The Dead Series (Book 3): Dead Weight (26 page)

Looking at a power gauge, he saw it to be at an acceptable level. T
hen turning to his assistant he said, “Open it.”

Jim
pushed a button on the console and they both heard an audible click as a magnetic lock was released. On the far side of the room, a steel door burst open and the first of a dozen dead staggered into the room.

They
looked around as if in a daze for a moment before spotting the woman. Whining noisily when they saw food close at hand, they pushed each other out of the way as they made a beeline for her. With outstretched hands and saliva rolling down their chins, they were only feet away from where she cringed when they suddenly stopped as if they’d hit an invisible wall. Moaning as if in pain, they backed off and tried to move forward again, only to be repelled again by the field put out by the Malectron. They slowly circled the table as they reached out and clawed the air at what was keeping them away. The woman’s face was red as she tried to scream through her gag.

In an
excited voice, Hawkins said, “We’re getting excellent results, Jim. That’s one hundred percent of the dead being driven away. I’m going to turn up the power now. Make sure you take good notes.”

“Yes
, Doctor,” his assistant replied as he picked up a clipboard.

Slowly twisting another dial on the control board, Hawkins watched in triumph as the dead staggered
away and shrunk against the walls, moaning and thrashing about.

“It’s more powerful than I thought,” he said aloud.

Turning the dial the other way, he saw the dead quickly recover and move towards the woman. Slowly twisting it back and forth, he could see them alternately attracted and repelled. He noted that the test subject had passed out, but it didn’t matter. With the blood running down her arms from where she’d struggled against the handcuffs, the dead would be attracted to her if she were a lump of wood.

After five minutes of this,
during which the woman came to and passed out again when her eyes focused on the horrors around her, Doctor Hawkins said, “I would conclude that our test is a success.”

“Yes
, Doctor,” Jim said. “With the exception of the attraction factor and testing the remote unit, we’ve run the second generation Malectron through its paces.”

“We
definitely need to field test it,” Hawkins said thoughtfully. “In this kind of closed environment, we won’t know if the dead are attracted by the device or the food.”

He turned
away from the room where the woman had regained consciousness again and was screaming against her gag, and asked, “Is everything ready at the processing plant?”

Looking at his notes, Jim said, “Lieutenant Randal is set to
discover the survivors at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ve already put one of the devices in a backpack that will go with the supplies he’ll give them. There’s a slight hill a few hundred feet away from there where we can observe the experiment.”

“
Good job,” Hawkins said, then asked, “And the unit here at the base is still working?”

“No problems so far,” Jim answered. “As you know, it’s the first
generation, so it doesn’t throw off as much of a field as what you’ve built now, but it keeps most of them away.”

“Excellent,” Hawkins said before turning back to look into the test chamber. After a moment of thought, he asked, “
Do you think we should go ahead and do a trial here on the attraction value?”

After studying the dead as they circled the woman, Jim replied, “I don’t see why not.
It’s really not a long run for them, but we can judge the distance and speed they need to reach their target and compare it with the other data we have on how fast they move. It should give us an idea as to whether they’re attracted to the food or the Malectron. We can study their behavior after they’ve finished with their meal and see if they stay around or go looking for more food.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Doctor Hawkins said as he
twisted a dial and watched as the dead were pushed back against the walls. Flipping a switch, he then watched as they rushed in.

After calling in two of the guards to exterminate the dead when they were done, it took Jim an hour to clean up the mess.

***

It was noon when
Staff Sergeant Fagan drove through the gates of the compound with the last of the people from the processing plant. As he stopped in front of the tents that had been set up for refugees, he said to Cage, “Hawkins is just going to find more survivors holed up somewhere to run his experiments on, and next time, we might not be able get to them before he does.”

“I know,” Cage replied, “but at least this bought us some time. Lieutenant Randal is dragging his feet looking for more survivors
, and hopefully the Commandant will come through and find us someone who’s immune.”

He was about to get out of the truck when Fagan asked, “How do we know we don’t have someone around here who’s immune?”

Cage laughed and said, “The only way to know is to get bitten and live through it.”

Shuddering at the thought, Fagan shut off the engine.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Happy Hallow Insane Asylum:

Coming around a curve in the road, Tick-Tock studied the low wrought iron fence and the building beyond as he thought that it didn’t look like any nut house he’d ever seen. With its high gables and the huge pillars holding up its front porch, he thought it looked more like a Victorian mansion. Rectangular in shape, it was a two story, monolithic structure painted a bright white that gleamed in the sun. And while beautiful in design, he saw that the dead could easily overrun its fence if they showed up. The best thing he noticed about the building was that storm panels covered every opening on the first floor.

“Home, sweet home,” Grimm said from beside him.

“This is it?” Tick-Tock asked.

Grimm laughed and said, “You were expecting
stone walls with barbed wire at the top and guard towers?”

Nodding
at the fence, which only stood five feet high, he said, “I was hoping for a wall that was a little more secure.”

She pointed
to its gleaming surface, saying “I have a bug sprayer filled with cooking oil and we coat the fence every few days. It keeps the dead from climbing it. We’re off the main road, so we only get a few of them coming through here.” She touched her scythe and added, “And those I reap.”

As they reached the gate, two people came out of the house to greet them. In her early teens, the girl
wore a white dress over a blue paisley shirt while the boy was dressed in blue pants and a striped shirt. Both wore red fright wigs and had white makeup on their faces except their noses, which were painted bright red.

“
Who in the hell are they?” Tick-Tock asked.

Grimm laughed and said, “
Don’t you know? That’s raggedy Anne and Andy. Our motto here is: If the wind blows your dress up, stand where it feels best.”

Now it was Tick-Tock’s turn to laugh.

Judging by the fence, the house and its lack of prominent guard posts, he decided this was a low-security facility. He’d been slightly worried when Grimm told him it was an insane asylum, so he was relieved to find it was only a place where rich parents sent their slightly weird, adult children.

“We have to stop at the gate,” Grimm told him. “We can only go through one by one.”

“Why’s that?” Tick-Tock asked.

With a
small smile, Grimm said, “You’ll see.”

As they neared the entrance, Tick-Tock
noticed that the ground had been churned up. Asking Grimm about it, she told him, “My children have been through here twice in great numbers.”

“The dead?” Tick-Tock asked as he looked around as if expecting to be rushed by a hoard of them.

“The one and only,” Grimm answered. “Like I said, there are millions of them massed on the other side of town. They move through here all the time, but it’s always been smaller packs heading east. When they find they can’t get in, most move on. The rest I bring home. My biggest concern is that they’re merging now into one huge group and might come back this way.”

“And if that happens?” Tick-Tock asked.

“You’ll die,” Grimm said in a simple voice.

As they approached the gate, they turned onto a perimeter road and stopped, leaving the other vehicles lined up on the
main drive. Grimm yelled that everyone needed to get out of the vehicles and could only enter one at a time after being checked by Igor. She then pulled an MP5 machine gun from beneath the seat.

“I thought you used that?” Tick-Tock asked as he pointed to the scythe.

“Sometimes I reap from up close, sometimes I reap from afar,” she told him.

As
Grimm was getting out of the wagon, Steve approached her and asked, “What are we getting checked for?”

She gave
him the same answer she gave Tick-Tock, “You’ll see.”

“If it’s for weapons, we won’t give ours up,” he told her.

“Nor would I want or expect you to,” she answered.

He looked to Tick-Tock for some kind of explanation, but he only shook his head to let it go
as he jumped down from the wagon.

“What about the vehicles
?” Steve asked Grimm.

“We’ll bring them in later,” she told him. “First, Igor has to do
his security check.”

“Just go along with it,” Tick-Tock
told him as he rounded the back of the cart. “I think I know what’s going on.”

As Grimm went to join Igor at the gate
and explain how they had to enter, Steve asked his friend in a low voice, “What in the hell
is
going on?”

“
Igor’s looking for someone,” he answered. “Just watch.”

Igor took
off his cloak to reveal that he was armed with pistols in shoulder holsters and at both hips.  As he turned, Steve could see that he also had two at the small of his back in a double holster. After taking a moment to study the man - the boy - Steve corrected himself, since he couldn’t have been more than seventeen, he decided Igor wasn’t anyone to screw with. Muscular and built like a fireplug, the kid looked like he could bench press a bus. He decided that if Igor wanted to play some kind of game, it might be best to go along for now and keep him happy.

Grimm got everyone into a single file line as Igor went
to open gate. After undoing multiple locks and chains, he slipped inside and shut it again quickly. Reaching into a metal ammo box, he pulled out a can and opened the gate only wide enough to admit one person as he waved the first of them through. It was Sean, and as soon as he slipped through the narrow opening, Igor lifted the can and sprayed the air all around it. A mist of red paint filled the air for a few seconds before he slammed the gate and peered intently for a moment before waving the next person in to repeat his security procedure.

Steve and Tick-Tock
watched as Sean stopped him and said something in a stern voice. They were too far away to hear what it was, but Igor obviously took offense because he raised his can and sprayed it in Sean’s face. Sean dropped to the ground, and they could hear him as he wailed about being blinded. Raggedy Anne and Andy thought this was hilarious and flopped and flailed their arms and legs as they danced around him in a circle.

After
he and Steve were done laughing, Tick-Tock explained, “I’ve seen this kind of behavior before. Igor’s trying to tag the invisible man with spray paint to keep him out. Sean must have pissed him off, so he tagged him instead.”

Steve laughed as
he asked in wonder, “What in the hell have we gotten ourselves into now?”

“They’re harmless,” Tick-Tock told him. “Low grade
delusions and paranoia. I used to work at -.”

“Bellevue.” Steve finished for him. “I know, I read your personnel file
.” After a moment’s thought, he asked, “Any of it rub off on you?”

“I didn’t go
nuts,” he explained. “I’ve always been crazy. I just go normal from time to time.”

***

When everyone was through the gate and settled in the numerous rooms of the mansion, Grimm explained to Steve that they would have to wait for Igor to go to sleep before bringing in the vehicles or he would freak out that the gate was open. Her wagon would stay outside. Before settling into their room, Heather and Steve walked the perimeter to make sure it was secure. Grimm assured them that none of her children had ever made it over the fence, but they had to see it with their own eyes.

They were surprised to see that Grimm and the others
had managed to keep the huge rolling lawn leading up to the mansion cut. There were a few trees here and there, but none big enough to hide behind and no shrubbery. Beyond the fence, everything had grown wild until it reached the forest surrounding the asylum. This had been cut back at least one hundred yards in every direction.

Steve noted that
this would give them a good field of fire if anything showed up.