“For God’s sake it better. We’re using nuclear power,” he’d quipped when she’d first come aboard.
Iggy would occasionally glance up at the lights as if he knew. “No, he knows,” June said.
Whatever Will had done, in addition to getting the virus to spread, also instilled more intelligence. Iggy had been fairly average as far as apes go. Intelligent when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom, but he was about the equivalent of an eight-year-old human child in terms of smarts—generally innocent and wide-eyed. But not Iggy 2.0. The only thing that shined behind those obscured irises was an abundance of aptitude, adaptability, cleverness, and worst of all, cruel, cold, calculating intelligence. And, oh yeah, one more thing, endless hunger. That part burned brilliantly.
Will was now down to his core, and Iggy didn’t look like he’d even touched on the outer edges of his needs. This was the point in which the beast did something completely unexpected; he turned what remained of Will so that they were now facing each other, although Will’s head was lolling to the side. Iggy began to move Will closer to the door to his cage.
“No it can’t be.” June was frozen in terror.
Iggy had manipulated Will so that the dead man’s chest was about even with the card reader locking mechanism. They’d had the old locks changed after an accident last year. One of the technicians had been walking by a cage and her keycard, swinging on a lanyard, had come within a foot of the card reader and allowed the mechanism to unlock. June had watched the video surveillance the following morning to ascertain how Petey, the Guinea Pig, had escaped. Not that he’d gone far or done any damage other than make a small mess outside of his cage, but if this could happen with his cage, then it could occur with the much more dangerous animals housed in the next room. The readers had been calibrated to make them not nearly as sensitive. The cards that the techs wore had to now be physically placed on the reader before it would change the locking light from red to green. It would also give an audible alarm much like the chirp a smoke detector would when its battery began to die. June had just turned and was heading for the door when she heard the telltale tweet.
Too late, she thought as she heard the cage door crash open. Her screams were swallowed up in the maelstrom of battle.
Chapter Eleven – Tracy
Trip sat atop a horse, a thick, woolen white robe with a heavy red cross emblazoned on the front enshrouding his body.
“Trip, I’ve been so worried!” Stephanie sobbed as she ran toward him.
“Hold off, ma’am.” Another rider came up next to Trip. He was riding a great brown stallion that nearly dwarfed Trip’s gelding. He was wearing the same robe and had a brilliant ornamental scabbard hanging down by his side, which was not nearly as threatening as the Israeli Uzi he had slung in front of his chest.
“I’ve got this,” Trip said to the man.
Stephanie stopped short as Trip held his hand up. “What doth the lass request?”
A look of confusion swept across her face.
“I should just shoot him,” BT mumbled to Tracy. “What the hell is he sitting side-saddle for?”
“Mom, I know that symbol. It’s for the Knights Templar,” Travis said.
“Trip, it’s me, honey. Your wife, remember?”
Trip held his hand up to the side of his face like he was going to deliver a stage whisper. Instead, it came out a few decibels short of a full out yell. “Of course I remember you, honey. I have to play it good for these guys. This Renaissance Festival stuff is a hoot. If I knew how much fun they had, I would have joined up years ago. If I do it right, they’ll let me stay.”
“Um, I see,” she replied.
The man on the horse wiped a hand across his face and sighed.
“I guess he’s been around Trip too long. Imagine that,” BT said surly.
“My name is Joseph DiPaolo,” he stated before getting down from his horse. At six feet two, he was nearly as imposing a figure off the horse as he was on. Closely cropped hair hinted to a past military career, as well as the demeanor with which he strode to Stephanie. “Ma’am, honored to finally meet you. After listening to John, err, I mean Trip, I wasn’t sure you truly existed.”
“Yes, he has a way of skirting around reality.”
Trip slid off the horse. “Holy shit,” he exclaimed when he touched ground and turned around. “Where’d we get elephants?”
“Honey, are you alright?” Stephanie asked nervously.
“I know there are more of you out there. My men are close, but not too close. I didn’t want to mistakenly touch off a small battle. Those things seem to happen in abundance in these End of Times,” Joseph seemingly spoke to the forest. BT stepped out from around a tree. Joseph’s eyes grew momentarily big. “I…umm, sorry. I thought he was kidding when he said you were traveling with a grizzly. You must be BT, the traveling bear.” Joseph approached with one hand extended, the other loosely gripping the Uzi in case not all went as planned.
“What are your intentions?” BT asked, ignoring the man’s outstretched hand. He hadn’t brought his weapon to bear but he was in a much better position to do so if the case was warranted.
“With you folks it’s nothing more than to lend some assistance. Trip told us about your group camping in the trees.”
“He called that camping?” BT looked like he wanted to rip Trip’s arms off and beat him with them.
“I told you he was ornery,” Trip said in between kisses from his wife.
“He’s just being cautious. I understand the sentiment during these difficult times. I’d appreciate it if perhaps you put that weapon down some and we talked, friend.”
“The last person that called me ‘friend’ when we first met nearly knocked me out with the handle to a broken hockey stick and stole my brand new sneakers I’d been saving up for all summer.”
“Someone knocked you out?” Gary asked.
“I was nine.” BT turned to answer and then directed his attention back to the front. “So, we’re not friends, Joseph, because I don’t have new shoes and even if I did, I don’t think you’d be capable of taking them from me.”
“Okay, let’s start over,” Joseph said, raising his hands up off his sub-machinegun, which hung from a tactical harness. “We are just here to see if everyone is alright and perhaps needs anything before we move on. We are not in the business of harming others, at least those who are not deserving.”
“Who determines who is deserving?” BT growled.
“Well, this is going nowhere fast. You keep going like this, BT, and we’re going to be in a firefight in the next couple of minutes.” Tracy came out from behind the bush she’d been hiding behind. “My name is Tracy Talbot,” she said as she approached Joseph. She took note that part of him was dwelling on her name like he’d heard a song from yesteryear but just couldn’t remember the title. “My friend means well here, but he’s a little overprotective. We appreciate you coming when you did. We’ve been in the trees for quite some time now and didn’t think the zombies were ever going to leave. It seems something scared them off.”
“Not scared…driven.”
Now it was Tracy’s turn to look confused.
“This is going to take a second, and you might not believe a word of it.”
“Does this have to do with the Knights Templar robes?” Travis asked, still hidden behind a tree.
“Why don’t you just paint a bulls-eye on your forehead, boy?” BT grumbled.
“Oh shit, you made him mad,” Justin whispered.
“Now I know why Dad wanted to get on his good side. Damn.” Travis shrunk back a bit.
“When I was back in the Naval academy, I was approached by my commander who was a Freemason. We talked for hours, most of it sounding like crap to me. I’d honestly thought he had lost his wits.”
“You talking to me?” Trip was looking around.
Joseph continued. “I’m not going to go into a long drawn out history of the Templar order except to say we were cr
eated as an elite fighting force back in the eleventh century, which was most famously known for the Crusades. When we were officially disbanded in the fourteenth century, we went underground. We went from fighting for Christianity to preserving its relics. When that mission was completed, we strove to find another higher purpose.”
“I can’t help it, I need to know,” Travis said to his brother as he exited his hiding spot.
“Boy, I am going to string you up by your toes!” BT said, getting in between him and Joseph like a human shield.
That same searching for an answer expression came over Joseph’s face as Travis found a way around BT. “So you’re saying you found all the relics?” Travis asked.
“All of them,” Joseph answered.
“The Ark of the Covenant?”
“Yes.”
“The Holy Grail.”
“Of course.”
Travis stopped to think.
“I’ll save you the trouble. We have the real Shroud of Turin, the Seamless Robe of Christ, the Veil of Veronica, the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Lance and the True Cross among others that might not be as famous. When we’d completed our mission, our jobs became different. We were now protectors of the origins of Christianity. We decided to take that one step further and protect all of humanity.”
“From what?” Travis asked.
“From itself, unfortunately. But to do that, we soon realized we needed to expand. Not so much to put distance from our earlier roots…but to be more adaptable. This was too big for just one sect, thus was formed the Illuminati.”
“The Illuminati? But you guys are supposed to be taking over the world.”
“That’s what others would have you believe. The ones that truly wield the power and have been amassing it for ages want the attention on anyone but themselves.”
“Why not just come out and squash the rumors?”
“Not a bad idea, but we’re not even supposed to exist.”
“So what are you doing here?” BT queried.
“I think you already know. According to our friend here, you just left their building. The Demense Group, while relatively new in the world domination scheme at a hundred years old, has had some serious technological and monetary backing that has thrust them to the forefront.”
“Like you, he is not my friend, either.” BT made a point to let him know his status with Trip.
“Very well, but neither am I your enemy.”
“We’ll wait and see on that.”
“Is he always like this?”
“Pretty much,” Tracy responded. “So…the zombies?”
“That was our doing...wait, wait, I don’t mean creating them. No, the Demense Group can take credit for that. We missed stopping the spiked flu shots by hours. Could have stopped all of this and brought them down at the same time. For that I will ultimately have to answer for, as it happened on my watch.”
“Not completely your fault, Jopesh.”
“It’s Joseph. For the forty-eighth time, Trip, it’s Joseph.”
“I know, Jopesh, I know. For the forty-eighth time you don’t need to keep telling me. I think he really likes his name,” Trip said to Stephanie. “I just think you ought to know that parts of this contest are being played out on vastly higher levels and the outcomes there have great influence on what happens here.”
“Trip, I do not know how you go from Chong to Descartes within the same sentence.” Joseph stroked the side of his horse’s head as he’d whinnied loudly.
“Do you think I can ride the llama again, Jopesh?”
“Okay, getting back on track, we fortuitously stumbled across some plans in a white panel van full of cheap beer.”
Tracy placed her hand to her mouth. “I think you’re talking about Mad Jack’s truck. Was it full of air-soft guns?”
Joseph laughed, his face seemingly lighting up as he did so. Tracy looked at him. The laugh was genuine, and he enjoyed it. She could also tell it was not something he did often, at least not recently.
“I guess perhaps laughing is not the best thing until I know his fate.” Joseph had let the smile dissipate.
“He’s fine, at least he was the last time we saw him.” Tracy eased his mind.
“My men and I just thought it was one of the funniest things we had come across. In the midst of an apocalypse, someone was running around with toy guns. We stopped laughing the moment we took a look at his plans. It had to be a sign, just another indicator that perhaps Trip is right. If we had come out of the woods a hundred yards further up or back, we would not have bothered to see what was in it. We have some pretty technical personnel within our group, and they were able to shrink down his original design somewhat.”
“You have the zombie repeller boxes?” Travis came closer.
“Huh? I guess we never thought of it that way, but that works as well. We thought they were constructed for herding.”
“Is that what is going on here?” Tracy asked.
“Yes, we’ve been assembling the largest army of zombies we could in order to send them into the Demense facility and take it down. We have a person on the inside who should be opening the doors right about now.” Joseph looked to his watch and then the sun.
“All the doors?” Tracy asked in alarm. “You’re letting all those zombies into that building? BT, we have to go back!” She turned.
“Ma’am, there are over twenty thousand zombies going there. You can’t get through them.”
“My husband is in there!”
Another confused look came across his face and then a light dawned. “Your last name is Talbot? And your boy is a dead ringer. He about this high?” Joseph held his hand up close to his chin. “Mostly mouth and bad decisions?”
“That’s him,” BT answered.
“You know my husband?”
“I do. I was his Unit Commander, and for a while I thought I was his principal, he was sent to my office so many times. Boy, I liked him. I couldn’t let him know that, though. He dressed down more of my officers than I care to remember. Although, in fairness, they all deserved it. I could have perhaps gone for a little more compliance out of him.”
“Couldn’t we all,” BT stated.
“Hell of a soldier, and not much would stop him if he was determined to get through it. I’m truly sorry for your loss.”
“Shove your loss up your ass and call your zombies back!” Tracy got up in Joseph’s face.
“Ma’am—”
“It’s Tracy. Do I look seventy to you?”
“No ma...Tracy. Like I said, there are twenty thousand zombies there. It has taken us over a month to assemble that kind of herd, and I’ve lost a dozen men in the process. Even if I wanted to stop them, which I don’t, I couldn’t anyway.”
“Oh, you’ve gone and done it now.” BT was moving close, not so much to pull Tracy off of Joseph as to protect the man from her wrath.
“Your husband was—”
“IS!”
“Is…um, an interesting man, and I liked him greatly, but this is bigger than any one person. That facility is attempting dominion over what little of humanity is left. And they have the ways and means to accomplish that. We have an opportunity to stop that now. We may never get another chance like this.” A radio on Joseph’s hip squelched. “Hold on, I have to take this.” He grabbed the radio and moved away.
“When did I get a job with the Red Cross?” Trip was looking down at his chest. “Are there doughnuts?”
“I know what you’re thinking, Tracy, and I’m with you all the way. We just have to send everyone else away. Especially him.” BT was pointing at Trip who was searching his pockets desperately, looking for the doughnut that wasn’t there.
“You do know that, for all his faults, he just saved us, right?” Tracy asked.
“Yup, and I’ll have to live with that every day for the rest of my life, which probably won’t be that long anyway when we go back for Mike.”
Joseph came back a few moments later, clearly confused
about the news he’d just received.
“What’s going on?” Tracy prodded.
“The computer systems are down inside the facility.”
“That good or bad?” BT asked.
“It’s good, it’s means their satellite surveillance is down as well as their defenses. Now coordinating a strike or any future attacks would be extremely difficult for them.”
“Wasn’t that part of your plan?”
“I’d like to say so, but our plant was fairly low level. Plus, the man could barely operate his cell phone, so I’m pretty positive that he could not have hacked the main frame and shut it down.”
“This has Mike written all over it.” Tracy turned to BT.
“How is it that Mike is in there? Are you, or were you, part of the group?” Joseph asked. “Near as I could get from John was that you had been staying at the Holiday Inn and he seemed agitated that the pool wasn’t open.”
“I can assure you we weren’t guests. We were…” Tracy paused. There was only so much information she could trust this man with, and she wanted to be careful to not give him anything more than the bare minimum.
“Out scavenging.” BT picked up the thread. “We got surrounded by zombies, probably part of your horde now that I think about it. Was looking pretty grim until some military guys showed up. Dropped some explosives and then we were rescued by a helicopter. Next thing we knew, we were all in cells.”
“Why go through all the trouble of rescuing you folks just to deposit you in cells?” Joseph asked, clearly fishing for more information.
“I…I think they wanted to use us for human experimentation for their vaccines,” Tracy answered when BT stalled. It probably would have looked more convincing if BT hadn’t shook his head in response as if to say, “good answer.”
“Makes sense, but why then are you out here?”
“The leader, Hawes.”
“Dixon Hawes? I knew it was that wily bastard. Figured it couldn’t be Deneaux, too egotistical and, to be honest, too stupid and obvious. Seemed he was more of the front man.”