Time of Death Book 2: Asylum (A Zombie Novel) (28 page)

The room began to spin and I had trouble
breathing. I was having a panic attack. "I think I need to sit
down," I said, clumsily handing Daphne off to Meg and stumbling to
the nearest antique chaise in the reception room. Jake rubbed my
back, encouraging me to relax in a soothing tone, while I hung my
head between my knees and hyperventilated.

"Okay," I said, still breathing heavily. "If
not rabies, then what? Government conspiracy? Meteorite? And what
qualifies this Mack to declare himself as president?"

"When the president and vice president fell,
along with the other cabinet members, the secretary of defense was
next in line for the presidency."

"Mack? Do you mean Jeb MacKenzie?" Jake
questioned Mark. I knew that name; the Republican was well known
and hated by many. More importantly, I was well aware of Jake's
very vocal abhorrence toward the man. My husband held him solely
responsible for the decisions that led to the many deaths of our
men and women in the armed forces. Most recently, a decision to
infiltrate a heavily populated area in the Middle East to remove
the leader of an insurgent group who had begun stockpiling weaponry
and threatened to defend their cause on US soil.

Vinny's platoon had been tasked with the
assignment but fate had changed the course of action, and he'd been
positioned elsewhere. The enemy combatant was decommissioned—Jake's
way of saying assassinated—but not before his cell captured,
tortured, and murdered the soldiers sent in to remove him. In my
opinion, Mack was a narrow-minded, self-inflated baboon. The fact
that he led Asylum with values from decades' past only reinforced
my opinion.

"The one and only," Mark confirmed.

It was my turn to stop Jake from saying
something we'd all regret, and I gave him a pleading look to bite
back whatever scathing remark he was itching to make.

"And the infection?" I prodded.

"Before things got completely out of hand,
the CDC released a statement negating their original assumption
that the infection was caused by the rabies virus. The outbreak
wasn't isolated to Florida. Actually, it's all pretty unbelievable
and science fiction if you ask me," said Mark.

I was beginning to lose my patience with his
lack of a straightforward answer. "Look, Mark, I'm both emotionally
and physically drained. I don't have the capacity to pussyfoot
around things right now. Could you please just lose the exposition
and tell us what's really going on?"

He narrowed his eyes at me, and I knew he
wanted to snap back, but his professional tour guide demeanor won
out and he collected himself before providing an answer to my,
admittedly very rude, question. "According to the CDC, there was a
drastic shift in the tectonic plates at the earth's crust, and they
moved apart in most of the major, and minor, locations at the
mantle. When this happened, an unidentified gas escaped and rose to
the surface. Anywhere humans came into contact with the gas they
died within a short period of time and came back. The symptoms were
in line with that of the rabies virus, so it was easy to label it
as such."

"I remember studying about that in science,"
said Meg. "The plates could potentially shift in three ways. When
rubbed together, earthquakes occur. If they push together, they
form mountains. And when they're pulled apart, trenches can form,
but also that's how volcanoes are formed."

"Obviously, we missed that bulletin. We were
hit by Hurricane Ike right around the same time the shift happened,
and we spent the first two months without electricity," I added.
"Did they say anything about working on a cure or vaccine?"

Michele opened her mouth to respond but was
cut off by Mark's rushed, "No."

She looked like she wanted to say more but
instead looked away and kept quiet.

Jake wasn't satisfied with Mark's curt
answer, knowing full well there was something they weren't sharing.
"When was the last time you received an update from the CDC?"

"News stations stopped broadcasting a week
into the outbreak. Phones went down shortly after as well. Mack was
in Florida touring army bases when it happened, and he began
setting up Asylum as a refugee camp," said Michele. "When DC fell,
and we lost contact, the CDCs Atlanta facility had already gone
dark. Mack had already put an evacuation plan into place for them
to relocate here if it got bad enough."

I caught Mark as he shot his wife a wide-eyed
look. Evidently, he hadn't wanted that information shared. Before
her loose lips clamped shut, I prodded her for more details. "Did
it get bad enough?"

Michele, oblivious to her husband's withering
stare, answered, "Oh yes. They showed up here in a helicopter on
the tenth day. Only six of them made it out of Atlanta.

"Okay," interrupted Mark. "What's say we
finish off that tour now before we miss dinner and find you three a
place to call home?"

Curses, foiled again, I thought, and followed
the annoyed man as he headed to the grand staircase leading his
wife by the arm. I winced in empathy at the grip he had on her.
Michele's arm dimpled in where his fingers pressed, and the skin
around went white from pressure.

Halfway up the stairs, Jake stopped. "Are
these detonation charges?" He asked, fingering a cluster of wires
at the landing where the two sets of stairs came together.

"Don't touch those!" shouted Mark, causing
the busy room below to fall into silence. His chest heaved and he
put his hands out in front of him, bouncing them in the air like he
was talking a jumper off the ledge. "They're live. In case the
unthinkable happens and we're forced to retreat to higher ground,
we can blow the stairs. There's two other sets of stairs leading up
from the main floor, and they both have similar charges."

"And whose finger is on the trigger?" I
asked, expecting his answer to be our illustrious new
president.

"No one," he said. "Anyone."

"Make up your mind," said Meg, finally
exasperated. "Is it no one or anyone?"

Mark continued to the second floor, stopping
once we'd all joined him on the marble floor. He pointed to a
rudimentary detonator taped to the nearest wall. That button, if
pressed, will blow all three sets."

"And won't that just leave everyone stranded
up here to starve?" I asked.

"Not for a long time," replied Michele.
"We've created a secondary food depot in one of the maid's quarters
and were lucky enough to find a water truck, so there's another
room packed full of bottled water. It's warm, but it'll keep us
going nonetheless if we have to spend any great length of time up
here."

I had to admit, it sounded like they'd
thought everything through.

Meg tilted her head to the side, deep in
thought. "With all the access to the ground floor collapsed, how
will we get back down?"

"We have ladders stacked on the master
bedroom's balcony. They'll reach the main floor from all the upper
floor landings."

The left wing of the second floor was
comprised of eight maid's bedrooms each with their own three-piece
bathrooms. The right wing had four guest suites, each with their
own full bathroom, sitting area, and walk-in closet large enough to
be used as an additional room with a full size bed. With each new
room we entered, I counted the number of people they accommodated,
and before even reaching the two—that's right two— master bedrooms,
I'd tallied fifty-six potential people. Each of the eight maid's
quarters contained two twin beds, the guest suites had enough beds
to sleep eight comfortably, and the four enormous closets could
sleep two.

Between the two masters, their sitting areas,
and their closets, I counted another fifty available sleeping
areas. One-hundred and six people could sleep, very comfortably I
might add, on the second floor alone. That didn't even take into
consideration the ample floor space in the rooms or common areas on
the floor that could likely sleep double that amount.

Nestled into the back corner was a door,
currently closed. "What's this room?"

"That used to be the man of the house's
office. Now it's Mack's room," Michele answered, either not
noticing or choosing to ignore the scowl Jake wore at the mention
of Mack. She opened the nearby doors, using a key that dangled
around her neck, to show the rooms where the food and water were
located. With this many people, it made sense to keep those areas
locked up tight. If shit went bad, it would be a fatal blow to find
people had been getting the midnight munchies and depleting the
stores.

"The third and fourth floors are pretty much
the same. There are ten more guest suites on the third floor and
eight on the fourth," Mark informed us.

I did some quick math in my head, and assumed
the size of the rooms were similar to what we'd already seen. "That
means three-hundred and eighty-six people can sleep here
comfortably then?" I asked, wanting confirmation. Math was never my
best subject.

"I think you carried an extra one there,
champ," my husband busted on me. "Two-hundred and eighty-six by my
math."

"Oh, yeah, that makes more sense," I replied,
a little embarrassed at the dumb miscalculation. I looked up and to
the side and gave a little whistle as if to say, nothing to see
here, folks. Nope, no idiot over here.

He leaned into Meg conspiratorially and stage
whispered, "If she ever calculates a medication dose for you, ask
to see the scratch paper."

I slapped him on the arm. "Dick!"

"I take it we'll be sleeping on the third
floor?" Meg asked our guides, who still wore a smile from Jake's
ribbing.

"Actually," divulged Michele, "people are
pretty spread out. It's hard to find any privacy with so many
people, so we usually let newcomers pick their beds. Our only rule
is that closets be claimed by couples." Her face fell, and she
looked sad. "We get so few arrivals with intact families nowadays,
so there's quite a few open."

"Any suggestions?" Jake asked her.

"Actually, yes. One of the guest rooms on the
fourth floor only has one person at the moment. Perhaps you and
Emma would like to share the closet and Meg can stay in one of the
beds in the same room."

I leaned over the banister and looked down at
the main floor below, then peered up to the floors above. My legs
were going to get a workout from climbing, but the thought of
having a space to ourselves made the future muscle burn worth
it.

Ever the protector, Jake questioned the sex
of the room's sole resident. "I'm not keen on putting Meg alone
with a man; would the other person by chance be female?"

"Yes," she answered. "Refresh my memory. How
old are you again, Meg?"

"Twenty-one."

"It should work out fabulously. Jahayra is
right around your age. Nineteen, I think."

Meg perked up at the news that she would have
someone her own age to hang out with for a change. Fuck, I'd never
felt older than I did at that very moment.

We were all breathing heavy by the time we
made it to the fourth floor. Sweat beaded on my forehead, and I
felt a drop trickle down the small of my back. I'd shifted Daphne
between arms a few times and her body heat against my own
perspiring skin left her hair damp and matted.

Panting, I leaned on the railing and pointed
a stern finger at Jake, waving it as I spoke. "I don't want to hear
a single complaint from you. If she has to pee in the middle of the
night, you're taking turns with me."

"Fuck that," he said, the words coming out
broken as he laughed.

"You suck," I spat back at him.

Meg giggled at our bickering. "Where on earth
did you find so many mattresses?"

Looking closer, I noticed only half of the
beds were on frames. Most of the twin-sized mattresses lay flush
with the floor.

"It took quite a bit of time to get
everything arranged in the most efficient way." Michele paused a
moment, recalling the project. "Probably close to a month, and
during that time one of the groups made trips to a nearby mattress
warehouse."

I nodded. "That was a lucky find,"

"Not really," answered Mark. "There's pretty
much everything we could ever need within a half-mile radius."

Jake stopped looking around and turned back
to Mark. "What about weapons and ammunition? How's your
supply?"

Mark shrugged, "I don't know," he answered
honestly. "Most of that stuff is stored in the basement, and pretty
much all the men are always armed."

I honed in on his statement like he'd just
lit a beacon. "The basement? I thought Florida homes didn't have
basements?"

"Newer homes don't, but this mansion is over
a hundred years old. It's got a basement that spans the entire
length of the footprint." His face paled slightly, and he pursed
his lips together knowing he'd said too much.

Once again, my husband didn't miss a beat.
"Is the basement on the tour?"

Mark shook his head, "No, the basement is
off-limits. The only people permitted to enter are the
council."

I felt my brows furrow at his statement. I
didn't like secrets, but I guess if Asylum was the last bastion of
governmental structure, it would make sense to have an oval office
of sorts.

Michele took over the conclusion of our tour.
The third floor was much quieter than the lower levels, and only a
few people passed by. I had to hand it to Asylum, the people had
been friendly thus far, giving us nods of hello and welcoming us
with warm greetings.

"This," said Michele, sweeping her hand
around the room as we entered, "is your room. Jahayra is likely
down helping get dinner finished, but I'll introduce you to her
after dinner," she told Meg. "There's fresh linens on every bed and
clean towels in the bathroom. Laundry is centralized, and we ask
that towels and sheets be cleaned no more than once per week, and
no less than every two weeks. With so many people, it's a concerted
effort to maintain cleanliness so we don't end up with bedbugs and
rodents."