Orpheus (9 page)

Picture in hand, she'd expertly transferred it to his flesh, as an eternal reminder of what he had been and wanted to remember.

Now, instead of naked skin on his left arm, he saw a beautiful rendition of one of the last pictures he'd ever taken with his family. His wife, loving, caring, beautiful Jackie. His son Ethan, the spittin' image of his old man at the same age, but already becoming a man in his own right.

And Cameron Holt. Husband. Father. At the happiest point in his life, before Orpheus was ever born.

It was perfect.

* * *

Lena woke up, showered (trying not to think about Orpheus...God, she hated calling him that, even in her head), locked her door, and got to work on her side job. She started loading the memory cards from the cameras onto her computer. Each one took a minute or so, and when they were all loaded she set up a slideshow of all the new photos. She set the cycle to ten seconds and went to work matching up cell phones with the appropriate chargers and USB cables so she could load those, as well. Orpheus had shown incredible foresight when he and his team raided the electronics store during their first field trip into town. She made sure that she looked up every few seconds, because she absolutely, positively did not want to miss anything. There had to be at least one photo somewhere that could lead to some peace for him, and she'd never forgive herself if it slipped by. He was counting on her.

Someone knocked softly on her door.

She yelled, “One sec!”

She paused the slideshow and was about to slam the laptop shut when she heard, “It's Mutt. And I already know what you're doing. Open up.”

She opened her door and invited him in.

He looked at her slideshow. The picture on the screen showed two smiling young women in Stetsons. Mutt did a double-take at the photo. “Hell-o, cowgirls. God, I miss Texas. Anyway, find anything interesting?”

“Mutt, we're not going through this again. Let it drop.”

“No, I'm not gonna let it drop, Lena. You're not out there with him. The false hope that you're giving is killing him a little more every time we come up empty.”

She squared her shoulders to him. “Who says it's false? There's still a chance. I know it's slim. But it's enough to keep him going.”

“I want you to stop doing this. Just tell him it's over. He'll listen to you.”

Lena spoke in a calm, but unmistakable, tone. “Not going to happen, Mutt. It doesn't matter what you want. Or what I want, for that matter. He asked me for help, and I owe him. You of all people should understand that.”

That one hit home. “Yeah, I know. It's just that he's in a real bad place. If he ever has to put a bullet in his own kid...he won't last five minutes after that.”

“Let's not think like that. He deserves to know the truth, if I can find it. Please don't get in the way of that. It's not fair to him.”

“Fine. But I hope you never find anything.”

“That's sweet.” She saw him forming a retort. “No, I mean it. It's really sweet how you want to protect him.”

He cleared his throat. “So, what'd you need that picture for, anyway?”

“Oh, I put it to good use.”

“Sounds kinky.” He reached past her and hit a key to resume her slideshow. He left without saying anything else.

Lena paused the slideshow once more. She knew how Mutt felt about her. It was pretty much the same way that she felt about Cameron. And so on. It was almost comforting to know that, even at the edge of the literal end of humanity, people could still find a way to have utterly screwed up emotions.

The slideshow ran for another fifty minutes. She saw a wide variety of pictures, but nothing even remotely close to what she was looking for. She loaded the media from the cell phones next. She came up empty on those photos as well, but then she remembered the videos.

She hit paydirt on the sixth video. The action started immediately. The scene was shot through the plate glass windows of the theater, the narrator was making fun of his friends as they approached the theater. It must have been just before the outbreak, as the street was teeming with the living.

What initially caught her attention was the young man who walked towards the camera. When he noticed that he and the girl holding his hand were in the shot, he ducked sideways with a "Sorry about that, brutha." There was a louder, clearer, "No problem, man," as a response, then he was gone. The maturing voice, though not quite yet his father's, was unmistakable. She rewound the video and watched it from the beginning. She refused to let herself believe it until she confirmed his identity multiple times. She got to the point where she held up his photo side-by-side with the monitor and just looked back and forth.

It was Ethan Holt. She didn't have to blow anything up, sharpen the image, or stretch her imagination in the slightest.

She let the video play, but Ethan didn't make another appearance. The next video from the same phone showed the outbreak in its initial stages. The camera work was nauseatingly shaky as its owner ran to get clearer view through the picture window. The crowd reaction was mostly disbelief. Lena knew from firsthand experience that it would soon give way to full-blown panic.

So he'd been there in the beginning. He wasn't there now, in any form. There's no way that the team would have missed him. So, at the very least, he'd survived long enough to escape the theater.

Wow. That's something.

Lena tapped her fingers on the desk, thinking. She knew where Ethan had been in the beginning. Big deal. She wasn't going to go to Cameron yet. She opened up the file that contained all of the information she had on the Holt family. The last thing that Cameron knew about his wife was that she had a hair appointment...Lena traced her finger along Main...right here. At the same time, Ethan was at the movie theater which was less than a mile down the road, according to her map.

She knew about Cameron's last phone call to Ethan. He hadn't had time to ask where he was, but he knew where he was going. Was it unreasonable to assume that Ethan went to get his mother at the same time that his father was? So how did they miss each other? Also, that was the first place that Cameron had returned to when he got a chance, and he'd searched every square inch of the area surrounding the salon. It had cost him a man, and he came up with nothing, including his wife.

Somewhere in the space of a dozen or so blocks, Ethan Holt had disappeared.

She checked the map again. It didn't take her long to find what she was looking for.

She put everything away and rushed to Mutt's room as quietly as she could. She explained what she'd found. He resisted her at first, their previous conversation fresh in his mind, but he promised her he'd get what she needed.

“When?”

“I'd do it right now, if I could. It's relatively close by, but I have no idea how we'd get there without drawing a whole lot of attention. And I can't do it alone. I have to get the team together.”

Lena sat down on the edge of his bed and winked. “I'll wait right here.”

Less than ten minutes later, four-fifths of the Scalpel team were assembled in Mutt's room, listening to Lena's plan. The fifth, and the reason for all the subterfuge, remained asleep in his room. She filled them in on what she'd learned, and then told them what she needed.

“He left the movie theater here and headed here.” She pointed out each building in turn on the map. “So he had to pass by here and here, at the very least.”

“Banks?” Sam asked.

“Banks with ATM cameras,” Tim corrected.

“Exactly. That footage might show us what happened to him. Or it might show us nothing. But it's worth a shot, I think. I've got to get my hands on those tapes.”

“Why? We cleared the shit out of that place. He wasn't there. We don't need the tapes. They run on like a twenty-four hour loop anyway, so even if the kid did pass that way, any evidence is probably long gone by now. ”

“Fish, I think...”

“You're the smartest chick I know, Lena, but that's your problem sometimes: you think too much.” Everyone looked at Fish. “My guess is that you were going to send us to get those tapes through the sewer tunnels, right?”

“Um, yes.” She was a bit disappointed that Fish had stolen her thunder.

“So is there any reason why Ethan Holt, son of our fearless leader, wouldn't think to do that, too?”

Mutt spoke for everyone when he said, “Sonofabitch.”

They spent the next half-hour going over details such as what Lena would use as a cover story if Holt woke up and started asking questions. Then they got to it.

* * *

That same night, not too far away, Anders and the rest of his Scythe team touched down and headed to the zone that had been searched the night before. They went to work setting up. They'd done this many times before and worked efficiently, with minimal conversation, building by building, in much the same manner as Orpheus' team had.

The setup was fairly simple. They connected gasoline-powered air compressors to a device that contained the chemical agent, and that, in turn, was connected to each building's ventilation system. The whole process took only a few minutes per building, then they moved on to the next. Anything inside, alive or otherwise, would be disintegrated within a few days, and he was fine with it.

Anders was never great at math, but he knew that it was almost a certainty that they'd wiped out some truly alive people in the process. Maybe someone had been unconscious, or incapacitated, or just too scared to make themselves known. He was fine with that, too, because that was on Orpheus' conscience. It wasn't Anders' job to find people.

They were the angels of death.

If he's had his way in the beginning, the island would have been zombie-free a long time ago, because he would have greased everyone and everything as soon as possible. It was cliché, but in every war there had to be sacrifices, and he would have gladly sacrificed everyone else to get the job done. But Trager and Vincent needed their specimens. Anders thought the whole thing was asinine for multiple reasons, but as long as he got what he wanted in the end he didn't really care.

Within a few hours they were back at the theater and the helicopter was coming back for them. “Everything set?” he asked of one of his masked compatriots. He got a nod of confirmation. He was about to give the order to gas it when he reached into his pocket and pulled out Lena's report from the previous insertion.

“Blahblah...here we go...'LIVE EXERCISE. THEATER CLEARED 100%'.” He replaced the map. “We have a few minutes. Who's up for some refreshments before we burn this place?”

They made their way down to the first floor lobby and raided the snack bar. They filled their pockets to bursting. One of them made the mistake of trying the popcorn and found out exactly how stale stale could be. Anders got his Goobers and wandered into the theater because he wanted to see something for himself.

Anders couldn't help but be impressed with at least one aspect of Orpheus' management style: according to the report, the guy had thrown his rookie into a theater full of zombies and told him to go nuts. It was especially surprising because Orpheus had already lost three rookies and he still sent him in alone. He was amazed that he'd found something to admire about that asshole, but there it was.

“Search the bodies and let's blow.”

The Scythe members had barely begun the search when they realized that someone had beaten them to it. “Uh, sir?” one of them said. “They've been rolled already.”

“What? Holt never struck me as the looting type.”

“Pockets are turned out, purses dumped...but it looks like all of the money and valuables are still here.”

“It's weird. I haven't found a cell phone yet. Anyone else?” No one else had, either.

“That makes no sense.”

“No, sir.”

Anders chewed on it for a moment. He was stumped. “Move out.” The men dropped what they were doing and headed back up. Anders was the last one out. He was almost through the door when a glint of reflected light caught his eye.

It was a digital camera. That wasn't too odd, Anders thought, but then he saw the open panel. He picked it up and saw that the memory card was missing. He looked for more cameras and found that all of their cards were missing, as well.

He put it all together then. The cell phones, the memory cards...

He's looking for his kid.

He wished Holt luck, because he was definitely barking up the wrong tree on that one.

That kid was dead, and Anders should know. He was the one who had killed him.

Chapter 7: Side Mission

The trickiest part was getting out of the building without being noticed by anyone in the building. The second trickiest part was getting into the nearby sewers without being noticed by zombies.

They managed both, but they had to go way out of their way to do it.

The trip to the first bank was more or less a straight shot, and uneventful. They couldn't avoid the noise of the sliding manhole cover, but they dealt with the few zombies it attracted quickly and quietly. They hoofed it into the bank which was, mercifully, unlocked. Mutt figured that they had the power outage to thank for that.