Breach (The Blood Bargain) (25 page)

“Bastard launched a full frontal assault against our colony using the dead.” I replied factually.

“He’s holding my brother captive.”  Candice chimed
in from the shadows behind me.

“We need our medical trade.” 
Rylie tacked on.

“Being on the road sucks and I just want to get this over with so I can go home!” We all turned to look at Ben. 
Rylie mouthed ‘what the hell’ to him while Ethan did a typical face palm. “What?  I thought we were listing stuff....sorry.”  From his ear to ear grin, he was clearly not.

We let out a collective groan while I turned back to China.

“Look. You help us, you free your city. You don’t? You die right here."  I pulled the short knife from my belt, pressing the flat side onto her cheek. "Right now. Now I'm not a college grad, but I think that sounds like a hell of a deal.” 

China laughed, low and throaty.  My little knife show not even phasing her. “Check out the big balls on you all, what makes you so certain you can pull this off?”

Candice stepped into the candle light, smiling wide.  Her fangs gleaming a sharp white over her red hued lips. The scav’s eyes widened, clearly she had missed the pretty little fact that my dear friend was a vampire before she’d knocked her out cold.

“I’ll be damned...”  China Lynn muttered.

“So, what’s it going to be Chinadoll?”  Rylie asked, flipping his short knife handle to blade in his left hand. I’ll give her credit, her composure maintained.  There was nothing but resolve on that freckled face as she looked us over one by one, her eyes finally resting on Everen.

She licked her lips, cleared her throat, and gave her reply. 

Lake City was nothing like Junction.  There was no wall, no sprawling town of buildings, no chickens wandering in the streets or endless gardens.  Lake City was a converted hospital complex turned into a city within a city, and unlike us, they still had electricity.

In a way I guess it made sense, plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms, a cafeteria and extensive amount of medical supplies.  From what China Lynn had told us-funny how much someone starts talking with a full belly of rations-the place had been a huge ‘go green’ initiative before the outbreak.  It had geothermal lines and solar panels, self-contained water system,  all the features that let them live large when the rest of us went back in a time loop.  I was momentarily jealous, not for the lighting or running water, but for heat in the winter and AC in the summer.  Refrigerators and Microwaves.  Hell, even a hairdryer.

Sure she told me this brought its own slew of problems, they had to do runs for light bulbs, find Freon.
Deal with maintenance to systems we hadn’t given a thought in a decade.  From what China told us, the first floor was largely unused throughout the medical complex, they had skywalks connecting the buildings and an overzealous fear of walkers invading the ground floor. Along those lines, most stairwells had been blocked or destroyed off ground level.  The hospital had two basement levels, one wing used for storage, the other was burned and highly damaged.  Not many people ventured down there unless they needed to use the shoots to get garbage out of the building.  Needless to say, there wasn’t much waste to dispose of with the internal cycling systems in full swing. 

Aside from the main building the series of connecting towers once used for private clinics and testing procedures had been given the name T1,T2,T3.  The upper floors of T1 were occupied by the vampires, T2 was primary agriculture and T3 was storage and additional housing.

T1 was our goal.

At the edge of downtown, hunkered down in an old department store employee break room we came up with ‘the plan’.  Which, the more we covered ‘the plan’ the more it felt like a military counter terror op than a rescue mission.  I suppose that was part
Rylie’s no bullshit leadership and part Scav’s survivalist mindset.

“We need to go through main housing and find
Lex first once we get inside.”  China muttered, taking a drink from a dusty bottle of water we'd managed to pry out of the vending machine.

“Who’s
Lex?”  Suspicion evident in Rylie's tone.

“A friend with access keys.  She can get us where we need to be.”

“How do you know you can trust her?”  Rylie asked, brows dipped in a sharp v.

“How do you know you can trust
me?”
China snapped back
,  “
its my damned city,  I want those blood sucking bastards out the door more than all of you assholes, so get over it.  We do it my way or I don’t help.”

“You so much as blink wrong and I’m going to put a bullet between your eyes.” 
Rylie drawled, his dark eyes looming over the blonde.

“
Lex is solid, her sister was one of the first Zhang... she’ll be with us to the bitter end.”  China directed towards me, flat out ignoring Rylie at this point.

Rylie
stepped in front of her line of sight, putting his face inches from the girls.  "Your word carries about as much weight as bird shit on a car window, sorry china doll but you're going to have to give us more than that before I consider a damned thing that comes out of your mouth."  My eyes widened slightly,  reminding myself to never get on the bad side of captain hardass.

“Fine. You want
deets?  Madeline Cannon was a happy kid.  Course she’d seen her Dad go south early on, an ER doctor who treated some of the first bite wounds to hit the hospital.  Didn’t take long till one of those pronounced dead woke up and came at Dr. Cannon.  Lex was working at her residency at the time, happened to be in the building after picking Maddie up from soccer practice.  Excuse me, I’m getting off topic."  She paused, taking a deep breath.  "Despite all that, the blood and the death that is, Maddie came through happy.  She got into medical and farming, grew up tall.  Tall and pretty.  One of those rosy cheeked girls that never needed make up, eyes bright as the sun. When she went with Zhang, she went willingly.  Was happy to help so the rest of us would be safe."  China's shoulders hunched, her eyes watering slightly.  "Madeline Cannon committed suicide just two days after she came home from her blood service. Slit her own throat with an antique scalpel from her father’s office.  That was after she....she...mutilated her face.   So when I tell you that Lex can be trusted, I speak the truth. There isn't a soul in lake city who hates those blood suckers more than Alexis Cannon.”

“So we get inside, get this
Lex.  Then what?”  Rylie's tone had softened as he spoke.

“With her keycard we can get into the vamp tower.  I’ve heard Zhang turned the whole top floor into some sort of throne room.  His food and playthings are usually kept in rooms on the floor below.”

“And prisoners?”

“No clue.  We’ll find out I suppose.”

“Look the hard part is going to be getting inside.  There’s a loading dock on the first floor that should be loosely watching during the day time.  Most folks avoid the first floor like the plague due to the carpet.”

“Carpet?”

“Term some jackass thought was funny for the dead round the hospital complex.  Most caravan trades are done here.”  She pointed at a spot on the map passed the river.  Ethan nodded, confirming the old rendezvous point.   “While we live here.”  Her fingertip circled the hospital.  “Everything in between?  Shoulder to shoulder dead and moaning.”

“Like a living carpet.”  Ben snorted.  "That’s good."

“Yeah. Rich.”  The scav rolled her eyes.

“Why no clean out?”  Candice chimed in, looking confused, hands on her hips.  Perfectly polished nails tapped at the metal rivets of her tight jeans as she spoke.  “Isn’t that the deal?”

“Deal was to keep us
alive
.  Inside we are alive.  Outside, we get eaten.  Keeps order.”  China sighed.  “Wasn’t that bad in the beginning, was actually pleasant to be able to sleep a whole night without fear of someone ripping up your legs after you got caught off guard.  We had food, we had docs, we had this new state of the art go green bullshit.  It wasn’t until the second year in that Zhang started treating us like cattle, openly I should say.  They stopped thinning the undead horde that crept outside, oh sure they’d place a vamp on ground level so if anything ever managed to get in it would be handled, but essentially reiterated it was a prison.  Then the abductions started.  Those that were taken for feeding...when they came back they were dead but breathing...husks of their former selves.”

“Taken?”  Candice raised an eyebrow.

China sneered at her.  “You know how
your kind
is.  We’re nothing but meat sacks to you.  To be used however your little immortal brains desire until you’re bored then we’re out in the trash.”

“Just because he thinks that doesn’t mean I do.  These people are my friends-”

“-and food.” China spat.

“It doesn’t mean I have to kill them for it.”

“Whatever.”

“So how do we get through the carpet?” 
Rylie mused, pacing back and forth on the cheap tile.  Candice wrinkled her nose, I played with the chain of my angel pendant.  How indeed.

A dull scraping sound cut through our quiet think tank. Standing in the doorway to the sales floor was a very deceased employee.  Still in his blue work polo, a brightly colored badge on his shirt reading 'Hi! My name is Carl'.  Mostly intact, the deadhead reached out with both arms for the closest person in the room.  Milky white eyes focusing on Ben, jaw dropping in a barely audible moan.

"Hey Ethan you missed one."  Ben looked over at the shuffling Carl with disdain.  I was impressed how much the big guy had changed in just a year.  When we'd been in downtown Des Moines such a thing would have had him leaping into the air, axes flying.

"Crap I guess I did." Pulling an
icepick of his belt Ethan stood, moving to intercept our uninvited guest.  "Sorry Carl,"  He drove the sharp end through the right eye socket, "you're fired."

Ben swung his feet down off the table, raising his hands in the air.
"Fired?  Hey now, looks like Carl put in eleven solid years of overtime.  He should be employee of the month if you ask me." Walking over to the HR posted notices board Ben pulled down a picture of a smiling Latina named Rosa that hung on a large silver star matte.  In its place he wrote Carl with a black pen. Barely legible, his penmanship rivaled that of a small child. I didn't have the heart to tell him the r was backwards.

"There."  Turning around he smiled at all of us triumphantly.

Candice laughed first, a soft but contagious giggle that spread across the room until everyone momentarily forgot our predicament.  Even Rylie.

As the laughter died down, Ethan dragged the body into the hallway, then closed the door to the break room.

"Maybe we should just borrow some uniforms and tell them we have a TV delivery."

I ripped a sheet from the weekly mailer someone left on the table.
"Yeah right."  I quipped,  throwing the wadded up shampoo advertisement at him.

"So you have a better idea
Liv?"

I didn't.  Ethan threw the paper back at me, the corner smeared with blood from his recent kill.  Not wanting to touch that, I batted it down onto the table.  Gross.

“If we clear a path in they’ll know we are there faster than you can say oh shit.”  Ben frowned, collapsing back into the uncomfortable blue plastic chair. Slowly he started flipping through the various paper clippings.

"Stop." 
Rylie's eyes were locked on the page in front of Ben. "That is it."

"What is what?"

"Up and over.”  Rylie smiled wide, tapping at a picture of the mountain on a coffee ad with his left hand.

“Beg pardon?” I wasn't sure how his gym teacher command aided our situation.

“Ever hear of a little thing called a zip line Liv? We’ll lodge one end above the front awning of the hospital, other from the office complex across the street, zip over the dead and onto the second floor.”

“We will have to be on guard for vamps in the main lobby.”

“I’ll go first then.” Offered Candice.

“Wait wait...you want us to slide across a thin cable above thousands of hungry dead into a hospital building full of vampires and humans who will probably try to kill us on sight?” Ethan was turning whiter by the second.

“In a nut shell.” Rylie replied.  “Once we’re inside, you positive you can find this Lex?”

“Provided she's still alive.  Positive.”

“Well then. Rest up kiddos, for tomorrow we do something batshit crazy.”

I nodded, a strange lick of anticipation fluttered in my heart. D was in there somewhere, and I sure as hell was bringing him home
.