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  Teeth munched and hands clawed up her shoulders and legs, as one dead eater became three, five, eight and then ten. Warm with blood, each attack drew new red as wounds were deepened and explored. Her devouring was nowhere near finished when a mouth ate around her knee bone. New fits and battles erupted among them for the next taste.

  Unable to keep her eyes open, she drifted closer to unconsciousness as each new drop of blood exited her body and mixed with the fetid colors on the floor.

  Then the hatch below her exploded.

  Whup-whoosh!

  A rush of wind from an unknown force shoved the zombies from her body, their bodies flailing helplessly as they tumbled feet away, an invisible hand shooing them. Some were launched so high, like debris spinning in a tornado funnel, that they back-flipped and collapsed or slammed into the wall, many unable to get up, so twisted and broken.

  The hatch was in tatters below her, and she fell through it. No thanks to her efforts, but by gravity. Forward falling, blood leaked below, draining into the dark channel. She collapsed on cold concrete.

  She wanted to close her eyes and avoid the horrible pain. But then she overheard something strange: distant conversation muffled and between many walls.

  A seething shrill, “What the hell was that explosion?”

  “Did Brenner finally find our hiding place?”

  “No, he can’t—he won’t!”

  “Let’s move out.”

  Forcing herself up, she tramped through the blood that trickled down like a low-powered waterfall and hid at the bend of the hall.

  Steps entered the hallway.

  “The hatch is open!”

  “Who could’ve done that? It’s reinforced steel.”

  The statement was worded with dead seriousness: “Maybe a ghost.”

  “Ah, blood’s getting everywhere. Christ! It’s rancid. It’s zombie feed.”

  Addey peeked from the darkened corner at them, spying. One had pure white skin with a shaved head. Blue veins jutted from its tight skin. Green and black eyes, like a snake’s design. Its teeth were sharpened to match a piranha’s. She supposed it was a vampire from the picture in the file folder. Next to him was a vampire woman. She was sleek, her skin a wondrous marble gray, her hair olive black and flowing down her shoulders with silky-smooth character. The eyes were red and black, matched with the same teeth as the other creature.

  The male vampire pointed up at the hatch, regarding the zombies. “Stay back. You can’t leave the area. Keep glutting yourselves. We’re not ready for your help yet.”

  “Do what he says.” The woman’s eyes glowed in bright red slits. “Go back to where you came from and stay there.”

  “Why do they keep peering down here?”

  The male surveyed the area.

  Addey ducked her head back.

  “Somebody’s down here?” He spoke back up to the hatch. “I’ll find her. Stay put. You want warm and living flesh on your tongues like the good ol’ days, then do as I say and hold back.”

  Frantic, she scavenged for a place to run. The hall was narrow, she quickly learned. A set of stairs met her initial retreat. She hiked up what seemed to be two floors before reaching another hallway. Two doors was all she had to choose from. If she tried one, the sound would alert the two vampires.

  They’re already alerted.

  She shot herself into the nearest room.

  The garbled snarl erupted from a boiling throat, “Who’s in here?”

  Two sets of hands pounded against the door seconds after she closed it, threatening to break the hinges. The impressions bent the metal. The barrier wouldn’t hold against much more of a beating.

  Then Addey caught what was in the room and was delivered from one harrowing moment of possible death to another. She faced a row of sleeping werewolves, a row of sleeping, decayed zombies and a row of slumbering vampires. They were each connected to IV fluids and plastic tubes. The collection of monsters confounded her.

  They were sharing tubes—swapping blood, it seemed.

  Her entrance hadn’t disturbed them, and thank God, she thought.

  A talon-tipped hand punched through the wall. The give of metal was excruciating on her ears. Grating vocal cords demanded, “Intruder, come here!”

  She launched toward the door at the back of the room. The door was small, the size of a locker. She forced it open. Addey fell through it, forcing her pitiful body inside. She collapsed into another hallway, this one occupied by living quarters. The door closed behind her, the green and black eyes reflecting for a split second before disappearing.

  The hiss, “I’ll find you. It’s not safe for you to sleep ever again.”

  The door that closed wasn’t a door from the hallway; it was a panel disguised by the wall’s design as a secret passage. The images recurred at slipstream speed in her mind: the walking dead, the piles of bones as fortresses, the corpses wading and crawling through blood, Deke’s image above the hatch in the puddle of blood, the two vampires, the room of sleeping villains. Each would’ve caused her mind to plummet into insanity, but her burning wounds kept her in reality.

  The vampires had marked her for death.

  All of this happening, and I’ve only worked one hour!

  A woman stepped out of her room with a bored, wind-beaten face. She wore a black skirt and the white button-up top, the uniform of everyone. Her strawberry-blonde hair was put up in a bun. Her name badge read Cynthia.

  The woman snapped out of her routine upon sighting Addey. “Oh my God. What happened to you? Y-you’ve been m-mauled.”

  Cynthia scanned up and down the hall to ensure their safety, then phoned for help. Addey could hear her talk. “Security, bring a medic, somebody to help this poor woman. I can barely read her name badge. It’s torn to shit. She stinks of those dead people. She must’ve come from the sublevel.”

  Addey was zoning in and out of wakefulness. Blood seeped from her cheek, her shoulders and, most of all, her chewed-up calves. The impressions of feeding mouths refused to stop.

  Cynthia cradled her in her lap, cooing to her. “You’re going to make it. Help is on its way.”

  Without Addey seeing it happen, the woman applied shreds of clothing and compressed them against the wounds. “I can stop the bleeding. I used to be an EMT.” Rolling her eyes. “And now I’m a fucking waitress for the dead.”

  Addey whispered, “Waitress…for the dead?”

  Her vision was cotton balls mixed with blue and purple pixels. Her hearing faded in and out. She closed her eyes, much to Cynthia’s dismay.

  “No, Addey—wake up! You must stay awake.”

  She was slapped softly on her good cheek. “Hey, what the hell?”

  Cynthia was happy to see her patient wasn’t dying just yet. “Ah, you’ve got some piss and vinegar left in you. That’s what it takes to survive a zombie attack.”

  “Yeah.” She was happy to brag about such an event. “I survived a zombie attack.” Then her words became slurred again. “There were so many…and two vampires…and sleeping werewolves…and sleeping zombies…they were all in the same room together…hooked to IV bags…why…why, I don’t know…?”

  Cynthia stared at her concerned. “You’re not making sense, but keep talking.”

  She caressed Cynthia’s face, reaching up to her. A streak of blood colored her pale skin, but Cynthia didn’t shirk from her touch. “What do you want to tell me, sweetie?”

  She pointed at the wall with a trembling, bloody finger. “It’s a secret passage behind the wall. They’re back there, all of them.”

  The woman was puzzled after seeing no open door or secret passage. “It’s a wall, Addey. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Then steps closed in from down the hall. Three medics placed her on a stretcher and started to cart her to a different wing of the facility. She caught Richard talking to Cynthia and pointing at the wall, trying to explain what Addey had told her. Then she overheard Cynthia whisper, “She said there wa
s a secret passage behind the wall. She’s delirious. Who knows what she really saw in there?”

  Richard advised her. “Go to work. Don’t speak any of this to anyone. I’ll look into it.”

  Addey went to sleep the moment Richard began knocking and placing his ear on the wall where the passage had been.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Richard waited for Carl Brenner to show up in the east wing of the living quarters. Cynthia Wells claimed Addey had pointed at the wall and said it was a secret passage. Perhaps she was delirious, but the wounds she suffered could only be the result of the walking dead in the sublevel, and how she had escaped them was a curiosity in itself. Douglas Parnell claimed Addey had slipped into the gutter during her shift. He would further question Douglas about the events later, but for now, he had to locate where Addey escaped from and how she ended up in the east wing of the living quarters. If there was an opening in the sublevel, they were in danger of letting the dead escape, and that would be a bad wake-up call for everybody.

  He had other concerns too. Four of his counterparts—John Sullivan, Eddie Parker, Roberta Gonzalez and Annie Fuentez—were missing. They hadn’t responded to their private frequencies for days. They were dead, he supposed, and that left him as the only remaining spy on the PAM Complex. The team had been assembled to ensure the island was prepared for extermination. Recently, the United States government had decided to pull the plug on the project. The first problem: they hadn’t located James Sorelli in months. Sorelli was the one who had proposed the plan to create the island and form a truce with the United States government nearly fifty years ago. The second problem: the team searching for Sorelli was missing, and that meant Sorelli could be onto their plan. The third problem: how much did the monsters already know about the government’s plan to end the PAM Complex, and would they counterstrike? The final problem: the United States government had ceased communication with Richard twenty-four hours ago. The chief of defense simply put it during their last talk, “Find your team and report back to me.” He hadn’t found his team, and the frequency with the chief of defense was a dead one.

  The chief of defense, Layne Alexander, knew dropping a nuclear bomb and exploding them to hell would be a mistake. The military had no concept of what effect such an attack would have on the monsters. Would napalm and Agent Orange harm the creatures or give them new powers? The extermination plan was being drawn up now and currently was incomplete. Forming the team on the island had been a preliminary action to determine the best method of destroying the island.

  All of this so the government can save fifty billion a year. Too many liabilities. No shit it’s difficult to secure workers and keep it secret. It’s like we’re always funding a war with this island, but at least citizens could clearly see the legitimacy of this measure. Raise gas prices, raise taxes, or dig into the Federal Reserve, but find a way to keep this functioning!

  Disturbing his thoughts, Brenner finally arrived and met up with Richard. The director was grim, his presence sending Richard into high alert. Did the man know he was on a strike team? He’d worked on the island since he was fifteen, and now he was nearing thirty-three, and he knew about Brenner’s work ethic. The man didn’t sleep. Ever. Brenner was always awake, checking files, checking security cameras, completing rounds, taking inventory of stock and doing anything else he could busy his hands with. His skin was tinged yellow from chain-smoking cigars. His head was shaved close to the skin, a demented GI Joe with alcohol and substance abuse problems. He stank of gin, and the man didn’t care to cover it up. Strangely, Brenner was also a powerhouse. He was two hundred pounds of lean muscle. The man was in his fifties, vital despite being depleted and overworked. He believed in the work done here on the island, and he took his career to heart.

  Brenner was firm. “What’s this about a secret passage?”

  Richard played it calm. “A woman fell into the pit on the sublevel. Somehow she escaped the zombies. Cynthia Wells found her bleeding in this hallway. Douglas O’Neil, the shift supervisor, claimed she fell down the gutter into the pit of pus heads. The woman kept pointing at this wall, saying that’s where she came from.”

  “Oh really?” Brenner knocked on the wall; then he paused, hearing the depth of sound. “It’s hollow back there.”

  Without another word, the brute battered his shoulder into the wall. A thin door flew open, though it swung back and forth, still on its hinges. They stared at each other in shock. “I’m surprised you didn’t check this out before me.” They trudged into the thin access. “Follow me inside. And close it behind you, for fuck’s sake. No one else can know about this.”

  Richard followed the instructions, tagging along with the silent Brenner, who was working something out in his head. The room they entered was empty, nothing left except dried-up blood footprints. Upon closer observation, there was one object in the corner, and Richard picked it up. “Did you see this?”

  Brenner snatched it from his grip. He traced his finger down the four-inch butterfly needle attached to a plastic tube that fed into a clear bag. “Butterfly needle. Somebody was drawing blood or extracting blood.”

  “What is it doing here?”

  “This is a hideout.” Brenner squeezed the bag, crinkling it. “They’re doing shit behind my back. Conniving bastards. They think they’re clever. I’m onto them. They’re not getting away with anything. Not under my authority.”

  Richard speculated aloud, since Brenner declined to create any thesis besides statements of revenge. “Perhaps they’re having a private party. Vampires love their blood orgies. The more blood types on their tongues, the better.”

  Brenner shunned those notions. “This is behind our backs. We haven’t kept them from fornicating and supping blood. They’ve been busy, at work. The word retribution comes to mind.”

  They left the room and entered another hallway, taking on the unknown. Thin snakes of light from structures above illuminated the darkness, although the lit-up details were sketchy. The air was stuffy with the iron stench of aged blood and mold and decay. He eyed the secret corridor as his eyes adjusted better to the darkness. The passage was roughly formed, the walls and the concrete stairs unevenly erected as if hammered into completion by crude tools.

  I haven’t seen this section of the facility before, and judging by Brenner’s reaction, he hasn’t either.

  “I don’t like the way I’ve been feeling lately.” Brenner scolded nobody—or he hoped the perpetrator of the said concern was nearby to overhear the threat. “Someone’s planning something big, and I’m on the outside of it. This is my island, my authority, and nobody will subvert it while I’m in command.”

  Brenner tensed his knuckles, cracking them like dry kindling. He exhaled, an exaggerated show of distress. “Vampires have been here. I can smell ’em. But I also smell wolf shit and rotten flesh too. All of them have resided here at some point, hiding like cowards.” His eyes shifted, burning into the walls, the very air, for an answer. “Why are they meeting up like this?”

  He was truly perturbed, verging on fury. He lost control of his breathing, his body, and he pounded his fists against the wall, scaring Richard, who stayed back as the man unleashed his emotions. “We gave those murdering sons of bitches what they wanted, and so much more! This is how they repay us? Sorelli’s behind this. I’ll have his head. I’ll pike that vampire suck-head.”

  Sorelli had been here since the facility was erected. If there were secret channels to exploit, that vampire would be the one to exploit them.

  “This stinks of vampires,” Brenner blasted through gritted teeth. “The last time I visited Sorelli, he’d torn the head off a room service matron. He was glutting himself. Maybe in celebration, I think. He hasn’t been in his room for several days after that. What is he up to, huh, Richard? You haven’t said much. You’re not in cahoots with anybody, are you?”

  Richard kept calm. “No, I’m clearly not. I’ve been here since I was fifteen. I’ve recruited thousands on the islan
d, and you know me. This isn’t the time to be interrogating me, especially after finding this lair.”

  “Fine, but if I find out anything about you,” Brenner snarled, “I promise you won’t live to see another day.”

  They walked down two sets of stairs. Blood prints slathered each tier. In the bottom clearing, there was an inch of standing blood. They stamped through it, taking in the rank smell.

  Brenner rushed ahead to the opening in the ceiling that still leaked drops of blood. The outline of heads looked down at them. “Hey, you stay back!”

  He fired twice from his service revolver.

  The shots rendered sparks where they hit. Then he spat into his walkie, “Operator, dispatch two maintenance workers to the east wing of the living quarters. Have them bring materials to patch a wooden hatch and to create a makeshift lock.”

  Richard cocked his head to the side. “Why did the zombies stay inside? They had time to climb down and escape. Lots of time. And they didn’t. It makes no damn sense.”

  Brenner grimaced. “Somebody has control over these zombies, and it’s not me…not anymore.”

  Richard gasped when Brenner seized him by the collar. He thought they were going to fight, but the director was pleading with him. “You’re my only ally right now, Richard. Stay on my side. We might snuff out this insurgency.”

  “I am on your side. Always have been, sir.”

  “We’re government babies. This is where we belong.” Brenner was sweating. He released his grip on Richard’s collar. Then he took a calming breath. “The island must remain secure. I have a pressing piece of business to take care of, but I’ll be back. Will you investigate this corridor and make sure the idiots show up to repair that hatch correctly?”

  Richard was happy to be rid of the man. “Of course. I’ll make sure the shit gets done right.”

  Brenner left him alone in the dank, bloody corridor.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Security has been breached.

  The insurgency is inevitable.

  Brenner ducked into his office, fighting horrible thoughts. He threw his office door shut, then searched in his desk for that bottle of bourbon. He hammered back three big-mouthed gulps. The alcohol burned his stomach, yet it did nothing to abate the rage coursing through him. He bypassed his desk and opened the back door to a private room. When he flipped on the light, the beam revealed three dead bodies tied to chairs. They were John Sullivan, shift manager for the vampire floor; Eddie Parker, shift manger of the werewolf complex; and Roberta Gonzalez, ship cargo manager. Each had been bled out by a variety of cruel knife wounds. A woman hung from the ceiling, bound by the wrists. She was Annie Fuentez, a level-one zombie caterer.