Man Eaters (22 page)

As if sensing this, Merlin slowed to a trot, then to a gait, then to a walk until Roper slowly slid off the saddle into the dirt, landing on her back. The last thing she heard was, “Did you fucking see that?”

****

Roper

When she opened her eyes, Roper found herself cable-tied to a hospital bed in a makeshift field hospital ward, her shoulder feeling like it was on fire. Things being what they were, she was surprised she’d woken up at all.

“Where the fuck am I?” Roper yelled. She had a feeling she knew, and it was difficult not to let panic set in.

But she was panicking. Her heart banged in her chest, her palms were sweaty, she was weak from loss of blood, and she knew she was in deep shit trouble.

“Pipe down,” growled a doctor or nurse who walked in, clipboard in hand. “Oh, we can gag you. Trust me. It isn’t very pleasant and makes this process harder.”

Roper looked at the cable ties on her wrist, confident she could get out of them. When she leaned forward, she felt the burn in her shoulder where she had been shot.

“We patched you up. It went clean through. You’re a lucky gal.”

Roper looked around for her weapons. While they’d taken her rifle and magnum, they’d let her keep her boots on. That was their first mistake.

“They want to vaccinate me only to let one of those things bite me?”

The fact that she knew the truth made the doctor look up from the clipboard. “Oh.” His eyes peered out over a facemask.

“Yeah. I know the fucked up shit you’re doing here. And I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I’ll be your lab rat quietly and without problem if you can only tell me whether or not a woman named Dallas is here.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. There are hundreds of you here.”

“Could you find out? Please?”

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry. We really don’t have time for that.” The doctor wrote a few things on his clipboard, checked Roper’s vitals, jotted them down and left the room.

She had to get out of here before they shot her with some dead cells of a vaccine that probably had little to no viability.

A young girl in the bed next to her cried softly and, although Roper couldn’t see the girl through the curtain separating their beds, she knew by the sound that it was a female.

“It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.”

“They gave me a shot to calm me down, but I’m not calm. I’m scared to death.”

“Can you tell me everything that has happened to you since you came in here?”

The girl took some shallow breaths before answering. “They asked me a lot of questions. Told me I was getting vaccinated and if I didn’t show any bad effects after twenty-four hours, they are going to take me to a safe compound where there are no zombies.”

“So you’ve been here how long?”

“Two days. I’m at the last step, but I’m so afraid I won’t pass.”

“Pass?”

“Oh yes. You have to be in good health to get to the safe compound. I am so tired of being tired, of being scared, of being hungry. They say the compound is built all with cement, has hot showers and plenty of food.”

Roper understood that desperate people were likely to believe anything, and clearly, this poor girl was willing to believe in the government’s nonexistent Shangri-La. “Have you wondered why we’re chained to the beds?”

“They said in case we have a violent reaction to the serum. They also don’t want people roaming around. It was the first thing I asked when I got here.”

“You came here willingly?”

“Sure. Who wouldn’t?”

“Then why were you crying?”

“They separated me from my family. Until you got here, I’ve not had anyone to talk to.”

For the next ten minutes, Roper casually grilled the girl about what she’d seen when she first arrived—the layout of the facility, the sounds and space in between buildings, and whether there were armed soldiers inside the facility.         

When she was armed with enough information, Roper started to plan her escape.

****

Dallas

Dallas rode as hard as she dared, and when Morgana kicked into high gear, Dallas nearly fell off. She’d never ridden so hard or so fast, and as she leaned into the horse, the wind whipped by her face and ears. She had no idea where the Hummer was and was too afraid to look behind her.

When Morgana eventually slowed, Dallas finally turned around to see...nothing. The Hummer must have peeled off because it was nowhere in sight. Turning Morgana back, Dallas trotted her higher up the hill so she could get a good look at the area. To her horror, she watched as they dragged a lifeless Roper into the Hummer. Merlin backed away. Dallas had no idea where the others had gone or how far away, but Roper was alone and being carted away.

When she reached the summit, she didn’t see the Hummer, Butcher, Einstein, or Peanut. Pulling out the binoculars, she scanned the hillside, trying not to freak out.

She decided staying put on the crow’s nest was the better option than running around looking for the kids. She could not panic now.

Keeping the binoculars on her eyes, she scanned the grounds below her for fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes. Nothing. Then she saw Zeus. Lowering the binoculars, Dallas rode quickly to the dog, which raised his hackles and growled when she rode up.

“Peanut?”

Dallas jumped off the saddle and knelt down, five feet from the dog. “Easy, Zeus. It’s me.”

The dog sat down and stopped growling but the hackles remained up.

“Peanut!” Dallas called out. She slowly rose when she saw the dirt and cut grass move a foot behind the huge beast.

Uncovering herself, Peanut brushed off her camouflage and ran to Dallas, who hugged her tightly. “You okay?”

Peanut nodded. “My daddy taught me that trick when we would play hide and seek.”

“Where’s Einstein?” she asked the little girl.

“He made me get off and told me to hide.”

“What happened to him?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I got off the horse and ran like he told me to. Is he okay? Where’s Roper?”

“I don’t know, honey, but we’re going to find out.”

****

Roper

Roper answered all of the doctor’s medical questions without giving him any information he could use against her. Whenever she tried asking questions, he shut her down, explaining the same pat line he’d repeated to Stephanie, her roommate. It was the same tired line over and over: Only the select few would be allowed to transfer to the compound. If Roper cooperated and showed no ill effects from the vaccine, she could be transferred in the next day or two, blah, blah, blah. Roper tuned him out.

Instead, she spent her time sizing him up. She knew she could take him, but getting out alive would be a bit trickier.

Stephanie had told her all she could about the security and size of the facility. She estimated about three hundred beds, a dozen or so doctors, and closer to fifty armed soldiers, all through the perpetually closed linen screen.

Roper had her work cut out for her if she was going to get out of here before they sent her to the “compound.”

What a crock. This whole place was reminiscent of Mengele’s torture camps. She was nothing more than a lab rat...only she had no intention of eating their cheese or drinking their Kool-Aid.

“They said I’ll be able to leave here around noon tomorrow when a new transport truck leaves.” Stephanie had perked up a great deal over the last few hours, and had talked nonstop whenever they were alone, which was most of the time.

“Did they tell you how far away it is?” Roper asked.

“Yes. The truck ride is about ten minutes, to what they call the bus station. From there, it’s another eight hours or so to the compound.”

“Which is where, exactly?”

“They won’t say. I guess its top secret or something. If everyone knew where it was, it would get over-crowded.”

The prolonged fabrication made Roper’s mouth taste sour. They would be taking her to her death only after subjecting her to...to what? Roper couldn’t imagine the military housing any of the man eaters to actually bite people. That would be far too dangerous and gross. More than likely, they had managed to create or recreate the same virus the terrorists had dropped. The other alternative was simply too frightening to consider.

“If you have a hard time sleeping tonight, they’ll give you a sedative.”

Roper nodded. She had no intention of sleeping. What she had to do was figure out a way to get out of there, and sleep would not do it.

“Will the doctors come around often tonight?”

“Oh no. Once lights are out, it gets pitch dark in here. They won’t be back until breakfast, unless you start screaming and making noise. Then they’ll sedate you. A security guard comes around once every hour, but he doesn’t peek into the cubicles. He just walks to the back of the room and out again.”

A germ of an escape plan started in Roper’s mind. The only real issue was whether or not she should attempt her escape during the night. It might actually be safer to get out during the daylight when she could see where she was going and who was after her.

It was a coin toss.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Stephanie said softly. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you worried you won’t make it to the compound? You sound pretty healthy to me.”

Healthy was a relative term that had no bearing on this situation. This was a disgustingly desperate move by a government that had already lost the first few battles in an all-or-nothing war.

“Just tired, that’s all. I’m not fond of being tied to a bed.”

“It’s for your safety, that’s all.”

When Stephanie finally quieted down, darkness crept into the medical facility on the inside, while enormous lights run by generators shone all around the exterior of the camp. Roper knew there weren’t too many nights left for generator use. This was probably the government’s last-ditch effort at a vaccine.

Roper counted the seconds in between rounds of the searchlight. It only varied by twenty seconds, at the most, but as much as she wanted to get out there, running around blindly in the night didn’t seem like the best-laid plan. Besides, she reckoned the soldiers had more people to report back to than doctors, so if she was going to get out of here alive, she’d have to do so during the day.

And that was the beginning of her plan.

****

Dallas

It took Dallas less than fifteen minutes to track down Einstein. She’d spent enough time with him that she knew he would go back to the last safe place they’d been and, sure enough, there he was, pacing back and forth. When he saw them riding up, he ran toward them, but stopped when he saw Zeus.

Peanut jumped off the horse and ran to him. Dallas threw her leg off the saddle and nearly collapsed when she landed. Her ass hurt so much she could barely stand.

After picking up Peanut and hugging her, Einstein threw his arms around Dallas. “Thank God you’re okay, but...” He looked into Dallas’s eyes. “Where is she?”

Dallas shook her head. “They got her.”

Einstein’s face fell. “You don’t...she’s not—”

“No, no, I don’t think so. They wouldn’t have taken her otherwise. They’d have just left her body there.”

“They took her? You mean, to that med facility?”

Dallas nodded. “We need to get Merlin and go after her.”

“After her? Dallas, we have no idea where they’ve taken her.”

“We don’t, but we know who does. Saddle up, kids. We’re going after Luke.”

As they rode toward the frontage road, Einstein said, “This is awfully dangerous, Dallas.”

“I don’t care. We’re in this together, and if those mother fu...if those asswipes are taking her to that medical facility—” She turned to Einstein, tears in her eyes. “I made a promise to her. I plan on keeping that.”

Thirty minutes later, they rode up on him walking along the freeway.

When Luke heard the horse’s hooves, he raised his hands in the air. “I figured it was too good to be true. You decided to kill me after all.”

Dallas shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s Roper. They got her.”

“They? The zombies?”

“Your people.”

He blinked. “Oh.”

“It’ll be the same thing unless we can get her out of there.” This came from Einstein.

“You’re thinking of breaking her out of a medical facility manned by armed military?”

Both Dallas and Einstein nodded.

He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how impossible that is?”

“Look, I’m not asking for your help. I’m asking for you to take us there. That’s it.”

“Take you there, and then what? Stand by while you bust her out?”

“I’ll go after her. Einstein and Peanut can stay with you, gun trained at you should you decide—”

He held up his hands. “No need for all that, Dallas. I won’t get in your way. I just think it’s a suicide mission is all.”

“Maybe so, but I’m not going to stand by while they turn Roper into a man eater. I made a promise and I’m going to keep it. Now hop on.” Dallas held her hand out and Luke grabbed her wrist and jumped on the back of the horse.

“This is crazy, Dallas. You know that, right?”

Urging Morgana on, Dallas replied, “I’m getting pretty used to crazy.”

****

Roper

Roper fell asleep somewhere around four o’clock. When she woke up, she was being wheeled to another room. She barely had time to glance over her shoulder to see Stephanie’s bed empty.

“Where you taking me?” Her heart was pounding now and she considered using her Buck knife she’d spent half the night getting from her boot to beneath her thigh. It had been a tedious, laborious process, but eventually she got it to a place where, if she raised her hips from the bed and came down hard on the flat of the blade, the handle would lift just enough that she could grab it.

“We’re just going to draw some blood and run a few tests. You’ll be back in no time.”

“What about Stephanie? Where is she?”