Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller (16 page)

“Right, right,” Voskuil said. “I know, it’s a fucking dead zone out there. But together, we can make it. Don’t be so negative. Jesus.”

Lena looked sadly at him. She didn’t shake her head, but she clearly wanted to.

“Anyway, you better hope we make it,” Voskuil said dismissively, tapping his fingers on the table. “Where’s the damn food?”

#

Nic was taking corners at fairly terrifying speeds. Winter looked at her and saw a frantic gleam in her eyes that wasn’t conducive to smart police work. He began to reconsider that unspoken covenant. He didn’t want to die helping the woman he loved save the woman she loved.
 

As if reading his mind, Nic shot an infinitesimal glance at him. “If you want out of this….”

“No,” Winter said immediately. “Got nothin’ better going on.”

Nic shook her head, unsatisfied with that answer. He actually hoped, in all seriousness, that she would pay more attention to her driving.

“Don’t sweat it,” Winter almost pleaded. “I’m with you. Let’s get this creep and save your family. It’s all good.”

Nic glanced at him. Winter saw in her brief look that, however uncomfortable she might be with his reasons, she needed his help.
 

Whether it was his undying devotion to Nic or the awakening of something in him at this pure, no-shades-of-gray mission of heroism, Winter decided something in that moment.

He would gladly give his life for a pregnant woman he had never particularly liked.

#

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Lena informed Voskuil. She wasn’t lying when she told him she couldn’t keep any food down; her stomach had been turning queasy somersaults since he’d pulled that gun in the break-room.

“No way,” he said, tearing into his bacon and eggs with a vengeance. She stared incredulously at him.

“Want me to save it for Nic’s backseat?”

“Can’t risk it here,” Voskuil said, glancing down the hall toward the restrooms. “We’ll pull over in the countryside somewhere. Trust me, you won’t be worried about voyeurs.”

“I told you, I’m not feeling well,” Lena said. “This is happening one way or another.”

He looked at her disgustedly, waved his fork toward the bathroom. “Fine. Bail and I’ll take everyone in here down with me, starting with that bald motherfucker over there. Count on it.”

Lena went down the hall to the bathroom, mulling that over. She was, of course, planning to escape, but she had no doubt Voskuil meant what he said. She tried to figure out a way to get help and take Voskuil out before he could kill anyone. Nothing brilliant came to mind.

Making the decision easier was the fact that short of running into the kitchen, she wasn’t presented with a way out. The ladies room had no window and she passed no back door in the hall.

So after relieving herself she returned to find Voskuil pushing his empty plate aside with a smirk. “Everything come out all right?”
 

She didn’t dignify his juvenile wit with a response. It was at that moment a pair of sheriff’s deputies entered the diner. Voskuil turned white, watching the hostess seat the cops only three tables away.

The bald guy glanced from the cops to Voskuil and back. It was, even if you were
not
the paranoiac type, a bad omen.

Lena noticed Voskuil’s hand shaking as he pulled a twenty from his wallet and put it on the edge of the table.

“Can we get our check over here,” he muttered, eyes shining with an almost feverish intensity. Lena found it horrifying to watch a cold and composed mind, however emotionally immature and egotistical it might be, go to pieces so quickly. But Voskuil had turned a corner somewhere, and this was not the rational physician before her.
 

It was a hunted animal.

“James, you need to cool it man,” Lena whispered. She actually put her hand on his. “Get it together!”

“We’re leaving,” he said abruptly, clamping down on her fingers and pulling her from the table.
 

Lena complied, though cold fear strummed her spine like piano wire. Across the room, the waitress was taking the deputies’ order. She turned toward Voskuil and Lena, poised to stop them, when her eyes flicked to their table and spotted the twenty-dollar bill lying on it.

Lena smiled reassuringly at her in passing. They were almost out the door, Voskuil pulling her along like a wayward child.

The bald guy suddenly rose from his stool. “Officers! Stop that man!”

He pointed at Voskuil. The deputies, caught off guard, glanced from the old man to Lena and Voskuil.
 

Voskuil laughed, an attempt at dismissive that bordered on the hysterical, and pushed through the door.

“Uh, hold on a second, sir,” One of the deputies said, rising with his hand moving smoothly toward his sidearm. “If you don’t mind.”

Shit.

#

Leon was changing a bed when he heard the page again. “Dr. Voskuil to the nurse’s station.”

Dr. Stone stuck his head into the room.

“Seen Voskuil or Gladden? We just admitted multiple shooting victims!”

“Not for like an hour,” Leon said. “I think Voskuil left. Haven’t seen Gladden today.”

“He left?!”
 

Leon nodded sadly. “Maybe he had more important business to take care of.”

“This isn’t a dermatologist’s office,” Dr. Stone said. “Heads are gonna roll.”

Leon didn’t know what was going on, but he knew that Voskuil was in deep shit now.
 

#

“You know we’re not on the duty roster until two o’clock,” Winter said to Nic as they sped toward the diner. “Quarles is gonna wonder what we’re doing in the field.”

“I can deal with Quarles.”

Winter checked the load on his Heckler & Koch. Still ready to rock.

“So what’s the plan? If you can occupy his attention, I’ll take him out before he knows what hit him.”

“We’ll find a position for you. If he’s not holding a gun on her, just put him down, first clean shot you get. Otherwise, hang back. Commandeer a vehicle and tail us. I’ll figure something out.”

“Copy that.”

#

Voskuil paused, indecisive, in the threshold. Lena saw the panic in his eyes (
how could anyone miss it?
) and felt a surge of her own.

“This guy’s up to something, bank on it,” the old man said, approaching the cops’ table. The other deputy rose as well, assessing Voskuil and reaching the obvious conclusion that Lena just had. His energy was all wrong. Nothing innocent about it.

“Why don’t we all step out for a moment, sort this out,” The first deputy said, coming around the table toward the door. He was in his early 20’s but didn’t seem wet behind the ears. His blue eyes were so pale they reminded Lena of robin’s eggs.

“Sure,” Voskuil said, agreeably enough, taking a few steps onto the sidewalk. Lena watched his gaze stutter between the cops and the old man as they all filed toward the door.

“He’s awfully jumpy. Why don’t you run his name through your database,” the chrome-domed retiree was saying.

“This gentleman has too much time on his hands, I think,” Lena said to the deputies as they left the diner.

“I think he’s gotten the wrong idea about us,” Voskuil chimed in, trying too hard to sound casual and bemused.

“Let’s start with your I.D., sir,” The first deputy said. They both had their hands on their holster-straps.

Voskuil withdrew his driver’s license from his wallet, handed it over.
 

“Yours too, ma’am,” the blue-eyed cop said to Lena. He took their cards back to the cruiser.

Meanwhile, the other officer, whose dark sheaf of hair was spotted with gray, watched Voskuil with wary interest. Getting the measure of him.

“We were just getting some goddamned breakfast,” Voskuil said, glaring at his elderly nemesis. “Don’t believe that’s illegal yet.”

“Oh yeah? Then why didn’t you eat anything?” the old man said, openly challenging Voskuil. With the cops here he was eager for confrontation.

“All right, we’ll take it from here, sir,” the deputy said. “Please go back inside and we’ll let you know if we need a statement.”

The senior citizen returned, reluctantly, to his spot at the counter. He stared resolutely out the window at them, unnerving even Lena.

Voskuil’s phone started ringing. He nervously clicked it off. Then Lena’s phone started ringing. She saw that it was the Center. She put it on silent. The deputy watched them curiously.

An eternity later (though it must have been two minutes or less), the first deputy returned. He kept a poker face until only a few feet away.

“You’re free to go,” he said.
 

“Thank you, officers,” Voskuil said. He looked expectantly at Lena. She hesitated, seeing the cops exchange private words. Why didn’t they catch her eye?! She didn’t want this to turn into a bloodbath, but if they could somehow be alerted…

Voskuil cleared his throat and she saw that his hand was in his pocket and something was pressed against the fabric, aimed in her direction.

Probably not a roll of breath mints.
 

Voskuil and Lena got into his Porsche.

“Christ, what was that fossil’s problem?” Voskuil said, thrumming with nervous energy.

“Let’s just go,” Lena said. She saw that she had three missed calls. All from the Center. The search was on, but it was just starting.

Voskuil pulled out of the lot and drove down the street. “We’ve got to find somewhere else to wait.”

Lena noticed the sheriff’s car following them. Her stomach twisted into knots.

“James. Stay calm.”

He followed her eyes, saw the cruiser in his rearview mirror. “Fuck!” he exploded.
 

“They’re just seeing where we’re going,” Lena said. “Let’s go to the post office or something. It’s only a little ways.”

“Yeah, fine,” Voskuil said. “Nothing’s fucking easy, you know that?”

“That I do.”

They pulled into the USPS branch parking lot. The deputies slowed, but kept going.

Lena got out of the car. Voskuil did the same. They started walking up the stairs to the door. Inside, a line of bored customers awaited service at the only open window.

“Thanks for keeping your cool,” Voskuil said. “I’m glad you didn’t make me kill you back there.”

“Staying alive is kind of important to me,” Lena said.

Voskuil chuckled despite himself. “That makes two of us.”

They spent a couple of minutes inside, Voskuil buying a roll of stamps from the machine for the sake of appearances. For a moment, it seemed as though everything would be all right. But when they walked out of the post office, a police car was pulling up behind the Porsche. The officers were looking at the car, not them.

#

“This way,” Voskuil hissed to Lena, walking in the other direction. Lena went with him and the twenty steps they took to the corner were the longest of her life.

But they turned that corner without incident. A red-headed, somewhat paunchy fellow was dismounting from his green Honda sport-bike right at the curb. As he goggled at them in surprise, Lena realized the gun was back in Voskuil’s hand.

“Keys!” Voskuil said, thrusting out his palm. The guy put the keys in his hand so quickly you’d think they were white-hot.

“Take it, man,” the guy said, almost wheedlingly, mincing away with baby-steps. Lena wouldn’t be surprised to see he was wetting his pants.

Voskuil forced Lena to hop onto the motorcycle. He leaned in to whisper, “I’ll drive five yards, and if you’re not right behind me, I’ll turn around and shoot you, that red-headed douche, and anyone else I can take down with me.”

She nodded with the faintest sneer of irrepressible contempt. Of course he would. She knew that now.

Voskuil leaped into the saddle and fired up the bike. It sprang from the curb as if rocket-propelled and they streaked down the street.
 

A siren chirped behind them and Lena risked a glance behind her. The police car was now in pursuit.

#

Nic had just pulled to the curb a block from the diner when the announcement came over the police band. A high-speed pursuit was in progress just three miles away. Suspects were Caucasian, male and female, ages 25 to 45, on a stolen motorcycle.

“Oh God,” Nic said, putting the Interceptor back in gear. “Oh God, oh God….”

“We’re gonna get her back,” Winter said. “I swear… We’ll get her back.”

What did he have to lose? If they failed, he might not be around to feel guilty about the broken promise. But somehow he knew they could not be stopped. Not Nic and Winter. No way, no how.

As if suddenly feeling it too, Nic seemed to gather herself. Her gaze through the windshield became laser-focused again. She was upping her internal threat level another notch.
 

Winter’s wasn’t exactly bottoming out, either. He gripped the doorframe tightly as Nic took a speed-bump at 30.

“Damn, girl,” he said after the painful jolt was over. “Easy. We’re not much use to her as street pizza. Or without a transmission.”

“I got it,” she said tightly. But for the first time in their partnership, Winter didn’t entirely believe her.

#

Voskuil tore through a curve in the road just as a Seattle Police Interceptor, this one a Corvette, reached the next intersection. He zipped right past it but the Corvette turned sharply and was immediately hot on their heels, flashers igniting in a blaze of ferocious certainty.

“Fuck,” Voskuil whispered, losing another heap of hope. This was bad. He kicked the crotch-rocket into a higher gear. They sped through an industrial district, mostly warehouses and factories on either side. The streetlights flashed highly irregular pools of luminance on the grimy strip of pavement.

The Corvette was quickly joined by a Mustang. At the wheel, Nicolette Waters was driving like the proverbial winged Chiroptera exiting the land of damnation.

Voskuil saw this in his side mirror but didn’t give much thought to the Virus Control decal on the Mustang’s hood. He had stopped thinking minutes earlier and right now he was just trying to keep the bike on two wheels. They nearly wiped out on a hard right, missing a parked van by inches as the bike skidded and fishtailed through without dumping them.