Love in the Time of Zombies (7 page)

I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death,

and Hades was following close behind him.

— Revelation 6:8 King James Bible

Concord Hospital

Concord, California

General Martin Peters rode in the reinforced Jeep, the behemoth of an armored school bus casting a shadow over the smaller vehicle. Speakers mounted on the bus’s roof broadcast the drone signal. The sound had numbed his teeth miles ago. The high-pitched whistle barely noticeable after the hours spent listening to it except for the incessant throb at the base of his skull. He’d have a headache tonight. But it would all be worth it.

They’d rounded up the undead as they traveled. Captain Gomez set the signal to repel the horde before them, rolling along slow enough so they didn’t run over the slowest shambling creature. A journey that in the past would have taken an hour, maybe, now consisted of most of the day to travel a simple twenty-five miles.

Martin cracked his neck, moving in his seat to get the kinks out of his back. They’d spent last night on the freeway, just before the city limits. Antonio set the speakers to a tone that put the zombies into a swaying stupor, and he and his men slept like babies for the first time in a long time.

He wanted to hit the hospital in daylight. He wanted the people to see him coming. He wanted them to know he was King of the Zombie Horde.

They’d hit the mall last, hitting a small strip mall and a community college first to see how it went. It had gone like clockwork. The zombies swayed in their stupor and his crew fitted them with suicide bomber vests. He growled.
The only good thing to come out of the years of the war on terror was thinking like the terrorists. And you didn’t even have to promise these guys seventy-two virgins.

Not since the plane crash of ’85 had the mall sustained such damage. The zombies piled on each other against the walls, pressing the front row into the cement barrier. Martin had pushed the detonator button and laughed as rotting body parts and bloody debris rained down on the parking lot. The whistle drove the zombies further and further into the building like lemmings off a cliff. More explosions rang out and the roof collapsed, taking zombies and humans with it. His men shot anything left moving, stumbling out of the debris dust cloud.

Now they sat up the road from the hospital. He got out of the Jeep and stared at the sun. They had a few hours until sunset. Plenty of time to take the hospital, get a few doctors or nurses for the compound, and all the drugs and medical supplies they could carry.

Antonio walked to his side with Tanya in tow. His fingers itched to touch her. He fisted his hands at his sides as the man started talking and his wife hung onto his arm. He pushed down the growl in his throat. The bitch knew exactly what she was doing. Her smug smile said it all. She thought she could have her husband and string him along on the side. No damned way. Antonio was going to have an unfortunate accident as soon as his usefulness died. When it happened, he’d make the bitch watch. He’d take her right there, before her husband’s corpse turned cold, or turned undead. He hadn’t decided which yet.

He grabbed the binoculars Antonio held out and scanned the building.

“The western wall would be the easiest to breach. Looks like offices and stuff. It’s the one with the Dumpsters parked up against it.”

“I know which way is west,” he huffed, with a quick glance to the sun.

He stared through the binoculars. “I only want to take out a small section. Then we send in the creatures on fire and have the whole hospital in a panic. We might lose some, but we’ll round up most of them and sort out who we need and kill the rest.”

“Just because they aren’t doctors or nurses, doesn’t mean we don’t need them,” Antonio stuttered. “There could be cooks, repairmen, or someone we need. We’ve lost many men to the zombies.”

Martin lowered the binoculars and glared at his captain. “I don’t need to explain myself to you. All you have to do is follow orders. We have too many mouths to feed now as it is. Inventory says we have three months tops before we start rationing or starving. This trip has been to see if we could take something as big as a mall. After that demonstration at Sun Valley we should take this hospital like a walk in the park. Then we strike at The Streets of Brentwood group. That location is an over-ripe plum waiting to fall in our hands. Along with everything else Brentwood has, food, water, and women, we’ll be sitting pretty when winter comes.”

Tanya glared at him out of her husband’s line of sight. He’d known that last remark about women would get to her. He had orders for the woman as well. “Mrs. Gomez, I want you to be in charge of Miranda.”

He pulled a leash from his pocket and handed it to Tanya. “Stay close to the bus and keep an eye on her. She’s been trying to run away lately, and I’ll want her later.”

Tanya snatched the leash out of his hand and stomped off. Beside him, Antonio cleared his throat. “Don’t say a word. You could still work your machine minus a tongue. We all have our jobs to do. Miranda’s is to keep me happy. Yours is to direct the horde. Let’s get to it.”

Antonio did his job well, albeit with shaking hands. Martin smiled.
Good, remember who is in charge here.
He stood beside his captain, keeping one eye on the control board and the other on the advancing horde.

Row after row of undead advanced on the hospital. Their nonexistent perimeter of piles of dirt and cement blocks fell in mere minutes. The few outlying guards were overwhelmed by rotting flesh, and then turned quickly to join the horde. They doubled their numbers in minutes.

He stared as a man had his arms ripped off, only to rise a moment later to shamble in the direction of the building. All this power was his. He would own California before next summer. Straightening his spine, he jammed his hands on his hips. Hell, the whole North American continent could be his.

Explosions rocked the area as the first wave reached the wall. More and more undead piled against the cracking wall until it collapsed, taking the first group with it.

“The fire zombies next,” he ordered Gomez.

The man’s fingers danced over the controls and the horde stood still yards from the fallen wall. Peters’ men rushed forward with torches and lit up the swaying zombies. Antonio’s fingers flew to set the undead, now aflame, moving toward and then inside the hospital.

Panicked screams rose above the moans of the undead menace. Martin bounced on the balls of his feet. Soon! He glanced at his watch and returned his gaze to the hospital. Flames crackled as curtains flared on fire. Live people streamed out the doors, clothes on fire. They fell to the ground with whimpers. The creatures fell upon them and soon they rose to join their undead brethren.

He lifted the bullhorn. “This is General Peters. Surrender and you may live. Resist and you all die.” Faces appeared at the windows on the upper floors. “You have minutes to live before the zombies reach you.”

Clicking off the bullhorn, Martin turned to Antonio. “Make them stand still so the men can move in.”

Antonio did his stuff and the undead stopped in their tracks, swaying to music only they could hear. Martin waved his arm and the men moved in. Screams erupted from the building. He smiled. The zombies were still not moving. His men were having their fun. He would give them a couple of minutes, and then he was going in to pick who lived and who died.

Jed Long’s fingers twisted the knobs on the ham radio. Nothing came in except for the barely audible screech on all frequencies. A few moments ago, an explosion had rocked the building. Plaster dust had fallen on his head and the radio. He’d looked outside to see hundreds of rotting undead swarming the hospital, more than he’d seen since the Z virus struck months ago. The far western end of the building collapsed on the horde.

The pieces were falling into place. He rushed to the window again and gazed down on an army of zombies just standing in place. His ham radio hummed. Grabbing a recorder, he held it to the speaker and pushed the record button.

The smell of smoke wafted up to his room just as the door slammed open, hitting the wall behind, and slamming shut again. Dr. Shannon Drake stood there, gasping for breath, tears running down her face. Screams echoed through the hospital.

“Jed, we have to get out of here now. There’s an army outside, and I don’t mean the zombie one. It’s as if they can control them and make them do what they want. Some maniac calling himself General Peters seems to be in charge. The hospital is lost. We have nothing to fight them with and there are just too many. We have to get to Brentwood and Commander Canida. He has the weapons and the numbers to put up a fight.”

They both jumped as the door opened again. Jed shoved Shannon behind him. Amy stepped through the door. Her clothes were ripped and a nasty scratch ran down her face and neck. Blood oozed from it.

She gasped for breath and leaned back against the closed door. “There’re coming. They’re looking for doctors and nurses and killing the rest.” Gunshots and screams from the floor below punctuated her words.

Jed turned to look at his equipment on the desk. Both women grabbed an arm. “We can’t take it with us, Jed,” Shannon said, moving the group toward the window.

She opened it and looked down. “There’s no one in the back. We are out of here. We’ll take the fire escape and hide out until dark.”

Amy and Jed quickly straddled the windowsill and climbed out onto the fire escape. Shannon stood in the room, her head twisting back and forth from them and the door.

Amy grabbed her hand. “Don’t even think about it. We can’t save the patients. We have to let Canida know what he’s facing. One of the soldiers bragged to another that the Streets of Brentwood was next so they would be comfortable this winter.”

“Doc, grab my gun. It’s under the mattress,” Jed said, leaning in the window.

Shannon grabbed the weapon and pulled herself through the window. The trio looked down. Still no one. They climbed down and sprinted for the nearby tree-covered walking path.

Finding a giant, straggly bush, they hunkered down and stared at the destruction. Shannon whispered to the others. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t they surround the building?”

They saw a few others escape as they had, but they were too far away to call out. Amy whispered back. “I don’t think they are real soldiers, even if that guy did say he was General Peters. They seemed unorganized, letting the zombies do all the work.”

Shannon stood up. “Let’s find somewhere to hide until morning. Then we try to find a car and get to Brentwood.”

Miranda Stevens had had it. She was neck-deep in shit and she wasn’t taking it anymore. The collar and leash were humiliating enough, but having Tanya Gomez at the other end of the rope was too much.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the woman just stood there, but she wouldn’t shut up. Every remark out of her mouth was designed to cut and wound. She knew Tanya was sleeping with Peters. A shudder ripped through her.
Why would anyone willingly have sex with that dirty old man?

Mrs. Gomez outweighed her by a good thirty pounds and she had some muscle beneath that fat. The slaps hurt, but no more than the ones she got every day from Peters. The pinches annoyed as she tried to move away, only to be brought up short by the leash. She’d tried to get the collar off while she’d been alone in the bus, but it had a lock and Martin had the key.

No, what hurt the most was watching Tanya brush her long, thick hair, and then reach over and run a hand over Miranda’s shaved head. In her nineteen years it had never even been cut, until Martin had a fit when she refused certain kinky sexual acts. He’d beat her unconscious and taken hair clippers to her head. She’d come to in agony and bald.

She flinched as Tanya ran a hand over her head again. She tried to scrunch up her shoulders but the woman just pulled tighter on the leash until Miranda was practically in her lap.

“I can see why Martin keeps you like this. It’s kind of like having a pet.” Fingers trailed down her shoulder to her barely-covered breast. They tweaked her nipple.

Miranda exploded. She may be forced to be Peters’ sex slave, but she had had enough. She turned around and sank her teeth into Tanya’s hand. The woman screeched, reared back, and slapped Miranda full-force across the face.

She fell to the floor and the woman leapt on top of her, her fingers wrapping around her neck. Spots appeared before her eyes, and she tried to breathe. No air. Her body jerked, trying to get the woman off her.

With her last drop of energy, she brought her feet up, wrapped them around Tanya’s neck, and slammed her head into the bus floor. A crack echoed as Miranda sat up, catching her breath.

Mrs. Gomez lay at her feet, just the bare movement of her chest showing she was still alive. Blood pooled behind her head. Miranda eased the leash out of Tanya’s hand and unclipped it from the collar.

Still, the woman didn’t move. Miranda turned her head and glanced out the windows of the bus. No soldiers. No zombs. No one. For the first time in weeks, she was alone.