Wheels and Zombies (Book 3): Aground

by M. Van

“Sir, the data is not here.”

  Dr. David’s head shot up, as did mine. If the data he was looking for wasn’t there, then Matley must have destroyed it. Surely, the information had to be invaluable to Dr. David. It seemed Dr. Matley had signed our death warrants. The man wasn’t a fool. He knew we were here, and he knew we must have been inside that lab. While he spoke into the phone, he inspected the sectioned-off room inside the lab where the bed sat surrounded by those plastic sheets. He also must have spoken with Dr. Matley before he decided to kill her. What had she told him? Either everything, and he shot her, or nothing, and they shot her anyway.

  Dr. David’s head lowered to his chest, and then he took in a deep breath and straightened his shoulders to stand straight.

  “Find them,” he said. His voice sounded cold and harsh. The three men glanced at each other before they returned their attention to the doctor. “Are you deaf?” Dr. David fumed. His hands balled into fists at his side. The big man took a step closer to the doctor.

  “Sir, please forgive me, but …” the man said, hesitating, “we have no protection against the infected, and by now there might be a hundred of them. Attacks have been reported all over the base.”

  Dr. David stepped forward. He stood about a foot shorter than the big man but didn’t seem bothered by it. His eyes bored straight into the big man, who had a problem keeping his head from shifting away.

  “You knew what you signed up for, and it was all fine when you got to sit in an office and cash a big check,” Dr. David spoke in a calm but pressuring voice. “Now, this is what I have been actually paying you for.”

  One of the other men took a step into the doctor’s direction. He stopped when Dr. David snapped his head to face the man. “But, but …” the man stammered. Dr. David cut him off.

  “They are slow-moving brain-dead zombies; as long as you don’t let them bite you or get their guts and gore into your mouth or eyes, you’ll be fine. Use your guns, dammit. I don’t care. Just get me 101 and 102.”

  I guessed these designations were meant for Ash and me, and we weren’t his favorite subjects anymore; he had given us a number.

  Dr. David stared at the men some more before they resigned, and they left the lab with him in their wake. After they left the room, Mars’s fingers rattled the keyboard. Images on the screen flipped from one area to another. Some were empty; others, like the mess hall, were the basic scenes from a horror movie. The big man was right—the virus spread fast. I didn’t know how it had gotten from that hallway to almost the other side of the mountain, but it had. Tables we had eaten at stood on their sides. Chairs and trays lay scattered across the floor, along with half a dozen or so bodies. A handful of zombies roamed the room as if they owned it.

  Mars clicked through different images and found a bunch of survivors. A couple of them had locked themselves in one of the offices. Others had made it to the open area to where those massive doors were located. About two dozen soldiers had set up a perimeter at those doors and refused to let anyone pass who seemed to be infected. Anyone who came close without adhering to their commands got shot. The ones who did comply were checked before they were allowed to exit.

  It looked as if more would survive than I had thought. Still, every single one who didn’t would be on my head. I had done this, and I was to blame for every death that occurred here or anywhere else on this side of the Mississippi. The thought made my stomach turn. What if they got out?

  General Whitfield and Colonel Cornwell appeared on one of the screens, and I was glad to see they had both made it to the open area. Mars looked from the screen to face us.

  “It seems we need to get down there,” he said. Angie rested her butt on the desk and let out a breath.

  “Yeah, but how are we supposed to do that?” she said, pointing a finger at the screen. It showed the different hallways that I presumed would lead us to the open area. “It would mean we have to get past them.” She indicated the zombies that roamed the halls. Although soldiers were making it out of here, this place employed over two hundred and fifty people, and we had definitely not seen all those in the open area. There were still a lot of them inside. No doubt some would be zombies by now, and others might follow soon.

  “That is exactly what you will do,” Mars said. We all looked up at him. “All three of you, you can just stroll past them.”

  “And what,” Angie and I said simultaneously. The combined response made us glance at each other for a moment before we returned our gazes to Mars. I held my mouth so Angie could speak. I wasn’t sure if my words held any meaning for Mars anymore.

  “We will not leave you behind,” she said. “That is not how this works.”

  “Well, there shouldn’t be any zombies inside the mountain either, but I guess shit happens,” he snapped at her. It was a cheap shot, but it hurt as if he had rammed a fist into my stomach. I bit the inside of my lip to keep it from shaking. No one blamed me more than I did myself, and I could understand how he felt, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt coming from him.

  “Don’t be an ass, Mars,” Angie said. “We couldn’t have known this would happen, and you were the one who wanted Mags and Ash here in the first place. You even told them your family lived here, just so she would come.”

  “Don’t you think I know that,” Mars said aloud slamming his fist on the table.

  Ash’s mouth dropped open as I closed my eyes. Tension started to claw at my chest. I opened my eyes and found Ash glancing nervously from one of us to the other.

  “You lied to us,” she said, puzzled. Mars’s gaze softened and focused on her. He shook his head.

  “It’s not what you think,” he said, but before he could say anything else, Ash broke in.

  “You lyin’ bastard,” she said, “you’re just as bad as Warren.” Ash set off in a rant about how Mars had tricked us, inserting a curse word in every other sentence. The news hadn’t come as a shock to me; Mars had practically confessed it the moment he had handed me that note. The fact I had read it days later wasn’t his fault.

  “Was that the reason you sprang us out of jail?” Ash said, fuming. “So you could trade us to Matley? Mags trusted you!”

  “Ash, it’s not like that,” Angie said, trying to overrule the kid’s rant. She obviously sat torn between Mars and us.

  “You don’t understand,” Mars said even more loudly.

  I stood up from my chair and walked down the row of desks, leaving the bickering behind. My jaw hurt, my tongue hurt, and my head, in general, hurt, and I could do without the shouting.

  In the reflection of one of the monitors, I noticed smears of blood around my mouth. I sat down behind a desk and grabbed a bottle of water of the tabletop. Using the water, I cleaned the blood away and rinsed my mouth. Without anyplace else to put it, I spit the water out on the floor. It didn’t wash away the taste of blood, but my tongue seemed to have stopped bleeding and felt better.

  Around me, I noticed the room had gone silent, and I lifted my head up. The three of them stared at me as if I had turned into a zombie. The sight of them made me smile. It all seemed so close to home, the bad language, the fighting, but somehow in a way that I had never understood before, never noticed in arguing with my family back home, I could feel their intentions. They all tried their best in the interest of the ones they loved. It seemed so strangely clear now. These people had become my family as well.

  It had definite signs of a dysfunctional family, but what else was new.

  “I think I get it now,” I said as I focused on Mars.

  Those pale jade eyes that had caught my attention from the moment we’d met, took me in. What I saw in them ranged from suspicion to confusion as he asked, “What?”

  Ash and Angie glared at me as I replied, “That thing you accused me of.” He strained and opened his mouth as if to defend himself, but I wouldn’t let him.

  “You were right,” I said. “I get it now.”

  With that his lips curved upward at the corners an
d his face lit up.

  “It’s about time,” he said.

  “Huh,” Ash said after a moment of silence.

  “I already knew about his family not living here,” I said as I stood and made my way to them.

  “Including …” Angie said, shooting Mars a hesitant glance.

  “Yeah, he told me about Rowdy,” I said.

  Angie let out a huff of air in apparent relief.

  “Okay, I’m starting to lose track here,” Ash said. “What’s a Rowdy?”

  “He is Mars’s son,” I replied.

  “Mars has a son,” Ash exclaimed.

  “Maybe we should talk about this later,” Angie said, exasperated. “We still kind of have to get out of here.”

  I glanced up at Mars, who hadn’t stop staring at me.

  “All of us, right,” I said.

  He didn’t reply immediately, but it wasn’t hard to read that brilliant smile on his face as he said, “We’ll need a plan.”

  | 27

  We divided ourselves between the different stations to keep an eye on the monitors. There seemed to be a distinct movement in the newborn zombies. For some reason, they all managed to stumble their way in the direction of the open area. I didn’t know whether they sensed that people were alive there, or they somehow remembered where to go. From our last encounter with Dr. David at his lab in Florida, we had learned that he had done something to make the infection by Mortem worse. He had done something that gave awareness to the flesh-eating creatures, something I had seen myself, fleeing from that lab, something I had seen in their eyes. A struggle raged behind those eyes as if they were fighting for control of their own bodies.

  The cruelty of doing something like that seemed unimaginable to me at the time, but then so had knowingly infecting someone. That was what had started all of this, with Dr. David releasing a virus in the middle of New York, and now I had done the same. It gnawed at me that maybe we weren’t that different after all.

  “Why can’t we just make a circle around him and walk out?” Ash asked. She, too, sat behind one of the monitors and clicked at a keyboard. She seemed more efficient at it than me, even though I had worked with a computer for most of my life.

  “We did it for Jonesy back in Brooklyn,” she added.

  “I don’t know if you remember, but that didn’t work out to well for Jonesy, or Chuck,” Angie shot back. I noticed Ash’s shoulders slacken, and her face went pale. Angie immersed into the camera footage on her screen. If she hadn’t been sitting three tables over, I would have kicked her in the shins. Jonesy had been Angie’s partner when they’d raided the hospital where Ash had been admitted. The loss of Jonesy hadn’t turned out to be a great miss. The man had taken following orders to the letter. It hadn’t mattered that those orders had come from Dr. David, and he hadn’t cared who had stood in his way.

  Chuck, on the other hand, had become a friend to Ash. She had reluctantly told me about the old one-time soldier with a habit for booze and smoking while carting around an oxygen tank. Although it was hard for me to picture the two of them, I could tell Ash’s eyes sparkled at remembering the old man’s antics. Still, she didn’t like to talk about it and certainly didn’t wanted to be remembered of the old man’s death. I reached out and tousled her scruffy blond hair. She faced me with a half-smile.

  “That’s it,” Mars said elated. “I’ve had it. This shit is getting worse by the minute. I say we take the direct route back.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Mars,” Angie said.

  “You do know I’m still your superior,” Mars replied with a questioning look.

  “Yeah well, if we get out of here and there is still an FBI, you can berate me.”

  I pressed a finger to the screen and tapped it. “I think B12 looks clear enough,” I said, “and this maintenance duct leads directly into the open area.”

  “That’s a hell of crawl, but I agree,” Angie replied. “We should take the safe route and I doubt we’ll run into zombies down there.”

  “Maybe we should shove Mars in a box,” Ash said.

  “I like your thinking,” I said, chuckling, although Mars didn’t seem amused.

  “Could we be serious for one minute?” he said.

  “Oh, I am, mister. I’ve been lying through my teeth—son of-” she started to say until I slapped a flat hand over her mouth. She mumbled away, but the words diffused. Angie still grinned as she got to her feet.

  Although not everyone seemed happy about it, we came to an agreement to take the corridor, and the maintenance duct I had suggested.

  The door creaked as Angie opened it a crack so she could listen. We couldn’t hear any of the familiar moans, and she opened it further. She poked her head out and announced the all clear.

  Ash and I had cramped up behind her while Mars stood at the other side of the room. We tried to mask him with our scents. We all knew it was a vain attempt if we ran into a bunch of zombies, but it might fool the odd few. We stepped out, and Ash rolled her chair into the hallway.

  “Where to?” she asked. Mars followed and searched both directions. Left had been where we came from, and right was new to me. He pointed his finger to the left.

  “We have to get back to the point where we encountered William,” he said. “It connects with B12.” My stomach dropped at the thought of what we would find in that passage, and I think he must have read it on my face. He touched my arm and gave me a confident smile. I tried to draw in some of that calm he radiated and took a deep breath. It didn’t work.

  Mars took off down the hall. Ash followed him and eventually over took him.

  “You can’t go wanderin’ off, and you have to stay in the middle, so we can mask your smell,” she said with a scowl.

  “Hey, kid,” Angie said as she stepped in alongside me. “You okay?”

  I glanced at her sideways. “You calling me kid now,” I said. “I’m like, what, five years older than you?”

  A wide smile brightened her face when she said, “Yeah, I can’t take on Ash, but I think I can handle you.” The smile transformed into a smirk, and she nudged me with her shoulder. “Come on.”

  In a line, we walked down the hallway, making our way back to the place where it all went downhill. Everything seemed the same as I followed Ash while Mars walked behind me, and Angie took up the rear. Gray walls and doors lined the hall. Inside the rooms, monitors and screens cast different colors while it all seemed eerily quiet. It wasn’t that long ago when these corridors were buzzing with people focused on surveying the skies and gathering information to fight the outbreak. They’d fought a war that seemed so far away then, and I had to go and bring it to their doorstep.

  Deep in thought, I almost tripped over Ash as she suddenly stopped.

  “Watch it,” she whispered. I perched myself up on her shoulder. As I steadied my feet, I caught the reason she’d stopped. We had arrived at the T-junction where William had ambushed us. Blood covered the floor as if someone had dragged a body from one side of the hallway to the other. I squeezed Ash’s shoulder and motioned her to stay.

  I couldn’t hear the moans of zombies or the sounds of screams or gunfire, so I figured it would be safe to take a look. Mars joined me as I eased forward. Although what I saw wasn’t life-threatening, my eyes weren’t ready for it, and I felt grateful for Mars’s presence. A handful of bodies lay sprawled across the floor. Blood covered the ground and walls. Piles of what I suspected to be entrails shimmered in the fluorescent lights. The back of my hand shot to my mouth, and I gagged at the smell of coagulated blood along with the gruesome display of intestines.

  The bodies were unrecognizable, mangled to a degree that the virus wouldn’t be able to sustain them, although a name tag betrayed one of them as Donovan. The poor bastard’s torso had been ripped to shreds. Among the bodies of four soldiers lay two men in black. I couldn’t be sure William wasn’t one of them, but they didn’t seem big enough. That could mean he was still out there. Mars placed a gentle hand on my shoul
der and guided me to the others.

  “It’s not a pretty sight,” I warned. “Don’t let your eyes wander.” With a hard look, I faced Ash. She sneered at me. “Don’t give me that tough-girl routine,” I said. “This will give you nightmares for the rest of your life, trust me.” She bit her lip as if she was considering it, and I shook my head. “Suit yourself.”

  I eased around the corner with careful steps. Slipping on blood or guts wasn’t something I was eager to experience. I sensed the others behind me as I moved to the other side of the hall. Halfway down the hall, I heard several curse words. Over my shoulder, I saw the reason. The blood that covered the floor had coated Ash’s wheels and had seeped on to her hands. Her hands looked as if she had clawed at the bodies herself. Mars bent to reach for a body.

  “Stop,” I called out. Shocked, he looked up at me.

  “What?” he said.

  “Don’t touch those,” I said stepping closer.

  “I wasn’t going to touch the blood,” he said defensively. I, however, wouldn’t take the chance.

  “Just don’t,” I said and grabbed the body myself. I pulled at what was left of the man’s collar and pulled him aside so Ash could fit her wheelchair through the gap. Mars shook his head and moved further down the hall. Exchanging glances with Angie, I could tell she was starting to get annoyed. We needed Mars at close proximity if we ran into any zombies. I sprinted ahead and overtook Mars. It seemed useless to argue with him, so I just took the lead.

  As I closed in on the next turn, I could almost sense the presence of zombies. There was barely a sound, but somehow I knew they were there. I pressed my back against the wall and urged the others to do the same. I slid closer. My heart picked up speed with every step I took. Holding my breath, I peeked around the corner. Within the same second, I pulled back. The others looked at me expectantly. I shook my head. No way we would be able to get past the dozen or so zombies that lumbered in that corridor.

  We had to figure out a different route, but which one? On the monitors, they all looked similar to this. I took another peek and saw that some of the zombies had found a dead spot out of the camera’s view. That’s why we had thought this route would be clearer.