“No problem, ma’am, we’re all under great stress, I totally understand.”
“Thank you.”
Then, Shane looked him right in the eyes. He was forced to return the look. A couple of seconds later, Hartford fell on the floor, his body twisting in a strange manner.
“Robert, call a doctor!” She ordered.
“Me?”
“Yes you. And quick, this man is having a stroke!”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I caused it.”
Very reluctantly, the minister grabbed the phone.
Shane stood face to face with Talbot. He froze in cold sweat.
“So…” She said. “It seems our beloved Hartford will have to be discharged for medical reasons. But don’t worry. I have this feeling only his brain is permanently damaged.”
Talbot glanced at his former superior officer.
“And I believe congratulations are in order!” Shane continued. “You’ve just been promoted to colonel and you’re the new squad leader. I trust you’ll put an end to this whole mess and recapture the fourteen escapees. Then, you’ll help me making an example out of them.”
“Sure ma’am.”
“Dismissed.”
Colonel Talbot turned around in a labored military fashion and walked out the door.
“The doctors are on the way.” Mister Hedgiest informed.
Shane approached him.
“See that man over there?” She nodded at Hartford drooling on the Persian rug.
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget we all can have strokes, especially at your age. Now, if you excuse me, I have a dinner to attend to, one that involves three lovely children and hopefully an Australian zombie.”
Shane opened a half smile, turned her back on him and gone she was.
After making sure she had left the building, the minister grabbed the phone again.
“Hello… Yes, good morning Harland, this is Robert Hedgiest. I’m doing fine, thanks, and you? Glad to know it. Listen, I need the codes for Termination Factor. Oh no, not immediately, but I’m afraid we are indeed in a Delta Status.” After a brief pause “Yes, by all means, I have the authorization numbers right here, let me check…”
At the local school, six parents were nervously waiting for the principal in her office. Two fathers walked back and forth while one mother poured coffee from a pot into a paper cup.
The remaining father and the other two mothers were sitting down, trying to entertain themselves with magazines. But they only showed Shane and Becky, much more of the first and less of the latter.
They all knew each other, even had a little chat when they arrived, to cope with the waiting, but gave up at a certain point, choosing to silently worry in the privacy of their thoughts.
Why had the principal asked them to come to the school at those strange hours, and only that specific group? Was it some kind of extraordinary and private PTA meeting?”
Missus Hildenbrandt came into the room with a very dismal face, looking way older than she really was. All eyes turned to her.
“Good day to you all.” She said. “Sorry to keep you waiting, thank you very much for coming on such short notice. I apologize for that too, I surely appreciate your efforts. As you can imagine, a matter of the utmost urgency has arisen.”
“What’s wrong?” One mother asked.
“I’ll go straight to the point. I’m afraid something very bad happened and your children are involved.”
ACT 22
Once again, the pale and freckled body of Mate Clarkson was violently pushed to a wall.
“Alright, rusty boy, time for a little walk in the park.” Sheriff McBeattie said. “Load him up, boys!”
Two deputies dragged him to a police car and put him in the trunk.
“What are you going to do?” Mate asked in panic.
“You’ll see.” The sheriff replied and slammed the boot lid shut.
He drove about half a mile beyond the city gates before bringing the vehicle to a halt. McBeattie drew his gun from the holster, popped the trunk open and pulled the tennis player out. He slammed the lid shut again and hit the young man twice with the handle of his pistol, making him tumble on the barren terrain, still conscious though.
“Here’s the deal, friend.” The sheriff said. “You broke the law and now you must pay your debts with society.”
He kicked Clark’s stomach with his huge right boot and continued:
“And in order to do so, there’s nothing better than some good, healthy and outdoors community service.” He cleared his throat. “Some walking corpses will come to you and reduce you to pieces. You’ll be wide awake to enjoy it all, part of your sentence, you know. In ten minutes I’ll come back here to pick up your pieces and spread them around the Industrious Zone, to show folks there what happens to criminals around here. Well, court is adjourned.”
McBeattie holstered his gun, jumped to the police car, honked twice and sped away.
“Come back, don’t do this, please! COME BACK!” Mate Clarkson screamed and cried, but there was no one else to hear him other than zombies.
And they came fast, lots of them, snarling, growling, a huge circle of dead people surrounded the poor man. And this time, who was there to save him?
Creatures in all degrees of putrefaction had their filthy hands all over Clark. Exposed muscles and flesh mixed in a pool of reanimated dead organs, mouths and teeth about to tear his entire body apart.
The young man could already visualize his guts all over the place, with him still alive to feel the pain. Mate thought of his family, daddy, mommy and baby sister “Sorry I couldn’t reach you!” He sobbed.
Clark still had a few seconds to get a glimpse of his horrible death, but what he saw was something else entirely. A boomerang cut the air, together with several heads, causing a lot of creatures to collapse on the ground around him harmless and defeated.
And the device flew round and round, destroying beasts as it went, until finally landing on a fingerless glove, wrapping up an Australian hand.
“You seem to have a knack for this sort of thing.” Lily said in a mild laughter.
By using her two little knives, she opened way through the zombies to reach her friend.
“LILY!!!” He screamed with eyes flooding in tears.
“Good guess, partner!”
She was a brunette, short, skinny girl, but to him she looked more like Beyoncé, Charlize Theron and Jennifer Lawrence, all rolled into one, that moment.
“Sorry I’m late.” Lily said, stretching a hand to help Clark standing up. “I had some trouble escaping captivity, a kind of peculiar one I might add.”
However, a lot more dead people kept on coming, slow but steady.
The Australian woman reached into her sheath, took the hockey stick and began to assemble it. The creatures were closing on them fast.
“Why you always wait till the last possible second to mount your hockey stick?” Mate asked her.
“It’s an exercise of concentration.” She answered.
“Yeah, we also need this in tennis.”
And that was all she wrote. When the stick was ready, there was no much the poor, defenseless zombies could do. Clark snatched the two small knives from Lily’s belt and did some killing on his own.
“Are you sure about that?” She asked.
“Yes! I’m tired of being your comic relief.”
“Alright, let’s give them hell!”
“Um, by the way, we’d better do it in less than ten minutes. The stupid sheriff who brought me here will be back soon.”
“Okay, let’s wrap this up in nine minutes, what do you say?”
Eight minutes and forty-seven seconds later, McBeattie drove to the same spot he dropped Clark.
“Very well, pretty boy, time to pick up the garbage!” He said while leaving the car. “I want to see some guts, literally speaking, hahahahaha!”
But the only guts he found belonged to zombies.
And none of them looked like Mate, not even remotely.
“Whaaa?!” The sheriff opened his jaw in a dumb face.
And before he could even consider thinking of the possibility to react somehow, Lily was already compressing the blades of her boomerang against his neck. He immediately raised hands right to the air.
“Clark, get his gun and point at him.”
“With pleasure” The tennis player did as told.
McBeattie’s eyes goggled and his lips twisted in weep mode.
“I usually don’t kill non-zombies,” Lily said “unless they make me. And you don’t strike me as someone willing to die for Shane. Well, are you?”
“Shane?” Clark whispered.
The sheriff was too petrified in fear to speak. He wanted to shake his head to say no, but if he did, his throat would be cut by the blades.
“You’re a little too quiet, aren’t you?” The Australian woman spoke. “Just blink once for yes and twice for no.”
He blinked twice to answer her previous question.
“I didn’t think so.” She said. “Then, you’re not coerced to do what you do?”
McBeattie blinked twice again.
“So, being a neo-nazi fuck is your calling.” Clark observed.
“It’s not that, alright?” The sheriff finally spoke. “I have a family, okay? I have to think of them! It’s hell out here! But in there, we got security, privilege, a chance to be how we used to!”
“And in return, you only have to torture and kill once in awhile, right?” Clark said.
“It’s not my fault, okay?” The sheriff started to sob. “Shane is not one to be messed with.”
“How Shane controls minds?” Lily asked.
Now, Clark definitely frowned at her.
“I’ll tell you later, lad.” She turned to him.
“Okay.”
Then, she faced McBeattie again to wait for an answer.
“It’s a rhyme.” The sheriff mumbled.
“A rhyme?”
“Yes, I don’t remember the exact words. It’s like a poem or something. She says it to a person and the bastard obeys her all along.”
“Some kind of hypnotism, perhaps” Clark divagated.
“Could be” Lily agreed.
“That’s how things work over there.” McBeattie continued. “If you behave, she takes you in and treats you right. If you don’t, she says the rhymes and you follow her every command.”
“So, you got all the breaks without having to lift a finger of your hand.” Mate said.
The cop didn’t answer.
“In other words, you go there and become a politician.” Lily concluded.
“And whoever’s not good enough to live in paradise is sent to your Auschwitz-like power plant!”
It was Lily’s turn to frown at him.
“I’ll tell you later, lass.” Clark spoke.
“Okay.”
Problem was, while they talked, more walking corpses approached. Never mind how many of them were killed, replacements always came. Lucky they announced their presence with a lot of growls.
“Um, Lily, we might have to go now.” The tennis player pointed out. “Our hungry friends will be joining us soon.”
“No worries, we just throw this guy here to them. While they’re busy feasting on him, we just waltz to the car and get out of here.”
“Please, please, don’t do this, please!” The sheriff burst into tears.
“Yes, that’s exactly what I said when you did the same to me.” Clark reminded him. “You didn’t seem to care.”
“I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry!” McBeattie wept. “It’s not my fault… not my fault… Please, don’t kill me! I got wife and kids!”
“Yes. And such a lousy role model you are!” Lily grunted.
They pushed the sheriff to the police vehicle and forced him on the driver’s seat. Living dead were slowly surrounding the car.
“Where are we going, Lily?” Clark asked.
“To the town hospital” She replied. “We have to rescue that woman we rescued from the zombies. I got a feeling she’s not being treated properly in there.”
“Got it.”
She turned to McBeattie and said:
“You’ll take us there smoothly and anonymously. If you even wink funny, I’ll either slit your throat and feed you to the zombies, or just feed you to the zombies.” She grabbed the walkie-talkie from his belt.
“Okay!” The sheriff said, wiping tears off with his hands.
“Now drive.”
“But those rotting things are blocking the way!”
“Then run over them.” Lily suggested. “Don’t worry; they’re not going to sue you.”
ACT 23
Shane lifted the garage door that led to the hangar. It was very heavy, but such fact wasn’t a problem to her. Even so, she found it too easy to open. She checked chains and pulleys of the mechanism and verified they were all ruined.
She remained composed, but some feelings she wasn’t quite familiar with took possession of her senses.
The elegant woman walked, her high heels producing loud tap dancing noises. She froze all of a sudden, her heart for the first time assaulted by two sensations very foreign to her - surprise and dread.
“No, this can’t be right. This can’t be right!”
“What happened to our kids?” One mother asked Missus Hildenbrandt with anguish and fear corroding her face of terrible expectation. Her husband was wrapping an arm around her.
“Oh, they are fine.” The principal clarified. “They are in the toy room with one of my teachers.”
“Damn you!” One father exploded. “You could have said that in the first place! Jesus Christ!”
“You’re right, I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m too nervous. Something very unprecedented took place and I confess I don’t know how to deal with the situation.”
“Why don’t we all calm down, take a coffee, have a seat, and then you tell us what’s going on?” Another mother suggested with gentle, understanding eyes.
ACT 24
“Cuff yourself.” Lily ordered the sheriff.
“Are you locking me up in the bathroom?” McBeattie complained. “This is a hospital, for crying out loud! There could be all sorts of bacteria in here!”
“If they are disgusted by you like I am, you got nothing to worry.” Lily answered.
“Besides,” Clark said “you’re in a good position here. If nature calls, you’re already in the right place.”
“And I suggest you resist the temptation to scream for help, because we might respond to it.” Lily spoke. “And those zombies outside still have their appetites.”
“Fine!” The sheriff muttered and cuffed himself to a pipe.
“Court is adjourned.” Clark said to McBeattie.
The grey-haired doctor left the break room, looking satisfied. He nodded at some beautiful nurses on his way to the elevator. He pushed the button. When the doors opened, he went inside.
“Wow, those girls are getting better.” The doctor couldn’t help whispering once the doors closed again.
“And perhaps you are not!” Lily stood up behind him, with Clark by her side, pointing the sheriff’s gun to the doctor’s hip. “You do remember us, right?”
The Australian girl pushed the emergency button and the elevator stopped between floors.
“Yes.” The man answered insecure. “Please don’t hurt me. I do whatever you want.”
“What’s your name?” Lily asked.
“Doctor Blake.”
“I’ll call you Blake, because you’re hardly a doctor.” She said. “You should be treating that woman we brought here. Well, we’ve just been to her room and she doesn’t seem to be doing any better. What are you giving her in those dip bags?”
The doctor hesitated. Clark pressed the gun against his back.
“She’s under Luviximil, okay!” Blake finally replied. “She also took some shots of it. But believe me, it’s basically a
soporific for the muscles, she’s not in any danger!”
“It looks way more than that.” Clark said.
“I can bring her back!” The doctor assured. “Just say the word!”
“Not you, doc” Lily determined. “I don’t trust you. We need to find ourselves a real doctor.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Blake asked.
“What’s the name of the woman we brought, do you know?”
“It’s Susan.”
“Great.” Lily continued. “You’ll accompany us to Susan’s room and you’ll help us getting her out of this dump. But first, we need to blend in.”
Doctor Blake was walking the hospital hallways toward Susan’s room. Clark and Lily were following him on both sides, dressed like nurses. The tennis player was hiding the gun in his apron pocket, still pointing at Blake.
They entered Susan’s room and Lily closed the door. Clark could now expose his weapon to the doctor.
The Sunshine Dame of Doom Page 15
