by Lori Devoti
After a quick stop in the office for directions to a pay phone, she headed back out onto the street. The desk clerk had directed her to a grocery store three blocks away. He had first offered to loan her his phone, but she hadn’t like the way he’d looked her up and down as he’d gestured to the tiny room behind his desk.
She’d thanked him and hurried out of the office.
She kept up her rapid pace as she made her way to the grocery. The buildings she passed were boarded over and weeds seemed to be choking out the concrete walks. The few people she saw looked harmless enough, but after her time with the zombies she was afraid her ability to judge between safe and dangerous was shot.
How ironic would it be for her to survive three zombie attacks only to be taken out by a common mugger?
With the thought scratching through her mind, she picked up her pace even more. She was almost jogging by the time a building with neon-colored paper signs advertising Canned Goods Four For A Dollar came into view.
Letting out a relieved breath, she shoved her way through the broken automatic doors and scurried to the pay phone.
The buttons and handset both showed the gray-brown residue of other grocery patron’s use. She cringed a little then pressed Zero for the operator.
Collect call for doctor zombie. Will doctor zombie accept the charges? A hysterical giggle bubbled up inside her. An older woman pushing a cart loaded with two cardboard flats of canned goods frowned in disapproval.
With a sigh, Samantha leaned against the wall and waited for her call to go through.
The woman was right. She shouldn’t be laughing. There was absolutely nothing amusing about what she was doing.
On the other end of the line a woman answered, using the cover name of the lab, Lifeline Industries. The operator announced she had a collect call for Dr. Allen, the name Samantha had been given. She had no idea if it was the doctor’s real name; she had no idea if the man she’d seen on the video and spoken to briefly on the phone even was a doctor. However, she suspected the answer to both was no.
In seconds the baritone voice of the doctor echoed into her ear. After accepting the charges, he addressed Samantha. “Good to hear from you.”
As if the call had been her idea. But while it hadn’t, she had wanted to talk to him. She clutched the receiver and prepared herself to make the demands she’d practiced back at the motel. She wanted to talk to Allison; if not, she would tell Caleb everything.
“How is your trip progressing?” he asked.
“Fine,” she replied. She wasn’t sure what else to say, wasn’t sure why the man she hated more than anyone or anything had called her. She suspected the cylinder told him exactly how her trip was progressing, distance wise at least, but if it didn’t, if by some chance he didn’t know where she was, she wasn’t going to tell him.
“Glad to hear that. I was concerned something might have gone wrong. I’d sent some of our patients out to keep an eye on you, for your own safety of course, and I seem to have lost track of them.”
His patients, the zombies.
“That’s too bad,” she answered. He was playing coy; she could, too. Hatred and distaste bubbled like magma inside her. The man talked a good game. He might have convinced her he was some kind of philanthropist if she hadn’t seen the video, if she didn’t know his life-enhancing lab was actually a factory for monsters. But she had seen it and no amount of concerned words or sympathetic noises would make her forget those images.
He was silent for a second. There was a clicking noise. His tongue snapping against his teeth, she realized. She shuddered, imagining him standing in his white lab coat surrounded by whatever tools he used to turn living human beings into flesh-hungry zombies.
“Did you see them?” he asked.
She considered lying, but then remembered how the first zombie at the truck stop had angled his head like a dog listening to a signal. She suspected that signal had been the doctor or one of his minions giving the creature directions, that the doctor knew all too well what had happened to his “patients.”
“I did.” She stared at a phone number that had been gouged out on the side of the phone with a key or other metal object. She wished she had such an object and was next to the doctor right now, gouging out his eyes, his throat, his life.
“And how were they when you saw them last?” he prompted.
Her tone dry, she replied, “They were dead, their brains scrambled.”
Air hissed into the phone. The doctor was not pleased.
For the first time in days, Samantha smiled.
“And Caleb Locke?” he asked.
Samantha stiffened. “What about Caleb?”
“Are you two getting friendly? Not a bad tack for you to take.”
Her stomach clenched. She wanted to scream that it wasn’t like that, that she hadn’t slept with Caleb to trick him, that the feelings he created inside her were the only good things to happen to her since Allison had left for the damned job with this zombie-making maniac.
She squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed the words, tried to swallow her guilt as well, but that was impossible. It burned through her like a gasoline cocktail.
“How did he react this morning?”
Caught up in her misery, his question caught her off guard. “What?” Did the doctor know what they had done last night? Had zombies watched them? Had the cylinder recorded them?
The sick feeling she’d felt before returned. She wobbled on her feet.
“When I notified you, how did he react? Were you able to get away without him knowing?”
“When you…?” The buzzing. He was asking about the buzzing. “Uh, yes. There wasn’t a problem.”
“No problem? He didn’t seem suspicious? Did he hear the signal?”
She hesitated. It felt as though she was betraying Caleb somehow by answering, but then she’d already done that, hadn’t she? “No, he didn’t.”
“He didn’t!” There was no missing the excitement in the doctor’s voice.
And there was no missing that somehow Samantha had just made her previous betrayal all that much worse.
“So, it’s true. This changes everything.”
Samantha didn’t ask what was true; she didn’t have the heart for it, didn’t have the heart for anything. The doctor rambled on, directing her to change their course, to get Caleb to take her to some address in Iowa.
Bile rose in her throat. He was planning a trap. He wanted Caleb, but for what?
Her hand rose of its own accord, reached for the lever that would disconnect the call. Her other instinct—the one that told her to tell Caleb everything—was the right one.
“Allison will be there.”
Inches from the lever, her fingers froze.
“Allison? Is she all right? I want to talk to her. If I can’t talk to her I won’t do it. I won’t do anything. No, that’s wrong. I’ll talk to Caleb, tell him everything I know—that the lab isn’t in Texas at all. That it’s in Wisconsin and you wanted me to lure him away.”
A chill passed through the line. “That would be a very stupid thing to do. You’ve met my patients, but only a few. Do you really think your new friend, Caleb Locke, would stand a chance against ten of them? Twenty? How about fifty or one hundred? I can do that. I can unleash a village on him.”
A village of zombies. A chill passed over Samantha’s skin, bored inside her.
“And what about your old friend Allison? Have you forgotten her? I’ve told her you are working for us. I’d hate to have to tell her I was wrong. She would be so distressed. I doubt she’d ever trust you again. She might even choose to undergo my therapies herself. She has shown an interest in them. So much, that I’ve been considering—”
“No!” Samantha yelled into the phone.
Another grocery store patron, this time a teenage boy shuffling by with his black hoodie all but hiding his face, stopped and stared.
Samantha stared back, bared her teeth.
He scurried o
n. She returned to the phone, her expression and mood grim.
“So, I can plan on your arrival?” the doctor asked.
Samantha’s palms filmed over with sweat. Allison, who had depended on her since childhood or Caleb? There really wasn’t a choice to be made.
“What’s the address?”
She scribbled his reply onto her wrist with a pen that dangled from the phone by a piece of twine.
“Good, then. We will look for you there.”
We? Samantha closed her eyes and tried not to think of what that meant. Then as she sensed he was getting ready to hang up, she remembered what she’d planned on saying to him, demanding of him.
“Wait! Allison. I need to talk to her.”
There was silence and for a second she thought he’d already disconnected the call. Then he said, “Do you?”
She did; she really did. Her knees buckled. She was beaten down, lost. She’d done so many things she’d never imagined doing, gotten so far from the peaceful Zen person Allison had encouraged her to be.
She had failed her friend in that way. It couldn’t be for nothing.
“I do,” she whispered. The soft plea was miles from the barked order she’d imagined giving, from how the words would have sounded from her father’s lips, but it was all she had left.
She could feel the smile on the other end of the phone, slimy and self-satisfied. The bastard knew he had beaten her. She hated him for it, but she hated herself more.
“Well?” Another pause.
Samantha gripped the receiver until her hands ached.
“I think that can be arranged.” He held the phone away from his mouth, or muffled it somehow. Samantha could tell he was talking to someone, but she couldn’t make out his words.
Then a new voice came onto the phone. “Sammie?”
Samantha sagged against the wall. “Allison?” She breathed the name. She hadn’t realized until right now how little hope she’d really had that her friend was still alive…still herself. Yes, she had been forging forward as if she believed it, but that had been an act to keep herself from facing what she had feared was the truth.
“Yes?” Her friend’s voice was colored with confusion.
“Are you…are you…” Alive? A zombie? Samantha didn’t know how to ask the question. “Are you okay?”
There was a pause, like their connection wasn’t quite in synch, then Allison replied, “Of course. I’m fine. How are you?”
Samantha laughed. Relief washed over her, and tears escaped from the corners of her eyes.
“Fine, great.” She didn’t know what to say next. The doctor was listening, she had no doubt of that. Reality struck. Nothing had changed. Even if Allison was all right at this moment in time, it didn’t mean she would stay that way.
“Happy?” the doctor asked.
Samantha’s smile disappeared. “If you hurt her…”
“Hurt her? Why would I do that?” He murmured something and Samantha had the feeling someone was walking away. Allison. Or was she led away? How was the doctor holding her?
“If you make her into one of your patients, I’ll—”
“My patients ask for my services. I give them new life and it doesn’t come cheaply. You think I’d waste my research and time on someone who didn’t beg for my help?” he scoffed.
Allison didn’t buy it. Yes, maybe some of those people had asked for some crazy idea of life after death, but if they did, they’d had no idea what that would mean.
“But then, as I said, Allison has shown an interest.”
Samantha stiffened, but before she could form a reply, he continued.
“Just do your part by bringing Caleb Locke to the address I gave you and I’ll do mine. Allison will be there to meet you. After that it’s up to her whether she goes with you or not. I’m not forcing her.”
Of course not. That would be inhumane. Samantha gritted her teeth.
Again, there was the sound of the doctor preparing to disconnect and again, Samantha stopped him. “Wait.”
“Yes?”
“Caleb. Why do you want him? What are you going to do to him?” She knew better than to ask the question, knew if the doctor gave an innocent answer she wouldn’t believe it, and if he gave a dark one, it would just make trading Caleb for Allison all the more gut-wrenching.
But she had to ask. Some twisted part of her had to hear the doctor’s reply.
“Do to him? My, you do have ugly opinions of us, don’t you? I, Miss Wagner, am a scientist. I have no interest in hurting your self-proclaimed hunter. I simply want to learn from him, to study him. That, my dear, is what I do.”
Then he hung up.
Leaving a new line of questions queued up in Samantha’s head. What the hell did the zombie doctor think to learn from Caleb? Why in the world would he want to study him? And how exactly would he do it?
With questions or a scalpel?
Chapter 11
C aleb had slipped a kid in a hoodie five bucks to spy on Samantha while she was in the store. Now he leaned against the sign-covered window waiting for his recruit to come out with a report.
The once-automatic doors crept open and the kid slouched out. Holding the folded five-dollar bill between two fingers, Caleb gestured for the kid to come closer.
The boy reached for his pay. Caleb jerked it back.
The kid cursed and Caleb lifted a bored brow. “What do you have to tell?”
“She’s on the phone.” He made another move to grab the bill.
He was slow. Even a thirty-year-old zombie could have outsnatched him.
“What’s she saying?”
The kid shoved his hands into his pockets and lifted his shoulders in a disinterested shrug. “Dude, she’s at the pay phone. There’s nothing but a broken gumball machine near her. It’s not like I can load up on jaw breakers—or just stand there staring at her. People around here get jumpy when you do that.”
Caleb flicked the five back toward his wrist, dropped it down his sleeve.
“Hey!” The kid grabbed for the disappearing bill.
Caleb shoved his other hand up under the kid’s hoodie and dug his thumb into the kid’s solar plexus.
“Ever hear stories about the Aztecs?” he murmured.
The kid stared at him, his eyes wide and unsure.
“It’s said they sacrificed people by ripping their still-beating hearts out of their chests. I’ve always wondered if that was true.” He squeezed; the kid gagged.
He released his hold, but only slightly. He kept the kid close enough he could grab him again if necessary. It wasn’t.
“She was all emotional—angry then scared then happy. It was like watching some card commercial on TV.”
Caleb processed that. “What did she say? Any names?”
“Yeah, Dr. something.”
The lab. A chill shot through Caleb. She was talking with someone at the lab.
“A girl’s name, too. Alicia, Alice…something like that.”
“Allison?”
“Yeah, that was it. She seemed happy when she was talking to her.”
Caleb dropped his hold on the kid and stepped away. Then he held out the folded bill. The kid grabbed it and, hood pulled back over his dirty blond hair, he scurried away.
Caleb ignored him.
Allison was alive and well. And Samantha had been speaking with her.
It was all a lie. Targeted at whom? Him?
The zombies, it appeared, had finally turned the tables. The hunter was now the hunted, and the head dog rounding him up was Samantha.
He had never felt more betrayed in his life. But the need for revenge…that was achingly familiar.
The motel room was still empty when Samantha returned. She let out a sigh of relief. She’d worked out a story to tell Caleb if he noticed she was missing, but she knew he’d see through it. Better if he never suspected she had left at all.
As she scrubbed the now-memorized address off of her arm, she worked on how to get Cale
b to the doctor’s new address. She couldn’t just announce a change in direction. She needed a reason for the new route. And at the moment, she couldn’t think of one.
With no other choice except to wait and hope something came to her, she paced around the room.
It took Caleb one trip through the women’s section of the closest department store to nab a full wardrobe for Samantha. He had a feeling she wouldn’t be thrilled with wearing stolen clothing, but then what did or didn’t thrill her was hardly his concern.
His only concern regarding the lying Southern beauty was keeping her alive long enough to figure out what her game was and to use her to draw out whoever was behind the lab.
If there was a lab.
He realized now he didn’t even know if he could trust that.
He only knew he couldn’t trust Samantha.
Samantha stared silently out the windshield. Caleb had returned to the motel with new clothing about an hour after she had gotten back. She had changed and they’d immediately hit the road again.
There had been no discussion as to what had happened between them; there had been no discussion of anything.
It was unsettling.
Samantha tugged at the stiff cotton shirt Caleb had provided. He’d given her matching stiff denim jeans, too.
She crunched when she sat.
She toyed with the idea of undoing one button on the blouse for breathing room. As it was, her breasts felt smashed and uncomfortable. But as her hand drifted to the button, Caleb’s gaze slid toward her.
Suddenly all too aware how he might interpret such a move, she slowly lowered her hand.
She glanced at the GPS on the dash instead. She’d checked the thing earlier and discovered the address the doctor had given her was only a few miles off the highway they were currently traveling. At their current pace, they would pass the turnoff within the hour.
But she had yet to mention the detour and she was running out of time.
Caleb fidgeted in his seat. They had been driving for three hours; they were almost into Missouri. Samantha hadn’t said or done anything to raise his suspicions, but then she really hadn’t done anything at all except twiddle with the damned top button of her shirt.
