Dead, But Not For Long (Book 2): Pestilence and Promise

by Kinney, Matthew

  Dan sighed and pointed to a rock. “That’s what he saw. It kind of looks like a coiled-up snake from a distance, but it’s not. No snake.”

  “You might want to check for marks,” Miranda suggested to George. “They can be deadly.”

  “I give up,” Dan muttered, walking over to look at the pond while Miranda and George discussed rattlesnakes.

  ~*~

  St. Mary’s Hospital, Lansing

  Lindsey went to her room to put her jacket and weapons away since she wasn’t going to leave the building after all. She stood at the window for a few moments and watched as the others rode off. As badly as she didn’t want to see Wombat with the blonde, she found herself searching for him in the mass of bikes as they rode through the gate into the walled park area. Unable to pick him out of the crowd, she wondered if he and the blonde were riding in one of the trucks.

  She turned away from the window, unsure of what to do with her time. She knew that Theresa could probably use some help, but the group that was doing the canning tended to be chatty. They loved to gossip, and Lindsey wasn’t sure she wanted to be around them until she cleared her head and was able to put on a cheerful face. The last thing she wanted was for them to see that something was wrong and try to drag the story out of her.

  Grabbing the jacket she’d just taken off, she put it back on and left the room, locking the door behind her. She made her way quickly to the roof, needing some time to think. Lee would be back in five days, and she hadn’t decided just how to handle their meeting, though she knew that she would need to tread lightly when she spoke with him.

  When she got to the roof, Hawk was already there, having a cigarette. He was doing his best to try to stay dry under the overhang of one of the utility sheds.

  “Hey, Lins,” he said. He looked at her a little closer and asked, “You okay?”

  “Not really,” she said, walking over to stand beside him. “I just made a complete fool of myself in front of everybody.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, slipping an arm around her shoulder in a brief hug. “Cheer up. I’m sure whatever you did, I’ve done worse.”

  He pulled his arm away after a moment, blowing smoke in the other direction.

  “I doubt it, Hawk,” she said. “I’m not sure I can face anybody again.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I can’t tell you. I’m too embarrassed. I’m sure Wombat will tell you later.”

  Hawk put out his cigarette and said, “I’ve got to get back inside. I’m on duty in the crow’s nest. If you need to vent, just come find me, okay? I’ll nod my head at all the right places.”

  “Thanks,” she said managing a smile.

  ~*^*~

  ~42~

  Boulder City, Nevada

  “George’s knee is bleeding pretty badly,” Miranda said when Dan walked back to join them. “He should probably have some ice on it.”

  “I ripped my jeans, too,” Rayburn said.

  “Do you have a first aid kit?” Miranda asked.

  “No,” George said, “and I guess going to the local drug store is out of the question.”

  “They’ve been closed for a few days,” Miranda said, appearing to be deep in thought for a moment. “Maybe I could go home and get you some gauze and stuff.”

  “I’d hate to put you out like that,” Rayburn told her.

  She hesitated for a minute longer before coming to another decision. “I can’t believe I’m suggesting this, but maybe it’ll be easier if you just follow me to my place. You guys seem okay. Please tell me that you haven’t been bitten.”

  “No. We’ve had some close calls, but not in the last day or so. We’re harmless,” Dan said.

  “Just don’t follow Dan into any tunnels,” George said. “You might not get out alive.”

  Miranda’s eyes darted over to Dan.

  “Really?” Dan asked. “What would you have done, George? The dead were going to find us there. If we hadn’t gotten out when we did, we would have both died in that culvert, in a very horrible way.”

  “Maybe,” George said, obviously not convinced. “The zombies on my side weren’t looking at me, so I think we would have been fine.”

  “If you’ll recall, I’d already had to kill one on my side,” Dan pointed out. “If any more had tried to crawl in, I would have been trapped. I had no choice but to get out fast. And we’re both alive, right?”

  “No thanks to you.”

  Dan crossed his arms and looked at George, one eyebrow raised.

  Miranda was silent as she watched the interaction between the two men.

  George broke first. “Okay, okay. Maybe you did help me get out of there.”

  “And?”

  “And maybe, just maybe, we would have died if we’d stayed. But we don’t know that.”

  “So, since we don’t know, let’s just drop it. Can we do that?”

  “Fine,” George said. “But I think you owe me one. We should definitely go to Miranda’s house and fix up my knee.” He lifted his leg, wincing in pain.

  Dan relented. “That’s fine. I’d like to make sure she gets home safely anyway since that spare seems a little soft, and yes, we can take care of your leg. Now are you happy?”

  “Yes,” George said. He turned to Miranda. “I promise we’re harmless, even Dan.”

  “I hope so,” she said, walking back to her truck.

  Dan waited for Rayburn to limp over to their vehicle before starting the engine. When Miranda pulled out, he followed her.

  “Is your knee really that bad, or is this some kind of scheme to get a break?” Dan asked.

  “My knee really hurts,” Rayburn said. “Miranda seems nice. Pretty, too.”

  Dan glanced at his friend, surprised. “She’s kind of young for you, George.”

  “Me? No, I meant for you.”

  “Oh, please tell me you’re not trying to play matchmaker during a zombie apocalypse. There are so many things wrong with that.”

  George shrugged.

  When Miranda turned off onto a side street that appeared to be leaving town, Dan said, “I wonder where she’s going.”

  He followed her truck as she weaved in and out of cars on a road that was clearly leaving Boulder City. Within a couple of miles, they could see another town in the distance.

  “What is this place?”

  “Whispering Springs, I think,” Rayburn said. “I remember checking it out a while back, maybe ten or fifteen years ago. It’s one of those planned communities, and my wife made me drive through it to look at model homes when we were visiting Las Vegas once. The population was around 4,000, but it looks like it’s grown a bit.”

  “Small population. That’s good. Shouldn’t be too many of the dead around,” Hixson said. “Were you thinking about moving here?”

  “No, she just hated the whole gambling thing in Vegas, so after I’d play some Keno, we’d go for a drive or something. She liked to come out here where gambling isn’t allowed.”

  “No gambling?” Dan asked, surprised.

  “I guess Boulder City and Whispering Springs are the only places in Nevada with no gambling,” Rayburn said. He shrugged. “Well, then there’s Panaca. It’s the only place in Nevada that’s dry.”

  “Looks like it’s all dry to me,” Dan said, glancing around at the forbidding desert.

  “I mean dry as in no alcohol,” Rayburn explained. “It was a Mormon colony back in the 1860s. It started out as part of Utah then they shifted it to Nevada.”

  “Where do you learn all this stuff?” Dan asked.

  “I read a lot,” George said, looking out the window.

  ~*~

  Lansing, Michigan

  Two people crouched behind a structure on a roof that was half a block away from the hospital. The man lifted his head when he heard the sound of motorcycle engines. Careful to stay out of sight, he checked to see three trucks leaving the hospital along with most of the bikes.

  “Right on time,” he said, lookin
g through binoculars. “I don’t see her. The only woman is the big, blonde one.”

  “There she is,” the woman said, pointing to the roof.

  They watched as Lindsey walked over to where Hawk was standing. The woman took several shots with her telephoto lens. “Oh, my God, that’s perfect,” she laughed as Hawk put his arm around Lindsey.

  After Hawk left, the woman checked the photos and found one where the biker had his arm around Lindsey. They looked intimate.

  “Will that work?” she asked the man who was with her.

  He smiled when he saw the image on the camera. “Absolutely perfect. Henry was just hoping to get a picture of her riding with one of the bikers. This is much better. Give me the memory card. We need to do this fast, because I have the feeling he’s going to want to move now, while the others are gone.”

  When the woman handed the card over, he quickly inserted it into the laptop and logged onto his e-mail account, using his smart phone as a mobile hotspot. A tarp covered everything to keep it dry. “Cross your fingers. It’s been working about half the time lately.”

  “It had better work. I’m sick of being out here in the rain,” the woman said.

  After a few minutes, the man said, “It went through. Henry said you can go now. Someone will be waiting for you on the ground.”

  She hurried over to the fire escape and began to make her way down.

  ~*~

  Boulder City, Nevada

  The road they used to enter Whispering Springs was a small one, its only purpose apparently to connect the two towns. As Dan followed the woman, he noticed that the town seemed to be deserted. They turned onto a residential street then took a couple more turns. Up ahead of them, Dan could see a garage door starting to open. When they reached the house, Miranda put her truck into reverse and backed into the garage while Dan parked in the driveway.

  “I didn’t see any dead on the streets,” Dan remarked as they entered the house through the garage. Miranda locked the door behind them.

  “We have people who patrol all day long,” she said. “They take care of the infected. We’ve also been told to stay inside our houses as much as possible, so there aren’t too many live people on the streets, either.”

  “It’s a lot different than LA. The whole area was in chaos,” Dan said.

  “I saw that on TV,” she told them, walking into the living room. “We haven’t had anything like that here.”

  Dan noticed that the large picture window was covered with bars and that the front door was reinforced from the inside with two heavy boards placed across metal brackets. He walked over and got a closer look.

  “The brackets are fastened to the beams inside the wall,” Miranda said. “I had a hard time finding them.”

  Dan smiled, seeing several holes surrounding each of the brackets.

  “You could have used a stud finder,” he said. “Or you can usually tell where the studs are by knocking on the wall.”

  “I finally figured that part out,” she said with a wry grin. “I’d rarely even used a hammer until recently. My husband always did that sort of thing, even hanging up pictures for me.”

  Something in her tone made Dan look up. “Is he . . . ?” he began to ask, not sure what to say.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her tone making it clear that she didn’t want to talk about it. She turned away from him. “George, why don’t I get you a pair of shorts, so we can take care of your knee?”

  “If you don’t mind,” he said.

  “Not at all,” she told him, leaving the room. She returned a few minutes later with medical supplies and a pair of basketball shorts. Dan noticed a distant look in her eyes as she handed the shorts over to George then pointed him toward the bathroom down the hall.

  While they waited for him to change, she told Dan, “He kind of reminds me of my dad.”

  Dan opened his mouth to ask about Miranda’s parents, but he held his tongue, not sure if he should ask after her reaction to the question about her husband.

  “My parents are doing all right, so far,” she said, apparently realizing his dilemma. “They’re in Oregon.”

  “So you’ve talked to them recently?”

  “Yes, just a few days ago,” she said. “They’re retired, and they have a place out in the country. The neighbors have been helping each other to get all the houses in the area fortified.”

  “That’s great,” Dan said. “I just hope that’s happening in other places, too. The human race might actually stand a chance.”

  They stopped talking for a moment as gunshots sounded in the distance.

  “I hear that off and on, all day long,” Miranda said quietly. “It seems that it’s gotten a lot worse since Vegas was overrun.”

  George limped down the hall, and Dan had to fight back a grin at the sight of his friend in the long shorts.

  “Have a seat, George,” Miranda told him. As she began to clean Rayburn’s knee, she asked, “Are you two staying in town or just passing through?”

  “We’re trying to find a safe place to stay,” Rayburn said, wincing when Miranda dabbed some antibiotic cream on the wound. He yawned and added, “Sorry. We drove all night, and I can’t stop yawning.”

  Miranda carefully taped some gauze onto George’s knee. When she finished, she glanced at the clock and said, “If you’d like to get a little sleep, I could cook you dinner before you leave. It’s the least I could do to thank you for helping me with the tire.”

  “We should probably get going,” Dan said. “I’d like to get a few more miles in before we have to stop for the night.”

  George sighed. “Are you going to make me sleep in the truck again? It’s going to be uncomfortable with my knee messed up.”

  Dan crossed his arms. “I know what you’re doing, George.”

  “Why don’t you just stay here tonight?” Miranda suggested. “You could get an early start in the morning.”

  “That would be great,” Rayburn said, not looking at Dan.

  Hixson shot Rayburn a look, but he relented after considering it. “I guess it might not be a bad idea. I’m not sure George will be in any condition to walk if we have to ditch the truck and go on foot.”

  “Definitely not,” Miranda said, pausing with adhesive tape and scissors in her hand. “He’s probably going to be hurting for a few days. I’d think that walking would be out of the question.”

  “I agree,” George said, wincing as he lowered his leg from the chair.

  “I’m no doctor, but his knee is already swollen and bruised,” Miranda pointed out.

  “I am a doctor, and I can tell you I won’t be running from zombies with this knee for a while,” George said. “I could use a good night’s sleep after what we’ve been through the last few days. It’s been exhausting.”

  “You poor thing,” Miranda said, patting his good leg with a look of concern on her face.

  Dan rolled his eyes. “You win, George.”

  ~*~

  Yucca Compound

  Madec hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.

  “Well?” Bob asked.

  “The dogs picked up a scent in Barstow. It looks like Rayburn and Hixson were there, after all. They apparently hid out in a dilapidated trailer for a while then spent the night in a house across the street from it before leaving town.”

  “How did they get out of town?” Bob asked. “I thought the exits were being watched. Why didn’t anybody see them?”

  “They slipped past the roadblock. The dogs followed a trail out of the city for several miles before it disappeared. There were a couple of bikes nearby, so I would guess that’s how they left town.”

  “And the chopper didn’t spot them on the road?”

  “They weren’t seen anywhere along the highway to Las Vegas. It’s possible that they took another road,” Madec snapped. “If we’d gotten the dogs there immediately, Hixson would be dead, and Rayburn would be in our custody by now.”

  Bob looked embarrassed
. “How was I supposed to know? The handler wanted to know where to take them, and you were dealing with something else at the time. I thought the tip we got saying that they had been spotted in Santa Barbara made more sense.”

  “It was a bad call. I told you to send them to Barstow,” Madec said. “Your poor decision cost us far too much time.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t my fault that the handlers were out of radio range for so long.”

  “It’s your fault that they went in the wrong direction in the first place.”

  In an obvious attempt to change the subject, Bob asked, “Have you learned anything new on the immune person in Michigan?”

  “Nobody is talking yet. I’m concerned about Henry, though,” Madec said. “He’s becoming a problem.”

  “In what way?”

  “We’ve received some disturbing reports out of Lansing. The others aren’t pleased with the way he’s running things there. Unfortunately, we need his help. If Doune isn’t willing to turn the immune person over to us quickly, we’ll need Henry to handle it from there.”

  “Was that him?” Bob asked, nodding toward the phone.

  “Yes. He wanted to go in, guns blazing, from the sounds of it,” Madec sighed. “He’s become a bit unstable, I’m afraid. I explained to him that it would be unwise. He finally admitted that he has a pilot with ties to a woman who works at the hospital. He’s going to try to convince the pilot to see what he can find out.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “If it works,” Madec said. “If it doesn’t, he may do something foolish and blow our chances to retrieve this person.”

  ~*~

  Lansing Compound

  “You wanted to see me?” Lee asked.

  “I was wondering if you’d made a decision yet,” Henry said, without turning around. He was looking at a cell phone as he spoke.

  “I just don’t feel right about what you suggested,” Lee admitted. “It’s crossing a line that I don’t want to cross.”