Hell on Earth (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 7) Read online

  But Sarah scrunched her face and pushed herself off the bed she found herself on, sitting up and glancing around the room. She was back in her bedroom in the cabin, and she couldn't understand what had happened; a moment ago (or so it had seemed), she was swinging from a tree, a taut rope around her neck. And now she was here as if she had just woken up in the middle of the night, like it had all been a nightmare. But that still didn't explain the girl.

  "What... What happened to me?" Sarah asked. She rubbed her neck and felt her skin burn from the contact. She tried to clear her throat and sharp pain filled it. Whatever was going on now, there was no doubt that she had actually tried to kill herself. She just didn't know what stopped her.

  "I was walking down the road and I heard someone yelling," the girl said, "so I looked up and I saw you hanging there. I didn't know if I was too late, but I got the chair back under your feet and then Wayne here helped me get you down."

  Sarah remembered being utterly miserable before, but now she was overcome with extreme embarrassment. She'd been too cowardly to face Wayne and tell him what she was going to do; she supposed it was truly the coward's way out, but it was the only option that made sense to her at the time. She still felt a roiling sea of unbearable depression inside of her, but now that she was faced with company, it seemed an entirely improper thought. She muttered something that she thought was somewhere between a thank you and an embarrassed expression of displeasure. Mostly, she just tried to look away and hide her reddening face.

  The girl noticed this and shied away from asking her why she did it. She didn't think it was the answer, which was why she saved her, but she knew that everyone had their reasons. When she finally mustered up the courage to look at Sarah again, she changed to a more appropriate question. "Do you remember me?"

  Sarah cleared her throat and waited a moment for the redness to even out.

  "No, should I?" she asked.

  "That's okay," the girl said, "I'm sure you've seen a lot of faces."

  Wayne had his face turned to Sarah as he listened intently to the conversation, glad to hear that she was awake and okay.

  "This is Sandra," he introduced.

  "Sandra..." Sarah muttered. "Why do I know that name?"

  "You rescued me," the girl said with a smile. "I guess there was a reason I was here just in time."

  "I did? From what?"

  "You saved my life. Me and my brother. You rescued us from Zed's camp after..." Sandra's words faltered as she glanced over at Wayne.

  Wayne became a little sheepish at the bitter acknowledgment from his past. He had been the one along with Kenny to lay siege to Zed's camp under Noah's orders, killing every man, woman and child they came across. There was no doubt there was blood on his hands, but he would own it. "Sandra and I had a chance to get to know each other just now," he said.

  For his part in the massacre, Sandra understood that he had been a reluctant participant and had abstained from killing any of the women and children himself. It didn't excuse his actions, but that felt like a long time ago to her, and considering all the torment she'd been through since, she considered it water under the bridge.

  But still Sarah found the situation strange as recognition suddenly struck her. She remembered finding the two scared kids hiding under the desk in that office. The ones she had snuck out of the place and told to meet her at the Marriott the next day so that they could smuggle her explosives to assassinate Noah. Wayne had found her consorting with the enemy as they escaped, and now here Wayne sat with the two of them, seemingly no animosity at all between them. This world took many strange turns.

  "I do remember you," Sarah said. She opened her mouth again as she was about to mention her brother Tommy, but then she faltered, remembering what he asked her to tell his sister if they ever crossed paths. She remembered their sordid history after they had a run-in with the bandits and what Tommy was forced to do to her to gain favor with them. Tommy's last thoughts on this earth was that his sister hated him, but Sarah couldn't possibly believe that would be true, even given the circumstances. And seeing the sweet face of the girl in front of her, she knew it for a fact.

  "What were you going to say?" Sandra asked, seeing the hesitation on her face.

  Sarah sighed. "I ran into your brother not too long ago."

  Sandra's eyes widened in shock at first, then they slowly narrowed back to normal as she settled into caution. "Oh... where was that?"

  Sarah decided the best thing to do was just be honest. "I found him in a bandit camp. I took him away from there, but he... didn't make it."

  "I see."

  It was hard for Sarah to tell exactly what Sandra was feeling or thinking, but she pressed on. "Just before he died, he asked me to tell you something." Sandra looked up at her expectantly, and Sarah could see that there was a twinge of sadness in her gaze. She remembered Tommy's cold and self-pitying words he instructed her to relay, how his sister would be glad to know that he was dead and thinking that she hated his guts. But Sarah could see that flame in her eyes, that eternal bond between blood that could never be broken, and she just couldn't bring herself to say those words. In the very final moments of his life, Tommy told her he had changed his mind and wanted her to relay a different message, but he never spoke the words before the life drifted out of him. So Sarah would do it for him. "He wanted me to tell you how much he loved you and that he never meant to hurt you."

  Sandra teared up. "I know," she said. "He was always a sweet brother, and I... I'm sad to hear he's gone. Did he... die peacefully?"

  "Yeah. In my arms. The last thing he talked about was you."

  Sandra wiped her nose. "That's nice. I know he's in a better place now." She looked up at the ceiling and muttered under her breath, telling her little brother to rest easy.

  Sarah motioned out with her arm and Sandra sauntered over to the bed and sat down next to her. Sarah wrapped her arm around her back and hugged her. Sandra leaned her head on her shoulder as a single tear dripped from her eyes and ran down her cheek. Sarah patted her on the back, and when she was better, she stood up and walked over to the window, looking outside into the darkness.

  "How long was I out?" she asked

  "About an hour," Wayne said.

  "Wayne told me all about the two of you and what you've been doing lately," Sandra chimed in. Her face turned somber again. "You guys have been through a lot."

  "We certainly have," Sarah said. "You might not even know it to wander around these parts, but there's a war going on. At least... there was. That's all over with now."

  "What do you mean?" Sandra asked.

  "Jack Glass," Sarah said. The name tasted bitter in her mouth. "We tried to fight him, but we lost. He's too powerful, and anyone I've ever known lately has been killed trying to stop him. We're the only two left, and we're just a couple of cripples hiding in the woods, as Wayne says."

  "I didn't think you'd ever be one to give up," Sandra said.

  Sarah laughed, not knowing whether to be amused or offended at this.

  "It's just that, after everything I've heard about you and remember about you, you always seemed like you could take on anything," Sandra added. "I think you being here is proof of that."

  "Not this time," Sarah said. "We don't even know where Glass is or where he's conducting his experiments. There's no more hope left." She looked down and brushed her fingers across her neck again, wincing at the pain.

  "I know where he is."

  Sarah and Wayne both turned toward her.

  "What?" Sarah asked.

  "I know where he is," she repeated.

  "You do?"

  "Yeah, he lives in this huge mansion up in the hills. It's pretty well hidden, so you probably wouldn't stumble upon it by accident, but it's somewhere northeast of here. I couldn't give you the exact location on a map, but I know how to get there on foot."

  Sarah was shocked. "How do you know this?"

  "Because I used to be one of his... servants. It was li
ke being a maid or secretary, but he also made me do... other things. He beat me when I didn't do something right, or sometimes it would just be for the fun of it. After I got separated from my brother, some people got a hold of me and kidnapped me. The next thing I knew, I was chained up in this place and told that I could either serve him or I would be killed."

  "How did you get out of there?"

  "While I was working there," Sandra continued, "I fell in love with someone. One of the soldiers stationed there. We kept our relationship a secret, but he would find times to come and see me in private. He couldn't stand seeing me being hurt anymore, so a few nights ago he smuggled me out of there and set me free. I'd been traveling down empty streets the last few days, holing up for the night or whenever I'd see someone around, and then I just happened to be walking by here tonight and I saw you."

  Sarah's expression turned especially serious. "What's in this mansion?"

  Sandra leaned forward on the bed. "The place is like a fortress. There's always helicopters flying in and out of there, and there's huge patrols guarding the place. They even have tanks stationed outside, watching for any trespassers."

  "And Glass lives here?"

  "Yeah. Sometimes he leaves to go somewhere else, but most of the time he's at the mansion. But with all the security, it's more like a compound."

  Despite Sarah's feelings of utter defeat, she found herself breathless for more information. "What else?"

  "Well, there's this huge lab underneath it," Sandra said. "It's where they create all the new zombies."

  "Have you ever been down there?" Sarah asked.

  "No, I've only seen some of the scientists walking around."

  Sarah's eyes narrowed. "Do you know who's in charge there?"

  Sandra thought about it. "Yeah, a short guy with glasses, mostly bald. Ron, I think his name was."

  Sarah sat on the deck and stared out at the landscape beyond the cliff. The air was cool and calming, and it seemed strange to her that she had tried to kill herself only a couple hours earlier. It almost seemed like there was a smokiness to the air that was comforting as she drew it into her lungs, even though no one was burning anything nearby. It was still late at night, but now she couldn't sleep. So she just sat there and stared.

  A million things ran through her head at once. At first, she tried to stuff them back down into that deep, dark hole inside of herself where they would never see the light of day again. But now those feelings clawed their way back up after Sandra's revelations, and she didn't feel the immediate need to stifle them again. She was contemplative. The horrible images of her recent and distant pasts filled her brain, and she would have to calm herself down again when she felt her chest start to squeeze into a panic.

  Now she knew where Glass was—his main headquarters—but she wasn't sure that changed anything; she was still a broken and lonely woman, inches away from a self-inflicted death. And if she needed anything else to dash her dreams, there was the fact that Sandra said the place was locked up tight with security. It sounded like far more than what was at the military base she broke into.

  But the one singular thought that she couldn't dismiss was that they had her son. She thought she'd lost David a year ago, never in a million years imagining that she would find him again, or that he had some kind of purpose which he was being forced to fulfill. She thought about what they did to Kenny, and now her stomach turned into a bramble of knots at the thought of them experimenting on her baby. Boiling bloodlust rose up inside of her at the thought of it, and she took a moment to stop and breathe before she gave herself a heart attack.

  She rescued Wayne from that military base, and the mother in her told her that if she was willing to do that for him, she would be damn sure willing to rescue her son if she still wanted to call herself a mother at all. But that was back when she still had some vigor left in her; now it had all been stripped away and she was left a broken, bitter person.

  The door to the deck opened behind her and Wayne stepped out. He shuffled his way over to a chair next to her and sat down. He turned his head toward the cliff along with her. "Nice view?"

  "I've never seen one better," she said absentmindedly.

  "So what do you think?" he asked.

  "About what?"

  He smiled. "Should we do it?"

  Sarah laughed, struck by the absurdity of his question. "Are you out of your mind?"

  "It's your son, Sarah."

  "My son is dead."

  "No, he's not. Your son's alive."

  "My son, nothing!" she snapped, slamming her hand down on the arm of the chair. She felt anger flow through her again, and she forced herself to calm down. "There's nothing I can do," she added. "Even if I could get him, there's no turning him back to the way he used to be. That was all a lie."

  "But if there's even a chance," Wayne said, gently putting his hand on hers.

  She looked down at it.

  "Isn't that what you told me?" he asked. "When I was locked up in that godforsaken place? You told me you thought if there was even a chance that you could get me back, then it was worth it to try; no matter what happened, the journey was worth it."

  Sarah ruminated on this. But what he said next really cut her to the bone.

  "What do we have left to lose? A moment ago, you tried to kill yourself. If we go down in a blaze of bullets and fire, what have we lost that we haven't lost already?"

  Sarah looked down at her feet. "I don't want to get hurt anymore. The pain is one thing; I can get shot, I can get stabbed. But I can't work myself up over my son again only for him to be taken away."

  Wayne chuckled.

  "What?"

  "You're a lot different now than when I first met you," he said.

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  Wayne drew in the sweet summer air. "Back at Noah's Ark, you were always the first one to volunteer to go on an excursion. Even though you'd just lost your son, you put that pain behind you. Not to remove it from your mind but to have your back and support you, to fuel you and give you strength to go forward and make a difference in the world. We may have all been wearing the rose-tinted glasses that Noah gave us, but your heart was in the right place. You'd already went through hell to get to Noah's Ark, but you kept on going. I miss that Sarah."

  She didn't say anything. Part of her wanted to be offended, or to offer up any excuse, but she was too dulled for that. Ever since she got to Noah's Ark, her ideals led her forward—always. And Wayne was right: what else did she have to lose? Even if she marched right up to Glass's front step and got shot on sight, she would do it just to make him have to move her body.

  But what he was most right about was what he said before that: if there was a chance, if there was even a single chance to get her son back or to put a bullet through Glass's head, she would do it.

  3

  SCOUTING

  The three of them traveled northeast in the morning, getting a good start on the day as the warm sun shined down on them. Sandra led them through streets that Sarah had never seen before, but once they got closer, they left the roads entirely end slipped through the woods. Sandra repeatedly told them how dangerous it was and just how much security was surrounding the mansion compound. And indeed, as they got closer, they could hear the faint buzz of helicopters whirling in the distance. Sarah got an aching feeling in her stomach on the way, growing increasingly suspicious of Sandra; it wasn't that the girl had anything in her demeanor or her actions to indicate that she was untrustworthy, it was just that Sarah had so trusted others before and been viciously stabbed in the back. The pain of the open wound was still fresh, and even though she couldn't share a knowing glance with Wayne, she got the idea that he understood her trepidation.

  Wayne carried a proper cane with him that they picked up on the way, a big thick one in case it had to double as a defensive club. He was starting to get his bearings more and more and he was able to walk without stumbling and falling to the ground all the time. He did best
on flat surfaces, but he started to be able to navigate hilly terrain with his cane, slowly becoming skilled at feeling out his path. Even though it had only been a short time since his injury, he was starting to feel like his other senses had become heightened. Whether it was imagination or not, Wayne found that his sense of hearing was very keen and even started to use his sense of smell to get an intuition of what was around him.

  As Sandra helped them negotiate the steep terrain through the woods leading to the isolated and hilly region northeast of Eagle Rock, she explained what she knew of Glass and the compound.

  The mansion itself was three stories tall and it sat on a huge, multi-acre property. Walls that she estimated to be at least fifteen feet tall surrounded the property with only one gate in the front that she knew of. There was a big security checkpoint guarding it with swaths of troops standing vigilantly on guard. Patrols around the inside of the property were common and in large numbers, and there were even guard towers that popped up along the inside of the wall to watch for any incoming intruders. The gate was constantly being opened and closed as a multitude of convoys and other excursions went in and out of the compound, but Sandra assured them that Glass made up for this weakness in security by two military tanks parked outside the gate, constantly watching the approaching road. More tanks also patrolled the road for some length, and she said that as far as she knew, any incoming or outgoing vehicle that required security like a tractor-trailer was escorted by a fully-equipped Humvee with a soldier stationed on the machine gun turret, ready to repel any assaults. All incoming shipments were thoroughly inspected outside of the gates at a security checkpoint before it got near the compound. And choppers constantly buzzed in and out of the property, landing on helipads at the back of the mansion, although Sandra was sure there was also one stationed on the roof of the building. She didn't know military vehicles very well, but she said the helicopters she'd seen had chain guns and missiles installed on the sides.

  Inside the mansion, it was three floors of intricate hallways and rooms, which Sandra could navigate quickly and easily. She knew where most rooms were, and she knew all the entrances and exits to the building. She couldn't directly comment on the lab beneath the mansion—she only knew there was a big room on the ground floor that was restricted and there was also an elevator that led down that she had no business being in on her duties. She said that Glass had private sleeping quarters and an office on the third floor, with a large balcony attached to the office that he often stood on, surveying the landscape. Very tight security checks were installed in the hallway leading to Glass's office, and everyone was vetted when they came through. The security for his sleeping quarters was even tighter, letting in only one servant at a time with two armed guards waiting right outside the door at all times.