"Who are you?" Stu asked, addressing the man who had just rescued them. He was a burly fellow in his thirties or forties, with a shaved head, but with an extravagant mustache and beard. He was wearing a tight t-shirt, which showed off his muscles, and a gold chain around his neck. He looked vaguely like Mr. T, without the mohawk.
"Name's Rico," he greeted. "Nice to meet ya."
Rico. Stu recalled having heard that name; Dr. Snowe had mentioned a Rico to Virge and Wayman over the radio. "Do you work for Dr. Snowe?" he asked.
"Yep. But how'd you know that?"
"My name's Stuart Brakely," he said. "I need to speak with Dr. Snowe. Can you take us to him?"
"Stuart..." The man frowned. "Did you say Stuart Brakely?"
"That's right."
"Holy shit!" He took his eyes off the road to look at Stu, studying him carefully. "It's you! The guy Dr. Snowe has been looking for! How'd you get here?"
"It's a long story," he said, "but it starts with Virge and Wayman. They...well, they brought me to this world."
"Virge! Wayman! Where are they? What happened to them?"
"They're dead," he admitted sadly. "Wayman was bitten by a zombie, and Virge was killed by a mutate."
"What? Where?"
"In Meku City."
"Meku City..." He trailed off. "Fuck. So that's where they ended up. But how did you get here?"
"Virge told me to go to Lon Halos to meet this Dr. Snowe. He told me he'd be able to send me home. I didn't know what else to do, so..."
"That's a hell of a long trip, though. How did you manage it?"
He glanced at Luna and the others. "I had some help."
"You're damn lucky is what you are. I was just about to head back to the lab when I heard the gunshots. I've been cruising around the area every night for the last week, keeping an eye on his hordes. What the hell is that gun anyway, an H&S Elephant? Shit, I can't wait to see the look on Dr. Snowe's face when I bring you in." He paused his rambling. "None of you are infected, are you?"
"No," Stu said.
"What about that girl back there?" He referred to Millie, whose unblinking red eye shone out of the darkness in the back of the van. "What is she?"
"She's not infected," Stu said. "She's a cyborg."
"A cyborg? Where'd you find her?"
"In a town called Heart's Glow. It's a long story." He was growing frustrated; Stu had plenty of questions of his own he wanted answered, but Rico kept beating him to the punch. Virge and Wayman had acted similarly, he recalled. "What does Dr. Snowe want with me?" he asked. "Why did he send Virge and Wayman to kidnap me?"
"You'll have to ask him for the details," he said. "I'm not a scientist. It's something to do with the serum he's working on, though."
"Serum?"
"He's been trying to find a cure. That's what it's all about, you know? Finding a cure, getting rid of the zombies and the mutates and all the rest of them, once and for all. That's why we're all helping him. Myself, Ula, Charger, Virge, Wayman..." He sighed. "Virge. Wayman."
Stu remembered what Virge had told him with his dying breath: You're the key to this whole thing. He had told Stu over and over again that he had to get to Lon Halos, that everything depended on it. Did that mean that Stu somehow held the key to curing the zombie infection? But why would that be? He was just an ordinary person -- or he had been, until Virge had given him the ICON system.
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"The Researcher was working on a cure, too," Millie said thoughtfully. "I wonder if they're anything alike, her and this Dr. Snowe."
"I hope not," Lucky said darkly.
"You'll meet him soon enough," Rico said. "Stuart Brakely. Shit. I can't believe it. Maybe we've got a chance of winning this thing after all."
He drove them the remaining few blocks to the mall they had sighted earlier, the mall where Dr. Snowe and his companions had apparently taken shelter. It was a fairly typical-looking mall, as far as Stu could see, although he didn't recognize the names of any of the stores displayed on the signs above the entrances. Unlike the rest of the buildings in the area, however, some portions of the interior appeared to be illuminated, and there were three gigantic dynamo engines -- the biggest Stu had ever seen -- sitting in the parking lot. The engines were connected to a series or tubes and hastily-installed plastic conduit, which ran into the building. Another, smaller engine had been installed in the back of a large truck; it was connected to the other engines, and there was an odd machine which looked like a radar antenna sitting on top of it.
Stu's enhanced sense of smell picked up an odd odor in the air -- a sharp, tangy smell, that might have been chlorine or ozone. He could feel the hair on his arms prick up as well; this area was definitely charged with static electricity.
Rico stopped the truck at the entrance to the parking lot. He got out and went to a booth that had been placed nearby; it looked a little like an old phone booth. Inside the booth was a wired microphone, which he picked up; he tapped it a few times and started speaking into it. "Ula? You there?"
A staticky female voice responded: "Hey, Rico. Everything all right?"
"Yeah. Check this out, though -- that flying mutate the Dread sent to spy on us is dead."
"You killed it?"
"No, some other folks did. I'm bringing them in. Lower the shell, will you?"
There was a pause. "I can't do that, Rico."
"Oh, come on, Ula."
"We can't risk any more infected getting in, after what happened the other night."
"They say they're not infected."
She snorted. "Whatever that's worth."
"One of them calls himself Stuart Brakely."
There was another pause. "Really?"
"He just gave me the lowdown on Virge and Wayman. Apparently the gate opened up in Meku City. He managed to fight his way here, but Virge and Wayman...they didn't make it."
Ula swore. "I'll ask Dr. Snowe. Give me a minute."
Rico waited impatiently for Ula to come back on the line. About thirty seconds later she returned to say, "I'm lowering the shell. But we're sending Charger out to check these folks. This could be another one of the Dread's tricks."
The machine built into the back of the truck, which had been producing a loud whirring sound, suddenly quieted down, and the static-electrical feeling Stu had noted suddenly dissipated. Rico climbed back into the van and drove into the parking lot; a moment later the machine in the truck started whirring again. That must have been the device powering the electrical shell, although the shell itself was apparently invisible.
Rico confirmed this a moment later: "Just a word of warning. The entire mall, up to the edge of the parking lot, is protected by Dr. Snowe's electric shell. You can't see it, but it's there, and if you touch it, it'll fry the fuck out of you. It runs at about forty thousand volts."
"Zombies can't get through?" Luna asked.
"Some mutates are tough enough to force their way through," he admitted. "And mutates with electrical powers can short it out. That's what happened up at the old lab, at Akiva Air Base. We had to make a run for it after the shell went down and the zombies started comin' in. And the shell isn't like a force field; it can't stop a bullet or anything like that."
"You get zombies with guns out here?" Lucky joked.
But Rico's expression didn't change. "Once in a while," he said, surprising them all. "Ragers can be trained to use guns, although they're too crazy to use them most of the time, and they don't have the patience to reload."
"I don't believe it," Luna said.
"I've seen 'em with my own eyes -- ragers, with shotguns. The Dread sent 'em." He chuckled. "Surprised the shit out of us, I'll tell you that."
He parked the van outside the entrance to the mall. The five of them were met at the door by a brown-haired woman with freckles and flinty eyes, who was accompanied by two armed men.
"Hi, Charger," Rico greeted.
She didn't return the greeting. "Check 'em," she ordered the men, and Stu and his companions submitted to being patted down and checked for signs of infection. When they were done, the woman asked, "You're Stuart Brakely?"
"Yes," he said cautiously.
"Damn." She glanced at Rico. "Nice work."
He responded with a casual shrug.
She turned her attention back to Stu. "All right. Come with me. Dr. Snowe will want to see you right away."
"And my friends?"
"You're all welcome here. If you're hungry, we can try to scrounge up some food for you, but I should warn you, our supplies are running pretty low. We've got half of Georgetown taking shelter here in the mall, behind the electric shell, and they've been eating us out of house and home."
"We'll take what we can get," Luna said.
"Fine. Let's go, then."
And they entered the mall. Stu was elated. Despite everything, despite the trouble they had had getting here and the awful situation in Lon Halos, he was only minutes away now from meeting Dr. Snowe, the man he had been seeking for the last two months or more. He was finally on the verge of getting some answers, and maybe -- just maybe -- of finally being sent home.
He couldn't wait.