Riposte (The Redivivus Trilogy Book 2) (45 page)

Plant stared past the woman into the distance, and said, “What’s going on over there? We should probably go with her to check it out.” Although Reams did not see what captured their attention, he fully intended to follow Animal. Reams, Plant, and John set out after her while Garza and Cujo stayed with the Bearcat.

When they finally caught up to her, Animal stood staring into a space formed by four large shipping containers arranged in a square. She had opened one of the shipping container’s side doors to look inside the enclosure. The air was heavy with the coppery scent of blood and the fetid odor of decay.

John peered over Animal’s shoulder and saw at least a dozen mutilated bodies—not just the infected that had been put down, but also some that appeared to have been
played with
or tortured. John was not even certain all of the corpses were those of the infected. Before he could divert his gaze, his stomach took over, forcing him to turn and vomit.

“Hey guys, check this shit out,” Plant said, his voice echoing as though far away.

Plant stood at the open end of one of the empty containers. When Animal asked where he was, her voice resonated through the space, sounding as clear as if she were standing directly in front of him. It was dark inside despite the light filtering in through the open doors connecting it to those of the adjacent container.  They formed a narrow corridor in which one could only move into the next container or climb over the top of the doors. Plant noticed a black rectangular box with wires protruding from it located at the opposite end of the container. Intrigued, he stepped inside.

While his first heavy footstep echoed inside the empty metal container, the second was drowned out by the booming voice of a man beckoning him forward. The voice sounded garbled, drunk, and frankly evil; spewing all manner of profanity and derogations directed at the infected as a bright light flashed near the black box. Just as abruptly, the container fell dark and silent about fifteen seconds later. Glancing around tentatively as though waiting for something to jump out and grab him, Plant said, “Well, that was messed up.”

He looked down and noticed a welcome mat with wires conspicuously poking out from under it. Kicking the mat to the side, he crouched to examine the pressure switch hidden underneath it. Now more intrigued than ever, he followed the wires to the other end of the container where they led to a very crude circuit. Some of the components were soldered while others were simply twisted together. More wires connected the circuit to a small light and a handheld digital tape recorder that was plugged into the speaker he had seen from the entrance. Inside the adjacent container, Plant found a similar set up that he imagined was designed to draw the infected farther inside.

While the first mat had been a black rubber industrial affair that was hard to see, this one was a brown coir mat with the words
Welcome Bitches
stenciled on it. Eyeing the floor mat conspiratorially, Plant said, “Oh, what the hell.”

His weight immediately triggered another strobe light and a recording of the same creepy voice. Although the words were different, the message and the delivery were the same. Once again, everything fell dark and silent fifteen seconds later. Plant was not surprised to find a mat and a pressure switch at the mouth of the third container, but this time the speaker and light were located outside the side door in the enclosed space between the containers.

John and Reams finally came up alongside Plant, and John asked, “What the hell is this? Do you think someone is trying to round up the infected and reclaim the area?”

None of them knew the answer to that question.

The containers were approximately eight feet tall, and all but the top foot of the walls inside the enclosure was smeared with a rusty brown color as though they had been painted with a rag. John lost his footing when he stepped inside, nearly falling to the gore-slick pavement.

Reams pointed to two pairs of heavy leather gloves covered in thin chain mail as well as several lengths of bloodstained rope hanging in one corner of the enclosure. “Something tells me this isn’t the work of the local neighborhood beautification committee,” Reams said.

“Where’s Ann?” Plant asked, his voice suddenly alarmed and serious. He almost never called his friend by her proper name. The look on each of their faces confirmed that none of them knew the answer to that question either.

They split up immediately and set out to find her. Out of fear they might inadvertently attract the infected to the area, they refrained from calling out for her. The absence of infected monsters trying to kill them was the only positive thing about their current situation, and they all knew that was subject to change without a moment’s notice. When they met back in front of the enclosure and still had not seen her, Reams began to worry. Sensing his unease, John said, “Don’t worry. She can handle herself out her better than any of us.”

Nodding, Plant said, “No argument there, but I’m pretty sure she went that way.” He pointed toward a derelict building that looked as nondescript as the next.

John did not notice the two slain revs that Plant thought identified her as well as a signature or a fingerprint.

* * *

Animal stayed by the side door when John and Reams went to check on Plant.
Why the hell is that jackass making so much noise?
Her eyes darted around; scanning the area for the infected she knew he was calling. After a moment, she spotted two revs standing more or less motionless near the front of a rundown building about fifty yards away. “I better deal with them before they call any others,” she muttered under her breath.

As there were only two of them, she was not overly concerned as she moved toward them. For some strange reason, they seemed uninterested in her despite the fact that they were staring directly at her. Slinking out of the shadows, she watched in fascination as they pulled and clawed in her direction but never budged an inch. As she advanced with her brush tools at the ready, the chains binding the revs to the front porch posts finally came into view. She put them down with a decisive slash of her wicked blades.
Why the hell would some sick asshole chain those things out here? Unless…they didn’t want anyone going inside.

Peering through the grimy windows, the front room was cloaked in darkness and she could ascertain nothing about what lay inside. After padding the glass pane adjacent to the door, she shattered it with a sharp
thwack
from the pommel of one of her brush tools. When she heard no moaning reply, she reached in and unlocked the door. The room was pitch black beyond the light trickling in through the open door. Cautiously, Animal stepped inside and yanked the cloth covering away from one of the windows. She gasped when she saw the monstrous abomination standing only feet away from her. Its throat had been savagely cut out, and the stump of its trachea oversewn to prevent any air—and thus, any sound—from escaping. With the windows covered, the silent rev represented certain death for anyone who wandered in carelessly. Another stroke of her razor-sharp blade and the thing crumpled into a lifeless heap.

Heart racing, she pulled the covering off of the remaining window before slipping deeper into the room. Pausing for an instant, she put her ear to the door but heard only a soft skittering as though there were rats inside.
Rats are everywhere these days. One man’s hell is another thing’s heaven, I guess.

When she opened the door, the vile odor hit her hard enough to double her over. The stench alone was enough to keep anyone other than Animal from venturing inside. Recovering slowly, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the darkness as she peered inside. Like the room she just passed through, this room held its own horrors. The torsos of two revs crawled around the floor, waiting to latch on to the ankle of anyone unaware they were lurking there. They were tethered to the center of the room by a length of chain anchored to an eyebolt screwed into the exposed vertebrae of their lower backs.

As she skirted around the room’s outer edge, carefully avoiding the reaching half-revs, Animal noticed several boxes stacked against the back wall of the room. The six long metal boxes appeared to be military grade and were stacked in two rows. Her curiosity had her by the balls as she cautiously approached the containers. She had to know what was so valuable that someone would go to such gruesome lengths to protect it. The more she thought about it, she realized it might not necessarily the value or importance of what was inside, but rather the level of insanity in the twisted person’s mind.

The heavy hinges sounded deafening as they opened with a snap
and a creak. A slight shudder came from the box, as though one of the hinges caught as she tried to remove the lid. When the container’s airtight seal was broken, the rancid odor that wafted out forced her to turn to the side and vomit instantly. As she did, she lost control of the lid and it clattered to the ground with a bang loud enough to wake the dead. Despite all the awful, sick shit she had seen since the start of the outbreak, Animal was not prepared for what she found inside.

* * *

As he approached, Plant noticed the two nearly decapitated bodies were chained to the front stoop of the building. Breathlessly, he muttered, “I swear, she is going to get herself killed.”

Stepping over the lifeless corpses, he crept into the room with John and Reams on his heels. They found the throatless rev sprawled on the floor, its head nearly cleaved in two. Without making a sound, Plant moved into the next room just as Animal was opening the second container in the stack.

“There is some seriously sick shit going on here,” she said, as if she had known he was coming all along.

Plant sidled up beside her, and they both stared slack-jawed at the cornucopia of ammunition she had just opened. There were thousands of rounds of various calibers.

Without taking her eyes off of her treasure, Animal said in a wistful tone, “Take a look in the other stack, just be careful.”

When Plant opened the top box, he gagged and his eyes went wide at the sight of the squirming adolescent rev crammed inside the narrow box. Its arms had been cut off to make it fit, and its jaws snapped voraciously as it stared at him with blank eyes. “Holy hell! I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Plant said as he stifled another gag.

John and Reams stayed by the door, while Plant and Animal opened the remaining boxes. Not counting the one that had been on the top of each stack, the metal crates were apocalyptic goldmines. While they did not go through everything, they saw enough weapons, ammo, and military hardware to outfit a whole battalion. “Reams, give me a hand with these,” Plant said.

Animal flashed Reams a salacious grin as she took up position next to John. The two big men made quick work of dragging the four heavy crates out of the room.

“What about those two?” Reams asked.

Looking to Animal, Plant said, “I think we’ll just leave those two here.”

Once outside, Plant and Reams stayed with the containers, while John and Animal made their way back to the Bearcat.

“Garza, we found a ton of weapons and ammo. We need to pick up Reams and Plant,” John said as they climbed into the truck.

The back of the Bearcat was considerably more cramped after the four containers were loaded in, but given the value of their contents, they readily accepted the discomfort. As they drove back to Building 18, they told Garza and Cujo about the rev trap they discovered as well as the infected centurions guarding the weapon cache. Every face went ghostly pale when Plant told them about the contents of the top box that served as the final deterrent.

When his stomach finally settled, John asked in disbelief, “Why the hell would you open another box after finding a mutilated rev in the first one?”

Without batting an eye, Animal replied, “I don’t know. I just needed to see what was inside.”

Shaking his head, John thought
curiosity killed the cat, or in this case got it a shitload of weapons and ammunition.

“They’re like infected marionettes scattered around at the whim of some deranged puppet master,” Plant said.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Animal said with a growing look of concern on her face.

It was obvious to all of them why the owner of the cache had gone to such lengths to protect it; its contents were beyond value in the world they lived in. That someone other than the military possessed that much hardware was a troubling prospect, and Garza had no doubt that some other entity was responsible. He refused to accept that the U.S. military had perpetrated the heinous acts described by the members of his team. Who had acquired the weapons and for what purpose were but a few of the questions plaguing their minds as they drove back to the CDC. 

“We need to get back to the lab and tell Lt. Weaver about this ASAP. I’m not sure who’s behind it or what it means exactly, but I get the feeling something much bigger than we know is going on,” Garza said.

Staring at a lone rev staggering through the desolate wasteland, John knew in the depths of his soul that the soldier was right.

TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK THREE OF

THE REDIVIVUS TRILOGY