Heroes of the Undead | Book 1 | The Culling

by Meredith, Peter

  Bryce was suddenly embarrassed. Instead of sharpening his sword or even looking for a better weapon he had made a sandwich. The smell of the salami was strong on his fingers. Wiping them on his pants, he said, “I am perfect. Perfectly happy to never see Magnus again. Tell him that Bryce says to kiss his ass.”

  He had just started to turn to leave when he caught a flash of grey out of the corner of his eye. Instinctively he brought his sword up to block the blow he knew was slashing at him. His sword was truly pathetic and had Grae-zier really wanted to kill him, he could have.

  Grae-zier destroyed Bryce’s sword instead. The first strike with the great blade knocked the top six inches from the sword. The metal flew up into the air and was still going up when Grae-zier reversed the swing of his weapon and struck Bryce’s sword a second time. Bryce blinked as the hunk of metal twirled towards his face. Before it could hit him and while he was still in mid-blink, Grae-zier snapped his blade back again.

  In the space of a single second, he had hit Bryce’s sword three times, reducing it to a stubby piece of pitted and bloody steel that could only be used now as an ugly butter knife.

  “You would do well never to say another disrespectful word about Daniel Magnus again,” Grae-zier growled. “And you would do well to realize that there are no more laws to protect you from your own stupidity.”

  Bryce could only glare in response and even that was pushing it. He was at Grae-zier’s mercy. “What is it that you want from me?”

  “You are to carry on southward and bring a message to the FBI. You are to explain to them that Magnus is their only hope. That he is the only hope that humanity has left.”

  “But he did this!” Bryce was a little sharp; a little too accusatory and Grae-zier’s huge brown hand clenched into a fist. “That’s what they’re going to say,” Bryce added quickly before he could be punched.

  Grae-zier’s hand relaxed. “They will say a lot of things. Some will be true, some not so true, and some will be lies. That is the way of humans, as you know.” He made being human sound like an affliction. “Your job is to make them realize that the course they’re on will be what destroys the human race for good.”

  “And what course is that?” It was a stupid question, but one he needed to ask. The idea of nukes being used had danced in and out of his consciousness for the last day. He hadn’t had a dream like Maddy, but it was still an obvious chance.

  “You don’t know?” Doubt crossed over Grae-zier’s heroic features. “I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised given how the twenty-one series is turning out so far.” He shook his head to clear it and told Bryce what he already knew, “The government is planning on using nuclear weapons. They’ve deemed much of the northeast to be lost and will employ a scorched earth policy. You will continue south and you must stop them.”

  Bryce had expected him to say nukes, and that alone would have left him winded and shaken. He certainly hadn’t expected to be told that the fate of millions of people depended on him. This stole his breath completely. He clutched his bare chest before collapsing onto a stool covered in cracked red vinyl. His eyes fell to the red, pink and white tablecloth. The checkered pattern blurred as he picked out individual grains of salt.

  “I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”

  Grae-zier did not have the patience to be called wrong by the likes of Bryce. His metallic silver eyes narrowed. “You are Bryce Carter, Twenty-one Zero One. I don’t have the wrong man.”

  “I’m him, I guess, but, but, but what you’re asking is crazy. The FBI won’t listen to someone like me. If you want them to listen, you should be the one to tell them!” The thought, suddenly so obvious, popped into his head. “They’ll believe you and that’s for certain. You’re all…whatever you are.”

  “I am Grae-zier, one of the chosen. And I would go happily if that was Magnus’ wish.” He grinned suddenly. His teeth were perfectly white in his dark face. “I think I understand now why you were given this assignment in my place. You are changed but weak. I’m beginning to believe that what I perceived as a design flaw in the twenty-one series must’ve been Magnus’ concept all along. Tell me, Bryce Carter, how would the government officials see me were I to deliver the message?”

  It was an odd question. Wouldn’t they see Grae-zier just as Bryce did: impossibly big, impossibly handsome, impossibly perfect?

  Yes, of course they would see the obvious, but what would their reaction to Grae-zier be?

  Grae-zier represented the unknown. “They’d be scared, though not like…” Not like I was, he had been about to say. “They’d be afraid that Magnus had created a superior race. A master race, if you will, one that wouldn’t hesitate to enslave the rest of us. It’s what they would do.”

  They’d be jealous as well. Grae-zier was different in a much, much better way. He made Bryce feel like a child. He made Bryce feel stupid and weak, and if he’d had a gun a moment before, he might have used it. The government had guns and they weren’t used to being talked down to, something Grae-zier was guilty of. This sudden realization was something of a jolt. Grae-zier was not perfect. He was haughty, quick to anger, and condescending. He treated Bryce like a child and not in the way a father might, but like that of a loutish uncle.

  If Grae-zier were to deliver Magnus’ message, the nukes would fall for sure.

  “I think I understand the situation,” he said to Grae-zier.

  “Unlikely. Still. I believe you will do what you have to, to keep them from using their nuclear weapons. Let them know that Magnus does have a vaccine for the plague. That is a fact.”

  It was a fact, Bryce read it quite clearly in his handsome face, but it also held an element of uncertainty in it. “He has a vaccine but hasn’t used it yet, why? They’ll ask.”

  Grae-zier stood back, tight-lipped.

  Again, Bryce asked, “Why not?”

  “I’m sure you’ll come up with a plausible reason.”

  “Meaning you want me to lie for you?”

  The silver eyes blazed with a light of their own and Grae-zier’s knuckles stood out like a ridge of mountains as he gripped the hilt of his sword. For a moment Bryce thought Grae-zier was about to take his head off; however the man controlled his temper. “You will do what you have to keep them from using nukes. That is your mission.”

  “What if I can’t?”

  “Millions will die.”

  Bryce shifted uncomfortably on the cracked red vinyl. “They’ll die anyway.”

  “Maybe.” Grae-zier slid his sword away. “You do not have a full understanding of Daniel Magnus. He is far seeing. He knows what cannot be known. Trust in that and your fears will be diminished.” Grae-zier’s enormous hand came down on Bryce’s shoulder. “Be strong and do not tarry.”

  He turned abruptly, causing his cloak to flare. Bryce jumped up. “Before you go. I need to know what this is all about. You and me and…” He bit back on Maddy’s name. It felt wiser to leave her out of this. “And all this. What series are you talking about? What did Magnus do to us?”

  Grae-zier took his time answering. “He gave us a gift. Inside each of us is greatness that’s been locked away in our genetic structure since the dawn of time. Magnus has discovered a way to bring it out. With each successive series of tests, he strives to recreate more of God’s original creation. I am of the Fifteen series. Sometimes the advances are greater, other times smaller. Sometimes there are no changes at all…or there are backwards steps. There was great hope with the Twenty-one series.”

  “Was?”

  “Like I said, sometimes there were backwards steps.” He gestured at Bryce: Exhibit A for his example of genetic mistakes. “At least you’re alive.”

  After everything he had gone through, Bryce did feel lucky to be alive, though he was sure Grae-zier was suggesting more. “Meaning what?”

  Grae-zier’s eyes shifted away. From what little Bryce knew of him, he wouldn’t lie, but he might leave out important details if he felt there was a need. In this
case he came right out and said, “So far, the trial has not gone well. Of sixty-two volunteers, only you and the woman with you have managed to survive.”

  “Sixty dead?” Bryce clutched his chest, wondering if he was even then on the verge of a massive heart attack or a stroke. He wanted to ask how the others died but a new thought struck him. “And where do you get off calling us volunteers? We didn’t volunteer for anything. We woke up in a hospital with people thinking we overdosed on drugs.”

  As Bryce should’ve expected, Grae-zier ignored this unpleasant reality. “Like I said, you are lucky. Use that luck to complete your mission. Remember, lives are at risk.”

  Again, he swung away, allowing his cloak to ripple in a wave behind him. Soundlessly, he disappeared down the corridor and was gone.

  “My life is on the line,” Bryce mumbled, gazing down at a little chunk of his sword. “Do you care about that?” He felt it was unlikely that Grae-zier cared at all. “He just doesn’t want to be incinerated.” A shiver went down his back as he pictured a nuke exploding over the city, vaporizing everything.

  Chapter 46

  Five minutes later, Bryce stepped into the dark interior of the furniture store. Even from inside, the “Europeanness” of the furniture escaped him, unless stiff, uncomfortable and pretentious equated to being European, he didn’t see it.

  He had spent the previous five minutes collecting himself and, just as importantly, finishing the sandwich he’d been making and filling his pack once again with more fixings. He had also found a t-shirt hanging from a hook in the bathroom. It was liberally decorated with pizza sauce stains down the front and the armpits were a grey yellow color. The shirt smelled pretty much like it looked.

  The smell seemed to drift from his consciousness as new smells greeted him: Wilkes’ last merc was fast losing his humanity. He was off in the corner by himself, chewing on one ragged thumbnail. A little closer, someone’s bowel had ruptured. A man named Juan had been crushed, first by a train and then by a falling chunk of cement the size of a Shetland pony. He had doggedly kept up with the group but internal bleeding combined with undiagnosed diverticulitis had resulted in his large colon splitting open. He was shitting blood.

  Maddy was not far away when Bryce walked in. She was holding a woman by the shoulders as a white-faced man pulled on the woman’s right arm. The arm was badly broken, and the woman was unable to hold back a scream. The entire room stared, frozen in shock at the sound.

  “Shut her up!” Wilkes barked.

  Bryce was the closest. He leapt on her and clamped a hand over her mouth. “Look at me,” he hissed, staring her in the face. “It’ll be alright.” It was an outrageous lie. An ugly shard of bone had torn up through her bicep and erupted through her flesh. The arm was bent and swollen up twice as large as its twin, and to make matters worse, the scream had stopped the man in mid-pull, thus prolonging her agony without helping to set the break.

  It was not going to be alright. The lie stung his honor, which had been only a vague thing with little meaning the week before. It was no less vague now, and yet it had more meaning, though he knew not why. Worse than the lie was the useless pain they were causing the woman. Her pulse was thready despite the fact that her heart bounded. It was trying to make up for the lack of blood in her system.

  She had left a red trail all the way from the wrecked train and now she was going into shock. Unfortunately, there was nothing he or any of them could do. She needed a surgeon to repair the shredded blood vessels and she needed a blood transfusion or at the least a gallon of IV fluids to stabilize her. After that she would need antibiotics, pain pills by the score, and a great deal of rest.

  And all that was never going to happen. The best they could do was splint and bind her arm. It would be a stopgap measure; without surgery she would slowly bleed out or the shock would send her into cardiac arrest. One way or the other, she was going to die.

  “It’ll be alright,” Bryce lied again. He knew it would be a mercy to kill her now. It would be an honorable thing to do. In spite of this, he could not kill her, not while there was still so much life in her eyes. That spark in her eyes was also a lie. It was like the last day of Indian Summer with a nor’easter barreling down; it was little more than an illusion.

  What would Grae-zier do? he wondered. Or Magnus?

  The answer to both came quickly. Magnus would snap his fingers and one of his faithful followers would smother the woman with a pillow. Grae-zier would cut her in two with his sword without blinking. He would not need to justify his actions to himself or the people around him. They were only human and not one of the “chosen.”

  “Let’s consider a different approach,” he suggested. “I say we should bind up the arm as is until we can get in a safer spot or a more defensible one. In the meantime, she needs as many pain pills as she can handle and some rest.” He smiled down at her. “How’s that sound?”

  “Yeah. Please. Let’s do that.” The woman laid back trembling, her eyes staring at the ceiling.

  Maddy raised an eyebrow. Something had changed about Bryce, she saw. Behind the smile and the calmly spun lie he was suddenly skittish and his sword was gone, replaced by a long, white-handled kitchen knife. And he smelled odd. It wasn’t just the shirt, either. There was the strangest aroma around him.

  “Where’s Sid?” Bryce asked, trying to pretend he didn’t see Maddy’s searching inquisitive eyes on him.

  Without looking, she gestured to the side. “In one of the recliners. My bet’s that he’s asleep already. Asleep or passed out.”

  He turned out to be somewhere between the two states, but managed to come alive enough to rifle through his pockets. He found four little plastic containers. “I can’t read none that,” he muttered, squinting at the letters in the dark, “but one ‘dem should be like ty-nol with codeine. That’ll knock her on her ass, ‘specially she takes it with Jack.”

  When it came to getting high, Sid was generous. Abandoning his recliner, he went to the woman, saying, “It’s da ice cream man. What’s your flavor?”

  Bryce turned away without comment. He surveyed the low-ceilinged room; there were people scattered on every bed, turning the sheets filthy, mostly with mud or tar, but frequently with blood. He counted forty-three of them; they were still picking up people.

  “You want to tell me what’s up?” Maddy asked.

  “Not here.”

  She was not the only one who was aware of Bryce and who had tracked him as he came in. Nichola wasn’t going to be left behind, Victoria had a promise to enforce, Wilkes had his wagon hitched to him, and Griff still had his mission. These four trailed the pair into the gloom of the sales office. Although it was glass-walled, not much light filtered this far back into the store.

  “I met a man,” he said. Thinking back on Grae-zier he had to pause to reconsider the word “man”. Clearly Grae-zier was more than a man, and yet Bryce wasn’t going to describe him in fawning terms. “Magnus sent him.” Again, he paused, knowing that the others would need a moment.

  Nichola was the first to speak. “Magnus? Daniel Magnus? And he sent someone to see you?”

  Maddy cast a side eye at the young woman’s disparaging tone and was about to snap at her; however, Wilkes put up a silencing hand and asked, “What did he want? Did he mention me? Is he sending in another team? Did he give you an evac point?”

  Bryce grunted out a laugh. “I wish. No, he said some stuff that may or may not be true. He seems to think it is and that it might be, you know, soon. And I…might believe him.” Although Bryce stumbled over this string of nearly incoherent words, Maddy had heard enough in his tone to know that her worst fear was no longer in the maybe category.

  A shiver made her shoulders twitch. “When?” she asked

  “When what?” Victoria demanded. “What stuff?”

  “They’re going to use nukes,” Maddy answered. “I’ve known it since whenever it was we woke up. I dreamed it.”

  Griff scratched his head and
grit sifted down to land on the shoulder of a brown coat he’d picked up somewhere. “You dreamed it? Okay, that’s, that’s whatever. Magnus didn’t dream it though, right? He has evidence?”

  “Of course, he has evidence,” Wilkes said, talking over Bryce. “You think my security team was the only one working for him? He had dozens; all the big names. What I don’t get is why he didn’t contact me? And you know what else doesn’t make sense? Why did Magnus send this guy to find you to tell you to go to the Feds? Why didn’t Magnus have the guy just go himself?”

  Maddy felt Bryce’s hesitation.

  “The guy…the man was different. He wasn’t a good choice for something like this.”

  Wilkes gave a quick glance around before he stepped in close. “Was he a zombie? Or becoming one?”

  “No. He was just different. Sort of like Maddy and me but more so.”

  “He’s more of a freak?” Victoria asked. Maddy shot the blonde woman a hard look, but Victoria only shrugged. “What? You aren’t normal. You said it yourself. Magnus did something to you. Something that wasn’t right.”

  “Look, the man doesn’t matter,” Bryce practically shouted. “The government is going to nuke us. That is the takeaway here. Soooo, what do we do? Wilkes? Do you have contacts we can draw on? And better visuals? Maybe satellite photos? I was told to carry on southward.”

  Wilkes rolled his eyes. “South? Through that? Did this guy look out the fucking window?”

  Griff waved his hands. “We are jumping to insane conclusions. The government is not going to nuke New York City. That’s crazy.”

  This struck them all dumb for a long second until Nichola made a dismissive tsk sound. “You need to wake the fuck up. Of course, they will. You ever heard of Waco or that thing in Philadelphia. They dropped a big ass bomb on some people there.” Everyone was nodding in agreement. “And if some guy who’s got more ESP than these two thinks it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen.”

  “Did he say this was from some sort of vision?” Griff asked.

  Bryce grimaced as he answered, “The man told me that Magnus was far-seeing and that he knows what cannot be known.”