New Regime (16 page)

Rune shoved a zombie out of her way and strode to the
hillside. It would have been difficult finding the entrance in the best of
circumstances, but with mounds of zombies trying to push themselves into the
hill, it was next to impossible.

She looked up to see the berserker charging toward her,
slinging zombies away as he came.

She went to meet him. “You found the entrance?”

“No. It’s not here. Fie is on the other side of this wall,
but the entrance…” He turned, narrowing his eyes, staring at the top of the
moon-bathed hill. “Follow me.”

She didn’t hesitate but ran with him up the side of the
hill. The hill leveled out, then rose again, and it was on that second rise
that he stopped her.

“There,” he said.

“Bastards,” she muttered. Keeping Fie inside the cold, dark
earth, with no sunshine or friendly people…the child would be desperate.

Steel doors were placed into a wide swath of concrete wall.
She wasn’t sure even she could kick her way through them.

“They’re following us,” Strad said, nodding at something
behind her.

She turned to look. The zombies had begun to climb up the
hill, making their slow, inexorable way to the entrance.

She put her palm against the cool metal of the door.
“Anything could be in there.”

“I’m here,” said Jack, jogging toward them. “What do we
have?” Then he took a long look at the gleaming doors. “Well that might make
things more complicated.”

“No kidding.” She took a deep breath, then gave the door an
experimental punch.

The door didn’t give, but she had to hold back a whimper of
pain as the impact broke the bones in her hand and shook her entire body.

Strad took her hand and ran his thumb over her skin as the
zombies began to gather at their backs. One of them stumbled to Jack and would
have taken a bite from his arm if he hadn’t moved.

“Shit,” Rune said. “She’s losing control.” And if that
happened, the crew was in trouble.

Raze and Lex forced their way through the crowd.

“I found the entrance,” Lex said, her voice strained.

“This is the entrance,” Rune said. “But I can’t break it.”

“That’s a dummy door,” Lex told her. “Don’t forget where I
come from. I recognize the decoy. Come with me.”

She turned back when they all stood staring uncertainly.
“Come
on.
We don’t have all night.”

Raze shrugged. “She…felt the entrance. We went there before
we found you.”

Rune nodded, then broke into a run to catch up with Lex. The
zombies were beginning to sound their eerie moans, and the little blind Other
was right. They didn’t have all night.

They likely would not have found the real entrance had it
not been for Lex and her ability to see things they could not.

The doors were hidden behind a copse of trees and camouflaged
to match the greens and browns of the surroundings.

“I felt the heat,” Lex said. “There is someone standing
close to those doors. Smoking. He’s human.”

The zombies picked up speed and lurched toward them. More
zombies climbed the bank and suddenly, in the semi-dark, it looked as though
the hill were undulating, spitting zombies from its bowels.

“Rune,” Jack said. “You might want to get us inside.”

She didn’t ask them if they were ready—they were always
ready. She ran at the door and slammed her body against it like a truck hitting
a fence.

The door flew inward with a scream of metal twisting and
tearing, and the crew streamed inside.

The zombies were at their heels.

The inside of the bunker was surprisingly well-lit and, with
its clean lines and lack of clutter, had a clinical feel to it.

The guard who’d been standing near the door lay lifeless on
the floor, his arms flung over his head.

The long entryway opened into a short, sterile hallway, then
into a large living area furnished with a couch and a few small chairs. A flat
screen television hung silently on the wall.

“Split up,” she said. “Find the girl.”

Zombies became stuck in the entrance hall, then some of them
finally managed to find their way through the doorway into the rest of the
area.

Their moans became livelier, more vicious. Hungry.

And then, gunfire sounded from outside as new arrivals came
to take out the zombies infiltrating the bunker. Probably an alarm had
triggered when Rune smashed in the door.

She ground her teeth as she ran, shoving doors open, her
heart pounding painfully against her stake scars.

In seconds she entered a huge, circular room with small
doors spaced evenly around the walls.

The room was cavernous and cold with its white brick walls
and stone floors. A drain had been set in the middle of the floor, its edges
tinted with the stains of old blood.

She wanted to find Fie—that was all. Find the girl and get
out before the enemy realized more than zombies had discovered their secrets.

Rescuing Fie was the only thing that mattered.

Until she shoved open one of the doors and found a room full
of restrained pregnant girls. A dozen of them, all lying in cots with their
wrists cuffed to metal rails.

Others.

Their faces were slack with disinterest, their eyes open but
bleary and dull. The room had been laced with silver. Though she was immune,
Rune could feel that silver trying to suck the life out of her.

The room stank of feces and vomit, and the once white sheets
covering the girls were yellow from urine stains.

And the girls. The girls.

Rune shot out her claws and slashed the air, unable to
suppress a scream of horrified rage.

“Rune,” Strad called from the doorway.

She spun around. “Berserker. These
girls.
” She
couldn’t say anything else. There were no words.

They raced to the beds, Strad taking one row and Rune taking
the other. She ripped cuffs from the bed, freeing skinny, bruised wrists.

“This one’s alive,” Strad called.

She straightened, her heart full of horror. “Aren’t they
all?”

“No, sweetheart,” he said.

She’d known all along that some of those stares were empty.
She hadn’t been able to admit it to herself. Not then.

“What about the babies?” she asked, as though he would know.
As though maybe he would somehow make it right.

He shook his head. “The one I found alive just died.”

So she hardened her heart against the horror she was facing
and got back to work. It was all she could do.

The girls wore white plastic bracelets on which was written
a single number.

“Shit, Strad,” she cried. “This one’s having her baby.”

He strode to her, and they watched as the quiet mother
delivered her baby. She needed no help. The child poured out in a gush of
blood, a tiny Other with a limbless body, a too-small head, and a mouth it
couldn’t close because it was full of half-formed fangs.

It jerked once, then went still.

As did its mother.

Rune shuddered. “Check the other ones,” she whispered.

“Found another one alive,” she said, ten seconds later, her
voice calm. Her lips were numb and tingly, the way they’d gotten when she
grabbed the electrified fence at the Camp.

The girl’s bracelet told Rune her number was thirteen.

“This is what happened to the girl the Annex found,” Strad
said, leaning over another still form.

Rune nodded. Thirteen’s breathing was shallow, and as Rune
watched, she opened her eyes. Rune saw the fear bloom like blood on a tissue.

“I’m going to get you out of here, baby.”

The girl didn’t appear to comprehend Rune’s words.

Just as Nine had, the pregnant Other began screaming.

And then, Rune saw the mound beneath the sheet begin to
move, to ripple as though a snake had awakened and was now slithering off the
huge belly.

But it wasn’t a snake.

The girl’s baby was coming.

And so were the zombies.

Fie had lost her control.

Rune found a whole other gear—there were too many things to
think about, to fight, to do. So she shoved everything out but the immediate
emergency, and that was delivering Thirteen’s baby.

That child wasn’t going to slide out with no trouble. It
needed help.

Strad was at the door, cutting down zombies who wanted to
get into the room. Who wanted to eat.

She had a second to silently plead,
don’t get bitten,
Berserker,
and then her thoughts were all for the tormented Other on the
cot.

Even when she heard the sound of gunfire drawing closer as
the enemy began to break through the barricade of zombies, she ignored it.

A baby was coming, and she was about to help it into the
world.

“Owen,” she heard Strad yell. “Behind you.”

Owen? Owen was in the hospital in River County.

Wasn’t He?

Focus, Rune.

The Other’s screams faded to a pitiful, whimpering moan. She
tried to find the source of her pain with discolored, searching fingers, but
her hand kept falling to the bed. The silvered room had drained her. Or maybe
it was the baby who took all her strength.

Rune didn’t make a sound. She pushed the girl’s soiled
hospital gown out of the way and waited. Watched, and waited.

“Rune,” Strad roared.

“Not yet, Berserker,” she whispered.

And then, black, curly hair showed as the baby began to
force its way free.

Thirteen shrieked, a scream of pure agony that went on
forever, and finally, the child was out.

And Thirteen stopped screaming. For good.

Rune lifted the baby from the mess of blood and fluids
soaking the mattress. A girl. A tiny girl with thick black hair, wrinkled, red
skin, and the smallest fingers Rune had ever seen.

“Well shit,” Rune murmured. “Look at that. A baby.”

“Rune,” Strad yelled again.

She didn’t want to leave the infant alone, but she wrapped
it in the sheet and placed it carefully on the bed between its dead mother’s
legs, umbilical cord still attached. “I’ll be back, kid.”

She streaked through the doorway, slamming it behind her
before shooting out her claws. The zombies seemed to think Fie was in the room.
They piled on top of each other trying to get past Strad, who had pushed them
back into the circle room.

A pale but grimly determined Owen hacked his way through
them from the back of the room, but Rune saw no signs of Jack, Raze, or Lex.

At the sound of gunfire, she realized the other three crew
members were keeping the enemy shooters occupied and out of the compound.

But it wouldn’t be long before her crew was overpowered by
the number of Shop backup that was surely on the way. She had to find Fie, and
get her and the baby out.

Owen worked his way toward her. “Find Fie,” he shouted.
“We’ll take care of the zombies.”

She found Strad with her searching, desperate gaze. He stood
head and shoulders above the slow zombies, his spear flashing as he used it to
take out the monsters. Both ends boasted long, sharp silver, and the zombies
fell as those blades spilt brains from broken skulls and separated heads from
rotting bodies held upright by magic.

Fie’s magic.

She ran, slamming open doors and peering into closets.
“Fie,” she shouted. “Where are you?”

Where the hell
was
she?

She was nowhere.

Finally, Rune ran back to Strad and Owen and grabbed a
lurching male zombie on the fringe of the crowded room.

He careened off the hallway wall and fell, then began to
drag himself up with torturous slowness.

There was a chance the zombie would lead her right to Fie.

“Come on, you bastard,” she muttered. “Get the fuck up.”

But after he finally found his feet, he lunged forward,
trying to either get some dinner or go back the way he’d come.

“Fuck,” she screamed, and took off his head. One less
monster to worry about.

“Rune,” Strad roared, and she ran with everything she had
back to where she’d left him and Owen.

Jack, Lex, and Raze had arrived, but not to help with the
zombies. The Shop shooters had forced them to retreat. There was no door to
shut—Rune had destroyed it.

“We’re trapped,” Owen yelled.

Enemy shooters entered the room, blasting anything and
everything they could see. Zombies fell beneath the thick spray of bullets.

The crew, using zombies for cover, began to back into the
hallway.

“Keep searching,” Rune told them. “She’s here somewhere. She
has to be.”

“What about you?” Jack asked.

She nodded toward the moaning mass of undead and the men who
were now streaming into the room, guns aloft.

“I’m going to take out the Shop ops. Find her.” She met
Strad’s hard stare. “
Find
her.”

He didn’t want to go—didn’t want to leave her there with a
room full of toothy monsters and dozens of bloodthirsty humans.

But he did.

He knew he could trust her. She wasn’t going to die on him.

She threw herself into the crowd.

The Shop’s men were more concerned, at that moment, with the
zombies than with her. That would soon change.

A zombie fell into her as a bullet nearly took off his head.
The next bullet found her, ripping through the soft flesh of her shoulder where
it sat for a long, painful moment before her body expelled it.

She didn’t even pause. There was no time.

And at the back of her mind was the image of Thirteen’s
black-haired baby lying on the filthy cot, waiting.

Waiting for her.

She fought like the mutant monster she was as desperation
lent her a little something extra. She sliced into zombie bodies, so fast a
human would have had trouble tracking her deadly claws.

She cut a path through the zombies, and blood was flung into
the air in strings and splatters as she began annihilating the men.

Her monster shrieked with happiness as she was bathed in the
blood of the enemy. And finally, lost in the battle and the blood, she forgot
everything but killing.

And when the hurt, flinching pain in her mind and heart was
gone and there was only the fight, only the blood, only the
violence,
it
was good.

So fucking good.

That was where she found the silence, and she dove right the
fuck in. Wallowed in it, drank it down, and laughed with the ecstasy of it.

If Lex hadn’t appeared at her side, mimicking her movements,
killing as she killed, she could have lost herself in that darkness forever.

And it was with a tiny bit of regret that she refused her
monster the chance to take completely over.

Someday.

But with Lex’s appearance came responsibility, and she and
her monster were once again on even terms.

And that was good, because as she killed and maimed and
became coated in blood, she saw something her monster might have ignored.

Sheriff Erin Wallace was sliding along the wall, her eyes
wide with terror but also a resolute determination. She held two guns and shot
at anything that came near her, but that wasn’t what made Rune shudder with
fear.

Wallace made it to the door of the room holding the dead girls—and
Thirteen’s baby—and with a single, quick look over her shoulder she ran into
the room and slammed the door shut behind her.