Wheels' End: Book Four in the Wheels and Zombies series Read online

  Ever since Mags and Angie had left me behind in Colorado, life had become a lot less exiting. Not that this lack of excitement was a bad thing, but I missed them both. They had become my family, and I hadn’t experienced that in a long time. Of course, Mars came to visit Rowdy, and Mr. and Mrs. Marsden were really nice people, and I was grateful to them for letting me stay. The fact that they lived in the cutest blue house by the beach was a plus, but I didn’t know them as well as I did Mags or Angie. It’s kind of nice to know what to expect from a person in certain situations, and I had that—especially with Mags. I missed our banter.

  General Whitfield had promised us that the trip would only take a couple of weeks—three at the most—but Mags, and Angie had been stuck in Alaska for months now, and I didn’t think any of us were happy with it.

  “C’mon, little man,” I said as I made the last turn, “it’s time to go home or else your grandma will leave me to do the dishes all on my own.”

  “Awww,” Rowdy replied, but I ignored him. We were only a couple of houses down from where the Marsdens lived, but the elderly couple was very protective of their grandson. I couldn’t blame them for that—they had almost lost him in the same car crash as that had killed their daughter-in-law.

  I’d seen pictures of Lisa on a side table in the living room and in Rowdy’s room. The Marsdens did their best to keep the memory of Rowdy’s mom alive and talked about her a lot—well.

  Mars hadn’t spoken about her with me, but I figured that might have something to do with him being with Mags and all. I did know that Lisa had died in a car crash when Rowdy had been a year old. The little man had been with her inside the wreck, but had thankfully come out unscathed. As a family they’d gone through a rough time, but at least they’ve had each other.

  I rolled down the sidewalk while Rowdy stuck his hands out and pretended to be a plane. He was making engine noises as I spotted a man at the front door of the blue house. Mrs. Marsden stood in the doorway, talking to the man, who was wearing black pants, a yellow jacket, and a red baseball cap. He seemed to be delivering something. I rolled up the pathway that led up to the house. Mrs. Marsden waved as I stopped at the steps of the small porch.

  “Thank you,” she said in a warm voice as she accepted the package.

  After I undid the clip to release him, Rowdy wriggled down my lap and climbed the porch to meet his grandmother. I turned to roll around the back where it was easier for me to get inside. Mr. Marsden had offered to make me a ramp, but I had declined his generous offer. This was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, and I didn’t want to be any trouble.

  “Here you go,” Mrs. Marsden said as she signed the tablet that the man held out to her. I was about to push off when my chair started to move on its own. Of course, it hadn’t moved on its own, but the friendly delivery guy probably thought I needed help.

  “Hey,” I said, sounding not so friendly and instantly the pushing stopped. I turned to face my wannabe do-gooder. Tablet in hand, the man had raised his hand apologetically, but the expression on his face told me it wasn’t sincere.

  “My apologies, Miss,” he said in a tone that added smugness to his condescending look.

  “How’d you like it if I pushed your around?” I said with a sneer. Lots of people had a tendency to be helpful when it wasn’t called for, but annoying as it was, I usually managed to maintain some form of politeness. With this guy, that didn’t seem possible. With that nasty smirk on his face, it felt as if he were looking down on me for no reason and it wasn’t just the fact that I was sitting.

  “Ash,” Mrs. Marsden said. She sounded a bit annoyed. I glanced past the deliveryman, who stood with his back to Mrs. Marsden, so she couldn’t see his expression. A frown added to the creases on her wrinkled face.

  “It’s quite all right, ma’am,” the deliveryman said. His voice was friendly as he spoke with Mrs. Marsden, but he sneered at me as if he’d found me sticking under his shoe.

  “Ass,” I called after him as he walked down the path.

  “Ash,” Mrs. Marsden said, and this time she sounded really appalled. “You get inside right this minute, young lady, and I think tonight’s dishes belong wholly to you.”

  “Great,” I muttered under my breath as I watched the deliveryman get into an unmarked white van. Which I might have noted as being odd if it weren’t for Mrs. Marsden calling out my name again. I turned to face the porch and saw Rowdy sitting on the top step as he watched me with wide eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said as I started to make my way around back.

  “I said I was sorry,” I said as grabbed a plate from the dry rack and started to run a towel over it.

  “I would just appreciate it if you’d check your attitude, especially in Rowdy’s presence,” Mrs. Marsden said. “I thought we had passed that stage.”

  I placed the dried plate on my lap, and as I rolled to the proper cabinet, I caught Mrs. Marsden eyeing her husband as if in search of his support.

  “Well?” she said, confirming my suspicion. Mr. Marsden raised his eyes from the paper he sat reading at the kitchen table.

  Avoiding his gaze, I turned to fetch another plate and exhaled. I wasn’t sure how to feel about this parenting stuff. These people weren’t my parents, and besides, I had turned fifteen last September, and it wouldn’t be as if they could bring about big changes. Mags never seemed to have any problem with my behavior.

  Still, I understood that they were helping to raise a small kid and that they needed me to use a little finesse once in a while. I was really trying not to ruin his upbringing.

  “I didn’t even use a bad word,” I said, feeling the need to defend myself.

  “I think that three-letter word you called after that poor man definitely counted as a bad word,” Mrs. Marsden said. I shook my head in defeat and conceded to the fact that I had gotten myself stuck in the Twilight Zone.

  “Have you considered asking Ash about her reason for lashing out at the man?” Mr. Marsden said. His calm deep voice always made me smile. He sounded like that actor who played God in that Jim Carrey movie. Mrs. Marsden sighed, and I took that as my cue to turn and face them both.

  “Because he looked at me like I was dirt,” I said. I flicked a nervous glance between the two of them, but I couldn’t hold their gazes and glanced down at the tiled floor.

  “He did not,” Mrs. Marsden said. My head shot up, and I guessed my glare spoke volumes, because Mrs. Marsden’s eyes widened.

  “I think Ash might see that differently.” Mr. Marsden stood from the kitchen table and nodded in the direction of the living room. “Why don’t you relax a little?” he said to his wife. “And I’ll help Ash finish up.” He came up behind me and grabbed the dish towel from my shoulder.

  He waited for Mrs. Marsden to leave the kitchen before he spoke.

  “It’s not always easy,” he said, “being different.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that because I wasn’t different—was I? I shrugged instead.

  He paused drying the plate and stared out the window for a moment. “My old man, he was a proud man who had worked hard all his life—”

  “Wait,” I said. “I remind you of your dad.”

  Mr. Marsden raised an eyebrow as he looked down at me and slowly quirked a smile. “You wanna hear the story or not?”

  I grinned and nodded. I always liked it when Mr. Marsden started telling me his stories. It kind of reminded me of Chuck, an elderly gentleman I had met at the hospital where I had been staying before all hell broke out. The two men looked nothing alike of course. Mr. Marsden was a big man, tall, with broad shoulders. He must have been a catch in his day with his dark skin and muscular arms. Now, the gray hair and the belly that had started to hang over his belt began to abate his dashing appearance a little, but there were still enough ladies who turned around as he passed. I had seen it at the grocery store. Chuck, however, had been ill at the time I had met him, with skin as gray as the ash of the cigarettes that he smoked an
d his face a wrinkled mess. He had taken a liking to me, though, and treated me like a normal person and not as a disabled kid in a wheelchair.

  “Like I said, my daddy was a proud man, and even after he had lost his leg,” Mr. Marsden said before stopping himself. “I told you about my daddy’s leg, right?” He glanced down, and I nodded emphatically yes. In fact, he had told me several times how his dad’s leg got caught underneath the wheel of a tractor and had to be amputated. As Mr. Marsden continued, he fortunately skipped that part of the story.

  “Even after he lost his leg, he was a proud man. It hadn’t changed him, because that was the kind of man my daddy was,” he continued, “but that didn’t mean that others didn’t see him in a different light—or treated him differently.”

  Mr. Marsden handed me another plate, and I rolled to the cupboard. To help me out, most of the essentials like glasses and plates along with the Twinkies and other snacks had been moved to lower shelves and cupboards to make them easier for me to access.

  “How did he deal with it?” I asked as I closed the little door. Mr. Marsden glanced at me with a half-smile and a look that seemed as if he had been in a faraway place.

  “Pretty much like you did,” he said as that half-smile turned into a grin. “With a shrug and by staying the person he had always been.”

  We finished the last of the cups and utensils. After I had cleared them all away, Mr. Marsden threw the towel in the sink and leaned against the counter.

  “I almost forgot,” he said, giving me a curious glance, “what did the guy bring?”

  I shifted my gaze and gestured at a small brown box that rested on a shelf mounted on the wall next to the pantry.

  “Hmmm,” he said as he walked over to the box and picked it up to inspect it. He gazed at it a little while until I saw his eyes widen. “Must be the spark plugs I ordered. Jack from the auto shop must have been kind enough to send them over. I’ll have to thank him for that.” He placed the box back where he had found it and then headed in the direction of the living room.

  “I’ll take them to the garage tomorrow morning,” he added before he left the room.

  | 3

  Mags

  My feet had started to warm up a bit as I pushed the food around on my plate. As the lack of coats on the racks had predicted, the spacious room with rows and rows of tables sat almost deprived of people. Though the sun had started to set, it was still early. It was mid-December, and that meant that by the time it was five o’clock it would be dark outside. That was also the time when most personnel would find the mess for dinner, which meant Angie and I had about thirty minutes of quiet left.

  I lifted my eyes and watched Angie saunter between the rows of tables as she approached the table I had picked in the furthest corner from the food line. She had stopped commenting about my choice of seating arrangement after the first two weeks.

  Angie placed her tray on the table and plopped down in the chair across from me. Our eyes met, but I soon dropped them to my plate, shoved some peas onto my fork, and forced myself to eat them. It had nothing to do with the food, but soon my fork started digging aimlessly into the mashed potatoes again instead of shoving them into my mouth.

  I missed being around Ash and Mars, but that wasn’t what kept me from eating. Not even this strange, cold place with its days too short and so far away from everything I knew and loved was the reason. My mind kept wondering about what the hell we were still doing here. The only reason that we were supposed to come here was to get Dr. Kelly Matley’s research into the hands of this Dr. Theodore Chen, and we had done that.

  Everything Dr. Matley had found out about the virus causing the zombie mutation and the reason that neither Angie, Ash, nor I had become infected was in the files we had delivered. I had expected to be here for a couple of weeks, because without Dr. Matley around to explain her research, Dr. Chen would have to do some digging of his own, but it had been over three months now. Dr. Matley’s death had set the research back, I knew that, but this was starting to get ridiculous.

  “Okay, spill,” Angie said out of the blue. I looked up to face her. “You’ve been poking at your food for the last ten minutes, and it’s not that bad.”

  “And you managed to notice that in the two minutes that you’ve been sitting there?” I said and looked up to face her.

  Angie’s dark eyes bored into me with that commanding quality they held. I still needed to ask her how she did that—get people to comply with just a stare. I managed a half-smile, but then sat back in my chair and pushed the tray holding my plate away. I held Angie’s gaze for a moment but knew I would lose that battle, so I shifted my gaze to the door as a couple of airmen entered the mess and walked past our table.

  “Why are they keeping us here for so long?” I said. I kept my voice low, but probably more out of resignation than out of concern someone might hear. “I mean, Chen has been checking our blood every two days since we’ve gotten here.”

  “Well, you got yourself bitten again, and that thing with your eyes wasn’t pretty,” she replied. I gazed at my right hand that as of late was missing a pinky and a ring finger. A fleeting image of running down hallways inside Cheyenne Mountain complex flashed across my eyes. The memory of trying to lure the zombies away from Angie, Ash, and especially Mars sent a shiver down my spine. Although zombies usually didn’t show interest in me because of the Divus serum that had formed in my system, a bloody rag drenched with Mars’s blood had been too much of a temptation to one of the zombies, and it had sunken his teeth in it. The rag being wrapped around my hand at the time, the bite had caused me to lose the fingers. I shook my head to shove the memory from my mind.

  “I know,” I said in a whisper, “but that was months ago. Why is Chen still checking my blood, and yours for that matter?” Angie placed her utensils on her tray as I added, “And don’t tell me you haven’t wondered about that.”

  Angie moved her mouth as if she were poking at something between her teeth before she said, “I truly believe that they are checking to make absolutely sure that once injected with the serum the turning into a zombie process isn’t just delayed.” She paused as her eyes scanned around us. The crowd had started to grow, and men and women in mostly green fatigues were piling inside.

  “But?” I said. Though the tables around ours in the far corner of the room sat abandoned, Angie leaned in closer.

  “The fact that the three of us are practically contagious ourselves kind of concerns me,” she said. “We’re basically incubators for this virus that is killing the world, and I have no idea how they are planning to deal with that. It’s not a coincidence that it’s just the two of us when we get to do any kind of training.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. Except when I’d been with Mars, at which point the incubator part had been more of a worry to me than it had been for him. Angie had a valid point. It seemed unlikely for the government to distribute a cure that could potentially worsen the situation. Maybe Chen had been working on a method to get around that and that was the reason he had needed us to stay so long.

  “So you don’t think it has anything to do with …” I started to say, but hesitated as it came to mentioning his name, “Warren.” The memory of that man tended to make me physically ill, and I felt my stomach churn as his name fell from my mouth. The things he had put Ash and me through, the tests he’d performed on us, which had been basically torture, still woke me up bathing in my own sweat at nights.

  Angie frowned as she said, “You mean the super soldier thing.” I nodded in reply. Angie held a thoughtful expression for a moment, but then shook her head. “I don’t think anyone has forgotten about it, but I don’t think that it’s on the top of the list right now,” she said after a moment. “Getting rid of the zombies is.”

  “Yeah, but don’t you think that super soldiers might give them an edge on that, making it a reason to bump it up on their list?”

  “I hope not,” Angie said as she leaned back in her chair.


  “Well, I’m thinking of asking Dr. Chen tomorrow,” I said.

  Before she could answer, the voice of a young man pulled us out of our conversation.

  Private First Class Jon Hickey stood awkwardly at our table, his brown eyes darting nervously between Angie and me. The young man clenched his jaw, which sharpened his features. A combination of freckles and acne riddled his face, but I figured someday he’d grow out of that to become a decent-looking man.

  Angie blew out a breath as a sudden irritation flooded her eyes, and she glared at the already tense-looking private. “What?” she asked in a harsh tone.

  The private’s hands twitched at his side, but he held his composure as his eyes met Angie’s. For a brief moment he managed to hold her gaze before he trailed his eyes to mine, but I would have applauded him for the effort.

  “Ms. Vissers, Ms. Meadow,” he said with a nod.

  “Hey, Jon,” I replied, trying to sound a bit more welcoming than Angie. It took some effort. The topic of our discussion wasn’t the most enjoyable one.

  Jon gave me a faint smile and nodded again. “I am instructed to inform you of a scheduled video call,” he said. “You’re expected at coms tomorrow at nineteen-hundred hours sharp.”

  His words lifted a smile on my face, and I felt some of that earlier built tension fade. A video call, that could only mean one out of two things—Ash or Mars. Both would even be better, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. I still maintained a love–hate relationship with hope in an effort to keep myself from getting hurt. But as I had learned this past year, a little hope wouldn’t kill you.

  “Thanks, Jon,” I said, adding a cheery note to my voice. Angie shot me a look and raised an eyebrow. I ignored her. “Have you eaten? You could join us.”

  Jon’s gaze shifted over the table and then to the food line before it settled back on me. Although the young man had been nothing but polite ever since we had met him that first day we’d arrived, he never seemed comfortable around us. He had shown us around the base and explained the basics for us to get around this massive place, but he’d always kept his distance. If we needed anything, we only needed to ask and he’d make sure we got it, but conversations never went any further than the basic yes, ma’am, and no, ma’am. Jon shifted on his feet as he cleared his throat.