Rotten (27 page)

Sully opened the door. “Out of the tank!”

We waited.

“We can turn off your signal again,” Sully warned.

“No! No, don’t do that!”  We heard a muffled voice. “There’s one in here.  I’m coming out.”

“Let’s see your hands first,” Sully said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”  We saw one hand, and then the second.  “I’m not armed, I’m just the driver.” 

“Come on out.”

“I need to use one of my hands, I swear I’m not armed.”

“Do it fast.” 

With one hand the man climbed up a small ladder and stepped awkwardly out of the hatch.  He stood on top of the machine with both hands in the air, and turned slowly showing he had no weapons.  He didn’t look like the other henchmen, he was much smaller and his hair was longer.

“Jump down and walk toward the house.  That’s it, stop right there.  Michael, search him, Princess cover them.” 

“He’s clean,” Moonshine called up from downstairs.

“Bring him up here,” Sully said, scanning the yard for movement.

Moonshine pushed the man up the stairs and tied him in one of the heavy wooden dining room chairs. 

“I was just following orders,” the man began and upon closer inspection he seemed not such a man, but more of a teen and he had acne on his face.

“Are there any more of you out there or any more in that tank?”  Highland said.

“No, there were only two of us in the Mrap, the tank, and there were four men each in the three jeeps.  That was all of us, I swear.”  He looked around at us, his brown eyes wide with fear and something else I couldn’t name, maybe excitement.  “Oh, and the deadies, but you know about them.  Pretty cool how you cancelled the signal, I knew someone would figure it out, at least I hoped someone would.  And you pushed the button at just the right time, another second later I would have been zombie meat, that thing almost had me.”  He spoke fast and I couldn’t tell if it was because he was nervous or if it was just his natural disposition.

“We need to kill the zombies so we can turn off the signal.”  Moonshine looked at the girls standing in the doorway with the headphones over their ears.  “Just because they can’t hear it doesn’t mean it’s not doing them any harm.”

The soldier looked over his shoulder at Rebekah and Sarah, and then turned to look at Will.  “No, it’s not good for kids.  The headphones are pretty smart, though.” 

“There must be a hundred of them,” Princess said.

“Eighty-one at last count,” the teen said.

“Are you always this helpful?” Sully pulled off the helmet. 

“Man, I had no idea what I was getting into, no idea.  They recruited me out of college, I’m a techno geek, and I thought I found the dream job and the pay - wow!  No one I know makes that kind of money.  I’d been with them for six weeks when I got shipped here and they make me drive the Mrap?  It’s not what I signed up for.  Especially in a zombie apocalypse, it’s definitely not what I signed up for.”

“You don’t really look like the rest of them,” Princess acknowledged.

“The muscle heads?  Those guys are just for show.  Oh, they’d shoot you as soon as look at you, but they count on the fact that they look so intimidating, the baldheads, thick necks, and the blue contact lens.  It’s psychological, and it works.  You guys are only the second ones to fight back, that’s why they sent me out on this mission, the other Mrap guy got killed.”

“Come on, we’re going to need everyone to get this done fast,” Highland grabbed the bag of knives.  “Bring him. What your name?”

“John Paul Brinkley, everyone just calls me Binks,” he said, as Moonshine untied him. 

“I sure hope all the men in black are dead,” I whispered.

“Me, too.” Binks laughed nervously. 

“Get as much light as we can find and lets go kill some zombies.”  Moonshine pulled Binks down the stairs and we followed.  “Knock ‘em down and chop ‘em quick.”  He shoved Binks against the truck.  “Stay there.”

“You know that thing can be remote controlled, don’t you?” He pointed at the tank on wheels.  “And the deadies follow it, especially these guys, they’re programmed too.”

“Wait. What?”  Moonshine turned and looked at the tank.  “Seriously?”

“Yeah, and I could have the deadies back to the compound before you could finish chopping them up.” 

“They follow it? Like in the trance, or like stopping and starting?” Rotten said.

“In the trance, they stay zonked out, harmless, but they walk, and even jog along with Mrap as long as the signal is going.  If you’ll let me get the controls we can move them out of the way, at least far enough to get the signal away from the kids, it’s not good for kids.”

We looked at each other, we knew it could be a trick, and finally Highland spoke.  “Where’s the remote?”

“It’s in a case on the passenger side seat, big black thick case, you can’t miss it.”  Binks held his hands up in the air.  “I can get it if you like and get that thing out of here, it’ll be a lot easier moving it with remote than from inside the thing anyway.”

“We’ll help you get it,” Sully said, nodded to Moonshine, and together they walked through the deadheads to the mini tank, their guns aimed at Binks.

“I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t trust me either, especially since I’m with these guys, but I swear I had no idea what was happening.”  He opened the door and pulled out a large rubber or plastic suitcase.  “I was hired to make toys, you know robots, remotes, stuff like that, I didn’t know about the deadies until I got here.  Can we move back to the house?  These things make me a nervous wreck.” 

Sully motioned him with the gun.  “Everyone in the house.  Not you,” he said.  “You do your magic out here and if it works we’ll think about letting you inside.” 

“Okay, okay.  I don’t blame you.”  He set the case down on the concrete under the porch overhang and opened it, revealing a computer screen.  The box unfolded as if it were made of cardboard, instead of electronics, metal, and plastic and Binks took a remote control in his hand.  The armored vehicle backed up and smoothly turned around, pulling between the trees and the crushed caddy, and began to move down the driveway.  Sully edged closer to the barrier in front of the door, but kept his gun aimed at the soldier’s head.

The tank drew further away and deadheads didn’t move.  Sully took another step backwards.  Finally, almost as one, the zombies turned away from the house, and those on the ground who had fallen while taking great leaps and jumps rose to their feet and followed.  They moved robotically and not at all like the zombies we had come to know, and we stepped back out of the house to get a better view.

“What the fuck?” Moonshine muttered.  “Damned zombie robots?”

“Watch this,” Binks said. 

He increased the speed of the vehicle and the deadheads jogged along, moving mechanically, like some automation you’d see at a theme park, you know, the dancing bears or waving gorillas or the marionette show.  As many things that had threatened our sanity in the last days, this one seemed the worst, it was bad enough to be turned into a brainless zombie, but a brainless zombie robot ranked even higher on the horrendous chart.  

“How the ever-loving fuck does that even work?” Princess said. 

“They chipped them,” Binks said.  “That is not what I do, I make toys, and unfortunately I found out too late what Nexus Security likes to do with cool toys geeks like me make.” He looked around at us.  “I had nothing to do with that chip.  That was made years ago, at first it was sold to keep up with livestock, have a problem with a wandering goat or cow?  Does your horse run off in storms?  This was the solution to the problem, the chip would lay dormant in the brain until you turned on your remote, the chip would receive the frequency and your horse, cow, or goat would come running home.  There’ve been some advancements since then.” 

“I hate this world,” Princess muttered.

“Okay, they are out of range, just turning on the highway down there toward, well, wherever you want them to go.  Where do you want them to go?”

“The kids are safe to take off the headphones?” Mrs. Williams said.

“Yes, ma’am, they shouldn’t be able to hear the tone from this distance.”

Mrs. Williams mimed for Will to remove his headphones and he pulled them off slowly.  “Is it okay?  Do you hear the tone?”

“Yes, ma’am, I mean, no, ma’am, I don’t hear it.  What the heck did I just see though?” Will stared at the scene on the computer screen that looked like a high dollar video game.  “Cool.”

Rebekah and Sarah removed their headphones and also stared at the computer screen.  “I’ve played video games but I’ve never seen anything like that.”  The moving picture on the screen was real time, but not from a camera.  It was somewhere between animation and reality and the zombies looked both real and cartoonish at the same time.  Each deadhead had a blinking red light in its brain that was clearly numbered on the screen. 

“I know.  This is how they recruit geeks like me, to be able to play with these kinds of toys and improve them.”  He shook his head.  “I should’ve known there was a catch.”  He looked up at Sully.  “Where do you want me to put them?” 

“What happens if you take them back to the nest or the compound, as you call it?”

“Everything works on automation there, so the Mrap will pull to the fence, the fence will open, and I’ll be able to park it and the deadies in the loading bay.”

“How many people are in the compound?” Rotten knelt down to get a better look at the graphics on the screen.  “Why isn’t the display showing real images?”

“The experts decided that soldiers, especially the geeks, do better when it looks like a video game, easy to believe they aren’t real people and real events if it looks like a cartoon - it’s psychological.  I haven’t seen a lot of people there, of course I don’t have full access, and I’ve personally only seen a few dozen and including those who were here tonight.”

“So what is the protocol when you return from a mission?” Highland also stared at the screen.

“This is my first mission, so I don’t really know.  I suppose the major over there may have checked in with someone.”  He glanced at the body with a bullet hole through the forehead.  “That was damned good shooting, by the way.  But the Mraps come in and go out alone a lot, so it probably won’t raise many eyebrows if it just tucks itself into the bay.”

“Okay, do that,” Sully said.  “Take it home.” 

“Okey dokey,” Binks nodded and we watched the screen as the tank moved through town and passed along the roads we had cleared earlier. 

“How did you know where we were?” Rotten stood from the kneeling position with a groan.  “Damn, I’m tired.”

“We saw that someone had moved the cars in town, deadies wouldn’t do that, so we sent up a drone with a heat signature reader and found you here.”

“I didn’t hear a drone.  So you weren’t watching us the whole time we were out?” Rotten glanced at me and raised his brows.

“No, we’re a little short handed and we’ve had some accidents.  And the drone, it’s one of mine.”  He smiled.  “It’s tiny, looks like a dragonfly, and it doesn’t have any defensive capabilities, just observes and reports.” 

“What kind of accidents?” Princess leaned against the truck, her arm around Sarah’s shoulders, and watched Binks, not the computer screen.

“Well, we lost a lot of men during and after the earthquake, I think the big guys put a little too much oomph on that thing.  I’m pretty sure knocking the bridge down in Arlington wasn’t part of their plans.  The deadies ended up getting a bunch of them, like I said, they’re muscle heads, placed in their position because they were big and intimidating, not because they are super intelligent.  We lost another dozen, a troop just like the one I was in tonight, when another group fought back.”