Love in the Time of the Dead (8 page)

“Already?” She shouldn’t have been surprised. Guist was positively meticulous about having their packs together. “Thanks, Guist. You’re the man.” She unzipped her pack and rifled through it.

Finn glanced curiously at her pack, so she showed him a few necessities he might not have considered, being a guard and not a fighter. Flint and twine stored in a tic-tac case. A small plastic bag of pistachio shells that provided a fast-burning and oily tinder for fires. A small leather pocket of fishing line and colorful hand-made flies.

Laney came across her newly full clips. “Where did you find ammo so quickly?” she asked Guist. That had to be some sort of record for him. She’d worry about him except he’d been running on robot mode since the day she and Jarren met him.

“I got lucky and found a good gunsmith right off.”

“Smith?” Finn asked him.

“Yeah. Does he do the guard’s ammo?”

“Sure does. He’s the best. Colony got lucky when he wandered in here.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Smith?” Laney asked with a grin. “A gunsmith named Smith? Huh.”

Finn chuckled as Guist started hauling the wheelbarrow toward them. “I’m supposed to meet back with Smith in a couple of hours about some tracer ammo.”

Laney gulped a bite. “Don’t you tease me, Guist.”

He laughed as he hauled the soiled hay outside. With Jarren and Mitchell, he always tried to find their favorite available road snack. For her, he didn’t try to track down chocolate, or magazines, or beauty products. Tracer ammo was her favorite treat.

She yawned so hard her jaw popped. The nap she had taken earlier hadn’t been nearly long enough to make up for all she had put her body through. She was safe enough with her team so near, and the scent of living, furred flesh instead of the decaying stench of death had her comfortable enough to curl up on the hay bale that had served as her lunch table and fall promptly asleep.

Chapter Five

J
ARREN
S
HOOK
H
ER
G
ENTLY
A
WAKE
. “Seems you’ve made an awesome first impression, as usual.”

Laney sat up and rubbed her eyes sleepily. “What have I done now?” she asked testily as she removed pieces of straw from her hair.

“I was just notified by a very upset Drake Erhard that our team is supposed to leave immediately. Apparently he is second in command here and can do that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, since I have a dinner date with the first in command at six o’clock, Erhard can suck it.”

“Oh, so you are going to dinner now?” Finn asked from a few bales to her left.

“I suppose if it’s the only way to keep us here until morning, I will make the sacrifice.”

Finn shook his head and sighed. Mitchell and Guist were both eating on a wooden bench, and Jarren studied her with a worried furrow in his brow.

“We came here for a reason, remember?” her brother pointed out.

“Well, we better find some kind of scientist and quick because our time in this colony is limited,” she said. “I met a doctor while I was quarantined. Maybe we can talk to him and he can steer us in the right direction. He seemed nice enough.”

Jarren nodded at Finn. “Your doctor. He’s good?”

“Yeah, he’s great. Saved a lot of lives, but that doesn’t sound like the type of service you need from him.”

Jarren looked questioningly at her, but she only shrugged in answer. How should she know if Finn could be trusted?

“We need a type of science experiment performed.”

“Well, I’d say Doc would be a good man to talk to about it. He worked as a doctor for the Centers for Disease Control before the outbreak.”

The team looked at Finn, dumbfounded. How could they be so lucky? Jarren was making an effort to hide his excitement, but the corners of his mouth kept turning up when he spoke. “He’ll do, then. Where is he?”

Finn frowned. “Uh, let me think. It’s about dinner time. I don’t think he’ll be at the clinic. He’s a self-diagnosed terrible cook, so I bet he’s heading to mess hall.”

“Great. Let’s go,” Mitchell said, wiping crumbs from his lap before standing. “Let’s just hope we can avoid Laney’s new boyfriend.”

“Oh, I’m not supposed to meet him for at least another hour,” she said absently.

“Not Daniels,” Mitchell said, with the oddest expression on his face. “I was talking about Erhard.”

“Oh,” she said lamely. She grabbed her pack and avoided eye contact as best she could. She didn’t want the boys to see how much this Daniels guy affected her.

Rays of rosy evening sunlight hit her face as soon as they opened the barn door. The gray, grassy field in front had grown tall during the springtime, and though it was dry in the colder months, it still waved an alluring greeting. It would have been a profound sight if it weren’t for the stench of Deads that washed over her like a tidal wave. She keeled over and retched, her instincts like a fire alarm in her head. For a split moment she was in the woods again, and the sensation was dizzying.

“Whoa, Laney. You all right?” Jarren asked. He dropped his pack and patted her back.

Mitchell and Guist had crouched into position to cover them as they had done a hundred times before.

“Deads,” she gasped. “It smells like Deads here.” She put the back of her hand over the side of her mouth and tried to catch her breath.

“I don’t understand,” Mitchell said as he pulled a canteen of water from her pack. “It’s not usually like that in a colony, right?”

“No, this is a first. Something doesn’t feel right, but Daniels assured me there are no Deads in the colony gates.” She thanked Mitchell and rinsed her mouth out with the offered canteen.

“You mean you’ve been smelling them this strongly all day?” Jarren stood and looked around. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Finn spoke up. “Maybe your nose is becoming more sensitive. The rescue this morning was pretty intense. You’ve been through a lot.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she admitted. “It’s the reason I haven’t told you guys before now. I think maybe I’m going crazy.”

“Shut up,” Mitchell said. “You aren’t crazy. Look, let’s follow your nose. If it leads us to the fence, we’ll know it’s just being sensitive.”

“What about finding the doc?” she asked.

“He can wait,” Jarren said. “If you think there’s something wrong, we need to figure it out right away.”

“I don’t know about this,” Finn said nervously. “Laney has dinner with the boss soon. And if Erhard catches you guys poking around, he’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

“You can leave if you aren’t comfortable,” Guist offered. “We aren’t trying to get you in trouble.”

Finn rubbed his face vigorously. “Honestly, I’m curious about what’s going on, too. The last few weeks have felt different here.”

The group headed off with Laney the bloodhound in the lead. Her nose led her and the team back toward the gardens.

The relief was obvious in Finn’s tone. “Looks like the smell is leading toward the fence. It’s about half a mile straight ahead.”

She plowed on. If it was the Deads on the other side of the fence, great. But she had to know for sure.

Daylight was fading as the navy dark of evening approached, and she quickened her pace. The men behind her also seemed to sense her growing urgency and walked faster to keep up. They passed through a group of storage buildings and headed for the fence. She started jogging and skidded to a stop after about two hundred yards. She doubled back and shook her head. She turned and looked toward the fence and frowned.

“The smell lessens when I go toward the fence, which makes no sense. Deads usually gather around the fences, right? Why wouldn’t the smell be stronger there?” she asked Finn in a hushed whisper.

“There isn’t much human activity on this side of the colony. The Deads tend to gather in areas they can smell us. They are rarely reported this far down the fence. We don’t even schedule as many patrols down here because of a history of no action.”

She readied her Mini as his words took hold. “They are inside,” she whispered in horror. “What are those buildings?”

“Storage for the harvesting equipment,” Finn answered, his voice thick with shock.

Click, click, click
. The men readied their weapons. She checked the mag in her own gun to find Guist had been true to his meticulous nature and refilled hers completely.

“Let’s go,” Jarren said, lowering his stance and moving quickly and decisively toward the buildings.

She and the others followed closely. They walked the perimeters of all three buildings and found nothing. The doors of the first two buildings were open, and the receding light illuminated the lack of anyone in them, dead or living. The third building to the far right was slightly bigger than the other. The grayed wood paneling added to the aged look of the structure. The door had a thick padlock, and a faint shuffling sound could be heard from the inside.

“Give me a lift,” she instructed Mitchell, and he boosted her up to a high window.

The window had a ledge on the interior that blocked her view, so she pulled herself inside to get a better look. The stench was the worst she had ever smelled. It was as if the odor had soaked into the wood with prolonged exposure.

She pulled a handheld flashlight from one of her cargo pockets and shimmied forward on her stomach, shining a spotlight on the opposite wall of the building. Four groaning figures snuffled slowly to the attraction.

One walked directly in front of her beam of light, and she stifled a gasp. The creature had some sort of muzzle over its mouth. She pointed the light at the other creature’s faces to find the same treatment. Someone had even gone to the extreme length of tying their arms behind their backs.

“What the hell?” she breathed. She debated the distance it would take for her discharged weapons to fall unheard by the colony. They weren’t far enough away to avoid attracting attention, and it did appear the Deads had been rendered mostly harmless. Blades it was, then.

“Guist,” she hissed out the window. “Hand up your ax.”

“How many?” Jarren asked as Guist loosed his newest weapon and handed it upward into her waiting hand.

“Four.”

The anger in his voice sizzled like the crack of a whip. “No way are you offing four by yourself. Way too risky.”

“Pipe down, Jarren. They’re muzzled and tied.”

The men erupted into a whispered frenzy at the news and were aiming questions that sounded suspiciously accusing at Finn, who sounded as genuinely shocked and angry as them.

She left them to it and set to her task. Shimmying to the edge of the ledge, she readied herself to lower down.

“Pssst,” came a whisper from the window behind her. Mitchell. “I’m coming in, too. We’ll get the job done faster with both of us.”

Relief fluttered in her stomach for the help. That place was downright creepy.

The Deads smelled them, their human odor finally breaking through the stench of confined carcasses. The zombies groaned loudly and frantically searched for them. She and Mitchell dropped onto the unforgiving floor and rolled to cushion their impact. She came up swinging the ax at the nearest Dead and Mitchell drew the others away. He kicked in a female’s brittle knee caps before he turned on the other two.

They were silent and efficiently deadly, and the deed was finished in moments. Mitchell hoisted Laney back up to the window ledge, and she climbed down to the waiting group. Mitchell followed directly.

She said nothing, only looked at Finn and waited for answers.

“I don’t know anything about this. I had no idea there were Deads in our gates or I would have killed them myself long before now.”

He was angry, and obviously felt betrayed. Truth rang from his voice. He had no part in it.

“Any guesses on who would bring them in here and why?” she asked.

“No,” he answered miserably. “The guards have been acting off lately. It’s like everyone has a secret and no one talks about it. I guess this is it. Muzzled Deads are the big secret.” He shook his head. “How stupid could they be? Whoever did this, whoever brought them here, they could have killed off the entire colony! All of our family and friends could have died.”

“We have to be careful who we tell,” Jarren whispered to the group. “We have to make sure to flush out whoever did this or they will just rebuild their little project. They brought Deads in here for a reason. We need to figure out why. Laney, you should go straight to Daniels and alert him.”

“What if he’s the one who did it?”

“It’s your job to find out. Go to dinner and make the decision either to tell him or out his plans. Finn, you go with her and act normal. Business as usual, okay? Don’t talk to your buddies or family. You will cause a panic and send whoever did this into hiding. Mitchell and Guist, you two track down the doctor. We don’t have much time here and we need to get things with Laney set into motion.”

“What are you going to do?” Laney whispered to Jarren.