Wheels and Zombies (Book 2): Brooklyn, Wheels and Zombies

by M. Van

  The numbness jabbing into my legs announced the passing of time. A growl from my stomach made me wonder if they would feed us. Then the steel door whooshed open. I blinked to convince myself that the image was real. Mars ambled down the steps. Those jade eyes didn’t release me until he kneeled down beside me and let out a breath. His hand fell on mine, holding the bar. I flinched and pulled it from his grasp. With a sigh, he sat down next to me, shoulder to shoulder, separated by thick metal bars.

  He let the silence wash over us as if he needed the time to work up a nerve, before he said, “The kid is okay. She’s in recovery. I have someone keeping an eye on her.”

  As I contemplated his words, the trust that had kept me from mentioning him during the doctor’s procedures wavered. He must have seen it because he shifted to face me. I could feel his eyes reach out to me.

  “I know you have no reason to trust me, but this is what I have tried to protect you from,” he said. “I’m grateful you haven’t told anyone about that. Building on that, trust me when I say the kid is okay.”

  I could never have imagined I’d be the type of person who could build up a burden this big, to feel responsible for a kid. Mars lifted a fraction of that weight from my shoulders. When I nodded, he reached through the bars and wiped a tear from my cheek.

  “Aren’t you afraid of being caught fraternizing with the enemy?” I said and nodded toward a camera. He smiled without a hint of concern.

  “I have my resources,” he said. “A friend of mine is good with buttons.”

  “What is this place?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I had hoped you got away,” he said in a soft voice.

  “Got away from what?” I asked. My voice came out hoarse from my earlier screaming.

  “This …” He tilted his head against the wall and paused. Did he think he needed to build up the tension? I was ready to punch him through the bars.

  “Goddammit, if you’re here to talk, talk, or else fuck off,” I croaked and buried my head on my knees. My head felt too woozy to deal with vague assumptions.

  “Yeah, but where to begin?” After a moment of silence he said, “You were right at the airport when you said we looked prepared. It was our job to secure potential neoplasma malignum carriers.”

  I turned my head without lifting it off my knees. Neoplasma malignum, fancy words for abnormal growth of tissue, also known as cancer. They were looking for cancer patients as they had at the hospital where I met Ash.

  “So what? Experiment on people until they find a cure?”

  “There is no cure.”

  “Then what the fuck is this for?” I said through clenched teeth.

  Mars didn’t waver at the venomous look I threw at him. Instead, he explained in a calm voice that after scientists had witnessed the repellent effect of cancer patients to those infected by Mortem—that’s what they called the virus that created the zombies—they widened their research. The reason behind zombies not attacking cancer patients would be invaluable information to fighting the Mortem threat. This research had led scientists to the discovery of something they called the Divus Serum, or DS for short. DS occurred when Mortem was introduced to certain cancer patients; it revealed interesting characteristics like fast healing and immunity to other effects of the virus. Apparently, it had something to do with how the accelerated growth of cells in cancer patients acted when it came in contact with the Mortem virus.

  His hand slid over my cheek and the remaining scar as his words filled my head with the memory from our moment when he had fallen on top of me in the back of that truck, and it triggered a faint smile. So this DS was the reason I hadn’t turned into a flesh-eating zombie.

  “Besides as a vaccine, Warren wants to use DS to enhance human ability. Unfortunately, DS only develops in about twenty percent of the female cancer population, and Warren thinks you triggered it in Ash,” Mars said. “That’s why Dr. Warren has such an interest in you. He wants to know how.”

  I tried to pay attention, but my gaze kept shifting from Mars to the steel door in hopes of a sign from Ash, until he mentioned that name.

  “Dr. Warren?” I asked.

  “Dr. David Warren, he runs this place.”

  “Met him,” I said, nodding. My head still laced with fog, it took a second for his words to click.

  “Wait,” I said. “You let that piece of shit call the shots around here?” My hands wrapped around the bars, knuckles turning white. “He tortures people. He tortured me. He’s probably still torturing Ash somewhere. She’s only sixteen years old, and you let him.”

  My chest tightened, which made it harder to breathe. Mars dropped his eyes to the floor. I could tell it pained him. I knew he wasn’t responsible, but he was part of it.

  “Fourteen,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The kid, her paper’s said she’s fourteen.” My vision swayed as I released the bars, and my head dropped to my knees. She was only thirteen when I met her. Mars placed a hand on my shoulder followed by a comforting squeeze.

  Without much pause, he continued to tell me that Dr. David had gotten hold of Ash’s blood, but I already knew that. The blood hadn’t brought him what he needed. Apparently, Ash wasn’t the best subject, which made me wonder what he wanted with her now.

  Dr. David had been under heavy FBI scrutiny for a while, and it prevented him from rushing forward with his plans. It wasn’t until the infection rate became too high for the government to handle that officials gave the doctor the go-ahead to test on neoplasma malignum carriers in combination with the infected. The government felt they had no choice. They suspected his involvement, but they also needed his help. As soon as Dr. David received the military backing and medical resources he needed, he decided it was time to bring us in.

  “Dr. David told me he had been watching us,” I said.

  “They had a tracker on you. All cancer patients get tagged, and Decks suspected you were. That’s why he picked you up in the first place. If you hadn’t run into Father Deacon, he would have found you anyway,” Mars said and glanced at my arm.

  The medic unwilling to face me on I-678 shot across my mind. I glared at Mars, who shifted uncomfortably.

  “I didn’t know until they brought you in. Decks hadn’t told me.” He said it with a certain urgency in his voice as if it were important for me to believe that.

  I glanced up at the mention of his name. I hadn’t seen Decks since I got here. “Where is Decks?” I asked.

  Mars pinched the bridge of his nose before he said, “Dead.” After a pause he added, “Zombies.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. He was an asshole. He would have gladly shot you according to protocol.”

  At his revelation, I let out a breath. Before I had been grateful to Decks when I thought he tried to save my life. I guess he was only following orders.

  “So, what’s your part, Lieutenant Marsden?” I asked absently.

  His lips thinned into a faint smile. “I’m not actually a lieutenant,” he said. “I’m sort of undercover to keep an eye on Warren and report to the FBI. That’s the Federal—”

  “I know what it is, Mars. I’m foreign, not an idiot,” I said.

  “Right,” he said.

  Dr. David had been on the FBI’s radar even before the outbreak, concerning missing patients that attended some trials when he worked in Colorado. Undercover, Mars was part of the team who cleared out cancer wards and clinics to ship everyone to a laboratory in Florida.

  “That’s why we were at the airport, to wave off a transport filled with newly procured cancer patients,” he said, “and that’s when I met you.” A smile formed on his lips, but it quickly faded. “I never thought they would actually give him permission to do his research. To test on human beings.”

  Maybe it should have shocked me what he said, but I had witnessed firsthand what the doctor was capable of. Still, the look in Mars’s eyes pained me.

  “What about the FBI?”
I asked. Surely, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would do something to stop this maniac.

  Mars shook his head.

  “The Bureau’s hands are tied as long as the government thinks Warren is our only hope to defeat the virus.”

  “They can’t just do nothing.”

  “Politics,” he said, “plain numbers and politics.”

  He didn’t elaborate, but I didn’t need him to. It was about survival on a larger scale. Why risk a global pandemic when a bunch of cancer patients who might or might not be terminal could help prevent it? Why arrest the bad guy when he might be the key to a solution?

  “So now what?” I asked.

  “I’m going to get you out.”

  I snorted a laugh and said, “And they are just going to let you.”

  “I wasn’t going to ask,” he said in a casual tone.

  I looked up at him in disbelief.

  “Why would you help us?” I said with a tinge of distrust in my voice.

  He smiled that bright smile that made me feel fuzzy and warm, but I wouldn’t tell him that.

  “You owe me a date.”

  Heat rose to my cheeks.

  “So you were flirting with me back then,” I asked and raised a hand to my forehead.

  He nodded his head like a little kid.

  “Great timing, Mars,” I said.

  His eyes brightened. I was afraid to trust him, but he was still the man who came back for me in that parking lot and defied an order to shoot me in that alley.

  “You could have said something. Let me know what I was getting into.”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  I shook my head. I guess not.

  He took my hands through the bars. “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” he said.

  “Yeah, me too.”

  We sat in silence for a while until Mars glanced at his watch and propped himself up. “The guard will be back soon. I promise I’ll keep an eye on the kid,” he said as he stood.

  “Ash.”

  “What?” he asked as he turned around.

  “Her name is Ash.”

  “Ash,” he repeated with a frown, “that’s not really her name. It’s—”

  I cut him off. “Trust me: it’s Ash.”

  He nodded with a grin, but at the same time, I could see a dark veil fall over his features.

  “Listen,” he said as he kneeled with his forehead close to the bars, “from what I’ve heard, you are the key.” I could only stare incredulously. “Something in your blood kept Ash alive. That’s why you are so important to him. He hasn’t been able to figure it out, but that means he’ll need you both. So hang in there. I’ll find a way to get you out.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked

  “I don’t know exactly, but we’ll figure it out.” He flashed me that great smile when he turned to leave, and once again, he left me staring at his back.

  My head throbbed. Overcome by exhaustion, I had trouble remembering Mars’s words, although they lingered in the back of my head. Time stopped. Or did it run away from me? I couldn’t tell. Minutes turned into hours, hours into days, or maybe not. At some point, I must have dozed off when the metal door opened with a clank that vibrated in my bones.

  My heart stopped when I saw this huge soldier hold a lump of orange teenager in his arms. Her head wobbled; her mouth was open. She didn’t move.

  I felt myself turn to dust and dissolve like a sandcastle in the rising tide. My body dragged itself off the floor as I watched another soldier open the cell door next to mine. I stuck to my corner afraid to move. I was grateful he didn’t dump her on the floor. I watched him deposit her on the cot, fused to mine.

  When they left, I edged to the cot and set a knee on the hard metal surface that, as it lacked a mattress, was probably as bad as the floor. Ash’s eyes remained closed, with her mouth slightly ajar. My hand shook when I reached between the bars to take hers. Her head was shaven, the same as mine. All that bright white hair that stuck out on all sides and reflected the sun so perfectly was gone. I scooted down on my cot to lay down, her hand firmly in mine.

  | 29

  Ash woke with a scream that made my heart stop. Her arms flailed. I had to reach through the bars and grab her waist to prevent her from falling off the cot.

  “Ash, Ash, please stop. It’s me,” I whispered to her as close as I could get with the bars separating us.

  “Shut up,” the voice called from behind the desk. “People are trying to sleep here.” I withheld the temptation to throw a whole lot of colorful obscenities at his head. Instead, I placed a tentative hand on Ash’s mouth as I tried to break through her haze.

  “Ash,” I said as I pinched her arm. Her eyes flew open. She was breathing heavily. When they found mine, she glared with glassy eyes. My heart skipped a beat when, for a second, I saw the milky white sheen of the infected, but then she blinked, and her bright blue eyes came into focus. Her chest heaved, searching for air while her eyes twitched. Moments later, she calmed, and I released the breath I was holding.

  “You decided to return to the cue ball look,” she croaked with utter amazement on her face. Too tired to retort, I grabbed her hand and brought it to the top of her own head. My body collapsed on the cot.

  “Ow, shit,” she muttered as she rubbed her hand over her shaven head. Ash looked as bad as she had at the first house.

  “You okay?” I whispered. She faced the ceiling. Considering that a bad sign, I found her hand. “We’re going to find a way out of this—I promise.” She nodded without reply but refused to face me.

  I didn’t sleep that night. At least I assumed it was night; I felt tired enough. Whatever they had given Ash to soothe the pain had worn off halfway through the night. Her body reacted with an aching fever. The only thing I could do was moisten the sleeves of my orange jumpsuit at the small sink to try and cool her forehead. She shivered from the inside out, wincing in pain, which made me afraid to touch her.

  When they came for me in the morning, Ash was unconscious. This time, I did not resist. My body felt worn out, and the thought of that punch still made my stomach turn. They dragged me out by the shoulders.

  Two soldiers brought me through the same metal door into the medical facility, followed by the glass box-like rooms. We stopped halfway down the hall, and though I was unsure if it was the same box, the rest of the routine remained identical. The table looked familiar enough, however. Dr. David didn’t come to gloat, or he did and I couldn’t tell. Unlike before, they injected me with something that made the world fade into black.

  I opened my eyes to the bright lights of the cellblock and the concrete floor. My body shook in uncontrollable fits as if I’d been running through snow in my underwear for an hour. I couldn’t stop the shivers. At least they had scrubbed the vomit off the floor. I could see Ash watching me from her cot, but I couldn’t move to get to her. She looked terrible, but at least she sat up.

  Time became lost for me. I didn’t know how long I had been on the floor when they came for me again. I heard the door open with a clank. Unable to move, I closed my eyes. I resigned myself to my fate, unable to fight it.

  “Hey, you can’t take her again.” I heard Ash’s broken voice followed by my name. She stopped talking when another door clanked. They lowered me to the floor. I heard the soldiers leave, followed by a soft tussle of fabric, and then felt Ash’s scrawny arms wrap around me. Instead of hauling me off to the lab, strong arms had picked me up and placed me in Ash’s cell.

  “I don’t feel so great,” I croaked through chattering teeth. Ash took my hand.

  “Can you move?” Her voice sounded rough, almost broken, for the same reason mine was, but it didn’t belong to a broken person. I lay on my back to face her and winced.

  “I think I’ll stay here for a while,” I said. Ash buried her head in the crook of my arm and wrapped an arm around my waist.

  “Besides, I don’t think the cots make a difference.”

  I dri
fted off in intervals. The chatter of my own teeth sometimes waking me out from my dozing until the loud clank of the door made me jump, fully alert. Ash cringed at the low, drawn-out moan that followed. Chains clanked, and men shouted as I tried to lift my head.

  Two soldiers held long poles attached to a metal neck brace. A female soldier followed in their wake. The two poles held by the two men reminded me of the dogcatcher poles Father Deacon’s flock had carried. Chains ran around the ankles of the zombie’s legs. The chains linked at the arms. The soldiers shoved the creature inside the cell across from us, secured it, and released the poles to retreat for the door.

  “What the fuck!” Ash exclaimed. The thing, butt naked, bald, and male, flung itself at the bars as it growled. It hovered there. I felt its eyes study us. The strangest feeling erupted in my gut when I stared into those eyes. They seemed different from what I had seen with Emily. These were glassy and fogged over, but they weren’t the empty void I would have expected.

  I sat up with a groan when the woman lingered at our cell. She waited for the metal door to clank shut behind the exiting soldiers and then turned to us. It was the Mohawk woman from the church. She didn’t look that much different in her green army fatigues instead of the dark coveralls from the church. Her dark hair, as before, was braided and shaped to resemble a Mohawk on top of her head. She smirked as she crouched to face us. Her dark brown eyes shifted to Ash and her smile widened. Ash answered with a smile of her own. It confirmed what I had suspected before: Ash and the woman knew each other.

  “We weren’t introduced properly last time,” she said. “My name is Angie, Special Agent Angela Meadow.”

  Ash seemed to be surprised at that statement; maybe they didn’t know each other that well. She looked to be in her twenties. I knew I towered over her, but I wouldn’t mistake her short stature for a weakness. Underneath those delicate girlish features hid a woman who could handle herself.