"See what?"
Sarah didn't say anything else as she turned Carly's head and looked at the small cut under her ear. The skin was a dull red from Carly scratching it, and the cut itself had turned into scar tissue. As she inspected it, she noticed it was only a centimeter long and it was a perfect straight line, no roughness to it at all, like someone had made a neat incision.
She backed away from Carly as Carly looked at her in confusion. Sarah held her finger to her lips to tell her to be quiet and then she held the finger in the air, telling her to wait for a moment. She rummaged around the room and found a sheet of paper and a pencil. She put it on the table in front of her and bent over, scribbling a message. Carly watched her with intrigue, and then Sarah brought the note over to her.
DON'T SAY A WORD it read at the top. They put a bug in your ear. I have to cut it out. P.S. we're going to fake our own deaths.
Carly's eyes widened when she read the words "cut it out". Sarah began scribbling further down the page and then passed it to Carly again.
Follow my lead
Sarah pulled her by the arm and led her back out into the chapel. She left her there and went to find a knife and a pair of tweezers, placing them on the floor by Carly's feet, then she picked up an M16 and checked to make sure that it had ammo in it. She took the gun over to the entrance of the church and opened the door. Carly stood at the edge of the chapel and leaned over into the hallway, curious as to what she was doing.
She slammed the door and then ran back to the chapel, trying to make her footsteps as heavy as possible. "I see one!" she yelled in her gruffest man voice. She knelt down and propped up the assault rifle on her knee, aiming it to the right of Carly. She fired a spray of bullets at the wall at the end of the hallway just before it turned into the chapel. Carly recoiled in fear, but stayed on the spot. Sarah walked up to her slowly, clomping her feet on the floor. She propped the machine gun under her arm and motioned for Carly to get down. Carly sank down and lay on her stomach, and Sarah became frustrated and motioned for her to flip over onto her back. "I've got you now, bitch!" she said.
She laid the M16 silently on the ground next to her then picked up the knife. "Tell me what you were planning for tomorrow," she said in her disguised voice as she turned Carly's head and hovered the knife over her cut.
Carly's eyes went wide and she clenched her fists together as tightly as she could. The tip of the blade sunk into her skin and she screamed in pain. She fought and struggled on the ground, but Sarah put a knee on her to tell her to be still. She pounded her fists on the hardwood and cried out, telling the imaginary soldier to please stop. "I don't know anything!" she yelled, and Sarah was pleased with her performance, even in the face of great physical pain.
Sarah cut an incision in her skin a little wider than the original cut, then she put down the knife and picked up the tweezers. She pushed Carly's face until the light was shining in the wound, then she spread the cut open with her fingers as Carly screamed some more. "You're gonna tell me what you know, or I'm gonna cut it out of you," Sarah said. She inserted the tweezers and felt around for something. As the metal wormed around under her skin, she let out a high-pitched whine and continued banging her fists on the floor, her fingernails cutting into her palms.
Just as Sarah reached the point where she still hadn't found anything and she was afraid to slide the tweezers in too far, the ends of them struck something solid. She moved them around and opened them, trying to get a hold on whatever it was she ran into. Carly squirmed and struggled a little bit more until Sarah managed to grasp something tiny inside of her. When she was sure she had a good grip, she slowly pulled it out and held it up to the light as Carly pressed a hand to her neck.
A tiny little cylinder was gripped between the prongs of the tweezers, no bigger than a few millimeters. It looked like a little capsule with a transparent casing around it and some minuscule circuitry inside.
Sarah brought it over to the corpse of one of the women and set it down next to her, then she came back with the knife and cut a small incision in her neck, sticking the transmitter into her. She motioned over to Carly who was now just standing up to pick up a gun and then go stand over near the back hallway of the church.
Carly hurried over and did so, still pressing a hand to her neck. She picked up a pistol and then stood on the spot that Sarah had directed her to.
Sarah picked up the M16 and propped it on her knee again, pointing it a little ways away from Carly. "Look out! There's one over there!" she yelled in her man voice. She turned her head to the side and yelled, "That's her! It's Sarah! Drop it!" in a slightly different voice.
A moment later she began firing the M16, painting the back wall of the church with lead. Carly got the hint and began firing back over Sarah's head. When she stopped, Sarah kept firing for a moment longer until she ran out of ammo.
"Aw shit!" she said. "Is she dead?"
"You weren't supposed to kill her!" she replied to herself in her other voice. "The boss is gonna have your ass!"
"Well, let's pack up whatever shit we can and get out of here."
"Should we burn it down?"
"Yeah, do it."
After Sarah finished talking to herself for the benefit of the enemy soldiers listening in over the transmitter, she went over to Carly and whispered in her ear. "Let's gather up everything we can and get out of here."
Carly nodded and the two of them silently went around the church, collecting as much guns and ammo as they could and dumping them into a wheelbarrow sitting out back of the church. They gathered up any maps and intel they had on the enemy, as well as some food and water, though they didn't take too much of it, knowing they could find more later; for now they had to get out of there as quickly as they could and find somewhere new to hide and regroup until they figured out what they were going to do next.
When they finished collecting everything and piled it in the wheelbarrow, they took a brief moment to weep over the dead, then they put old blankets over their heads and used them as cloaks to help hide their identity from anyone watching from afar; if they were going to fake their deaths, their identities could no longer be seen if they happened to be spotted while out and about.
As Sarah stood in the back door of the church, ready to leave, Carly struck a match and tossed it on some old newspapers that they had piled up in the middle of the church, then she ran back over to Sarah.
The match hit the newspaper and the flame waned a little in it, but then it slowly caught on and spread, igniting the pile. The flames moved over and began licking at the pew that stood next to it before the flame jumped over to it and grew.
"Let's go," Sarah said, holding her cloak together under her chin with her only hand.
Carly pushed the wheelbarrow and they exited through the network of alleyways, coming up a block to the north. They headed northeast out of the city, trying to stick to more hidden roads and stay off the main ones. They paused after a while and turned around, seeing black smoke start to climb up into the sky. They were satisfied that their deaths had been effected as far as anyone knew, and then they turned and continued on their way.
They made it out of the city without running into anyone. They saw the occasional zombie, but they kept well out of sight from them, and as they got closer to the outskirts, they knew they wouldn't have to worry about scratchers very much. They rested a few times on the way, Carly's arms getting sore from pushing the heavy wheelbarrow. Sarah would have offered to help, but she didn't think she could manage it with one arm. They paused to eat and drink as well, taking from their limited stores.
A heaviness hung in their hearts for the rest of the day, knowing that they had run up against the mother of all brick walls. Carly was thoroughly depressed, and that made the journey even harder.
"How did you know it was in my ear?" Carly asked on the way.
"How else could they have known about what we talked about?" Sarah asked. "There was no one else there but us. When I saw you sc
ratching your ear again, I knew."
"I can't believe that was what was causing it to itch this whole time," Carly said in annoyance as she pressed her fingers to the wound and looked at them, still seeing a little bit of blood. "I can't believe those assholes bugged me this whole time. How long have they been listening in on us?"
"Well, since you ran into them in the woods, I guess," Sarah replied. "But think about it, how many times have we ever pulled off a significant score on them?"
"Plenty of times," Carly said.
Sarah shook her head. "No, think about it. We only ever got small potatoes from them... a few weapons here, some insignificant intel there. Every time we tried to pull off something big, they've always been there to ambush us and the plans went awry."
The truth of what she was saying donned on Carly and she found herself surprised that she had been too stupid to see it before.
"They've been reeling us in like the small fish that we are," Sarah continued.
"So what do we do?" Carly asked. "How the hell do we fight them?"
"We align ourselves with bigger fish," Sarah said.
"Like who?"
Sarah smiled. "The bandits."
4
DEADLY ALLIANCE
Halcomb wiped the blood off his knife on his shoe and then began stropping it, getting it back to that sharpness he liked. His eyes scanned the landscape past the small bridge they occupied, admiring the way the sun shone down on the trees and the wild flowers growing in the field. He was a hardened bastard and his soul was cold as ice, no ticket to Heaven for him when he kicked off, but he still appreciated the finer things in life. And in a world where the only thing they worried about was survival, admiring the scenery could certainly be called a finer thing.
His eyes drifted from the field to the road in front of him, and they fell upon two figures in the distance. They walked toward him and they were in some kind of disguise.
"Hey boss!" he called back over his shoulder.
Another bandit emerged from a tent in the middle of the bridge spanning over the thin river. The man's gut stuck out beyond his feet in front of him but the rest of him had a scrappy musculature that suggested his true strength and toughness. He squinted his eyes at the harsh sunlight and turned to his left, walking over to Halcomb. "This better be important, you sonnuvabitch."
"We got a couple-a monks comin' for us, boss," Halcomb said.
The boss walked up next to him and wiped the grime out of his eyes.
Just like he said, two figures headed for the bridge, gray blankets draped over their heads and shoulders like cloaks. They didn't appear to be armed, but it was hard to see what they had underneath.
"Stupid idiots," the boss said. He looked back at the rest of the camp and whistled. "Boys, get out here!"
Three dozen bandits of all heights and sizes came away from what they were doing in their encampment on the bridge and came over to the west end, staring off in the distance at the odd fellows heading their way. Many of them were armed, even if just with a knife, and some of the ones that weren't simply cracked their knuckles, ready to strip a couple of poor suckers of any goods they had on them.
Halcomb licked his lips. He didn't see too many people covering themselves up like that, and he wondered if they were both women, trying to disguise themselves from perverted maniacs like him.
"Hey, come on over here!" the boss called out to them. "We'll help you out! Got plenty of water for a couple o' weary travelers!" He couldn't hide the smile that crept across his face, the same nasty thoughts running through his mind as the others.
The figures said nothing as they walked the rest of the way, and the strangeness of it started to give some of the bandits the creeps, though the numbers were certainly in their favor. The two of them finally reached the bridge and stopped just before them, still keeping their faces shrouded in shadow.
"How you fellas doin'?" Halcomb asked.
"I want to talk to your boss," one of the cloaked people said.
Murmurs circulated in the bandits behind. "Sounds like a chick," one of them said.
"Take off your hoods," the boss said coldly.
They both complied and Sarah and Carly revealed their faces to the leering, sex-starved men.
The boss looked them up and down. "You ladies came to the wrooong part of town," he said with a grin that the Devil would wear. He reached out to run his hand up and down Sarah's chest, but she shoved him away. He recoiled with a look of shock on his face. "Who the fuck do you think you are?" he said, getting angry. He stepped forward and wound up his hand to slap her, but she caught his wrist in the air and shifted her hips, throwing a punch into his cheek. He staggered back again in a daze and the other bandits aimed their weapons at the two of them.
"You made a big, big mistake, lady," Halcomb said, leaning an arm on the railing of the bridge and watching the scene in amusement.
"I don't think so," Sarah said. She nodded at Carly.
Carly pulled an arm out from under her blanket and produced a hand grenade. As the eyes of every bandit on the bridge lit up, she pulled the pin and tossed it away into the river, holding down the lever to keep it from exploding.
Everyone backed up, including the boss whose countenance had suddenly changed.
"Whoa, let's not get hasty here," he said, holding his hands up.
"Put your guns away," Sarah told them. "Nobody's killing anyone today, and nobody's taking anyone as property. We came here to talk."
The boss was confused at the bizarre turn of events. When he started to process what was going on, his nerves settled and he relaxed. "Okay, so talk."
Sarah stepped forward as Carly continued holding the hand grenade in the air. "Where's the boss?" she asked.
"I'm the boss," he said.
"What's your name?"
"You got a lotta nerve, lady."
"Your name," she repeated.
The boss looked at the hand grenade nervously. "Macklin," he said.
"Macklin," she said, weighing it on her tongue like she was the one in charge. "I'm Sarah, and I have a proposition for you."
"Like what?"
"I hope I don't have to tell you about the new zombies around lately," she said.
"Those fast freaks?" Macklin asked. "Been seeing them everywhere lately. Fuckers are hard to kill, too. So what do you know about them?"
"I can tell you they're not a natural mutation," Sarah said. "They've been cooked up in a lab and there's a lot more coming. Probably much worse than those things, too."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I've seen it with my own eyes," she said. "There's a man in Raleigh that created the zombie virus. Now they're working on these new ones. Who knows what comes next? You might have seen him around or his men. Heavy duty equipment, looks like military special forces..."
A haunted look glinted in Macklin's eyes. "Yeah, I've seen them around. We don't go too close to their territory."
"Well they're going to be coming for you, and soon. This man I'm talking about is hell-bent on wiping out everyone—man, woman and child. That includes the bandits."
"Bullshit," Macklin said. "Ain't no one is fuckin' with us."
"And that's why you hide from them like pussies?" she asked.
The crowd of bandits murmured again, expressing disagreement and things that each of them would like to do to her, but Macklin quieted them down.
"It's not going to be his men that come for you," Sarah continued, "it's going to be the zombies. And they're going to get bigger and badder, believe me. The ones you see around here are still in the trial stage. And soon enough, you're not going to have enough bullets to stop them all. As they infect the old population of zombies, pretty soon there's not going to be any but the new kind, and then you can kiss your ass goodbye."
"So what are you saying, lady?" he asked.
"I'm saying that our only chance of surviving is to work together and take him and his men out."
"And how d
o you propose to do that?" he said with a smug look on his face.
"We're going to gather all the bandits together and assault his base."
The bandits standing on the bridge began to laugh, but she didn't even say the best part yet.
"And I'm going to lead you."
The bandits' laughter turned uproarious. "You, lady?" Halcomb asked, still leaning on the railing and grinning. He stepped forward and yanked off her blanket. At first there was silence when they all saw that she was missing an arm, then their laughter returned harder than ever, some of them pissing their pants.
"And uh, what makes you so qualified to lead us?" Macklin asked, humoring her.
"I killed your leader, for one," she said.
"Bullshit," he said again. "The zombies got him."
"No, that's her!" one of the bandits called from behind. He worked his way up to the front and stood next to Macklin, pointing at Sarah with excited eyes. "I was there, boss! She killed Jericho! At the carnival!"
Macklin eyed the bandit uncertainly. "You're not bullshitting me?"
"No, boss, I swear!" he said. "I remember her now! She tried to cross the bridge into Durham and we caught her. But she escaped and ran away with her kid. We caught up to them in the old carnival and then the zombies came. Hundreds of 'em! Thousands of 'em, maybe. I managed to get out of there, but I saw her killing Jericho before I got chased out by some zombies."
"You saying you just left the boss there to die while you ran away?" Macklin asked.
The bandit stumbled over his words as he tried to provide an explanation. "Uh, um, I uh, there was nothing I could do," he said. "The zombies were everywhere! If I could've done something, I would've, I swear!"
"Do you want to know how I killed him?" Sarah interjected.
Macklin just stared at her, his eyes steely.
Zombie Apocalypse Series (Book 5): Scourge of Evil Page 3
