30 Minute Plan - 4

"Can you make it back to base?"

 

"Uh, that's a negative, sir."

 

"You said you are in a pack. Just to be specific—are you in a pack of zombies?"

 

"That's affirmative, sir. Ziggy is in the house."

 

Danton chuckled. He heard a couple others.

 

"Cargill—tell me, other than accepting you into the group, have you noticed any other altered behaviors?"

 

There was patch of static and when it cleared he was saying, "—over on the hill. They've been following us."

 

"I'm sorry, Cargill, you broke up a moment. Who's following your group?"

 

"Another pack. A large one. They smell like—"

 

"Come again. They smell like what?"

 

"Wood chips. Dammit, they smell like wood chips."

 

Boyle fixed his mouth as if he were about to repeat what Cargill had said. He was confused.

 

"I don't understand," he said to himself.

 

"What's not to understand?" Klingerman said. He was a civilian. Could run like hell and cleave the hell out of a ziggy skull. "He said they smelled like wood chips. So what?"

 

"Well, none of our boys was equipped with a spray with that scent."

 

"So somebody else is doing it," someone Danton couldn't see chimed in.

 

"Some other group of scientists," Mary said. She was seated next to him. Danton used to dig her until he found out she was into chicks. Now he was just about ravenous when he looked at her. He forced himself to keep facing forward.

 

"No," Boyle said. "Not possible. We're the only facility capable of any such things in at least a hundred mile radius. Any scientist wouldn't have ventured this far to experiment. The danger from traveling all the way here and traveling all the way back to their lab to monitor their subjects would have been too great.

 

"So it was something else." Danton made it sound like a statement, hoping he sounded smart for Mary. The chick she got down with was one of the brains.