Time of Death Book 2: Asylum (A Zombie Novel) (31 page)

"Is Mack really the president?" I asked.

"Assuming the elected president, vice
president, and others before him in the line of succession are
dead, yes. The secretary of defense is sixth in line to the
presidency."

"That's a pretty big assumption," she
declared. "Has anyone provided empirical evidence that they are
actually dead and not just hiding, or cut off like the rest of
us?"

"Nope," he replied.

I grabbed the bull by the horns and went for
it. "So what's really going on here? Outside of the apparent
dictatorship, I mean."

Tom cut his eyes to me. "Like what?"

"I don't know, but something doesn't feel
right." I saw the officer's posture stiffen slightly. Boss felt it,
too, and raised his head. I'd pushed too much and needed to find a
way to back pedal. I knew I'd found a potential ally, but I didn't
want to scare him off. I hoped Tom wasn't as good a cop as I
thought he was, and decided to try another tactic.

"A man helped us get here, Striker. He
wouldn't give us any details, but his message was pretty clear, and
he warned us off Asylum." I held my breath, waiting for him to
either sniff out the bullshit or buy it. It's not like it wasn't
true.

His expression changed, and he looked
interested. "I know Striker. How is he holding up?"

"I don't know what he was like before it
happened, but he's pretty closed off and robotic. He's just going
through the motions. It's sad and infuriating all at the same
time," I confided.

"So he told you what happened?" Tom looked
surprised.

"Yeah," I replied, hoping he wouldn't ask me
anymore questions. I was talking about the outbreak, but it was
clear that Tom had been referring to something else. Something that
would have made Striker leave and not want to have anything to do
with Asylum. I held my breath and waited for him to slip up.

"Man, I still feel horrible for that guy. He
got a raw deal." Tom shook his head at the memory.

Come on, I willed him silently to give me
more. Spill it!

Boss' head snapped up and he growled, low and
menacing. Instantly, Tom was on his feet, his weapon drawn.

"Sook," Tom commanded the dog. I understood,
from years of hearing my father give commands in German, that he
was telling the dog to find something. Boss took off at a sprint
with Tom following behind.

I looked at Meg and shrugged. She returned
the gesture, and we ran to catch up to the dynamic duo. We stopped
near the wall. I hadn't noticed on our earlier tour, but the stone
wall was shorter by the water's edge. Instead of a five-foot
barrier of impenetrable stone, it was only about three-feet high,
topped with razor wire. A zombie struggled in the wire, caught up
when it fell over the wall in an attempt to breach the sanctity of
Asylum's fortification.

Boss hovered at a safe distance, growling at
the undead and pacing back and forth. Tom reached him and patted
him on the head.

"Good dog," he praised. "Sitz!" Instantly,
the dog sat on his master's command, but remained alert. His
muscles were tightly coiled, ready to launch himself between Tom
and the zombie should he feel threatened.

In a fluid motion, Tom stalked to the
struggling corpse and unsheathed a long blade. Without pause, he
plunged the blade into the soft tissue at the base of its neck and
drove it upward until the hilt stopped its progression. The zombie
fell limp as soon as the blade perforated its brain stem. Like
someone had cut the power on an electrical panel, the nerves
stopped firing and it was twice-dead.

I scanned the area beyond the wall and found
it empty. Boss, too, relaxed, satisfied that the threat had been
neutralized.

"Oh, poor baby," I heard Meg coo behind me,
followed a moment later by the labored panting of my dog. Her
little legs made it impossible to keep up, and she tired much
faster from the exertion. Meg showed mercy on poor little Daphne
and picked her up so she didn't have to make the journey back on
her own. She was pooped.

The moment was lost. There was no way to
reopen the conversation without it feeling forced, so I set it
aside and we just chatted for a bit. All the while, I searched
every movement for Jake. Not knowing where he'd disappeared to
bothered me, and the more time that passed, the more urgency I felt
to locate him.

I got up to leave when the clock chimed,
signaling my appointment with a career counselor, and said goodbye
to Tom.

"Hey, Tom?" I added before walking back to
the house.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think you could help me with Daphne a
bit? She's a good dog, but she's stubborn, and her lack of
obedience has gotten us into some hot water."

"Sure," he said. "No problem. We'll come up
with a plan over breakfast tomorrow."

"Thanks!"

* * *

Meg and I entered the reception hall as the
seventh chime of the clock rang out. Jake was seated on a sofa and
looked up at hearing my boots echo on the parquet flooring.

"Where have you been?" I asked.

"Out."

His snippy, one-word reply instantly raised
my hackles again, and my anger and frustration returned. I
swallowed my bitchy retort when someone else joined us in the room.
The woman from dinner, the one who sat by Mack's side and wore the
frilly blouse and skirt suit, pulled up a chair and motioned for us
to sit.

"Hey, y'all," she greeted us in a thick, and
most likely forced, southern accent. "My name's Jocinda, assistant
to the secretary." She drew out the latter half of her name and put
an annoying twang into it.

The tart, yes she was most definitely a tart,
tucked an imaginary piece of hair behind her ear and looked at us
expectantly. I returned her look, waiting for her to continue. She
was also waiting for something, though I had no idea what it was.
Her brightly-polished nails tapped away at a clipboard resting on
her lap.

Jocinda looked to be in her late-twenties,
maybe early-thirties, but I doubted it. Her bleached blond hair was
done up in a bun so tight that it pulled the corner of her eyes up,
giving her a feline appearance. She sat at the very edge of her
seat with her back straight, like a proper lady. However, she wore
too much makeup, which dispelled any misconceptions that she was a
proper anything. Her cream silk blouse was pulled taught against
her ample chest, and I'd put money on those perky boobies being
bought and paid for by our illustrious president.

"And you are?" she finally prompted us. Ah,
that was it, she wanted us to be civilized people and be socially
acceptable. Boy did she have another thing coming.

Jake introduced himself first, and then he
gestured to Meg and me, giving Jocinda our names. I wanted to puke
in my mouth at the way she fawned all over my husband. He was
eating every bit of it up, too, which pissed me off even more than
I already was.

Jocinda looked down at her clipboard, and I
saw that it was the form Michele had filled out during our initial
examination. "This is excellent!" She exclaimed. "Jake, we've got
just the job for you. How would you like to join our security
team?"

"Sure," he said, as if we didn't know that
was coming already. Military and medical professions were the
highest demanded professions. I was curious, though, to see how
Meg's degree in psych could be put to use.

The tart answered that question next. "Now,
Meg, I'm sorry, but we don't have anything that matches your skill
set. The only thing I've got for you is kitchen or cleanup. Both of
those are highly important positions, considering the number of
people we cater to here at Asylum. Do you have a preference?"

Meg didn't look pleased at being relegated to
servitude, but she didn't suffer from the same antagonistic
personality issues that I did. She thought about it, and finally
decided, "I think I'd prefer cleanup."

"Good for you," Jocinda praised in a
patronizing tone.

"Okay, Emily, let's see what we've got for
you."

"It's Emma," I snapped.

"Oh, goodness, how rude of me. You're
absolutely right; it says Emma right here." She tapped her hot-pink
talon down on the clipboard again, and I rolled my eyes, waiting
for her to point me in the direction of the medical staff.

"It looks like I can offer you the same
options as Meg," she said.

"Huh?" My mouth hung open in confusion.
"There must be a mistake. I'm a registered nurse." Okay, so it was
a little fib. I didn't technically have a nursing license, so I
wasn't registered, but close enough.

"Yup, I see that. So which would you
prefer?"

"Uh, nursing, please," I replied. What was
this chick's malfunction? Had all the blond hair dye seeped into
her brain?

"Yeah," she said, "I'm sorry, sweetie. We
just don't have anything available in the medical team. But I'll
definitely keep you in mind should anything open up. Should I put
you down for cleanup then?" Her pen was poised over the clipboard
awaiting my answer.

"Fine, whatever." Asylum officially sucked
ass. "Are we done?"

"Almost," she replied. "Dr. Chen just needs
to administer a tetanus shot to Meg, and then we'll be all
set."

At the mention of his name, Dr. Chen strode
into the room with a syringe in hand. He drew the liquid from the
vial and, without a word, swabbed Meg's upper arm and jabbed her
with the needle.

"Now, we're done." And with that, she left
the room with Dr. Chen in tow.

* * *

More than anything else, I wanted to scream
at the top of my lungs. I held back my outburst because, once
again, we were in a place with zero privacy, and I didn't want to
look like a crazy woman. I stalked into the kitchen with Daphne
under one arm and grabbed a cereal bowl from the recently washed
stack of dishes, then clomped loudly up the stairs. I ran out of
steam at the first landing and had to drag my tired body up the
remaining floors before getting to our bedroom; a closet.

Before getting comfortable, I filled the bowl
with tap water and set it beside my bed for Daphne. Resting my head
in my hands, I heard her lapping at the water greedily until she
let out a belch. I was so mad that I couldn't even muster a
chuckle, and instead robotically refilled the bowl and set it back
down after closing the door to the closet.

I heard the mumble of voices as Meg and Jake
walked into the bedroom. Just the sound of his voice was enough to
raise my blood pressure. Not only was I still infuriated with him
over our earlier fight, but I was unreasonably jealous and pissed
that he was awarded a job appropriate for his skills while I was
relegated to mopping and dusting.

When the door to the closet opened I was
armed and ready, and Jake got a face full of pillow. I was not in
the mood to share a confined space with him.

"What the—" he responded as the pillow hit
him right in the kisser.

"Fuck off!" I snapped, and pulled the door
shut again. "Find another room!" I shouted through the wood.

"Fine!"

I did a belly flop onto the bed and kicked at
the mattress with my feet. Finding the other pillow, I shoved my
face into it and screamed until my voice was hoarse. When the
tantrum passed, I rolled over and grunted. Daphne jumped up onto
the bed and crawled her way to my face and just stared at me.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it. I'm a head case,"

She cocked her head to one side and just
looked at me with her little grape eyes.

"How would you feel?" I asked the dog, who
responded by swiping at her face with one paw and covering her
eyes.

"I know. Right?" In my head, she was
completely agreeing with me. Jake was an asshole, Asylum sucked,
and Jake was still an asshole. My dog totally had my back.

"Come here." I put my hands out and she
climbed up onto my chest and rested her head below my chin. I
breathed in her scent, relaxing, and my eyes grew heavy as I stared
at the rainbows reflected in the crystal chandelier over my
head.

Chapter 20: It's in the
Rules

"Emma!" I heard Jasper bellow out
enthusiastically.

I had been hanging damp sheets over the
clothesline in a grassy area on the quiet side of the mansion all
morning. Tom graciously took Daphne off my hands and was hopefully
working his magic on her. Every once in a while I snuck around to
the back courtyard to make sure she was okay. My worries were
without merit, of course, and Tom, Boss, and Daphne were perfectly
safe.

Jasper was like a talisman; whenever I was
around him, the stress of life melted away and was replaced with a
feeling of contentment. I waved to him as he jogged across the
lawn. His size made him slow, and it reminded me of a Chris Farley
Baywatch parody; the beginning scene where the girl runs on the
beach in slow motion. Except instead of bouncing boobs, Jasper's
big belly jiggled. I couldn't help but smile.

"What's up, buttercup?" I greeted him.

He giggled at the colloquialism and bent to
catch his breath.

"Easy there, big guy, you don't want to run
out of juice this early in the day," I tousled his hair and
immediately remembered Striker doing the same the last time I saw
him.

Jasper's face went stricken and he paled. "We
ran out of juice? Oh, geez, I hope it's not the red stuff. I love
the red stuff."

Laughing, I tried to explain the term to him.
"Not that kind of juice, cutie. I meant you needed to save your
energy."

"Oh, okay. You scared me. I don't know what I
would do if there was no more juice. You're funny, Emma. I like
you." He looked relieved that the juice situation was under
control. For a brief moment I marveled at the slow man. What would
life be like if my biggest worry was the juice running out?