Free Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones by Saul Tanpepper Page B

silent for a moment, either stunned by his audacity or doubtful of his veracity. Then Jake launches into an explanation of how the contraption works, as if Stephen hadn’t spoken at all. He explains the series of levers that extend from the device through the tiles of the dropped ceiling and into the adjacent room. Anger roils inside of me, seeing how the trigger can be controlled by someone standing on the other side of the safety glass, who could watch without any fear of personal harm if things go terribly wrong. Just a squeeze of the finger and the person lying on the table is no more. A life snuffed out. A death stolen.
    After that, I make sure both rooms stay locked. I don’t trust Jake. Frankly, I don’t trust any of them. They all think I’m wrong and that we’d be better off not letting Stephen live. Even Ashley tells me I’m being stupid.
    â€œThat shithead was going to inject you with whatever he injected into himself,” she tells me. “He was trying to inject Kelly, too. What if he’d succeeded?”
    The image flashes before my eyes, the struggle between them on the tram as Stephen tried to stick the needle into Kelly. The green— no, white —solution inside the syringe.
    It was green.
    In my memory, the liquid is always green.
    That’s what I’d seen in the moments before my body fully rejected the implant. I was in pain. I wasn’t thinking clearly. It had to be white.
    We get Micah settled in a bed in one of the other rooms, then Reggie leaves to see if he can find us some water to clean up in. He returns a half hour later. “There’s a tank behind one of the maintenance trailers outside. It’s filled with rainwater. Not the nicest stuff. Kind of smells oily. But it’ll do.”
    The walls of the container are covered an inch thick in slimy green algae and the surface is carpeted with mosquito larvae and a grayish-green sludge. Kelly skims it off as best he can before dumping in a couple gallons of bleach we tote down with us from the storage closet. Then I climb in to wash the gore off. But neither the smell nor the slime nor the mosquitoes bother me. I scrub until my skin is raw and even the dirt under my nails disappears.
    After everyone is cleaned off, Kelly and Jake go back downstairs to watch the tram entrance. They’re an odd team, particularly because of the friction between them over me, but also because of the way Jake has been acting in general. He’s unpredictable. Kelly is logical and consistent. And secretive. I’m not sure I can trust either of them.
    I go back and sit with Micah. He finally regains consciousness a couple hours later.
    â€œWhat time is it?” he asks, bleary eyed. He’s obviously still out of it, though, since he thinks he’s late for school.
    â€œClasses don’t start for another week and a half,” I tell him. But this only makes him more agitated.
    Last week, we’d all sat around dreading the inevitable horror of the first day of our last year of high school. Now there’s nothing I’d be more happy to do than to sit in a boring, overheated, overcrowded classroom.
    â€œWhere are we?”
    I limit the information I give him. How do you tell someone in such a delicate mental state that he’s stuck on an island full of zombies, not to mention people intent on adding us to their Undead rosters? How do you explain you’ve just dumped an IU with a gaping hole in her chest and a bunch of body parts with human teeth marks on them into the room right next door? How do you explain that we’ve been kidnapped by a company that makes—of all things—video games?
    â€œYou’re in the hospital.”
    It’ll suffice for now. Maybe later, when he’s stronger, I’ll tell him some more.
    Ash, Reggie and I take turns making sure he stays in bed. He protests, but he’s weak and doesn’t put up much of a fight. Kelly returns a couple