Mutated - 04 (24 page)
Authors: Joe McKinney
Gabi shook her head slowly, not understanding, or perhaps not wanting to.
“That’s what we’re doing out here,” Sylvia went on. “We’re trying to find a friend of ours. The Red Man has her, and we have to get her back.”
“You’re crazy . . .” Gabi said.
“No,” Sylvia said. “Gabi, this is the truth, every word of it. We have to find our friend. She’s been in contact with a doctor named Don Fisher. He can use the cure Nate’s got with him. He can—”
“Don Fisher?” Gabi nearly spat the name on the deck. “Fisher? He’s nothing but a myth. A pipe dream. You might as well be looking for Prester John.”
“He’s real!” Nate interjected. “I’ve seen him. I’ve met him. I’ve met his family.”
Gabi wheeled on him, gun raised high, her gaze narrowed down the length of the barrel.
“Nate, no!” Sylvia shouted.
Nate pushed the barrel of Gabi’s gun away with his uninjured hand.
“It’s alright,” he said. He turned his attention on Gabi. “It’s true. I’ve met him. He helped me when I was sick with the flu.”
“Why didn’t you give him the cure then?” she said.
She could have pulled the gun away. She could have taken a step back and blasted him, but she was battling more with herself now, her confidence wavering. She didn’t want to believe what he was saying. That much was plain from the look on her face. But somehow, and he didn’t know how he knew this, only that he did, she needed to believe. Something inside her needed to believe. Against every hard grain of doubt in her being, she needed to believe.
“Because I didn’t know who he was,” Nate admitted. There was a note of humility in his voice now. “And because I was scared. And stupid. I had the flu when I saw him and he helped me. He gave me medicine and clean water. I should have known he was a doctor.”
Just then Richardson stepped between them. He put a hand on the top of Gabi’s gun.
Gabi looked at him, and her eyes pleaded for direction.
“I didn’t believe it, either,” he said gently. “But I’ve seen the proof. He’s telling you the truth.”
He put pressure on the gun and she yielded. She lowered the muzzle to the deck. “So what are we supposed to do?” she asked.
“We find this girl, this Niki Booth, and then we find the doctor.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I really don’t know.”
Without notice, the
Sugar Jane
rocked hard to port, throwing them all off their feet. Nate crashed headlong into the gunwale, hitting his head so hard his legs went numb. He sagged to one knee, looking around, blinking stupidly.
Sugar Jane
rocked hard to port, throwing them all off their feet. Nate crashed headlong into the gunwale, hitting his head so hard his legs went numb. He sagged to one knee, looking around, blinking stupidly.
Gabi had lost her gun. She and Richardson were tumbled together in a heap on the opposite side of the deck. Sylvia managed to keep her feet, but only by holding on to the awning above her.
He couldn’t see Avery.
Gabi stood, looked around. The fog was thinning, but they still couldn’t see much beyond the Red Man’s compound rising above the next bend in the river.
“We’re turning around.”
The engines strained suddenly, causing them all to stagger.
Gabi caught herself on the gunwale and turned toward the pilothouse. “What are you doing?” she said.
But Jimmy was already climbing down. He looked upset, desperate.
“Jimmy? What’s going on?”
“We got trouble,” he said.
He rushed past her without explaining, unlocked an access panel near the bow, and threw open the hatch. Inside Nate saw what looked like scuba gear: tanks, masks, and hoses.
“Help me with this,” he said.
Gabi didn’t hesitate. She rushed forward and started pulling metal tanks out of the hold, lining them up against the railing. Jimmy brought out the regulators and together they slid them onto the tanks and screwed them down.
He tested one of the regulators and, satisfied it was working, turned to the others.
“We’re abandoning ship,” he said. “Everybody up front—fast !”
“What’s going on?” Richardson said.
“The Red Man’s coming. I caught a glimpse of them through the fog. There’s a bunch of boats.”
“You can’t outrun them?” Sylvia asked.
“Not a chance. Let’s go, everybody. We’ve only got the four tanks, so two of you will have to double up.”
Jimmy slipped a tank on his back and pulled the regulator over his shoulder. Then he helped Gabi into hers. Nate looked around. Sylvia and Ben were both putting on tanks, Sylvia pulling Avery over to her side as she did so.
Ben nodded at him. “Looks like you’re with me.”
Nate opened his mouth to speak, but didn’t know what to say. It was happening again, the confusion seeping into his head like a fog. This was coming at him too fast. He had so many questions buzzing around in his brain he couldn’t figure which one to ask first.
In the near distance they could hear the steady thrum of boat engines coming closer.
“Let’s get moving, people,” Jimmy said. “They’ll be on us any second.”
He climbed over the railing and looked back.
He caught Nate looking at him.
“What’s your problem?” he said.
“I . . .” Nate stammered.
“Spit it out, boy.”
“I can’t swim,” Nate finally said.
Jimmy laughed. It was a deep, phlegmy sound. Then he shook his head. “And here I thought you couldn’t get any dumber.”
He shook his head again and dropped overboard with a splash.
C
HAPTER
17
HAPTER
17
The Red Man sat in the dark in the middle of the little cabin at the foot of the stairs. The young man who had been given the task to go below and deliver the news stood at the top of the stairs, not wanting to take another step.
He was more than scared. It was coming off him in waves, like heat shimmers rising from the highway pavement in the middle of the desert. The Red Man terrified him in ways he could not even express. He was sweating, unable to swallow the lump in his throat, a chill creeping over his skin with every moment he spent in this devil’s company.
“Well?”
The voice startled the soldier and he flinched. The Red Man was stirring, a darker shadow moving through a pool of lighter shadows.
The solder took a few steps down, stopping when the smell assaulted his nostrils.
“Sir,” he said, his voice faltering, “we’ve got the boat. We should be coming up on it any second.”
There was movement in the dark, and the next instant the Red Man was standing just below the soldier, staring up at him with eyes that were unblinking and insane. He didn’t speak, only stared at the soldier.
The young man wanted to back up, but didn’t dare. His name was David Cohen, and he had been a black shirt for a little over a year, ever since the Red Man’s army swept over the Las Cruces compound where he’d lived since he was a boy. He’d been working the fields, harvesting squash, when the main attack started. The klaxons had sounded, but David and the three people with him never had a chance to take their stations. Zombies poured through a hole in the fence and overran the main part of the complex. He’d barely cleared the field when the rest of the defenders started running in full retreat toward him.
David was luckier than most. He and a handful of others managed to escape the compound, and he’d wandered, lost and confused, through the surrounding countryside for two days before the black shirts cornered him.
The Red Man had given him a choice: become a black shirt or a zombie.
At the time, the choice had seemed obvious. But the truth was, this was no way to live.
And still the Red Man stared at him, the thoughts behind his eyes and painted face completely unknowable.
Finally the young man could take no more and blurted out: “They asked me to come get you.”
The Red Man nodded. It was a subtle gesture, and the young man wasn’t even certain that he’d seen it, but he scrambled back up on deck just the same.
Back in the fog, the soldier quickly made his way aft.
This, he thought, was no way to live. No way at all.
But he had seen his compound razed to the ground by the black shirts, and those who refused to serve the Red Man either eaten alive by his zombie army or impaled through the ass on a forest of stakes outside the Red Man’s compound.
This was no way to live, to be sure. But he was living.
That much he would hold on to as long as he could.
The old trawler emerged out of the fog, its stern toward the Red Man’s approaching fleet. From the bow of his boat the Red Man studied the trawler. He could see at a glance that it was deserted, save for a few dead bodies draped over the deck fixtures. Its hull was dark with smeared blood and mud, but he could still see the name of the boat, the
Sugar Jane
, painted in solid block letters over the propellers.
Sugar Jane
, painted in solid block letters over the propellers.
“Doesn’t look like anyone survived,” one of the soldiers said.
The Red Man didn’t look at him. He studied the boat for a moment longer, then said: “Bring us alongside. I’m going aboard.”
“You don’t want us to clear it first? Just to be sure?”
“Just bring us alongside.”
“Yes, sir.”
They glided up to the other boat, nudging it gently. The crew tied it off and the Red Man stepped aboard. The deck was slick with gore and mud. Spent shell casings glinted wetly from the deck. Quite a few of them.
The Red Man walked forward the length of the boat, noticing the busted window, smeared with blood, the fresh bullet holes in the fiberglass, and older damage, clumsily repaired.
He circled back and went down to the main cabin. He saw beds for five or six, two of them hastily made up. There was a backpack on one and he opened it. A few yellow blister packs of pills and some tattered clothes fell out.
And something else.
An iPad, wrapped in a Ziploc bag.
He opened the bag and slid the instrument out, running the stub of his missing finger down the side. He remembered these things and was surprised that it still worked. The owner must have found a way to recharge it. In a world without electricity, such an instrument was a strange find indeed.
On the screen was a file called “Interviews.” He opened it and double tapped on the most recent file. A moment later, the face of a young fat girl appeared on the screen. She looked dimly familiar in a way that so many of his memories did from the time before what he had come to think of as his conversion. This girl, awkward, shy, nervous, hesitant . . . he did know her. But from where?
And then she started talking about Houston during Hurricane Mardell. And having to evacuate. And moving to Gooding, Illinois, to be with . . . her cousin Niki Booth.
Of course, he thought, a smile forming at the corner of his mouth.
One of his guards appeared in the doorway behind him.
“Sir, we’ve searched all the holds. There’s nothing. My guess is they got pulled overboard during the attack.”
“I doubt that.”
The Red Man shut off the iPad without closing the file. He tossed the iPad on the bed, took one last look around, and turned to face his soldier.
“They’re still alive,” the Red Man said. “They’re somewhere.”
“I have boats searching the water now, just in case.”
The Red Man nodded, but he knew they wouldn’t find anything. These are Niki Booth’s friends, he thought. They’re coming for her.
Well, that was fine.
Let them come. He reached out to the zombies in his compound, his mind focusing on them, moving them into place.
“Your orders, sir?”
“Tow the boat back with us. And find the people who escaped from here.”
The Red Man drew close to the soldier.
The man stiffened. His mouth twitched, the beginnings of a grimace, partly from fear, partly from the rotten smell.
“There should be a young, fat girl with them. Take her alive. I want her brought to me.”
The man swallowed uncomfortably, then nodded, and got out of there as fast as he could.
C
HAPTER
18
HAPTER
18
Nate surfaced, sputtering and coughing. They were underneath a large wooden pier that stretched some hundred feet or so out over the water, and there wasn’t enough headroom for him to stand up. But even if there had been headroom enough, he wouldn’t have had the strength. He was just lucky to be alive.
He pulled away from Richardson and crawled on his hands and knees onto a stinking, slimy mud bank, the foul taste of the river still in his mouth.
Richardson was beside him, also on his hands and knees. “You okay?” he said. He was speaking in a whisper.
Nate nodded, then coughed again. He glanced toward the river, his eyes following the line of the pier. A thick, drowsy fog hung over the dark water. Waves lapped quietly against the muddy bank, stirring up a smell that reminded him of compost. He found it difficult to process the sleepy ease of the scene, especially after what he’d just gone through. It had been a rough swim. They’d been going with the current, downriver, and Nate was able to let it carry him most of the way. But then the group had reached the pier and turned toward shore. That had been the hard part. He had kicked and beat ineffectively at the water, but couldn’t make himself go. The regulator had popped out of his mouth and he’d started to sink. He’d panicked. River water had got into his mouth and he’d swallowed some of it. But then Richardson grabbed his arm and pushed the regulator back in his mouth and carried him the rest of the way.
I almost drowned, he thought. Jesus Christ.
That would have been something. He’d lived through the apocalypse. Four thousand Air Force soldiers died at Minot, but he’d escaped. He escaped the mass suicides at Jasper Sewell’s Grasslands compound. He’d even escaped certain death at the hands of the Red Man, the zombie king. It would have been something to live through all that just to drown in the river.
Nate laughed, a gravelly, choking sound that brought with it another round of coughing. His chest and his throat were burning and tight, but it didn’t hurt as badly as it had just a few moments earlier.
Nate Royal dodges another bullet, he thought. Yay me.
After another round of coughing, he glanced up at the others.
Jimmy and Gabi were stowing their gear in the joint where the pier met the bank, the two of them all business, as usual.
Sylvia was fussing over Avery. She checked her injuries, then brushed the girl’s wet hair back from her eyes with her fingertips.
They made eye contact.
Sylvia whispered something to her and Avery nodded in reply.
Beside him, Richardson was sliding out of the harness that held the air tank on his back. Nate wondered if he too was thinking how close they’d come to drowning. With all his panicked kicking and thrashing, Nate knew he’d been a handful down there, and Richardson was certainly no spring chicken anymore.
“Where are we anyway?” Nate said.
Jimmy wheeled around fiercely, his eyes narrowed, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “Keep quiet, you idiot. You trying to get us killed?”
Nate frowned at him.
Jimmy stared back at him, almost daring him to say something else. Growing up, there had been a few years, mostly during middle school, when nearly every word he spoke to his father earned him a slap across the mouth. Kneeling there in the mud, the quiet sound of water lapping against the pier beams all around him, Nate felt the sting of old wounds rising in his cheeks.
He lowered his eyes. “I was just asking,” he said.
Jimmy turned away, muttering something about how a man so dumb had no reason to go on living.
When their gear was stowed they crawled over to the pier’s shadow line and looked out across the grounds of the Kirkman Hyatt Hotel. A few guards stood by the entrance closest to the pier, but otherwise the field between the water and the buildings was deserted.
Nate’s gaze drifted from the water, across the open field, and finally over the buildings. Or building, rather. From the glimpses he’d gotten while they were still on the
Sugar Jane
, it had looked like the hotel was made up of three separate buildings. But it was just the one building, he could see that now. One really huge building. There were three towers, each about nine or ten stories high and made of dingy gray brick. They were arranged in a V shape, each one connected to the others by flat-roofed common areas.
Sugar Jane
, it had looked like the hotel was made up of three separate buildings. But it was just the one building, he could see that now. One really huge building. There were three towers, each about nine or ten stories high and made of dingy gray brick. They were arranged in a V shape, each one connected to the others by flat-roofed common areas.
Avery was looking at him. He met her gaze and she smiled.
“It used to be the Kirkman Hyatt Hotel and Convention Center,” she said, almost as though she could read his mind. “It was the biggest hotel in the Midwest before the outbreak.”
Sylvia looked back toward the water. “The fog’s starting to clear,” she said. They could hear the Red Man’s boats powering slowly back and forth across the river. “They’re still looking for us, but once that fog’s gone, they’ll know we’re not out there. That doesn’t give us much time.”
“To do what, exactly?” Gabi asked.
“We’re going in there,” Sylvia said. “We have to find Niki. Without her, all this is for nothing.”
“I only see the two guards,” Richardson said. “We can get past them.”
“Listen to you two,” Gabi said. There was a smile forming at the corners of her mouth, but it was an expression of disbelief. “You’re both absolutely insane.”
Gabi looked from Sylvia to Richardson and back to Sylvia again, as though one of them might miraculously come to their senses and tell her they were just kidding. But when that didn’t happen she huffed and shook her head.
“What would you have us do?” Sylvia asked. “You know why we’re doing this. You know how important this is. Not just to us, but for all of us. People everywhere.”
“Save your speeches,” Jimmy said. “Just tell me how you’re going to get in there.”
“We’ll have to get around those two guards,” she said. She hesitated for a moment, then pointed to the north side of the tower to their left. “Maybe through a window on that side there. That line of shrubs should give us some cover from those guards.”
“It’ll get us out of their line of sight,” Richardson agreed.
“And when you’re inside?” Jimmy said. “How are you gonna find your friend?”
Sylvia shrugged. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
Jimmy huffed. “Well, it’s your ass.”
“Hopefully not.” She turned to Gabi. “You two don’t have to come with us. It’d help if you could find us a way out of here, though. Maybe have a boat waiting for us?”
Gabi looked at her husband. A silent conversation seemed to play out between them.
Finally, she turned back to Sylvia, nodding. “Yeah, we can do that.”
“Good. Ready everybody?”
“Wait,” Richardson said. He glanced at Avery. To Nate, it looked as though he was about to suggest she should stay put, or perhaps go with Jimmy and Gabi.
“What is it?” Sylvia said. If she had picked up on Richardson’s questioning glance toward Avery, she made no sign of it.
“I . . . nothing,” he said. “I’m ready.”
A ragged line of red-tip photinias ran along what had once been the hotel’s northern property line. It wasn’t much for cover or concealment, and looking up at the black, vacant windows on the tower face above them, Nate figured that anybody watching the grounds from up there would spot them easily. But Sylvia guided them to the tower without incident. They ran from the last of the bushes to the side of the tower in a crouch. Like kids playing at being soldiers, Nate thought. The thought might have been funny in some other place, some other time. As it was, he was beginning to feel sick again, as though something long and massive was slowly uncoiling in his gut.
Nate crossed the last few feet of rangy lawn and put his back against the wall next to Richardson. On the other side of Richardson was an empty window, and on the other side of that stood Sylvia and Avery. Sylvia glanced into the opening and seemed satisfied.
“At least we won’t have to break out the window,” she said.
“Let’s just get out of the open,” Richardson said.
“Agreed.”
Sylvia climbed through the window. Richardson helped Avery through and then went himself. A breeze touched Nate’s face, bringing with it the dank, earthy smell of the river. But there was another smell behind it, underneath it, something evil. It sent a chill through him, raising the gooseflesh on his arms.
Maybe this was a bad idea, Nate thought.
But he did it anyway.
He climbed through the window and dropped into what must have been some kind of office back before the outbreak. In the dark he could make out a lot of desks, most of them pushed off at odd angles from their once orderly rows. He could picture people working at those desks, discontented drones engaged in the soul-sucking task of moving paper from one stack to the next. There was dried blood on the walls, a ragged outline of a hand dragged across a grimy wall. How old the blood was he couldn’t tell, and he supposed it didn’t really matter. Trash was scattered all over the floor. Countless rainstorms had found their way through the windows over the years, and the room had a water-damaged grunginess about it. There was a smell in here, too, that of sodden paper and spoiled food. Rats scurried into the shadows. Nate heard, or at least thought he heard, the sound of their little claws tapping on the hardwood floor.
“Where do we go from here?” Richardson asked.
Sylvia shrugged. “I don’t know, Ben. I guess we just start looking around.”
“Should we split up or something?” Nate asked.
“No,” Sylvia said. “If we get separated we may never find our way back together again.”
They found the exit, and on the other side of that a long, narrow hallway. There were rooms all down the length of the hall, darkened doorways leading God knows where.
“I don’t like this,” Avery said.
Sylvia grabbed her hand and squeezed. “You’re worried about zombies in here?”
Avery nodded.
“I don’t think we’re gonna have to worry about that.”
“Why?”
“This is the Red Man’s home base. If he can control zombies from miles away, he should be able to keep them under control when they’re right here under his thumb.”
“How is that supposed to make me feel any better?” Avery asked.
“He uses uninfected troops, too. He can’t very well house them here if he has zombies running around everywhere. None of them would stay. My guess is the zombies he does have here are kept out of the way and under tight control.”
Richardson scoffed. “Sylvia, that’s bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“You know better than that. They let us get in here. They practically opened the front door for us. This is a trap.”
“A trap?” The muscles in her neck twitched. She put her hands on her hips and stared at Ben like he was the dumbest man alive. Nate knew the look well. He was just glad it was pointed at someone else this time.
Sylvia shook her head.
“Ben, you need to make up your mind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You tell me. First you don’t believe these zombies are capable of being cured, that their minds are permanently gone, and then you go and suggest they’re capable of setting a trap. Which is it, Ben? Make up your mind.”
“A Venus flytrap is capable of setting a trap for a fly.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nearly every predator on the planet is capable of setting a trap. That doesn’t make them human. And it doesn’t prove they can be cured. You’re living in La La Land if you believe that.”
“And you’re being obtuse.”
“I am not.”
“Fatuous then.”
“Hey, I’m not calling you names.”
“You said I was full of shit.”
“No, I said what you said was bullshit. There’s a difference.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
These two, Nate realized, were like racehorses going around the track. Their arguments had a sort of useless circularity to them, a constant effort to outdistance one another on a course that went nowhere and proved nothing.
Nate looked at Avery. She met his gaze and he saw exhaustion in her eyes, the same kind of exhaustion he’d seen in the soldiers back at Minot, right after they’d come back from working double shifts at the fence line, where the zombies gathered in crowds hundreds deep, moaning with the voice of hell.
And yet it wasn’t exactly the same. Not really. Now that he was studying her, really looking at her, he could see it was actually the exhaustion in him projected onto her. The clarity of the insight startled him. For so long people had told him he was dumb, a moron, and he had believed it. He’d never seen or felt anything to contradict it. And yet, when he was with her, when he was with Ben and Sylvia and Avery, he couldn’t help but feel . . . good . . . like he was complete. When the four of them were together, he felt like matching gears had suddenly been pieced together for the first time. This constant arguing between Ben and Sylvia, perhaps it was some kind of courtship between them, something the two of them needed, but it was throwing a wrench in the gears.
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