My stomach clenched. “I still can’t believe Jackie and Claire are… They murdered them!”
“I know,” Lucas said. “It’s freaking horrible. Those girls didn’t deserve that. Nobody does.”
Anger rose up inside me. “They had names, Lucas! They were not just ‘those girls’! Call them Claire and Jackie, for goodness’ sake!” I said, my emotions raw and touchy.
“I’m sorry, man. Of course they had names. I’m sick over their deaths too, Dean, but right now, we have to stay focused and try to get our hands on that cure and bust outta this town. Otherwise, they…er, Claire and Jackie, will have died in vain.”
“Don’t forget Val,” Nick said. “We can’t give up hope on her. I’m not leaving here without our sister.”
I nodded my head in agreement. “She’s our blood. I couldn’t bear facing Mom and Dad and telling them we just left and didn’t do a thing to try and save her.”
“You did try to save her,” Nick said softly. “You stole a cure. You broke her out when they were going to execute her.”
“Well, we obviously didn’t try hard enough,” I said.
“Stealing that cure might be our best miracle yet.” Lucas ran a hand through his buzzed hair. “Look at it this way. If she hadn’t got bitten, there would be no hope for mankind. She’s already a hero.”
The room seemed to grow hotter, and it became hard to breathe. Something about his words suffocated me. “What are you talking about?”
“You woulda never grabbed that bag of vials if she hadn’t gotten bitten, right? Think about it. By leaving the city, you saved that batch of serum before the lab was bombed to smithereens. If this cure works, it’ll be salvation for humankind. The doc said he was gonna save everybody if it was the last thing he did. He swore that batch would work. You’re a hero…and so is she.”
“Some hero,” I said. “I couldn’t even save the ones I loved.”
“And Nick,” he continued, ignoring my disdain, “if your brother hadn’t gotten you out of that city, you’d be dead.”
Nick shook his head. “Yeah, I know.”
The door cracked open, and Tahoe walked in, casually sipping a cup of coffee. To my surprise, he was dressed in a police uniform. His newfound squeaky-clean image fit the part, especially in that crooked town.
I looked at Nick in stunned disbelief. “I get one phone call, right, Lake Tahoe?” I asked, sarcastically knowing full well the town didn’t have working phones.
“What’s with the uniform, Deputy?” Lucas demanded, scowling at him.
“My dad’s the chief of police here,” he said, cocking his head. “I told you that, right? When I was in your trunk? Oh yeah, that’s right. You boys refused to believe me.”
“You didn’t exactly inspire trust,” Nick said. “So what? You stole your dad’s police uniform? Are you here to break us out or what?” he asked, his tone sarcastic.
Tahoe chuckled. “Break you out? Heh. Good one, Nick. You’re a regular stand-up comedian.”
“Look, Tahoe or Sam or Slime Ball or whatever your name is, we need to get to that lab,” I said. “I’m sure Val’s there. How well do you know your friend who runs the lab?”
Tahoe laughed again, as if I’d said something absurd. “I assure you he’s not experimenting on your zombified sister,” he said. “Wow. You must really think I’m crazy.”
“Why are you in that get-up?” I asked the weasel.
“Well, with the zombie outbreak and everything, they made me a deputy.”
“Unbelievable!” Lucas said.
I reached through the bars, trying to grab Tahoe to wring his neck, but he jumped back just in the nick of time to save me from committing yet another homicide—this one while I was behind bars. I wanted to pound him so hard. If only I could have five minutes alone with the idiot.
Tahoe glared at me coldly. “Nice try, Dean. Just remember, I’m always a step ahead of you.”
“I don’t care how many steps ahead you are! You’re gonna pay for everything you’ve done!” I yelled. “Because of you, I’ve lost three people I cared about.”
“I didn’t ask you to come to my house, did I? You just showed up, uninvited, like those flipping zombies. The blood of those girls is on your hands, Dean.”
“What?! I can’t believe you’d blame me for their deaths. How dare you?!” I shouted at him.
Tahoe stepped close to the bars again. The lines in his face hardened, and he shot me a fierce look. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why he was so pissed, but his eyes narrowed into angry slits, like the snake he was, and he sneered at me and said, “You have no idea what’ve you done!”
“What’s your problem? You won!” I roared. “You’re a deputy, we’re in jail, and you even walked away with the black bag, filled with the most precious thing in the entire world.”
“The black bag wasn’t recovered from your truck,” Tahoe snapped. “I hope you know you’ve screwed everything up. All my plans… They’re ruined because of you.”
I pressed my face between the bars. “Your plans are ruined? What about my plans to save Val? You screwed everything up the second you left with my bag!” I shouted.
“You, Tahoe, are an absolute idiot,” Nick said, gripping the bars tightly. “If I ever get out of here, I’m going to rip you to shreds just like one of those zombies!”
“Why do you want the bag so badly?” Lucas asked.
“I’ve got my reasons,” Tahoe said. He touched his chin, as if pondering. “But time is fleeting. I need those vials, and I need them right now. Where did you hide them?”
“We didn’t hide them anywhere,” Nick said. “One of your good ol’ boys must’ve taken them.”
Tahoe vehemently shook his head. “No, I already asked them all. It wasn’t them. It had to be you. Listen, I need that bag!”
“Yeah, and so do we,” I said. “Now you know how we felt when you stole it from us, Tahoe, you selfish, greedy jerk!”
He didn’t even flinch at my insults. “The name’s Sam, buddy, but you can call me Deputy Maloney.”
Nick met Tahoe’s gaze. “All right, Officer Baloney. Whatever we call you, know that we hate you, and I want to kill you. But we both want that bag desperately. Can’t we just put our differences aside and work together to find it? If you’ve got a brain in that head of yours, surely you’d see how wise that would be.”
Tahoe looked away for a minute before glancing back at us. “Tell me where those vials are hidden, and I’ll sneak you out of here.” He held out his hand, as if to seal the deal.
“No deal!” I said, refusing to shake on it—mostly because I was far too tempted to rip his arm off if I laid a hand on him. Maybe I am as bad as the zombies, I thought for a second, but I hated that man. And while none of us knew where the vials were, I had to wonder why Tahoe (I refused to call him anything but that on principle) so desperately wanted them. “We already saved your pathetic life,” I said, hoping the guilt card would work. “Without us, you woulda been zombie bait. We gave you a ride, antibiotics, fresh bandages, food, and water. And in the end, all you did was screw us over. The way I see it, you already owe us your life. The least you can give us is your cooperation!”
He cleared his throat. “You didn’t save my life. Jackie and Claire did. If I owe anybody, it would be them, not you.”
“Well, you can’t pay them back now, can you?” I screamed. “I mean, since they got killed because of you! We wouldn’t have even been here looking for the vials if you hadn’t taken what wasn’t yours, you stinking jerk!” Out poured a long string of curses like none I’d ever uttered before, and I lunged toward the jerk. The bars kept me just out of reach of choking his scrawny little neck. “I swear I’m gonna make you pay.”
“You already have!” Tahoe muttered. “You came in my house and stole my bag, then lost it.”
“Your bag?” I roared. “Have you been drinking the psychedelic water around here too?”
“Let us go,” Lucas pleaded.
“We’ll split the vials 50/50.”
“I don’t like you one tiny bit,” Nick said, “but I’m willing to work with you if we can all get what we want—what we need.”
“What am I supposed to do against the nuts in this town? One false move on my part, and I’ll be sitting in the slammer with you. As it stands right now, by Kingsville justice, you are guilty until proven innocent.”
“So they kill two innocent girls, and we’re the bad guys?” Lucas said. “Somebody needs to inject this whole freaking town with Prozac—in large doses!”
“How sick and twisted can a town get?” I shouted. “What the heck is going on here?”
Tahoe looked down at the tiled floor. “After everything Lucy has told me, I want to get as far away from this town as I can.”
“So she told you everything?” I asked.
“For the most part, yes.”
“Then why don’t you tell us. Why the heck are they bringing zombies into this town?”
“Trust me, you don’t wanna know. All I know is that I’ve gotta get out of here. You should have, too, while you had the chance.”
“If you know that, why are you still here? Why haven’t you run away already, with your tail between your legs?” Nick asked.
“I have a few complications to deal with right now. But anyway, we’re not here to discuss my travel plans.” He smiled. “Looks like the tables have turned once again, gentlemen, and now I’m the one making life-and-death decisions. If you stay here, you’re already dead. You’re dead men walking, like those zombies out there.”
Keys jiggled, and a door cracked open. The sheriff and five police officers, armed with weapons, lumbered in our direction.
The police chief introduced himself, then frowned. “You killed the mayor’s son.”
I swallowed. Jason was the mayor’s son? I couldn’t believe it. I was sure they’d throw the book at me now, and from what I’d learned about the place so far, the justice scales in that town were nowhere near fair. I knew in that instant that I stood little chance of walking out of the Kingsville city gates alive—or at least not as a human being.
Shifting his stance, he said, “There’s no use for you to spend weeks or months in a jail cell. You have a right to swift justice.”
Justice? Yeah, right. “So when’s the trial?” I anxiously asked, assuming they’d give me at least that, though there’d be nothing fair about it.
“Now,” he said.
What? Wait…not yet! I needed more time to convince Tahoe to help us. Sure, we were mortal enemies, but we were all after the same thing: that bag. As much as I hated to admit it, Tahoe was our key to breaking out of there.
“Let’s go!” the police chief said.
I shot Nick a look. “What about a lawyer? Don’t we have a right to defend ourselves?”
His lips pressed into a grim line. “No point. It’s a fixed trial, Dean—a matter of technicality, really.” With that, he opened the door to the cell and gestured for me to follow him. “You heard me. I said let’s go.”
I sighed heavily and walked behind them as the group led us across the street and inside a courthouse, wondering what my fate would be.
Chapter 8
Lucas, Nick, and I walked to the courthouse in chains. We’d been granted no way to contact our family, no one had interrogated or interviewed us, and no common arrest procedures had been followed.
Glancing around the large courtroom, I noticed that the whole place was designed in dark wood, giving it an ominous feel. A large Judge Judy-like podium was in the center, with two witness stands on either side. To the left was the plaintiff’s table, with three chairs. To the right was the respondent’s table, also furnished with three more chairs. Behind each party were ten long benches, already packed with angry, scowling, glaring townspeople. An American flag hung behind the judge’s empty chair, as if liberty and justice for all actually existed there.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat when I stared at the great and glorious Old Glory. As I gazed at the Stars and Stripes and remembered the Pledge of Allegiance I’d recited so many times in grade school and at football games, I wondered how, in such a great nation, we’d been reduced to fighting amongst ourselves. We were nothing but a shell of the great nation we’d once called home.
I was chained to a chair by leg irons, and my hands were clasped together in silver handcuffs. People wailed, and others emitted obscenities, all directed at us. I looked around the room and saw only madness; I couldn’t find one face that didn’t show the effects of the tainted water. And the lunacy wasn’t limited to the people crowding the benches behind us. The doors at the front of the courtroom were guarded by two madman cops, the jurors in the box looked completely psychotic, and even the court reporter, sitting at her stenography machine, looked rabid. The madness was everywhere, surrounding us, suffocating us, trying to swallow us whole. An ugly feeling crept up inside me, and it was impossible to ignore.
Jason’s loved ones sat in the front row, looking stark, and the mayor just glared at me. Instead of tending to his son’s dead body and planning a funeral, he was there, waiting anxiously for the judge to show up and hand out our sentences without even listening to our side of the story. The look in his eye was dangerous and horrifying, and it intensified that awful feeling inside me.
Lucas rose from his seat. “I want a lawyer!”
The bailiff standing next to him stood and smiled in a mocking way, as if he was stifling a know-it-all kind of laugh. Quick as lightning, he raised his rifle butt and smashed Lucas in the face, like a snake striking its prey. The smile never left his face as Lucas’s nose gushed with blood. In fact, as Lucas cradled his nose, the bailiff’s sadistic grin grew wider. “That’ll be a fifty-dollar fine, boy, for bleeding in the courtroom. Pretty rude in the front of the judge, if ya ask me,” he said heartlessly, then turned to stare out the window.
I opened my mouth to speak, but Nick hushed me. “It won’t do any good. These people aren’t playing with a full deck.” He was right: There was nothing any of us could do about the insanity, so it was best to keep our mouths shut.
Tahoe walked over and handed Lucas a red handkerchief, which he promptly threw on the floor like a child having a tantrum.
I leaned over and picked it up with my bound hands. “Take it,” I said.
Lucas held the cloth up to his nose and started muttering some obscenities of his own while the blood began to drip and pool below him.
I turned back to Nick. “I’m sorry I got us in such a mess.”
“It’s all right. You were just defending yourself. We just need to find a way to escape from these crazy nuts.” He glanced over at Tahoe, who was standing by the wall. “I keep hoping that idiot will have a change of heart and come up with something.”
“You can’t have a change of heart if you don’t have a heart in the first place,” I whispered.
“Right,” Nick agreed.
“Still, he seems to understand how crazy these people are,” I whispered, “and he was apparently upset about his children. Maybe he’s got a conscience in that thick head of his somewhere.”
“Well, if you get a chance, try to play that fiddle. He won’t listen to me, but he might hear you out.”
“I’ll try,” I said under my breath.
The bailiff’s voice rose above all the noise. “I sense a presence. Hear that? He’s talking,” he screamed, and everyone went silent.
Before I had time to wonder what the heck he was talking about, a stick-thin man pointed to the center of the courtroom.
“It’s Jason!” the man said. “He’s here to see that justice is served.”
Jason? The man I killed in self-defense? Needless to say, the whole thing was giving me the creeps on a whole new scale.
“All rise for the Great Judge Tomrado!” the bailiff ordered.
Everyone else in the room stood, and all the townspeople and court officials began to chant with him, repeating it over and over again in almost p
erfect harmony. The eeriness was unsettling, so much so that I actually preferred their hissing and screaming.
The bailiff turned to us. The shock of the proceedings had left us stunned, so we were still seated. He started to raise his rifle again, still singing, with that creepy smile on his face. I quickly stood up, dragging Nick and Lucas to their feet along with me.
We waited for the judge to come from behind the bench, but instead, the large doors to the courtroom opened behind us. An older man in a long black robe stepped through. His white hair was wild and stood on end, like that Back to the Future doctor with the time-traveling DeLorean, and as he passed by, he glared coldly at us. When I lowered my eyes, I saw his bare feet. Judge Tornado, or whatever his name was, climbed the steps to his bench and stood behind a dark brown chair. He banged his gavel three times, and everyone stopped singing at once.
“The Kingsville Court is now in session!” cried the bailiff. “And Jason has joined us.”
The judge sat down, his eyes focused on me. “Everyone, please be seated.”
They sat in unison behind us, the whole insane lot of them. Nick, Lucas, and I slowly took our seats, keeping our eyes on the judge as our chains rattled.
We don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell, I thought with a gulp, and hell is definitely where we are.
Chapter 9
The prosecutor was tall and thin, with bulging eyes and a nervous tic that caused him to constantly twitch, freaking me out all the more. His head twisted and turned at random times, making him look like a bobble-head. I worried that it might actually spin around; considering how possessed they all acted, it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit.
Maybe they’ll believe us over this weirdo, I hoped, but I knew they wouldn’t. After all, he was one of their own kind, and we were the nosy outsiders.
“The prosecution calls Jake Janepson to the witness stand,” he said.
One of the punks strolled up to the witness stand and was sworn in. I heard noises coming from behind me, and at first I could have sworn I’d jumped into a séance. I chanced turning around to take a look and saw women in the far back row, lighting dozens of candles along the shelf edge and chanting weird syllables that made absolutely no sense to me.
The Zombie Chronicles - Book 3 - Deadly City (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) Page 5
