Zombie Attack! Army of the Dead (Book 3) (19 page)

“Which gives you the right to break your word,” I sneered.

“Exactly,” John nodded, not getting my jab. “This way works better for me anyway. I never was one for rules and regulations and all that military nonsense. Up at the crack of dawn, doing more than most folks do all week before six a.m., all of that. It's unnatural.”
 

“Whatever you've got to tell yourself to justify what you've done,” Benji said in a low voice, “you're still a murderer. Plain and simple. You might not see it, but everyone else does.”

“I never really did buy your whole Benedict Arnold routine, you know,” John chuckled. “Franco sure did though. Man oh man. It was just what he needed to hear at the time too.”

“What's your point?” Benji spat.

“My point is that it's all relative to the situation at hand. You needed Franco to trust you so you could betray him, but you don't see what you did as wrong because you've got this blinding sense of righteousness. In reality, it's not all that different from what I'm doing now. Hell, at least I tried to give him a chance. You on the other hand, went in knowing full well your intentions were rotten, smiling to his face and being his whipping boy. So excuse me if I don't feel all that bad being called names by a pimply faced kid who doesn't know his elbow from his…”

“How does this end?” Moto interrupted, turning John’s attention back to him.

“Once Franco is out of the way, we'll control the most powerful army known to mankind, along with the most powerful biological weapon. After that, anyone who gets in our way or tries to stop us will become food for my loyal troops.”

“You're crazy if you think you can control them long enough to take over the world,” Moto said. “The bigger they get, the stronger their hive mentality becomes. Eventually, they'll just turn on you and your men.”

“He's right,” I joined in. “I've seen it before. They work together to knock down walls and buildings to get at living people. You won't be able to shut them off.”

“Who says I want to see it end?” John laughed. Desdemona joined in.
 

“What good are they if you can't make them stop?” Moto demanded. “There will be no one left to rule over.”

“World domination is Franco's dream,” John explained. “Not mine. My wife and I had something different in mind. We're happy just putting a barrier between us and the rest of the country for the foreseeable future...or what's left of it anyway.”

“Everybody wants to live in California,” Desdemona laughed. “That's always been the case. It will be even more appealing once word gets out about our new attractions.”

“Hellfire and the Circus of Pain are just the start,” John continued. “We eventually plan on opening a network of similar spots up and down the coast from San Diego to San Francisco.”
 

“You're setting up franchises?” I asked, feeling confused.

“Franchises,” John chuckled. “I like that. That's funny. After we take out the powers that be we plan on establishing clean communities, similar to New Lompoc, where people of breeding and culture can congregate without fear of being attacked by zoms, or assaulted by lawless gangs. They can set up anywhere else they want, take over any piece of land that suits them and turn it into the world’s biggest biker bar. I could not care less, as long as they keep away from suburbia.”

“Doesn't seem fair,” Moto said, playing devil's advocate all of a sudden. “Your biker pals put their butts on the line for you, but they don't get to live in your shiny white paradise?”

“Oh, they'll be taken care of all right,” John smirked. “Don't you worry about that.”

“That's where I come in,” Desdemona added with a cocky sneer. “I've found I have a real knack for keeping the troops entertained, so to speak.”
 

“It's a perfect balance,” John said with a self-satisfied smile. “Those who crave order and stability get it. Those who crave lawlessness and chaos will have their fun as well.”

“As long as they don't piss off you or your wife,” Benji added, looking disgusted. “At which point they get fed to zombies, killed for sport, eaten by cannibals, or worse, made into slaves at one of her new churches.”

“You catch on real quick,” John responded. “You've come a long way from your idle days of video games and comic books. Looks like we're just about ready for the next part of the plan.”

John let out a loud whistle and the tow truck driver revved his engine, sticking his thumb out the window to let us know he was ready. I felt my stomach lurch as we began to move, the bars of the cage we were in slightly vibrating. For a moment I thought we were heading away from the fighting, but the driver brought us around in a wide loop through the patches of stragglers still ambling our way sporting torn limbs and gruesome wounds. The ones closest to us reached their gray hands toward the cage, but were unable to even touch the bars because we were up so high. This was obviously John's intention to keep us all away from the swarms of biting corpses, but it also meant that if anything went wrong we'd be trapped. We'd be surrounded on all sides by angry zombies all trying to break in and tear us apart, while we waited for help to arrive and set us free again.

Seems like a flaw in his plan
, I thought. It didn't surprise me though. Above all, John was arrogant. He rarely thought things through because he knew if something went wrong, he'd find a way to make someone else pay for it instead of him. It had been his one constant characteristic, unchanged since I'd first had the misfortune of crossing his path.
 

I thought about the night Benji and I left New Lompoc, how John had abandoned his own men to save himself, how he'd later blamed Tank's death on me when it was really John who'd left his friend behind.
 

One thing’s for sure,
I thought.
John can't run anymore, not while he's locked in this cage with us. Whatever happens now happens to all of us.

Most of the horde was now already on base, working their way into the fighting between Franco's men and our resistance. We wheeled around and the truck picked up speed, knocking over zombies that wandered blindly into its path and crushing them under the large vehicle’s tires.

“Don't worry,” John said, as the motion of crushing a dead man's head sent us flying off our feet. “The cage is chained down. It's not going anywhere.”

All around us I could see evidence of the battle raging on in our absence. Blackshirts climbed on top of anything they could, alternating between taking shots at Loyalists in standard camo, and relentless zombies intent on making a meal out of them. There was even a guy who had climbed up a tree, thinking he was safe in the perch. He had a sniper rifle and was working on taking out a dozen or so of Benji's fighters who'd taken over the PX building. The fighters had managed to keep the biters out momentarily by blocking up the front with some two-by-fours and plywood. The Blackshirt sniper waited patiently for the fighters to stick their heads above the mess of lumber that had been haphazardly piled together until it resembled a drunken beaver’s shoddy handiwork more than a shelter from the maelstrom of hot lead raining down all around them. He picked them off one by one, with diabolical precision, a cruel grin twisting the side of his face as he knocked them down like tin silhouettes of ducks at a carnival shooting gallery. He snapped the bolt of his rifle back between deadly shots, reloading and taking aim anew. In his single-mindedness he'd ignored the growing number of zombies around the base of his tree. By the time he'd realized his mistake, it was too late. Working together as I'd seen them do in Vandenberg, the zombies used the weight of their bodies to uproot the massive oak, sending the startled sniper sailing down to the ground. They were on him in seconds, the sound of his astonished cries causing me to inwardly wince in sympathy. I turned and looked away as I saw one of his legs pulled free and held up like a drumstick to be shared between two very hungry former humans.

“Why are we heading back on base anyway?” Benji asked.
 

“I'll tell you why,” John haughtily replied. “The last thing Franco said to me was to find you and bring you to him. He said he was headed to the lab to get Haki. He was sure after the resistance fighters saw his super zombie doing whatever he ordered, they'd fall in line quick.”

“But you don't work for Franco anymore,” I stoically reminded him.

“I never did,” John spat, visibly trying to control his anger at the idea.
 

“It's all right, lover,” Desdemona cooed, but John shook his head.
 

“That creep treated me like garbage,” John snorted, practically foaming at the mouth. “He killed my friend right in front of me, then sent me to run errands for him like I was his punk. He thought he was better than me, but I'm gonna show him he's not. That's why I'm planning on personally feeding him to my army.”

“Why not just wait until the carnage is over, then send your handlers in to clean up before tracking down Franco? It's not like he's going to escape, not while this madness is going on.”

“I'll be damned if someone else gets to kill him first,” John raved. “I wanna see the look on his face when they start tearing into his skin and he knows that it's all over. I wouldn't miss that for anything in the world.”

The truck came to a stop near the side entrance to the labs. There were several zombies roaming about, moving forward to the sounds of yelling and gunfire we'd just passed through. I saw a few go through the open door that led to the cells we'd been in just hours earlier and vanish out of sight, swallowed up in the shadows. Going that way right now meant fighting through monsters to get to Franco. The odds of being killed were greater than the odds of ever seeing the coup leader’s face again, and that didn't account for what might happen if Franco unleashed Haki on us.
 

John took the key from around his neck, and began to feed it into the lock on the outside of the cage. I felt my stomach twist up in a ball of nerves as I realized he was planning on going through with what was surely a suicide mission, propelled solely by his wounded pride and blinded by a need for vengeance.

“Get ready to go when I tell you,” John ordered.
 

“Why not lock us in and leave us here?” I appealed, hoping to trick him into keeping us out of harm’s way.
 

Who knows,
I thought.
Some of our own guys might find us and break us loose.

“No can do,” John said. “You're my insurance policy. I want you in my sights at all times, amigos.”

“Insurance policy?” Benji looked confused. “But you said yourself that Franco is gonna know you betrayed him. What does it matter if you deliver us to him or not?”

“I don't need help dealing with Franco,” John laughed.

“He means when the rest of our armed forces show up,” Moto informed Benji, “which could be any minute now, for your information. He thinks if he keeps us near him and something does go wrong, he can use us as bartering chips to save his own skin.”

“That's right, cowboy,” John boasted. “They'll have to let us pass, otherwise I'll start killing hostages. The last thing they want is a group of their highest-ranking officers being butchered while the rest of the troops watch, and all because they weren't willing to negotiate.”

“They're not going to make a deal with you,” I objected. “That's not how things work!”

“You better hope that's exactly what they do, squirt,” John taunted. “Otherwise, the last thing you'll see in this world is the tremendous satisfaction on my face as I put your lights out for good.”

“It's not going to come to that,” Desdemona said gravely. “Because as soon as we take Franco out, we're going to be able to create a new battalion of supermen who feel no pain and only respond to us. Your armed forces won't be able to defeat us any longer. Your generals will be forced to lay down their arms and surrender, or be slaughtered and conscripted to eternal hunger and warfare.”

“That's pure poetry, baby,” John exhaled as he gazed at his insane wife. “Now if you'd all be so kind as to follow me.”

John began to swing the door open.

“Wait!” I cried out, causing him to turn back to look at me. “You can't just send us out there unarmed.”

“You're crazy if you think I'm giving you back your weapons,” John spat back at me as he challenged my plea.

“So what are we supposed to do when we're attacked?” Benji asked, looking scared for the first time.

“Here's the plan,” John impatiently answered, looking annoyed to be questioned in the first place. “My guys will go first to make sure the hallway is clear. You will follow them. Desdemona and I will be right behind you. If you so much as turn away from that door, or change direction for even a split second, I will put you down. I'd hate to end it so quickly, but I'd still enjoy it; so try me if you don't believe me and watch what happens. Now, if you're all done with your game of twenty damn questions, let's move out.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The door swung the rest of the way open, and John motioned for his men to go in ahead of him. They scurried like rats out of the cage and hopped down off the back of the flatbed, their heads whipping back and forth anxiously as the undead began to notice them. Soon several zombies were heading in their direction, their hungry cries alerting the dozens around them that there was more fresh meat to be had. Still, John took his time helping Desdemona down off the truck. By the time her feet touched the ground, John's fake Blackshirts were already starting to fire off head shots, bringing down four full-sized adult biters, and drawing the attention of hundreds more in the process.
 

“Come on then,” John said, turning impatiently to Benji, Moto, and me, as if we were the real cause of the dangerous delay, instead of his wife. “Don't just stand there looking stupid. Get moving.”

Benji hopped down first, looking nervously back and forth as more zombies began to join together and move in on us from all sides.

“Grab that one,” John said to Desdemona, who immediately took Benji by the back of the shirt and yanked him close to her.