Once Bitten, Twice Dead Read online

  Maybe it was just that he was the real deal. Many of her fellow officers had some military background, and she respected them for their service. But none of them had made the grade to join one of the elite Special Forces. There was a lot of respect among her colleagues for those select few.

  Xavier was gone in a heartbeat. One minute he was there, standing next to her, the next he was gone, swallowed by the shadows. Damn, he was good.

  She heard more movement and stepped a little closer to the ladder. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark, and even the small amount of light that came down from the unlit building above seemed like a lot of illumination compared to the complete absence of light in the underground space. The ladder was her lifeline. Her only route of escape. She was no coward, but after what she’d been through, she admitted to feeling a little apprehensive about encountering one of those creatures again. She’d keep the ladder in sight.

  A grunt followed a scuffling sound in the darkness. Then she heard the distinctive sound of darts being fired. It wasn’t the loud, percussive bang of bullets. Rather, it was a whoosh and zing as a slim dart left the weapon at high velocity.

  Xavier wouldn’t have fired unless he was certain there was one of the creatures in the basement with them.

  “He’s heading your way, Sarah.” Xavier’s loud call was the only warning she got before a hideous-looking man, dressed in filthy rags that had once been a T-shirt and jeans, stumbled into her line of sight.

  His face was a mess, covered in blood and ripped to shreds along one side. One of his arms was dislocated and looked as if giant rats had been gnawing on it. For weeks. There was little flesh left and the sickly white of bone showed in several places.

  Sarah felt bile rise in her throat as her last meal threatened to make a reappearance, but she breathed lightly, trying to block out the stench of rotting flesh as the creature drew nearer. She firmed her spine and took aim with her pistol. She knew what she had to do.

  “Fire in the hole. Stay clear, Xavier,” she called as she let loose with two shots in rapid succession. She hit her targets cleanly. One dart landed in the middle of the man’s chest, the other in his left thigh. Yet, he still shuffled forward, directly toward her.

  Sarah backed up, her back connecting with the ladder behind her. The zombie showed no signs of slowing down. The darts hadn’t even fazed him. They bobbed up and down, embedded in his skin, unnoticed as he stalked toward her, unrelenting in his determination to reach her.

  “He’s not going down,” she yelled to Xavier. “I hit him twice, but he’s not stopping.”

  “I hit him in the back. Give it time. He should be imploding any second now. Are you in the clear?”

  “He’s coming right for me.” Panic threaded its way through her voice regardless of her attempt to maintain a little dignity. The truth was, she was scared shitless. Xavier had to realize it, too, just from the tremor of her higher-than-normal pitch voice.

  She reached for the ladder and started scrambling upward as fast as she could. Too late.

  The zombie grabbed her booted foot and pulled. Hard. The guy was stronger than he looked, even though he could use only one arm. Sarah was stuck. No matter how hard she pulled, his strong, single-handed grip kept her from getting away.

  She tugged and tugged, to no avail. Then she saw his brown-stained teeth bearing down on her leg and she really began to panic. She still hadn’t healed from the last time one of these guys started chomping on her leg.

  A beefy fist came out of the dark to knock the zombie’s grip loose from her leg. Xavier moved like lightning, spinning the creature away from her. She went a few more rungs up the ladder, out of range of anyone on the floor, then turned to shine her light down from above, illuminating the scene in a halo of light that extended only a few feet in a hazy, circular pattern.

  It was enough. She could see Xavier squaring off against the zombie. They circled each other like prizefighters sizing one another up.

  “Why is it taking so long? We both hit him, so shouldn’t he be gone by now?” she asked worriedly, watching Xavier stay out of arm’s reach. If he was touching the creature with bare skin when it imploded, there was the possibility of some of the toxin making its way into Xavier’s body. Since the toxin was so incredibly deadly, that was to be avoided at all costs.

  “Sometimes it takes a while to work through their systems,” Xavier finally answered her, but she could see the furrow in his brow. He was concerned, too, though he wouldn’t speak of it.

  She didn’t want to argue with him. Not while he was facing off against something out of a nightmare. Later, they’d have time to talk through what was going on. In the debrief. Right now, they had a job to do to make sure they both made it to the debrief.

  The zombie lunged at Xavier, scraping those inch-long claws the zombies all seemed to have, too close for comfort. He barely missed Xavier’s midsection as Sarah watched helplessly from above. She could see Xavier’s darts sticking out of the man’s back as they circled. The guy had been shot with four doses of toxin. Xavier had told her it usually took only two doses to end one of these creatures. Had he been disastrously wrong?

  Sarah was afraid they were about to find out.

  “Dammit, stop this,” she prayed aloud, watching the action intently. The zombie looked up at her and something flickered through his dead eyes. A look, almost of uncertainty, passed over his ruined features.

  Could it be he understood what she’d said?

  “Stop!” she said again, louder this time, directly to him, putting all the authority she could muster into the command.

  The creature hesitated. His mouth opened. He seemed to be struggling to speak, though Xavier had said these creatures were incapable of forming words. Still, it looked like this one was trying to do just that.

  “M-mst—”

  Dammit, he really was trying to speak.

  Just then, his body disintegrated. It flowed like sand…or runny Jell-O…right down to the floor. The toxin had done its job. If she understood it correctly, the man had been reduced to a gooey puddle of biological material. The bonds between his cells had been dissolved on a molecular level.

  “Holy shit.” She’d never expected anything like what she’d just seen, even though Xavier had warned her what would happen.

  “You’re not kidding.” Xavier stepped into the circle of light emitted by her flashlight. “That son of a bitch was trying to talk to you. Could you make out what he was trying to say?”

  Sarah stared blankly at him for a short moment. She really needed some time to regroup, but she knew it was impossible. They still had the rest of this basement to search. That one might not have been alone down here.

  “Hard to say.” She started back down the ladder, joining Xavier on the concrete floor. “It sounded like mst—must. Or it could’ve been ‘mast’ or maybe ‘mist.’ M-S-T something.”

  Xavier pulled a small device from one of his many pockets and twisted it between his fingers. A small LED light began to blink. He dropped the blinking object on the pile of old clothes and goo that had once been the zombie and picked up his more powerful flashlight, doing a sweep of the area.

  “Tracker,” he explained as she looked at the softly blinking electronic device. “For the cleanup team. We label all kills with these so the nerds know exactly where we dropped the tangos. They come in after us and sanitize the place.”

  He’d alluded to that before, but in all the tumult she was having a hard time recalling exactly what he’d told her about his process in the field. Hearing about it and actually doing it were two very different things.

  Dammit, she was better than this. Maybe the blow to the head really had scrambled her brains. She was a professional. An officer of the law. No matter how bizarre the situation, she should at least be able to remember what she’d been told, and how to perform her duty.

  Instead, fear was choking her and the insanity of this entire ordeal was making her weak. She wasn’t pulling her weight
on this team and they both knew it. Xavier was babying her, ushering her along like some feeble-minded responsibility rather than an equal partner.

  She’d do better from here on out. She could handle this. She had handled this—all on her own—just a week ago. She needed to find her reserves of courage and pluck to get back on her feet and back to the competent officer she used to be.

  They went through the rest of the underground area together. Sarah got a handle on herself and managed to participate in checking and clearing each room. Once they were sure the place was empty aside from the two of them, they commenced a cursory search.

  “We’ll go through it as best we can right now. The geeks will bring in lighting and do a more thorough job after they clean up the kill site,” Xavier said offhandedly as he walked through what looked like an office with her.

  He flashed his light around the empty room. All that was left were a wooden desk and some other furniture. A rolling chair. An empty filing cabinet.

  Sarah took her time, looking closely at each joint of the wooden desk. Her persistence paid off when she saw a glint of something metallic.

  “There’s something wedged in here.”

  Xavier was at her side in an instant. “It’s a wire. Look, it shows under the desk for an inch before disappearing under the carpet.” He shined the light downward, following the path of the wire. “Why leave this when everything else in the place had been stripped?”

  “Let’s see what it leads to.” Sarah bent down to examine the carpet. “We’re in luck. They used commercial carpet tiles in here.” With the tip of her utility knife she lifted the edges of the squares covering the thin silver wire as she spoke. Sure enough, the wire made its way from the desk, directly toward the wall. “This is weird.” The wire ended at the wall, disappearing behind it.

  “Can I borrow your nightstick?” She handed it over to him without comment. “Stand back and hold the light for me,” Xavier directed, and Sarah followed his lead. He took a swing at the sheetrock with the business end of the stick, breaking through the thick gypsum board as if it were paper.

  When the dust settled, he shined his light inside the wall, following the wire’s path upward toward a small grate at the top. The grate was no more than five inches square. Using his own, much larger knife, Xavier pried off the plate and reached inside.

  “Camera. Video feed must’ve gone to whatever equipment was on the desk. Most likely a computer. I wonder why they’d wire the office? We should check for surveillance equipment like this in the rest of the place. Could be the former residents were a touch paranoid.”

  Once they knew what to look for, it was easy to spot similar view ports in all the other rooms on the subterranean level. In the fifth room they searched, they caught a break.

  “Looks like someone missed a DVD in the shuffle to get out of Dodge,” Sarah observed, picking up a shiny silver disc that had fallen behind a piece of furniture. “I wonder what this will tell us?”

  “Secure it for now. We’ll check it out after we finish here.”

  “Yes, sir.” She gave him a mock salute along with a grin that he answered ruefully. Command came easy to the man, it was plain to see. She didn’t take offense but wanted to remind him gently that she wasn’t one of his soldiers. The nod of his head told her without words that her message had been received.

  They finished up with the lower floor. They hadn’t found a lot belowground except for the disc and the camera. Sarah hoped that would give them a good solid lead. They needed one about now.

  Although she’d encountered two of the creatures on the premises and now they’d faced a third belowground, they hadn’t found anything to tell them why or how the zombies had gotten there. Whether it was just dumb luck that the creatures were attracted to the building or whether they’d been stationed there on purpose was still unclear. The basement rooms were suspicious, but whoever had cleaned them out had done a thorough job. It was hard to tell what the rooms had been used for. Only a few pieces of ubiquitous office equipment had been left behind.

  The disc was their only hope to somehow connect the building with the creatures and whoever might have unleashed them.

  “I’m guessing whatever was here last week cleared out after you were attacked upstairs,” Xavier said, breaking into her musings as they headed back toward the ladder. “They probably left that one behind to guard whoever might come after. Or maybe he was just a mistake. Whichever is the case, I think the premises are clear now and are likely to stay that way.”

  “And that’s important why?” She sensed he was leading up to something.

  “You saw some of my men that first day in the hospital. They’re not immune, but they know what we’re up against. They’ve been assigned to support roles on this mission and this is the perfect opportunity to do their thing. I’m going to turn investigation of this site over to them.”

  “What about the local authorities?”

  “We have authorization from the highest levels. The president, the head of the CDC, the surgeon general, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and on down the line.”

  “Wow.”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures. They want to nip this in the bud before the general population finds out about the mess they let develop on their watch.”

  “No doubt.”

  “But we’ll keep the locals in, as much as we can. In fact, you’re the local tie for this mission. You’re authorized to report, within certain parameters, to your chief. I’m sorry, but I’ll have to clear all your written reports and be present at any in-person debriefings. He can know certain things. The cover story is close to the truth—a terrorist bioweapon that’s a national security risk and needs to be kept top secret. Nobody else is supposed to learn about the creatures if we can possibly avoid it.”

  “I guess I can understand that. You don’t want to cause a panic.” She scratched her chin as they entered the area with the ladder.

  “Not only that, but this technology could be sold, Sarah.”

  “Sold? You’re kidding. Who’d want to make zombies?” Even as she said it, she realized there were a lot of unscrupulous people out there who’d like this kind of weapon. It was a terrorist’s dream come true and a hostile nation’s doomsday device. No matter what, this information needed to be contained. “My God.”

  “Yeah.” Xavier caught her eye, nodding as a moment of understanding passed between them. They made it to the ladder and Xavier motioned for her to go first.

  Stepping gingerly around the pile of goo and ratty fabric that had once been a human being, Sarah started up the ladder. Now that the action was over, her leg began to stiffen up. She sort of half-hopped upward, doing the best she could on her injured leg. Xavier followed right behind, and she had the embarrassing sensation that he was staring at her butt on her way up.

  She waited for him at the top, and, sure enough, he had that lazy, devilish grin on his face when his head popped up through the trapdoor.

  “Lovely view,” he commented, looking around with mock innocence.

  “I bet.” She had to suppress a chuckle. The man was a rogue through and through. “Next time, you go first.”

  “Anytime, sweetheart. You can ogle my ass all you want.”

  He didn’t give her a chance to come up with a snappy comeback. As it was, she sputtered a bit as he marched down the hall toward the exit of the building and the sunshine outside.

  He’d pulled a radio from his utility belt and was already talking to someone on the other end as she followed behind, taking two steps to every one of his. The man was tall and long-limbed. His steps were giant-sized in comparison with hers, so she had to scramble to catch up when he decided to move at full speed.

  He was at the Humvee when she emerged from the building, still talking on the radio. When he saw her, he ended his conversation and turned a bright smile on her.

  “This is one of those times when you can be of great assistance, Officer Petit. This building is soon
to become an army work area, which means we’ll be shutting off access through this road, if at all possible. Since you know the area, not to mention your boss, your government would be grateful if you could run interference and help coordinate some roadblocks. What do you say?”

  When he poured on the charm, she doubted many females ever said no to him. He was right in this instance, though. She was best suited to coordinating the local effort, since she knew all the players personally and they knew she’d been seconded to this high-level, hush-hush operation.

  She knew the cover story, such as it was. Vague innuendo about a terrorist bioweapon and an army intelligence officer run amok. National security secrets at stake. Her chain of command had been told that she’d stumbled onto a major terrorist operation in the abandoned building and could personally identify the bad guys. She’d been put under federal protection, partnered with an army escort authorized in this one instance to consult on U.S. soil because one of their men was involved.

  It was flimsy, but with all the official seals and political heavyweights backing it up, her chief believed it and was willing to work with the feds. Too much had happened in the New York Metro area since September 11, 2001, to allow local cops the luxury of territorialism when it came to federal operations on their turf.

  The turf wars were over. Or, at least, put on hold. For now.

  “You got police band on that fancy radio of yours?” She grinned at him.

  Chapter Four

  “In the truck.” He grinned back at her, seeming truly happy that she was onboard with his plans. “It’s hardwired into the battery, so just flip the switch for power. It’s the unit closest to the passenger side. I installed it there just for you.”

  She wasn’t sure if she bought that, but it was nice to know he’d at least thought ahead to have the equipment she’d need put into his ride. Sarah walked over to the passenger-side door, trying her best not to limp. Her injured leg was making itself known. It was a relief to hop up into the big vehicle and plant her butt in a sitting position, taking weight off her leg. The muscles were still reforming, knitting at an amazing speed, but they still had a way to go.