The people in the stands above us began stomping their feet in tune with the ragged steps of the attacking ghoul. It might have been scary if they hadn’t been drowning out our conversation and therefore irritating the hell out of me.
“You told me they aren’t patrolling some sections of it very well.” I didn’t dare speak any louder, and both of the guys had to clump in around me to hear my voice. “We’ll go through one of those spots, get to the radio room, and call Hammond.”
Tony ruminated over it for a moment. “And if we get caught?”
Then we get shot. Wait. No, that wouldn’t work. How would I excuse wandering into a restricted area? I couldn’t say that had been a problem for me before all this shit went down. The biggest problem I’d had with authority had involved speeding tickets. How had I gotten out of those?
Well, to be fair, I hadn’t.
I had tried to play dumb. Which might be my only defense here, too.
“We’ll bring the dog,” I said. “I’ll pretend I didn’t realize where I was going. And you had to chase after me.”
Tony frowned. Dax screwed up his face in something resembling dismay.
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. “Lattimore thinks I’m an idiot and I’m pretty sure Keller thinks that too, now. Why wouldn’t I wander into the Forbidden Zone, or whatever it’s called?”
Tony laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Forbidden Zone. I like that. Okay, my little mastermind. Next problem. We don’t have weapons.”
“He let you keep your pistol, didn’t he? Can’t you—”
“No, I can’t get us weapons.”
“Well, we’ll think of something. Or we’ll just be really, really quiet.”
Dax pulled his sweatshirt hood up over his head. “Million-dollar question. Do you know how to work the radio?”
I had a pretty good feeling a military-grade radio wasn’t going to look anything like the little transistor thing I used to listen to while doing the dishes back in the pre-apocalypse days. “Alyssa will tell me.”
Tony nodded. “And you’re going to remember her undoubtedly detailed instructions?”
“I have an excellent memory.”
He conceded that fact quickly enough. “And if Hammond’s dead? What if no one picks up?”
That was the one part of our situation I hadn’t really considered.
The revenant flung itself at the fighter, sloppily hacking at the air with its rudimentary weaponry. I wasn’t sure it quite realized it could use the swords to cut; it more or less did the usual zombie thing and tried to grab at her with short daggers instead of bare hands.
Everything about my plan hinged on someone picking up on the other end. If Hammond was gone, if Camp Elderwood had been completely overrun, then there was no one to save us. Then all of this was for nothing.
It couldn’t be for nothing.
Of course, that line of thinking wouldn’t work on a hardened pessimist like Tony.
“What if he’s dead, Vibeke?”
“If he’s dead, he’s dead. We figure out a way to make it work here. Maybe I’ll sign up for fencing lessons.” I gestured to the fighter dancing around the dead guy. “But we came here for a reason. To get help for the people in Elderwood.”
Six thousand people were waiting for us in our previous camp. Well, maybe considerably less, now, but still. We’d been sent here to help them. We had taken too long already.
Tony grunted softly. “Seems like the people here might need our help more than the Elderwood group.”
The lady fighter whirled around, and sliced off the ghoul’s hands. The rotten appendages dropped to the ground, the weapons still affixed to them.
Of course, the dead man didn’t seem bothered. He just continued to go after her, waving his stumps around. Even from this distance, I could tell his jaw was still working.
“We have to try,” I said.
The crowd stomped and cheered, the noise rising into a deafening crescendo over our heads.
Tony grunted in what I hoped was assent.
The fighter jammed her blade through the zombie’s head, and the crowd went wild. She hacked her way through the skull, then thrust her blade in the air as the dead thing toppled over.
Maybe this was what surviving off pastrami alone did to people.
Tony sighed.
“Go find out how to work the radio,” he said. “I’ll find out what kind of weak spots that fence has.”
Chapter Thirteen
I wandered into total chaos at work the next morning.
Two orderlies were holding down a man—well, holding down might have been too strong a term. They were getting knocked around pretty hard.
Alyssa wobbled in front of them, a scalpel clenched in her hands.
One of the orderlies spotted me. “Medic! Help!”
I dashed over. I knew immediately the man they were fighting wasn’t dead: he foamed at the mouth, bloody spittle flying around with each jerk of his body. One of the orderlies got an elbow into his gut and managed to hold him down for a split second, giving me enough time to check the wild man’s eyes. They were clear. Alive.
He just seemed…angry.
“Sedative!” I squawked.