by JJ Zep
“Shut the fuck up, Pete,” Buck said. He placed his arm in the ready position.
Ruby lifted the cushion from the chair, placed it on the table and then sat. She pulled Pearl in close to her. “This will all be over soon kiddo,” she whispered into Pearl’s ear. Then she moved the cushion into place, positioned her elbow on it and slapped her palm into Bucky’s. Even with the extra elevation that the cushion offered, it was a stretch. His hand was sweaty, his aroma at close quarters, eye-watering. Drool ran from the corner of his mouth as he regarded her with startlingly blue eyes.
“You’re real pretty,” he said speaking through a mouthful of rotted teeth, at the same time applying pressure on her arm.
“Why thank you, Bucky.” Ruby smiled and pushed back.
“I ain’t begun wrassling yet, case you was wonderin’.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
“One more part of the deal to be gotten done yet.”
Now he definitely was pressing. Ruby met his challenge and offered a smile.
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“I win and you spend tonight in my bed,” Bucky grinned.
“Done,” Ruby said immediately. She pushed down. It was over in two seconds.
eleven
Chris looked across the corridor to the closed door of the ER. Doc Whitfield had been in there with Jojo for what seemed like an hour. Despite Chris’ protestations Whitfield had banned him from the room, saying that he’d only get in the way. He was probably right. But that didn’t make it any easier, waiting out here, not knowing. Sugar, lying at Chris’ feet, emitted a sorrowful sigh, as though she understood exactly what he was going through. He reached down and ruffled the fur between her ears. He was glad of the wolf’s company. He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt so alone, so utterly helpless.
In the time since they’d wheeled Jojo into the ER, he’d dispatched Joe to check on Hooley and Charlie to bring Kelly to the hospital. Then he’d paced the silent halls, sat a while, then paced some more. He'd even popped his head into the ward where Clay Dumfries was sleeping off the ass kicking Hooley had given him. Now he was back to sitting on the bench, anxious for word.
The sound of an approaching vehicle drew his attention. He got up from the seat and walked along the short passage and across the foyer, just in time to see his Jeep slide to a stop. Immediately, the passenger doors flew open and Kelly and Ferret were racing each other across the lot.
Chris met them as they entered the hospital foyer. Kelly rushed to his arms, while Ferret stopped a foot away, her face a caricature of grief. Chris pulled her into an embrace and the three of them stood clinging to each other. “He’s going to be okay,” he told them. He just wished he were as certain as he was trying to sound.
Kelly pulled away from him, blotted at her eyes, tried to compose herself.
“Has Shane said anything?”
“Nothing yet,” Chris said. “He’ll do what’s needed, Kel. Jojo’s in good hands.”
“But Shane’s not even a doctor,” Kelly said. Tears spilled over and Chris wiped them away with his fingers, then folded her into an embrace again.
“I’m sorry,” Kelly sobbed. “That sounded ungrateful.”
It was true, though. Shane Whitfield was too young to have received any formal medical training. There was no diploma decorating his wall. His medical expertise had come from his father, Ralph, a cranky old army vet who’d died in a boating accident the previous summer. Still, Ralph Whitfield had been an experienced combat medic. And he'd passed that knowledge on to his son. Chris said as much to Kelly and it seemed to calm her.
“Nothing we can do but sit and wait and pray, Kel.”
He led her and Ferret to the row of benches arrayed outside the ER, then he called Charlie and Wackjob aside.
“You boys did well bringing Jojo back, but what part of ‘don’t leave town’ didn’t you understand.”
“I had to Dad,” Charlie said. “I couldn’t leave him out there. If we hadn’t found him –”
“You got lucky. You could just as easily have gotten yourself killed.”
Charlie said nothing, looked through the glass windows towards the lot. Chris felt a sudden rush of love, of pride. Charlie sometimes did things without thinking them through, but he was a good kid. Scrap that, he was a good man, and capable. Still, what Chris had said had needed saying. He didn’t want Charlie taking unnecessary risks.
“You did good getting him here,” he said.
“Is he going to pull through, Mr. Collins?” Wackjob asked.
“He will,” Chris said emphatically.
There was a flurry of movement behind them. Chris turned towards the ER, where a grim-faced Shane Whitfield had just emerged. Kelly and Ferret were already on their feet, rushing towards him. Chris did the same.
“Is he okay?” Kelly asked. “Is he –?”
“He’s stable,” Shane said, “That’s the best I can tell you. I’ve set his arm and dealt with the various cuts and bruises. He’s on a saline drip and I’ve given him some morphine, but he’s still unconscious.”
“Is he going to be okay? Can we see him?”
“In answer to the first question, we just don’t know. In answer to the second, yes, in a minute, but we need to talk first.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Ferret said and started sobbing. Charlie went to comfort her.
“It is bad,” Shane admitted. “But not as bad as it might have been. The blow caught him behind the temple and was partially cushioned by his forearm. Half an inch forward and it would have killed him.”
“Is he going to live?” Kelly asked. Tears welled over and chased each other down her cheeks. Chris drew her towards him, held her as she began sobbing.
“I can’t give you a definite answer on that, Mrs. Collins, only that I’ll do whatever I can to see that he does. Jojo has suffered a cerebral contusion to the left hemisphere. What that means is that the brain tissue has been severely bruised and that there’s some bleeding into the brain cavity. Now I know that sounds bad, but all it means is that some small arteries have ruptured. Quite often these things repair themselves with time and rest.”
“Quite often,” Chris said. “But not always?”
“The real danger is that the bleeding might not stop. If that happens, the intracranial pressure will increase until the brain is forced against the inside of the skull cavity. In that scenario, Jojo won’t survive without surgery.”
“Oh God,” Kelly sobbed into Chris’ shoulder, while Ferret cried even harder.
“Can you do the surgery, if it comes to it?” Chris dreaded the answer, but the question had to be asked.
Shane gulped, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He looked suddenly very young and vulnerable, like a kid playing doctor. “I’ve never done anything like that before Mr. Collins.”
“Can you do it?”
“I can try. That’s the best I can tell you.”
“That’s all I can ask of you.”
twelve
“You fight good, girlfriend.”
Ruby had spent the last twenty minutes trying to track down the woman in the blue kimono. Now she appeared out of the crowd, looking the worse for wear. “That asshole Bucky been ruling the roost for three months and you take him like that.” She snapped her fingers and gave a little giggle. Ruby caught a faint whiff of urine and blood from the woman. Tripped out on PCP.
“Forget about that. I’ve got the money. Where’s this ride you were talking about?”
The woman scowled. “No need you be rude. I try to help you.” In her inebriated state, her ability to form proper sentences appeared diminished.
“And I appreciate the help. Now, are you going to point me in the right direction or do I have to look elsewhere?”
The woman seemed to consider her response. “You follow,” she said, turning and forcing her way into the crowd.
Bob’s Bar was doing good business today. If anything, the crowd had thicken
ed up since Ruby had arrived. She pushed off after the woman, holding Pearl in front of her to shield her from the worst of the buffeting. A time or two she lost sight of the woman before picking up a flash of blue from her kimono among the grimy garb of the other patrons. Eventually Ruby pushed through into an alcove at the back of the room. The kimono girl was waiting, her hand drawing back a red velvet curtain that led into a dimly lit passageway. “Come, come,” she said.
Ruby paused a moment, peered into the half-light. The sounds coming from within, a discordance of grunts and groans and obscenities told her exactly what this place was. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take Pearl in there.
“You come,” kimono girl prompted.
Ruby had a decision to make. She wanted to be away from here as fast as possible. Right now this woman was the only game in town. On the other hand, she didn’t want to expose Pearl to what was behind that curtain. There might be other rides and there might not be, she decided. Either way, she wasn’t taking Pearl in there.
“Forget it,” she said.
“You come,” the woman insisted.
“I’d take little Mae’s advice if I were you,” a familiar voice said behind Ruby. “The alternative ain’t real attractive.”
Ruby started to turn and felt the sharp point of a blade shoved up against her spine. “You won’t get half turned before I slice through you. After that I’ll hand over your little brat to Bucky to break in. You want that?”
Ruby did a quick calculation of the odds. The man with the knife to her back was Pete, Bucky’s manager. Could she move fast enough to take him before he made good on his threat? Yes, but not while she was holding onto Pearl’s hand. And she wasn’t prepared to let the little girl go. Who knew what might happen to her in the melee that followed.
“You want that,” Pete prompted, probing with the knife, breaking the skin.
“No, I don’t want that,” Ruby said.
“Pity,” Pete said. “Cause I was hoping you’d try me. Now, I need you to be a good girl and slip your free hand behind your back real easy like.”
Ruby did as she was told and felt a cuff fixed to her wrist.
“Now the other.”
“No,” Ruby said.
“No? No, ain’t a word that exists when you’re talking to me, bitch.” Ruby heard a weapon cocked behind her. “Now Bucky ain’t much of a shot but at this distance he’s got enough going on to spatter the brat’s brains all over the ceiling. You still want to tell me no?”
The odds were against her and Ruby knew it. Choose your battles, was a piece of advice her father had always given her. This was one she couldn’t win.
“You touch one hair on my little girl’s head,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Pete said, “And you’ll chop me into cubed beef and feed me to the Z’s. Just give me your fucking hand.”
Ruby reluctantly released her grip on Pearl. “It’s okay sugar,” she said as the little girl clung to her. “It will all be okay.”
“Yeah, Pearl,” Pete mocked. “It will all be okay.”
He stepped in front of Ruby, looked her up and down. “You took a Benjamin from me,” he sneered. “That will turn out to be the hardest hundred bucks you ever made.”
thirteen
John Messenger strode purposefully along the stretch of highway, his long leather coat slapping at his thighs. It was mid-morning and he’d been walking since well before first light. Yet he felt no tiredness, no ache in his muscles nor thirst in his throat. Such things were of no concern to a god.
He allowed that idea to rest a moment on his brain, weighed and measured it.
God. Superior Being. Supreme Entity.
Those concepts sat well with him. Who but a god could wield the kind of power he now commanded? Who?
His mind drifted back to Cincinnati, Ohio, to his naïve former self who had terrorized that city. How he’d loved the fear he’d sown then, the lurid newspaper headlines, the halfwits sent scrambling for the gun store, the hardware store, the dog pound. The mayor calling in the State Police, the Staties calling in the FBI, the celebrity profiler they’d sent in to catch him. He recalled the pile of psychobabble crap that idiot had sprouted, describing him as someone with a ‘God complex.’ Even now that made him chuckle. God complex. Look around you Mr. FBI man, and tell me if that is still your learned opinion.
He stopped in the road, turned and looked back along the path he’d traveled, a stretch of the I-10 now rendered invisible under the vast horde of undead creatures that had followed him here. He turned to the left and saw a sea of filthy, emaciated corpses a mile deep, turned to his right and saw at least as many. Now he about-faced and looked towards the city that skulked in the distance, the necropolis formerly known as San Bernardino. More of these things were stirring there, he knew, even now shuffling from buildings and fields and ditches, attracted towards him like sewer rats to shit.
At first Messenger had had no idea how he was attracting them. He’d even tried evading them, tried outrunning them, tried killing the motherfuckers as they’d followed him around like celebrity stalkers. Eventually, though, he’d learned the secret of the hive mind, learned how to control them, to wield them as a weapon of war that no one, not even the mighty Pendragon Corporation, could withstand.
They were his to control, his to command, entirely under his power. If he told them to kill, they killed; if he told them to die, they did that too.
He tested his power now, picking out a hollow-faced male in the front rank and sending him the die vibration. In an instant, the zombie collapsed to the tarmac. Messenger honed in on the next creature, cutting off its life force, then the next and the next, knocking them down like dominoes. By the time he forced himself to stop, upwards of a thousand lay on the ground. Their deaths pleased him. Messenger had nothing but contempt for them.
Why then did he not kill them all, send out the die vibration and cause a mass extinction? Maybe he would, maybe when all of this was over he’d simply turn them off and strike out on his own. Then again maybe not, maybe he’d march across the country at the head of his zombie army, rooting out every human being still left alive and devouring them. Yes, maybe he’d do that, become the king of the world, with Skye by his side.
A yearning suddenly filled him, a craving far greater than the bloodlust that had once propelled him to serial murder. He turned back to the road and started walking. The mountains that were his destination lay just beyond the city.
fourteen
The Chevy Impala made a right and entered a parking lot. Ruby twisted in the front seat and looked past Buck to the vehicles following, an entourage of three American muscle cars. Pearl was in one of those vehicles.
“Your girl’s going to be just fine, as long as you play ball,” Pete said, as he pulled the Chevy into one of the few vacant slots. The building at the end of the lot was a three-storey structure with a façade of mirrored glass, rendered opaque with years of grime. On the third floor, the glass had shattered, leaving a gaping hole. Ruby could see into the space beyond. There were people moving around in there.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“This here’s Chang’s Gymnasium,” Pete replied, as though the answer were self-evident.
“What happens here? Who are these people?”
“You’ll see,” Pete said, eliciting a snigger from Buck in the back seat.
The other cars had now found parking slots towards the rear. Ruby looked into the side mirror and saw Pete’s crew of miscreants weaving between the cars. There were eight of them, big, tattooed men in dirty jeans and denim cutoffs, all of them carrying automatic weapons. In their midst, Mae’s blue kimono stood out like a beacon. She was jostling Pearl in front of her, the little girl’s face registering no emotion. That concerned Ruby more than if Pearl had been crying and wailing. She remembered how Pearl had been in the days after Cyrus Cain had dangled her over the Z pit, the weeks of gentle coaxing it had taken to draw Pearl out of her shell. If Pearl wi
thdrew again from the horrors surrounding her, Ruby wasn’t sure if she’d ever get her back. That realization filled her with both fear and impotent rage. She stilled it. Anger was only going to make her current predicament worse. She had to keep her wits about her.
Pete’s goons had by now surrounded the car, guns at the ready.
“As you can see,” Pete warned. “You’re outgunned and outnumbered, so don’t try anything stupid. You do and the brat eats the first bullet. Tell me you understand?”
“I understand,” Ruby said.
“Good. Now get the fuck out.”
The passenger door popped open and Ruby was pulled from the car. Rough hands closed on her arms and hustled her forward.
“Wait,” she shouted. “Wait!”
“What the fuck is it now?”
Ruby wrenched free from the men holding her, spun and ran to Pearl. She heard guns cocked behind her and didn’t care. She dropped to her knees and looked into Pearl’s expressionless eyes. She wanted more than anything to throw her arms around Pearl, to tell her that everything was going to be okay.
“Be strong, sugar. Ruby loves you,” was all she managed before she was yanked to her feet. Then Pete was in her face.
“You try anything like that again and I’ll carve up your precious Pearl and feed her to you in little bite sized chunks. You got that?”
“I don’t want her inside this place,” Ruby said.
“Well now that’s just tough titty, ain’t it? She goes inside. Mae?”
“Yeah Pete?”
“Take good care of the little bitch. Make sure nothing happens to her that will upset Ruby Tuesday.” He turned to his men. “Right, let’s make bank.”
Ruby was hustled across the lot, through a pair of warped glass doors, across a litter-strewn foyer. She heard shouts and cheers from somewhere in the building, the whine of an electric motor, dogs barking. She also picked up a familiar vibration. There were Z’s nearby, lots of them.
