Zombie Attack! Army of the Dead (Book 3) (7 page)

She's using his original first name,
I noticed.
She's not calling him Moto or Patrick, like the rest of us. She must be his girlfriend! Otherwise he'd never allow it. I thought he hated that name.

“She kept the radio I'd left for Apache,” Moto said. “She started contacting me regularly, asking all sorts of questions I couldn't answer.
 

“You left that radio behind on purpose,” Sonya chastised him. “Admit it.”

“I'll admit that I was a little distracted that day we met,” Moto said defensively. “My brother, who I'd been searching for, turned up bitten by a zom, so yeah, I wasn't thinking a hundred percent clearly at the time. I felt guilty about it. I still do.”

“You do?” I asked. Moto nodded affirmatively. I couldn't understand why. When he left me at Vandenberg there was no way he could have known what was coming, that the zombies would form into hordes and start knocking down walls. How could he or anyone else have known that? I certainly didn't blame him, but I could see from the look on his face that no amount of telling him otherwise was likely to convince him at this point.
 

“Well, I'll never forget the first time I saw you,” Sonya swooned. “You were all dressed up in your fatigues. You looked so handsome. To me you represented everything I distrusted in the world, force and might and violence, and yet I was inexplicably drawn to you.”

“I remember staring into your eyes a little longer than I should have,” Moto finally admitted. Sonya seemed to be visibly set at ease by his confession of love at first sight. He leaned over and kissed her again, seemingly forgetting that we were even there. Apache cleared his throat and they pulled back, looking almost surprised to still find us there.
 

“So you began to visit him on the base?” I asked, rubbing the back of my neck and looking down at the floor. I was feeling a little nauseated by their public display of affection as well, not that I didn't understand it. I'd just never seen my brother act like this over a girl before.

“That wasn't possible,” Sonya answered.
 

“As you know, it's a restricted area,” Moto explained further. “There was no way she could meet me there without causing a huge commotion. Besides, she'd still have to go through inspection and decontamination to get proper clearance.”

“Why? I thought you were in charge,” Felicity said. “After General Conrad passed away I thought you became the top of the command chain.”

“Pulling rank wasn't really an option,” Moto explained. “Besides, I didn't want my men to see me as the kind of person who thinks the rules don't apply to him. It sets a terrible example and is bad for morale. That's why I had to go to her. There was just no other way we could see each other without drawing a lot of attention to ourselves, and I didn't want that either. Whatever was happening between us was special, and I wasn't ready to expose it to the court of public opinion. I made up all sorts of excuses about scouting expeditions and supply raids, just to see her for a few moments at a time.”

“I don't understand,” I said, shaking my head. “As ranking officer you'd need a security detail to escort you on and off the base. How'd you manage to ditch them?”

“I didn't,” Moto began to clarify. “Instead, I handpicked my personal team from the small group of people I knew I could actually trust. We'd approach from the north side, and then I'd backtrack through the forest. Usually, Sonya met me near a cluster of oak trees about a mile from the entrance to Xanadu.”

“I hated waiting,” she admitted. “Plus I loved the look on his face when I managed to surprise him. He'd get so huffy about not being seen together. It was kinda adorable.”

“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Sounds like my big brother all right. He's one big adorable teddy bear.”

“As I was saying,” Moto continued, his ears turning slightly scarlet with embarrassment, “we generally didn't get much time together, but there's only so long you can go without seeing the person who makes your day worth getting up for in the morning.”
 

“We used to sit up at night and talk for hours,” Sonya said with a sigh.

“We'd talk until the radios went dead,” Moto laughed. “I always wondered how she was going to recharge hers and whether or not she'd be back the next night, but she always was. You never did tell me how you kept the radio recharged those first few months.”

“I have my ways,” Sonya smiled coyly.

“Anyway,” Moto said, finally registering the impatient look on our faces. “Things just escalated from there.”

“I wasn't supposed to go onto the base,” Sonya explained, “but I did. It was a chance to practice my stealth skills. I made a game out of it. It was easier than I expected.”

“I'd be sitting in bed waiting for her to come on the radio, and instead she'd pop up at my door,” Moto explained. “We got a little too comfortable though, and we almost got caught a couple of times. After that, I told her she needed to knock it off.”

“But I didn't listen,” Sonya jumped in. “I came back again the next night, but I didn't make it to Yosha's room. Instead, I tracked a suspicious-looking group of civilians escorting a female zombie across the base to a big white building in the middle of the grounds.”

“You mean the lab?” I asked, recalling my short stay there after being treated with Ibogaine myself.

“I didn't know what it was at the time,” she admitted, “but yes. They took her downstairs and put her in a holding cell, like a prison. I managed to duck out of sight just as they came back and walked upstairs again.”

“Weren't you worried about being seen?” Sam innocently asked.

“That's what was so weird about the whole thing,” Sonya explained. “These guys didn't seem to care who was watching. They acted like they were a law unto themselves, beholden to no one else. They even had their own little uniforms, black cargo pants with matching black shirts.”

“Can we skip the fashion details and get back to the story?” Felicity asked, impatient to the core. Sonya flashed an angry look that melted Felicity's icy demeanor once more. “Sorry. I don't mean to be rude; I'm just eager to see how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.”

“When I was sure they were gone, I crept into the hallways,” Sonya continued. “There were cells down there, like a prison. And they were full, every last one of them, with rotting zombies. But these creatures weren't like the ones you see on the outside. All except the woman they'd just brought in had been experimented on in some way, as far as I could see.”

“What do you mean
experimented
on
?” I asked.

“Just what it sounds like,” she said plainly. “They were missing pieces of their skull and had wires sticking out of their exposed brains. Some of them had electrodes on them. Some had burn marks on their upper torsos. This wasn't just your average, sick torture going on. This was beyond full-fledged research. This was vivisection!”

“Who would do something like that?” Felicity asked. I turned from Sonya to Moto and waited for an answer.

“Franco,” Moto replied.

“Who the hell is Franco?” It was my turn to question him.

“Do you remember the strange guy who came on base a few weeks before General Conrad died? He was a walk-on, but he checked out. Short brown hair and dark eyes? Black bomber jacket?”
 

“You mean the one who looked sorta like a civilian contractor?” I asked. “I remembered thinking it was odd to see a guy in blue jeans and a white t-shirt walking around with the General. I thought maybe he was a former Air Force guy or something, because of the jacket.”

“Right,” Moto replied. “That's him.”

My mind flashed back, remembering the odd feeling I'd had in the pit of my stomach watching a guy in street clothes being saluted by a superior officer. At the time, I'd written it off as just another oddity of our newly formed Unified Armed Forces Alliance. We had former Marine Sharpshooters bunking with Army Rangers and Navy SEALS, all now part of the general rank and file of the UAFA. Port Hueneme was originally a Naval Base, home of the SEABEES, but for the time being, the old divisions no longer applied. It could be frustrating too, since each branch of the military put emphasis on different combat techniques and skill sets. To top it off, the base had seen a surge of new recruits since the day General Conrad blew the trenches around the core of the base. Many had simply walked up to the gates begging for asylum, then volunteered after being told the base was off limits to ordinary civilians. Not only was it the fastest way to get a hot meal, a fresh shower, and a safe bed to sleep in, it also meant they would be given a weapon and trained in self-defense. Turns out the zombie apocalypse was the best recruiting tool in the history of the armed forces.
 

The only problem was that many of the enlisted men turned their noses up at the wave of new Joes flooding in. They'd devoted their whole lives in the service of their country, and didn't like being lumped in with guys who'd only signed up to save their own hides after all hell had already broken loose. As far as they were concerned, these were guys who didn't know the meaning of the words
country, service,
or
sacrifice
. Not only did they look down their noses at them, making up nicknames for them like Fobbit or Plant Eaters or worse still, Obaffz (One Bite Away From Full Zom), they also didn't trust them. Basically, there were still a lot of kinks to be worked out.
 

Franco had come along right at the peak of one of those periods. He seemed a bit off, but I couldn't put my finger on it, and besides, a lot of things were off with the world. Beyond that, I had no lasting impression of the guy. In all honesty, I'd been too involved at the time in my new life with Felicity to pay much attention to anyone else. It was, after all, technically our honeymoon.

“He had credentials from the CIA, but he said he hadn’t been with them for years and that he was now part of some Black Ops group,” Moto explained. “The General took him into a private meeting that lasted over an hour. When they came out, we were instructed to get Franco and his men anything they needed and to stay out of their way. Conrad said it was a sensitive project they were working on, and that it had the utmost importance. He said he thought they could turn things around for us.”

“I don't remember a group of civilians on base at the time,” I countered.

“We disguised them as officers,” Moto informed us. “Gave them clearance, uniforms, weapons, and anything else they needed. They slipped right in and no one noticed; no one except Sonya that is.”

“That's the problem with the military,” Sonya jeered. “Sometimes all the rules and regulations leave you blind to what's happening right before your eyes. No one is taught to question. They're just trained to salute.”

“Franco brought a handful of guys with him the next time he came back,” Moto said, ignoring her taunt. “We don't know where they came from either. Some were special ops, a few were Navy SEALS, and one guy looked like the personal interrogator of a foreign dictator. They came and left as they pleased, and answered to no one. The lower part of the lab was off limits to anyone but them. For a while no one said anything, but then the General began to have doubts.”

“That's when they killed him,” Sonya said. “Making it look like he'd died of a heart attack.”

“How could they do that?” Felicity asked in shock.
 

“We don't know for sure,” Moto said. “However, these operations are pretty standard for spy types like Franco. The General had a heart condition. They'd have known that. They had access to all the medical files, including his. They'd want to use that to their advantage, especially when he began talking about revoking their access to the base and ending their study.”

“So they slipped him a drug?” I asked.

“We doubt it,” Sonya said. “It seemed unlikely they'd do something that could be traced back to them, even if there was only the faintest possibility of discovery. They needed everyone to go along with their plan.”

“I thought there were drugs that didn't leave a trace,” Felicity added.

“Potassium chloride breaks down in the system,” Sonya explained. “But there's always a chance of the wrong dose either giving them away or else not doing the job. Plus, old habits die hard. Why go through all that work when there is a faster, more effective way to get the job done?”

“Air Embolism,” Moto interjected. “It's totally undetectable. A direct injection of air via syringe to any vein causes the chambers of the heart to fill with air as well, which causes a heart attack.”

“Wouldn't that leave some kind of visible mark?” I asked.

“Not if a small enough gauge needle was used,” Sonya offered. “Like the kind people use for insulin.”

“The General was a diabetic,” I said, suddenly getting the connection. “The guys who found his body probably never even checked for puncture wounds, and even if they did they'd be explained away as part of him taking his daily insulin dose.”

“Now you're getting it,” Moto said. “They mask the crime of murder with a natural cause of death like a heart attack. No one was the wiser.”

“Covering up murder is just part of the job description with these people,” Sonya said in disgust.

“I became the guy in charge, but right away I knew something wasn't quite right,” Moto admitted. “I couldn't shake the feeling that General Conrad had been murdered for questioning the secret project, but I didn't have any proof. I started asking questions about the project, but Franco told me that all his information was classified and only available on a need-to-know basis. The more I pushed him on details about it, the more tense things got. He refused to even tell me who he was reporting to, and at one point challenged me to a fight in front of the men to settle it once and for all. Two nights later Sonya tracked them into the labs. The next day I sent you to Freedom Town. That night Sonya and I hatched a plan.”

“Our first of many secret missions of our own,” Sonya said with excitement.

“We hid her on the base all day long and when night came she broke into the lab once more, stealing all the files on synthesis along with every last sample of Ibogaine, including the clones now growing below us.”