Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands

by Meredith, Peter

  And that left who? A rival of Monica’s? But what vamp would be desperate enough to use six proven losers?

  “And use us for what?” he wondered aloud. He had hours to ponder the useless question before they felt the tremor of a door opening up front. The paddy-wagon began to shimmy and shake.

  “Hello?” McGuigan called out. When there was no answer, he wiggled to the front and kicked at the wall separating them from the driver. Thud, thud, thud. “We’re back here! There are people back here!”

  In answer the driver slammed on the brakes, sending the six of them flying into the dividing wall. “I think he knows, dip shit,” Hamilton grumbled as he tried to untangle himself from Sergeant Phillips. “Just sit back and let it…whatever this is, happen.” Surprisingly, they didn’t have to wait long. The ride took all of ten minutes. The doors were flung open by two hulking men in matching black uniforms. Hamilton shared a quick look with Cole. They knew the uniforms. The men were part of the “High Guard,” which formed the governor’s personal army. These men were given the best of everything: food, training, equipment, and pay. In return, they murdered, maimed, tortured and raped at the governor’s behest.

  By law these guards could not number over a hundred, though some governors in the past had purchased three or four times that many, on a temporary basis, of course. Twice in the last hundred and fifty years, the High Guard had gotten out of control and had assassinated their own governors and tried to enthrone one of their captains.

  Both times, the vamps and mob bosses had set aside personal vendettas and old hatreds long enough to depose of these wannabe kings.

  The ranking guard pointed at Cole. “You first, slag.” Cole glared as he wiggled out of the box. When he was standing, a tight black collar was fastened around his neck. “You see this?” the guard asked, holding up a small black box. Along with four switches, it had a dial on it. Wearing a reptilian smile, the guard flicked up one of the switches and watched as Cole fell to the cold concrete, convulsing in pain.

  “That was a level three,” the guard said after flicking the switch back down. He stared at Cole, watching him pant through a teeth-cracking grimace. “A level six will kill you. Now, you’ll do as you’re told, or I will flick the switch again. Nod if you understand?”

  Cole nodded quickly, watching a line of drool swing back and forth from his chin. The pain had been a terrible combination of fire and lightning. It had been immediate and debilitating; there’d be no fighting against it.

  “Stand,” the guard ordered. Cole stood and had his manacles removed. “Put your face on the side of the truck.” Cole didn’t argue or curse. He didn’t even glare. He went right away to put his face against the truck and felt sweat trickle into his eyes. “Little boy. You’re next.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Cole watched as they collared Corrina. Once more, the guard held up the box. “No!” Cole hissed. “That’s a girl. She knows what it does. She won’t…” The pain came again. It was like someone was sawing his head off with a blade hooked to an electric outlet. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t stand. The guard watched him and as he did, he counted slowly to six, then flicked up the switch.

  “Stand and put your face against the truck.”

  Slowly, Cole stood and put his face against the truck. He couldn’t watch as Corrina was zapped. She was given four seconds. In that brief time, her bladder let go and hot urine splashed down her thigh. “You will do as you’re told, or I will flick the switch again. Nod if you understand?” She nodded, tears falling like diamonds from her eyes. When he told her to stand next to Cole, she practically ran to him.

  The other four received the same treatment, except the police officers, who were given a five-second zap. Brunker also wet himself and hung his head in shame. No one said a word about it and wouldn’t have even if they had been alone. They knew the pain.

  The guards then marched them through a doorway and down three flights of stairs to a dank little room that was lit by a single yellow bulb hanging from the ceiling. It was the sort of room that people were tortured in. The walls were solid concrete; the door a slab of iron four inches thick. There was a drain in the floor off in one corner.

  “You, kneel here,” the ranking guard said to Cole and pointed. “You, girl, kneel here.” She knelt next to him and the others filled in along an invisible line. There they waited as minutes dragged by, their knees aching.

  Finally, Governor Scott Aikens himself swept in and changed the room completely with his beaming presence. Aikens’s smile was blinding. His hair, dark brown with just a trace of grey at the temples, was perfectly swept back as if he’d had control of the wind while he was teasing it. He smelled of strawberries and apricots.

  “Look at you!” he said in a booming voice, one that was more suited to a campaign rally than a torture chamber. “Sit back. Relax. What is this, Patton? Is this any way to treat guests? There you go.” His smile faltered when he realized Corrina was a girl and a young one at that. “Well…well okay. Oy, Shamus! I was saddened when I heard you got caught up in all of this. But you took one for the team and that was a bit of alright.”

  McGuigan dragged his eyes from the floor long enough to say, “Took one for the team? They tried to kill me.”

  “And they would have if I hadn’t stepped in!” He paused long enough for them to thank him and when no one did, his smile dimmed. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I should’ve let them string the lot of you up. What do you think, Patton?”

  The ranking guard’s name was Mike Patton. He was a trained Californian assassin who had backed the wrong king and had barely escaped Sacramento with his head still attached. Killing is what he did. It was his purpose in life. “We can still string them up if you want, sir. Or we could strangle them or goose them to death with the collars. I like the idea of mulching them alive, but it’s up to you.”

  McGuigan swallowed the last bit of sludgy saliva left in his mouth and said, “No. You didn’t make a mistake. I screwed up. When I heard Cole was in Krupp, I should’ve gone in with more agents. I thought I could handle it. But the pit, sir, it’s awful; worse than I ever thought. We were lucky to get out alive. And it was too late either way. The other, uh, beings hid the bodies before we could get to them. This…none of this was my fault.”

  Aikens employed a little Mandarin woman—she was tiny, old and as shriveled as a raisin—she came by his office once a week to keep his eyebrows the perfect shape and length. He could cock his right brow like a fishhook and he did so right then. “Not your fault? How can you say that this isn’t your fault? Weren’t you the ranking man? Weren’t you in charge?”

  “Don’t blame them,” Cole said. Fear of the controller in Patton’s hand made it come out in a hoarse whisper. He had no idea what the governor wanted. Revenge maybe. Or perhaps he wanted to make an example of them with some particularly cruel death. Whatever it was, it made him sick to death thinking that Corrina would be a part of it. “This was my fault. I called him in, and I forced the girl to come along. She’s innocent in all this.”

  “He tricked us, too,” Hamilton said, throwing Cole under the bus. “We had no idea that he was dealing with zombies and…”

  At a glance from Governor Aikens, Patton thumbed Hamilton’s switch. The policeman immediately convulsed in pain, writhing on the floor. After three seconds, Aikens waved a hand and Patton flicked the switch back down.

  “Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here,” Aikens said. “I don’t like liars. So, rule one with dealing with me is that I am the only person here who is allowed to lie. And that goes for you, too Mr. Younger. Yes, I know the White Knight of the 7th Precinct. You are not allowed to lie either, even in what you believe to be a noble cause.”

  Cole nodded towards the floor where Hamilton was still quivering, drool running from the corner of his mouth.

  “Lying is silly, anyway,” Aikens declared. “I happen to know the entire situation already. After all, a governor can’t affor
d to be ignorant about these sorts of things. Am I right?” He paused for the six of them to nod, which they did quickly enough, afraid that any hesitation would earn them another shock. “Yes. Knowledge is power. That is a damn fact. Of course, one has to know what to do with that knowledge and he must know the exact right moment to act on it.”

  He began pacing in front of the little group. Cole found himself staring at the man’s gleaming shoes. They were Texas leather. His perfectly tailored silk suit was from London. He was almost a vamp.

  “Yes,” he went on, “a governor can’t jump into every situation. He is most effective when he uses his authority sparingly to balance the power within the city so that no single faction grows too strong. Which brings us to why we are all here today. You idiots screwed up. Every last one of you. The Tinsleys were properly divided and now, you have given the Turner side of the family carte blanche over the entire house. And if you knew anything about the Turners, you’d know that was a huge fucking mistake. For starters, she’s going to destroy your friend Ashley,” he said to Cole.

  “The only good vamp is a dead vamp,” Hamilton sneered. “Why should the rest of us care?”

  Patton glanced at the governor, holding up the black box. Aikens shook his head. “As with so much, you don’t know what you’re talking about. There are bad vamps and worse vamps, but I would take them all rather than live in one of the socialist utopias. They can’t even feed themselves in Quebec.”

  Corrina, who had starved for most of her life, kept her face pointed straight at the floor and said nothing.

  “Monica Turner is particularly ruthless. She’s rallying the entire vamp community against the mob. Not just the Fantuccis, no, she’s going to declare war on all of them. You of all people should be worried about that, Mr. Hamilton.”

  Hamilton’s face froze. “Me? Why? I didn’t…” He sucked in a breath as Patton raised the block box. When he wasn’t immediately shocked, he changed his tone. “How did they find out about Fantucci?”

  “It’s a given that vamps have spies and informants, though in this case I told them.” Aikens laughed easily, touching his flowing hair with the palm of his hand to make sure it hadn’t budged even a fraction of an inch. “Why the shocked looks? If I hadn’t, they would’ve drawn their own conclusions and what would that have been, when five city employees, and some slaggy girl show up and planted evidence? They would think I was behind it.”

  “We didn’t plant evidence and they know it,” Cole said, forcing his voice to remain respectful.

  The governor’s perfectly teased eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Do you think the truth matters a hill of beans? Turner knows exactly what she’s doing. A war against the city nets her nothing except maybe a new governor and no one wants that. However, a war against the mob creates a power vacuum which she is now conveniently able to fill.”

  “What do you want us to do?” Sergeant Phillips asked. “Kill her?”

  “God no! That’s how revolutions get started. No, I just want you to do what she accused you of doing. I need you to plant evidence, and yes, by that I mean Dead-eyes.”

  McGuigan frowned and started shaking his head. “Sir, unless there are, uh, subjects kept on ice somewhere, we don’t have any in the Referral Program. The research facility was shut down forty years ago. I guess there may be some blood somewhere that we could use to, uh, create new subjects.”

  “That is a sick, sick idea,” Aikens said, “and I wish I had thought of it. Too bad for you lot, there is no more blood. When they shut down the research facility, they destroyed everything, which is going to make your jobs a lot harder. In two hours, I am going to schedule a ‘surprise’ inspection of Krupp for tomorrow night. This will give you almost a full day to track down the creatures and plant them in the Pit. I don’t care if they’re dead or alive, just have them there on time.”

  “How?” McGuigan cried. “Where are we supposed to get zombies from?”

  Cole knew. Just across the river was a radioactive wasteland filled with the living dead. Millions and millions of them. As far as he knew, no man had set foot on the far bank of the river and lived to tell the tale.

  Chapter 24

  “Jersey,” Cole said softly.

  Everyone else had expected the governor to mention a lab or some sort of scientific facility. That would have been logical. Crossing the brown river to the Jersey side was suicide. It was without a doubt a death sentence.

  “No,” Phillips said from the far end of the line. “No disrespect, sir, but we can’t go into the Rad Lands. There’s no way. And…and if we did go, how would we get back? The sentries, sir, they are trained to shoot on sight. This is, uh, this isn’t going to work, sir.” He waited for his shock collar to go off with his balls sucked in tight to his body.

  The governor did not give the order to zap him. He only shrugged his broad shoulders and said, “You’re probably right. You’ll probably all die and that would be sad. I know I’ll be broken up by your passing. But if you stay here, I can’t very well let you go. You are a convicted killer. All of you are.”

  “I’m not,” Phillips said, licking his soft lips. “They got me for conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Aikens was very close to signaling Patton to zap the man. He took a breath and closed his eyes before saying, “The penalty is the same, is it not? Let me make the choice simple for you: accept the mission or die horribly.”

  Hamilton’s lips were twisted beneath his hooked nose. “It sounds to me like: accept the mission and die horribly. If we don’t get eaten alive out there, how will we survive the radiation? And if we do somehow get one of those things, how do we get it back? And then what? Do we get magically reinserted back into our lives as if nothing happened?”

  “It was my thought that you’d be hailed as heroes,” Aikens replied. “We will say that you were on a secret mission to root out and destroy an existential threat to the city.” Cole knew it would never be that easy. Monica’s side of the Tinsley family would be hell bent on revenge, as would Julius Fantucci and perhaps every mob family in New York. The governor saw the hesitation on all their faces and, ever the salesman, turned on the charm. “You guys are looking at this in a negative light. You snap up a couple of zombies, easy-peasy. This guy right here bagged five of them all by himself.” He slapped Cole on the shoulder like they were bowling buddies and Cole had just picked up a seven-ten split.

  “You chain ‘em up and drag them back to Krupp, and wham-bam, thank you ma’am, you’re reborn as heroes. It’s that or I send you to the mulcher alive and kicking. It’s your choice.”

  “I’m in,” Cole said. The governor began to broadcast a gleaming white smile when Cole held up a finger. “I’m in on one condition: the girl stays behind. She’s only a kid. She’d just get in the way and jeopardize the mission.”

  He looked down the line for agreement and received plenty from Corrina, but none from Hamilton. “I say she goes,” the police officer said. “The more the merrier. Also, you tend to fight harder when she’s around.”

  Sergeant Phillips agreed. “I say she comes. If we gotta run, them zombies will eat her first. Besides, she can act as a look out or what not.”

  “If I gotta go,” Frank Brunker said without looking up, “then she’s gotta go. Sorry kid but you were a big part of this screw up.”

  McGuigan was the last to answer. “She should go.” Cole was a second from flying at him in fury. McGuigan held up his hands. “Sorry, Cole. She’s part of this, and it doesn’t matter anyway. The governor doesn’t run a daycare and he’s not going to let her go. Really, I’m more worried for myself than for her. She’s tougher than any of you realize.”

  Corrina didn’t feel tough. She felt like she was about to puke. They couldn’t cross the river. It was impossible and wrong. There were demons and Dead-eyes over there; more than anyone could count. As she sat back on her heels, her knees aching, her gigantic prison jumpsuit growing colder with her piss, her mind ran over every horror story
she had ever heard about the “Rad Lands,” as Jersey and everything west were usually called. She was just about to piss herself a second time when the governor clapped his hands, making her jump.

  “Okay, so are we good? Yes? Alright, that’s what I want to hear.” He looked down at his gleaming chrome watch and said, “I want at least three of them. More would be better, less is unacceptable. You have one day. Have them in place at nine tomorrow night or don’t bother coming back. Now, it’s time for me to leave. Dinner at Bato’s and then a meeting with my ministers, where I tell them about the inspection. It’s a safe bet that the information will get back to Monica soon after that, so we don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Just do the inspection now,” McGuigan said, desperately. “We can round up a hundred men in no time and descend on them before they have a chance to hide the last few Dead-eyes.”

  Aikens flashed his beaming smile once again. “Don’t be a fool, McGuigan. Monica would’ve hunted down her Dead-eyes and fed them to her furnaces hours ago. No. We give them all the time in the world to make sure their ducks are in a row, then when they’re most confident of passing the inspection, we discover the treats you lot have brought back.”

  “But…but…” McGuigan flicked his eyes to Patton and his little box. “Twenty-four hours isn’t enough time.”

  “Don’t be silly, McGuigan. It’s more than enough time. Do you know how many of those things are out there? Millions! The entire continent is overrun by them. Trust me, you’ll find more than you’ll ever need and, chances are, you’ll find them faster than you really want. Now, as much as I love pressing the flesh with my constituents, dinner awaits! Good luck. Not that you’ll need it. This will be a piece of cake and I have the utmost faith in you.”