DEAD: Reclamation: Book 10 of the DEAD series (30 page)

He was at the door when he heard the crash. There was a slap and then a scraping sound.

Entering the cabin, Chad saw his daughter standing over Melody who was curled up in the fetal position on the floor. Ronni had a knife, but it looked clean, which indicated that he did not think that she had used it as a weapon…yet.

“Get up!” Ronni shouted. Bringing her foot back, she let loose with a kick that connected solidly with Melody’s ribs. “C’mon, play that crap with me, you little—”

“Ronni!” Chad cut his daughter off and stepped the rest of the way into the cabin.

“She’s evil!” Ronni spun to face her dad, all the anger showing like raging bonfires in her eyes. “And she was coming at you. All she would have had to do was get some of her blood on you and that would be it.”

“First,” Chad moved in carefully between his daughter and Melody, being careful to stay clear of the infected girl in the chair, “it does not happen quite that easily. You can’t get it just by somebody getting a bit of their blood on you.”

“And you know this how?” Ronni challenged.

“It just doesn’t work that way. I would have to be cut or something.”

“You don’t know that, Dad.” Ronni was starting to cry. Chad was becoming confused. “You are only guessing.”

“But I am pretty sure.” He reached over to pull his daughter into a hug, but she yanked away.

“And I am pretty sure won’t give me my dad back if you are wrong!”

And there it was. Chad looked at his daughter, speechless and unable to counter her statement. She was right; he could not be absolutely certain. He was just making a guess, but how much faith did he have in it. Suddenly, his conviction was slipping.

“Sweetie—” he started, but she jerked away and cut him off.

“You are all that I have. I lost everything in the world except for you. And when you were sick back at Dustin’s, I realized that I was very lucky. So many people have already lost everything. And here I was with my dad…and I didn’t care. I felt terrible. Terrible for how I acted, how I treated you. And now you can just risk dying and becoming a zombie because you
think
you know how this works?”

Chad pulled his daughter to him again. This time she did not resist. She buried her face in his chest and cried. It struck Chad that he could not actually recall the last time his daughter had a good cry.

As he held his daughter, a million thoughts tried to crowd his mind. He shoved them aside. They stood that way for a long while until Caroline actually came to make sure that they were both okay.

Reluctant, but aware that they had some things to take care of ASAP, Chad eased away from his daughter and turned to face Caroline.

“Go cut that guy loose.”

***

“Says her name is Jan Seiber or some such thing.” George gave a jerk of his chin to indicate the woman crumpled on the floor with Margarita standing over her. He had his arms folded across his chest and did not seem to notice the droplets of blood that had splattered his face.

Jody looked around at the group. Not one single person seemed the least bit bothered. A couple had actually sat the dead bodies of a few of the women against a wall and placed their hands over their eyes, ears, and mouth in a twisted parody of “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

“Everybody downstairs now,” Jody said calmly. When nobody appeared inclined to move, he added, “NOW!”

People jerked and Bill Pitts looked up from the pack he was poking through. All eyes had turned his way, but Jody would not shrink. Instead, he drew himself up taller.

“I said everybody out,” he repeated with a hint of menace in his voice.

“What’s your problem?” George challenged, clearly not happy with being told what to do, much less ordered.

“When did we become
these
people?” Jody asked, indicating the dead bodies and then pointing to the woman on the floor who was breathing in slow, labored gasps that hinted at a broken rib or two. “When did we become the bad guys?”

Pitts rose to his feet and Jody was prepared for a confrontation. Instead, the man walked over and stood beside him. After giving Jody a nod to continue, the man folded his arms across his chest and fixed a disapproving scowl on his face.

“We have seen plenty of this over the years. And sure, these people did something horrible, but is this what we have become now? Because, if it is, you can all count me out. I’ll pack my stuff as soon as we get back, and I will take my family someplace else.” Jody kept his tone hard, but did not yell.

“And what would you have us do to get information from these people…tickle them?” George asked. “And maybe you forgot that they murdered the people who lived here and then burned the bodies.”

“We were simply coming for one of our own,” a voice coughed.

All eyes turned to the figure on the floor at Margarita’s feet. Jody winced at the woman’s face. She struggled to move, but Margarita had her booted foot in the woman’s back. Pitts cleared his throat and she stepped away with a sour twist of her lips that almost looked like a snarl.

“What do you mean?” Jody asked, stepping forward.

“A pair of our girls were scouting the area when one of them was grabbed by a couple of men. Her partner followed to this place before returning to get the rest of us. We were simply coming for our friend.” The woman had pushed herself up to her knees.

“So, you want to explain what was done to
our
friend?” Jody asked.

“We were trying to find out where our girl was, and he was the only one left after we took this place,” the woman stated matter-of-factly. “And before you ask, we did not set out to kill everybody when we got here. It just ended up that way once things got ugly.”

Jody looked around at the bodies of his own group’s recent handiwork before turning back to the woman. “And how did you get in this place to begin with?”

“A tower full of five men? Really?”

Jody shook his head. She had a point. But that still did not really explain Danny.

“And the man you people maimed and put in a cage?”

“He showed up late for the party, hell, that is probably what saved his life. If he’d been here with the others when we took this place, he probably be just as dead as the others.”

“Listen…Jan…Sieber is it?” Jody knelt in front of the woman. “You aren’t doing yourself any favors with your attitude. I can only keep these people back for so long. Can you tell me about the women from your group that was supposedly kidnapped and brought here?”

“Yes, my name is Jan,
her
name was Angel, and they dumped her in that pit like so much garbage after they did God-knows-what to her.”

Jody did not know anything about a body in the pit. He looked around and got shrugs in return.

He considered things for a moment. He glanced over at Pitts, but the man had stayed silent and was offering no help. At last he told everybody to move down to the lower level. Danny was down there with Tracy, and he wanted to have everybody in one place. Also, the time it would take for everybody to get down there would give him time to think.

Once they reached the ground level, Jody had a couple of the group do a circuit around the tower to see if there was in fact a body. He also had a few others help Tracy carry Danny inside. He did not need the verbal confirmation when he saw the expressions on the faces of the two he sent when they walked back into the turret.

“I want this woman and Danny separated from each other,” Jody announced. “Set each one up in a store room for now.”

“Ummm, you want to tell me why?” Danny asked.

“Because,” Jody announced, making his voice loud enough so that everybody could hear him, “we are going to return to doing things right around here. We have let things go long enough. It is time to start acting like civilized people. I think we are on that edge, and if we don’t pull ourselves back, we are going to fall over and never be able to get back.”

“What in the world are you babbling about?” Margarita huffed.

“We are going to have a trial.”

***

Entry Forty-nine—
We reach Billings early tomorrow.

I am determined to do this now. No more waiting…no more stalls. I forced myself to face the truth. For all my desire to do what is right, I am afraid. I don’t really want to die, and I am frightened that this is exactly what will come of this should I pursue it to its conclusion.

Entry Fifty—
They are outside the door.

I know that there is no escape, but at least I have done what I vowed to do, and that is make sure that Darwin Goodkind never again victimizes another living soul.

I woke early to reach Billings before the caravan. I was seated by the window in a saloon when the wagons passed by. I quickly followed, doing my best to keep my distance in order to minimize my being discovered.

It almost made me sick when I watched Darwin Goodkind walk into the nicest inn Billings has to offer. Seriously, each room comes with a tub and your choice of a young man or woman to keep the hot water refreshed as well as scrub you down and a number of other things that do not bear repeating.

He was greeted at the door by a man dressed in a white suit that looked at least two sizes too small and fell out of fashion six months after
Saturday Night Fever
hit the big screen. The man had greasy looking black hair and a scar from one temple to the corner of his mouth on the left side of his face that looked like it was put there with a big knife.

I am telling you all of this because of the fact that I know how this ends for me. I will not leave Darwin Goodkind’s hotel room alive, and if I do, I will be taken someplace and killed there. So, when I finish this entry, I will throw this book under the bed and hope to God somebody finds it besides the people banging on the door right now.

But, back to Darwin…

When he entered the hotel, I found the first boarding house I could and checked in. I got cleaned up and then went to the market. Using everything I had of value, I traded for some nice clothes that would get me through the doors of the Billings Grand Hotel.

Once inside, I strolled with surprising ease into the lounge where I spied Darwin talking to the greasy hotel manager (or whatever the guy is). It was an animated discussion, and in the end, a satchel was pushed across the table to Darwin. He promptly excused himself and exited.

I followed, making my way up the stairs. I arrived at the fifth floor just as the door was closing. Waiting for a few heartbeats, my hand grabbed the knob and turned it as slowly as I could manage in an attempt to minimize any noise.

When I opened the door and peeked down the hall, I did so just as Darwin stepped into a room and shut the door. I hurried down the empty hallway and pulled up on one side of the door. I could feel my heart trying to pound its way out of my chest, but my goal was so close that I could taste it.

I was just trying to decide what to do when the door from the stairwell I had exited flew open to reveal a pair of men who were brandishing spiked bats. A second later, the door at the other end of the corridor opened to reveal two more.

With no other choice, I kicked open Darwin’s door and rushed inside. He was simply sitting in a chair like he was expecting me. Turns out he was. This is my best attempt at recreating that dialog.

“When exactly did you start following us? I told my men that it was somewhere around Park City.” Darwin folded his hands in his lap and leaned forward just enough so that I could see his eyes as he peered at me over the tops of his tinted glasses.

“I’m here to stop you from hurting anymore people,” I finally said, ignoring his casual remark and accurate guess.

“Oh goody, a crusader.” Seriously, the only thing missing was an English accent to make this guy sound like the evil villain that I knew him to be.

Pulling my knife, I saw the first glimmer of concern cross his features. But it was quickly erased when there was a solid thud against the door that I was currently leaning against.

“You will do no such thing, and…you will have the added benefit of dying a painful death for your troubles.”

Another slam into the door I was braced against caused me to lurch forward an inch or two before slamming back into place. I would not be able to hold these guys off for long, then my eyes made a connection: there was a table just inside the door against the wall to my right.

I endured another solid thump against the door and then reached over and yanked the table to me, spinning around it and then wedging it cockeyed so that one corner of the table was right under the doorknob and the kitty-corner was just inside the entrance to the small closet on the right hand wall. I knew it would not last for long, but I didn’t need too much time.

When I turned, knife in hand, I saw the fear in Darwin’s eyes. He was on his feet and had drawn a long slender blade at his side. I was willing to bet he hadn’t had to pull that thing in a long time. It looked awkward in his hands and he wielded it with the uncertainty of a novice.