Douglas waited with the others. They’d pulled all the way to the rear of the parking lot. I studied his location, looked back along the entryway and shook my head. Fucking amateur hour. If someone turned in here they’d be seen immediately.
I moved along the line of rooms, doing my little inspection routine, and was met with more of the same. I finally met Douglas near the SUV.
“This place is good. We have a small element here who keep an eye on things and report back to us. They rotate in and out, see, we’re not that dumb.”
“You have at least twenty units here. Each one has an open door. A Z can wander in and decide that a room looks nice for the night, or whatever the fuck these things have on whatever is left of their minds.
"You’ve parked at the very rear of the place, meaning if we were overrun you’d have a hell of a time navigating through a hundred zombies. This is not smart. The church, that was smart. Small and easy to overlook, and yet look what happened to your crew,” I said.
“Hey man, we’ve been doing this for a while, we know how to survive,” Douglas protested.
Christy jumped down from the back of the SUV. She’d tucked her little revolver into the waistband of her pants. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her hair was an unkempt mass. She looked about as tired as I felt.
Diane glided around the vehicle and joined us, but didn’t say a word. She kept her eyes roving over the rooms.
“Like I said, you don’t know what you’re doing. Since I joined you I’ve seen you lose three people--I’m counting the men at the church. Then Steve got killed, and you continue to make mistakes. Park that SUV near the gate with the hood facing the road. We get in a scrape and it’s going to be a mother to escape.”
“I told you, we have men here.”
“Yeah? Where are they?”
“Front office. They waved when we got here.”
I took the Springfield out of its holster.
###
17:15 hours approximate
Location: Somewhere near Vista, CA
The 9mm felt good in my hand. Thanks a lot, Joel Kelly, for making me feel like I’m naked if I don’t have a piece ready--or as Douglas put it, ‘packing heat’. From the way the weapon dragged at my limb, I knew I was at least close to having a full load. Another tip from my former companion.
“What’s wrong?” Douglas asked.
Diane didn’t wait, and also drew her weapon. She double-checked her handgun by sliding the chamber back, then nodded at me and moved away to check corners.
“Where’s your friend?” I asked.
“I’m sure he’s fine. We have a pair here: nice couple named Maggie--or Mags as she likes to be called--and a burly guy named Chuck. He’s the one with the biker mustache. We met them a few weeks ago, and they joined us and agreed to rotate to this checkpoint for a …” Douglas trailed off as I walked off.
The office sat a good seventy-five feet away, but on the opposite side of the rooms I’d already inspected. I moved along the open air hallway, taking a peek in each room as I passed. Christy had my back, and Diane followed her. Douglas stood in the middle of the parking lot with his clueless dick in his hand.
Maybe everything was okay, as he expected, I thought. Maybe I’d turned into a paranoid asshole and needed to relax my guard. Then the voice of Joel Kelly spoke up in the back of my mind and reminded me that I needed to be vigilant no matter the situation.
The office's side door was shut, and the curtains were drawn. I tried to peer into the darkness through the crack between the cover and the glass, but I couldn’t see a damn thing in the murk.
“Mags, Chuck, we’re here,” Douglas called.
Jesus fucking Christ, just call for all the shufflers in the area to show their faces.
I waved my hand at him to shut the hell up. He shrugged and started taking things out of the SUV.
I gently tried the doorknob, but it was locked. Something responded to my exploration inside the office. Whoever was in there wasn’t trying to hide. Hopefully the face of one of his companions would appear and grant me a whole lot of relief. We shifted around to the front of the office. The curtains here were also drawn, but there was a small gap allowing me to see that a figure lurked in the room near the front double glass doors.
“Christy,” I whispered. “Can you sneak under the window and try to get a look inside before we announce ourselves?”
“On it,” she said.
Didn’t feel right about sending her, but she was less than half my size and I could cover her.
Christy ducked and slid along the sidewalk on her butt. When she was under the window she got on all fours and stretched so she could get an eyeful of the office. She peered inside for a few seconds, then looked up and gasped. She backed up and stood, wiping down her hands and knees.
“There’s a guy standing there. He’s big and has a beard.”
“Phew. I’m becoming a paranoid jerk. Must be tired,” I said.
Diane moved around me and went to the door.
“Hey Chuck, why are you so quiet in there?” she asked and opened the door.
I took a few relieved steps, the kind where tension drains out of your body and your anxiety slows enough so your heart doesn’t feel like it’s loud enough to be heard for a block.
Diane had a funny look on her face, like she was trying to remember something.
Chuck’s body fell out onto the pavement in a heap. Part of his back had been ripped out, exposing shattered vertebrae. I lifted my handgun, but the newly-dead Chuck was quick and got a hand on Diane’s ankle.
She kicked free and backed away. Her gun came up fast and she put a bullet in her friend’s head.
Then the thing leapt out of the door. It was fast and mean. Green eyes glowed with malevolence as it sailed past me. I turned to fire, but Diane was right in the middle of my line of sight.
Christy dashed around me and aimed her weapon around my waist.
Diane had good reflexes. She ducked and avoided being snagged by the shuffler. The thing landed on all fours and went for her.
I dove in front of Diane, and managed to knock the bastard down. He flailed away from me, but not before managing to get in a glancing blow that made me see stars.
Christy came in firing. She shot the shuffler, only catching him in the upper arm. He was quick, and for all of Christy’s expertise with her little gun, it’s never easy to hit a moving target, especially when there are people in the possible line of fire.
The green-eyed howler skittered away like a wounded animal and curled up around the damage. Its leg kicked at the ground as it tried to get away, but we must have hit him in the spine, because his other leg didn’t twitch.
I rolled to the side and with my head swimming, tried to get off a shot.
A female Z stumbled out of the building and hit Diane. She staggered, spun once, and struck the woman in the face with the pistol. She crumpled to the ground.
I shook my head as the downed shuffler swam into view. The problem was that I was seeing two of them, and wasn’t sure where to aim. All I knew was that I wanted to put a bullet in its head.
Douglas was a surprise. He dashed past me with a weapon in hand. He leaned over and did something to the shuffler, something that made it twitch and howl in pain. He hit it again and the shuffler’s legs kicked.
“Move, I’ve got a shot,” I said.
Douglas turned and put his foot on my wrist so I couldn’t even lift the gun.
Diane turned her gun on the shuffler, but she didn’t fire.
“The fuck?” I said.
“Just keep your head on, partner,” Douglas said.
He leaned over and took my handgun.
Christy lifted her revolver and pointed it at Douglas.
“Let him go,” she said.
“Peace, please. Let me explain,” Douglas said, lifting his hand with his fingers extended.
“It’s okay, Christy, don’t do anything,” I said, all too aware that she’d fired two o
f the three rounds in her revolver.
“Thank you. Now just give me a minute and I promise all will be clear very soon, okay?” Douglas said, his voice dripping with something I’m sure he thought was reassurance.
All I felt was betrayed.
He slipped my handgun into his waistband and offered me a hand up. I took it, not as a sign of truce, but because I felt dizzy and wanted to puke up my lunch, and that would have been a shame, because I’d just eaten the first real meal I’d had in days.
Diane extracted a walkie-talkie-looking device and triggered a switch in a pattern of short and long presses. She listened quietly until a code was returned.
Back on my feet, I did a quick inspection of my wounds. Another knot on my forehead and a scratch across my cheek. My hands hurt from hitting the ground and my left knee rang like a son of a bitch.
Douglas smiled at me then leaned over and hit the shuffler again. I realized then what he was up to. He had a Taser of some kind, and he was using it with great glee on the creature at our feet.
This guy might actually grow on me.
“I’m next,” I snarled. “I want to zap him until his eyes pop out.”
The shuffler was dressed in a pair of jeans that were covered in dirt and blood. He wore the remains of a tank top that revealed wounds on his abdomen. His face was in pretty good shape except for his nose, which was a mangled mess. I’d seen broken noses before they were reset; this wound was similar.
“We have one. We’re at checkpoint six dot two. Send immediate evac,” Diane spoke into her handheld device.
“I apologize for this whole mess, friends,” Douglas said. “See, we have these checkpoints set up for a reason, and it’s not just to keep us informed on activities around the base. We’ve been laying traps for one of these for a week now. Thanks to you we have one.”
“You motherfucker. You were planning to use us as bait,” I said.
“Not really, you did that yourself. I do thank you again.”
“You can’t hold one of these things, you can’t reason with them. They’re animals. Kill it and get it over with,” I said.
Now that it was curled up in pain, the creature looked very little like a threat.
Diane rushed off to the SUV, opened the truck, and dug around for her backpack.
“We need one, need to study it. They’re special you see, these ghouls. They have a weird sense about them and we need to figure out what it is if we hope to defeat them,” Douglas said, trying to sound reassuring.
“I took to calling them shufflers a few months ago because they shuffle around on the ground like freaky crabs. But things have changed since then. They used to be stronger and faster than your garden-variety Z. But they’ve gotten smarter. I saw one call for backup once, and within moments we were surrounded by the dead. We nearly died. They're the real danger, man, and they need to be eradicated.”
Diane arrived and dropped her backpack. She unzipped the bag and took out a hooded mask like something from a BDSM collection, wads of rags, and rope. Douglas placed thick leather gloves on his hand and grabbed the cloth. He leaned over and shocked the shuffler again. When it opened its mouth to scream, Douglas jammed a wad into the creature's mouth.
Diane moved in and strapped a piece of thick tape over the shuffler’s mouth while Douglas played out the rope. He wrapped it around the creature's wrists and tied them together.
I took a seat and watched as they trussed the shuffler up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
While I admired the way they secured their target, I also felt a great deal of unease. Shufflers had a strange, almost telepathic way to control or at least guide the hordes. If it called to them, I worried we’d be overrun in minutes.
Douglas sat back on his knees and regarded his handy work.
“We’ve been trying to get one of these for a while. That’s how we came under fire the other day from Bright Star. We had a pair on the run, with fifteen of our guys in pursuit. The military guys saw us and started shooting. We lost a number of men during the fight. Men we needed. That’s one of the reasons you’re still here and not left behind. We need guys who know how to fight. We need them badly,” Douglas said.
“You can go fuck yourself, Douglas,” I said. “You put us in harm's way. Not only that, but you’ve lost even more men, thanks to these stupid checkpoints.”
“I apologized. You don’t like what we’re doing, you can just go about your business and say thanks for the food. But one thing you need to understand about our little bases. We left men out here so they could apprise us of possible hordes or shufflers. The green-eyed’s have indeed gotten very smart, as you have observed, and they turned the tables on us, ambushing multiple locations. The men and women we lost were good people and friends. That’s why finally capturing one of the ghouls is so bittersweet.”
“So, research, eh? Got a mad scientist lab stashed away somewhere?”
“Listen, Jackson. We have a location that is safe and secure. It’s well-guarded, and we have food and water. The goods won’t last forever, but we are very selective with who we allow in. You’re in, as far as I’m concerned. You and the girl. But you fuck up and you’re out. I’m just laying it out there.”
“He’s not kidding, Jackson. We are very secure. You will not find a better location, unless it’s in unoccupied land,” Diane interjected.
She looked frazzled from the fight. Diane pushed her dark hair back into place and dropped her piece into its holster.
“I’m not sold. You left us hanging out to dry. Do you do that to everyone in your little palace?”
“It’s no palace, but it’s practically impregnable.”
“Bullshit. No such place exists from what I’ve seen,” I scoffed.
“Your choice, but you need to decide. We’re going there now,” he said.
I looked at Christy. She shrugged.
Douglas and Diane dragged the trussed-up shuffler to the Escalade, being none-too-gentle with him. Diane removed a tarp from the back of the SUV and laid it out on the ground. Douglas rolled the ghoul onto the plastic and they wrapped him up. The pair then spent several minutes struggling to get the body inside the car.
I would have helped, but I had been squid, and one thing I was good at was looking elsewhere when heavy work was taking place.
Frosty didn’t care for the shuffler being in the back of the vehicle. I had to wrestle her onto the floor, because she snarled and kept leaping at the back seat. Dog wanted a piece of the ghoul, just like me.
“What do you think?” I asked Christy.
“I think we should check it out. I’m tired of being scared all the time,” Christy said.
She leaned over and tried to reassure Frosty with a few pats to the head, but the dog was still freaked out.
If I was alone, I could just wander off now. Or I could just shoot these two and take their car and goods. I’d probably get away from the city, maybe head to the desert and see if it was Z-free. But I wasn’t exactly the kill possible companions guy. I was more of the team player with a smart mouth. But the idea stuck with me, for some reason. Was I really capable of doing something like that?
“I don’t trust them,” I said.
“You don’t trust anyone except Joel and Anna, and they aren’t here anymore,” she said. “I wonder how Roz is doing.”
I was trying to avoid thinking about our friends, and wondering about Roz’s fate wasn’t helping. We’d lost her when the truck the Bright Star guys were driving had taken off. Joel Kelly had looked like he’d wanted to chase them down.
After we'd gotten shot at, attacked in a shitty apartment complex, and somehow managed to survive, Joel and Anna had been gone when we’d managed to escape the building. Everyone had been gone.
During the firefight we’d shot at and been shot at by the guys who we were now about to ally with. How was that going to work?
“If we go, we can’t ever mention Bright Star or our association with them--and by that I mean Anna.”
>
“I know, Jackson. I’m not dumb.”
“Never said you were. So I guess we’ll go have a hot meal and maybe get cleaned up. If this place is bad news we’ll move along.”
“Think they’ll let us?”
“Only one way to find out. Besides, I was trained by super-soldier Joel Kelly. If I can’t bust us out, I can probably bullshit us out.”
Christy smiled and clapped me on the upper arm. “That’s the spirit.”
35 – Hope in Sight
18:00 hours approximate
Location: Somewhere near Vista, CA
Unlike the guy who had presented himself to us earlier in the day, Douglas was suddenly sure of himself. He took to roads and quickly found a path through the myriad wrecks, abandoned cars, and bodies left to rot.
We came to an intersection between a grocery store and a small strip mall made up of half a dozen Spanish sporting signs. Two of the stores had been burned out by fire, but that wasn’t what made me gasp.
A row of bodies lay on the ground. Each had been shot in the head, execution-style. Men, women, children--none had been spared a bullet. I shuddered, and was glad that Douglas sped on.
Frosty lay under Christy’s feet and didn’t make a sound. She occasionally lifted her nose to nudge Christy or me, but otherwise she was the same chilled-out dog she’d been since San Diego.
After a fifteen-minute ride in which we all sat in discomfort due to what we’d just seen, we drove past a Popeye’s chicken. My first thought was that I’d pretty much kill for a bag of fried chicken. I’d settle for In-N-Out burger while I was dreaming. Hell, serve me up a big steak and baked potato from some chain restaurant like Sizzler for all I care. I just wanted something hot, really bad for me, and tasty.
That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. Everything we came across had been looted five times over. There wouldn’t even be a package of saltines laying around.
We came in view of a massive enclosure.
I couldn’t help it: I smiled.
Reavers (Z-Risen Series Book 4) Page 5
