The Zombie Chronicles - Book 3 - Deadly City (Apocalypse Infection Unleashed Series) (5 page)

Nick and I decided to go check out the house, thinking we might see him through a window. As I glanced up at the stars, a cool breeze blew over me, making me realize that at least some things in the world had not been tainted by all the nastiness going on, on the surface of our handicapped planet. I peered in through the lit windows but couldn’t see anything.

“
We’re gonna hafta invite ourselves in, little bro,” Nick said.

I let out a long breath to clear my head and calm my beating heart, then knocked on the big, wooden front door.

A man answered. He looked just like Tahoe, only younger and clean shaven. Up close, though, I knew it was him.

In an instant, Nick burst through the door, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. “Where’s our bag, you maggot?” he yelled.

I couldn’t believe we had found the dirt-bag, but I was happy for the break—glad to finally be making some progress. Clenching my fists, I took a deep breath.
Nick better move it, because nobody wants to pound that guy more than me!

A woman with blonde hair raced down the stairs. “What are you doing?” Lucy yelled. “Leave him alone!”

“
Lucy,” I said, “you’ve no idea who you’re married to.”

“
Wh-what’s going on?” she shouted at Tahoe, stuttering in confusion and occasionally moving her hand to her head to apply pressure to her aching temples. “Baby, do you know these guys?”

He shot her a look. “Yep. Dean and Nick.”

“
I met ‘em at the bar,” she said. “How do
you
know them?”

“
Go upstairs,” he barked. “I’ll handle this.”

“
But, babe, I—”

“
Do as I say!” he demanded.

Lucy inched toward me. “Please don’t hurt him,” she begged.

I still couldn’t believe she was married to him. Had we figured it out earlier, we would’ve already had the vials before Val escaped from the hotel room, but nobody in that town wanted to talk—except for the maid, who was eager to rat us out.

“
Sam’s harmless. Let him go,” Lucy pleaded. “Please!” she wailed, then grabbed her head again and nearly keeled over from the pain.

I rolled my eyes. He had cleaned up pretty good, with a fresh shave and haircut, but underneath all that, he was still the same little pilfering, lying weasel who’d sentenced Val to certain death with his greed. Trusting him had been our biggest mistake. “Harmless? The man tried to kill my sister!”

“
What? No!” she yelled. “My Sam would never do a thing like that. Tell them, baby.”

Tahoe dropped his gaze. “I told you to go upstairs,” he muttered, looking at the floor.

Lucy turned toward me, a mask of confusion washing over her face. “So this is the guy you were looking for all along?”

“
Yeah,” I said. “You said you hadn’t seen anyone matching his description.”

“
You mentioned a scruffy beard. My Sam doesn’t wear his hair all sloppy like that,” Lucy reasoned, defending herself and her husband.

“
I cleaned up before I got here,” Tahoe admitted. “I found a house to crash in for the night and shaved there.”

That explained why the tracker was still while we were having our sleepover in the gym, and it also explained why no one in the town knew of any man with a bushy beard, like the one we were describing. When he’d been with us, he’d had long hair and a thick mustache and beard, but clearly, the man wanted to look good for his homecoming, to impress his wife. Unfortunately, his blatant and selfish disregard for Val’s life and our wellbeing didn’t impress me much at all.

“
How did you find me anyway?” Tahoe said through clenched teeth.

“
If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” Nick said, not at all sounding as if he was joking.

Lucy spun toward me. “Wait…my husband is the guy you were planning to stay with?”

I shook my head. “Nope. Sorry about that little fib, but we’ve been trying to track down the slime-ball who snatched our bag of vials—the vials that might save my sister’s life.”

Lucy yanked Tahoe’s arm. “You
stole
those vials you showed me? Why?”

He let out a long breath. “You know why. I did it for
us
.”

That comment must’ve pissed Nick right off, because he slammed Tahoe back into the wall with a fierce
thud
.

“
Don’t hurt him!” Lucy yelled again. “Please!”

“
Don’t worry. We wouldn’t lower ourselves to the slime level your husband has. We don’t go around hurting people—even guilty ones who deserve it,” Nick said. “Just give us back our bag, and we’ll leave. It’s as simple as that.”

Tahoe was no match against my muscular, military-trained brother, and both he and Lucy knew it.

“
We’re history, as soon as your hubby gives back what he took from us, what’s rightfully ours,” I reiterated. I hated being part of any of it. I almost felt like a drug dealer breaking into somebody’s house to steal drugs. But, darn it, the world had changed, and we needed those vials badly—not to mention they were ours in the first place.

“
You have five seconds to tell us where the bag is,” Nick said, “or I’m gonna show you what big hands like mine can do to a scrawny neck like yours.”

Tahoe gasped, and Lucy screamed.
Hmm. Nick’s playing his role a little too well here. I might just have to take back Claire’s Academy Award and give it to my brother. The two of them can fight it out on the red carpet,
I mused, imagining that would be a sight to see—and probably something Nick wouldn’t have minded at all, since it was obvious he had a thing for Claire.

Nick didn’t mess around and began his countdown. “Five…four…three…two…” His face was red, anger boiling in his eyes. He held Tahoe up against the wall, choking him, and for a moment, in spite of his promise not to hurt anyone, I feared he just might kill him.

“
They’re in the closet!” Lucy yelled to spare her husband’s life. “Down in the basement.”

Nick released his tight grip on Tahoe’s throat.

Lucy turned toward her husband. “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice wavering.

Tahoe nodded and coughed. “But we…I…we
need
those vials,” he said between gasping breaths.

“
We only need one, and you have a vial at the lab, right?”

He nodded again.

“
Then give them back their bag,” Lucy said, fuming at his stubbornness. “What’s wrong with you?”

Nick motioned for me to go look for the bag.

As I turned, Lucy grabbed my arm, her eyes glaring. “You should’ve been upfront with me in the bar. I might’ve been able to help had I known the real reason for you being in Kingsville. I had no idea you were after the bag of vials.”

“
Yeah, well, next time I’ll casually slip that in. I mean, ‘Hey, have you seen our zombie virus vials?’ is a question so easily asked over a game of pool,” Nick said in a sarcastic tone.

“
Where’re the girls—Jackie, Claire, and Val?” Tahoe asked.

“
The girls are fine, but Val turned,” I said, trying to keep my temper from exploding. “And we lost her.” I yanked my arm from Lucy’s grip and ran down the stairs. My eyes scanned the empty, musty basement. A wooden door to the far left caught my attention. I flung the door open and saw something in the back corner. “There’s nothing down here but a metallic box!” I yelled.

“
You have to open it!” Lucy yelled down.

It hit me then why our tracker had stopped working: The concrete basement, along with the underground environment, was certainly capable of blocking the signal. I opened the metal box and sure enough, there was the long-lost bag of vials. Relief flooded through me. “It’s here!” I yelled, emotion pouring from my voice. I grabbed some rope from a nearby shelf, and hurried up the stairs, faster than I’d ever climbed stairs before, taking them two or three at a time. Unzipping the bag, I pulled one vial out and showed it to Nick.

My brother’s eyes lit up with hope. “We can save her!” he whispered.

I was working so hard to contain my emotions that I could only nod in reply.

“
Let me see one of those,” Nick said.

I handed him one, and he held it up to Tahoe’s face.

“
All you had to do was leave us one vial—just one so we could save our sister’s life.”

“
I did! I left it by the window, at the airport tower,” he said. “What kind of person do you take me for anyway? Do you think I’d leave Val out to dry like that? I saw what she was going through!”

“
You’re a liar. There was no vial there,” Nick said. “You have a nice life here with the kids and the missus. How would you like it if one of them became a zombie and I took the cure out of your hands? Could you watch them turn into a creature of the night, the way I had to watch Val change? I had to tie my freaking sister up and drug her and put a bag over her head, for goodness sake!”

“
He’s sorry,” Lucy said. “You got what you came for, so just go!”

“
We plan on it, and trust me when I say we’ve had enough of your small-town hospitality around here. But we have to make sure you don’t go trying to get help before we’re out of town,” I said, tying her hands behind her back. “I’m sorry, Lucy, but it has to be this way.”

“
Where’s the lab?” Nick demanded, pounding Tahoe into the wall again.

“
Two miles down, Tyler Road,” Lucy said. “It’s a big white building. You can’t miss it. But why are you going to the lab just to retrieve one little vial? You already have the entire bag. If you wanna live, you’d better just go!”

“
I think my sister’s being held prisoner there,” I said.

Tahoe cocked a brow. “What? You’re crazy!”

“
Yeah? Well, it takes one to know one, and I oughtta fit right in in this place then!” I shouted in uncharacteristic rage. “Just answer us one question before we leave. Why did you steal from us?” I still couldn’t fathom why anyone would do such a horrible thing, especially after we’d tried to help him.

“
Because…well, I just have my reasons,” he said, “and I don’t have to discuss them with you, of all people. It’s none of your business.”

Nick pinned him to the wall with an arm to his throat. “You well better tell my brother what he wants to know.”

“
I’m not…I-I…ain’t tellin’ you…nothin’!” Tahoe said in a strained voice, barely able to breathe from the pressure of Nick’s strong forearm.

Lucy broke into a fit of sobs. “Tell them, Sam! So help me God, if you don’t, I will.”

“
Please tell me,” I said softly.

She pointed next to me. “See the twins? Those are my daughters, Sandra and Jessica. They have blonde hair just like their mama. We did it for them—so we can be together again.”

I looked around but saw nothing. Lucy was obviously hallucinating about her dead daughters. The housekeeper had told us that Tahoe’s children had already died a year ago, back when the outbreak first happened. Sad as it was, I was frustrated with the whole lot of them. I was obviously not going to get any answers.

“
You have a beautiful life here in Kingsville,” Nick said, “so why were you out playing house with Earl in the woods?” He released the man’s throat so he could speak.

“
Earl was my uncle, crazy as anything. We drove to another state to pick up some surviving relatives and bring them back to Kingsville, but that zombie herd sidetracked us. We ended up way off course and fought to get back. When you met us, we were trying to rest for a few days. We were so tired of fighting, completely exhausted.”