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In the elevator, Liv removed the severed hand from her belt and held it to the touch pad. Major held his breath, hoping this would work, not sure what the hell they would do if it didn't.
But it did work. The computer said brightly, in a startlingly normal voice, "Thank you, Jeffrey Grunderson," and the elevator began moving. "Live to the Max!" the computer added.
Liv and Major looked at each other. Maybe this would all be over. Maybe. "Yeah," Major said breathlessly. "Thanks, Jeffrey."
The elevator doors opened behind them. Clive whirled around with his gun pointed almost as soon as the doors binged, but there was no need. Everything down here was silent. Still. Abandoned.
Major pointed with the axe. "Okay. Zombie cells are behind those doors." He raised the axe as they moved cautiously out of the elevator. "I'll try to get some lights on."
They made it to the touchpad with no problems—which shouldn't have been a surprise, what with everyone being dead, but really was—and Major started punching buttons, looking for the lights, while Liv and Clive explored the area, guns at the ready. At last Major got the lights on, displaying the zombie cages. Clive cried out when he saw what they contained. Classic zombies. A full Romero in both cages. God, Major hoped that hadn't happened to all the people he'd kidnapped. Saved just to be used as experiments? What a cruel joke.
"What the hell are these?" Clive demanded.
"They're Romeros," Liv told him. "This is what we'd become if we didn't get any brains. Once you're this far gone, there's no coming back."
It was what Major almost had become stuck in jail, but he didn't bother to point that out to Clive. Not now.
Then, from another cell, the last voice Major had expected to hear. "Hey, roomie."
It was Rita, white-haired and zombified.
"Well, if it isn't the poster child for poetic justice," Liv said. "Did someone have a lab accident?"
Rita ignored the sarcasm. "I'm going to guess, based on that dismembered hand on your belt, that you weren't invited down here. But I know what you're looking for. Who you're looking for."
Major had had just about enough of her games. "Where are they?"
Rita gave him a smile and a little wave. "Hey, baby. I can access the control panel to get you to your zombies." She pointed to her left. "They're right through that door."
Clive tried to pull the doors apart while Major started punching buttons, hoping to hit the right combo. Rita watched them both with her usual superior sneer.
"It's locked," Clive told him unnecessarily.
"Come on, guys!" Fake pouting, Rita knocked on the glass of her cage with her fist. "We're all on the same side here! We all hate my dad. We all want to survive the night. We've all seen Major naked."
Clive made a face. "I haven't."
"Do it, Major!" Liv called. She lifted her gun. "If she makes one false move I'll put a bullet in her brain."
Rita clapped, grinning. "That's the spirit. Just punch in 8675309," she told Major.
He looked up at her, unable to believe it could be that simple a code.
"What can I say? Dad loves the '80s."
He keyed in the numbers and the door slid open. Rita emerged, holding up her hands and pulling her sleeves up to show her arms. "Nothing up my sleeves," she said to Liv, who kept her gun trained on Rita's head nevertheless.
"Come here," Major said. "Open those doors."
Rita reached for the control panel, pulling it toward her. Major came with it, axe at the ready. "Sheesh," Rita groaned. "I mean, I've had bad breakups before, but, really, Major?"
He ignored her, gesturing at the control panel. "Go."
She punched some buttons and behind Clive the doors opened. He moved through into the rooms beyond, his voice floating back to them. "It's clear."
As Liv followed, Major looked at Rita. "Move."
"I'm guessing, no funny business?"
He gestured with the axe, and she went around the glass wall toward the doors. Major's anticipation was rising. Natalie. She had to be there. But before he and Rita reached the doors, they slid closed again, trapping Liv and Clive—and all the kidnapped zombies—on the other side.
Startled, Major and Rita both whirled around … to see Vaughn du Clark, clean and pristine and untouched by the disaster that had been his party, standing at the controls. "Welcome to the after party, folks! Are we having fun yet?" du Clark was watching a monitor off to the side, hidden behind the glass wall. "Oh, Major," he said pityingly. "It's such a shame you're not seeing what I'm seeing, 'cause there's a whole Lifetime movie playing out in the next room."
Liv and Drake, Major assumed. He would have liked to think 'good for them', but du Clark's tone made it sound like maybe it wasn't so good. Poor Liv.
"Seems your gal had a zombie on the side," du Clark went on. "Good-night, sweet zombie. Cue the strings. Aw." He looked back at Major, who was fuming in impotent rage. "Yeah, I'm bored. Seems to me the key demo here is men thirty to …" He pointed at himself with a little smile. "48. And our demo loves action. Don't we?"
Clive was in there. Vulnerable, human Clive. If all the zombies were Romero, he was dead. If only a few of the zombies were Romero, he was probably dead. "Vaughn," Major said urgently. "Please don't."
"Action it is." Vaughn punched a button and watched, fascinated, at what was happening on the screen. "Damn! Oh, man. She shot him! 'Kay? Shot him dead! Well, more dead."
Oh, Liv.
"Couple more deaths, we're gonna be able to change this Lifetime movie into a Greek tragedy."
Major didn't have a snappy comeback. Or any comeback. He couldn't help imagining what Liv must be feeling right now.
Unmoved, Vaughn held a finger above the control panel. "Hey. Wonder what this button does." He punched it, looking up expectantly, then he turned to Rita. "Uh-oh, honey. All our guinea pigs are escaping. And with them, your chances for a cure."
Rita approached the glass, genuinely upset. Near tears. "Did you ever care about me?"
"Do you hear yourself? Do you hear yourself?" du Clark shouted. "Making this moment about you! 'Cause I'm the one who stands to lose a billion dollars tonight, not to mention my reputation! One hundred dead employees, one dead Rob Thomas! I mean, this just looks bad. You think Twitter's gonna be kind?"
"Vaughn," Major said through gritted teeth. "Let us out!"
Pointing his finger at Major, Vaughn went on, "And you! You made a lot of bad life choices, Major! You could have been on my Gulfstream! Party stops to Rio, Berlin, Ibiza … I bet you'd have made a hell of a wingman! Nothin' wrong with my sloppy seconds." He held up a finger, wagging it back and forth. "But no super you, my friend. Whatever's happening up there, you're to blame!" He punched another button. As the cage doors slid open, he shouted, "Dinner's served! Go get 'em, guys."
Major turned and watched as the Romeros threw themselves at the glass, trying to get through to du Clark.
"What's the dealio? Will no one rid me of this meddlesome Jason Priestley-type?" du Clark demanded. "Hey! Hey! Dummies," he said to the Romeros, pointing at Major. "There's your first course. Hot cross brains, right there!" As the Romeros continued to ignore Major, the light dawned on du Clark's face. "Ohhhh, snap. Yeah. I'm arguing with a dead guy. Et tu, Major?" He thought for a moment. "Okay, this seems hardly worth my time. Tell you what." He punched another button and some kind of machinery started running, something coming from the air vents above their heads. "That gas should deanimate you. It'll work in about a minute or so. I'll come in after you're … out for the count, take that axe and put everybody out of his misery. Sound like a plan?"
Major was trying to think of a plan. After all this, he was damned if he was going to be taken out by this guy. He decided to gamble on the glass not being bullet proof. From his waistband, he took Vivian Stoll's gun, turned, and shot du Clark through the glass, catching him in the hand, then he attacked the glass with the axe where the bullet had gone through, as du Clark staggered back toward the elevator, cradling his bleeding hand. He made it through just as du Clark reached the elevator, the doors closing. But the elevator didn't move, du Clark's bloody hand not allowing him access, and Major pried the doors open with the axe, sticking his face through and crowing "Here's Major!" in his best Jack Nicholson voice.
"I can see you're upset," du Clark tried, shrinking back into a corner as Major lifted the axe.
But instead of attacking du Clark, Major banged the axe against the access panel in the elevator ceiling. "I would not go out there," he advised. "There are zombies and poison gas … whew! And they're gonna be in here any second." He used the axe as a piton, and climbed his way out of the elevator even as the doors started sliding open again behind him.
du Clark shouted as the Romeros stuck their faces in the doors. They sounded less like Jack Nicholson, but seemed to have more impact. Major crouched at the top of the elevator, watching as the Romeros—and Rita, who seemed to be losing her grip, as well—forced their way through the doors.
"Help me! Help me, my friend."
"I know you're a fan of submarine movies, so I'm sure you'll understand." Major dropped the axe down. "Good luck." As he closed the hatch, sealing du Clark in with what he had created, Major had to admit he felt pretty damned heroic.