The Zombie Whisperer (Living With the Dead) (17 page)

“I-I didn’t know they would hurt the baby,” she said softly.

“Well, they’re going to,” I said.

The baby we were talking about was moving around inside me, proof that that ‘thing’, as the Major referred to him, was my kid.

My very delicate, totally helpless and utterly breakable kid, zombie benefits or not.

“Hope it’s worth your trip to West Virginia. If they even intend to get you there,” I said as I turned my face to indicate the conversation was over.

She caught her breath, like she wanted to say something. She didn’t. As she turned, she caught both the lamps next to me and trudged out of the warehouse, leaving me in the dark with my equally dark thoughts and fears.

“Dave,” I whispered. “You better come for us. Soon would be good.”

Chapter Sixteen

Confessions of a Tiger Mother… er, Father. Er, Zombie.

Dave flipped over the mattress in Nadia’s quarters, watching in satisfaction as it bounced off the wall and slid down to be pinned behind the box spring.

“Okay Hulk-Smash,” Fenton said. “Why don’t you calm down a touch or we’ll miss something.”

Dave shot him a glance. Not a bad reference or a wrong sentiment really.

“I don’t know what to think of you, man,” he admitted as he looked under the bed, itself. There were a couple of duffle bags there and he yanked them out and set them on the hard box spring to go through them.

“What do you mean?” Fenton asked.

Dave shrugged. “Well, you don’t make sense. You’re a military guy and I don’t trust you, but you’re going out of your way to help me, even going so far as partnering with me on the search for shit on Nadia even though you could have just assigned the grunt duty to one of your… your…”

“Grunts?” Fenton supplied with a half-smile.

“Yeah.”

Fenton pulled open each drawer of Nadia’s dresser and searched them with the precision Dave didn’t exactly have in him at present. Not when his thoughts kept going back to Sarah in captivity.

“I
know
you don’t trust me,” Fenton said after a moment. “I knew that from the moment Sarah saw our team and looked like a deer in headlights.”

“Yeah, well we have our reasons,” Dave muttered.

One of Nadia’s duffel bags was filled entirely with shoes. Who needed so many shoes, especially in an apocalypse? Actually, Sarah would probably have a long-winded answer for that. She liked shoes, too. There had been plenty of mall shopping trips over the months where she’d just tried them on for fun.

“I’m not saying it as slur against your character,” Fenton said with a shake of his head. “I can’t blame you for how you feel. One thing you learn in a zombie outbreak is listening to your gut. That keeps you alive nine times out of ten. But there’s something else you forget.”

“What’s that?” Dave asked, frustrated by the lack of evidence in the duffels. Aside from the shoes, there were dirty clothes in there, but little else.

“I’m not really military anymore,” Fenton said with a sadness in his tone that made Dave look up. He had stopped searching and was just staring into nothing. “They abandoned us, just like the civilians. They bombed without notice. I lost dozens of men. The thirteen in this area are the survivors, but we’re not a real team anymore.”

“But they still salute and call you Colonel and-”

“Makes them feel better to have that normalcy,” Fenton said with a shrug as he went back to the drawers. “Hey, look under the fitted sheet on the mattress you flipped.”

Dave looked at him a second more before he followed the order… actually it was more of a suggestion… and tugged the mattress back down to the bed.

“So why do you hang out here? Why keep up the charade of military unity besides the normalcy?” Dave asked, struggling with the tight sheet. It was a size too small and really on there.

“There’s a chance we can save the world with this serum,” Fenton said. “That is awe-inspiring. I have to give my men that chance to be a part of something bigger. I have to give myself that chance.”

Dave chuckled. “Plus there’s the girl.”

Fenton glanced up at him. For a minute, it looked like he was going to deny it, but finally he just shrugged. “Yeah. There’s the girl.”

“I get it, man,” Dave said and grunted as he finally managed to get the fitted sheet loose. “I’ve got one of the most frustrating and amazing girls around.”

He pulled the sheet down and his eyes went wide. There, tucked into the fold of the sheet was a slim volume, a journal.

“
That
looks promising,” Fenton murmured as he stepped closer.

Dave sat down on the cock-eyed mattress and opened it. The journal had been sporadically written in during the outbreak, hardly more than ten entries…

Until the past few weeks. Then the entries had increased to daily, and sometimes multiple times each day.

“What does it say?” Fenton asked, perching next to Dave to read over his shoulder.

Dave skimmed. “Nadia encountered someone when she was gathering supplies outside the wall.”

Fenton’s lips pursed. “She was briefly separated from a salvage team around the date of that entry. On her own for several hours. She said she just got turned around, but clearly it was more than that.”

“It’s pretty detailed,” Dave said as he read further. “Said they were part of something called Team Twelve. There’s stuff here about special forces. Shit, she’s got to be making that up, it sounds like something out of a bad movie.”

He glanced up, but instead of a smile, he found Fenton’s face pale and his eyes wide.

“What?” Dave asked.

“Team Twelve. I’ll be fucked,” he murmured.

“What is Team Twelve?”

“It’s this sort of legendary task force in the Army, meant to gather enemy combatants. They were really active when our biggest national security threat was terrorists, not zombies. Their tactics were… questionable. I heard they were disbanded after a raid went bad and some innocents were slaughtered. That explains the black uniforms Lisa saw.”

He was more mumbling to himself the last thing, but Dave didn’t care. “Were they deployed when the zombie outbreak started?”

“Not that I knew of. But it’s been nine months, David. A lot could change and it’s not exactly like I’m in the chain of command anymore.” Fenton rubbed his chin slowly. “Honestly, I could see it, them sending Team Twelve out in a do-or-die situation like this.”

“Look here,” Dave said as he scanned further. “She says the name. Keel.”

“Major Keel.” Fenton leaned away. “Shit, that confirms it.”

Dave flipped through the pages. “There’s a lot of whining and prevaricating over what they want her to do, lots of talk about her Mom and wanting to go home and all she’s lost… And she seems really concerned about leaving the dog behind, Duncan. Nice that she worries about the dog, but not betraying her friends.”

Fenton shrugged. “Priorities, I guess. I remember her saying the dog’s been with her from the beginning.”

Dave tossed the book aside with a scowl. “Fucking bitch,” he muttered. “There’s nothing in there that can help us find out where this Team Twelve is or what they want from Sarah.”

He pushed to his feet to pace the room, but Fenton grabbed his arm before he could.

“Hey, what’s that?” He motioned toward the discarded book.

“What?” Dave snapped, but all that anger faded. Sticking from the later pages of the journal, where Nadia hadn’t yet written, was the corner of an envelope.

Fenton reached out and grabbed the book, pulling the envelope free. He held it up. “It’s addressed to me.”

“Read it out loud,” Dave whispered.

“‘Dear Colonel Fenton’,” he began. “‘If you are reading this, I can only assume that I have finally come to a gut-wrenching decision about my future. I’m sorry for betraying you and your men, especially after all the kindness you showed me. Please understand that I only did so because I had no choice. But I don’t feel good about what I’ve done, so I’m going to provide you with some more information so that you may perhaps be able to stop the plans that Major Keel has laid out.’”

Dave backed up a step. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Let me continue,” Fenton said, waving him off. “‘Major Keel first approached me to trade when my diary indicates. Please read it if you have no already done so. At first he wanted David. He said he had taken him before but that Sarah and her friends had orchestrated his escape. He saw this as a bit of an affront to his personal pride, and he wanted to get his escapee back.’”

“If that’s the guy responsible for me being taken in Illinois…” Dave breathed.

Those short hours had been horrifying. They had taken his blood, tested his ability to heal with torture, and he had known they would kill him in order to run tests on his corpse.

They had Sarah now. And his son.

“‘But when I told him that Sarah was pregnant, his interest shifted to the child,’” Fenton kept reading.

Dave saw red. He’d heard that expression before, of course, but never experienced it. And yet there it was, totally red veil over his vision, desperate desire to strangle one lying nurse, maybe eat her brains a little just to complete the image.

“Hey, um, David.” Fenton was staring at him. “You’re looking very freaky. I kind of want to get my sidearm out, can you take a breath and stop looking so… zombie?”

Dave gasped, taking in air for the first time in what he realized was a very long time.

“You okay?” Fenton ventured softly.

“No,” Dave ground out past clenched teeth. “Not even a little.”

“‘I don’t want to hand her over,’” Fenton continued. “‘I really don’t. But I want to go home and they’ve offered me a way past the Midwest Wall in trade. I don’t know for sure their plans, but they have had headquarters in the warehouses near Ballard right on the Sound. He’s also talked some about a location in Snoqualmie Pass. I’m sorry.’” Fenton sighed. “That’s where it ends.”

Dave stared at his hand. His wedding ring seemed to be screaming at him. In Sarah’s voice nonetheless.

“I need to get to my wife and my kid.”

Fenton hesitated, but then he nodded. “Yes. Of course. Come on, let’s go downstairs and talk to the others. We’ll need their input.”

Dave snatched up the journal to supplement Nadia’s note and followed. Even if no one else was going to help him, he had to get to Sarah. Now.

#

“I want to help,” Nicole said, stepping forward. “I’m going with you.”

“Not without me, you aren’t,” McCray added, grabbing for her hand.

Dave smiled as he looked around the room at the others assembled there. After a quick explanation about what was going on, he was happy that his old friends would once again be on the case with him.

“I’m coming too,” The Kid said, folding his arms.

Dave saw the way Drea’s lips parted. She might have had Robbie thrust upon her, but she took being his mother very seriously.

“Look, Robbie,” Dave said. “I don’t think so.” When The Kid started to argue, he rushed to continue. “I know you’d be a great help, but the cure is the most important thing now. You need to stay here with Josh and the others, to finish the work you’ve started.”

“Then let me go,” Fenton said, stepping into the center of the room.

Dave stared at him. He and Sarah had really underestimated the dude. He was good people, uniformed or not.

“I appreciate it,” Dave said, “But no and for the same reason. This lot needs you as their leader. You and your guys should stay here and protect the lab. If Keel wants Sarah, he might also want a whack at what you’re developing here. We can’t let him get to it.”

Fenton seemed to consider that for a moment, then he nodded once. “Okay.”

“But you still need a military liaison,” Lisa said, pushing her way from the back. “And I’m the closest thing left.”

She shot a glance at Fenton. He seemed stoic, but Dave could see the bright fear in his stare. Still, he said nothing, just respected her decision. Hmmm, he might be able to learn from that, himself…

“Lisa, you got hit by two darts and cracked pretty hard in the head,” he said, for Fenton’s sake as much as for hers. “Are you sure-”

“If I’d been more on top of it, Sarah wouldn’t have gotten taken in the first place.” Lisa lifted her chin. “I owe her, bitch or not. So I’m coming and we’re done discussing it. Plus I can fly the chopper, which I assume will make your life a lot easier.”

Dave blinked. He’d been planning on a long, miserable drive to both locations. “Yeah, that would help.”

“Good.” Lisa turned to look at Fenton again. “I’ll come back.”

He arched a brow. “You better. Or I’ll have to come after you.”

She smiled, but then it was gone, replaced by her usual ‘kick ass girl’ scowl.

“All right, enough bullshit. Let’s load up and go. We’ve got something to do.”

Dave began to follow as the lab rats went back to their stations. He had reached the door that would take them to the hallway, the weapons closet and eventually the copter, when he felt the tug of someone’s hand on his jacket. He turned.

The Kid was standing there, looking shifty.

“I have something that could help,” he murmured.

Dave wrinkled his brow as The Kid pressed two grenades into his hand. “What are these?”