The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (15 page)

When I turned, Lisa had done something similar to the other zombie, a half-dressed man in what had likely been a very expensive suit.

“Onward,” Lisa whispered.

Luckily, Hall Health wasn’t much behind the HUB and we were able to maneuver ourselves behind trees and buildings to avoid being spotted (or scented) by the handful of zombies on the path between our current position and the one we wanted to reach. Soon enough, we were at the door.

I had always been confused by Hall Health. A clinic was supposed to look clinical, but the building had been designed in that same “Ivy League” quality of the rest of the UW buildings. It looked more like a lecture hall than a place where you’d get your free birth control, but whatever.

Lisa leaned against the side of the building near the door, checking our flank and getting ready to cover me as she motioned for me to open the building.

I sucked in a breath and placed my hand on the door. But before I could push, it was yanked open, out of my hands. There in the doorway, stood Nadia.

I stared at her. She wasn’t zombie-fied. She was just in the building, waiting for us.

“What the hell are you doing here, Nadia?” Lisa asked as she whipped around into the doorway to look at our friend.

She shifted. “Yeah, well, here’s the thing.”

To my horror, she lifted what looked to be a pistol and fired it directly at Lisa. I recoiled, expecting her to fall in a spurt of blood as a bullet pierced her flesh. But it wasn’t a bullet that came out of the gun, it was a little dart that embedded itself in Lisa’s neck.

Lisa stared at Nadia, then lifted her hand to her neck and pulled the dart free.

“What-?” she began, but then collapsed in a heap in front of the door.

I backed up. I’d put my pistol away, so I held my machete up like it could somehow stop her.

“What are you doing?” I whispered. “What are you doing, Nadia?”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured as she leveled the tranquilizer gun toward me. “It’s the only way.”

She fired. I swung the machete like a bat, like I could hit a home run with that dart, but I’d never been much good at sports. I missed and there was a tingling pain as the dart entered by chest, just at the flesh of my breast.

I looked down. It was a tiny dart, so small and yet immediately the world began to spin, spin, spin around me. I staggered, trying to run toward the fence, but I didn’t even manage to turn around before I fell into the wet grass next to the door and everything in the world went pitch black.

Chapter Fourteen

Zombie Knows Best

Dave held the note Sarah had left him in a fist, so hard that the paper was crumpled. How many times did he have to say to her that he didn’t want her to be unsafe? Sometimes it felt like she did shit just to piss him off.

Only it wasn’t like that anymore. She didn’t poke at him for fun. Sarah was just… Sarah.

He turned and stalked out of the room and down the stairs. In front of the door that led outside was a sleeping little sentry in half-military gear and a UW t-shirt.

“Hey, you!” Dave snapped.

The boy straightened up and his eyes went wide when he looked at Dave. He was kind of famous that way. Nadia the Nurse (as Dave referred to her in his head) had even implied that there might be a few “Cults of David” out there in the Wilds. Some kind of weirdoes who had heard of his powers and thought he was the second coming. Ridiculous.

“Where is my wife?” he asked, trying to keep his tone calm so he wouldn’t end up with the nervous young man’s bullet in his skull.

“Who?” the boy replied.

Dave shut his eyes and counted to a slow ten. He could smell the kids sweat and the sweetness of his brains. Utterly disconcerting, no matter how long he’d had the advanced sense of zombie smell.

“My wife, Sarah. The pregnant one that everyone is so concerned about. She left here with the Colonel’s girlfriend, Lisa.” He held the boy’s stare so he would be able to know if the solider was lying when he answered.

He shifted, sweating even more. “Oh, um, yeah. They left a few hours ago, to clear out Hall Health.”

Dave clenched his fists. Wonderful. Sarah was outside the semi-safety of the fence again, roaming around with Lisa, who he didn’t trust and who was certainly a bad influence. He pulled the pistol from his belt and started outside, leaving the boy at the door to sputter after him as he slammed the door shut behind him.

Sarah called it his “caveman” thing. Which he hated, by the way. Shit, why couldn’t a guy not like it when his pregnant wife put herself in danger just for the thrill of it? Especially now, his reaction just didn’t seem that outrageous. And he wasn’t even sure
Sarah
thought he was being ridiculous. She just still went out without thinking.

Hall Health… Sarah had gone to school here what seemed like a million years ago and he recalled heading to Hall Health with her when she had the flu or something. He sort of vaguely remembered it being behind the HUB, so he headed in that direction.

He didn’t have to worry as he walked. Even if zombies had somehow made it past the fence line, it wasn’t like he was their prey. Where once he had battled and fought, now he herded and fired. His life was so utterly boring.

Okay, so maybe he wasn’t all that far from Sarah and her desire for a thrill.

He moved around the big university student building and there he saw the fence, freshly put up behind the HUB to signify that Lisa and Sarah had cleared the place the day before. And when he looked at how big the damn building was, he was pretty proud of his wife for covering all of that pretty much by herself.

Sarah was a badass, that was never something he would debate.

He stopped as the fence line became clearer from behind a couple of overgrown bushes. There, lying just inside the gate that led to the buildings that hadn’t been cleared, was a body. A woman’s body, judging by the size of it.

He took off running toward her, holding his breath as he prayed, actually prayed, that it wouldn’t be Sarah crumpled there. Zombie-fied maybe, because that was all he could think that could have happened to the victim. They just hadn’t gotten back up yet.

He dropped to his knees beside the person and flipped her over from her stomach to her back. Relief swelled in him as he stared at the bruised face before him. It wasn’t Sarah, it was Lisa.

More interestingly, she wasn’t zombie-fied. There was no greyness to her flesh, a small wound on her cheek bled red, not black sludge. She was just unconscious.

But where was Sarah?

“Lisa,” he said, shaking her. “Lisa, wake up.”

She grumbled at his sharp tone and slowly her eyes came out. Nope, definitely not a zombie, there was life and light and recognition in her stare.

“David?” she moaned. “What’s going on?”

“You tell me!” he burst out, unable to control his emotions. “Where is my wife? Where is Sarah?”

Lisa started to sit up and he helped her, resting a hand on her back to help support her as she rubbed her forehead and then her eyes.

“They-they took her,” she said.

He stared at the woman beside him, almost unable to comprehend what she was saying. It didn’t make sense.

“Who, zombies?” he asked. “Zombies don’t take people, Lisa.”

“No, not zombies… men. There were men and-”

Dave stopped helping her sit up and jumped to his feet, staring at her and trying, with every human fiber left in his being, not to go ape shit on her.

“Men,” he repeated. “Huh, interesting since this place is so heavily guarded and all. Or do you mean men who you let in? Men who you and your little boyfriend are allies with? How much did you get for getting Sarah and the baby in her? What did you trade?”

Lisa stared up at him like he was speaking some foreign language. “What the hell?”

“She never fully trusted you,” he continued. “Neither did I. She said, be careful, the military isn’t a good thing. And I told her it was fine and rambled on about the cure and now you guys have screwed us just like she thought you would.”

He moved toward Lisa one long step, but before he could continue a tirade or make demands about Sarah, he felt the barrel of a shotgun against his back. He froze. Zombie powers or not, he really didn’t want half his chest blown out. He doubted that would go well for him.

“Stop screaming.”

The voice he recognized. Colonel Fenton, come to save his girlfriend’s day. How super-fucking-romantic. Except that they were the bad guys in this tale. They weren’t supposed to get a happy ending.

“God damn it Fenton, stay out of this,” he growled.

“Shut up and turn around,” Fenton continued.

Dave did as he was told and found himself facing ten fully armed military guys, all aiming various and sundry guns toward him. The military goons included the little sentry from the lab. Nice, so he’d gone to tattle.

Not that Dave could really blame him.

“What’s going on?” Fenton asked. His gaze was still on David, but it was pretty clear he was talking to Lisa.

She struggled to her feet and staggered slightly. Shit, was she still pretending to be hurt for her boyfriend’s sake?

“Sarah is gone,” she said and then promptly fell over in a new heap.

Fenton’s lip tensed, but he didn’t race to her, he just flicked a wrist and one of the bigger guys moved to her side and swept her up.

“David, we’re going back to the lab for a talk.”

Dave looked at him, but said nothing. Not much to say with so many guns pointed at his chest.

Fenton ignored his silence and his sour look and continued, “Henson, carry Lisa and make sure she goes straight to the med staff. In fact we’ll have our meeting there so she can explain herself once she’s awake.”

He glanced at the younger man who was the guard at the lab. “Ward, you retake your post at the lab entrance and try not to let hell break loose this time. The rest of you, fan out, if Lisa’s statement is true, we seem to have a breach of some kind. Check all the fences, radio in if you find pods and keep your eyes out for enemies with brains, as well as brainless ones. Go!”

He returned his attention to Dave as the crew fanned out. He leaned in, pressing the gun barrel right into Dave’s chest. There was anger in his stare, Dave could see it, he could smell it, too. So he really did have feelings for Lisa… maybe was blaming Dave for her injuries.

“After you,” Fenton growled, pushing him toward the lab with the gun.

“No, I need to find my wife,” Dave said, just as low and angry. “If she’s been taken, we don’t have much time.”

“I agree,” Fenton said with a raised brow. “And you’re wasting that time by arguing. Let’s go back to the lab, let me find out what’s really going on and then we’ll decide the best course of action when it comes to Sarah. Now move.”

Dave wanted to scream. To zombie roar. To rip Fenton’s arm off. None of those things were going to happen in this scenario, at least not without taking a shot to the chest first. And, more importantly, none of it would help Sarah. He clenched his teeth and started moving.

#

“Did you do this?” Fenton asked later, motioning to Lisa and her bruised and battered face as The Kid and Josh looked her over. Somehow they couldn’t find Nadia, so chemistry nerds were as good as it got.

“I doubt it, unless you have a dart gun, Dave,” The Kid said as he pushed some of Lisa’s hair out of the way and pulled a tiny dart from her skin. “I think that should help with the wooziness.”

Fenton stared as Robbie handed over the dart and stared at it. He stared at Dave.

Dave shrugged. “Shit man, I don’t have a dart gun. Why would I want one? I kill zombies by roaming into the middle of them and firing off shotgun blasts. Those darts wouldn’t do a damn thing to any of them.”

Josh nodded. “I’d say that’s true. As Robbie knows, it’s very difficult to manufacture a serum that would incapacitate a zombie or affect it in any way due to the compromised circulatory system.”

“So whoever fired this was targeting humans,” Fenton said softly.

Lisa groaned and sat up, steadying herself on the table she had been laid on. “They were targeting
us
, not just any humans.”

Fenton swallowed, but the relief wasn’t exactly covered up. Dave could almost smile. He got what it was like. But right now, he wanted to know where his wife was.

“Tell us what happened,” they both ordered at the same time.

Fenton glared at him. “How about you let me run this interrogation, David? You’re a little emotional.”

“You think?” he snapped, but then folded his arms. He had to stay cool, if only to get the information about Sarah. Then he could figure out how to get the fuck out.

“We were going to clear Hall Health,” Lisa said, rubbing her neck where the dart had been stuck in her skin. “We exited the gated area and shut it down behind us. We followed entrance protocol. Sarah was opening the door, I was cover. But before she could enter, the door opened and Nadia was there waiting for us.”

“Nadia?” Dave repeated. “What was she doing there?”

“A very good question,” Fenton agreed.

“She shot me with a tranq gun,” Lisa said, her face twisting in anger. “So you hazard a guess as to what she was doing there.”

Dave blinked. The little nurse who had been so kind of Sarah when she was scared during the ultrasound?