The Plague Runner

by Burgy, P. J.

  A little later, he became distraught and unreasonable, demanding to stop find a place to rest. Finding it impossible to talk him out of it, she was forced to wait outside of a broken down cafe while he dug himself a little hole to curl up in and slept.

  It took several hours before he came out. She'd been staring at the sky, watching the sun move, and worrying over the time lost. She'd also been keeping an eye out for anything, or anyone else. It wasn't lost on her that there might be some surviving Purgers out there wandering around with an ax to grind. She was anxious to get moving and felt waves of relief wash over her when he took the lead once more.

  Ahead of them, a mess of tangled cars came into view. There had been a massive accident here, the fronts all smashed in. She walked up to the first vehicle she came to and saw the bones on the seat.

  “2011 Nissan Rogue. Just like my Dad used to drive,” he stated.

  She turned to look at him and saw his eyes through the visor. He looked distant, miles away, and yet contented. She had only a brief moment to study his strange expression before he turned his head and the visor darkened.

  “Yeah, me'n'my dog Bucky would hop in the back, and we'd drive down to the ice cream shop and get us a couple cones. Those were good times.” He began to hum a tune and then walked off, stepping around the SUV. He began to whistle the same tune then, and she chased after him.

  “You remembered his name,” she said, smiling.

  “Hm?”

  “Your dog. You remembered his name.”

  “What dog?” He tilted his head.

  She stared at him, lips parted. “Your dog, Bucky.”

  “I never had a dog. What are you talking about?”

  She tore her eyes away from him and continued to follow, something dropping from her throat into her lower stomach. He did not whistle again, nor did he hum. Instead, he climbed over the next car and stalked off ahead of her with a renewed vigor.

  “Do you remember where we're going, Russell?”

  He stopped, pivoting to look back at her.

  “To the heart of the city," he said, “Why?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  They walked on.

  The sun would be dipping low in the sky soon, the late afternoon muggier than Kara had anticipated. She took off her bandanna and crouched by a large puddle, rinsing her forehead and then her hair. She wet the bandanna, wrung it out, and tied it back around her head again before looking at Russell. He stood close by, watching her. When she straightened up and faced him, he kept on his way through the street and she caught up to him in a few long strides.

  “So, I've been wanting to ask you something,” she said.

  “Mm'yeah?”

  “Father Isaac called you the Ghost. You'd run into him before. Why didn't you tell me about the Purgers, or that there were other people out here?” she asked.

  “I was wondering when you'd ask me that,” he replied.

  “Well?”

  He shrugged. “Thought you'd leave, that you wouldn't get that deep in. Didn't seem important.”

  They walked in silence for a few moments.

  “I killed all those people. If I'd known...”

  “The Purgers?” He snorted, glancing over to Kara as his pace slowed. “Don't torture yourself over those maniacs. They'd have killed you, remember? Isaac Bachman and his kin were murderers, regardless of who they went after. Don't fool yourself. More than one healthy human being has died in their basement, trust me. I've seen them capture the lost and wandering many times, and I've never seen those people again.”

  “Bachman...” Kara mused, “Still, they're all dead now, because of me.”

  “You did them a favor.”

  “How do you figure, Russ?”

  “Did any of them seem particularly happy?” he asked.

  “One of them did,” she answered.

  “Well, he enjoyed what he did, didn't he? And now he's dead," he said.

  “I was talking about Elijah.”

  “He was happy?”

  “He had a home. A family. Yes. He was happy,” she replied.

  “He's probably dead too.”

  Her face screwed. “Fuck, Russell. What is wrong with you?”

  “I question your reasons for feeling remorse, that's all.”

  Her jaw clenched. “I don't know, okay? They weren't like the Brethren, but-”

  “Wait.”

  He froze, Kara passing by him and then halting when she saw he'd dropped back behind her. She turned, staring at him. Then, he began to stalk down the road once more, his posture more predatory, his movements jerky and quick.

  “This way. I smell blood. They’re this way,” he stated, head forward, shoulders back. He was walking faster, starting to jog.

  She hurried beside him. “What?”

  “Flesh. This way,” he murmured and then broke into a hard run. He was quick, his powerful legs taking him over an abandoned car. After a sharp left turn down a wide street, he halted, dropping to a crouch and touched the cracked asphalt with his gloved fingers.

  She reached him, stopping to stare down at him before noticing what he’d picked up. He was standing again, turning toward her with the bloody shoe in his hand. He turned it over, holding it near his visor, and made low, guttural noises as he traced his thumb over the stained gray fabric.

  “Blood.”

  “Two days old,” he stated. “Male. This flesh was young.”

  “That flesh is probably someone I know, Russ,” she said.

  “I’m sorry. This was a young man.” He dropped the shoe to the ground and pivoted on his booted heel, craning his neck while his eyes scoured the surrounding area from behind his dark visor. “I wish I could take off this helmet. I could follow the smell of the blood so much better. Maybe if we wait until dark-”

  “We can’t wait until dark, Russell,” she said. “I’m here, remember?”

  “If I lift my visor, just for a second…”

  “Be careful.”

  Russell lifted his visor, briefly. He took in a deep breath of air by the sound of it, and then dropped the visor back down. His arm lifted and he pointed right again. “That way.”

  “Oh my god,” she breathed, close beside him as they stood in front of a massive brick faced building with tall, barred windows.

  The glass doors had been broken decades ago, the fence gates torn away and the pavement shattered into dust around the growing vegetation. Beyond the doors, after a platform with visible rails, she saw only darkness. Those must have been stairs there, stairs leading down into the earth, down under the city. There was a massive mall built above and behind the brick building, and the pieces of glass left in the arching ceiling reminded her of Salvation. On either side, there were shops and little stores built into structure, and then another set of doors leading into the mall visible far to the right, near the end of the street.

  “This is the place,” Russell stated.

  “St. Christie Station.” She read the faded words on the building, right above where the open doors lead into the blackness underground.

  “You could’ve just told me it was the train station," he said. “I could’ve gotten you here faster if you had.”

  “I didn’t know. How would I?” She shook her head.

  “This is not a place that you should be.” He tensed. “This is a bad idea.”

  “This is it, isn’t it?” she asked. “This is the hive.”

  “I smell so many. So many Infected. I smell blood. Flesh,” he whispered, and lifted his visor again to take in a deep breath. “So many are here. Kara, you have to go.”

  “It isn’t night yet,” she told him. “And my friends might be down there.”

  She reached to her pocket, to the flashlight, and he stopped her, his gloved hand on her shoulder. She regarded him with her hazel eyes, head tilted.

  “No. You can’t go down there. You’d be killed the instant they smelled you. I’ll go," he said. When she protested, he shook h
is head and squeezed her arm. “I’ll smell just like them, Kara. I can walk among the Infected, and find your friends, if they’re there. Or not. I’ll come back, and in either case, we can figure out a plan. But, we both can’t go down there at the same time. No.”

  “Russ.” She stared at his eyes behind his visor. “What if something happens?”

  “Then hide for the night and leave in the morning.”

  She blinked. “Leave? Run away?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “If I don’t come back, then it means something went wrong. You tried. That’s all that matters, isn’t it? You tried,” he mused, and then stepped away from her. “I remember something, but, I don’t know what it is. I’ve been here, I think.”

  “You knew where the train station was, so I assume you’ve been here before.” She studied the shops on the other side of the street, looking at the gaping doorways and the shattered windows. “Look, if I hide, you need to see where I’ll be, okay? Because when you come back up, the other Infected will be out too. Help me find a place for the night.”

  Russell helped Kara find a hiding spot in a building down the block and across the street, on the second floor, in a loft apartment above a coffee house. It hadn’t been the easiest to reach, but it was sealed well and he had found no evidence of the Wailers there. She found the couch to be comfortable, and it folded out to become a bed. An old fish tank had dried up on a stand near the corner of the room, next to a fake potted plant, covered in dust and drywall. There had been a wall mounted flat screen television but now it was broken on the floor.

  She used her flashlight to have a look around.

  “Best to save your battery.” He surprised her, having sneaked up close to her in the shadows of the apartment. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  “Leaving now?”

  “I think so. Most of them may be day sleeping. It will be easier.” He nodded. “I don’t expect any trouble, but, if there are some like me there, well, they’ll be less complacent with me in their territory.”

  “I didn’t think Wailers had territories,” she muttered, having a seat on the couch.

  “Ones like me do.” He went to a closed, wooden door perhaps fifteen feet from the couch. “We have hunting grounds.”

  “I keep learning more.”

  “I told you that you had a lot to learn about the Infected, didn’t I?” He chuckled behind his helmet and then opened the door. “Stay quiet, stay hidden. If I don’t come back, and the sun comes up, what will you do?”

  “Leave the city.”

  “Thank you.” He nodded. Then, he left, shutting the door behind himself.

  She didn’t hear him walking through the building, but she did see him on the street a moment later when she went to the window. He looked back at her once and then trotted over to the train station doors. Kara saw his moment of hesitation as he paused at the edge of shadow before disappearing into the darkness.

  The sun had set and night had already taken hold of the city by the time Kara woke up. Unsure of how long she’d been sleeping, she started up, grabbing for her flashlight and looking around the dimly lit apartment.

  The exhaustion from the previous days had caught up with her apparently, knocking her out dead when she should have been the most alert. Angry with herself, she found that she was bathed in near darkness, the stars partially obscured by passing clouds. The moon was not quite as bright as it had been, the light waning, and the cool glow spread across the rough apartment floor. She crawled to the window, brows furrowed and concerned etched into her face at the lack of Wailer shrieks.

  It was quiet out there. She’d expected there to be a choir of the Infected out in the city streets. Looking down and across the street, she scoured the area in front of the train station for any signs of life. There was nothing.

  Judging by the position of the moon in the sky, dawn was only a few hours away. She cursed to herself, wondering where Russell could be. What was taking him so long? The night was nearly over and she'd slept it away.

  She remained at the window, eyes hunting over every shadow on the street, searching the darkness of the train station doorway, until she heard something strange from out there, somewhere close and above her. It was a soft skittering sound, like a squirrel on a roof or a bird hopping between branches. She backed away from the window, tilting her head, and grabbed for her flashlight. The noise seemed to be coming from the ceiling and she put on the red light and shone it above. Only the cracked and flaking stucco greeted her. The skittering had stopped.

  “She’s awake.”

  Kara held back a gasp of air as the very audible words met her ears. She swung the flashlight around the room. The skittering began again and the shadows in the corners of the room began to twist and move. Something smelled bad and she covered her face with one hand. The stink of the Infected had gotten into the apartment.

  She made a break for the apartment door, grabbing for the handle, and pulled it open. Halfway down the hallway she felt strong hands catch her arms, and, attempting to break free, she swung as hard as she could before being thrown into the wall. Fabric was pulled over her head, blinding her completely, and she smelled the bitter scent of burlap while her hands were wrestled to her back.

  There were multiple attackers, each incredibly strong, and she suddenly found herself weightless. She was being picked up, thrown over a broad shoulder. She cried out as the air was forced out of her lungs.

  “Careful now. Careful,” A thin voice hissed.

  “I’ll scream!” She growled through the bag. “I’ll scream and the Wailers will be on you!”

  A low laugh, ragged, came from near her side.

  Kara could smell it now, the scent of rotten garbage and sweet copper. She would have gagged in the bag over her head if she hadn’t fought it back. The realization came to her quickly as she stopped fighting back, her struggling ceasing completely as she froze to the spot, breath caught in her throat.

  “Sweet girl, we’re already here,” The voice told her.

  Chapter Nine

  Kara was being carried along on the shoulder of a stinking titan, the muscles moving like steel cords under her as it ran down the steps and out into the street. While she couldn’t see, she could hear its breathing, and she could feel the sensation of its speed as she bounced on its back. She knew when it had brought her down the stairs into the train station, because the air grew heavier and muskier and her equilibrium was jolted downward. She could feel them dropping further into a warm pit of sickening garbage, the scent assaulting her nose through the burlap bag.

  Faint light crept in through the mesh they’d thrown over her head as the thing carrying her found flat ground and continued to run. She smelled the candles burning, the incense in the air growing stronger and mixing with the bile of the Infected. She heard the murmuring conversations passing on either side of her.

  Then, she was lowered to the ground and pushed through what felt like flaps of fabric. Another set of hands grabbed at her and then pushed her to the floor, soft and carpeted, and the bag was pulled from her head. The lights were low, the candles flickering at the corners of the large, high tent. Lovely, silken cloth hung from above, sewn into vines that connected, woven together like an intricate web of different colors and textures. Kara saw the blanched figure sitting in the red, sequined chair and the taller, equally pale figure beside her. A young woman sat beside a tall, young male who stood close, like a statue. Kara blinked, staring.

  “Do you know who I am?” the woman asked, smiling.

  Her skin was milky white, her hair pale blonde and very long, very straight, obstructing the sides of her heart shaped face and draped over her shoulders, over her breasts. Even her eyebrows and her eyelashes were pale. The first thing that Kara noticed, other than the woman's apparent albinism, were those big black eyes. She had drawn spirals using black ink, or perhaps Infected fluids, descending from her eyes down along her cheeks. The pupils were huge
and unsettling, the darkness of them hinting at a madness that writhed and wriggled in her skull.

  The woman was an Infected and yet, she couldn’t have been. The whites of her eyes were unstained by hemorrhaged blood vessels, and Kara couldn’t see the telltale visible veins that should have been showing through her skin in branching patches along her throat, her wrists, or her temples.

  Her build was that of an Infected, with lean, muscular angles and thick, hard curves. Her softness was distributed in those areas reserved for a woman, but had been given modestly. She had to be young, barely twenty years old by Kara’s estimation. The white cloth she had wrapped around her body covered what needed to be covered for the sake of decency and nothing more.

  The man standing next to her was a tall muscular creature, another albino. Their faces were vaguely similar. His loin cloth was made from the same white material that Kara saw draped around the woman. His long, straight hair was pulled back and away from his face, his pupils were huge and black, and he had painted the same inky designs running from his eyes down his cheeks.

  Kara felt an icy chill run up her spine as she glanced at those black eyes again. Unlike the woman, there was no madness lurking there, but something Kara felt was far worse. A cold, emptiness resided in his gaze, vast like a sunken void, a doll’s eyes, dead eyes. He was a killer and she was a witch.

  “Meredith...” Kara breathed.

  Meredith’s smile grew wider, the black spit barely visible on her teeth, her eyes filling with joy. She nodded. “You had to know, I was sure of it. My name was always on his tongue. Of course, he would have told you about me. Father Isaac told any who would listen. What is your name?”

  Kara did not reply. Instead, she looked around the inside of the tent at the candles burning on the floor and the hanging fabrics that swayed to and fro in the cool breeze.

  “The candles are not for your benefit,” Meredith stated, “They are for our new matron, our new mother. She prefers the light. Her eyes are not as good as ours.”

  Kara found herself staring at the pale young woman.