The Dead Series (Book 2): Dead Is All You Get (31 page)

“Yeah,” Pederman said, getting exasperated. “What’s your point?”

“And those soldiers outside?”

“That’s it,” Holly said, “I’m gonna hit you.”

“Don’t you guys see?” I said, cringing a little as Holly shook her fist at me. “The virus. It’s evolved.”

“Dave, we already know that,” Warnick said.

“No, it’s doing what they wanted it to do. Erzen, you said it earlier. One of those guys we shot was still warm.
He wasn’t undead.
It’s working.”

“What’s working?” Pederman said.

“Oh, no,” Holly said. “He’s right. It’s what those scientists wanted to achieve but couldn’t. The virus would always kill the person who was bitten. And they would come back as draggers.”

“They’re not dying anymore,” I said. “But they
are
changing. Into I don’t know what.”

“You mean these things we shot were
alive
?” Erzen said.

“Yes, and that’s why I don’t think they incinerated these patients. I think they moved them to another site. To study them further.”

“Why didn’t they take those soldiers?”

“These guys just wandered out of the forest. Who knows where they were when the cops cleared this place.”

“So where do you think they took the other patients?” Warnick said.

“Evie said she heard about another facility that was not in Tres Marias.”

“Mt. Shasta,” Pederman said.

“And I suppose you think we should go there,” Warnick said to me.

“As a matter of fact. Look, do you guys agree that everything that happened here in Tres Marias was an experiment?”

“Well, not at first,” Warnick said. “The dog infecting your friend was an accident.”

“Sure, but they took advantage of it, running their protocol as more and more people were infected. I keep thinking about that little village in Guatemala. Bob Creasy planned to try that experiment again—probably in some other poor country where no one would ask questions.”

“But this dropped into his lap right here,” Warnick said.

“Exactly. They got their breakthrough. They might not need Tres Marias anymore.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Mr. Pederman, it was something you told Isaac earlier. I couldn’t get it out of my head. You said they can’t keep this town locked down forever. You’re right. Whatever it is they’re planning, we have to try and stop it before it’s too late.”

“Stop the government?” Pederman said. “Listen to yourself.”

“We have to try.”

“Every morning I’m grateful I hired you, Dave. And every night I regret it.”

“Welcome to my world,” Holly said.

I pretended to smile. “Glad to be of service. Seriously, we need to find that facility.”

“Good luck with that,” Springer said.

“I might have an idea how we can get started.”

“Damn you, Pulaski,” Pederman said. “And just when I was starting to not be mad at you.”

Evan gurgled
and kicked her feet as Nina Zimmer held her in her lap. Steve sat next to his wife, holding her hand. He looked much better than when we’d found him in the forest, scared and bleeding from a gunshot wound. He seemed nervous, even though we assured him this was not a formal interrogation. Warnick, Erzen, Holly and I waited for Pederman to begin. The conference room door was closed—there was no telling who in our organization might be working for the mayor.

“How are you doing, Steve?” Pederman said.

“Better. The nightmares are starting to subside.”

“Glad to hear it. Now, as I told you, we are looking for information. No one is here to accuse you of anything. We’ll start with Tres Marias. What are they saying out there?”

Nina nodded encouragingly to her husband. “Total news blackout,” he said. “It’s as if the town disappeared. None of the local newscasters ever mention it anymore. There hasn’t been a story about it in the paper for months.”

“What about the Internet?” I said.

“Are you kidding? I searched every day, trying to find something. I’m telling you, it’s like Tres Marias never existed.”

“Tell us about the group you came here with,” Warnick said. “How did that come about?”

Steve fidgeted with a pen lying on the table. He seemed reluctant to talk about it. Nina stroked his hand, encouraging him to respond. “I was working in San Francisco. When Nina and I were … having our problems, I left Tres Marias and took a job with a startup. I’d moved out of the house and found a small apartment in the Mission District. It wasn’t much of a life really. Mostly, I buried myself in work. There was so much to do, not enough people to do it. The hours were long but I didn’t care.

“When the news broke about the sickness, I called Nina. We hadn’t spoken in weeks. I guess she was still really mad—I don’t blame her. We sort of had a fight on the phone. I waited a few days and called her again. I told her I was worried and wanted to come back. This time she agreed. I think she was scared.

“I saw on the news that they’d quarantined the town. No one knew what was going on. I brought my iPad to work and streamed the news all day while I wrote code. Everyone did. There were so many stories. Evie Champagne was the only credible reporter—the only one who made any sense. Then she disappeared and the reports stopped. Pretty soon everything went dark—newspapers, talk radio … I couldn’t reach Nina. I was getting worried.

“We used to like to go to dive bars after work. No one ever got drunk—it was just a way to blow off steam. This time it was Lucky 13. Do you know the place? Anyway, we’d come in around ten for a few beers after a long day. The conversation was always the same. We talked about work, our stock options. What we’d do if somebody bought us. It’s really loud in there, but I overheard a group of men sitting near us. I was sure one of them mentioned Tres Marias. That was the first time I’d heard the name in a couple of weeks. So I went over to talk to them. At first they didn’t want to tell me anything. They were probably afraid I was a government agent or something.”

“Why would they think that?” Pederman said.

“Early on, there were rumors floating around that this endemic outbreak was the result of some kind of government experiment. Someone mentioned Plum Island. You have to understand—San Francisco has a lot of very smart tech people, but it also has conspiracy theorists and nutjobs who swear they’ve been abducted by aliens. Tres Marias fueled their imagination.”

“What about you?” Holly said.

“I was in the middle. I thought the outbreak was some kind of virus, like H1N1. Anyway, I told these guys about Nina and the baby. I said I wanted to be with them but I knew the town was quarantined. They asked me where I worked. Then they wanted to know my address in Tres Marias. Somebody wrote it down. They said they’d be in touch and left.”

“Did they give you any information about them?” Warnick said.

“No. I had no idea who I was talking to. Looking back, I was pretty naive. These guys could have been anybody. I tried not to think about it.”

Steve looked parched. As he adjusted himself in his chair, wincing from the pain of his wound, I got up and filled a cup with water from a plastic jug. He took it gratefully and gulped it down. “Thanks. A few days went by and I hadn’t heard anything. I went back to that bar every night, but those guys never showed again. One day I got a call at my desk. The voice said to meet me at this pub not far from my office on Market Street.

“When I got there, I recognized one of the guys from that night. We left the pub and walked down the street to the Yerba Buena Gardens, where we met the rest of the men who’d been at Lucky 13, plus a few more. I learned that, like me, some of the men who lived in Tres Marias had been out of town when the quarantine had gone into effect. Others had relatives living there. They wanted to know what had happened. And they planned to get in one way or another.”

“Meaning guns,” Erzen said.

Steve reddened. We waded through a long, uncomfortable silence. He gave Evan his finger to play with. “There was this guy, Kevin—I never got his last name. He was the one you found me with in the forest. He was basically the leader. When I found out that they planned to get in using weapons, I walked. I promised I wouldn’t say anything and told them I didn’t want to be part of any violence. I mean, most of these guys weren’t macho or ex-military or anything. They weren’t crazed vigilantes. They were
gamers
. People who’d only ever experienced warfare courtesy of
Call of Duty
or paintball. But they were totally serious about this.”

“And they were packing some pretty serious firepower,” Pederman said. “Where did they get those weapons?”

“You can find anything on the Internet. After a few days, Kevin showed up at my place of work. He wanted to convince me to join. He said that Black Dragon was a paramilitary group that had no right to hold the town hostage. He made it sound like we would be liberating Tres Marias. I didn’t really believe the things he said. Then he showed me a video on his iPad—said he’d found it on YouTube. Ever heard of Robbin-Sear?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, glancing at the others.

“Somebody’d uploaded a marketing video they’d produced years ago. It showed soldiers going into combat, taking direct hits and continuing on to kill the enemy, then going home to be with their families. Stuff like that. The video was called ‘The Future of Combat.’ I don’t know why, but it really scared me. Kevin insisted that this had something to do with the outbreak. He said he’d heard that Robbin-Sear had built a secret facility in Tres Marias. I wanted more than anything to find Nina and Evan, and I didn’t really have any other options. The next weekend I drove down to Tres Marias and saw for myself the barricades, the soldiers and the helicopters. It terrified me, the thought of going up against soldiers with guns. But by this time I was desperate. All I could think about was Nina and the baby. I didn’t know whether they were alive or dead, but I needed to find out. When I got back to San Francisco, I told Kevin I was in.”

“When we found you, you didn’t even have a weapon,” Warnick said.

“Kevin sold me one of his handguns. He took me to a shooting range a couple of times in South San Francisco. I got pretty good but those were targets.”

“How did you know when to attack?” Pederman said.

“Kevin friended a Black Dragon employee on Facebook. He was based in San Francisco. He sent the guy a private message saying he was worried about sick people escaping from Tres Marias. How well protected were the borders? They decided to meet. Kevin was one of those guys who could charm anybody. The guy spilled everything. He talked about how you rotated people in and out, and when. He said during a shift change, there was a short window where the coverage was light, but that otherwise everything was locked up pretty tight.”

“That guy is so fired,” Pederman said, looking at Warnick.

“When we got to Tres Marias that afternoon,” Steve said, “I tried using my gun, but I couldn’t bring myself to shoot anyone. I gave it to another guy. Your soldiers were firing at us. I was almost killed. Then the infected people showed up—I’d never seen one before—and you got distracted. I was with Kevin, and he told me to follow him. Somehow we got through and ran into the forest. Wouldn’t you know it, I got shot. Kevin said we could make it to the hospital once we got through the forest, but I didn’t think I could. We stopped in a clearing. I was pretty bad off. A group of Black Dragon soldiers found us. I didn’t care—I thought we were saved. But they just stood there. It was … I don’t know … weird.”

“What was weird?” I said.

“It was like they were in a trance. One of them grunted at the others and ... they surrounded us.”

“Did they raise their weapons?” Warnick said.

“No. But they kept moving in closer. Their eyes, they—never mind.”

“What about their eyes?” Erzen said.

“It was like … they were glowing. It sounds insane, but I know what I saw. Kevin shot at them repeatedly until he was out of bullets. I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do. I was bleeding out so I sat against a tree.” Gripping the edge of the table, Steve choked up. “They went for Kevin, but not me. They grabbed him—he was screaming. They tore his pants off. I thought they were going to, you know, rape him or something. The one in charge grunted again, and two of the soldiers handed him the straps from their weapons. As the others held Kevin down, the one in charge tied his legs off at the thigh. They removed the bayonets from their rifles and …”

Tears rolled down Steve’s cheeks. The fear he must have felt then was on his face now. His mouth was open but no sound came out. Nina rubbed his shoulder and whispered something to him. He nodded and swallowed. “The thing is, while they were … attacking him, Kevin stopped screaming. He just … He laid there. Probably shock, I don’t know. I can still hear them. Cutting the flesh … eating him.”

The only sound in the room came from Steve. He was sobbing. His daughter looked at him curiously, then she began to cry too. Nina got up and walked around the room with the baby as Steve pulled himself together.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Not a problem,” Pederman said. Then to us, “I wish I could see that video.”