Chapter 34
Specimens
Allie
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Cam snarled, on his feet now. “You have some of those things here, with innocent people everywhere? When you know they are drawn to each other?”
Odette stood, too, and took his arm. “Cameron.”
Key looked ready to slaughter her brother. “How many people know?”
“Only the people on my team. I told you because I wanted to be open with you all about what we’re doing here. What we’ve had to do in order to really research the Zs. Your dreams and abilities are a piece of the puzzle—but they’re just one piece.”
“You better fucking explain,” Key demanded. “Quick.”
Malcolm took a deep breath. “When Frankie showed up, when I saw what she could do, I thought this would be the answer to all our questions. I thought she could show us what caused the zombies to turn, how the infection—for lack of a better word—spreads. We need to figure out why nothing works and why some people turn in seconds and others take days or weeks. How the Zs can sense each other. Why they’re so fucking scary when they’re in groups of five or more. ”
He paused. “Believe me, I know pretty much everything there is to know about Z-terror at this point, and nothing explains it—not physically or psychologically. But.”
He held up a finger, and he stepped toward his sister.
“But. I know that if you take blue-light glasses and coat them with a specific clear polycarbonate, you can still move, even when you’re in front of six Zs.
It blocks that red light in their eyes, kind of like what scientists wear when they’re working with lasers.
That red light... It’s like part of their evil.
” He paused. “Two of my people could tell you more about it and how it’s made, but my point is.
..” He blew out a breath. “We wouldn’t know that much, or fucking anything, without those specimens to examine. ”
Odette had slumped back into her chair. “Keyshawna. I mean... it does make sense.” She lifted her hands. “How did we learn to survive on the road? Trial and error.”
Key shook her head. “Not quite the same thing, baby.”
Malcolm sighed. “Trying to figure this out before we got the Zs here—it was like trying to fly by flapping your arms. I have some of the smartest people left alive here, I’m pretty sure, and they had even less clue about why and how these things are able to function.
” He paused. “Nothing about them is natural. None of the laws of nature or rules we’re used to apply.
So when the evidence of the supernatural smacked me in the face, we had to take action. ”
He faced them all then took a minute to look straight at Cam.
“The only way we could test anything was to actually have zombies here to test.” Then he shifted his gaze to Allie.
“You get that, right? Nothing we’re trying to do works unless we have specimens.
Pure theory gets people killed in this world. ”
Silence around the table.
“That’s what Morrigan meant. That’s the risk you were taking.” Allie looked at Cam.
“The attacks,” Cam said. “That’s why Newtown fell. There must have been a horde down that way, and parts of it came here.” He looked at Odette and Key. “They move like flocks of birds. They don’t like to be separated once they’re in a herd.”
“No, they don’t. And yes.” He looked at Cam. “They definitely know we have Zs here. Which makes no fucking sense from a natural standpoint when they’re in the basement and completely cut off from the outside, but...” He flipped his hands and then did spirit fingers. “Evil. Magic.”
“Not magic.” Key folded her arms. “It’s like they’re a different species altogether at this point, not just reanimated dead people.”
Mal pointed at her. “You’re not wrong. They have a kind of hive mind, or at least some basic flock mentality, and whatever animates one of them seems to animate all of them. That’s the best theory we have. Unless they’re connected in some other supernatural way.”
“Could be both,” Dette said. “They move like birds or swarm like bees, depending on who you talk to. But that wouldn’t really explain how the Zs you’ve captured can be sensed by others from a distance.”
“Unfortunately, it does not.” Mal shrugged. “Of course, it took humans thousands of years to figure out how bees live and communicate as a group, so give us a break. We’ve had less than two years.”
“And it doesn’t at all explain why they feel so fucking evil.” Key’s voice was oddly hushed. “Why they show no emotion at all but still seem to be... malevolent.”
They all let that sink in. Allie knew from the looks on everyone’s faces that none of this talk of malignant magic or evil was anything any of them wanted to consider.
But hadn’t they all wondered? Hadn’t they all thought, at one point or another, that their world had turned into hell when the dead began destroying the living?
Because these zombies didn’t take over the world after a viral outbreak. They took over the world after a whole bunch of people all over the globe had a dream about a shark and some pilot fish.
“What happened to Frankie?” Her question cut through the silence that had filled the room.
Everyone looked at her then at Malcolm, who’d gone completely still.
Allie swallowed. “When Frankie touched the Z, what did she see?”
Malcolm licked his lips. “Well, we don’t actually know what she saw.
We prepped everything, made it all as safe as possible.
Had one of them taken into a different room, kept it restrained, put her in warm clothing.
She put two fingers on the skin of its hand, went completely rigid, and then collapsed.
.. and when she woke up”—he grimaced—“two days later, she had no memory of any of it.”
Key frowned. “Like, she didn’t remember what she saw?”
Mal slapped a hand on the table. “Like, she didn’t remember her own name for hours and acted like a creepy-happy toddler for the better part of another day until she finally slept for a terrifyingly long amount of time and came back from it all.
” That all came out in an irritable rush of information.
A lot of defensiveness. That particular failure had scared Mal, Allie could tell. Probably for multiple reasons. “Did you try again?”
“No,” he said. “When Frankie was told the scope of the experiment and what happened to her, she was willing to try again, maybe while wearing gloves. Liam and I decided not to allow it.”
“I’ll bet Liam had some things to say about you being willing to risk Frankie like that,” Allie said, throwing out a hunch. The tiger and the honey badger. “She’s way more valuable to you with her mind intact.”
Malcolm very nearly glared.
You don’t like me as much now, do you?
Through gritted teeth, he said, “Yes, but that isn’t the point.”
Key stepped up. “What is the point, Mal?”
“People who have dreams tend to find people with abilities. And vice versa.” He looked at them all. “Once I figured that out, I knew I needed to talk to you. The Armory was my best bet, once I got your message that you were heading south to find Cameron.”
“So you want to test us?”
“We’ve learned a hell of a lot from testing so far.
” He looked at Key. “And we were hoping to find another ability like Frankie’s.
Something that might help us learn more about where they came from.
Frankie didn’t know much about Allie, but she knew Allie had an ability.
Something that had helped keep her alive, something that your goddess, Morrigan, had given her. ”
Allie nodded then took a deep breath. “I can find things. And people. I can seek them out.”
Mal’s eyes went wide. “How do you find them?”
“How do you find anything? I look.” She found it impossible to resist mocking his earlier words.
“I usually need a connection to the earth, or something connected to the earth. But then I focus, and I guess I send my mind out to do the seeking. Usually, I feel a pull in a certain direction, and I follow it.”
“You can see it in your head.” His whiskey-colored eyes, so like Key’s, were bright and fascinated.
“And I always know how to get to it. Sometimes I even get information. Addresses.” She looked at Cam. “Names.”
Mal grinned widely. “That... is fucking phenomenal.” He glanced at Key. “I’m not even mad at you for not telling me right off the bat.” When Key glared at him, he held up his hands. “Hey, kidding! Mostly. You held out on me.”
He sat down by Allie. “You have no idea how exciting this is for us. Another ability that’s based on an extrasensory sight and understanding—that’s huge.” He reached out a hand to her palm up, as if she would... take it? Hold it?
Instead, she gave his hand a disbelieving look.
He withdrew it with a laugh. “Fair enough. You don’t play, do you?” He looked over at Cam. “And you landed this one? Punching above your weight class, kid. Wow.”
Cam growled under his breath.
Key had wandered a step or two away, and when she came back to the table, she leaned on it, looking thoughtful. Almost excited. “Allie,” she began, “have you ever gone seeking for something intangible, like an answer to a problem?”
“Like trying to learn what caused a problem I’ve had?” Allie grimaced, thinking. “No. I’ve only looked for physical things.”
“But you could try that,” Key said.
Mal looked at Key then back to Allie, realization visibly dawning. “What if you looked for a reason why something happened?” Mal asked her, voice urgent. “Like seeking out what started the zombie outbreak?”
Silence again. Then the full weight of what Mal was asking of her twisted in Allie’s stomach while arguing broke out all around her.
Cam
“Insane,” Cam muttered again. “Insane in one hundred new and exciting ways.”
He and Allie were back in their room, lying in the narrow bottom bunk together, her head tucked into his shoulder and her body fitted to his.
She murmured an “mmm,” which he took as an acknowledgement of his words.