did to Sienna. I’m doing this with or without you.”

  Megan looked Roman up and down. She didn’t doubt for a second he’d try to take on Purdue and Nick by himself. Word of Sienna’s grisly death in the stadium had driven him from anger into blind fury. He was a man possessed, and Megan feared the line between calculated revenge and a reckless crime of passion had grown dangerously blurry.

  “Hold on,” she said, bringing the binoculars to her eyes and focusing on Purdue’s compound two hundred yards to the east. “I want to take another look.”

  “Suit yourself,” Roman grumbled.

  Although she agreed with Roman, she wanted to make sure they weren’t walking into an ambush. She reviewed the visible defenses of Purdue’s command post one last time. First, a ten-foot-tall block wall surrounded the entire structure. The only breaks came in the form of two doors—a truck-sized one at the front end of the property and a slightly smaller one at the rear. Purdue’s Hummer was parked near the front entrance, next to a mud-splattered pickup truck. The second line of defense consisted of the men who constantly patrolled the perimeter. At the moment, she only spotted one. That was typical, according to Roman.

  “Tell me about those antennas,” she said, referring to the unruly nest of antenna masts on the northwest corner of the roof.

  “The colonel who ran this place—the Jefe,” Roman answered, “this was his command post. He used those radios to communicate with the mainland.”

  “Is the equipment still functional?” Megan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Roman said. “Does it really matter? Who are you going to call, anyway?”

  “Home,” Jack said solemnly.

  The thought of calling the Gulf Star brought a smile to Megan’s lips. That alone was a reason to risk their lives in taking on Purdue.

  A door opened on the second floor, and Purdue stepped out onto the narrow balcony. Leaning his back against the railing, he lit a cigarette then stared into the jungle as he smoked. Megan watched for almost a minute, wishing she had a rifle in her hand instead of a pair of binoculars.

  “It’s in the back corner,” Roman said impatiently. “Near the smaller door.”

  Megan moved the binoculars to her left until a small cinder-block building of shoddy construction filled her view. About the size of a large garden shed, the structure had the fresh look of recent construction: no red dirt along its perimeter, no vegetation crawling up the sides.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, adjusting the focus dial a bit.

  “Look at the door.”

  Megan panned down until she spotted a shiny fist-sized combination lock attached to the building’s only door. “What about it?”

  “Notice anything odd?”

  Megan studied the padlock closely then zoomed out a little. She laughed out loud. “Are you kidding me?” The hasp was nailed to a single two-by-four bolted to the wall. They wouldn’t even have to touch the lock to get inside.

  “I told you,” Roman said. “We’ll be through that door in ten seconds.”

  “Less than that,” Megan responded with growing excitement. “And you think that’s where he keeps his zombies?”

  Roman rolled his eyes. “I’m sure. I helped move them there from that shack in the jungle, remember? There are four in total—three others just like the one you fed from. Insurance, Purdue calls them. He’s rationing their flesh, taking little bits at a time. He has enough to last for years.”

  “And when he runs out?”

  “He won’t,” Roman said. “Not in our lifetimes.”

  Megan considered the risks involved in Roman’s plan. Breaking into Purdue’s compound and setting his captive zombies loose as a distraction was a move of total desperation, but given the alternative of doing nothing and dying a slow death, they had no other choices.

  She looked at Jack. He nodded.

  They waited until the sun dropped below the western horizon before making their move.

  Megan craned her neck and stared up at the heavens. Fat black clouds scudded across the sky, swallowing the moon and cloaking the jungle in a stygian darkness. She could barely see Jack and Roman’s faces beside her. “I hope this rain holds off.”

  Roman sniffed the air. “We’ve got a little while yet.”

  Megan wasn’t so sure. The storm clouds had been building since mid-afternoon, and they looked as if they would open up at any moment.

  “You guys ready?” Roman asked.

  The moon emerged from behind its cloud cover, bathing the jungle in a soft, almost phosphorescent glow.

  “Yeah,” Megan said at the same time as Jack.

  “Okay. You know the plan. We go through the back door. You two get the shed open; I’ll keep a lookout for Purdue’s men. We need to herd the zombies toward the main building. Purdue’s men won’t shoot them. They know better. That’ll give us time to get close. Then I’ll go inside and finish the bastard off.”

  “What if he’s not alone?” Jack asked.

  Purdue shrugged. “Let me worry about that.”

  Megan swallowed. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

  They crept from the cover of the jungle across open ground to the rear of Purdue’s compound. At the gated opening in the wall, Megan and Jack wedged a rusty length of steel bed frame into the lock mechanism, then Jack leaned on it until the door popped open with a groan.
>
  Megan froze, listening for any indication Purdue’s men had heard them. They had timed their entrance for when the lone guard was on the far side of the building. When she heard no shouting or boots running in their direction, Megan gave the all clear, and Jack yanked open the door.

  “Okay,” Roman said in a hurried whisper. “Go! Go!”

  Roman scurried to the right. Megan and Jack raced left, to the shed.

  When they reached the small building, Megan wedged the steel bar into the space between the lock hasp and the wooden doorframe. “Are we still clear?” she asked over her shoulder.

  Jack gave her the thumbs-up signal.

  The wood gave way with a splintering crack, and the lock dropped to the dirt at Megan’s feet with a muted thump. On the other side of the door, the zombies began to stir. Their moans were low at first but quickly rising to a persistent drone.

  “They know we’re here,” she said through gritted teeth. “Light?”

  Jack pulled a small flashlight from his pocket, turned it on, and handed it to her. Holding the light out in front of her, Megan pushed the door open and entered the building. Jack followed close on her heels.

  The interior appeared exactly as Roman had described. The zombies were stored in four pens, one in each corner. Each cage was constructed of heavy-duty chain-link fencing with a complex multi-stage latch on the outside that only a sentient human could operate.

  “How do you want to do this?” Jack asked, going to the nearest cage and slapping the mesh wire.

  The zombie inside charged him, and Jack jumped back. Megan didn’t know. The idea of herding the creatures seemed laughable. With four of them to maneuver, control would be a short-lived illusion, at best.

  “I say we just let them go and run,” she said. “We’ll have to hope they follow us to the house. I don’t know how the hell Roman is expecting us to herd them.”

  “We’ll have to move fast,” Jack said, eyeing the cages nervously. “There’s not a lot of room to maneuver in here.”

  “Yeah.” Megan edged toward the pen in the rear corner of the building. “How about we start back here?”