The Zombie Chronicles - Book 3 - Deadly City (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (14 page)

“
Well? Do we have a deal or not?” he snapped, holding out his hand.

I shook it. “Deal. Just get me, Nick, Lucas, and the girls out of here.”

“
Sure thing. Now where is it?”

I pondered the question.
What if this entire thing’s a setup, a farce? Boy, these guys might be insane, but they sure are clever! And to think, I almost fell for it.
He was trying to get me to talk, and after I told him everything about the tracker that could help us find the vials, thinking he was on our side, he’d scurry right over to the town mayor and flap his gums. Once they had the vials, I’d be as good as dead. I had no choice but to bluff him until Nick and Lucas were free, and I knew I’d have to put on my best poker face and play along until I could get away from him. “We’ll take you to it,” I said in the most sincere voice I could muster for the creep.

“
You better not be stringing me along, Dean!” Tahoe said.

I shot him a serious look, hoping he’d fall for it. “I’m not.”

Tahoe motioned me toward the hallway. I stepped around the detective, who was sprawled out on the floor, looking like somebody had cold-cocked him. We walked back to the cell, and Tahoe opened the steel door with a
click
.

“
Tahoe’s helping us,” I said. “Setup?” I whispered into Nick’s ear.

He nodded, getting the message loud and clear.

“
Where’s the cure?” Tahoe asked in a demanding tone.

“
You’ll have to drive us to the spot,” I said.

Tahoe motioned me toward the door. “Come on. We’ll take the patrol car.”

“
Let’s go get the girls first,” I said.

Tahoe shook his head. “No. We leave now, and we play by my rules. How else can I be sure you three won’t jump me?”

“
I don’t like it—not one bit,” I shouted. I was sure he was keeping them for collateral. “We can’t leave without them. We won’t.”

“
Of course not,” Nick said.

Lucas butted in. “We get the girls right now, or the deal’s off!”

Tahoe eyed him, but Lucas didn’t back down, and neither did Nick or I.

I stepped closer, meeting his gaze straight on. “We’re getting the girls, we’re getting back our vials, and we’re getting the heck outta here and never coming back! Got it?”

“
Listen,” Lucas said. “You cooperate, and you’ll get one vial that’ll heal over a hundred people. It only takes a tiny drop per person. You saw that for yourself.”

Nick crossed his arms. “I think this deal is more than fair.”

Tahoe crossed his arms over his chest and didn’t budge. “No deal…and the clock’s ticking.”

We were at a standstill. I glanced at Nick and nodded, both of us silently agreeing that we’d have to put off getting the girls. Getting Val, Claire, and Jackie back safely meant everything. We were sure if we left them, the crazy townspeople would take their revenge out on them. One way or another, now or later, we had to get them out. There was no way we were going to leave them behind.

Once we were all in his patrol car, we drove to Tahoe’s neighborhood and pulled into a gravel driveway that led to his house. I still didn’t trust the guy, and I was sure he was leading us into a trap.

“
What’s going on?” Nick asked, suspecting the same thing. “You want us to retrace our steps or something?”

Lucas sighed. “Whatever you’ve got planned, please hurry it up. The mayor, judge, sheriff, and all the others are gonna be hungry for a lynching when they come to.”

He nodded, then motioned for us to follow him. I hesitated only a moment, then walked behind him up the sidewalk. We were greeted by crazy Lucy.

“
I’m sorry,” she said, her long blonde hair blowing in the breeze. “I didn’t mean to come at you with a knife like that. My mind was cloudy from all the toxic water,” she said, her blue eyes looking sincere.

“
It’s okay,” I said, though part of me hated the idea of going back into the house with her. Apologies aside, the vision of her running toward me with a knife was still fresh in my mind.

Chapter 15

We walked in the living room, where Tahoe opened a locked cabinet and then threw each of us a rifle. “I brought you here so you’d trust me. If you really do have the cure, I need your complete trust. I know you think the mayor put me up to gaining your trust and this whole thing is a farce, a complete setup. I’m not stupid, and I suppose the second you get the chance, you’ll try to overpower me. “

I bit my lip hard. He’d read me like a book, because I was waiting for the perfect opportunity.

Tahoe gestured forward and took us into the kitchen. “Now don’t freak out,” he said, letting out a breath.

“
What’s going on?” I asked.

He led us to the other side of the house and out the back door. The moon was peeking out from behind the clouds, and a cool breeze rushed through my hair.
“This way,” he motioned.

I nudged Nick. “I don’t like this one bit.”

He nodded, holding the rifle tightly. “Let’s just see how it plays out.”

We continued down a path, through the vegetation, to a barn. He pounded on the chained doors.

Immediately, I heard heavy breathing, followed by hissing and moans. I didn’t need him to open the door for me to know what stood behind it.
I gasped.
They keep zombies in the back yard, like house pets or something?

“
Bet the mayor would be pissed you’re hiding some of his flesh-eating gladiators,” Lucas said.

“
Who are they?” Nick asked.

Lucy stepped forward and touched his arm. “My mother, father, and our twins are down there, along with twenty other relatives and some close friends.”

Wait…they’ve got zombies pinned up in the barn like livestock? More than twenty? Why would they even attempt to take care of so many?
It’s pure craziness. But as I thought about it, I was overcome with a feeling of shame. I felt hypocritical. I would have taken care of Val no matter what because she was my sister. Part of me understood Lucy’s actions.

“
What are you feeding them?” Lucas asked.

I looked at Lucas, my eyes widening in horror. My fingers tightened around the gun. I wondered if he was thinking what I was thinking.
Did they bring us here to be…food? No way! My heart raced. But why would he hand me a rifle? Maybe it’s not even loaded, just for show. Maybe the guns are just props to make us feel more comfortable.

“
Chickens,” Lucy said, “along with rabbits, squirrels, mice, and rats.”

I let out a tiny sigh of relief.
For a minute there, I thought…no, wait. I still don’t trust them. To stay alive, we can’t trust anyone but ourselves.

“
My gosh!” Lucas spun toward Tahoe. “You leave your wife by herself with these things? These brain-sucking monsters?”

“
I’ve been doing this by myself for months, ever since we lost Sam, er, uh, who you call Tahoe,” she said.

“
What if one escaped?” Nick asked.

“
She has a security system in place,” Tahoe said.

I was dumbfounded. “No! No security system is 100 percent safe.”

Lucy’s tough exterior cracked as a tear ran down her face. “They’re my friends, my family, my children! I’d do anything to protect them.”

Nick shook his head. “Lady, I don’t care who they were. Now they’re mindless, heartless, feeding-frenzied zombies, and they’d kill you without a second thought—without
any
thought, for that matter.”

Lucy gasped, and I pulled on his arm, signaling him to lay off. He had a tendency to be far too insensitive sometimes.

She let out a long sob. “If you can help us, I’ll be forever in your debt. I just want my babies back!”

I gripped her hands. “We’re gonna try. I promise.”

Lucy hugged me, and it felt sincere, like the desperate embrace of a heartbroken mother.

Nick shot Tahoe a look. “This is why you stole the formula? For your friends and relatives? Your kids?”

Tahoe nodded.

“
And that’s why you haven’t left the city yet,” I said. “You can’t leave
them
. Why didn’t you give them the formula when you had it?”

“
I didn’t know you were coming to take the bag. I never dreamt you’d find me, and I wanted to test the formula first. I couldn’t run the risk of killing my twins, friends, or family with an experimental serum, so I took one vial to a small lab my friend owns.”

“
If the sheriff knew they were alive, he’d send his little firing squad over,” Lucy said. “That, or he’d send them to the arena to fight the next group of so-called criminals.”

She handed me an eight-by-ten photo of their family, something she’d brought along to strengthen their case. It worked. I stared at the little girls with long, blonde hair and blue eyes like Lucy’s. They were adorable. The smiling faces of the children tore at my heart, especially the twins, who were on the other side of those barn doors at that very minute. They were the real victims of that horrible tragedy.

“
Please help us,” she pleaded. “If not for Sam, for me and my girls.”

“
We felt this exact same kind of emotion when Val turned,” Lucas said, “but we couldn’t help her because your husband ran away with our cure.”

Tahoe’s gaze darted from Nick to Lucas to me. “I swear to God I left you guys a vial for Val. Leaving it on the windowsill was stupid. I should’ve left it where you would’ve seen it for sure.”

“
Taking the bag was greedy,” I said. “Why didn’t you just take a vial or two and be done with it?”

“
Because you’re all just a bunch of kids. I was sure you had no idea what you held in your hands.” His eyes widened as he contemplated his thought. “You had a possible cure to save mankind. How could I just let you leave, knowing what you held?”

“
You’re an idiot!” Nick said, and I had to grab his arm to keep him from attacking Tahoe.

I swallowed the bile in my throat. Tahoe hadn’t any faith in us. He was sure we’d screw it up. He didn’t think the cure was safe in our hands. He didn’t feel any guilt or remorse. In his own warped thinking, twisted by the pain and desperation of losing his daughters, he took those vials from us in an attempt to save his family—and all of mankind. Truly, he had the best of intentions, but as the old saying goes, that was, in many ways, he’d paved a path to destruction.

“
I had plans for it,” Tahoe said. “If my friend tested it in the lab and it worked, I was going to deliver it to important government officials. You wouldn’t believe the connections my father has.”

“
Your heroic vigilante efforts almost cost my sister her life!” I yelled through the night.

Tears welled up in Tahoe’s eyes as he gripped Lucy’s hand tightly. “I’m sorry, but what’s done is done. I can’t go back and change things now. Trust me, I wish I could.”

Lucy met my gaze. “Everything went haywire, and Sam did things all wrong, but in the end, Val is alive and breathing. Now, I’d like to be able to say the same for my loved ones.”

I nodded. She was right: Everything had gotten quite complicated, but I did have my sister back. I could see the pain in Lucy’s eyes.
How can we deny her ever seeing her children again?
I hated Tahoe, but I wasn’t about to stand there and play God, dashing the hopes of a mother who just wanted to see her little girls happy and healthy again.

She gripped my hand. “You’re our only hope. Save our family, our friends, our children. Please, Dean. Please!”