“Is that in zombie years?” Mark joked with a snort.
Joshua couldn’t stop the expression that crossed his face, a mixture of confusion and surprise at the term used. It was an old-world term used before the meteorite shower in every movie that had been produced about the walking dead. Well, the walking undead, that is. Zombie was not a word used at all in the world after the end and hadn’t been since the first meteorite hit the Earth seven years ago.
“What?” Mark said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Just tryin’ to lighten the mood.”
No one laughed, just stood there in the quiet with Myra at Caesar’s back. The word just kept playing over and over in Joshua’s head until another question came to mind. Something that he should’ve thought of as soon as he saw the woman.
“What if she gets loose or something?” Joshua questioned skeptically.
Caesar grinned with pride and turned back toward Myra, pointing at a sensor on the pristine surface that looked like a small black dot.
“Like all things, the collar needed a fail-safe. I created one and put it here . . .” He motioned at the small dot again. “The sensor is triggered by this bracelet,” he stated as he lifts lifted his wrist to show a bracelet that is was identical to the collar on Myra, “which means it has left the invisible border I have created with it. She only has so far she can go before she’s out of range. I don’t need the Government of Defense getting their hands on her. Basically, once triggered, it’ll give her a zap as well as the biggest headache I can possibly give her without killing her or the parasite. That way, I can keep her in control and I can issue orders.”
“Any way I can get one of those?” Mark asked, pointing at the bracelet on Caesar’s wrist. “I think I’d feel a lot safer.”
“Absolutely,” Caesar replied with a nod. “It also lets her know who the enemy truly is. The bracelet is a fail-safe in more ways than one. It’ll help Myra to know who is ‘safe’ and who isn’t.”
“How is all of this going to help us save Jenny? Those bloodsuckers are strong, fast, and smart. Also, we’re severely outnumbered,” Mark pointed out. “There’s no denying that.”
“Mark’s right, Caesar. This is suicide,” Joshua admitted.
“You either come with me or take your chances in the Dead Zone,” Caesar stated bluntly. Your choice.”
They all looked at each other, eyes shifting from one face to another as Joshua and Mark thought over their options. Joshua didn’t like the looks of any of it. There wasn’t a way this could work out in their favor, no matter how much planning was done or how prepared they thought they were. In this world, the enemy was never as it seemed. They always had backup of some sort or an advancement that even the Government of Defense didn’t have knowledge of. So far this had only happened once, but now Joshua couldn’t help but believe that even that had been a rouse to throw off the remaining human beings within the United States’ borders. Even then, no one but those within the ranks of the G.O.D. were aware of the specifics.
His overwhelming urge to save Jenny could get them killed, but he would never be able to live with himself if anything happened to her.
“All right,” Joshua responded with a slight air of false authority to make himself feel somewhat in control, “we’ll do this your way.”
“Good,” Caesar acknowledged with a curt nod. “Make sure you’re ready to go soon. It’s a little over a six-hour drive to our destination if we take the old-world roads. And make sure you’re ready for a fight because that’s what we’re going to get once we arrive at the abandoned prison.”
Chapter 22
Near the Kentucky Dam
July 2027
Station 4
Xavier navigated the winding, crisscrossing halls of Station Four. He was in search of someone. Tann had agreed to meet with him in his office, but Xavier couldn’t wait until the evening. Tann was the kind of man who only did things by appointment because those types of meetings were all he seemed to be able to remember. Xavier just couldn’t keep going. He had to speak to him about Misty’s fate.
The Government of Defense had decided to kill Misty once the Meldano girl was safely back within the walls of Station Four. As a Revenant, there was no place for her inside, with the human beings who were left. They couldn’t risk the danger to their remaining citizens. He understood, but felt there was a better solution than slaying a young, innocent girl who hadn’t been given a choice in her fate to begin with. She deserved so much better, as did so many others.
At that point, Xavier was willing to do whatever it took to save her undead life, even if it meant sacrificing his career with the Government of Defense.
There was only one place Tann would be at that time of night. Of course, it was the same place anyone would be at three in the morning. The halls were hushed and empty, the glowing fluorescent lights glaring against the bright white.
Xavier’s boots thudded on the linoleum tile as he approached the room Tann had been assigned to during his stay with them until G.O.D. called him back to report his assessment of the situation. Which meant until the squads they had sent out into the Dead Zone to search for the Head Hunter returned with Jennifer Meldano and Misty was properly dispatched. That would be all the assessment they needed.
G.O.D. wanted Jennifer Meldano because she was intelligent, and because her father, Caesar Meldano, was the Head Hunter as well as one of the smartest men among those employed by Area 51 before the Earth fell apart at the seams.
The door came into view, only causing Xavier’s footfalls to come louder and faster until he reached the room in only a few long and anxious strides. This door was a lot like the others except for one major difference. Instead of an identification badge or keypad to let you in if you were the assigned occupant, there was a retinal scanner to its right for further identification purposes.
Xavier raised a fist and knocked purposefully on the door. After a few agonizing moments, Tann pulled the door open, wiping the sleep from his eyes.
“What do you want?” Tann asked. He looked and sounded irritated at being awakened before the sun rose to announce the morning.
“I need to talk to you,” Xavier replied in a rush of words.
“Look, Xavier—” Tann started.
“Hear me out. You have to. You as well as the Government of Defense owe me that much. I’ve dedicated my life to watching over their people, and I deserve to be heard.”
Tann scrubbed his hand over his face, his brown eyes filled with not only exhaustion but frustration at Xavier’s insistence.
“What makes you think that they’ll listen to you?” Tann questioned.
“They won’t listen to me, but they’ll listen to you. You’ve been with them since before all of this started. Please . . .” Xavier paused for effect, “let me in.”
Opening the door wider, Tann sighed and stepped to the side while motioning for him to enter the room. The lights were still off as Xavier crossed the threshold and turned to look at Tann. Light flowed into the room and illuminated his dark flesh in a way that made him look even more menacing than usual. As he closed the door, he flipped on the overhead lights. Xavier squinted past it, the light in the room even brighter than out in the hallway. Closing the door with a soft click, a look of disapproval crossed his features.
“Is this about the girl? The Revenant?” Tann probed.
“Yes.”
Before Xavier had a chance to say anything else, Tann groaned and leaned against the door with his arms crossed over his chest.
“Look, there’s nothing anyone can do. And I will go ahead and state that I do agree with the Government of Defense on this one. I know you feel guilty—”
“This isn’t about that.”
“I know you feel guilty,” Tann repeated, “but do you really think this is the best way to spend your time? She’s just a Revenant and, while I understand she had no choice in the matter, she is lucky that the Government of Defense has let her live this long.”
“Because of the threat of Colonel Jenkins.”
“While that may be the case, now they let her live so they can study the effect of the infection on those with a predisposition to schizophrenia. She is the first one of her kind, and they believe that observing and studying her can give them more answers about the Revs as well as the ‘Faith’ serum that turned Jenkins into what he is and spawned their race.”
“And they think they can get this information from her? How?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, Jackson, but that’s what they want. Once her usefulness is used up and the Meldano girl is returned to the Station, she will be dispatched, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.”
“And what about the Head Hunter?” Xavier requested.
“They have their plans for him, Xavier. That’s all you need to know.”
Xavier felt defeated, but now he was armed with more information than he had had previously. Granted, it wasn’t much more, but it was something. Something he didn’t have until he walked into Tann’s sleeping quarters. He would use it to the fullest extent of his abilities.
“You mean that’s all you know?”
Tann shrugged. “Look, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can give you some advice when it comes to the Rev girl.”
Tann looked at him seriously then, a grave look in his eyes that almost caused Xavier to stop his foolishness and give up. Hopelessness.
“Let it go.”
The plain and simple truth of the matter was that Xavier couldn’t let it go. And he wouldn’t.
***
Abandoned Memphis State Penitentiary
July 2027
Isolation Chamber 4
Jenny’s head throbbed and her throat was dry, each gash on her body stinging and oozing blood that dripped onto the ground in a soft and steady rhythm. She had fallen asleep from exhaustion, pain, and shock after Jenkins decided her torture was finally over. She had been beaten and slashed and zapped by so many different tools she lost track after a while. All she remembered was that one of the last was a cattle prod, something she hadn’t seen since before the meteorite shower. But it was different and seemed to have been engineered to better incapacitate a human being than a bull.
The only sounds in the room were her breathing and the steady drip drip drip of her life force pumping slowly out of her. Some of the wounds had already clotted, but some were so deep they’d need either stitches or one of the many compounds that the Government of Defense could offer to heal her quickly and stop the bleeding. Now all she could do was wait until she either died from starvation, dehydration, infection, or by the hands of the Revenant that held her.
Jenkins was a pistol of a man, and his torture methods were as brutal as they came, even rubbing salt on a few of her wounds in the literal sense to intensify the pain until eventually becoming numb and deadened.
She attempted to move and groaned when she felt the familiar pain and stretch and pull of cuts that had bled and crusted over, stiffening so badly that there was barely any chance for movement without the stinging agony of it.
Taking a deep breath, Jenny moved each muscle one at a time as best she could, since she had been tied to the metal chair again. The slickness of her blood on the metal made the movement smoother and slightly more manageable. Salty tears stung the back of her eyes as the pain radiated from wound to wound, traveling along each nerve like a roller coaster of anguish. With a sharp gasp, she let the tears fall to wash away her shame of the last few days, or however long it had been since she came to be locked away in the dark room without a single human soul to keep her company.
Metal on metal shrieked loudly. She jerked her head up to find Jenkins coming through it, the door; the kit as he so lovingly called the rolling metal table outfitted with tools of the trade, was absent. She whispered a silent prayer to herself and continued to watch him carefully.
He hadn’t noticed she was awake yet. She closed her eyes and hoped that if she acted as if she was in a deep sleep, he would leave her be. All she wanted was to be alone with the dark. With her discomfort. After all this time and all of the lives she had taken in the Dead Zone, she felt like she deserved her suffering. Or was that Colonel Jenkins making his way deeper into her head?
A cold rush of liquid washed over her, snapping her out of her thoughts. She gasped and spluttered past the icy cold of the water thrown on her, mixing with her blood and running in pink lines down her skin. Her hair stuck to her face and neck. She choked and gagged as water burned her nostrils, as if he had thrown the water on her from below her face and splashed it upward.
“Rise and shine, Jenny,” Colonel Jenkins shouted, his voice echoing off the bare walls.
Jenny began to shiver. Not just from the cold, but from the anxiety that crept into her chest and caused her heart to race and pound against her ribs. Even the urge to make a snarky remark left her as she attempted to stop her shaking by stiffening her muscles. It did no good. Even though she willed them to stop, her limbs shook uncontrollably, almost violently as her teeth began to chatter.
“How’d you sleep?” Jenkins sneered at her as he set the large bucket that held the cold water on the floor.
“I can’t exactly say it was pleasant, being tied to a chair and nearly tortured to death after all.”
Some of her bravado was returning, and she hoped her mouth wouldn’t get her into trouble again. An image of the kit flashed into her mind, but she shook it away.
“Now, now, Jenny. That’s a massive over exaggeration. I only roughed you up a little bit.”
Jenny had to stifle a pained and angry laugh, but she still smiled with that same rage. “I think you and I have different definitions of a little bit.”
“A little bit of anything can cause a lot of damage, Miss Meldano. Something I know all too well after dealing with your father seven years ago.”
Jenny wasn’t sure what she could believe when it came to Jenkins. She had no idea which words that came out of his mouth were true or not, or which ones were only being used to hurt her. Jenkins had said previously that the truth hurt more than a lie, giving him no reason to lie to her. That logic made perfect sense to her even through the haze of enervation and hurt.
“So, since he is your father, what do you know about the Head Hunter?” Jenkins probed. At that point, he knew more than she did.
“Nothing. I don’t know anything about him other than the stories that everyone else has heard,” Jenny replied in a stern tone.
“Now, Jenny, no need to lie here.”
“I’m not lying. I have no reason to.”
“You’ve never seen him? Not even from a distance?”
Shock ran through her at the question. He was asking because he somehow knew that she had, but it wasn’t like it was a rumor she had. She had stated on plenty of occasions that she had seen him, and that was how she could prove he wasn’t just a myth. A scary story used to hopefully ward off the undead hordes that had enough sense to remember them.
“That’s what I thought,” he said when she didn’t answer. “Obviously when you did see him, you didn’t see his face, or you would’ve known. It’s evident that you didn’t have any idea. You would’ve never shown up at the Stations if that were true. But what makes you think he’ll come for you if he knows I have you?”
“Because he’s my father.”
“But things have changed. He’s different, and so are you. You’ve been dead to him for seven years. What makes you think saving you matters to him?”
Her hesitation to answer was enough to spur him on.
“What makes you think that your dying would matter to him when you’ve been dead to him for almost a decade?”
Jenkins stood in front of her, leaned down, met her eyes, and placed his hands on the back of her chair on either side of her shoulders. It didn’t matter how many times he changed how he said it. She still knew that her father, the famed Head Hunter who until recently had been a fairytale, would come for her and save her from th
e man who was bent on destroying him. It didn’t take a genius to know that Jenkins had motives for taking him because of his involvement in his current state of being. They could kill him, torture him, or use him. Those were the only options she could think of.
“I just know,” she spat back at him.
His eyes scanned her face as he looked at her, a small twinkle quickly taking up residence when he noticed something in her expression.
“Ah, I see the doubt. You’re just as unsure as I am, Miss Meldano. I can see it in that small shift just behind your eyes.”
She didn’t reply, just stared back at him in defiance. If she could just act tough a little while longer, she could survive this. She could see her father and her friends again and not have to worry about Jenkins ever again because she was confident her father would kill him for kidnapping her and beating her to a bloody and shivering pulp.
“You can have a home here, Jenny. You can have a purpose,” Jenkins whispered.
Just as she was beginning to believe his words a loud, shrieking siren ripped through the air, startling her. Jenkins looked toward the wall and grinned, turning back to her with anger in his smile. Anger and the thought of revenge.
“Let’s say ‘hi’ to Daddy, shall we?”
***
The six-hour drive wasn’t the worst part of the entire journey to save Jenny from Jenkins. It was the utter lack of a plan that had Mark on edge, but he had his trusty old stilts. It was possible they’d get no use here, but they could be helpful. He knew it wouldn’t take much to figure out where Jenny was within the walls of the abandoned prison, but getting past all the Revenant soldiers with one singular objective to keep them out would be an issue. They were stronger and faster and were driven by the madness and irrational spontaneity caused by high dopamine levels. Knowing that and knowing the danger involved, it made the decision to shoot them on sight much easier.
They pushed through the doors, guns blazing as soon as Revenants came into view, running with foaming mouths and savage gray eyes. A few had even picked up weapons and began firing at them, each shot a near miss.
Zombified (Book 1): The Head Hunter Page 31
