Generation Dead Book 2: What You Fear (21 page)

“Come
on; let’s see if there is another way.”  I led the way back the way we came, moving quickly because I knew it wasn’t occupied.  That little feature of this place was still strange.  We went into an office in the southwest corner of the building, and I risked a small light, cupping my hand over the beam and allowing only a small sliver through.  The office looked normal enough, except for one little detail. Every single window had a large desk pushed in front of it.  At first, I thought the people here just wanted to see out, but then I realized it was intended to keep things from getting too far if they broke in.

“What’s that?” Kayla asked, pointing to an area in the next office.

I looked closely.  “Might be what we’re looking for,” I said.

We stepped over to the small bit of metal railing
that was sticking out of the middle of the floor in the central office.  I turned the light down to see a circular stairway leading into a very black hole.

“Guess we found our way down.  Wonder why they have a stairway here?”  Kayla asked.

“Probably to save time from running down the hall.  These old buildings have all kinds of shortcuts and passageways.  Lets’ go,” I said.  “Maybe anyone down there will think we’re supposed to be here and not shoot us in the legs.”

“Christ, Aaron, did you have to say that?”

I moved as fast as I could down the stairs, letting the full beam of my light find the stair and area below.  When I reached the bottom, I stopped suddenly.  I let my light shine around slowly and it revealed about a dozen men lying on the floor.  Most of them had been either stabbed or slashed to death.  Throats had been cut, chests had been stabbed, and arteries had been severed.  I began to suspect I knew where all the men had gone and why we hadn’t met with any resistance.  Question was, what could have brought them all down here?  This wasn’t a zombie attack; this was something else.

Chapter 47

Kayla came down quickly and stopped as suddenly as I had.  Her light was
on and added to the lit area.  She moved it around and took in the grim scene.

“My God, what happened here?” She asked.  Kayla shined her light through an open door across the slaughter and something seemed to catch her eye.  She gingerly made her way to the room and looked inside.  “Aaron, there’s two more in here.  Wait!” She ducked inside and reemerged holding a backpack.  “This is Jake’s!  They must have held him in there!  He must have escaped!”  Kayla was excited and scared at the same time as she looked at the floor.  “Is he here?”

I shrugged and started looking at the bodies.  I turned over several, and was relieved each time that I didn’t find my brother, but I was getting worried, too.  If he had escaped and managed to do this kind of damage, where was Julia? Did something drive him to inhuman rage?  Did he see something that threw him over the edge?  I was getting a really bad feeling and hoped with all my heart that I was wrong.

I stood up after checking the last man, and he wasn’t Jake either.  I turned around to find Kayla shining her light down the hallway.  From where I
stood, I could see a small blood trail on the floor, as if something was bleeding, yet dragging itself along.

Kayla was shaking. In a small voice she said, “Jake?”

I bolted past her into the hallway and saw a small figure huddled into a ball on the floor.  His eyes were closed and he was bleeding from a dozen cuts and stab wounds, but he still held a blood-covered knife in his hand.  I checked his pulse and by some miracle, I could feel a faint, defiant heartbeat.

“Jake?  It’s Aaron. I’m here.  Kayla’s here.  You’re safe now.  Jake
, can you hear me?  Stay with me, brother.”  I yanked my backpack off while Kayla cradled Jake’s head in her lap.  I ripped open the kit, pulling out bandages and antibiotics.  I pulled out a water bottle and splashed a little on Jake’s face, washing off the blood that was there.  Kayla was quietly crying, stroking Jake’s forehead and mixing her tears with the water.  She held her light to his face, helping me wash him.

Jake opened his eyes slightly and looked up at me, turning a little from the light.  “Julia’s down the hall.  You have to get to her before it’s too late.  Too late.” He closed his eyes again and gritted his teeth in response to a new wave of pain from his wounds.

I was torn in half.  My brother needed me, yet he was telling me to go save the woman I loved.  I couldn’t leave him, yet if I didn’t go to Julia, she might die as well.  I had to make a decision, because I knew I was losing time.  Jake had fought to get to Julia, and he had bought us a way in by keeping the men occupied and dying.  She was in obvious danger, so I couldn’t make that sacrifice in vain, but I couldn’t just run away from Jake.

Footsteps interrupted my thoughts and I swung up my rifle
one-handed, ready to blast the life out of anything that came down that hallway.  I nearly fainted when I heard a familiar voice call out my name.

“Aaron?  You down here?  Jesus, what a mess
,” my father said as he discovered the carnage in the other room.

“Dad!  We’re here!  Jake’s hurt bad!” I yelled, putting down my gun.

Footsteps pounded down the hall and my father and Uncle Charlie swept into view.  Dad dropped to the ground beside Jake, gathering him into his arms, and gently taking him from Kayla.

My father held Jake and lightly
touched his cheek, whispering as he did so.  “It’s okay, Jake.  I’m here.  I’ve got you. Daddy’s got you.”

I saw J
ake’s body relax a little when my dad said those words.  They triggered a long lost memory of my father coming into our rooms and holding us whenever we had a nightmare or something had scared us.  It was such a comfort to know our dad was there and he was ready to deal with whatever was frightening us.

Jake opened his eyes and looked into his father’s face.  He smiled slightly then said.  “Julia’s down the hall.  Couldn’t…couldn’t…get to her.”

My father looked at Uncle Charlie and me.  “We got this, go.  Kayla, I need your help, honey.”

I didn’t wait for Kayla’s
response. I simply launched myself from the floor with quite possibly one of the deadliest men in the world right behind me.  If Julia was in danger or had been hurt, I wasn’t sure even bullets would stop her father.  All I knew was I sure as hell wasn’t going to get in his way.

Chapter 48

We ran down the hall and stopped by a steel door.  I didn’t wait for anything
. I just yanked the thing open and went inside.  About halfway through the door I realized I had forgotten my rifle back by father and brother.  As a precaution I pulled my tomahawk stepped into a nightmare.

I stopped about three steps into the room and it took a moment for my mind to adjust to the horror I saw all around me.  There was a dim fluorescent light flickering intermittently overhead, and
its pale light actually made things worse.  I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me and I knew Uncle Charlie was seeing the same thing I was.

The room was large, about forty feet long and thirty feet wide.  Arranged in rows were about twenty reclining chairs.  In each chair was a young woman, ranging in age from fifteen to thirty.  Their hands and feet were secured to the chairs, and their heads were secured to the headrests by leather straps.  Each of them had a second leather strap that held their jaws closed, with a third going across their mouths.

Every single one looked at us, and each of them hummed a groan through their gags. All of them were zombies.

As I slowly walked forward, the horror intensified.  Every captive zombie had a thin tube attached to the back of their necks, and those tubes were filled with a dark
liquid which gathered in a small vial hanging off the back of the chair. 

I finally understood where the zombie fluid we had been fighting came from.  I looked around frantically, trying to identify Julia in the dim light, but it was difficult, since several of the women were young and blonde, and the leather straps obscured their features.  Uncle Charlie went to the other side of the room, trying to find his daughter.

Both of us froze as a door on the opposite side of the room opened and a short man wearing glasses walked in.  He didn’t notice the two of us at all. He just went over to a woman in the corner who struggled and was staring at him with big blue eyes.

As he approached her
, the man pulled out a syringe from his coat pocket.  I couldn’t see it very well, but I could tell it had something very dark in it.  It didn’t take three guesses to figure out what it was.  The man spoke as he walked.

“Well, I’m sorry it has to be this way, young lady.  But Ben says he wants you converted for your reunion with your father, and that’s that.  Too bad, though.  I would have liked to have taken a turn…”

Whatever the man was going to say was lost to the world as two tomahawks slammed into his head.  Mine took him by the temple and Uncle Charlie’s took him right behind the ear.  The impact of the two axes was strong enough to knock the man off his feet and into the wall next to him.  The syringe he was holding ironically wound up impaling his leg.

I ran over to the captive and with quick jerks of my knife, freed Julia from her bonds.  She burst out of the chair and wrapped herself around me, alternatively kissing me and hu
gging me.  I returned the favor with near desperation.

This went on for a minute until a grunt behind me made me realize who was still with me.  I pulled Julia off me and turned around, facing my Uncle Charlie who stood with a second tomahawk in his hand.

“
Daddy
!”  Julia burst out, grabbing her father around the waist and burying her face deeply in his chest. 

Uncle Charlie just held his daughter for a long moment, breathing her in, wrapping his huge arms around her, protecting her.  I felt a little awkward so I concerned myself with pulling the axes out of the head of the man we had killed.

Julia smiled up at her father and asked very seriously, “Where the fuck have you been?”

I nearly laughed at the look on Uncle Charlie’s face, but then I realized I kind of wanted to know that as well.  Julia stepped
back, wrapped her arms around my waist, and looked up at me, not waiting for her father to reply.

“Did you find Jake?” She asked.  “He was being held in a cell down the hall.”

Oh, shit.  Jake.  “Come on!” I said, giving the second tomahawk back to its owner as I raced past the secured zombies.  There was nothing we could do for these women, but knowing what we knew now, we’d definitely be back to send them over the divide for the final time.

Chapter 49

We rounded the corner to see my father hovering over Jake.  He had taken Jake’s shirt off and was cleaning his wounds, using my first aid kit.  Jake was wincing and breathing heavily, his head cradled again in Kayla’s lap.

Uncle Charlie went over to my dad and tapped him on the shoulder.  Dad looked up and got out of Charlie’s way.  Julia ran to Kayla and put her hand on her shoul
der, her other hand covering her mouth. 

Kayla looked up and smiled briefly at Julia.  “He was fighting to get to you.  He took out a dozen men to try
to get to you.”

Julia knelt by Kayla a
nd put her hand on Jake’s forehead.  I felt like a fifth wheel with nothing to do. Charlie worked over Jake, patching his wounds and probing for anything that might be life threatening.  After about ten minutes, there was a noise at the top of the stairs, and then two sets of feet came lumbering down the stairs.

I nudged my Dad, who looked up
quickly, then kept his gaze on his son. 

Dad said softly, “Wait for it.”

In the dark, I heard two sets of, “Holy shit.”

My dad smiled to himself briefly,
and then his face turned serious again. Charlie checked Jake up and down, and then looked up. 

“If we can get him to the capital, then he has a pretty good chance.  We can move him, but nothing too crazy.  Who’s going?”

Kayla spoke up first.  “I am.”  Her father looked at her curiously, but wisely said nothing.

Jake suddenly opened his eyes and looked up at Kayla.  “Love you, too
,” he said softly before closing his eyes again.

Kayla started to cry and rocked Jake’s head softly, kissing him gently on his bruised forehead. 

Julia spoke up.  “I’ll see him there.  We should be okay.”  She looked over at me expectantly, and I didn’t disappoint.

“That goes for me, too, by the way
,” I said, causing Julia to blush and her father to scowl.

“Talon’s are all the damn same
,” Charlie growled.  “You and I have a few things to discuss.”  He directed that at me and strangely, I didn’t feel any fear.

“When you’re ready
,” I said, mentally cataloguing where my weapons were.

Uncle Tommy s
poke up. “Knock it the hell off. We’re only patching up one of us today.  Ben’s escaped, and we need to figure out what to do.”