by Steven Booth
Miller straightened in her seat as a new thought occurred to her. “Hey, back up. What did you mean when you said that we popped up on your radar? Because that’s the same shit that our own Dr. Frankenstein here gave us.”
Rubenstein sat scowling and ignoring the conversation. He was staring out the window at the clear blue morning sky.
“So?”
“So who the hell else should I be worried about showing up looking for us one of these days, the Easter Bunny? Sasquatch?”
“Ain’t those kind of the same thing?” asked Scratch in an uncharacteristically thick, highly sarcastic drawl. “Like some dude in a fluffy suit?”
“Funny.” Miller patted him on the knee. “That’s nice, dear. Now let’s let the lady finish explaining.”
Rat drank water from a small canteen by her seat. “What do you want me to tell you, Penny? I was worried about you guys. Without getting all mushy…”
“Too late,” Scratch interrupted, “I heard the violins at least two minutes ago.”
“… You two are important to me and Lovell, and to Karl Sheppard as well. He is going to be thrilled that we found you alive.”
“Sheppard is okay? He got out?” They had lost track of their old friend while trying to escape the hunting lodge in Colorado.
“When he hears that we pulled you out today, he’s going to be turning cartwheels.” Rat lowered her eyes. “We did find Terrill Lee’s body back in the lodge. I’m really sorry.”
Miller looked out the window to control her reaction. Her eyes dampened. She forced herself to shut the sadness down. She was done grieving Terrill Lee—death was forever, at least with a carefully placed headshot. The past was past.
Scratch raised his hand again. He looked like some playful boy in elementary school asking permission to pee. Miller made a mental note to try and break him of that silly habit. It reminded her a bit too much of ol’ Terrill Lee.
“Hey, Rat. How’s my newly discovered kid?”
“Jimmy? Last time I checked, he was fine.”
It was Scratch’s turn to scowl. “What the hell do you mean, the last time you checked? Where the fuck is he?”
“Relax, Scratch,” Rat said. “The government folks took over since the boys are under eighteen. They found a healthy placement for them. Your surprise son Jimmy and his little brother are up in Mountain Home, Idaho, and they’re both perfectly fine.”
Scratch’s mouth gaped. “What did you just say?”
“Yeah, just one danged minute.” Miller shot a concerned look Scratch’s way. “Isn’t Mountain Home General Gifford’s old stomping grounds?”
“And mine,” Rat said.
“That bastard Gifford sold us out,” Scratch said. “He almost got us all killed.”
“Look, General Gifford was a good man once,” Rat said, “before the zombie thing happened. That’s when he went off the rails. This is all water under the bridge, the man is dead. You can ask Dr. Rubenstein anything you want. He knew Gifford better than I did.”
Rubenstein paled. “Penny, I bear no responsibility for what General Gifford may or may not have done. I simply worked for him.”
Alex had been watching the conversation quietly. At least up until now. “Offhand, just what the fuck do you take responsibility for, Doc? I think you have a hell of a lot to answer for.” He leaned forward toward Rubenstein. His jaw was set. “Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not tied up and drugged out of my mind anymore.”
Dr. Rubenstein sat back in his jump seat and tried a different tactic. He affected a look of relaxed superiority. “Though I can certainly understand your anger, Alex, the truth is that I have done nothing illegal. I have much larger concerns. I was operating under a government license granted to me by the Department of Homeland Security. And, as you may recall, you also gave us your informed consent. We have that in writing.”
“Informed consent? You freaking kidnapped me and shot me up with God-knows-what and then strapped me down to a cot. I would have signed a castration order in that state. I got poked and prodded and then splattered with blood and damn near bit when the crazies went wild.”
“I also understand you feel that your treatment experience was less than pleasing, Alex,” Rubenstein said, soothingly. “Truthfully, we had all hoped…”
But Alex wasn’t finished. “Less than pleasing? Why, you arrogant son of a bitch, have you got any idea what kind of hell you put us all through with all those drugs and that false imprisonment? You may have forced me to execute some kind of legal cover, but I sure as hell never consented to any of that, and I know the poor girl with me didn’t either.” Alex leaned closer to Rubenstein. “Her name was Leslie, and she is dead.”
Rubenstein shifted in his seat. His composure slipped. He stared at Rat, seeking support. “I have the paperwork with your signatures back at my office, people. Everything I did was duly authorized, I assure you.”
“Back at your office?” Miller said, scornfully. “Oh, you mean the office that just burned to the ground when the place got torched? All that destruction happened because of your experiments with super soldier accelerants.”
Rubenstein affected a tight-lipped smile. “But there were no soldiers at the Serenity Center—with the exception of you and your team, Major,” he said, nodding to Rat. “So I don’t know what you mean, Sheriff.”
“You don’t know?” Miller lost it. Only the seatbelt kept her from jumping across the deck to throttle Rubenstein. Her voice carried over the throbbing helicopter blades, even without the microphone. “You lying, pencil necked, old rucksack full of disease-ridden flea snot! Is there a single thing that comes out of your foul mouth that’s true besides that weak belch of a voice of yours?”
“Nice string, Penny,” Scratch said, admiringly. “World class.”
Penny ignored him.
“I never lied to you, Penny,” Rubenstein said. He broke eye contact.
“I’m going to throw the son of a bitch out the door,” Alex said. The idea lit his face up like a floodlight. Scratch seemed willing to assist.
“Help!” Rubenstein squeaked.
Alex lunged for Rubenstein, but the seatbelt held him fast. Scratch fumbled to unlock his own. Miller thought the two of them looked dead serious, though they may have been engaging in a bit of mental torture.
“Major, do something!” Rubenstein shouted, shrinking away from the angry men.
Before Rat could respond, Miller sighed and took charge. “All right, that’s enough. You ease up there, Alex.” Miller reluctantly dropped back into her usual role of group leader. “Not now. We’ll deal with him when we get where we’re going.” Miller turned to Rat. “And by the way, just where the hell are we going?”
Rat’s eyes dropped to the rivets on the floor. “That’s classified.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough. When we get there.”
Miller snorted. “Classified? Kiss my ass! Who are we going to tell? CNN?” Miller leaned forward and her headset tugged at her hair. She winced and pointed her finger at Rat, using the single digit to punctuate her words. “Where. The fuck. Are. We. Going?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“I won’t? Unless we’re going to the North Pole, Never Never Land, or that burned-out pile of Nevada nuclear waste that used to be Crystal Palace, I think I’d believe any damn spot on Earth that you could name.”
Rat stared back with a poker face worthy of the World Series of Texas Hold’em. It spoke volumes. Miller felt her skin ripple with fear. The absolute silence that followed gave her another distinctly odd feeling. Like someone had just walked over her grave.
Miller whispered, “No. No fucking way.”
“Well, it isn’t the North Pole,” Rat said. Her face still showed no emotion, just professional detachment.
It was Miller’s turn to go numb. “You have got to be kidding me. Crystal Palace is toast. We saw the nuclear device armed and placed. We ran for our l
ives. We saw the explosion! We can’t go back to that part of Nevada for Christ’s sake. Unless we’re in the first solid lead chopper in history and you got some first-class radiation suits tucked away under these jump seats and some SPF 3000 sunscreen spray to soak in, I’d say going back to Crystal Palace is a very bad idea.”
“Well, as it turns out,” said Rat, now choosing her words very carefully, “what actually went down when we weren’t there isn’t quite as bad as all that.”
“There was a nuclear explosion,” Miller said. “What am I missing here?”
She stared at Rat.
Rat stared back.
“There was a nuclear explosion, wasn’t there?” Miller’s head began to swim. So many deceptions to sort through, so little time. “We saw it from Utah, damn you. The whole sky lit up. Half of Nevada was toast.”
“Yes, there was an explosion,” said Rat, finally. “Look, most of this stuff really is classified. I’ll tell you this much, because you’ll be briefed eventually. The detonation we saw is officially referred to as a ‘controlled above ground nuclear test.’ It was more for show than destruction. It happened miles from the actual base. All of it was on a need to know basis, and even I did not know at the time.”
Scratch banged his head back against the chopper seat. “You have got to be shitting me!”
“I don’t think they are, Scratch,” Miller said. Her heart sank.
Rat said, “In point of fact, all of this was a just one huge Top Secret operation from the very beginning. I found out a few weeks ago that the bomb we planted in Crystal Palace turned out to have been a dummy. The insides had other functions, most of them just for research.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Good,” Rat said, “then no one else will, either.”
Scratch looked at her and drawled, “Is Elvis still alive, too? Did we ever land on the moon?”
“It was a brilliant operation,” said Rubenstein. He looked like the cat that had eaten a whole flock of canaries.
“Brilliant?” Miller said. “Blowing that place up was the only way to both destroy the source of the zombie virus, and to keep it contained in Nevada.”
Rat said nothing. Rubenstein shut up. Miller felt queasy as a twenty-dollar whore in a confession booth. She shook her head. “Wow.”
Rat said, “Penny, it’s simple, really. The bomb was not a nuke, and was never actually meant to destroy the laboratory. That’s because the Army still needs the facility to continue researching the zombie virus it created. It’s back in service, hopefully to find a cure, but you know those assholes. Anyway, they didn’t want to panic the public. They wanted everyone to believe it had been eradicated within a controlled area.”
“So they just… faked erasing an entire state?”
“I wouldn’t phrase it exactly that way, but… pretty much. Most of Nevada. They set off a number of devices in a controlled pattern. The rest weren’t even nukes. More like bunker bombs.”
Scratch was shaking his head. “This must be a government operation.”
“The government works in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform. Their purpose was just to find a logical reason to keep people out of Nevada until they could find a way to control… the bigger problem.”
“You mean the damn zombie plague?” Miller turned to Scratch. “Well, that sure as hell explains why zombies are popping up everywhere like a prom night hard on. In fact, we saw some of them up in Colorado right out of the gate, so the plan failed anyway.”
“Well, yes and no,” Rat said. She adjusted her headphones, made a sour face and checked her watch as if expecting them to be making better time.
Miller cocked her head. “Explain. I’m all ears.”
“Well, they aren’t exactly everywhere, Penny.”
“Enlighten us.”
Rubenstein interrupted the conversation. “The actual zombies are really only in Nevada, Central Utah, most of the western parts of Colorado, northern New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and a little bit of California—and even there mostly up by Lake Tahoe. And, you know, down by Los Angeles and Malibu. That’s pretty much it so far. Otherwise they are now completely contained.”
Miller snorted. “Contained? If you think that hot mess we just came from could be considered containment by any damn stretch, Rubenstein, you can kiss my freckled butt. There are already a couple hundred of them loose around your fun house back in Malibu. It won’t take long for the virus to spread. This has not been contained by a damn sight. In fact, there seem to be zombies just about everywhere I go these days.”
“Well,” said Rat, almost to herself, “that’s another reason we wanted to find you.”
“Why? Because the zombies are following me?” demanded Miller. That idea made her stomach clench.
Rubenstein cleared his throat. “That’s just the paranoia talking again, Penny. I want to run some tests after we land.”
“Fuck you and the mule you rode in on.”
“No, it is not because you’re being followed by the undead,” Rat said. “It’s because our good friend Karl Sheppard has convinced the powers that be that you, Sheriff Penny Miller, and only you, hold the key to finding a cure.”
Miller straightened up. “Now, wait one damned minute! I’m not going to be a guinea pig again, not even for Karl Sheppard.”
“Here we go,” said Scratch under his breath. He leaned forward. “Those ass hats want to experiment on Penny again? Then they’ll damned well have to get through me first.”
“Save all that macho posturing,” said Rat. “Penny, Sheppard needs your help.”
“Indeed he does,” said Rubenstein. “I know you all hate me, but let me say something important. It is something that could affect the future of the entire human race. We think we are close to finding a cure.”
Much to Miller’s surprise, no one mocked Rubenstein this time. Perhaps it was because of the power contained in the word “cure.” They all wanted the horror of the last few months put behind them for good.
“If it’s Sheppard doing the research,” Scratch said. He put his calloused hand on Miller’s knee, “Maybe we should hear them out.”
Dr. Rubenstein smiled benevolently. “You are still the key, Penny. You are our only real hope. If we can just run some more tests and find a way to understand the biochemistry of the virus, see what is really going on inside of you, we could destroy the virus that was accidentally created. But first we need to know why. Why you survived the virus when all those others succumbed.”
Miller clenched her teeth. “You can’t be serious.”
“Penny,” Rubenstein said, “I think we can learn how to end this plague once and for all. Your cooperation could save countless lives.”
Miller stared at him, stunned by his bland audacity. Scratch took her hand. The others watched the rest of the conversation without interjecting.
“No.”
Rubenstein made a steeple of his fingers. He looked idiotic in the headset, but his words rang true. “I don’t blame you for resenting me, but like it or not, you are a living, breathing science experiment. The worst thing in this world that could happen is that you stop giving us new data, because then your life, the lives of everyone you knew and loved, and all of those who have died so horribly because of this zombie plague, will have meant nothing in the end. Greatness has been thrust upon you. We need you to save the human race.”
Despite Scratch holding her hand, Miller felt alone. “You expect me to buy that contrite bullshit? Why the hell should I trust you? Any of you?”
“You trust me, right?” Scratch said.
Miller turned to look at him. With his short haircut, he seemed out of place, almost unrecognizable. A sickening thought occurred to her—what if this wasn’t Scratch, just a stranger doubling for him? What if she’d been set up again and he was just some brilliant actor deep in character? She looked at his tattoos, searching for any mistakes in copying. They all looked correct, but anything was possible these days, and she
had been sedated in that hospital bed for a long time. Or perhaps Rubenstein was telling the truth, and she had a tumor. Was she completely paranoid? Miller felt dizzy. One part of her mind knew she was just being overtaken by anxiety again, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. She had never felt so isolated and confused, despite the familiar faces around her. Christ, they all seemed to want her to spend the rest of her life stuck up like a pincushion in some bare-assed hospital gown.
“Penny?”
Miller snapped out of it. Of course it was Scratch who’d penetrated the fog. And he had asked her a question. Miller remembered to answer, though she wasn’t sure if it was a lie.
“Yes, I trust you, Scratch.”
“Then let’s at least see what Karl Sheppard has to say for himself before we go off the reservation.”
Miller closed her eyes. They flew on through the sky toward Nevada. She listened to the dull, repetitive sound of the rotors, the racket that she had all but drowned out during her intense focus on that shocking conversation. The throbbing was irritating now that she’d noticed it again, and the sound made her head hurt. She wanted to sleep for a month.
Before she could respond, Scratch said, “Besides, it’s not like we’re going anywhere until we land. We could try, I guess, but that first step is a damn doozey.” His eyes twinkled. He squeezed her hand tightly. Only Scratch seemed to fully understand what they were asking.
Miller squeezed back reluctantly. “It seems the decision has been made for me.” She sat back in her seat. “Okay, Scratch. Let’s go talk to Karl.”
CHAPTER NINE
RESEARCH BASE TK-501, NEVADA
CODENAME: CRYSTAL PALACE
The huge overhead hangar doors groaned loudly then closed with a thud just as the Black Hawk’s rotors sputtered into silence. Miller stared out the window. Her mind was still in shock. Crystal Palace had not been destroyed. They had landed smack dab in the middle of the brightly lit facility, a space bigger than two football fields laid side by side. It had been cleaned up, freshly painted and was once again filled with hurrying figures in uniforms and white lab coats. It was as if all that death and destruction had never taken place. Miller swallowed dryly. She struggled to block how the base had looked the last time she had been there—grotesque, unthinkably gory, packed with bodies of both the dead and the undead. The now neat and functional military base had been riddled with bullet holes back then, many of them contributed by Scratch when he’d decided to unleash an entire ammo box of .50 cal on an oncoming horde of zombies.
