Strive for more. More zombies, more fighting, more profit…

It took us a while to get rolling and then there was all the drama of blindfolding Robbie to deal with, too. The Kid was such a whiner, you’d think we were burning his eyes out with acid, not gently wrapping them with an old necktie Dave had in the van. I don’t know why he had one. It wasn’t like we were going out on job interviews or to a fancy restaurant any time soon.

Anyway, by the time we actually got back to the warehouse it was almost dark.

Dark was bad. Always. We had to hurry.

Dave killed the engine and we sat there for a minute, looking up at the ramshackle building that hid so much.

With a heavy breath that told me how little he was looking forward to this, he reached back and tugged The Kid’s blindfold down around his neck.

“We’re here,” he said.

The Kid blinked a few times and then leaned forward from his place crouched on the back floor next to our writhing captive. He looked out the front windshield and wrinkled his nose in contempt.

“You should have gotten paid up front. This is a dump.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Dave said as he got out and started around to the back of the van to pull our quarry out for delivery.

I grinned as I opened my own door. “Yeah. I mean, you look like a nice little boy at first glance. But we all know that’s bullshit.”

The Kid stuck his tongue out as I got out. When I reached the back of the van he had gotten himself behind our zombie and was helping push as Dave hauled him out.

I jumped into the fray. With a lot of grunting and swearing, we managed to finally lift the writhing body from the back. I had its shoulders and Dave the kicking, flailing feet. The thing was dead weight, but dead weight that kept fighting and growling. I would not be sorry to see it go.

I looked up at the building as I shifted my part of the load. “Think he’s watching?”

Dave nodded. “Hell yeah. He’s probably on his way up to—”

Before he could finish, the broken door opened and Barnes rushed out much like he had the day before. Only this time there were no readied weapons or threats. This time he had a grin on his surprisingly handsome geeky face and he clapped his hands together as he approached us.

“That’s it, isn’t it?” he gushed as he looked at the moving bundle of rope and burlap in our arms. “It’s perfect. Just beautiful.”

I sniffed as I looked at our bundle. It was oozing. Apparently Kevin had some fucked-up ideals when it came to beauty.

“Come, come inside,” he encouraged us as he backed toward the warehouse. “Bring it here.”

We followed him into the building, our arms heavy with our squirming bundle and with The Kid a few steps behind us. Kevin was so wrapped up in our gift for him that he didn’t even seem to notice we had an extra crew member. That is, until we reached the hidden elevator shaft. After Kevin had hit the button opening the floor, only then did he look back and his broad smile fell.

“What is that?” he asked, his nostrils flaring as he pointed across the empty expanse toward The Kid.

I chuckled. “He claims to be a child.”

Dave shot me a dirty look as we shifted the load. The zombie started to moan and groan louder and louder and he had to almost shout as he explained, “This is Robbie. He… um… helped us while we were working on capturing the zombie.”

“You needed assistance from a child?” Kevin asked with an arched brow. He kept his gaze firmly on David, almost as if he put the majority of the blame on him.

“I’m not a child, I’m almost twelve,” The Kid snapped. Both Dave and I shot him a “shut-the-hell-up” glare like my mom used to give me in church about a hundred years ago.

I wished I could step closer to Kevin, but with the zombie in our arms, it wasn’t possible. Instead, I shifted the load (my shoulders were starting to fucking kill me).

“The Kid sort of inserted himself into the issue. We didn’t invite him,” I explained. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, does it? We got the zombie.”

“You did, indeed,” Kevin said with a broad smile for me.

I heard Dave’s soft but highly irritated sigh beside me. “Look, asshat, this thing is really getting heavy. If you don’t mind…”

He nudged his head toward the elevator.

Kevin jerked, almost as if no one had ever called him a name before. But I guess if you were a highly educated doctor who spent his time doing research under an abandoned warehouse… maybe no one had. At least not since high school.

“O-of course,” he said as he stepped back and let us—all of us, including The Kid—onto the lift panel.

We rode down in an awkward silence. Dave and I kept shifting as our zombie jerked in our arms, The Kid was sulking about being called a child, and Barnes was just staring at our captive in pure rapture.

In fact, the only noise as we moved from the red to the green to the bright white lights were the groaning whines of our little zombie friend. And even they were getting softer.

The doors dinged open and into the bright light of the sterile hallways we moved. Of course, The Kid hadn’t ever been here before, so I couldn’t help but shoot a quick look behind at him to see his reaction.

Even he couldn’t be jaded about this. He was still standing in the elevator shaft, his eyes wide as saucers as he stared at the hallway. I smiled. He looked like an eleven-year-old at that moment, only instead of being impressed by a toy store, it was light and cleanliness that blew his mind.

“Follow me,” Kevin said as he moved down the hallway.

After a few awkward turns, he unlocked one of the little lab rooms where the shades were drawn so you couldn’t see inside. Barnes motioned us past him, flattening against the wall as we passed so the zombie wouldn’t touch him.

There was a table in the middle of the room with restraints across it. Dave shot me a quick glance as we set the thrashing zombie down on it. I ignored it.

“Want us to strap him down?” I asked as I turned back to the doctor.

He shook his head. “No, no. I’ll set him up myself.”

He motioned us from the room and shut the door behind us. I heard the lock click back into place.

“Most excellent work, Sarah. You have impressed me beyond measure, and trust me I had extremely high hopes for you,” Kevin began, reaching out to take my hand.

When he saw it was covered in blood and sludge from our little zombie friend, he hesitated and instead slid his fingers up to my bare bicep. He squeezed gently there, his fingers surprisingly soft. I guess I was used to rough hands like Dave’s.

I stared at the hand on my arm for a moment and then smiled.

“Well, it was truly a team effort,” I said as I looked at Dave. He was also staring at Kevin’s hand on my bare arm. “Right, honey?”

He continued to stare a moment longer and then grunted. “Go Team,” he muttered, the sarcasm dripping from his tone like poison. “So we’d like to get paid, thanks.”

Kevin flinched and I did, too. It seemed so gauche to talk about payment when the doctor was busy congratulating us. Or congratulating me, anyway, since Dave hardly seemed to register with him unless he was annoyed. But the discomfort cleared from his face instantly and he released my arm as he turned toward Dave.

“Of course. Please feel free to use the shower facilities at your leisure. And I have put a store of additional weaponry and ammunition on a wheeled cart near the elevator. I think you’ll find them more than satisfactory compensation.” His smile returned to me. “And Sarah, I hung some new clothing for you in the bathroom stall behind the door. I hope that isn’t too forward.”

Dave sucked in a sharp breath but before he could answer the question directed toward me, I jumped in front of him. “Well, thank you, Dr. Barnes—”

He shot me a look and I smiled.

“Kevin,” I corrected myself, swiftly, even as I reached back and patted Dave’s hand since I could feel his temper bubbling silently. “I’ll certainly take whatever you found for me, but I’m happy to bring my own fresh clothes in.”

“Of course.” Kevin looked sheepish as he shoved his glasses up his nose nervously. “I overstepped, and I apologize. Next time—”

“Wait,” Dave interrupted, shaking off my hand which was still patting him and coming around to stand next to me. “Next time? What the fuck do you mean, next time?”

Kevin stared at Dave for a long moment and then he shook his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.”

Dave clenched his fists and his voice strained through obviously clenched teeth. “You said you wanted a Goddamned zombie to run your little experiments on. So we brought you a Goddamned zombie. That’s it. That was the deal. So what the hell do you mean fucking next time?”

Kevin looked at me, then Dave, then back at me. “I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I thought you understood. I’ll need far more than one specimen to do a truly useful test of my curative serum. There are variables to be dealt with and overcome. The more zombies you can bring me, the better.”

My insides clenched as Dave stared at the doctor.

“Getting one was almost suicide,” Dave said. His voice was quiet now but that didn’t mean he wasn’t angry. In fact, Quiet Dave was an infinitely more Dangerous Dave. “And now you want more?”

“That’s stupid,” The Kid agreed from behind us and all of us jumped.

He’d been so quiet since we reached the lab, I think we’d all forgotten about him (it didn’t happen often, I assure you). Now I shot him another church glare. He wasn’t making the situation better by encouraging Dave’s anger and resistance to what Kevin wanted from us.

I grabbed Dave’s arm and held tight. Reluctantly he stopped glowering at Kevin and turned his gaze toward me. I smiled as best I could.

“We’re trying to save the world, babe. Even if it means one zombie at a time, right?”

He held my gaze for a long moment and then shook my arm off. With a grunt, he started down the hall toward the bathrooms we’d seen the day before.

“I’m going to hit the showers,” he muttered. “I don’t suppose you left any fresh panties for me, eh Doc?”

He was gone before any of us could respond. My cheeks heated with blood at his comment and I looked at Kevin with an apologetic shake of my head.

“Sorry. He’s a hothead,” I muttered. “He’ll come around.”

Kevin smiled, but there was something kind of pitying about it. “I’m sure he has many wonderful qualities. And I’m sure he was a great help when you caught the zombie.”

My brow wrinkled. “Well, to be fair, we caught the zombie.”

But Kevin was already starting away from me and I didn’t think he heard me as he turned the corner and left me standing in the sterile hallway with The Kid watching me, a little smug grin on his face.

By the time we had all showered (The Kid protested loudly, but we insisted. Two words for prepubescent boys: Pee. Ew.) at least a couple of hours had gone by. So when I stepped from the bathroom, my hair still damp and freshly dressed in a new t-shirt and cargo pants, I was surprised to see Dave waiting for me, arms folded, in the hall.

“Ready to load up?” he asked, his tone no longer the angry one from earlier.

I tilted my head. “What do you mean, load up?”

“I mean get the fuck out of here.” He rested his head back against the wall with a heavy sigh. “Go to camp, get some rest. Get rid of The Kid and move on with our lives. Whatever.”

I stared. “Dude, it’s pitch black outside by now. There’s no fucking way we’re going out on the road now.”

He pushed off the wall to face me. “Wait, are you suggesting we stay in Dr. Weird’s Lab of Secrets for the night?”

I smiled, reaching for some kind of levity. “That sounds like a Harry Potter title.”

He shook his head. “I’m not doing it, Sarah. I’m not staying here.”

“Why?” I burst out in exasperation. “Because you don’t like him? That’s a stupid reason to go out to certain death and you know it.”

When he didn’t deny that, I moved closer and slipped my arms around his waist. With a smile, I leaned up to kiss him.

“Jealous Dave may be a Neanderthal, but he has to know he’s the only boy for me.”

Dave tried not to smile as he kept staring at the ceiling, but he failed. “Yeah,” he said, “But Neanderthal Dave doesn’t like his woman wearing other man’s clothing.”

I laughed. “Well, you can take them off… if you agree to stay here tonight like a good boy.”

“Sarah is right.”

Dave instantly tensed as Barnes’s voice drifted from down the hall toward us. I sighed as the doctor approached us. So much for that hint of a good mood (and maybe even some nookie later).

“Thanks, I don’t need your advice,” Dave said as he let me go and glared at Barnes.

“You do if you’re thinking of leaving. You can view the monitors yourself. Right now night vision shows twenty to thirty of those creatures at the warehouse entrance and I have no intention of wasting good ammo on them. Even if you got through, God knows how many hundreds stand between you and the camp.”

Dave clenched his fists, but there was no arguing with that logic.

“Stay here tonight and I’ll help you load up all your new materials for the fresh hunt tomorrow.”

Dave snorted. “I don’t think we’ve even established we’re going on a new hunt for you tomorrow, Doc.”

Barnes cocked his head. “Oh, I’m sorry. I understood from Sarah that you would be.”

Dave turned toward me with a glare. “Did you now?”

“Dave—” I started, but he turned away.

“Well, she is the braaaains of our operation, right? Guess the brawn better get to bed and leave you two to plan our next step.”

He took off down the hall toward—well, I don’t really know where he was going, but he was pissed. Barnes’s attempt to help had only made things worse.

But as I turned toward the doctor, I guess to apologize again, I caught the end of a smug smile on his face. It was gone almost instantly, but there was no denying its existence.

And that made me wonder what ulterior motive this guy had for causing problems. And how hard I’d have to work to solve them in the morning.

Dave put our fully loaded van into gear and drove away from the warehouse with morning sun glinting off the windshield cheerily. He hadn’t spoken… not one fucking word… since we woke up.

I settled back in my seat and turned my head to look at him. I’d slept like a baby in the comfortable twin bed Kevin had provided, but Dave looked like hell. The circles under his eyes told me everything I needed to know without asking that good ol’ sitcom conversation starter, “How did you sleep?”

“So you want to become dear Doctor Kevin’s zombie hunter professionally now, eh?” he finally asked. “I thought you said we shouldn’t confuse the ‘brand.’ ”

I shut my eyes. With The Kid still in the back of the van, I really didn’t want to go into this, but apparently this was going to be the moment we hashed it out.

“Come on. You know all that brand stuff is bullshit now,” I muttered.

He shot me a look. “You didn’t think that before Barnes… I’m sorry, Kevin started asking you for favors. You were all about killing zombies for as much profit as we could manage.”

“But that was when I thought all that was left was this,” I said, waving my hands around at the empty desert. “In a wasteland, why not destroy, destroy, destroy? But now… I mean, come on, David. You saw what that serum did to the infected guinea pigs. You know that if Barnes could translate that to infected people it just might change everything. Don’t you think that’s nobler than just killing a bunch of zombies?”

He blew out a humorless laugh as he got off the freeway and made his way toward the camp. He had an answer on his tongue, but before he could say it, The Kid stuck his head between us and pulled his blindfold down away from his eyes. When he saw where we were, he gasped.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he asked Dave.

I flinched. “Language!”

He ignored me, of course. Dave looked at him. “What? Where the fuck do you think we’re going, Robbie? I’m taking you to the camp. You’ll be safe there.”

“No fucking way!” The Kid responded. “I’m not going to that camp.”

I turned on him and the stress finally took over. “Look, you little brat, we’re not taking you with us, so forget it. In the camp you’ll be taken care of. Why the hell wouldn’t you want that?”

He folded his arms. “Have you ever seen the way they treat kids in the camp? Oh yeah, some of them, the little ones, get taken by some nice lady who lost her own brats. But most of them get put into one big fucking tent. Sometimes some religious jerk comes in and tries to teach us to pray or whatever. But we don’t get to do shit. And we can’t leave. It’s prison. And I’m not going to fucking prison.”

He touched the gun in his waistband and suddenly I felt a scene from Boyz n the Hood or something coming on. I rubbed my eyes with my fists hard enough to see stars. Seriously, the drama boys create…

“Well, what do you want us to do, Kid?” I finally asked as calmly as I could. “We can’t just leave you running around in zombie hell. You may not like to hear it, but you’re eleven years old. You’re too young to make it on your own.”

He shook his head and suddenly I saw just how determined he was in his eyes. “My mom died on the first day the zombies hit Phoenix. My dad… well, he’s a whole other story. But the point is, I’ve been taking care of myself since the first moment this started. I didn’t need a babysitter then. I don’t now. So forget it.”

Dave slammed on the brake and swerved to park at the side of the deserted road. He turned in his seat and stared at the scraggly little boy who had somehow taken over our van and apparently our lives.

“And what will you do if we just pull into the camp and drop you off? You know I could get that gun from you if I wanted to.”

The Kid swallowed. Hard. He stared at Dave like he was sizing him up and by the pallor to his skin I’m guessing he knew he wouldn’t win in a fight. There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought Dave would ever take it that far, but now I wasn’t so sure. He might not have been bluffing.

“Well, I guess I’d have no choice but to tell everyone what you’re doing,” The Kid said softly, and the hardness was back in his little boy eyes. “About catching zombies and cures and warehouses that hide labs somewhere, what… out past Sedona Street?”

I spun around in my own seat to look at him. The Kid had been wearing a blindfold both in and out of the warehouse, how the hell had he figured that out?”

He smiled like he was a mind reader. “I counted the turns,” he explained even though I hadn’t asked. “Point is, even if I just have a tiny clue of the location of your big, bad secret lab, somebody will figure it out. And then your doctor guy won’t be so protected anymore.”

“You little hustler,” I breathed, though once again I was impressed by The Kid. Most people didn’t figure out blackmail and extortion until they were in their teens, at least. But I guess zombie apocalypses make you grow up fast.

Dave sat for a long moment just looking at The Kid. Then he slowly faced forward again, let out a deep sigh, and put the van in gear. To my surprise, he swung it around on the wide road and turned away from the camp and back toward the Badlands.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Unless you want to put your precious Kevin in danger, not to mention our own asses, I guess The Kid is right. He holds the cards.”

I slid down deeper in my seat as I muttered to myself about jerk kids and birth control. But David was right, anyway. At this moment, we had no choice but to keep the brat with us.

“So,” The Kid said with a grin wide enough to split his face. “What are we doing now? Catching or killing zombies?”

I sent a side glance toward Dave and he sent the same toward me. At the moment, nothing was really resolved and neither one of us was in a big damned hurry to flinch first in our fight.

Before one of us could, though, The Kid pointed. “Better decide fast. Look, a loner zombie!”

I followed where he was pointing. We had turned back onto the main road that led to the highway. The overpass was about a quarter of a mile away, a big wide hill that led east or west down the 202 depending on which way you turned.

At the top of that big hill was a pacing zombie, almost like he was waiting for something. He was exactly the kind we wanted to catch since he was alone and in an area where there wasn’t much chance that something else was hiding. If we were going to keep catching, I guess a decision was going to have to be made about it.

Now.

We all stared as Dave slowed the vehicle to nothing more than a crawl. We were so far away that unless we made a big noise or did something else to draw attention to ourselves, a zombie wouldn’t notice us.

Except that I could have sworn this one did. Its pacing slowed and it seemed to turn toward us and shift its weight.

“Get me the glock with the scope,” I said softly, waving my hand in the back toward The Kid.

I heard him shuffling around and then felt the heavy weight of the semi-automatic in my palm. I lifted the gun and peered through scope.

The zombie was everything we’d come to expect from the living dead. Gray skin, black sludge caked around the mouth, rotting body. Only this one still managed to be different somehow. For one thing, he was bigger than your average zombie. I’m not talking Resident Evil ridiculous, of course, but this guy had been a big boy in life, bigger even than the Arnold Schwarzenegger wannabe zombie I’d lured to our net trap yesterday.

But that wasn’t all that separated him from your average, run-of-the-mill infected bastard. Unlike the other zombies I’d seen over the past few months, his pacing had a purposeful quality to it. He wasn’t just shambling aimlessly. He was waiting. Watching.

And in that moment, he lifted his head and he looked right at us. Through the high-powered scope I could see pretty good detail on his face. There was no doubt about it, he was really looking. Seeing us even though we were too far away for most zombies to notice through their rotting eyes.

He tilted his head back and let out a moaning groan that was loud enough to be heard even all the way at our car.

“Shit, David,” I whispered, my tone laced with two emotions that bubbled inside of me like boiling oil. First there was fear, intense and powerful like I hadn’t felt since that awful moment when we saw a zombie for the first time.

But there was something else, too. Excitement. My heart raced with it and my hands shook as I continued to stare through the scope.

“What is it?” he whispered.

I lowered the scope and looked at him. “I think that might be a bionic zombie.”