“Lana, she’s the real monster.”
The zombie on the verge of an explosion plowed between my hands and Lana’s body. He lifted me off my feet with shards of glass poking into his palms. His green blood stained my face, and his brown teeth clenched around my collar. For a second I thought he had caught my skin, but when my red blood didn’t mix with the green, I knew I still had a chance. I reached without knowing what my hand would find until I had a rock in my hand. I managed to flip the zombie to his back and started to bring it down again and again and again. Its eyes stayed fixed on me with each blow. I’d have been able to pound him to the point where no one would ever know where he started and the soil began when a bullet ripped off half of his face. I fell away from him and saw Lana lingering over me with Ford over her shoulder. Just when I thought her strength had surpassed everything I’d already seen, she lifted me off the ground and pushed me ahead of her with the force of a Mack truck.
“Move, Sam. Now!”
I couldn’t think to do anything but run. Shots kept ringing out, and every time I turned my head, Lana was always firing at the approaching horde. She was knocking more off than not, and I had to hope that she could keep it going until we found some kind of cover. I wanted her to dump Ford so I could take her hand and feel her close. Like I said, Ford was the real monster. And Lana?
She was my monster.
I raced past the open door to a janitor’s basement, and a wave of inspiration flooded over me. I stopped running as my bad leg gave out, but I got my balance back by grabbing the top rail of the steps. Thinking fast, I waved and pointed for Lana to follow me.
“Lana! Here !”
I was down the steps and suddenly alone. For a second I thought that she hadn’t heard me, and I was ready to climb up again even if I was just destined to meet the zombies that her bullets had missed. Before I could make that move, Ford reappeared. Lana pushed her down to the landing and quickly followed.
“Get her inside!” Lana cried.
I did as I was told and hurried her into the foul-smelling darkness. The place stank of bleach that barely covered all the other smells coiling around the room. I pushed Ford into a dank corner and through the shadows I was still able to see Lana slam the door shut. The thing has obviously been boarded once before, and Lana was able to recover the wood. She drove them back into place with the butt of her rifle and finally fell against the security of the barrier. Even from this low point, I could hear the zombies’ hooves beating against the ground above our heads. It seemed to take forever, but the sound and the threat finally passed. I wanted to hold Lana, and I started to make my move when a shot from another gun broke my desire. Right after it I heard the sound of something shattering in what seemed an endless void. I reached for any weapon and got hold of what was just a screwdriver. I could use it. It could drive it into the milky eyes of any other zombies, the ones who’d escaped the econ building before we arrived and the ones---
Someone or something struck a match, and I blinked at the light. When my eyes adjusted to the spark, I was met with the last thing I expected.
Old friends.
“Prof?”
“Kid?”
Neal was there, here, with Morgan at his side. They were both battered and bruised. Morgan was in full crazy mode as she brought the business end of my bat down on Ford. She had to have seen the shackles and thought that she was enemy.
Morgan wasn’t that far off.
“Morgan! Stop!”
Neal grabbed her and pulled her back to the center of the room. She continued to swing. He really needed to hit her again, but his arms surrounded her thrashing body. He lost the match, and everything went dark again. I saw Ford playing possum as Lana rejoined our group. She slapped Morgan into silence then folded her face in her hands. I touched Morgan’s elbow and felt her flinch.
“Fancy meeting you here,” Neal tried to joke. He struck another match and worked his way to a forgotten lantern. It came to life, and the room was awash in dim light. Neal carefully regarded the sight of Ford and took me by the arm.
“Who’s she?” Neal asked.
The particulars would take way too long to lie out, and even then, he might not get or believe it. I brushed him and the reality of Ford off and looked back to the old gang together again.
“Later. Why are you guys still here?”
“We… we didn’t make it out.”
Well that was obvious.
“So what---?”
“We were nearly off campus when---”
“When there were more of them. Too many.”
Neal and I watched Morgan slink down the wall. She twisted her head from side to side in what had to be an effort to stave off a memory she couldn’t help but relive.
“Too many?” I asked even though I was pretty sure where this was going.
Morgan told a story of the car stopping and starting and finally dying until they had no choice but to make another kind of run for it.
“They had us cornered. They had brown teeth. And then… then…”
I was ready for her to tell me that they had been turned, too. It made as much sense as anything else that was happening. Was I a lone wolf in a pack of zombies? At least Neal and Morgan seemed like Lana, playing nice.
Morgan shook so much that it was like a stampede to rival the zombie parade in the room where we were supposed to be safe. She removed Neal’s jacket and revealed a body covered in a multitude of nips. Her chattering teeth showed no brown stains, so she wasn’t turned.
At least not yet.
No rules.
“They got her good, Kid. I… don’t even know how I managed to pull her away. I must have shot over a dozen of them. And… and everything we’ve seen so far meant that I should leave her behind.”
When those words came out of Neal’s mouth Morgan started to cry. He pressed her close to him in a futile effort to stop her overwhelming sadness.
“But your buddy was right about one thing, Kid.”
My mind flashed back to Tom and Leslie. I wondered if he was still trapped in the crate.
“I… I just couldn’t do it,” Neal said.
Now with Lana and Morgan to worry about, I scanned the shadows in search of any kind of container should we need to put both girls on an immediate lock down. The few cardboard boxes would be no good. I had already seen what Lana could now accomplish when faced with skin and tendons, so what basically amounted to paper would serve no purpose. The flame from the lantern caught the cuffs on Ford’s bound wrists.
If push came to shove, I could always unchain her and use them elsewhere…
Who was I kidding? At the end of the world, me and Neal and Tom were the last people who should have to make the tough calls.
Ford started stirring and she managed to sit up and face us. When she saw Morgan’s bite marks, she appeared beyond fascinated.
“Interesting.”
That word again. What was she hinting at?
Lana approached her with the rifle aimed.
“Alright, lady. Seems like we finally have a few minutes to spare.”
A loud cry rang out from above followed by more gunshots. I guessed that the new pack of zombies must have encountered Ford’s guards as they withdrew to whatever Code Orange was, and at some point, one group or the other was bound to make their way back to our present location.
So yeah. A few minutes. Not enough to dance around this anymore.
I recovered the bat and took my place at Lana’s side.
“Why does it work differently with everyone?” I demanded. Ford licked her lips and feigned confusion as she tilted her head to the side.
“Come again, Sam?”
I slammed the bat into her side. Ford tried to scream, but she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs to seal the deal.
“Why did Gabby go because of me and then come back?”
This time I hit her in the leg. She hissed through her teeth, and I was amazed at my own power. Maybe she’d be a
cripple, too, if she made it out of this night in one piece. I was proof that she could still go on to have a happy, fruitful, warmongering life.
“And Tammi? How long did it take for her to turn ? And we couldn’t even kill Tom! Now there’s Lana and---”
“Hold up!”
Neal was on his feet, and he retrieved the shotgun. He pointed it in our direction.
“What about Lana?” he asked.
Lana sighed and held the lantern close to her face. She forced a smile and showed him the new color of her teeth.
“You… she’s …”
I saw his finger trembling against the trigger, and I moved fast to step between Lana and the intended bullet.
“No, Prof. It’s not like that.”
“Not like what, Sam? She’s… she’s one of…”
“No. She’s… she’s like one of the good ones.”
Neal looked at me with incredulous eyes.
“One of the good ones? Since when are there good and bad zombies?”
“You are really the slowest suckers I ever did see.”
We all looked back to Ford. She was still moaning in the wake of the beat down I longed to see through to an even more painful conclusion, but she had regained the ability to sneer.
One of us should just finish her off. But first…
I grabbed her by her hair. Despite her moans of pain, I got her back on her feet and pressed her face close to mine.
“Okay, boss lady. What are we missing?”
“Show me a seat like a gentleman and I’ll tell you.”
I’d like to show her something or somewhere else, but I saw a rickety wooden stool and signaled for someone to drag it over. Lana answered the call and tiptoed past Neal’s aim. Slowly, she brought the stool to Ford’s feet, and I slammed her down to a sit. Like I was going to go out of my way to make it comfortable for her.
Our four sets of eyes glared at her as she took a few deep breaths.
“Sam. I told you that this was a weapon of war. You understood that right?”
“What is she talking about?” Neal asked.
I searched for the words to make him know the truth of the nightmare. I got it, but it was kind of complicated, so many steps. I sort of wished that I had been able to get hold of a users’ manual or something from the tent. But it would have probably taken Neal days we didn’t have to read it, and him being a teacher, he’d want to dissect and punch holes in the theories in service of some paper that he’d never even live to write and---
“Zombies are soldiers. Infect a population. Let them tear each other apart. No harm no foul. Welcome to the training ground.”
Lana had opted for the super abridged version.
“How Monsters on Maple Street,” Neal said.
The Professor seemed to catch on quicker than I was going to give him and his overly-analytical mind credit for. I could kiss Lana and her chocolate colored teeth.
Neal forgot his fear of Lana and turned the shotgun on Ford.
“So we’re just guinea pigs?” he demanded.
“In a word, yes.”
“In two words, you’re sick!”
But Neal wasn’t going to stop at just two words.
“People, kids, are dying, have died out there.”
“And children are the future and all that jazz and blah, blah, blah. At least they got to go out making some kind of a contribution.”
Neal dropped the shotgun and started for Ford’s throat. I was quick enough to hold him back.
“Easy, Prof.”
“Did you hear what she said?”
“Yeah. I got the long form. But that’s not important now.”
“Not---”
I ignored him and kept going.
“Why do some of them go full zombie when Lana and Morgan---”
“Breeding stock, Sam.”
Ford’s words sent a horrible chill down my spine. I knew what the words meant or implied, but I couldn’t quite wrap my head around the possibility. Zombies gestating in wombs until they came to term and were born to fight for or against something without ever having a chance to decide one way or the other if it was right or wrong? It really was sick.
And to pull it off would require cold, calculating control of the specimens.
“Lana?”
She looked at me with even milkier eyes, but I could still see the familiar fear that had brushed across her lashes so many times before.
“Sam?”
I moved towards her slowly.
“You… you weren’t bit.”
“I… wasn’t I?”
I sadly shook my head.
“I’d have seen it. Lift… lift up your sleeve.”
She trembled as she did what I asked. As the arm of the pink hoodie revealed more and more of her pale flesh, I saw the place where the tape met a tiny piece of gauze. She blinked back a tear and gritted her teeth as I gave the makeshift bandage a quick tug. Once discarded, all I could focus on was the purplish stain and the tiny puncture mark that still pulsated with a little bead of red blood.
That was something.
I helped Lana lower the sleeve and placed a gentle arm around her quivering shoulders. My rage was growing, but it already had a target.
“You shot her up,” I said to Ford.
“She seemed ripe for the taking.”
I held Lana closer and listened to Ford rattle on about a limited strain that worked like any other disease known to man. Take the common cold. In some cases, barely a sniffle. In others, raw throats and running noses for days. Ford and her people only realized that it was something they could put to wicked use when they stumbled upon what was left of Gabby and Tammi in our old house. Mix in some Tom and---
“Tom! Where is he? What have you---?”
“I see a reunion in your future, Sam.”
Best friend or not, I didn’t like the sound of that.
“But---”
“Your little band here has been quite, shall we say, adventurous? But even variables translate to benefits. And I can think of no better denouement than your friend cleaning up the mess that you’ve all made.”
I started to pull Lana towards the door. I knew I’d have to get the boards off so that we could make a run for it. There was no way I was going to let them torture her to a point where she could no longer bear to look at herself and just pray for zombie death and---
“And what about Morgan?”
Everything seemed to stop at the sound of Neal’s voice. I looked down at Morgan’s torn skin. Prof had a point. She went down like so many before her, and her teeth were still alabaster, her eyes bulging and dark.
Ford let out a light, long laugh.
“Happy accident. Two for the price of one really.”
She narrowed her gaze at Morgan.
“I’m quite interested to see what you’ll produce.”
Morgan was shaking and hugging herself close. Neal lifted her off the ground and carried her to where Lana and I stood in the hope of escape.
“We’re not going to let you hurt them,” Neal said.
Right on, Prof! I didn’t know how we were going to get out of the basement much less off the campus, but there wasn’t much more damage that Ford could do with her hands cuffed.
And then I heard screams in human tongues and boots pounding down the steps. Ford’s name was the thing that stood out over the rest of the noise, and I looked at her, wide-eyed.
“How did they…?”
Ford defiantly stuck her neck in my direction.
“Homing device in my earrings, Sam. Code Orange.”
The guards busted down the door and ordered all of us to our knees. We dropped our weapons and curled our hands behind our heads. Lana was getting ready to use her new set of teeth on the two that had grabbed her, but one of them tasered her into submission and clamped a metal muzzle over her stunned face.
“Leave her alone!” I yelled. Any intention I had of disobeying their orders and getting back on my feet came to
an end as another guard pounded the butt of his rifle into my side. As I doubled over in agony, I saw Ford take great pleasure in my pain. She was helped to her feet and freed from the cuffs. Wobbly as she still was, she summoned the strength to kick me in the same place I had injured her for good measure, and she spit in my eye. Her gaze went from me to Neal to Morgan. Morgan’s torn flesh essentially alleviated the need for specific instructions, and she was quickly given her own muzzle to wear.
“No!”
Neal tried to stop the awful thing from clamping down over her sobbing head, but he was stopped with a kick to the floor. A booted guard brought his heel down over and over again on his neck. Neal kept fighting as Morgan and her muffled cries were dragged away from his desperate reach. The room was spinning as I managed to twist my head to see Lana thrashing wildly as she too was carried out of my view. With all the strength I had left, I threw myself across Neal’s body in an effort to save him from getting hit again. I could feel hands trying to pry me away from him, but I held Neal fast. He was the only one left on my side, and I wasn’t about to give him up without a fight.
“Bind them,” Ford ordered.
I kept clutching at Neal, but I finally lost the battle. The guards flipped me to my stomach, and I felt plastic cuffs snap around my sweaty wrists. Neal suffered the same fate, and we were both hoisted to our feet and slammed against the wall. We dropped to the floor and looked up at our armed captors. I knew that Neal’s face was a mirror for everything I was feeling. I was angrier than I’d ever been and terrified for what would come next. Most of all, we wanted to know where they were taking Lana and Morgan.
“Where are you going to do with them?”
Neal found his voice first along with the courage to try to get back on his feet. I recognized the guard who’d been given the order of Code Orange back at the econ building, and he formed a fist that knocked into Neal’s jaw. I shuddered at the impact, and I knew that I’d get hit, too, if I didn’t stay silent.
But like Neal, I needed to know.
Zombie University (The Complete Series): How I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse Page 13
