The Zombie Theories (Book 3): Conversion Theory Read online

  “How did you find us?”

  “Tracked the group we were hunting by satellite since they left the Gulf. They ended up here.”

  “Who tracked us?”

  “I don’t know, all we got was orders handed down and we followed them.”

  I shook my head. “Douche.”

  It was time to get this show on the road. I had some other dickweeds to deal with if this one was telling the truth.

  I stood and looked around, weighing options.

  “You… you can’t leave me here like this. If one of them comes along, I’m helpless!”

  “Asshole, I care less about you than I do for an individually wrapped plastic spork from KF motherfucking C.”

  I whacked him in the side of the head with my handgun. He went down hard, but started doing this moaning thing, so I hit him again, and he went silent. This guy also had zip ties, and I put another two around his mouth with the piece of shirt stuck in there.

  I would have to be quick. The check in was probably every half hour, and I had inconveniently taken out the checker. I searched the Hummers and the Blackhawk for some night vision, but came up empty, so I skulked up on the main house. The front door was gone, but there was a guard sitting in one of the chairs on the farmer’s porch. We had just improved on all the defenses for the main house, so it was decidedly opportune that they were missing the door.

  I could hear some people inside talking about the radio and how to fix it. Someone must have either disabled it, or it was hit by stray weapons fire.

  I knew the porch boards creaked on the left side, so I had to come in from the right. I snuck up and over the side around the corner from him. Peeking around the corner, I could see that he was cleaning his nails with his knife. He was just a kid. Fuck.

  The MP5 was quieter than the Sig Sauer, so I trained the SMG on his head. I got to within about four feet of him before something gave me away. He looked up and right at me, dropped the knife, and put both hands on the hand-made, wooden chair.

  “Don’t,” I whispered.

  A sharp intake of breath could have meant a yell, so I put his brains on the side of Deek’s house. The boy couldn’t have been twenty yet.

  “The hell was that?” I heard from inside. “Moore, what was that?”

  Thing’s went to shit fast when an armed asshole came out on the porch. He looked left and I stitched a quick burst into his side. He smashed into the door frame, and I hurried inside, giving him one in the dome on the way past. The commotion didn’t go unnoticed, and three guys came into the great room from Darcy’s radio area. I blasted all three of them, but this time, I let go with a big burst. Shit broke as the rounds passed through the men or missed. It was too loud to ignore. Somebody must have heard.

  My superior mathematical skills told me that if the dude I shot in the feet wasn’t lying, there were five assholes left here, and at least six at the plane.

  I searched, but didn’t find them on the ground floor. What I did find was the word PRISON scrawled in black on both the ceiling in the kitchen, and the wall in the great room.

  I had been doing a little creeping, and some skulking, and now it was time for a bit of slinking. I might even tiptoe. I was standing on the top floor landing in under five seconds. The first room held no one, but the second had a guy sleeping in the top bunk and a guy sitting up and rubbing his eyes on the bottom. He saw me with my weapon and his eyes went wide. He put his hands up and I nodded for him to come to me. I zip tied him, wrists and ankles, then poked his pal in the back.

  “Fuck off,” he told me.

  I looked at his pal quizzically, and he shrugged, so I poked the sleeping guy again.

  He rolled over saying, “I told you to…” I put the barrel of the SMG right against his nose and his eyes crossed as he looked at it. I would have smiled if I wasn’t so pissed and scared.

  I trussed them both up to the bed, using the same trick I had with foot-guy from outside, but I left the mouth of one of them available. I was out of ties anyway.

  “I’ve accounted for two guards by the vehicles, two by the front door, three in the radio room, and the two of you,” I told them. “But I seem to be missing three.” They looked at each other. “Where are they?”

  “Patrol.”

  “When will they be back?”

  He was looking at me weird. “I dunno.” Then his eyes went wide as he saw my eyes.

  “Holy shit, you’re infected!”

  His buddy squinted at me, then they both tried to get as far away from me as they could.

  I smiled. “Yup. Make a fuk’n sound and I come back here and bite you.”

  Kill them, I heard in my head. Don’t leave them alive to come for you later.

  It had been Remo’s voice, and he was right, but I couldn’t do it.

  I found some hundred mile per hour tape in a pack on the dresser, and bound the shit out of both of them on top of the zip ties, including their mouths.

  After I checked the rest of the rooms, I moved cautiously downstairs. There were some odd noises coming from the porch, so I checked and found a zombie eating one of the dead guys. It appeared to be just one, so I shot it, but my wariness went up tenfold. It had gotten inside our unfinished walls, so maybe there were more. They did tend to travel in packs.

  I moved outside the house and waited by the big fountain for the last three guys. I had no illusions that I was Remo. I know who I am, and what my capabilities are, then and now. These guys weren’t Remo either. They were soldiers who had survived the plague, which makes them badass in and of itself, but they still weren’t all that. I was able to take out most of them, and I’m me.

  But why had that one stray zombie been munching on the dead dude? I took a quick peek behind me to make sure there wasn’t a swarm of them bearing down on me. All I could see was the barn and dead horses. I hate to say it, but I hope Shaitan made it out. I looked back at the dead assholes thirty feet in front of me with hate.

  These fuckers. They were still killing people because of me. Not only that, but what I had predicted for this place had come true. I stayed and they found me. They may or may not have murdered some of my friends, but they sure as shit killed the horses, and they were going to answer for that.

  Movement from the right stole my attention from my thoughts. Two of three remaining assholes were in view. They had noticed something was up and were on full alert, crouching and looking in all directions. I lifted the MP5, a smile creasing the corner of my mouth. Something poked me in the back of the head, I almost pissed myself, and somebody said, “Don’t. Hands up.” I put my hands up and he called to his buddies, “Over here. He was about to kill you two fucking idiots. I told you we had to come in from the front, not the side.” This guy looked tougher than the others, and was wearing an olive drab do-rag and a black T-shirt.

  They came over, disarmed me, and one of them punched me in the stomach. I doubled over, and the guy who had put the gun to my head a moment ago (that was the poke) said, “Enough. Orders are we bring him in alive.”

  The one who hit me looked a tad angry. “Fuck him. He was killing our friends and we shot him.”

  Do-Rag harrumphed. “You want to explain that to the brass?”

  “Fine!” the puncher said. “But I can still beat the shit out of him. He can go back barely alive.”

  He grabbed my arm and it was all over. I twisted my hand over his, brought my other elbow down on his elbow, and broke it. My knee came up fast into his face, forcing his head up, and I grabbed his bleeding chin with my right hand. I put my left on the side of his head, and before anybody could do anything, I applied a vicious twist and broke his neck. Thanks, Remo. Pain once again made its presence known and screeched its way up my arm.

  “Jesus!” the third guy exclaimed.

  They both had their guns on me, and each backed up a step. I folded my arms, a stupid act which resulted in extreme pain, but looked really cool. “Who’s next?”

  If you’re really dumb and a
ren’t getting this, I had just been Remo-level fucking awesome.

  Breathing heavily, the guy in front of me said, “We should just—” and his head popped like a balloon full of gooey shit. There was an extremely loud report, and Do-Rag spun to face this new threat.

  A figure clad in jeans and a T-shirt levered another round into his rifle and put a grapefruit-sized hole in Do-Rag’s chest. The figure stepped into view, and guess who it was?

  Nope. Not Remo. It was Daniel.

  “C’mon, they’ll have heard that.”

  “I killed the rest of them, except three guys that I—”

  “Not them,” he pointed behind me and to the right, “them!” I glanced in the indicated direction and saw a few dozen dead people stumbling our way. My ears were still ringing from the gigantic rifle shots from a few seconds ago, but I could just make out the cries and moans of the dead. They were a hundred feet away.

  Daniel helped me grab my stuff, and we hustled back behind us. There was no front door on the main residence, so I was thinking we should head to the guest quarters, but Daniel pulled me back toward the pump house by the pond. There were three horses there, one with a guy draped over the saddle, tied down. Initially, I thought it was James, but it was the guy I had left tied up by the helicopter. One of the horses gave me a dirty look. Yeah, you can see where this is going. Shaitan.

  I looked for Daniel’s brother. “Where’s James?”

  “Dead. We need to get out of here and find where they took everybody.”

  “Do you know where Bell Airfield is?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s where they are.”

  We both mounted the horses, Daniel leading the way.

  “Southwest, then,” was all he said.

  We stopped to pick up the stuff I had taken from Travis’ shack, and we were on our way toward our friends.

  Hercules

  “You got it?”

  Our prisoner looked at me, hate overcoming his fear and pain. He crushed his teeth together when he replied, “Yeah, I got it.”

  He must have been in agony with a bullet hole in each foot, but he didn’t bitch about it. He wouldn’t be running away from us anytime soon either. In fact, he wasn’t going to be doing any running at all.

  “You fuck it up, or give us away, and we leave you here and start making a shit ton of noise. You got that too?”

  “Yeah.”

  I glanced at Daniel. He had a pair of binoculars up to his eyes and was surveying a C130J Hercules on the runway of Bell Airfield. It was just parked at one end of the tarmac next to a huge red pickup truck, all buttoned up and waiting. No doubt for the assholes back at the Double Hoof to bring me in. There were two zombies walking on the runway, but other than that, it was clear of infected. We were directly behind it, maybe a hundred yards in the tall grass next to some type of storage shed.

  There had been four check-ins via the radio while we traveled from the ranch to the airfield. When the first one came in, Daniel put his gigantic Bowie knife between our prisoner’s legs and said, “Do it right.” The guy had given a code, but I don’t know if it was a panic code or the OK code. We’d find out shortly.

  I put my hand on my friend’s shoulder and he passed me the binocs. “Sorry about your brother, Daniel.”

  “He died well,” was his reply. Daniel looked at the douche we had trussed up. “It’s time.” Daniel sat behind him, wrapped his legs around the guy, and put his knife under his chin. I snipped the zip ties, and passed him his own radio.

  “Sky High, this is F.O.B. We are under attack by a large contingent of infected. We have sustained losses and need reinforcements, over!” The guy sounded a bit scared.

  F.O.B., Sky High. Authentication is required. Over.

  “Sky High, F.O.B. Code is zulu-alpha-niner-niner! We need a distraction and emergency evac ASAP!”

  Evac confirmed, ETA thirty mics. Sit tight.

  The guy had played it off very well. The back of the plane opened a few minutes later, and a Humvee rolled out with a few men in it. It looked like there were five, but that didn’t make sense. There were eleven back at the Double Hoof, and one tied up a foot from me, which meant there should be six guys here. Nobody, and I mean nobody, would leave a bunch of people tied up on a plane with one guard. Especially when two of those people were Remo and Ship. I could see two other guys with guns moving around, and a bunch of people sitting on the fold-down seats that lined the side of the cargo bay. They all had their hands behind them, and one of them was fucking huge.

  So this guy had been full of shit when he told me there were eighteen bad guys. I rounded on him, putting my suppressor against his balls. “Eighteen of you, huh?”

  “Plus the two Airforce guys, yeah.”

  I was pissed. “What, they don’t fuk’n count?”

  “I guess you don’t know Airforce guys.”

  Daniel snorted laughter. “Get ready.”

  One of the armed guards strolled down the walkway and shot the two infected that had come stumbling when the cargo ramp opened. I couldn’t even hear the suppressed shots from where we were.

  The shooter started to come back to the plane, when Daniel used the scoped hunting rifle I had liberated from Travis to pop one guard in the cargo bay. The shot was LOUD, and the other guard in the plane looked out toward us when his buddy dropped. One of the people on the seats was on the second guard immediately, and had him down before Daniel drilled the last guy.

  We left the Holy Footed guy where he was, and sprinted for the plane. I didn’t know if there were snipers in the area, or if some douche was inside and would shut the door on us. We made it quickly, and there were several smiles. It looked as if everyone was here, and I did a silent head count.

  Daniel used his cutters to free everyone, and there were hugs-a-plenty to go around. I had totally forgotten that these folks all thought I was dead or still missing. Ship gave me the stinkeye, but still lifted me off the ground effortlessly, and squeezed me until I couldn’t breathe. He smiled and nodded.

  Alvarez folded his arms and shook his head. “Like a bad penny.” Ship and Remo made their way up front to the cockpit to check shit out. Everybody else grabbed their formerly confiscated gear from behind the webbing on one of the bulkheads of the plane.

  The folks from the Double Hoof were all getting their stuff ready, and I looked at them, incredulous. I put my hand on Deek’s shoulder. “Uhh… Deek? What’s happening?”

  It was his turn for incredulity, and he shrugged. “Gonna go home and evict some assholes.”

  I shook my head. “Deek, the Double Hoof crawls with dead people.”

  “Kill them too then.” He hugged Kate and stared at me. “These guys are headed for Alcatraz to do I don’t know what. They said communications are spotty, but they’re going to have some kind of naval carrier group move from Panama up to San Francisco. They said it would take a month.” Deek sighed and regarded each of the folks in the plane as they did whatever they were doing. “You better get there quick, son. Come on back this way if you ever have the need, of if you just wanna say hi.” He picked up his cowboy hat, and then did something I never would have thought: he hugged me. “Javi didn’t make it, did he?”

  I shook my head. “No. the guy who pulled me out of the wreckage told me he died.”

  Deek sighed, “Thought as much.”

  The Double Hoof folks hugged all of us. When Kate finished hugging me, she passed me a piece of paper. “For you,” she said with a gigantic smile. I glanced at the paper, and it was lat/long coordinates for the Double Hoof.

  The group got into a red pickup that had been used to bring everybody to the airfield. It started right up and they all waved as they drove away. I wanted to help them, but I also wanted to warn my friend Dallas and Alcatraz about what was coming. Most people would say tough shit for Dallas, but I don’t do tough shit, and Remo had friends that had travelled to the prison island, and they needed to be warned as well. I knew he wouldn’t let t
hat shit go.

  Daniel and Matt stayed behind to take the horses back. Daniel hefted Holy Foot over his shoulder, and tossed him unkindly on the ramp of the C130J. “You can have this one. Better lock this thing up, you’ll be having company soon.”

  I shook his hand and he got on his horse. Shaitan gave me a final glance with his huge horse eyes. I smiled and flipped him off. Prick. I would miss him.

  Richy and Chloe came up to me with Donna. “Fuel tank is full, and there are thirty-six full fuel cans up on those pallets.” She thumbed over her shoulder at the shrink-wrapped cans. “Ship says he can fly this thing, but he wants to keep the pilot alive just in case.” There had been no discussion about staying on at the Double Hoof.

  “Thanks for not being dead,” Chloe told me.

  “Yeah,” Richy added, “who else can show me how to hot wire a car and shit?”

  Donna cuffed him on the back of the head. “Language, Richard.” He smiled as he rubbed his head and strode off with his sister.

  “Richard?” I asked.

  She threw her arms around me again. Her second hug lingered a bit longer than the first one. “I knew you weren’t dead.”

  “How?”

  She looked bewildered. “What?”

  “How did you know I wasn’t dead?”

  “Because you would have already pissed off Death, and he would have sent you back.”

  I kissed her on the forehead. “I think Death is on hiatus. He’s gonna be pissed when he gets back and sees all this shit. Somebody’s getting fired.”

  We both looked at the rear ramp as it closed.

  Alvarez and Kat came back to us. Everybody had their gear, and I asked about it.

  Kat shrugged. “They made us bring it. They said we wouldn’t be coming back, and it was safer where they were taking us.”

  “How are we settled for weapons?”

  “There’s two racks of M4s, three crates of ammo, and some M9 tacticals,” Alvarez offered. “They obviously confiscated our weapons, and they’re all back at the ranch.”

  The engines on the giant plane started with a cough, and it got loud. Remo came back and told everybody to sit down and buckle up, so we did. He did a check on us, and flashed Ship a thumbs up. The jarhead made sure both Holy Feet and the pilot were trussed well, and he buckled them into seats too. The pilot was still out from when Remo had jumped him.