Z Plan (Book 3): Homecoming

by Lerma, Mikhail

  “Makes sense,” Damian replied. “This fucker is heavier than he looks.”

  Damian adjusted Cale on his shoulder to better balance his weight.

  “I thought you never missed, man?” he joked.

  “I didn’t,” Connor retorted. “He probably had armor on or something.”

  “I’m kind of glad you missed anyway,” he smiled deviously. “He’s going to regret fucking with us.”

  For once, Connor didn’t feel guilty about Damian torturing someone. Their brown suburban came into view. Connor opened the door to the back seat. Damian threw Cale inside and circled around to the driver’s side.

  “You watch him. I’ll drive,” he said.

  Connor nodded and climbed into the passenger seat. The vehicle puttered a couple of times but finally started. Damian put it in gear and they began to move. The tires threw snow up behind them and the wipers screeched across the windshield. Damian hit play on the vehicle’s CD player and heavy metal music began blaring. Their unconscious prisoner didn’t stir, however, Connor turned the volume knob down. Damian shot an angry look at him, but he was preoccupied with eyeing Cale curiously.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Damian.

  “Nothing,” he responded quickly.

  “You think he’s like you?” Damian inquired as he stared at the road ahead.

  Connor rubbed his arm. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Damian looked at Cale in the mirror. His eye was already swelling up where Damian had hit him. He looked pitiful.

  “He looks like shit. I don’t think he’s going to make it,” he announced.

  “You’re probably right,” Connor submitted.

  The vehicle pulled into a snow covered parking lot outside of a police station. The vehicle slid into a cement parking stop before finally stopping. Both men dismounted the vehicle. The slamming of their doors woke Cale up.

  * * *

  “Get the fuck out!” ordered Damian as he opened the door to the back seat.

  Connor had an arrow ready just incase Cale resisted. Unhappy with the speed in which Cale was carrying out his order, Damian grabbed Cale by the collar and threw him to the ground. He then kicked Cale in the gut.

  “Get up, mother fucker!” he shouted as he pulled Cale to his feet.

  Cale was already disoriented, and Damian shoving him didn’t help. He stumbled and fell to the icy sidewalk.

  “Go!” Damian barked as he kicked him.

  Together, Damian and Connor lifted Cale to his feet and escorted him through the double glass doors and down the halls. The police station displayed clear signs of having been ransacked by the Horsemen. They took him through a door towards the back. The hallway was flanked by doors on the left and iron cages on the right. It was lit by barred windows on the right side.

  “Put him in here,” said Connor as he opened a cell on the left.

  It was a drunk tank. Cale could see the off-white walls and an aluminum bench that served as a bed, before they slammed the door behind him. Cale shivered in the cold, pitch-black room. There was no use calling out to his captors, as it would only most likely speed up his death. He felt his way down the wall and onto the bench.

  “What are you going to do?” asked Zach.

  Cale reached deep into his pocket. He pulled out the Ziploc bag with his iPod inside. They hadn’t bothered to search him. The screen illuminated, revealing the ugly scratch down its center. The battery percentage loomed like a death clock up in the top right corner. Forty-three percent. He opened the pictures menu and looked at his family.

  “I’m going to die,” he replied.

  Chapter 22

  VIRAL

  In the darkness, he had no idea how much time had actually passed by. It could have been a week, a few days, or even just a couple of hours. He could hear the Horsemen talking in the hall. Their voices drew near. The door swung open, what light that filtered in burned Cale’s eyes. Damian’s large figure came into view.

  “Get up!” he ordered.

  Cale clamored to his feet, only to be snatched and dragged out violently. Damian shoved him into the bars of the cell. Cale struck the metal hard and fell to the floor. Damian grabbed his arm and pulled him into one of the cells.

  “How much do you need?” Damian asked Connor, who was standing by the door.

  “Not much,” replied Connor.

  “Good,” he smiled fiendishly.

  He aggressively removed Cale’s coat and threw it aside. Cale could see that Damian had a black gym bag ready. From it, Damian produced a pair of handcuffs.

  “Give me your arms,” he demanded.

  Cale obeyed.

  Damian cuffed both of Cale’s wrists to the bars of the cell. His arms were stretched wide open. Damian went back to his bag. This time he turned around bearing a six inch hunting knife, the kind for skinning animals.

  “Fuck,” thought Cale.

  Cale’s heart thumped inside his chest. This was it. He closed his eyes.

  “No, you keep your fucking eyes open!” shouted Damian as he punched Cale with a left hook.

  Blood sprayed from his mouth. This man struck like a freight train.

  “Open your eyes!” he screamed.

  Cale bobbed his head in an effort to comply. He coughed up blood as a verbal response.

  “Look up!”

  Damian hit him again. Weakly, Cale looked up. His eye was already beginning to swell shut. Blood seeped down his face and from his mouth. Damian used the knife to cut away Cale’s shirt. He was the thinnest he’d ever been. Each intercostal space was clearly visible with every breath he took. Damian sat the edge of his blade on Cale’s collar bone. He gently caressed his skin with the cold piece of steel.

  “He doesn’t need much,” he smiled before shallowly pushing the knife into Cale’s chest.

  He was too weak to cry out. Damian avoided cutting deep. He wanted to take his time bleeding him dry.

  “Give me your slide,” he said to Connor.

  * * *

  Connor handed him a small glass rectangle. Damian scraped it up Cale’s bloodied torso. Once the slide was stained, he handed it back to Connor, who was wearing blue nitrile gloves. Connor prepared it as he walked back to the main area of the station.

  “I’ll be there in a second,” Damian called after him.

  Connor approached the modified microscope he’d set up. Through the open door he could hear Damian beating the man. Flesh hitting flesh. The man was tougher than he looked. Connor had never seen one of Damian’s subjects not beg for mercy. Not that it’d matter. Damian would break him. Then he’d kill him.

  Connor sat the slide under the lens and flipped the device on. It was powered by a series of batteries they’d rigged to a power converter and a wall socket. Carefully, he brought the contents of the slide into focus. He cycled to the most powerful magnification he could and fine tuned the image. It wasn’t an ideal sample but he made the best of what he had. He could make out tiny red disks and an occasional clear spot. Connor panned the slide around at a snail’s pace until he found what he was looking for. Tiny black dots, much smaller than the red disks, appeared intermittently. Connor had seen these micro-organisms before with a much more powerful microscope. They’d resembled tiny hexagons that possessed a cell wall, like plants. But exhibited behaviors similar to a virus. Connor had called his discovery the Cadō virus.

  When introduced into a host, it would aggressively break down healthy domestic cells and tissues for nutrients, and cause severe necrosis. It also had the ability to move itself through its host without the aid of the circulatory system. The virus could bond with its sister cells and essentially “power through” the host body. Any immune response triggered would immediately be countered. It mimicked a variety of other viruses and tricked the immune system into attacking decoy cells. These decoy cells acted as micro-suicide bombers. When attacked they’d expel their digestive contents, then Cadō would break them down and convert them into more virus cells.

&nbs
p; Two things made this virus special. First, it didn’t undergo any known form of mitosis. It would reproduce by assimilating host cells that had been broken down. Like zombies on a microscopic level. Each healthy cell would fracture into smaller pieces, develop a cell wall, and join the attack on the host. Secondly, it somehow preserved the pineal gland and the hypothalamus. Infected subjects were by all logic dead, but the activation of these parts somehow allowed them to remain animate. Other areas of the brain remained slightly active, however, no others had the protection of the Cadō virus. The infected were locked into a fight and hunger mode.

  Connor looked at the Cadō cells.

  “Did you find it?” asked Damian, who was wiping his bloody fists off with the Cale’s torn shirt.

  “Yeah,” he replied.

  “So is he like you?” he questioned further.

  “Come look,” ushered Connor as he stepped out of the way.

  Damian peered into the binocular sights.

  “This micro-cellular shit is all you, man. What am I looking at?” inquired Damian.

  “That’s it right there. The black dots,” explained Connor.

  “Yeah, so he is like you,” he said.

  “No,” Connor said, sounding unsure. “This is weird.”

  “Is he infected or not?” asked Damian.

  “He was,” Connor answered.

  “How is that not like you? And spare me all that scientific bullshit.”

  “Cadō is still present in him, but it’s—” he fought to pull the right words from his brain. “It’s dead.”

  “So he’s immune?” Damian speculated.

  “No, but it’s like he’s been inoculated or something,” he said.

  “Like a booster shot?” questioned Damian.

  “Yeah. You see, I’m immune. I’m just a carrier. My body holds the virus at bay, but his somehow killed it,” lectured Connor.

  “I don’t’ fucking see how that’s any different,” replied Damian angrily.

  “My immune system doesn’t react to it, and it doesn’t react to me, like I’m not a target. It just hangs out. His reacted, and—” he paused again to find the right words. “Neutralized it.”

  “So if he got bitten he’d be fine,” deduced Damian.

  “No. If enough of the virus becomes present it would overwhelm his immune system and it would kill him,” he explained.

  “Fucker is sick now. He looks like he’s going to die,” Damian stated.

  “That’s just his body fighting it. If we gave him antibiotics, he’d most likely pull through,” he explained.

  “Is he infectious, like you?” asked Damian.

  “He’s harmless,” announced Connor. “Apparently the levels of infection in my blood aren’t enough to kill him.”

  “Guess you’re gonna have to find a more potent source to tip your arrows with,” Damian chuckled.

  Connor resumed looking at the specimen under the microscope. Damian watched him for awhile before speaking again.

  “Maybe we should give him some meds then,” he said.

  Connor was surprised. Damian had been adamant about his desire to kill this man slow. And this was the perfect opportunity. If it were allowed to continue he’d die an extremely painful and agonizing death. Exactly what Damian wanted.

  “Why?” asked Connor.

  “You said it yourself,” he replied with a smug grin. “It’s going to be a long winter, and I don’t want to get bored.”

  Connor chuckled and smirked. The poor bastard in the other room was going to be begging for an arrow within a week.

  Chapter 23

  ONE HORSE TWO RIDERS

  Cale stared down into the aluminum basin. He almost had himself convinced that it could be a wash sink. His mouth was unbearably dry, and it had been days since the Horsemen had paid him a visit. Week after week, the one called Damian beat and tortured him. He had cuts all over his body, all in different phases of healing. Some fresh, others scarred, many in between. Dark bruises blemished his skin. He was positive he had a broken rib or two. “Pestilence” only came in to give him a piece of stale bread and a small cup of water every couple of days. Cale could feel how grainy the water was when he drank it, but he didn’t care. So what if they were drugging him? Or worse. He was dead either way.

  “Just like last time,” said Zach from the other cell. “Don’t over think it. Just do it,” he encouraged.

  Cale hadn’t spoken a single word since his abduction. Quietly he’d take his beatings. This drove Damian crazy, especially when he was trying to interrogate Cale. They still hadn’t even learned his name.

  “It’s survival buddy,” Zach reasoned.

  Cale dipped his hands into the toilet bowl and used them to cup water to his mouth. The water tasted horrible. A brown ring of scum encrusted the bottom where waste would be flushed away. He closed his eyes and forced the image from his mind as he continued to drink. Once he had had enough he crawled back to his corner and sobbed silently. Cale felt shame for the desperation of his actions. The room was dark and cold. Damian had taken all of his clothes except his boxers. He didn’t want his plaything to commit suicide. Cale was reluctant to admit his thoughts had gone to that dark place. He’d devised a plan to use his coat to somehow hang himself, but changed his mind. Damian only caught him holding his coat with a slipknot tied in the sleeve.

  “It’s okay buddy. You’re going to get out of here,” Zach tried to cheer him up.

  Cale heard two car doors slam outside. He jumped up and looked out his small window. Snow blocked most of his view, but he could see that the Horsemen were back. Cale cowered in his corner like a scared child. Damian always brought him back a “gift.”

  A moment later the door kicked in. Damian strolled in whistling the theme song of M*A*S*H. He carried Cale’s backpack, rifle, and Zach’s knife. He dropped all the items and pulled Zach’s tan notebook from his back pocket. Damian flipped through its pages as if he were searching for something specific.

  “Here it is!” he declared after looking for a couple of minutes. “‘Jo, If you’re reading this, then I didn’t make it home.’ Because I’m a fucking cunt,” Damian added. “‘I don’t know how I died…’ Uh, I fucking killed you.” He searched for where he’d left off. “‘…but know that I was thinking of you when I did. I’ve been sitting here all day, staring at this piece of paper. Trying to figure out what to say. I told myself I wasn’t going to write one of these, but I saw Cale working on one the other day. I decided I’d rather be safe than sorry. I want you to know I love you so much. That day in Spanish class was the best day of my life. I wanted to ask you to marry me right then and there.’ Isn’t that fucking sweet,” scoffed Damian.

  “‘Every day I wake up in this hellhole, I regret fighting with you before I left. You know, the fight we had about having kids. I know I said I wanted to wait, but really I just didn’t want to leave you alone while you were pregnant. I wanted to be there for you and with you. And again if you’re reading this, then I’ll never have the chance at being a dad. I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that. Just know I didn’t mean it, and nothing would have thrilled me more than to start a family with you. Those are little faces neither of us will get to see now. I’m so sorry honey.’ You’re a fucking dick, Zach,” he stated before reading on.

  “‘Somehow while I sit here all I can think of is how I should have listened to you more. We should have gotten married sooner; we should have started having kids sooner too. I imagine you sitting at my funeral surrounded by family but alone. I feel alone without you. Like I’m not even an entire person. Does that make sense? I don’t want to be corny like Tom Cruise in that movie, but you are my other half. The good half. You know me better than I know myself.’ You complete me? Fucking really faggot?” Damian sneered.

  “‘I wish I’d have told you that I love you more often. I wish that I’d held you longer and kissed you deeper.’ And fucked you harder,” laughed Damian. “I pray that you’ll never have to read
this. I hope to God I make it home to see you, to spend my life with you. And to cherish every moment. I love you, Jo, and I always will. I’ll be waiting for you in Heaven. Love, Zach.’”

  Damian closed the notebook and smiled.

  “Well, Zach,” he began. “While you’re waiting in Heaven, I’m going to be giving Jo the best dick she’s ever had. I’m going to fuck her so good that she won’t even remember your name. Then when I’m done, I’m going to slit her fucking throat,” he laughed. “Hell, I might even fuck her a couple more times after that!”

  He waited to see Cale’s reaction, but when he didn’t express one, Damian became angry. He fumbled the keys to Cale’s cell door in a blind rage. Finally, he was able to open it. The metal bars slammed loudly as he barged through. Damian began savagely beating Cale. First, just punching him, but eventually graduating to kicking him as well.

  “Say! Something! You! Fuck!” Damian shouted between blows. “Not! So fucking! Cocky! Without! Your! Rifle! Huh?”

  The last impact knocked Cale out. Damian hated when this happened.

  “Fuck!” he screamed, before leaving the cell and closing the cage behind him.

  “Unconscious again?” asked Connor.

  Damian ignored him and put on his heavy coat.

  “Where are you going?” Connor inquired.

  “I’m gonna go find that piece of fucking trailer trash that got away in Princeton!” he yelled.

  “We don’t know where that kid went. That was over four weeks ago,” argued Connor.

  “That kid is still in the area!” he exclaimed. “I can feel it in my balls.”

  “Right, because your balls have that ability,” mumbled Connor.

  “What?” Damian snapped.

  “Nothing. I said drive safe,” he replied.

  Damian stormed out and jumped into his truck. The engine roared as he departed down the snowy road. Connor opened a clear orange bottle and tapped two pills into a small bowl, then used a blunt tool to grind them up into a coarse powder. He emptied the contents into a small bottle of water, and shook it after fastening the cap.