Orpheus Born (9 page)

I cleared my throat. “Who's in there? We saw your signal.”

The door banged against the wall and I brought my weapon up, but the only danger I was in was being choked to death by a fierce hug from a middle-aged redheaded woman.

“Omigod, thank you! Omigod, thank you!”

I pried her off. “You're welcome. What's your name?”

“Ruby.” She let out several deep breaths. “It's Ruby. I work … worked … the desk for Whaler Air.”

We finished the introductions, and I asked, “What are you doing up here?” even though I was pretty sure I already knew.

“All the communications are down. All of them. I thought that if I could get up here, I could maybe get the light working and flag someone down.”

“Show us.” I had to raise my voice, because the helicopter had returned.

She led us in. The 360 degree view of the island was breathtaking, and everything could almost have been back to normal, save for the sight of Anders and his team dropping to the roof with their gear.

“I don't know when this thing was last used. The Ferry doesn't need it. There's a generator, but ...”

The problem was obvious.

“Bulb's busted,” Fish said. “Any spares?”

“Not that I can find.”

“Naturally.”

I said, “It was a good thought. It's just you?”

“Up here? Yeah. But there are two other people back at the terminal.”

“What? Where? There's no way they didn't hear us mopping up in there.”

“They wouldn't. They're in the basement. They're elderly, so it seemed like the best place to stash them while I made the run up here. There was no way they were going to make it, so I told them to wait until I got back.”

The radio crackled in my hand. “Anytime now!”

“What's the problem?”

“Remember all of those zombies that the chopper drew away? Well, it drew them right back. We're not as ninja in this truck as I'd hoped. We wait much longer it'll be a bitch getting out of here.”

“We have another problem. We missed a couple of survivors.”

“Shit.”

“What channel is Anders on?”

“Eight, I think.”

“Standby.” I switched to the other channel. “Anders! Anders!”

He answered me in a testy voice. “We're busy, Holt.”

“You have to stop. Right now.”

“And why the fuck would I do that?”

I punched the desk in frustration. “Because there are survivors, you idiot! And because I fucking said so!”

There was a long pause, then Anders came back with, “Sorry, that last transmission was broken up. I didn't quite catch that.”

“You damn well better catch it this time. Abort the operation. We have to go back in.”

I got no response.

“That guy's a piece of shit,” Fish said through clenched teeth.

Ruby still had no idea what it all meant. “What's going on?”

I called Anders again. No response. I knew those people were going to die unless I did something, and I could see only one solution. I moved to the catwalk and raised my rifle. I braced myself against the railing and sighted in on the roof.

Fish was right beside me. I told him to call Anders and say something, anything to make him react. I needed to know which one was him.

He hesitated, and I yelled, “Call him!”

He shook his head. “You know I have your back. But look down there. If you fire, they fire back, the pilot skins out, and you, me, our friends, the chick back in there … we all die one way or the other.”

“But ...” I really didn't know what to say to that. I looked down at the truck. Mutt wasn't joking. They were getting assaulted by dozens of zombies now. The truck was actually rocking on its springs. I didn't think there was any real danger yet, but it could only get worse.

“We've lost this one, Orpheus. Let's take our supplies and our survivor and go home.”

He was right. About everything.

Smart little pain in the ass.

I grabbed Ruby and led her downstairs while Fish let Mutt and Sam know we were coming down. Ruby kept asking me questions about the other couple. I had no answers, so I just said nothing, which apparently spoke volumes to her.

We hustled her into the truck. She just kind of crumpled to the floor, obviously in shock. The din inside the cargo area was nearly deafening.

Fish told Mutt that we were ready. The big engine revved, and we began to push through the crowd. I had a flashback to the zombies stuck in my wheel wells, but we pulled away smoothly. Fish and I each closed a door, and we were headed back to the hospital.

The only words that passed between any of us on the ride back came from Ruby. She looke
d at me with tears in her eyes and asked, “Who are you people?”



We got back to the hospital, and parked the truck by the one entrance that wasn't completely flooded with undead. We'd established a plan to get the goods inside, but we knew we were g
oing to lose the truck for good. It was just going to be a big closet from that point on.

Trager seemed genuinely pleased with our return, and the fact that we were one heavier. He greeted Ruby warmly and showed her around. Presumably, he would find out what she was good at and task her with something.

I didn't like him, but that man was an adept organizer of people. He'd already assigned all able-bodied people a job to help keep the hospital thriving. I didn't see those people all that much. My job had pretty much made me nocturnal.

I don't remember much else between our arrival and the first time my fist crashed into Anders' face.

Apparently he walked in, things were said, and my team had to eventually peel me off of him.

Immediately after that, a screaming Martin Trager made the proclamation that he would keep us separate at all times. He told Lena that she was officially the dispatcher, and her primary job was to keep us from ever crossing paths in the field.

Smart man.

No one's going to keep Anders safe from me forever, though.



I went to my room intending to get some rest, but it wasn't happening. I stewed in my bed for a while, but that's about the least constructive thing a person can do, so I decided to check
out the gym. I consulted the directory on the wall and headed down a floor.

I walked in and flipped on the overhead lights. They flickered into life and showed me a small, but complete, workout room. There was a row of high-end treadmills, another of elliptical trainers, universal machines and free weights. In the corner was what I guessed was a 32-inch HD set and a DVD player. I stripped down to my t-shirt and looked through the movies. I settled on “The Wedding Singer.”

Hey, Jackie loved that movie.

I popped it in, grabbed the remote, and hit the treadmill. I'm not a great runner by any means. Give me a basketball and I can play all day, but there's a mental aspect to distance running that I've never been wired for. However, my new circumstances dictated that I should probably just get over that shit and get back into real shape.

I started off at a ten-minute mile pace and went. I increased the pace several times until I had settled into a what I thought was nice, zombie-outrunning speed. And no, I'm not joking.

On the screen, Adam Sandler was serenading Drew Barrymore with his uneven, The Cure-inspired song, and I wanted to laugh. I always did at that part; Jackie did, too. But it wouldn't come.

I cooled down for a few minutes and stepped off. I was still too keyed up to get back to bed, but it's not like I had to be anywhere that morning. I moved to the curl bench and threw some weight on it. It had been a long time since I'd used free weights, and I didn't know how much I could handle without hurting something, so I started light. I banged out a set as a warm-up. I slid the weights off of the bar and grabbed a heavier one. I started to slide it off the rack, but I lost my concentration and the weight slid back on the peg and one of my fingers got painfully sandwiched between two weights.

As injuries go, it was nothing.

Still, I walked away from the rack and into the locker room. I intended to take a few breaths, splash some water on my face, and get back to it. Unfortunately, I still had the curl bar in my hands.

I screamed and swung it into the nearest locker. The door caved in. I swung again and again and again, bellowing with each blow, completely out of control.

In case you haven't guessed, it had nothing to do with hurting my finger.

I don't know how long I stayed at it. All I know is that, by the time I was done, I was panting, my hands throbbed like you wouldn't believe, and six lockers were, to put it mildly, unusable.

“Now there's a man who needs a drink.”

I was afraid to turn around and face Mutt. I had no idea how long he'd been standing there, but I was embarrassed enough when I'd thought I was alone. Now that one of my teammates had seen at least some of it, I was mortified.

I dropped the bar, but didn't look at him. “How'd you find me?”

“Wasn't hard. You were only slightly louder than a piledriver.”

For the first time, I met his gaze. “Sorry.” It was all I could think of to say.

“For what? Being human and throwing a shitfit? I trust you down there; that's all that matters. I haven't lost it like that yet, but it sure looks like it did the trick.” He tossed me a towel. “C'mon, the rest of the guys are up, too. Let's drink some cheap booze and have a smoke.”

My tantrum had been exactly what I'd needed at the time. And smoking and drinking with my team was exactly what I needed after my hissy fit was over. “Shit, yes. Just give me a second to freshen up.”

I ran the cold water and washed myself down as much as I could. When I walked out of the locker room, he had the remote in hand and had rewound to th
e part where Sandler was singing. “This part always makes me laugh.”



It's been a while since the last entry. I haven't written anything because, frankly, there's nothing new to tell. In the beginning, we'd find survivors here and there. That made ever
y trip worth it, even though I didn't get any closer to finding my family.

It's getting harder to convince myself that Jackie didn't die in the fire at the salon, or that Ethan isn't dead or worse.

Now, it feels like I'm on auto-pilot. We go in, kill zombies if we have to, come up empty, and let Scythe go in and wipe everything off the face of the earth. I've lost a few guys along the way, but the core team remains.

As I said, nothing new.

Well, there may be another recruit. Mutt brought him to my attention. I was against bringing in anyone else, because they had all been forced on me by Trager. But Mutt asked me to humor him. We put the kid, Tim, through a training exercise that we'd cooked up especially for him. He screwed up at the end, but there's something about him … I don't know.

I'm going to find out. It's time to have a talk, just me and him. I need to know what he's about.

I hope I'm doing this for the right reasons, and not because of my guilt over not being able to protect Ethan. But the fact that I just wrote the previous sentence probably means that I already know the answer.

We'll see.

More if I have time.

Honestly, it feels like everything's coming  to a head. A resolution.

One way or another.

Until next time, be safe.

Don't let them bite you.

Afterword

A funny thing can happen after you publish a novel: sometimes, people read it.

Even funnier, sometimes they enjoy it, and want more.

You may or may not have already read my zombie thriller
Orpheus
. If you have, thanks. Anyway, some readers had questions. Where did the virus come from? What happened in the first hours and days of the outbreak on the island? How did Cameron Holt and his Scalpel team come together in the first place?

They seemed like reasonable questions and, to be completely honest, I wasn't entirely sure of the answers. So I started writing, and who better to tell that particular story than Orpheus himself?

Orpheus Born
isn't meant to be one of those seque
l/prequel things. It's just an expansion of the first novel that fills in some hopefully interesting blanks. Even though I wrote it second, I think I managed to avoid putting anything in it that could spoil the actual novel, so the two can be read in either order.

That's it. Short novella, short afterword. See you in
Orpheus II
.

Dan DeWitt