LZR-1143 (Book 4): Desolation (33 page)

“I didn’t have anything else to use,” he shrugged, matter-of-factly.

“Uh-huh,” she said, reaching the ground floor two steps ahead of me. “If we weren’t plum out of vehicles, I might be more angry,” Rhi said under her breath.

A middle-aged woman burst from the group to take Eli by the shoulders and admonish him a second time, this time in animated and energetic Spanish.

“We had just realized he snuck away,” said Rhi, gesturing at the adults with a variety of meager weapons on their shoulders and hips. “He slipped away while we were attending to Ethan…” she began, but I held a hand up.

“I understand. Truth be told, he may have saved my life. I took a wrong turn on my way in here, and went down instead of up. Those things busted in and almost cut me off. I was getting ready to fight a losing fight up there.”

I laughed as Romeo barreled out of the crowd and found my hand, taking it in his mouth with glee. I bent down and tapped my shoulders, and he put his paws on either side of my head for a huge hug. His tongue made its way to an ear and I laughed, pushing him down and rubbing his head as I followed Rhi.
 

She lowered her voice slightly as the others in the group began to make their way over slowly.

“He’s a special boy. Smart as all get-out, observant. But no sense. He will walk into a room of those things, or slip away with no one watching. Don’t know if it’s trauma from his folks, or he’s a little off or what.” She shook her head as if to clear the air.

“Anyway, let me introduce you to our small group,” she turned to meet the men and women tentatively approaching.
 

“First the most important. That there is Margaret, she’s six and a half. Davey over there is Margaret’s sister, and he’s all of eight. Baby Tommy is over there with Susan—hi Susan, wave over, there you go—and Reggie here is Margaret and Davey’s dad.” She lowered her voice slightly. “Their mom didn’t make it. An accident before we met them.”
 

Mike took Reggie’s hand, feeling the callouses of a day laborer. Reggie was nearly six feet tall and large across the shoulders. A beer belly protruded slightly over his worn belt, and a Seahawks cap sat firmly planted on a thick shock of black hair. His dark complexion spoke of Hispanic heritage, but he spoke with no accent.

“Pleasure Mr. McKnight,” he said, eyes slightly unbelieving. I nodded, appreciative of him not making a thing about my erstwhile celebrity.

Rhi’s voice was less enthused as she gestured to the next couple in line. “This is Jean, and her husband Greg. They’re from Seattle.”
 

Jean managed a wan smile, but Greg held back, eyes cautious and suspicious. She was average height and pretty, but lines of worry crossed her face. From her blue eyes to her dark brown hair, she had been ravaged by the times. Her dark blue shirt tucked into jeans above thick boots made for a stylish end-of-the-world ensemble, even if the whole thing was dirty and torn.
 

Greg’s eyes narrowed as I took her in, clearly suspecting some amount of sleeze rather than a typical assessment of new company. Jeans under a thick leather jacket, with steel toed boots and a shotgun in one hand, he was the unshaven poster child for the weekend Harley crowd. Probably a doctor or a lawyer, I suspected. His dark, almost black, eyes were unblinking as they took me in from head to foot.

“Nice to meet you folks,” I said, nodding once.

Greg tilted his head slightly to the side and spoke, his voice arrogant and full of pompous threat.

“We’ll see about that,” he said.
 

I suppressed the urge to laugh in his cocky little face, choosing instead to grin crookedly, and moved on, following Rhi’s lead as she gestured at the small woman huddled near Eli in the corner.
 

“And finally we have Rosy, who has been taking care of Eli. She doesn’t speak much English, but she understands well enough. She lost her family a few months ago, near as we can tell—think they were all day laborers at one of the big farms up here. Found her hiding in an old barn ten miles up the road.”
 

I smiled widely at the middle-aged woman with a kindly face, and she returned the gesture, arm still tight around Eli. I turned away, and I heard her continue admonishing him in rapid-fire Spanish.

“How’s Ethan?” I asked, ignoring some of the odd glares from the group and looking to where he lay on the floor behind a row of monitors. “‘Cause he looks like crap,” I threw in, knowing he was listening.

“You shut your pie hole, you yuppy bastard. If you hadn’t screwed up yer piece, I wouldn’t be layin’ here like a gutted fish.”

“You’re full of horse shit, Ethan. We got flat out ambushed by those things and it wouldn’t have made a cow’s lick of difference if Mike was on target or not. His screw-up had nothing to do with your poor-ass shooting.”

Ethan struggled into a seated position, ignoring the pain in his left leg where the bandages indicated he had been hit.

“Okay, you old shrew. Take his side. All I know is that he was late, and his plan don’t seem to have worked. What the hell was that sound we heard, anyway?”
 

Ah. So.

Guess I had to be the bearer of the bad …

“Tunnel’s gone. No exit that way. He blew it up,” said Eli quickly, thumb pointing at me. “But there was no choice,” he continued evenly, as the looks of horror began to spread on the faces of the crowd. “Those things were inside, and there were a lot of them. Everywhere. And more were coming.”
 

The silence was awkward as I tried to find a spot on the wall to stare at.

There.

A nice little crack to see. Hello little crack. Is that water? Are you leaking?
 

Oh, right.
 

Hello claustrophobia, my old friend…

Maybe I’ll look at something else …

“So what you’re saying,” said Rhi, slowly, “is that we’re trapped in here? They can’t get in, but we can’t get out? I thought we briefed you on the fucking plan, man. We’re here to clear a way out of this place. Not shut us in.” Rhi’s voice was frustrated. She had a right. I showed up late. My plan was for shit. And now we were back to where they had started.
 

But for one change. Now they had me.
 

“Oh fucking wonderful,” said Greg, his tone rising an octave, and his face wearing a sneer. He looked around the group, then to me.

“So you’re here to save us, huh? And your grand plan was to trap us in here to starve to death?”
 

I groaned, allowing my eye roll to be visible.
 

“No, asshole. Starving isn’t on the table. If it gets bad, we’ll start with you. Although we’ll have to clean you real well before we eat, seeing how full of shit you are.”
 

He narrowed his eyes and stepped forward, as if planning on starting a fight. I cocked my head to one side and grinned, curious as to where he’d go from here. Surely, Rhi had given everyone a heads up as to my special abilities.
 

“Listen, this isn’t helpful,” she added in annoyance. “Greg, stop being such a twat. Mike, don’t provoke him. You effed up a little up there, right?”

I nodded, turning back to her and ignoring the pompous ass who was still fuming next to his cowed-looking wife. She was talking to him in a low voice. He threw her hand off and got close to her face, angrily gesturing toward the door.

Around the pair, the rest of the group was starting to mumble and move aimlessly. The news had brought a new level of despair.
 

My voice was a little too loud as I spoke, but I did manage to get everyone’s attention.

“Okay, fine. I fucked up. Yes, the passageway is out. But there has to be another way. Rhi said there were other exits, right? I saw another doorway on the roadway above the dam—isn’t that an exit? We’ve got options. And I don’t intend to die in this room. I have friends out there that need me, and I didn’t come all this way—risk losing them—just to throw in the towel. So let’s talk about options. I promise you I can get you out of here.”

“And why should we believe you?” Greg’s voice was acid, and his face screwed into a snarl. “A washed up movie star—yeah, I know who you are—who killed his wife and somehow landed his ass in the middle of fucking nowhere? What the hell are you even doing out here, man? How did you make it this far?”

I looked around the room and nodded, recognizing that for them to trust me, I’d have to explain. Rhi began to speak, as if to defend me, but I held up a hand.

“Fair enough. I’ll give you the short version. Yes, I killed my wife.” A gasp escaped from Susan’s mouth, and I looked at the tall, haggard woman, whose eyes were dark with exhaustion, and whose blond hair hung long and tangled around her face. She held her hand over her mouth in horror, and I swallowed back the sadness that her reaction inspired.

Still, after so long, I couldn’t believe it myself.
 

“I killed her. In my apartment, with a golf club.” I watched as the room grew quieter. No one moved.

“But the detail that was left out of the trial—the detail that I didn’t even remember until I could wake up out of a drug-induced stupor—was that she wasn’t my wife when I killed her. She was a zombie. Maybe one of the first that was created.”
 

This time it was Jean who reacted, a rapid intake of air causing her to cough loudly. Greg guffawed and put his hands on his hips.

“Created? What the hell are you talking about?”

I pulled an old office chair over and sat down heavily, groaning with relief as I took the weight off my sore leg. I looked down at the dirty floor before taking a breath and continuing. In the back of the room, Tommy started to make small noises that an adult tried to shush quickly.

“This plague was created in a lab. By the government. It’s based on a very old sample of a chemical compound from the middle east. If I gave you the whole story, you wouldn’t believe me. Suffice to say, my wife was one of the researchers. She was one of the first people infected.” I paused, then spat out the rest.
 

“And I was one of the first people inoculated against it.”
 

The room erupted in questions and I held up my hand, shaking my head and cutting off the inquiries.

“Yes, I’m immune. So are my friends. And so are a large swath of our surviving armed forces right now. Maybe even people living in larger cities. I don’t know. The last time I was plugged in to the effort, the military was going to deploy an aerosolized version in high-population areas. But I doubt that Concrete, Washington qualifies, so I’m sorry. I can’t help you there.”
 

“But I can help you with one thing: I’m immune, and the vaccine gives us special other abilities, not the least of which is increased strength. I’ve survived this far—cross-country from New York to DC to Seattle, and I’ve fought everything from militias to lions to zombies and survived.”
 

I turned to Greg, locking eyes with him as he listened. “Yes, I’m a washed up actor. And yes, I killed the creature that used to be my wife, who I loved to distraction. I have seen hell and I have watched friends die and I have come a long, long, fucking way to be standing here in front of you. But I have survived. I don’t intend to end my winning streak in this waterlogged prison. So. That’s me. The way I see it, you have two choices. You just lay down and die here, or you let me give you a fighting chance to survive. I know which one I’d pick.”

Silence reigned for several seconds before Eli’s voice rose from the back of the room.

“Well I don’t want to stay here. I’m going with that asshole.”

Rosy’s voice exploded in rapid-fire Spanish as she recognized the profanity from the nine-year old’s mouth. But his comment broke the silence as several people laughed. Susan was the first to speak.

“I will do whatever it takes to protect my baby. I think you’re the best chance. I’m with you.”
 

Reggie nodded and held out his hand, which I pumped once in affirmation.
 

Jean was speaking to Greg quietly, and his hands were gesturing wildly. Her tone got serious and he looked to the ceiling before throwing his hands up and walking away.
 

She looked at me and nodded once.
 

“Us too.”

Rhi slapped my shoulder once and turned to me.
 

“Okay, so what’s the plan?”

“The original plan was to distract the zombies and pull everyone out of the dam from the front door. We’d make our way around the larger herds and toward a safer place. But now, that herd outside is probably discovering that the bank alarm isn’t a dinner bell, and they’re scattering again, maybe coming this way, maybe staying in town. Either way, it’s not safe to leave here without getting rid of them, right?”

“So,” I continued, “This is my plan. I exit the building through one of the other doors, I make a play for the construction zone, grab some dynamite, and we blow the dam right after we get you all out. The water washes away our problems, we grab a boat, and we make back west. Or I do.”

“And us,” said Rhi, gesturing to Ethan, who rolled his eyes and shook his head slowly. “We made a promise.”
 

I nodded once in thanks, turning back to the group.

Greg spoke, clearly trying to control his dislike.
 

“We already told you. There’s only one thing wrong with your plan.”

“What’s that?”

“That passage you blew was the only safe way out on this side of the dam.”

“It wasn’t safe when I blew it. What’s the other way out?”

“It’s barely an option. It’s impossible. We’d be safer taking the way you came in and removing the concrete block by block.”

“Try me.”

He sighed.

“It’s through the main duct facility. One floor below this room. It’s half-flooded by now, and before the walls ruptured there were at least twenty of those things down there. We locked them in and never went back. It’s a death trap. Even if you could make your way through the water, there are too many of those things and they’d be impossible to see coming. It’s dark as shit in there, and full of pipes and water.”