The Zombie Chronicles - Book 4 - Poisonous Serum (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (2 page)

Lucy ran over from the other vehicle. “What’s going on?” she asked.

A guy with a buzzed head stepped forward. “What are you doing here, Lucy?”

“
We’ve come for the vials. Where are they?”

“
Vials? What the heck are you talkin’ about?”

“
Don’t play dumb, Tom,” Lucy hissed. “Where the heck are they?”

“
What do you need with that bag anyway?”

Instantly, I looked at Nick and then Lucy. He’d said “bag”, and none of us had mentioned that the vials were in a bag. We knew then that good ol’ Tom was a liar.
Birds of a feather
, I thought, glancing from Tahoe to his buddy.

“
Don’t you give me that crap,” Lucy said. “You have no idea what we’ve been through. Now, you’ll give me one of the vials, or so help me God—”

He clapped her shoulder. “Calm down, little lady. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack.”

“
Tom, get your hand off my wife and give me my bag of vials,” Tahoe demanded, glaring angrily at the man.

“
Wait…
your
vials? I don’t think so,” I argued. “Technically, the bag’s mine,” I explained to Tom in no uncertain terms. “Your buddy, here, stole them from me. Where are they?”

Tahoe glanced at me. “Kid, you best let me handle this my way. If you want that bag, you’d better stand there and shut up and let me deal with this. Tom’s got no business with outsiders.”

“
Screw that,” Nick said, glancing down at Lucas’s tracker. “Got a location on the bag?”

Lucas fussed with the buttons. “Working on it, boss.”

“
Where’s the bag, Tom!?” Tahoe shouted. He grabbed the guy by the coat, and in an instant, he was surrounded by guns being pointed at him, locked, cocked, and ready to shoot him dead right there in front of his wife.

“
Tahoe!” Lucy screamed. “Gettin’ yourself killed won’t help us one tiny bit.”

Tahoe, realizing he was sorely outnumbered and outgunned, slowly let the guy go. “You can lower your weapons, boys. I just got a little carried away, that’s all. I’m sorry.”

“
How did you get the bag, Tom?” Lucy asked. “And don’t you dare lie to me—not after everything I’ve done for you and your family.”

He let out a long sigh. “Sal’s brother took the bag of vials from the Jeep. He thought they were drugs, and he was lookin’ for a fix. When we saw how the zombies were healed at the high school, we realized we had gold in our hands. I hope you understand, because saving my family means everything.”

“
Nobody understands that more than we do,” Tahoe said, emotion nearly overwhelming him.

Tom shifted his stance. “Listen, my heart goes out to you. Having to kill your children is every parent’s nightmare. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain you suffered. But what if there was a way to save them? You know you’d do anything.”

“
I would,” Tahoe said.

As much as I despised the man, I knew that to be the truth. Tahoe had risked everything to save his twin daughters. Somewhere beneath all that angst and lying and selfishness, the man actually had a heart.

Tom pointed toward the school. “The whole place is filled with zombies.”

“
No way!” Lucas said. “And we’re standing here…why?”

“
Because my wife and three daughters are in there,” Tom said, “along with a bunch of school children.”

“
How do you expect to get them out?” Tahoe asked.

Tom ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “That’s just it. I dunno.”

Finally, Val and the girls approached. “We looked for the bag everywhere,” Jackie said, gripping my hand.

“
Find anything?”

“
Nope. Sorry.”

I filled them in on what was going on, which wasn’t much.

Tom shook his head. “Our mayor…he’s nuts! That cure should be public property, belonging to everyone. I wasn’t about to let him get his hands on those vials because he would have kept them for himself and doled them out for money or God knows what else. As soon as I get my wife and daughters out of there, we’re gonna deliver this cure to somebody who can help.”

“
We can do that,” I said.

“
And who, exactly, are you boys?” he asked.

I ignored Tahoe’s warnings about Tom’s narrow-minded insistence on dealing with only those in his inner circle and explained, “I’m Dean Walters, the guy who owns those vials. I’m on a mission to deliver them into the right hands. Sal stole them from
my
Jeep after his gang shot my friend, stabbed my other friend, and tried to kill me.”

“
Whoa, man. I can’t believe…look, I’m sorry, kid,” Tom stuttered. “I’ve been trying to help, too, drinking bottled water, like Tahoe, and trying to get the townspeople to do the same. We have an entire warehouse of it. I’ve been passing it out and telling everyone.”

“
That’s nice and all, but can we have the bag back now?” Lucas hissed.

Tom glanced at us, his eyes pleading at first, then furrowing his brow as if he’d thought of an idea. “Help me get my wife and daughters outta there, and the bag’s yours.” He pulled out one vial and held it in the air. “Here’s proof I have your vials.”

“
Can I see it?” I asked.

He slipped it back in his pocket. “Nope.”

Val walked over and grabbed my arm. “Dean, we’ve gotta help this guy. We’ve gotta get all those kids out of there. I can’t live with myself if we don’t try.”

In spite of the wheelin’-dealin’ look on Tom’s face, I agreed wholeheartedly that something needed to be done to save the kids. I wanted to help them, but risking our lives when we finally had everyone all together made me a nervous wreck. Still, we couldn’t just walk away. There was no way I could turn a blind eye to a bunch of zombified little kids when I held a cure in my hands.

“
My buddies and I got the generator working, so we’ve got electricity and a little light. You help us with this hero mission, and I swear the bag is all yours.”

“
Hero mission?” Lucas asked, sounding skeptical. “Sounds like a suicide mission to me.”

“
Well, I’m afraid if you won’t help us, you’ll never get your hands on that bag or those vials. Not a soul knows where they’re hidden besides me, and dead men tell no tales. If I go in there to save my family without enough backup, that’s exactly what I’ll be.”

“
Ah, blackmail. Nice,” Lucas said, his voice ringing with sarcasm. “Have you forgotten that we’ve got a tracking device?”

Tom laughed. “Go ahead. Use your fancy-schmancy gadget and see where it gets you.”

Tahoe grabbed Tom by the collar and threw him up against a tree. “Why’re you being like this, Tom?” he shouted. “I’m trying to save my family too.”

“
It’s too late for that. They’re already dead!” Tom said. “I thought you weren’t drinking that tainted water.”

“
No, Tom, my family’s alive. The whole story about killing them was nothing but a smokescreen.”

Tom gasped. “So they’re…you’ve been hiding them all this time?”

“
Yes!” Tahoe said, whipping out his gun. “You know what I’m going through, Tom, because your wife and kids are in trouble too. Give me a vial and let me heal my family.”

Tom exhaled slowly. “You can’t threaten me, Tahoe. If you pull that trigger, you’ll never know where I hid them.”

“
But what about our tracker? You can’t hide the bag if we can trace where it’s—”

Just then, as if on cue, Lucas walked over with the black bag and turned it upside down. “Gone, man. Just…gone.”

“
It’s empty,” I said, dumbfounded, and a cold shudder shot through me.

“
Yep. Tracker won’t help us now. This jerk had to have hidden those vials somewhere around here, and I intend to find them,” Lucas said, obviously ticked off.

“
But we could be looking forever,” I said. We needed Tom to tell us where those precious vials were, but it didn’t seem like he was going to cooperate anytime soon.

“
An empty bag, Tom? Really!” yelled Tahoe. “I’ll shoot you dead.”

“
Go ahead! I dare you. Without my wife and daughters, I’m dead anyway.”

“
I was one of them once,” Val said quietly. “Being a zombie is one thing, but those are real, living people in there. We can’t just desert them, Nick…Dean. We’ve gotta do something. They’re just kids, for goodness’ sake!”

Nick nodded. “Maybe we could put some drops from one of the vials into the ventilation system. Of course, I have no idea if that will work or not, but it’s worth a try.”

“
I like it,” Tahoe said, “but which one of you is crazy enough to go inside that school?”

“
I am,” Val said, “and you should be, too, considering you want a vial yourself. The quicker we heal these people, the quicker we can get our hands on the vials.”

“
I’m in,” I said.

Nick bit his lip as he pondered. “Can’t let you two have all the fun.”

“
Count me in,” Lucas said.

Tom and his friends joined our happy little zombie-killing throng as well, albeit reluctantly, and we all split up into teams. Tom pulled out the vial from his pocket, and we carefully placed a few drops of the precious cure inside an empty water bottle for each team. Tom wanted to make sure we didn’t run off if we were given an entire vial, so he hurriedly hid the remainder of the vial away. I just hoped we’d make it in and out of there in one piece, as I had no plans on dying in those school hallways. Each team chose a different location to break in, and Tom agreed to turn on the ventilation system, so all we had to do was get the formula into the ducts.
Sounds easy enough,
I thought, looking up at the school building.
Boy, I’d tell myself anything, wouldn’t I?

Chapter 2

Nick selected me for his team, of course, and I knew it was because he wanted to keep me safe. While my big brother was totally absorbed in his plans with the other guys, my rebellious side convinced me to call Val and Jackie over to be on my team, and then I left.

Holding my gun in position, I pointed ahead. I exhaled slowly as I followed the sidewalk up the main doors of the school. It was pitch black inside the building, as the generators we’d been promised weren’t working. Droplets of sweat rolled down my face as I came face to face with the unknown. I knew anything could be running around in those halls.
All we’ve gotta do is get to the ventilation ducts and place a few drops of the precious life-saving serum in there
, I told myself, as if it was going to be easy.
Just get in, get out,
I thought.
Simple
.

Glass crunched under my feet, and I motioned toward Jackie and Val. I shined the flashlight through the glass in the door, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Slowly, I opened the door and crept in, past the school office and water fountain. I held my flashlight in my weak hand, crossed it under my gun hand, then pressed the back of my weak hand against the back of my stronger one. The Harries Technique, as Nick had called it when he’d taught me, was the best way to carry a gun and flashlight at the same time. It provided a more stable shooting platform and increased accuracy.

Distant, garbled hisses made me shudder. My flashlight flickered, but I didn’t see anything. All I could picture in my head was one of those scenes from
Children of the Corn,
all those demonic-looking, possessed little kids. Wandering around in the dark to explore zombie-infested buildings was not my idea of a good time, and I had the eerie feeling we were being watched. I moved silently and cringed every time glass crackled under my boots.