Dead: Winter (40 page)

They made their way down the steep incline, using trees and bushes to slow themselves and keep from falling. Finally, they reached bottom and cut across a mostly empty parking lot. Behind them, they could hear those same trees they’d used as emergency brakes snapping like twigs as the enormous herd continued its slow but dogged pursuit.

They only had one last little ridge to climb and they would be at the beach. Juan strained his ears to hear any sounds of a motor. Nothing. If he and the others were first to arrive, that meant Thad and his group were still behind them. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a tall, slender pine tree lean and then vanish. That hill was being mowed of all vegetation. If Thad was there…

Juan didn’t want to think about it, he just kept running. They reached the top and all three skidded to a halt.

“Are we in the wrong spot?” the woman asked.

Juan turned in a circle. He recognized all the landmarks. This was the place. The only problem: the boats were gone.



“Since when is it okay for somebody to start killing people just because they suspect there may be something bad happening?” the man yelled from the crowd gathered in the lo
b
by of the largest hotel in Yosemite Village.

Chad had been led into the lobby and was more than a little surprised when he saw so many pe
o
ple. For one, he wasn’t aware that the population had risen to such numbers. There had to be at least two hundred people packed into the space.

Somebody had taken the time to open up the area by removing a false wall that revealed a ba
n
quet room. All the tables had been shoved aside to allow everybody who wanted to attend to do so.

“Nobody is saying it is okay to just go around killing each other,” Scott yelled over the noise of the crowd.

Chad glanced to the left and could barely see Mitch Rose. The man was slouched down in his chair and the person tasked to defending him was in the way. Still, the few times he had been able to see the man, he hadn’t looked the least bit nervous, despite the black eye and busted nose he was sporting. From all the noise right now as the debate was going on as to whether to charge Chad with murder, it was hard to tell which way the a
u
dience was leaning.

“Well then I say we set an example right here with that one.” An older lady in the front of the crowd pointed at Chad.

“He actually caught the man attempting to rape his daug
h
ter,” Scott reminded.

“So then we just call it good?” another voice shouted to be heard over the racket.

“Nobody is just calling it good,” Scott insisted. “But we ce
r
tainly can’t be okay with the fact that these men were assaulting a young girl.”

“One of them,” the man standing by Mitch finally spoke up. “Mr. Rose was not involved in that assault.”

“Not involved?” Chad snapped; he’d heard enough. “That guy was basically keeping watch and waiting his turn.”

“And you can prove this how?” The supposed defender turned to face Chad who now had an u
n
obstructed view of Mitch Rose. “Are you able to read his mind? He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time…as were apparently Jonas Lynch and Frank Olson.”

Chad shook his head and glared. Scott had come to stand beside him and placed his hand on Chad’s shoulder. He couldn’t figure out how this had become about
h
im
; he was simply d
e
fending his daughter.

“If we are going to be allowed to murder people who
may
have done something—” the defender resumed his speech, but Scott cut him off.

“This is a joke. You know it and he,” Scott pointed to Mitch, “knows it. They were raping that li
t
tle girl. The old ways are as dead as those pieces of meat that keep showing up and trying to eat us. Chad did what many of us with children would have done…or if we lost them in all this madness, what we would have wanted to do had it been done to one of ours.

“How many of us were sick of turning on the television and seeing some sick bastard being trea
t
ed with kid gloves because of his so-called rights? When did the system start caring more about the victimizer and to Hell with the victim?”

A few heads began to nod. For the first time, Chad began to notice an expression on Mitch’s face. Up to this point, he’d sat back like he was simply an onlooker. Now, as it looked like the tide was i
n
deed beginning to turn, he was starting to squirm.

Scott must have sensed it as well and moved in for the kill. “Can we just excuse murder? No. But can we allow a man to defend his own from the monsters? Of course. Well anybody who preys on a defenseless child is just exactly that…a mo
n
ster.”

The crowd began to get louder now. In the midst, a few pushing and shoving skirmishes began. Somebody started a chant of “Justice! Justice!” Chad really didn’t know if it was for him or against him, but he was starting to see more glares cast at the man, Mitch Rose, than in his direction.

“I call for a vote.” Scott had to cup his hands around his mouth and yell to be heard, but slowly the crowd returned its a
t
tention to him. “I will call for a show of hands. If it seems too close to call, we will take an actual count. Who finds the a
c
cused, Mitch Rose, guilty?”

“Wait just a minute,” the defender protested, but he was quickly shouted down by the owners of an overwhelming majo
r
ity of the population who now had their hands in the air.

“And who feels that Chad Meyers was acting in defense of his daughter?”

Not as many hands remained, but the vote was obviously in his favor. Scott motioned for one of the men who had been standing in front of the check-in counter that had been serving as a stage.

“So he just gets away with murder?” For the first time, as the security team was hoisting his chair off the stage, but leaving him tied to it, Mitch Rose spoke out.

Something large hurtled through the air and caught the man in the face, causing him to cry out in pain. That was like the ringing of the bell in a boxing match. There was an eruption of shouts as fights broke out everywhere at once.

“Let’s get you out of here,” Scott had to put his mouth a
l
most against Chad’s ear to be heard.

“Where is Ronni?”

“Brett and a couple of the others are getting her to your room.” Scott snatched the keys to the cuffs from one of the now-useless security guards.

Moments later they were hurrying through the deep, untouched snow behind the hotel. By the time they reached Chad’s room, a group was already gathered at the door awaiting their arrival.

“There he is!” somebody shouted.

Chad froze, certain that he was going to have to fight his way past all of them to reach his daug
h
ter, and he was prepared to do just exactly that until another person yelled, “Make a hole so he can get in and see his little girl.”

Scott ushered him through the crowd and then acted as a barrier for anybody who thought to try and follow him into his room. Chad closed the door after mouthing his thanks to the man as he took up a position outside.

Ronni rushed into his arms and they just stood hugging each other. Chad thought that this might very well be the single best moment in his life.



“Everybody needs to just settle down!” Samantha said. It was hard to hear because she was tal
k
ing so quietly to keep from aggravating her throbbing headache.

“Agreed.” Darlene spat out a mouthful of red saliva and then tilted her head back and pinched her nostrils to try and stop the blood flow.

“You,” Lena spun on Samantha, “performed a test on you
r
self that could have cost you your life. And you,” she turned back to Darlene, “were going to treat her like one of the test su
b
jects before she even died.”

“Going to?” Samantha quipped. “I have a notch in my skull that says it went past the ‘
going to
’ stage.”

“We were under the assumption that you were about to die,” Darlene rebutted with a nasal twang. “You have no idea how awful you looked. I had you pegged at dying within the hour, so I took drastic measures.”

“You activated the Containment Breach alarm!” Lena was shouting. She could care less if it hurt Samantha’s head.

“It was the only way to keep you out.” Darlene spit out a
n
other mouthful of blood and slowly let her head return to its normal position. A dab with the rag confirmed that the flow had stopped.

“Yes,” Lena snapped, “well now we have a third of our manpower laid up in a bed to recover from your cranial handiwork. The one person who had actually made headway in this screwed up o
p
eration, and you cut open her skull.”

“And so we get to the next point,” Darlene said. “If this test proved that Samantha has indeed di
s
covered an injection that gives the recipient immunity to the effects of the infection when bitten, what can we do next?”

“What can we do?” Lena laughed. Shoving aside the chair that sat beside Samantha’s bed, she walked over to the curtain and yanked it open to reveal the lab. Mounted on one wall were repeater monitors that showed the scenes from outside. The seemingly endless number of u
n
dead faces went on for as far as the camera could see. “We can’t
do
a damned thing!”

“We just found the possible cure,” Samantha insisted.

“And we are in this bunker without any way to get it to the general population, if one even e
x
ists…we have no way to mass produce it,” Lena pointed out. “Didn’t you say that it took you five days to make a single dose just for yourself?”

“So?” Samantha pouted. Looking up at the faces of her two fellow scientists, she saw the same sense of doom and surrender in their eyes that was trying to establish a foothold in her spirit. “We have the radio…somebody may call some day, and when they do, we will be able to say that we have the possible immu
n
ization. Between now and then, we can all just work on creating more.”

“We aren’t getting out!” Lena slapped the table and stormed out, leaving Samantha and Darlene alone in uncomfortable s
i
lence.

Finally, Darlene was able to speak. “That was a really brave thing that you did,” she whispered.

“But it may be too little, too late.”

“Why? Because Lena says so? She doesn’t have nearly as many of the answers as she would have you believe.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes. Neither one could take her eyes off the monitors.

Eventually, Darlene looked at Samantha with raised eyebrows. The woman sighed and nodded. Darlene walked over to the button and smacked it with the palm of her hand.

“Everyone remain calm, the emergency containment prot
o
cols have been activated…please stand by.”

She returned to the chair beside the bed and reached over to take Samantha’s hand. The two sat silently for several minutes before Darlene got up and walked over to switch off the mon
i
tors.