Zombie Rage (Walking Plague Trilogy #2) (2 page)

All of these thoughts went through my feverish mind in a haze. I tried to keep focused, to keep caring. I cared, but I didn’t care, too.

So weird.

I wanted so desperately to keep my daughter safe. And I cared for Carla, too. Who else? Jared, and even Mike, although just hours ago, he’d wanted to kill Anna. And, of course, I cared for my little brother, Joey.

I didn’t know what to do and I was so sick that I almost didn’t give a damn.
Almost.
But I had to give a damn. God, I wanted to live, but at the same time, I was losing...interest.

Jesus.

“Dad, I’m counting on you to keep it together,” Anna said. “We all are.”

I tried to hang onto that more than anything else.

“Jack, are you hungry?” Carla asked.

I nodded. The growing fatigue, I knew, could only be cured by feeding. Feeding on...human flesh. To be more specific, gray matter.
Brains.

Lord help me.

“Want an ice cream sandwich?” Anna asked me. “We have lots.”

I shook my head, gathered my thoughts. Or tried to. Mostly, my thoughts were on the gray stuff. I looked absently down at my hand. It had been cut a couple of days ago by a punch I’d delivered to my own brother. I was guessing this infection, or disease, was spread through blood contact. I didn’t even want to risk touching anyone.

Mike was absolutely convinced he was cured. That meant...what? I couldn’t remember.

“
Hey, bro, come back to us,” Mike said. His voice came from so far away.

“
You got better,” I heard Anna say to Mike. “Does he have to get better the same way?”

“
I’m fresh out of alternate ideas,” Mike replied and Anna gave a little cry. She could have been weeping from atop one of the distant hills behind us, she sounded so far away.

The voices continued, all sounding distant, hollow, empty. At least, to my ears.

“Let’s weigh our options,” said Carla, “and be very cautious with our actions.”

“
I can’t bear this,” my daughter said. Jared, her boyfriend, held her hand tightly.

I could barely pay attention to the conversation. My head ached so viciously that I couldn’t think of much else but the
thump-thump
of it all.

I’m fucked,
I thought.

I was also thirsty as hell but could no longer drink any form of liquid. I vaguely realized that I should be seriously dehydrated by now. Most of all, my hand hurt like someone was driving a railroad spike through it, although the cold pack had alleviated some of the pain.

I looked at Carla and reason left my mind. I wanted her. Not sexually. I wanted to
taste
her. Taste her
skin
, her
blood
...her
brain...
I shook my head again. I decisively glanced the other way, out the window and into the night, but only saw my reflection in the kitchen window. My own face looked desperate, haunted, and a shadow of my former self. I might have even had drool at the corners of my mouth.

“
Dad, are you even
listening
to us?” Anna’s voice brought me back.

I forced my mind back into the conversation and turned my face her way.

“Daddy?”

Daddy, she called me Daddy
, I thought to myself. Like when she was little.

“
What?” I asked blankly, forcing myself to cough up a one-word answer. Except it came out like a growl.
I’m a monster.

“
Mike says we should contact Uncle Joe,” she said. Her eyes fell on mine with growing concern.

“
Okay,” I said simply. Was that the right word? My mind was wandering again, leaving logic behind. All I could think of was the smell of humans, and the hunger that raged within me.

Anna was sitting next to me. I could smell my daughter’s scent, and in a perverse way, I wanted it.
Can’t be right,
I told myself.
She’s your daughter, for Christ’s sake.
But my hand, my good hand, reached out and pawed her. She shrank back, startled.

Jared jumped up and pulled her back. Carla took no chances. She switched into cop mode, jumped up and twisted my arm behind my back. I cried out in pain. It was my infected arm! But she didn’t release me.

“What are you doing?” she barked, not backing down, not one bit.

I tried to apologize but my throat and lips couldn’t form the words. I could still think but I was unable to articulate. It was maddening and more frightening than the pain in my arm. I had lost the ability to communicate with words, a basic human function.

Once again, I desperately tried to gather my thoughts. I loved my daughter with all my heart, more than anything or anyone in the world. How could I have wanted to hurt her?

God, I am going insane.

Carla squinted at me, clear intent in her eyes that I had crossed some line. She knew, damn her.
She knew.

In the next instant, I felt rage for Carla, who had been nothing but good to me through all of this. I lunged at her. I didn’t care about the pain in my twisted arm. I wanted her to leave me alone, and at the same time, I wanted to taste her flesh. I turned and lunged at her, my mouth wide open.

Carla immediately cold-cocked me with her handgun.

Chapter Two

I slowly came back into consciousness.

My eyes were still closed, but I could feel that I was lying on hard, cold cement that did cool the back of my head a little. I turned on my side. I didn’t care where I was. I just wanted my face to feel the same cool relief. It felt good, the only part of my body or mind that was soothed.

The smell of the cellar and the darkness came to me slowly. My right hand hurt like hell, and I realized my left hand was chained to one of the beams.

I was hazy but I managed to sit up and look around. Where was I?
You’re locked in the cellar. Why?
I tried to concentrate but my mind wasn’t cooperating.
Think, Jack.

The last thing I remembered was sitting with everyone at the table, listening to them all trying to figure something out. A cure. Because I was sick. I wasn’t sick, I was just hungry. I tugged at my cuffed hand. Carla must have done it.

God, my head was on fire.
What was going on?
My hand hurt, too. I tried to rub it, but my other hand was chained, too. So I settled with rubbing the inflamed hand on my jeans.

Struggling now to concentrate, I recalled something about Mike. He had been cured, apparently. How? By drowning? Sweet Jesus. Anna had come up with this idea. I remembered looking at her with an insane lust for feeding. I remembered Carla restraining me.
Damn Carla
.

No,
I tried to reason, Carla was good.
Wasn’t she?
She’d saved me from hurting Anna, who was the center of my existence. I was in the wrong. But my rage at being confined overtook me and I pitched forward to get free. I felt a sharp pain in my shackled hand, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all. I was
hungry
.

I was mostly gone, but I fought for reason. Mike had been cured, it seemed, by drowning. Suddenly, I knew what they were going to do. They were going to drown me, too. And I would die. Or at least I would be different than I was now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted that.

Part of me, a tiny part, was still fighting for life but mostly, I just wanted to get the hell out of there and have...satisfaction. Food. Flesh. Warm brain.
God, what the hell was wrong with me?

Suddenly, I heard voices up above and I looked toward the cellar stairs. I cocked my head toward the voices, and my mind went away...far away.

Chapter Three

Carla sat with Mike in the living room. Both were silent for the moment, each lost in their own thoughts, each puzzling out the situation.

“Mike, I’m a good career cop,” Carla said. “But this is personal, too, so I’m glad you’re here to help figure out this mess.”

Mike nodded, let out a lot of air. “We’re going to have to do the same thing to Jack that he did to me.”

“I’m...” She looked away, tried again: “I’m almost sure...but not a hundred percent.”

Mike knew that for the first time since he’d been infected, he felt human again. Yes, he’d fed while he was out. Up in Griffith Park. He’d gotten a hold of a couple of transients, but he couldn’t remember if he’d killed them or had just bitten them. That part was hazy. He felt horrible about it. And worried. He had spread this disease.
Or killed.
How many more people were infected by now? He had no way of knowing. The details were just too hazy.

But Carla was right. Was it the gunshot wound that had cured him or the drowning? Just hours earlier, he’d experienced both. Thankfully, the zoo vet, at Jack’s request, had removed the bullet in his side.

“I don’t think the bullet would have killed me,” Mike said. “I mean, I was
strong,
Carla. Extremely strong. And tough. And vicious.”

Carla shrugged, “Easy, tiger. You would have probably been killed if you’d been shot in the head.”

“Either way, I remember being conscious but not conscious,” he told her. “And the water filling my lungs and then just kind of fading away.” He paused, remembering it all again for the dozenth time in the last few hours. So unreal. So bizarre. He shook his head at the memory and continued speaking, “I then remember choking, gagging. My mind was awake again, somehow, in a cognizant way instead of an instinctive one. I don’t know what happened but it took all my strength to turn onto my side and get the water out of my lungs.”

Working as a cop in the Hollywood area, Carla had seen and heard a lot of crazy things, but she’d never heard anything like this. Mike’s gaze on her never wavered during this description; she knew he was telling the truth. It was a hideous truth.
Is this what it’s going to come to in order to bring Jack back?
she wondered.
Will he have to really be drowned to save his life?

“
It’s ugly, I know.” Mike seemed to read her mind. “But I’m also thinking about Joe. I was personally on the verge of...” he sought the right words, “...on the verge of not caring. At all. Jack is a few days behind us with this...whatever it is. He may still have a little time. And he’s safe, for now. Not happy, but safe.”

“
What about Joe, his brother?”

“
Joe’s running out of time.”

“
So what are you thinking, Mike?”

“
I’m thinking Anna’s idea of contacting Joe is the best we’ve come up with,” Mike answered. “Only, I’d bet that by now he’s probably beyond reason.”

“
I guess you know better than anyone else about Joe,” she said.

“
Right. Joe and I had a connection, an understanding, if you will, about our
condition
. I could try this drowning cure on Joe, if it’s not too late. But I think I will need to first fool him into thinking I’m, well, still infected.”

She didn’t like it. Who would? “You could be killed, or, if things get out of hand, you could kill Jack’s brother.”

Mike picked up his glass of water and gulped down half of it. Water had never tasted so sweet to him. He relished another mouthful and swallowed. He looked at her. “I’m close to Joe. We’re buddies. Seen and done everything together. But tell me if you don’t think it’s the most logical choice here. We don’t have much else. If there’s a chance to save Joe, then we need to do it.”

Carla thought of Jack in the cellar, probably trying to tear his hand through the damn cuffs. She thought of Anna upstairs, going crazy with worry. Mike did have a point. Jack hadn’t progressed to the point Mike had—and where Joe probably was at now. It was a great risk, but, yeah, they were out of other options.

“Okay,” she locked eyes with Mike. “Call Joe and talk him into meeting with you.”

That is, of course,
she thought,
if Jack’s brother was even coherent.

Chapter Four

Joe Carter parked down the street from the cottage where David Stetson and the Agent in Black were staying. Joe had gotten the call from the Agent—Cole, as he now called himself—and had decided to accept the invitation to come to them instead of turning himself in to the naval base at Seal Beach.

It sounded like a good plan, Joe thought. The three of them had been changed. Joe and Stetson were feeling great now, and they just had to get Cole (who was no longer an Agent of the CREW, everyone was sure) through the rough stage before Cole could feel better. Then the three of them would return to the base and, with their strength and heightened senses, take over the damn place.