Zombie D.O.A. Series Four: The Complete Series Four Read online

  She reached in and picked up one of the packs, cringing at the sticky feel of it, at the sight of the congealed black treacle trapped in the bottom of the sachet, the ochre-colored sludge floating near the top. Ruby hefted the bag in her hand and then pitched it at the closest Z, a one-eyed woman in a filthy, floral dress. The bag struck the woman in the chest and burst open, spattering her with its disgusting contents. The woman seemed barely to notice. She staggered on, now just fifteen feet away. Ruby directed the next bag at the ground. This time the contents exploded in front of the zombie, and as she stepped in the mess, her feet gave way under her. She came down hard, head slamming the ground with a sickening crunch.

  Ruby picked up a sachet in each hand and tossed them at the oncoming zombies, bowling underhand, aiming for their feet. She picked up another and pitched it, scoring a direct hit. The blockage at the door had resolved itself. More of the creatures lurched into the fray as Ruby continued her bombardment. Before long the room resembled a battlefield, gore-soaked zombies writhing on the floor, trying to get up, slipping and falling, again and again.

  “Dumb asses,” Ruby muttered under her breath. She tossed the sachet she was holding back into the fridge. It was time to get out of here. The stench of the place was making her eyes water. She picked out a path across the room, staying close to the wall, out of reach of their grasping hands. At the doorway, she paused and peered into the corridor. The path to her right was illuminated by a couple of flickering tubes, the left path extended into darkness.

  Ruby went left, running blind, following the twists and turns of a maddening labyrinth, snarls and snaps and loon-like cries peppering the darkness, hastening her along. She found herself eventually at a gate, standing slightly ajar, shards of brilliant light creeping in around the edges. She approached cautiously, placed a palm against the steel frame, coaxed the door outward. Her eyes took a minute to adjust. When they did she realized that she was standing in a prison yard.

  twelve

  “Let’s go over this again, Ferret. I want you to think real hard and make sure you’ve left nothing out that might be important.”

  Ferret looked back at him from the couch, Kelly beside her, holding her hand, her arm draped around Ferret’s shoulder. Ferret’s eyes were large and swollen from crying. Chris hated cross-questioning the kid like this. He knew how much Ferret loved Ruby, knew that she was taking this harder than any of them. But Ruby had been missing for over twenty-four hours and he wanted to get after her as soon as possible. When he did, he needed his search to be focused. The boroughs outside of Manhattan were still dangerous territory, and that was where Ferret said Ruby had gone.

  “Did she say where she was going exactly? Queens? The Bronx? Brooklyn?”

  Ferret shook her head. “She didn’t say. All she said was that she was going for a workout.”

  “You mean a fight.”

  Ferret nodded. “She said she had to go to Queens or Brooklyn because cage fighting wasn’t allowed in Manhattan any more.”

  “Wait a minute,” Chris said. “She said Queens or Brooklyn, she didn’t mention the Bronx?”

  “Queens or Brooklyn,” Ferret confirmed.

  “You’re sure?”

  Ferret nodded earnestly.

  “That at least narrows it down,” Joe said from the doorway. Chris had been so focused on Ferret he hadn’t even heard Joe arrive. “Ana has people in Queens,” Joe continued, “so we can get them looking there. That leaves you and me to cover Brooklyn.”

  “Still a lot of ground.”

  “True. But we can disregard anything east of Flatbush. The barricades running along Pennsylvania Avenue pretty much mark the edge of civilization as we know it, Z Central beyond that.”

  What Joe said was true, but it still left a sizeable grid for them to search, an area that was lawless and wild, with different gangs and factions all fighting for turf and survival, and with little love of anyone from Manhattan. And there were Z’s too, despite the barricades.

  “Let’s pull Hooley in,” Chris said. “The more bodies we’ve got on the ground the better.”

  “What about Dave?” Kelly said. “Couldn’t he help?”

  Chris thought about that for a while. Dave Bamber and his former Corporation troopers would, of course, be a great help. But they worked for the city now. Their primary responsibility was guarding the access points and maintaining law and order. He couldn’t pull them away for what was essentially a personal matter. Besides, he was probably overreacting to this. Ruby was probably fine. More than likely, she was off somewhere running through her endless sword drills. Except he knew that wasn’t the case. Ruby liked to work out in the northeast corner of Central Park, near Harlem Meer. He’d already sent Charlie and Jojo up there with Luigi. Ruby hadn’t been there.

  “Joe?” Chris said. “You want to have a word with Ana, ask her to get her guys asking around? I’ll round Hooley up. Let’s meet back here in, shall we say, ten?”

  “Done,” Joe said, already walking from the room.

  Chris turned back towards Ferret, there was something else he wanted to ask her, something that was niggling at him.

  “Did Ruby ever say why she was doing this, Ferret?” Chris asked.

  “She said it was to keep her fighting skills sharp. She said that all she was trained for was killing Z’s and that sooner or later there was going to be another fight with the Corporation and she wanted to be ready.”

  Chris mulled over that answer. Difficult though it was for him to accept that his daughter had been putting her life in danger getting into cage fights with Z’s, it seemed viable, seemed like something Ruby might say.

  “I don’t think that’s the real reason, though,” Ferret said.

  “Oh?”

  “I think she’s doing it because she wants to be like you.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Chris said.

  “She wants to be a fighter, like her dad.”

  thirteen

  Ruby stepped through into the prison yard and heard the door close behind her. She was standing in a small enclosure, a holding area that led onto a much larger space, all of it behind twenty-foot high chain link fencing, electrified, she realized by the low hum it emitted. She knew right away what this was, this was Scolfield’s fighting cage, the one Chez Burns had told her about. Was this why he’d brought her here, to throw her into the arena? If it was, she was in deep trouble, barefoot and dressed in wafer-thin scrubs and with the numbness still not fully exorcised from her leg.

  She took in the lay of the land beyond the fence. The prison yard was maybe a hundred yards by eighty with a dirt floor and high, redbrick walls. There was a massive steel gate set into the wall to her right, a couple of guard towers, a steel walkway running along the top of the wall. None of these areas appeared to be manned.

  The façade of the prison was L-shaped, standing at back and left of her. She turned towards it and angled her gaze skyward. There were three floors, the first, featureless except for a large bay window with diamond-shaped panes. One floor up and there was a row of barred windows that extended around the L. The third floor followed a similar configuration. She ran her gaze down again and thought she caught movement at the bay window.

  “Plllleeaaasse!”

  The sound shattered the silence of the prison yard like a sledgehammer being applied to a piece of fine china. Ruby wrenched her head left and picked up three doors, all of them opening into a second enclosure, slightly larger than the one she was in.

  One of those doors now flew open and a couple of burly guards manhandled a man through in and into the enclosure.

  “Plllleeaaasse! Don’t do this! Plllleeaaasse! No! No!”

  Ruby heard a rustle, a shifting of feet, above and behind her. She turned towards the cellblock, looked up at the second and third floor windows and saw that every space was now occupied, blank faces looking down into the yard below. She sensed movement at the bay window again and this time picked out a man standing a
few feet back from the glass, his hands folded behind his back, the sun glinting off his wire-framed spectacles - Scolfield.

  “Plllleeaaasse!”

  The cry brought her attention back to the yard, where the guards had just thrown the man from the enclosure into the main arena. The man was big and bald with a goatee beard. He was stripped to the waist, showing off his well-muscled and copiously tattooed torso. He looked desperately around the yard and then seemed to find what he was looking for at the window where Scolfield stood.

  “Please, sir,” he said. “I beg you. It will never happen again. As God is my witness, it will never, ever happen again.”

  A faint bellow reverberated from somewhere within the prison building. To Ruby it sounded like the plaintive lowing of a bull. Now another of the steel doors rolled open and she picked up a scent, the smell of an abattoir in which the carcasses have been left to rot.

  The man in the arena cast a fearful glance towards the gaping black hole of the doorway. He fell to his knees, bringing up his hands like a child at prayer. “Please sir, I beg you,” he sobbed. A puddle formed around him as his bladder released. “I beg you, I beg you, I beg you.” He rocked to and fro like a penitent, each repetition becoming more and more desperate.

  Ruby wasn’t sure what the man had done or was supposed to have done. What she did know was that this man was about to die, that he knew the manner of his death, and that it was something so horrendous that it was literally driving him insane with fear. This wasn’t right.

  “Stop this,” she whispered under her breath. Then louder, “Stop this.” Then screaming in the direction of Scolfield, “Stop this!”

  If Scolfield heard he paid no heed, simply held his position, standing impassively, waiting.

  The man in the arena heard her, though. He swung his head desperately in her direction, staggered to his feet, headed towards her at a shambling run. For a moment Ruby thought he was going to run directly into the fence, but the man stopped short, regarded her with crazed eyes.

  “Please miss,” he said. “Speak to him, tell him I’m sorry. Tell him it will never happen again. Tell him I’m sorry!” He crumbled to the floor as though every bone in his body had suddenly been turned to crazy putty, sat there in the dirt sobbing like a jilted lover.

  Ruby looked from the man to where Scolfield still stood at the window. Only Scolfield wasn’t looking straight ahead anymore. His attention was directed towards the darkened expanse of the doorway. Ruby followed his gaze and saw the thing that was standing there.

  fourteen

  Marcus Pendragon looked over the expansive oak acreage of his desk at the worried man facing him. Actually, scrap that, Tal Boyce wasn’t worried, he was frantic, his face ashen, hands curled into tight balls, body quivering. It was his voice, though, that amused Marcus the most. Tal Boyce, the former English professor, who usually addressed everyone as though delivering a Shakespeare soliloquy, was squealing like a kid with a skinned knee.

  “You can’t do this Marcus. You can’t!”

  “Already done,” Marcus said, speaking as though he was having difficulty suppressing a yawn. “Joe Thursday poses a threat to the Corporation. Action is called for. Action shall be taken.”

  He smirked at Boyce, sat back in his chair, folded his hands across his midriff in a manner he’d often seen his late Uncle Knox do.

  “But what threat does Joe Thursday pose, exactly? He’s on the other side of the country, with neither the means nor the motivation to hurt us in any way.”

  “Neither the means nor the motivation now, perhaps. But whose to say he’s not just biding his time, gathering his forces out on the east coast, getting ready to strike at us.”

  “Joe would never do that,” Boyce said emphatically.

  “So you say. As chairman of the board I can’t take that risk.” He reached for the handset, spoke into it. “Send in Mr. Grant.”

  “Grant?” Boyce blustered. “What the hell has he got to do with this?”

  Marcus ignored him, focused his attention on the door, just now opening to admit Avery Grant. Marcus cared for the smug grin Grant was wearing, about as much as he cared for Boyce’s pitiable sense of self-entitlement. The man was a snake, a rattler in human form. Still, politics at times necessitated syphilitic bed partners. His uncle Knox had told him that.

  “Avery,” Marcus said.

  “Marcus, Tal,” Grant returned cheerfully. He crossed the room and slumped into a chair.

  “I’ve invited Avery here to bring us up to speed on arrangements for our little east coast adventure,” Marcus explained to Boyce. Boyce’s gape-mouthed response was a joy to behold.

  “What’s our status?” Marcus said turning his attention towards Grant. He enjoyed using that term.

  “Moving along,” Grant said. “I’ll have Justine on the ground tomorrow. Soon as we get her first report, we’ll have a better idea of the kind of troop numbers we need. Paterson, New Jersey, looks good as a staging area, but we might be able to get in even closer than that. A piece of interesting intelligence has just come into my possession. It seems –”

  “Now I really must protest!” Boyce cut in. “Staging areas? Troop numbers? Sounds like you’re planning a full-scale military operation. Do we really have the resources to send a force clear across the country, using up valuable diesel and ammunition on some fool’s errand, leaving our defenses exposed back here in Pendleton? Really Marcus, I must ask you to reconsider.”

  “We won’t be sending troops,” Grant smirked. “Other than command and logistics. We can use –”

  Marcus cut him off. “I don’t believe Tal needs to know the specifics. You were saying? An interesting piece of intelligence?”

  “Ah yes,” Grant said, clearly pleased with himself. “One of my associates out east, feller by the name of Marin Scolfield, got in touch. He’s running some kind of half-assed fight club out in Hackensack, New Jersey and he’s been –”

  “Scolfield?” Boyce cut in again. “The Resurrection Man? The Scolfield who used to run San Jose? The guy who tried to sell us on the idea that he could create some kind of super Z? Oh, now that’s just priceless. Scolfield’s insane, certifiably insane.”

  Marcus ignored this latest outburst. “Please continue, Avery.”

  “As I was saying, Scolfield runs some kind of zombie fighting show these days. Lately, he’s been tracking a particularly talented fighter, young… female…”

  “Ruby,” Marcus said.

  fifteen

  The creature was unlike anything Ruby had ever seen. A hulking monstrosity, its features blurred under layers of oozing yellow sores, the soft tissue of its lips eaten away to expose large, blunt incisors, its arms terminating in rough, club-like hands, armed with jagged claws.

  “Minerva!” a voice suddenly boomed, startling her. Ruby scanned for its source, found a pair of speakers bolted to the wall, high up.

  Another of the things stumbled out. This one had lost an arm, but looked no less formidable for it.

  “Juno!” the microphone voice announced, the word all but drowned out by the screams of the man on the arena floor.

  “Plllleeaaasse! Oh, God, Plllleeaaasse!” the man screamed. He backed away, looked desperately left and right and then turned and charged towards the fence.

  “Don’t!” Ruby shouted, but it was too late, the man was already airborne. He rattled into the wire, got a grip, clung there.

  Ruby threw up an arm to cover her eyes, braced herself for the jolt of electricity that would course through the man’s body. There was none. The fence was dead.

  For a moment Ruby was almost spellbound, almost unable to move. The power to the fence was down. She had a way out. She cast a quick look towards Scolfield and could see him gesticulating wildly, shouting into a handset.

  The man on the other side of the fence was scampering higher, climbing in desperate lunges. One of the creatures, the one-armed one, (Juno, Ruby thought its name was) trundled towards him, regarded him with it
s head cocked quizzically, a lizard regarding a fly. It reached, leapt, closed its fist around the man’s ankle.

  “No!” the man screamed. “Let – me – go!”

  He kicked out with his free leg, tried to squirm free. But the creature held firm, tighten its grip and yanked. A sound, like dry kindling being snapped, echoed off the walls.

  Aaaarrrggghhh!” the man screamed. “Jeeessssuss! Aaarrrrggggghhh!”

  Still he clung to the fence, even as Juno tried to shake him from it, even as the other creature closed in.

  The scenario had played out in a matter of seconds, but Ruby suddenly realized that she was wasting time. The fence was down. This was her chance, might be the only one she’d get. She had to move. But some instinct stopped her, told her to wait.

  Another of the creatures entered, this one larger than the other two, a seven-footer at least.

  “Quirinius!” the announcer trumpeted, the last two syllables overlaid by Scolfield’s voice screaming something in the background.

  Ruby heard a sputter that sounded like fat on a griddle. Energy surged through the wire, engulfing the man in a white-blue light that haloed around his body, ran down his leg and transferred to Juno. The creature released its grip and the man was wrenched free of the fence and catapulted across the arena like a daredevil being fired from a canon. He slammed to the floor, twitched a couple of times and then lay still. A slim wisp of smoke rose from his corpse.

  Ruby heard the grind of metal behind her. She turned and saw the prison gate begin to slide open, giving her a brief glimpse of the parking lot behind, a river beyond that. The gate slammed shut again.