The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (25 page)

He lifted his chin, indicating
the dead leaning forward in their harnesses as they trudged after Igor, “How did you come across them?”

Grimm laughed and said, “The dead are plentiful, it’s the living that are rare. I find
my children here and there but most of them travel in groups that are too large for us to deal with. I capture the ones I can and keep them in shoes, and they pull me along on my quest for fuel.”

Tick-Tock took a closer look
at the dead and could see that they also wore a mish-mash of clothing and had hiking boots on their feet. In amazement, he asked, “You dress them too?”

“
Of course,” Grimm replied. “It would be immodest to do anything less. I also make sure they have good boots. When I first started using them, they wore their poor little feet down to nubs.” Nodding to the scythe that lay between them, she added, “And then I had to reap them.”

“You any good with that thing?” Tick-Tock asked.

“I can cut a gnat off a fly’s ass with it,” she said with a laugh.

Hefting his M4, Tick-Tock said, “So can I.”

This made Grimm laugh again before she said, “You are very easy to talk to. Why is that?”

Tick-Tock shrugged and replied, “A long time ago, I used to work as an orderly.”

Grimm turned toward him, her face shadowed by the cowl as she asked, “In a home like mine?”

Tick-Tock nodded and said, “For two years I worked at the Bellevue
Mental Hospital while I went to school.”

Turning her attention back to the front where the dead toiled at their labors, she said, “Then you understand
us. That’s why it’s so easy to talk to you.”

“So how did you end up in an insane asylum?” Tick-Tock asked.

Grimm thought about this for a moment before saying, “It started when my manager at the bank was talking about promoting me. He called me in to his office and told me that if I wanted to move up, I had to dress for the position I wanted, not the one I was in.”

“And?” Tick-Tock asked.

“The next day, I showed up in my Cat Woman outfit,” Grimm said.

Tick-Tock laughed and asked, “How did that work out for you, Grimm?”

“They told me to be more normal,” she said. “I told them that normal is a washing machine setting. My crimes against the state were for simply being unique and sarcastic.”

Tick-Tock was still laughing as
Igor led the dead pulling the wagon onto a side road.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Russellville Arkansas:

Major Jedidiah Cage restrained himself from slamming his fist down on the radio operator’s desk
when his call was cut off. He’d been trying for days to reach someone in command in Washington DC, so he could tell them what Doctor Hawkins was doing, but no one would talk to him. He was constantly met with aides telling him that the person he was trying to reach was unavailable. On top of that, communications were still sketchy at best, and most of his calls dropped before they went through.

He turned
to Staff Sergeant Fagan and handed him the headset, saying, “Maybe you’ll have better luck. It’s your guy we’re trying to reach anyway.”

Sitting in front of the satellite radio, Fagan placed a call to the office of the Joint Chief
s of Staff while Cage donned a spare headset and plugged it in before muting the microphone. After a few minutes they were connected, but before the aide who answered the phone could even say hello, Fagan jumped in by screaming, “Do you know who this is Marine? This is General Breckenridge of the western command. My Major has been trying to reach the Commandant for days now and all he’s getting is static from your people. Now unless you want to be doing sewer rat duty in Minneapolis by the end of the day, I suggest you get the man on the line right now.”

The Captain at the other end sputtered out an apology and promised he’d have
him talking to the Commandant within minutes.

While they were waiting, Cage asked, “Who in the hell is General Breckenridge?”

Fagan shrugged and said, “No idea, sir. I just made him up. Marines aren’t the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree. I figure with everyone getting eaten, no one knows who’s in the chain of command anymore. Most generals’ names begin or end in ‘ridge’ so I figured it might work.”

Cage heard a voice though the headphones say, “This is the General Eastridge, the Commandant of the Marine Corp, but I don’t know who I’m talking to since there is no General Breckenridge in my command.”

Putting his hand over the microphone, Fagan said to Cage, “Maybe not all Marines are dumb, but I got the ‘ridge’ part right anyway.”

Removing his hand, Fagan said, “I don’t know if you remember me
, but we served together in Iraq and Afghanistan, sir. This is Staff Sergeant Fagan of the 10
th
mountain.”

There was a pause for a few seconds,
so long that Cage thought the Commandant had hung up, when he finally heard his voice come through the headset, “Yes, Fagan, I remember you well. We did a couple joint operations between third herd and the 10
th
.  If I remember correctly, we saved your ass from a bunch of turbans on the Pakistani border.”

Fagan said, “I thought it was the other way around, sir.”

Both men laughed and then the Commandant got to business by asking, “What’s the meaning of this call, Staff Sergeant?”

Jumping right in, Fagan said, “I was recently transferred to a research facility in Arkansas, and
the reason I’m contacting you is because of the tests one of the doctors here has already done and another that he’s planning on doing, sir. They’re pretty disturbing. It seems he’s using human subjects.”

This was followed by a pause
, which lasted long enough that Cage thought the line had been dropped. He was about to tell Fagan to try calling again when the Commandant said in a low voice, “I’m well aware of all the aspects of the tests dealing with the Malectron.”

At that moment, Cage realized
that Doctor Hawkins’ operation was known of and approved by the highest levels of the military. He instantly regretted his decision to contact someone in authority to try and stop it. With one phone call, they had put their careers, and their lives, in jeopardy. When you questioned the orders of a superior officer before Dead Day, you found yourself stationed in Iceland or Alaska. Nowadays, you found yourself with a flashlight and a pistol crawling through the sewers in one of the Dead Cities.

About to tell Fagan to
let him apologize and try to explain the call away, he was surprised when the Staff Sergeant said in an accusing tone, “And you approve of this, General? I thought you were better than that, sir.”

Cage waited for the verbal explosion
and his immediate reassignment to New Orleans, but it never came. Instead, General Eastridge sighed and said, “I don’t approve of any of it, Staff Sergeant. I was against using humans to test the Malectron from the moment I heard about it. The problem is, the rest of the Joint Chiefs see it another way. The Chairman is basically running the country now and Doctor Hawkins has his full approval.”

“But not yours,
sir?” Fagan asked.

With an audible sigh, the Commandant said, “There are a lot of things going on right now that are way over your pay grade
, Fagan. In case you don’t realize it, we’re at war.”

“I just came from Orleans, sir. I know exactly what’s going on. What we’re fighting for is the same thing we always have been, freedom for the people of the United States.
Maybe now its freedom from getting eaten by the dead, but the Constitution is still in effect.”

The Commandant laughed
sadly and said, “The United States exists in name only. And as for the Constitution, it was being abused and used against us through the last ten administrations. Right now, the Malectron is our best bet to get everything back in order. And as for the people of America, they only have whatever rights the Joint Chiefs give them and that’s it.”

“
The right to be used in an experiment as lab rats?” Fagan questioned.

This caused the Commandant to pause. After a few seconds, he asked, “What are you proposing?”

Flipping the switch on his microphone off mute, Cage said, “Sir, this is Major Cage. I’m in charge of operations in Russellville.”

“Good afternoon, Major,” the Commandant said. “It’s good to know that someone is holding Staff Sergeant Fagan’s leash. Once again, what are you proposing?”

“There is an alternative to the Malectron,” Cage told him. “We have a doctor here who’s close to finding a way of eradicating the dead, but we need your help, sir. We need to find people who are immune to the virus. One would be great, but more would be better.”

“We
’re already sending everyone we come across to you, so what’s the problem?” the Commandant asked.

“But the
main focus is on the Malectron, sir,” Cage replied. “All of our resources are being put into that instead of finding someone who’s immune. What I’m asking is that we actively search for more people who are resistant to the HWNW virus. There’s a Doctor Connors here at the facility, and she needs at least one more test subject. She’s on the verge of coming up with an anti-virus that would eradicate the dead instead of controlling them, sir.”

“I haven’t heard about this,” the Commandant said as he wondered if the reports coming in
to the Joint Chiefs were being edited to skew their decisions. “But you have to understand that a weapon will always receive more funding and resources than a cure.”

“I know that, sir. All I’m asking is that you help us find more people who are immune to the virus,” Cage
repeated.

After a pause, the Commandant said, “I can do that, Major
, but I have to tell you that you are way out of line by jumping the chain of command.”

Accepting the reprimand, Cage said, “Thank you for your help, sir. We appreciate anything you can do for us.”

He started to say more but the line dropped. He said to Fagan as he took off his headset, “Well, Staff Sergeant, we’re not up on mutiny charges, but I don’t know how much your buddy the General is going to help us. He didn’t sound too thrilled about the whole idea.”

“Mutiny is for the squids and the jarheads,” Fagan said with a laugh. “Eastridge is a good man and
he’s straight forward. I’m sure he’ll do the right thing. If he was going to have us arrested or anything, he would have told us.”

“So what do we do about Hawkins?” Cage asked.

“From what Lieutenant Randal told you, he’s planning on sending a wave of Z’s through that little group of survivors they came across at the chicken processing plant to see if they can breach the fence,” Fagan said. “We can’t let that happen.”

“We could take
Hawkins out,” Cage proposed.

“And be executed?” Fagan asked. “No thanks. I didn’t make it this far to hang.”

After thinking about it for a minute, Cage said, “I have an idea. It won’t stop him but it might buy us some time.”

***

Doctor Hawkins ran his right hand lightly over the top of the black box lying on the table as his left adjusted a dial on its side. Considering Tesla’s theory, he quoted aloud, “Alpha waves in the human brain are between 6 and 8 hertz. The wave frequency of the human cavity resonates between 6 and 8 hertz. All biological systems operate in the same frequency range. The human brain’s alpha waves function in this range and the electronic resonance of the earth is between 6 and 8 hertz. Thus, our entire biological system – the brain and the earth itself – work on the same frequencies. If we can control that resonate system electronically, we can directly control the entire mental system of humankind.”

He twisted
the dial to seven hertz, “So I’ll just split the difference.”

Telling his assistant they were ready, he moved out of the
twenty-foot square, glass enclosed testing area. He watched with clinical interest as a woman was brought in and handcuffed around one of the table legs. She looked at him in wide-eyed fear but couldn’t voice her terror since she was gagged. She pulled her wrists and tried to twist them loose of the handcuffs that held her, but all she managed to do was make them bleed.

So much the better, Hawkins thought.

When his assistant had cleared the room and secured the door, Hawkins asked, “You made sure the table is secure, Jim? We don’t want another incident like last time when the test subject broke free and ran around.”

“Yes, doctor. It’s been reinforced.”

“And the device is secured to the table?” Hawkins asked.

“Yes, sir,” Jim answered.

“Good, good,” Hawkins said. “Then let’s begin. I’m going to power up and then you can let them in.”

Slowly twisting a dial on
the consol in front of him, Hawkins felt the hair on his body stand up by the field given off from the Malectron. Gazing through the shatterproof glass of the testing area, he could see that the woman felt it too as she shook herself.