Free The Book of a Few by Austen Rodgers

up on Lisa and the injured. It was Branden’s turn to bring food to the prisoner, so I was the first to check on Lisa. Taylor was conscious. This pleased me to an extent you may not understand. I was so bloody happy to hear him talk. I asked him a few quick questions and he seemed completely coherent. I’m not sure how Taylor hasn’t lost his mind to the infection, but I’m goddamn happy about it.
     
    Taylor was pretty shocked to see me, and honestly it felt good to get that joyous of a reaction. But alas, we had things to discuss, so I only spent a short amount of time in light conversation before I got started on business. I asked him if he could walk and said that I wanted to talk with him somewhere alone. He said he was physically capable of doing so, but if he moved too fast, he felt lightheaded. I helped him from the bed and we stepped out of the office, away from Lisa.
     
    We stepped into the break room alone, and I said, “Taylor, I need you to tell me what happened to you in the most detailed way you can. There are some…” I stopped for a moment to think of a word. “…issues that need to be solved.”
     
    Sighing, Taylor looked down at his feet for a moment. He collected his thoughts, and spoke his story. “I remember I was with my dad. Something happened to him; I want to say he fell from my apartment deck.” He groaned in frustration. “I don’t understand why I can’t remember.”
     
    “ It’s all right, man. Just take your time,” I told him.
     
    “ Well, I was walking to either the hospital or the police station in Waterloo, and then all I remember is waking up in some empty room.” He looked off in the distance, then back at me. “I was tied up, and I was trying to look out an open door, out into this hallway, and there was a friggin’ zombie like right there. I tried to shuffle back into the corner of the room, but the zombie got to me. It tore into me.” Taylor looked down and fiddled with his bandages. “Just when I was about to give up trying to get away from it, a group of masked guys walked into the room and shot the thing off me.” His breathing had grown heavy.
     
    “ They bandaged the bites up, and left me in there for at least a day, it felt, only checking up on me a few times. I’d hear commotion behind the walls and occasional talking, but I never could make anything out. I never moved from that one spot. Within a few hours of that, I’d hear running down in the hall, and a door or two would open and slam shut again in the hallway.” Taylor started weeping.
     
    “ Hey, it’s all right. You’re outta there, Taylor. I’m here, Branden Nuemann is here, and you’re safe,” I said, consoling Taylor as best as I could. Taylor sniffled and nodded as his hands slid up and down the wounds on his arms.
     
    He looked away for a moment and took a deep breath. Wiping the moisture from his face, he exhaled and spoke again. “Sometimes I would hear harsh breathing, and within five minutes, another zombie would waltz through the door to the room I was in and find me. Every time this happened, it was the same thing, or the same sequence of events. I don’t even know how many times…”
     
    With just that portion of the story, my suspicions were confirmed. Will had been subjecting him to the dead more than once. I wanted Will to pay. He subjected one of my best friends to the most gruesome kind of torture imaginable. I wanted him to feel what Taylor did.
     
    Taylor continued his story, describing how he was blindfolded and moved, presumably to the restaurant where we found him. Throughout the last half of our conversation, my mind was distant. Different thoughts and feelings formed into words and sentences as I formulated a plan.
     
    “ Taylor, can you do me a favor?” I asked.
     
    “ Possibly? Depends on what it is,” Taylor replied.
     
    “ Could you stay out of the parts cage or the Mechanics’ room ‘til I say otherwise?”
     
    One of Taylor’s eyebrows