After The Apocalypse (Book 2): Church of Chaos (11 page)

Drake shook his head at me. “Your dad got sold in the meat market. He's probably dead by now.”

His words stung but I took a deep breath and forced myself to focus on getting the answers I needed. “And my mom?”

Drake gave me a wide, toothless smile. His tongue had turned black inside his mouth. “Your mom is here.”

“Here?” I spun around and began scanning the empty cages surrounding us.

“Not in this room. There's a second room of cages two doors down. Your mom was being held there when I was brought in.”

“You're sure?” It took every bit of willpower I had in me not to immediately bolt for the door that would take me back into the hallway. I scarcely dared to hope that mom was still alive.

Drake nodded. “She was here when Bud brought me in.”

“Seth, I need to go-.” I began to turn towards the door.

Seth caught my wrist. “You can wait for me. Five minutes isn't going to make a life or death difference. Drake hasn't answered my question yet.”

“And I'm not going to,” Drake snarled. “You really expect me to believe you had no idea what you were walking into when you came here?”

Seth shrugged his slender shoulders and then stood back up. “Believe what you want, Drake.”

“I heard that the people who run the Cube are planning on overthrowing the king and taking the city for their own,” Gauge spoke unexpectedly, startling me.

“What?” Seth gaped at Gauge.

Drake chuckled again. He pointed at Gauge. “You aren't as dumb as you look, big boy.”

“Wait-,” Seth held up one hand, his attention focused solely on Gauge. “Run that by me again.”

“Rumors have been going around for a couple of years now. Folks say that Bud Moon and his people have been conducting experiments up here. You telling me that you really had no idea?”

“Experiments?” Seth repeated. He looked down at Drake's oozing, bleeding form. “I don't know anything about any experiments. Or I didn't before now, anyways. Lola, what is he talking about?”

“I don't know,” Lola said in a hushed tone. It was the first time she'd spoken since we'd seen Drake. “Gauge doesn't tell me everything the way Jeremiah used to.”

“Tell me what you know about the experiments,” Seth said to Gauge.

Gauge sighed. “Everything I've heard has been rumors. Nothing reliable enough to stake my life on until today.”

“You came with us because you wanted to see this place for yourself,” Seth said.

Gauge shrugged. He appeared to be completely consumed by his own thoughts. “The first time I heard someone say that Bud Moon and his cronies were trying to create zombie-human hybrids, I thought it was a bad joke. The second time I heard the rumors, it was from a guy who used to landscaping up here. He said he's seen dozens of people go into the bunker and that none of them ever come back. He said this building wasn't a hospital for sick humans, it was a slaughterhouse.”

“That's insane,” Seth muttered.

“No one wants to live in the Cube anymore,” Drake sounded almost regretful. “The canned food is running out. People are getting restless. The prison cells we live in keep getting smaller and smaller. Just ask Pilar. She can tell you.”

Seth glanced at me and I nodded. “Living conditions in the Cube suck.”

“It's only a matter of time before the people revolt and the Powers That Be lose everything. Why do you think I was trying to get out of the Cube and retire to the city?” Drake slurred his words slightly. Bits of blood and gore were still slowly oozing from his lips. “Everyone in the Cube is a week away from starving to death. People are getting tired of living that way. They want out. Not to mention that its getting harder and harder to hide that we're taking dozens of people out of their homes against their will every month and sending them to slaughter.”

“The disappearances.” Everything was starting to make sense to me.

“The disappearances,” Drake confirmed. “Did your precious Pilar ever tell you what she did to get a death sentence from the Powers That Be?”

Seth frowned and then shrugged. “If she did, it didn't stand out in my memory.”

“She stood up in the middle of an assembly and spoke out against the Powers That Be. She drew attention to the disappearances. Not just the disappearance of her parents. All the disappearances. Bud Moon thought there was going to be a riot right there in the auditorium. She got the Sheeple all worked up. She got them thinking about exactly how many people had gone missing from the Cube without a trace. She got them asking questions that shouldn't be asked.” There was no mistaking the hatred in Drake's sunken eyes.

“Sheeple?” Lola asked.

“You don't want to know.” I swallowed the lump that had grown in my throat.

“Its the term they use for the people they take to slaughter,” Seth explained.

“Oh god. That's horrible.”

“No worse than slaughtering people for a profit,” Gauge replied. He looked back down at Drake. “About a year ago, a zombie got loose in the city. It wasn't a normal zombie. It was smart. Human smart. It knew how to run. How to hide. How to use weapons. The killing started right outside this compound and we followed a trail of corpses almost straight to the outer wall of the city. I wasn't a part of the group who caught the thing and killed it, but I know people who were. They said it begged them not to kill it. They said it was babbling about the Cube and Bud Moon. Yammering on and on about how everyone in the city was going to die a horrible death when the Powers That Be finally made their move on the city.”

Seth stood over Drake, his sword held firmly in his hand. “Any of this sound familiar to you?”

“It all sounds familiar to me,” Drake replied with a garish, horrible grin. “The Powers That Be are going to create their own army of the changed and take the city.”

“Oh hell.” Seth looked away from Drake and then looked back at him. “No one is going to volunteer to become what you've become.”

“You really think Bud Moon is going to tell them the truth?” Drake laughed. “I was invincible for almost a month before I realized something was wrong. The last trip I took with the Scavengers, nothing could touch me. I'd already changed and you couldn't even tell, Seth.”

“Wait,” I stared hard at him. “You'd already been injected with zombie serum when I left the Cube with you?”

Drake nodded. “It was perfect too. I was changed but not even my closest friends could tell. No physical symptoms at all. Not like Seth here, with his dead eye and that ugly ass hole in his jaw. You screamed the first time you saw him, Pilar. You remember that?”

I nodded reluctantly, hating to recall the night Drake has kissed me on the roof of the Scavengers bus. I'd been so stupidly happy until Seth had walked out of the depths of the woods, scared the hell out of me and then told me that I shouldn't trust Drake.

“You screamed when you saw Seth, but you couldn't tell that I was changed too.” Drake's grin sent chills down my spine.

“You're not the same as him,” I said.

“No. I'm not. Something is wrong with Bud's serum. I'm changing too fast. The zombie virus is taking over me, rotting me from the inside out. You have no idea how bad it hurts. I feel like my stomach is being torn out through my throat. I can't stop bleeding and yet I'm hungry. So hungry. I don't want food but if I could get out of this cage, I'd rip your throat out and drink your blood.” He was looking at Seth now.

“You'd drink my blood?” Seth looked down at his vanquished and ruined rival with disgust.

“Your blood smells the best, Seth.” Drake lifted his head back up so that he could look Seth in the eyes. “I can hear it rushing through your veins. You're scared. I never thought you were capable of feeling fear but I can feel how fast your heart is beating now. I can hear your blood and I'm so hungry. So hungry!”

Drake slammed both his fists into the bars that held him captive. The cage rattled but nothing moved. Drake began pounding frantically against the bars. “I'm hungry. I'm hungry. I'm hungry.”

“I think we should go,” Lola said.

“I think I should probably kill him before he kills somebody.” Seth readjusted his grip on his sword.

Drake stopped pounding on the bars. His eyes were rolling madly in his head. The blood vessels surrounding his pupils had burst and blood was running down his cheeks like tears. “Do it.”

“What?”

“Do it, Seth. Kill me. Please.” Drake pulled himself back to his full height. “I can't handle the hunger anymore. Can't handle the pain. Show me mercy. Cut my head off while I can still appreciate what you've done for me.”

“Seth?”

“Do it.” Gauge held up his ax. “If you don't, I will.”

“Kill me,” Drake begged from the ground. “If you have any mercy on my soul, kill me now.”

Seth hesitated for a brief moment and then slammed his sword down through the cage bars. He neatly separated Drake's head from his body. It rolled away from his gasping, rattling corpse and landed in a pool of its own blood. I could have sworn his lips formed the words 'thank you' as the last of the life faded from his golden eyes.

Chapter 17

“Can we go home now?”

Lola was hugging herself while standing in a puddle of Drake's dark blood. The puddle was slowly oozing its way across the concrete block floor.

Seth looked up from Drake's disembodied head and frowned at Lola. “We still haven't found Pilar's mother.”

“Do we still want to find Pilar's mother?” Gauge looked questioningly at Seth. “I've been hearing the rumors about Bud's experiments for a few years now. What they did to him was worse than anything I ever imagined.” He pointed down at Drake's corpse.

“I want to leave,” Lola repeated. “Please. Seth, please. Can we go?”

Seth took a deep breath and then shrugged his shoulders. “I told Pilar that we'd find her parents. If you want to go, you can. All you have to is walk down the hallway, step over the corpse and climb the eight foot tall fence.”

“I told you not come.” Gauge shot her an annoyed look.

Lola shuddered. Tears were running down her pale cheeks as she took several steps towards the door. “You didn't tell me that they were torturing people in here.”

“Maybe we didn't know,” Seth snapped. “Do you really think I would have walked in here with you, Pilar and a guy I barely know as my only back up if I'd had any idea that Bud Moon was breeding monsters?”

“You've always been reckless.” Lola hesitated and then shrugged. “You care about Pilar. There's no telling what you would do if she asked you to.”

“I wouldn't have asked him to come here,” I said. “He would have warned me if he'd known what we were walking into. If you ask me, you're putting your blame on the wrong person. Gauge is the one who said he'd heard the rumors about this place.”

All three of our gazes went to Gauge.

Gauge took a deep breath and then looked directly at Seth. “Are you really the high priest of the Church of Chaos?”

“Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?” Seth wiped Drake's blood off his sword with a rag that had been lying on the ground outside of the cage.

“No,” Gauge said. “Maybe if I hadn't seen that dead eye of yours. All the stories say the high priest of the Church of Chaos has one eye that's completely zombified.”

Seth winked his dead eye at Gauge. “I've heard all the stories.”

“You made half of them up yourself.” Lola was still hugging her own arms. “Can we go now? Please?”

Gauge turned to Lola. “And you knew he was the high priest of the Church of Chaos?”

Lola nodded. “Why do you think I asked him to start helping our people after they escape the city?”

Gauge sighed and turned back to Seth. “And you knew nothing about the experiments they've been conducting here?”

“I avoid Ra-Shet at all costs,” Seth explained. “I haven't exactly been keeping up to date on all the gossip.”

Gauge considered Seth's words for a minute and then nodded. “That makes sense considering that you didn't bring nearly enough money to the meat market yesterday. The price for uncontaminated meat has gone sky high during the last few years. They say it's due to a lack of supply. I've heard that the flesh brokers are having a hard time getting their loads of captives through the woods because of interference from the Church of Chaos. Any truth to that?”

Seth halfway smiled. “I don't approve of cannibalism and everyone needs a hobby.”

“Yours just happens to be disabling Cube buses and killing all the passengers?” Gauge asked.

“Killing?” Seth frowned and shook his head. “We set them free. Point them towards the city and tell them to have a nice life.”

“You don't offer them any kind of shelter or food?”

“I don't want them to stay,” Seth said. “I just don't approve of eating them.”

Gauge stood silently for a minute and then shrugged. “You and I are going to have a long talk about morals and responsibility someday.”

“Not today.” Seth was almost smiling. I abruptly realized that he liked Gauge.

“No. Not today. We have more important things to talk about.” Gauge took a deep breath. “Regardless of what you have or have not been doing, the flesh brokers aren't providing nearly the amount of meat they used to. I don't know whether or not the people in the Cube are on the verge of rebellion. I do know that the citizens of Ra-Shet are pretty restless. It wouldn't be all that hard to recruit people who were willing to fight against the king. Especially if you promised them immunity from zombies as a bonus.”

“Immunity from zombies that turns you into a zombie within a matter of weeks or months.” Seth closed his eyes briefly and then reopened them. “What a nightmare.”

“We have to stop them,” Gauge said.

“What?” Lola blinked up at him.

“We can't just stand around and do nothing while Bud Moon tricks dozens of people into being injected with a serum that turns them into super-zombies. I've seen what one of these things can do when let loose in the city. The one we hunted last year killed over 40 people in the course of two days.” Gauge crossed his arms over his chest. He still had his ax dangling from one hand. “I don't know how many people are in the Cube-.”

“Seven thousand,” I interrupted him.

“Do what?” Gauge stared at me.

“There are just over seven thousand people living in the Cube. Trust me. I spent my whole life working in the hospital ward there. And Bud Moon wouldn't have to ask for volunteers. If he really wanted a zombie army, he could just order everyone be injected.”

“And they'd cooperate?”

“They wouldn't have a choice. Weapons are illegal in the Cube and anyone who speaks out against the Powers That Be disappears. I hate the term 'Sheeple', but it's accurate.”

“Shit.”

“We need to find out when Bud is planning on making his move,” Seth said.

“Somehow I don't think he's going to be nice enough to tell us.”

“We need to search this place.”

“Speaking of searching this place,” Lola ran one hand nervously through her hair. “Does anyone else think it's kind of strange that no one has come in here looking for whoever killed the guard outside?”

“Now that you mention it, yes. We've been in here undisturbed for a lot longer than I thought we'd be.” Seth glanced back towards the door. “None of the rooms we've already looked in appear to have been used recently. I vote we quickly search the last couple of rooms in the building, check to see if Pilar's mother is still being held here and then leave.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Gauge said.

“Not a good one,” Lola muttered under her breath. “We should forget about Pilar's mother and go. Get out of here before someone catches us here and we get killed.”

“I don't break my promises,” Seth said. “I promised Pilar we'd find her parents. Drake said they're holding her mother in one of the other rooms. We haven't come this far to leave now.”

I felt a wash of relief rush over me. I had been afraid he'd back out after everything we'd learned. “I need to go get my mom.”

“I vote we split up,” Seth said. “Lola and Gauge can go search for any records that may have been left behind. Let me go with Pilar to find her mom.”

“You sure that's a good idea?” Gauge asked.

“We need to see what Bud Moon has been doing in here with our own eyes but I don't want to hang around any longer than necessary,” Seth explained. “We've already been down here longer than I wanted to be.”

“You think they guards will be coming for us soon?” Gauge asked.

“I'm surprised that the guards haven't already come for us,” Seth clarified. He stepped closer to me and took my hands into his. “We'll go after your mother, but we've got to make this quick. We can't take any more chances than we already have. We need to find her, save her and get the hell out of here.”

I nodded without speaking. My hands were trembling in his.

“Lola and I can search the rest of the building. Maybe we'll find some more information about what Bud Moon is planning,” Gauge suggested.

Seth nodded. “Meet us back by the front door in 10 minutes.”

“Ten minutes?” Gauge frowned at Seth. “You're only giving your rescue mission a ten minute window?”

“If we're gone for more than ten minutes, I want you to come after us,” Seth said. “Or run away. Depends on whether you hear screaming or not. Make a judgment call.”

“Why would we hear screaming?” Lola asked.

I was glad she had asked the question. I'd wanted to ask but I was afraid of the answer.

“Because every lab needs test animals.” Gauge's dark blue eyes were solemn. “We just saw one super-zombie. I'm willing to bet that your former friend wasn't the only person who Bud Moon injected with his experimental zombie serum.”

“No.” My blood ran cold in my veins. “No. He can't have. Why would he?”

“He's right, Pi.” Seth took a deep breath and squeezed my fingers in his. “You need to prepare yourself. Your mom may not be your mom anymore.”

I pulled my fingers loose of his. “Don't. Please don't say that.”

“I'm hoping I'm wrong, but you need to be ready.” There was pain visible in Seth's blue eye.

I took a deep breath. My chest felt like it was going to explode from the mixture of fear and hope that I was feeling. On one hand, I had found my mother. The hellish and convoluted journey I'd made from the Cube to Ra-Shet was nearly at its conclusion. I'd done at least half of what I had sworn I would do. I closed my eyes and tried to think. “She's going to be okay. She's got to be okay.”

Seth and Gauge exchanged a look that I couldn't quite read. After another moment, Gauge shrugged. “Come on Lola. Let's go see if the bad guys left behind their handbook on how to commit evil crimes against humanity. The sooner Pilar finds her mother, the sooner we can get out of this hellhole.”

Lola nodded and took a deep breath. “Ready when you are.”

Seth looked over at me. “Are you ready?”

“No.” I started walking towards the doors at the very back of the dark hallway. “I'm not ready and I never will be.”

Seth was only a step behind me as I pushed through the doorway. I prayed that everything I'd gone through to be reunited with my parents hadn't been in vain.