We turned down the right side of the fork, curving around several small sheds and a larger equipment barn. The grass was not mowed, but it was easy to tell that six months ago the grounds had been pristine. Inside the barn we could see tractors and small landscaping equipment, a bobcat, a small front end loader with backhoe and a tractor with a bush hog.
We continued around the circle. Eventually we arrived at the inner fence around the main part of the facility. This fence was on rollers, designed to allow vehicle access. We stopped our Jeep there and dismounted.
I yelled for Frye to come out of there as loudly as I could. Once again I waited several minutes without a response. I didn’t hear a thing. Not a bang not a door closing, not a whisper.
The complex was built into the side of Mount Pony, right into the foot of the mountain. The main door was a long corridor that led from the flat spot for parking into the base of the mountain. Several stories up there were glass windows glinting in the afternoon sunlight.
“
Leo, can you pop up there and look in those windows?” I asked.
Leo disappeared in a cloud, reappeared a foot or so above each window, peering inside as she fell, before apparating in front of the next window. When she’d gotten a good look inside, she appeared between John and me.
“
The windows go back into the mountain. They’re tunnels six or eight feet long before they open into a room so I didn’t have much of a view. As far as I can tell there is nothing moving up there.” she reported.
“
This is a nuclear bomb shelter, I’m sure that there’s an inner chamber that seals off, wouldn’t make a lot of sense for there not to be an inner chamber that sealed, away from those windows. Let’s go in,” I said.
We walked up to the solid steel door with some hesitation. It was slightly cracked. We all carried flashlights everywhere we went these days. Without a word we all pulled them out before Marshall opened the heavy door. The door opened easily enough, although there was an odd rattle as we opened it. Once we were all inside, I got an odd feeling.
“
Don’t let that door…” I started to say as the door slammed shut. “Close.”
We all heard the steel bars locking the door closed drop into place. This was a nuclear shelter. Even Marshall couldn’t beat this door down. He smashed his fists into the door, barely denting it. The shockwave of that impact nearly deafened all of us.
“
Marshall, we have to find another way out. At best you’ll dent the door into the locks and we’ll never get them to retract.”
Just then we heard a crash from the floor above us, muffled through the thick concrete separating the two stories of the structure.
“
I don’t know what that is, but it sounds bad. Let’s get moving. We headed down the hall at a trot to be met with another slightly propped steel door, bigger and thicker than the first.
“
Don’t let this one close,” I said flatly.
“
Grab that stool, I’ll wedge it into the opening,” said John.
Marshall tossed him a stool, which he caught with one hand before removing his foot from holding the door open. He deftly slid the stool in place as the door softly closed against it.
The room on the other side of the door was a cafeteria and break room. It was surprisingly large and well lit. The fluorescent light looked weird to our eyes; we’d grown so accustomed to natural light or the LED glow from flashlights and lanterns. The light was so even and blue.
Leo asked, “There’s power working here. How do they still have working backup generators?”
There were two doors on either side of the far wall; we chose the door on the right after carefully moving through the space, looking for any sign of habitation. There was a large dish drop area, which was scrubbed and sparkling clean. The floors were shining; the table tops were wiped down.
“
There’s no dust. It’s been five months, if no one was living here, there would be dust everywhere, especially with the doors propped open. And why would you prop the doors open?’ Leo asked.
“
I don’t know, but Frye isn’t here. Let’s find a way out and head over towards Madison Wood Preservers. If we can get up to those windows on the second floor maybe we can climb out. Otherwise, let’s see if we can find a control room to open the outside doors.” I said.
I listened at the door for a second and upon hearing nothing, opened it up. It opened into a large auditorium that was full of people. Every seat in the house had a body sitting in it. Every person sitting straight up, hands on their knees, the picture of perfect posture. On the stage at the center of the small arena was a man with graying hair in a military uniform, holding a small blonde haired boy by the hand.
Every head in the auditorium turned, twisting unnaturally to look at the sound of the . When they saw me, they stood up as one mass and started slowly shambling up the stairs towards me. In unison they let out a guttural moan, “Tooooooooookes.” The sound was eerily low and rumbling.
This entire scene was set up to taunt me and it worked. I flew into a rage. I saw red everywhere. I drew my hatchet and started down the stairs, smashing heads. When my hatchet got stuck I resorted to my fists. I grabbed them, threw them and punched them. I killed several with a single punch to the nose. I felt the bones in my hands break, knit back together and break again. The pain drove me that much harder, fueled my anger.
I was about half way down the stairs using an arm I’d ripped off to club and stab anything in my way. I felt a hand on my shoulder, whirled to grab it when I felt the first mouth close down on my forearm. I yanked my arm free, enraged further and threw the zombie behind me into the crowd pushing up the steps. They fell like bowling pins and I waded down into them stomping on their heads, smashing their brains with my boot.
There were zombies filing in behind me. The further I went the more they pressed in on me. A mouth closed in on my arm, another on my leg. It was just like the fight outside the house, only this time Max wasn’t there to save me.
That’s when I felt something slip inside my head. I was reminded of that day at the house when I was battered and broken and Watley’s men attacked the house. Suddenly I could see my aura again. I twisted in the hands holding me and saw Marshall using his arms like battering rams, beating his way towards me. Leo was running down the tops of the seat backs, to get to the isle I was in, in an attempt to get to me from the side.
My rage calmed. A sense of ease washed over me and I felt peace. Peace that I hadn’t felt since all of this started. The zombies that had their teeth sunk into me crumpled to the ground. The zombies had lifted me up like a crowd surfer. When my armor appeared, I became toxic to their touch. All of the zombies holding me died simultaneously, I fell to the ground in a heap. I felt Marshall’s huge hand wrap mine up as he yanked me to my feet.
John’s H&K rang out. In one burst he emptied the magazine. The 7.62 rounds punched through skull after skull, each bullet decimating the brains of two or three before becoming lodged in the head of one more. He fired in thirty round bursts. Fire thirty rounds, change mags and fire another burst, until he was out of magazines.
Marshall put my hatchet in my hand and we fought our way to the stage. I lept on the stage and swung at the still motionless zombie that represented Frye. It dodged, dropping the little child zombie. My swing went wide and the little thing jumped at me. It grabbed my leg in a bear hug. I kicked at Frye-zombie with that leg, the small freak adding to the momentum. Both creatures went flying and landed together in a heap. I launched myself at the pile swinging my hatchet. I completely removed the top of zombie-Frye’s head, before reversing the hatchet and hitting the child zombie with the butt of the handle, smashing the back of its skull in, ending its torturous existence.
When I stood up I was battered, bruised and exhausted. I looked back at the room and surveyed the carnage. Leo was up in the stands racing across the back of the seats chasing down the last moving zombie. I watched her drive her short sword into the back of the things skull.
In a flash she was standing beside me. “Vic. If you ever do something that stupid again I’ll kill you myself.”
Marshall clapped me on the back “I thought you were a goner little bro. I don’t know what you did or how you managed to survive. I couldn’t get to you fast enough.”
John chuckled “Yer a bloody wakka, you really are aiming to be zombie tucker.”
I felt monumentally stupid. ”I lost my temper. Frye set that whole scene up for us. He’s teasing us; he knew we’d come here. He set up the door locks to seal us in and he set this horror show up to get under my skin. And he won. I’m back in control now, let’s get the fuck outta here.”
We walked back up the stairs around the back side of the auditorium, to the exit on the opposite side of the room. Behind a heavy wooden door we found stairs leading up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs was another huge steel door, this one with a ship style locking wheel. Leo spun the wheel open and pulled the door into the stairway.
We walked down the hall heading for the end room. I expected if a room was going to have windows, it would be the one at the end of the hall. The door at the end of the hall was steel but just a normal steel fire door, not the type of vault doors we’d encountered other places. It was unlocked and we quickly entered the office when we saw the window. We didn’t even look to see was the largest human being I’ve ever encountered standing against the side wall. He made Marshall look like a child. He was easily eight and a half feet tall. His arms bulged so much his tee shirt was ripped up the sleeves.
The man was standing motionless when we entered. It wasn’t until we were fully in the room that the lowest voice I’ve ever heard said “Hello Tookes, I’ve been waiting for you. Did you enjoy my show?” His voice rumbled; so deep I could feel it in my chest. Fear and anger ran through me at the same time. Frye had out-thought me again.
Chapter 18
Max’s Army
Steve, Jason and Max set off through the woods continuing to head north away from Frye’s men. They could move fast enough to stay ahead, but not fast enough to circle around to get behind them. Even with Max riding or being carried by one of his lieutenants.
Steve was carrying a sleeping Max in his arms when he caught scent of humans and dropped down into the tall grass of the field they’d been sprinting across. He shook Max to wake him. ”There are humans ahead. Many humans. We cannot go forward anymore.”
“
I’ll go check it out,” volunteered Jason.
The taller zombie sprinted forward. He was impossibly fast, but not nearly as fast as Leo.
“
I miss Leo,” said Max. ”She always gives me hugs and she always has something yummy in her pockets.”
Steve whispered, “We need to stay quiet right now.”
In a few minutes, Jason returned. ”There are about 75 humans in a camp. They have guards posted on towers around their fence, which is very tall. They are well defended and they appear well provisioned. I think we need to run wide around them.”
“
What if they’re nice?” asked Max. ”We need friends. They can be our friends.”
Jason said, “Max, they’ll kill us. They don’t know that you control us. They won’t believe you even if you told them.”
“
Then we shouldn’t tell them you have bugs. We just say you’re Steve and Jason. We’ll play a joke on them,” replied Max simply.
“
Max, that has a very high chance of failure.”
“
My dad says that if I ever get lost I should find a grown up and tell them. That’s the rule,” Max said as he stood up in the field and started walking up over the hill.
When he topped the rise, what he saw amazed the small boy. There was a huge wooden wall at least thirty feet high made of tree trunks planted upright. It was like whole huge forest of tree trunks. At the corners of the wall were round guard towers. The place looked to Max like a wooden castle. As he approached with Steve and Jason following him, the large gate made up of horizontal logs opened like a garage door. Very quickly six men with guns came running out and circled the trio. Once the men were out, the gate slammed shut. Max noted from the colors that surrounded them that they were curious, a little afraid and ready to fight.
The six men each had different guns, two of them had small guns like John and the rest had long guns like Daddy or Uncle Marshall liked. Most of them pointed them at Steve and Jason, only one man kept a pistol pointed at Max.
“
Who are you and why are you here.”