Zocopalypse (Death Fields 1)

She’s seen my own bruises. The speckled tracks left by the needles on the inside of my arms. I turn and look around the industrial bathroom located in the back of some junkyard Wyatt brought us to. The place is fenced in and abandoned. Nothing but heaps of rusted out cars and a couple of garage bays.

I open my mouth to speak but thankfully, a tap on the door interrupts whatever response I was planning on giving her.

She pulls a clean shirt over her head and cracks open the door. Wyatt’s tired face peeks through the opening.

“I need to talk to Alex when you’re done,” he says. I nod and continue to scrub my hands. He’s right, we do need to talk.

Chloe shuts the door and gathers her small bag of belongings. “If you need anything, I’m around—hopefully eating something. I’m freaking starving.”

I finish packing up my own bag, laying the wet shirt I washed over a metal rod on the wall. I enter the first garage and see the ninjas and Walker. They’re sitting in a circle with a bottle of something brown. The soldier lifts her glass in salute—toasting Richardson. Something tightens in my chest and I look down at my feet. It sucks losing people—even when you don’t know them. Or really even like them.

“Hey,” Cole says when I pass him. “You should eat something.” He offers me an open can of soup with the handle of a spoon sticking out. He has two others open at his feet. My stomach groans at the sight and I take it.

“Do you know where he went?” I ask sniffing the can. Chicken noodle. He gave me the good stuff.

“Wyatt?” he asks, a crease forming across his forehead.

“Yeah.”

He nods toward a door. “He just went out that door.”

“Thanks for the soup,” I say scooping up a spoonful and tasting it. Even cold it provides a rush of familiarity. Salt and childhood.

The crease deepens and he says, “Be careful, you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

I go out the door and it leads to a covered garage. We’re outside but the entire place is surrounded by a high fence, or so Wyatt says. I have little doubt he knows exactly where we are.

The crickets are loud and the air is muggy and warm. Wyatt waits for me on the hood of a rusted, light blue muscle car with no doors. A lantern sits on the ground near his feet. I sit next to him, carefully holding my can of soup in one hand and securing my hatchet in the other. That’s right, I don’t trust this guy, at all.

“So were you ever going to tell me about PharmaCorp?” I ask cutting right to the chase.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably not. Not until I had to.”

“So what’s the deal? Did they hire you to get me? Do they have my dad?”

He rubs his jaw as though he’s hesitant to tell the truth but says, “Yes, they hired me to track you and make sure you didn’t get into the hands of the military.”

“Well, you suck at your job then.”

He laughs. “It looks that way, although blowing up Erwin’s compound was a different part of the job—so two birds, one stone.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s okay with you that Cole and I were held captive and I was poked and prodded for days on end because it made blowing up the base easier for you? You’re un-freaking-believable.”

“What do you want from me, Alex? This is what I do. I’m a paid mercenary. I take money to do the dirty work no one else wants to—and during the apocalypse it’s a skill that is pretty valuable.”

“God, you’re disgusting.”

“Maybe. But are you sure you know who the good guy is here? How do you know PharmaCorp isn’t in the right? Maybe your dad is with them right now because he wants to be.”

“Is he?” I ask jumping up and kicking the lantern over with my foot. It spins in a circle. I pick it back up and rest it on the ground. “Do you know where my dad is?”

“No, but I’m your best shot at finding him.”

“What? So I’m just supposed to believe that? That if I follow you to your creepy, terrorist bosses then I “may” find my dad?”

“And your sister.”