Death Squad (Book 3): Zombie Nation Page 10

  Julius was slow in withdrawing the key card from his pocket. He watched her intently, on the verge of saying something. Instead, he pulled the card out and swiped it across the terminal. The light blinked green and Sam entered. The door slid shut behind her.

  What was all that about? What next? Was Julius going to start singing and dancing?

  She stood in the middle of the room and took in this permanent new world of hers. How long would she have to live here? Was this going to be her existence from now on?

  Empty words of hope were nothing more than a precursor to despair. And yet, hope was essential to survival. It kept you going. A life lived without hope was a life without a soul.

  She got down on her stomach and crawled under her bed. She worked the errant sealant loose and slipped the plastic sheet from her sleeve. She’d rolled it into a straw. She tucked it into the crevice along with the needle.

  This was her hope. These two basic items. They would have children and grow. For now, they were everything she had, all she could cling to.

  She replaced the string of sealant, slid out, and lay on her bed. She revisited the worst part of her day. The man responsible for her current predicament, within yards of vengeance. She could have ended him right then and there. She had allowed Greg to stop her, to convince her it wasn’t possible.

  Was he right? Or was he one of those still clinging to the creature comforts he currently possessed? Was there even a potential escape attempt on the cards? Or had he said that to shut her up?

  Not knowing the truth made it all the more difficult.

  Tap tap tap.

  The familiar tapping at the wall. “Sam? Are you there?”

  Sam wasn’t much in the mood for conversation, but Felix might have some new information for her, something he could share. After all, he had been there three years. He was grandfather to them all.

  “Yes, I’m here. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. Another boring day at the office.”

  “Not so boring this side. I was taken to a research center.”

  A pause before a response came. “There were others?”

  “Six of us. We’re working on the cure for that virus I told you about. I recognized one of the other researchers. We were working together before we got put in here.”

  “Lucky you. I’ve never seen another researcher here. What was it like?”

  Sam shrugged. “Like a regular research center.”

  “I’m jealous. I bet there was more than one looker too.”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “That’s all men ever think about.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “And proud of it. Something else happened today too.”

  “What? No, don’t tell me. A bunch of bikini models turned up.”

  “Close. The man who put us in here was there.”

  Another long pause. He tapped a few words but they spelled only gibberish.

  “Can you repeat that, please?”

  Felix resumed tapping. “Sorry. I didn’t know what to say. The news has come as quite a shock.”

  “It came as a shock to me too. I don’t know how the others could stand there and let him walk amongst us like that. He’s the one responsible for us being here.”

  “No one did anything?”

  “They did something. They paid attention to him. Nobody attacked him. Nobody tried to get in his face. They stared at the floor and waited to hear his opinion. You’ve been here a long time, have you never met the Architect before?”

  “Oh yes, many times.”

  A noise gurgled at the back of Sam’s throat. Her hand shook. “What?”

  “Oh, yes. We used to have long conversations together. We discussed science and history, everything that intrigued either one of us.”

  It was beyond comprehension. “Do you mean that you spoke to him on the terminal?”

  “No. Face to face. He would come to my research room and we’d discuss whatever we were thinking about that day.”

  “What did he say when you said you wanted to leave?”

  “I never asked him that.”

  Sam’s astonishment turned to anger. “Wait. You spoke face to face with the man holding you captive and you never asked him to let you go?”

  “If he wanted to, he would have. I was lonely and in desperate need of stimulating conversation. Over the years I’ve had many guards but none of them really conversed with me. It got to the point where I started having conversations with my test tubes. The reflections look like other people if you don’t look too hard.”

  Sam stepped away from the wall, shaking her head. The tapping continued. She even picked up on some of the letters and words through her feet, but they weren’t really sensitive enough to read tap code with. She was too busy rocking back on her heels. When Sam had first seen the Architect in the flesh, she wanted to end him. For what he did to Tommy, for what he had now done to her. If she’d had a sharp implement to hand, she might have done it too. And now Felix was telling her he’d met the Architect on multiple occasions and he still hadn’t taken the opportunity to attack the man? In a science lab, he wasn’t short for weapons.

  Sam drifted back to the wall and interrupted Felix’s monologue. “How could you have known this but not told me?”

  “What good would it have done?”

  “I could have better prepared myself. I had a chance, a window, to attack him.”

  “Then I did you a favor by not telling you. I told you what happens to those who try to escape. What do you think would happen to someone who attacked him?”

  Sam didn’t have an answer for that. If she’d been successful, would it have mattered? She shook her head. She’d think on it more later. “We’re working on a cure for the virus.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “Because I saw them give it to a zombie.”

  “You had subjects in the room?”

  “Three of them. We only gave the latest iteration of the cure to one.”

  “What happened to it?”

  Sam felt a hot wad blossom in the back of her throat and her nose itched. “Something miraculous. We watched as his brain systems switched back on. He could see. He could hear. He became aware of us in the room. And then things went bad. He caved his head in.”

  “We’re getting closer.”

  “Yes. Then the Architect took some of the cure and walked into an elevator. The door shut and I didn’t see him again.”

  “The way out. The way to the surface.”

  Sam blinked in surprise. Why hadn’t she thought that before? She’d assumed it was a regular elevator moving between levels of the base. Might it also lead to the surface? “You think?”

  “If anyone can get out of here, he can. And he’d make damn sure none of us could follow him up.”

  Sam feared Felix was right. The way out was within easy reach, but they had no way to gain possession of the key the Architect kept around his neck. If she was to escape, she needed to get her hands on it.

  As if my situation wasn’t hard enough already.

  16.

  HAWK

  Joe stood and stared, hands clutching the bars. His legs struggled to hold his weight but his eyes never once veered from him.

  Hawk sensed him there. He didn’t much like it. He turned away, and still, he was there. Even when he shut his eyes, he was there. Joe was no longer a regular undead.

  He was something more.

  He resided within that tight knot behind Hawk’s blistering right eye. So far as he knew, Joe was that tight little knot. How that could be, he had no idea. But there it was.

  Unable to ignore the creature completely, Hawk finally gave up and turned to him.

  “How are you doing today, Joe? Good? Great. Yeah, I’m pretty good too. I got a shiny new restraint that I’m pretty happy about. Can you see it? It’s this one here. Nice new buckle. It’s a pain though because it digs into my shoulder. I can’t feel it, but you never know the long-term damage it might be inf
licting.”

  Hawk paused. He couldn’t dance around the real cause of his discomfort forever. “You can’t hear me, can you?”

  Joe gave no sign that he could.

  “I have to say, I’m relieved. It would be my worst nightmare if you could. At least this means I’m not going crazy.”

  He chuckled to himself. It faded fast. The fact he allowed himself to talk to the creature meant he didn’t think of it the same way he did other undead. It was, ultimately, unsatisfying. He focused on the tight knot behind his eye.

  I need to be sure this creature isn’t linked or controlled by me. I have to be certain.

  “Joe. Hop on one foot.”

  The creature stared blankly.

  Once again, Hawk was relieved. Still, he wasn’t satisfied.

  “Turn around in a circle.”

  The creature did nothing.

  Hawk smiled to himself. Relieved. Whatever had happened before had been a fluke, nothing more. The doctor was wrong. Their little experiment had failed.

  “One last try. Reach through the bars for that keypad.”

  Hawk recalled a glimmer of the desperation he’d felt when asking the creature to perform the same favor.

  The creature glanced at the keypad. Hawk’s hopes sank. The monster eased over to the cage wall closest to the keypad and leaned against them. Hawk’s lips twitched, on the verge of belaying the order. He couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  The creature stretched its good arm through a gap and inched closer. The creature couldn’t reach it this time.

  It didn’t matter. The creature had already proven what Hawk was so desperate to disprove.

  Hawk fell against his restraints, succumbing to his desperation. “The doc is going to have a field day with this.”

  * * *

  “You said you would cure me! Not make my condition worse!”

  The doctor had barely stepped into the room before Hawk unloaded onto her.

  “I promised to help you,” the doctor said. “Look at your arms, your legs. Your automatic feeder. Have you had any attacks since?”

  “What about the device in my head?” Hawk spat. “Is it really a remote device or something else?”

  Dr. Archer pressed her lips together. “It was for helping remotely control your legs.”

  She held his glare a little too long. It told him everything he needed to know.

  “It’s not only for controlling my limbs, is it?” he said. “It’s for something else too.”

  Dr. Archer typed at the keys on her terminal. There was no rhyme or reason for her to do that. She was buying thinking time.

  “You put something in my head,” Hawk said. “Something that allows me to control zombies. How is it possible?”

  Dr. Archer couldn’t meet his eyes. “Anything is possible when you put your mind to it. And when you have enough motivation and funds.”

  She shook her head and slammed her hands down on the desk. She pressed her palms into it.

  “We gave you a gift, Hawk,” she said. “That’s all I can tell you.”

  “There’s another word for an unwanted gift. A curse. That’s what you put in my head. You cursed me with something I do not want.”

  Dr. Archer didn’t look up. “I can’t tell you any more, Hawk. If I do, they’ll never let me come back here.”

  Perhaps that was what Hawk needed. Someone else to talk to. Someone easier to manipulate. Except, that was never going to happen. They would replace Dr. Archer with someone even worse. Maybe even a robot.

  The doctor took Hawk’s silence as confirmation he didn’t desire the change. She decided to double down. “We need to run further tests.”

  Hawk couldn’t believe his ears. “First you implant this thing in my head and now you want to run tests on me? Forget it.”

  “We never had a subject to test properly before. You’re the first.”

  “In that case, I feel very special.” Hawk could taste the venom in his voice. “Just what kind of doctors are you people? You have a patient who needs your help and you inject something into him without even asking.”

  “If we asked you, what would you have said?”

  The answer was obvious. A resounding no. But that was beside the point. They should have asked him.

  “What’s the purpose of this research of yours?”

  Dr. Archer stiffened. “That’s classified.”

  “Bullshit it’s classified! This thing is in my head. If you want me to play along, you’re going to have to tell me what you aim to do with it.”

  The doctor waved her arms. “You don’t understand. It’s classified above my pay grade. In fact, it’s classified beyond almost anyone.”

  “Almost?”

  The doctor nodded.

  Hawk clenched his teeth. “Over my dead body.”

  “Technically, you are already dead.”

  Hawk met her eyes. She wasn’t even kidding. How could he have not spotted what these people were like sooner?

  She approached and looked up at him through her long eyelashes. “There are other ways of making you comply, ways that make life very. . . uncomfortable for you. I wouldn’t wish that upon you. Just do what they ask, and it’ll be a lot easier and less painful for you.”

  “‘They’, doctor? In case you’d forgotten, you are one of ‘them.’”

  “Only superficially.”

  Was that true? Was she merely their mouthpiece, every inch a prisoner as he was, or did she sit somewhere at the high table where the decisions were made? It was impossible to know for sure. He could only rely on his instincts, and they told him not to believe this woman.

  “No one can force me to do anything I don’t want,” he said.

  Dr. Archer nodded her head, a sad expression on her face. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “Then be afraid, doctor. I have a lot more to say. Go back to your friends and tell them they can’t scare me with this torture shit. This isn’t my first time at the rodeo. If they couldn’t get what they wanted out of me, there’s no chance you and your egghead friends can.”

  Dr. Archer looked up at a camera in the corner of the room. Hawk followed her eye line. A small light blinked green.

  Go? Affirmative?

  Hawk focused on the doctor’s expression. She betrayed a great deal more than a blinking light on the underside of a renegade camera.

  And it didn’t look good.

  17.

  TOMMY

  They saw the walls long before they reached the city. The same protective structure that’d been placed around Austin had been set up around San Antonio. Fat lot of good it would do them. The walls would fail to defend this city just as they had failed Austin.

  They were playing a losing game. It mattered only how badly they were going to lose.

  The barricades came at regular intervals along the highway. They’d been set up to be easily abandoned should the need to retreat become too strong. Each one opened without needing to utter a single word. Military vehicles held sway in this part of the country.

  The barricades grew taller and more formidable the closer to the city they came. Sentry guns were set up, with multiple Humvees parked and ready for action. They would hold the zombie horde off for a while, at least longer than the town of Seguin would manage.

  Beyond the last barricade was a familiar sight: a large military encampment. The walls provided a sense of strength and resolve to the inhabitants of the city more than anything else.

  The encampment gave no indication they were concerned about another Humvee rolling up into their camp. They were busy preparing for the battle of their lives. They were wise to do so. The nightmare that would descend upon them would be one for the ages. And that was if any survivors were left to tell the tale.

  The pathways became too crowded with people and there was no way to drive through. Tommy parked up and tugged his jacket on over himself. “Keep your injuries hidden. We don’t want to scare them.”

  “That’s eas
y for you to say,” Emin said. “I stand out worse than Frankenstein’s monster.”

  Tommy approached a soldier armed with a clipboard. “Excuse me, I’m looking for the command tent.”

  The man looked Tommy up and down. The insignia on his shoulder was met with a look of acceptance, not respect.

  “That way,” the man said, jabbing his pencil in that direction. “And you can’t leave your truck here. This is a throughway. Supplies will be coming out of the city.”

  He said it with the air of a man who’d explained the same thing many times before and was growing weary of repeating it.

  “We won’t be parked for long,” Tommy said. “We’re going into the city.”

  “Not with that Humvee, you’re not. No vehicles allowed inside. Commander’s orders.”

  Emin turned to Tommy. “I’ll move the car if I have to. You go speak to the commander.”

  “I’ll give Emin a hand,” Jimmy said with a toothy grin.

  Guy followed hot on Tommy’s heels into the bustling camp. The good thing about the military was their uniformity. Once you’d seen one encampment, you’d seen them all.

  Over there would be the mech yard, over there, the medical facilities. Right there, at the heart of the encampment, was the command center. It was one of the largest shelters in the camp.

  A dozen young men and women sprinted from tent flaps clutching papers. They took off in different directions, not bothering to apologize for knocking half a dozen people aside.

  “I’ll go to the medical center,” Guy said. “Maybe they have better equipment for Emin.”

  Tommy nodded. “Good idea.”

  That left Tommy to confront the commanding officer himself. Tommy stepped inside the tent.

  * * *

  His eyes adjusted to the darkness. He scanned the crowd. He was looking for the man or woman at the center of it all, where everyone’s attention was focused, even if they weren’t looking directly at them.

  That description could have detailed half a dozen people inside this particular tent. Then, all at once, several of his suspects turned away from the same figure. A young man—far younger than Tommy had expected—had just issued a bunch of orders to his officers.