by Amy Miles
I don’t like to kill, but I will if I’m left without any other options. The soldiers made the mistake of underestimating me the first time they tried to corner me and one of them died. Cap and Gunner will not make that same mistake twice.
Hugging close to the right side of the tunnel, I trail my elbow along the uneven wall for direction. When I turn back I realize that I have only traveled thirty feet but there is a new light starting to dawn at the cave entrance. The sun has begun to rise and the soldiers will be coming for me. I didn’t exactly take the time to sweep away my tracks as I ran for my life. The Withered were out in force and traveling at night no longer feels safe.
“Please don’t make me regret this,” I whisper to the cave as I continue forward.
When the wall takes an unexpected turn a few minutes later, I stumble to the side in search of it again. My fingertips feel nothing and I realize that another cavernous room has opened up. My pulse thumps in my ears and my breathing sounds far too loud in the dark as fear begins to rush in, a familiar yet bitter taste in my mouth as I blindly search for the wall.
No matter how many times I stare fear down, I have yet to conquer it. I guess that’s a good thing, though. Fear is the one thing that reminds me that I’m still alive. That and the damn bullet stuck in my arm!
A scuttling to my left makes me freeze. Every muscle locks down as I allow my other senses to kick in. The smell has not shifted and there is no hint of rot to imply a Withered might be nearby. I stretch the flashlight out before me and wave it around in the dark, gritting my teeth against the pain that shoots through my left shoulder but there is nothing there. I tighten my grip on the ax, spreading my legs in preparation and wait.
The scurrying sound comes a little closer this time. I breathe a sigh of relief when I hear the tiny scratching of nails on the ground. It is a rat.
My first thought is to scrunch up my nose in disgust like the girl I used to be. The second thought, this one far more prevalent than the first, is to smile.
Dinner.
A few months ago I was feasting on burgers and greasy fries. Now I get excited over vermin. Oh, how low the human race has sunk!
I track the rodent farther into the darkness, flicking on my light only when I fear that I’ve lost it completely to conserve the battery life. Hunting blind is not my forte but the thought of having food on my stomach fuels my determination. Fresh meat, no matter what sort, is better than the scraps that I’ve been living on the past couple of weeks. With only a single can of peas left, I am desperate for anything that I can get, and at this point, I hate peas more than I hate rats.
The sound of skittering comes from my right this time and I veer in that direction without thought. I step lightly, willing myself to be one with the rat, all the while wondering when the moment will arrive that I walk face first into a stone wall and knock myself unconscious.
Hoisting my ax, I thumb the light switch and the rat’s beady eyes glint in the light. Its whiskers flutter as it raises its nose to sniff the air then squeaks and darts in a panic.
“Shit!”
The rat’s eyes burst out from its sockets under the downward force of a combat boot. Its bones snap and its fur stains with blood. Its back legs twitch as the boot shifts from side to side, crushing the rodent into the floor.
The scent of rot might not be present now but something else is—blood.
My thumb flicks off the flashlight button a second before I dive, realizing too late why I was fooled. I couldn’t smell him over my own bleeding shoulder and the scent of gasoline still stuck in my nose.
Tucking my chin, I roll back to my feet and turn straight into a blind punch that momentarily helps me to forget the stabbing in my left shoulder. The right side of my face explodes with pain, from cheekbone to jaw. Even as I fight to regain my footing I know that I’m fighting a man.
A very strong man.
A patient man.
A predator.
He waited for me in the dark and was still enough to fool the rat. That means I am at a grave disadvantage.
I feel air shift in front of me a split second before a new pain lances through my right arm and slices deep through my bicep. Gritting my teeth, I refuse to allow myself to make a sound and risk giving myself away as I step back, struggling to retain my hold on the ax, but the air moves again and another attack splits my right cheek open. Warm blood seeps down my jaw, rolling toward the hollow of my neck.
How can he see me in the pitch dark?
Even with my senses on high alert, I am completely blind. Then a wild thought strikes me as I remember seeing combat boots in the flashlight beam. I engage without considering the danger of my attack if I am wrong because I know the consequences if I am not.
Flicking my flashlight on, I aim it in the direction I think my attacker is located and drive my ax in a low, hard sweep. A throaty grunt is met with a solid vibration in my arm as my blade buries deep into flesh. Blood gushes over my hand and I fight against my body’s need to panic.
Death, though necessary in the world I now live in, never gets easier. Whoever said that it does is a fucking liar.
A disconcerting gurgling erupts from the dark as I swing my flashlight to my right. I miscalculated the direction of my attacker by nearly half a foot but the length of my ax compensated for the difference, burying several inches into the man’s torso.
The fact that he never cries out in pain sets me on high alert as I scan him for symptoms. In the light, I spy a camouflage shirt followed by a scruffy beard and instantly sober at the sight of crimson bubbles forming at the man’s lips. His knees give way suddenly and the force tugs me off balance as I grip my ax, unwilling to lose my weapon. My flashlight crashes to the ground and rolls away.
In the angled light, I can see that the man’s fatigues are caked with newly drying mud and leaves. His torn camouflage shirt is already torn and shows pit stains reaching nearly to his breastbone.
Seeing this soldier’s Marine Corps symbol affiliation forces me to think about Cable at a moment when I desperately need to keep my wits about me. He shifted my entire world and taught me the true meaning of sacrificial love before I was sentenced to live alone in this hellish place. He made me keep going right until he faded in my arms.
Most days I don’t want to get up, to scratch and peck for what little food there is to scavenge and convince myself that any of it matters. It doesn’t. If it weren’t for my promise to find his brother, I probably would have used Cable’s gun on myself by now. It seems a kinder death than what this world has in store for me.
Cable Blackwell gave me a glimpse of happiness that helped me to forget all of the death and shit surrounding me. He was tireless in his patience and faith, both in me and in the world. He held onto hope when none existed, but I wasn’t like that. I saw things for how they were. The way I see it, there isn’t much good left now to fight for.
Gritting my teeth against the barrage of unwanted emotions, I force myself to push aside the thought of being in Cable’s arms and a hundred other memories that have begun to fade with time. Instead, I watch the soldier shudder and twitch as his life drains freely through his open wound and realize that he looks familiar.
Yanking back the flap of his shirt, I see his name patch: Gunner.
“Holy shit!” I jerk back and fall to the ground, crab crawling away from him.
Bloodied and broken fingernails claw at his torn pant leg but he makes no move to staunch the flow of blood in his side. I search for his gun on the floor around him but see nothing beyond the knife that landed several feet away.
“What the hell happened to you?” I ask, hating the appearance of a quake in my voice. His presence here in the cave is startling enough but to see him in this condition...how did he begin to turn so quickly?
“Did that animal do this? Are they somehow infected now too?”
I w
atch as he scratches at his leg without blinking. His skin, though paler than what I saw the day before, still has a bit of a rosy hue to it. From where I sit, the wound on his upper thigh doesn’t look deep enough to cause any lasting nerve damage.
“Hey, are you hearing me?” I wave my hand out in front of me but he doesn’t seem to notice. I can tell by the glisten of sweat along his forehead and bloodshot eyes that he is infected. He will become one of them soon, maybe within the day if he had not stumbled across me in the dark, but how did it happen so fast?
There is no way that he could have digressed so fast. Usually, it takes days for the transformation to become complete and he proved to be more than capable of handling himself when he was tracking me through the forest mere hours ago.
“Gunner, do you know who I am?” I lean forward to search for a response. “I’m the girl you were tracking last night. I got away because you lost sight of me in the rain. Do you remember any of that?”
When he doesn’t respond, I jerk on the handle of the ax. He should be screaming in agony but instead, he stares at me with an unusual calm. With the toe of my boot, I kick aside the blade that he used against me and it clatters as it strikes the wall.
Leaning forward to grab the flashlight, I shine the light high enough to see that a film has already begun to form in his right eye. The muscles in his neck spasm as he jerks away from the light and claws at the air. With each breath, I listen to the telltale rattle in his lungs and realize that the light is painful for him.
Lowering the beam just enough to shield his eyes but not the rest of his body I survey him with a mixture of pity and resentment. I have seen what the transformation can be like, how the change can turn a peaceful man into a creature filled with rage and how sensitivity to light can drive a sane man into the depths of this colorless hell, but this soldier has gone through days’ worth of transitions in less than half a night.
That’s when his agitation draws my attention back to his leg. Crouching low, I watch him carefully as I tear apart the fabric of his pants to look at the wound he continues to fuss with.
“Teeth marks?” I whisper and look up at him. The markings are distinct enough for me to see that it was not an animal that did this. It was a person. “Gunner, was it a person who attacked you back in camp? Did someone in your group go crazy and start biting people like a cannibal?”
It was terrible to think of someone actually doing such a thing but the realistic side of me knew that hunger was hunger and desperation could drive people mad. I knew it had been done before. I’d seen evidence of it along the road not long after I crossed state lines but to see it up close was terrifying.
“Oh man,” I blow out a breath and shove my hair back. Pain flares in my left arm and I’m instantly reminded that he is the one who shot me and tried to filet me only moments ago. How could he go from being so aggressive to passive? It was almost as if a switch had been turned in his mind.
“Where are the others?” I call out loud enough to hopefully get a rise from him but he stares over my shoulder, unblinking. The only movement is the twitching of his fingers at the edge of the raw wound and the raspy breath of his lungs filling. “What happened to your commander and the others? Did they survive the attack?”
I didn’t want to care about what happened to them, especially considering the horrible things they probably intend to do to me when they catch me, but the moment I stop being a human is the moment there is no point in living. Feeling, fearing, caring...those are all of the things that tell me that I am not like them.
Gunner shifts to stare up at me with unblinking eyes when I shift the light closer to his face. I doubt that he even recognizes anything beyond the brightness of my light and perhaps my scent now. That’s when a new thought strikes me. Maybe he wasn’t trying to hurt me after all. Maybe he was just trying to get me to turn off the light.
Lifting the flashlight to point directly at his nose, Gunner comes alive and suddenly swipes at me with fingers curled into claws. I rear back but not before seeing sheer rage light in his eyes. His lips curl into a snarl as he growls and rocks in place, his hands raised toward me as he fights to overcome the ax buried in his side to get to me.
A sinking realization falls over me as I stagger to my feet and I acknowledge that he would have killed me if given the chance. The light may have drawn him to me, but in the end, directing the beam straight into his eyes is the only thing that truly saved me. It was only after he returned to the darkness that he settled down once more.
Pressing my boot to his chest, I shove hard and dislodge my ax from his side as he collapses to the ground. Fresh blood pours from the gaping wound and his legs twitch as his inches toward me, half dragging himself across the floor. I grimace at the sound of squelching as blood is forced out of his wound, soaking through both layers of his shirt.
“You would have caught me in the end,” I whisper. I know that he won’t hear me but I feel like I should say something nice at the end. “You fought a good fight and I’m sorry, but it’s better this way.”
I pause a second to feel a flood of remorse before I bring my ax down over my head and bury it in his skull.
TWO
One week later...
Dusk sits heavily in the western sky as I pause to look back over my shoulder, searching the ground for clues that I might have missed when I spot something off to my right. Clutching my left shoulder as I bend, I touch my fingertips to a low hanging bush and come away with blood.
“I thought I’d lost you.” I stare at the steep decline ahead of me. The brush is thick and the night approaches far too quickly for me to be able to see if the wounded deer is nearby. Wiping the sweat from my forehead, I bite down on my lip just hard enough to allow this new pain to help me to focus while I debate my options.
It isn’t safe to be out this close to dark, especially not in my condition. With my clothes drenched from a detour through a nearby creek bed that had breached its banks from recent rains, breath puffs visibly through my trembling lips. The chill in the air bites my exposed flesh as I wring water from my pants and rub feeling back into my thighs.
Hunger drives me forward as I peer down the steep slope into a landscape too thick to see much of anything. My last can of peas went down like a disgusting, squishy rock nearly four days ago and I’m desperate for something in my stomach. The deer I clipped a few hours ago has proven to be elusive but the steady growling in my stomach can’t be ignored any longer. My hunger’s presence and the thought of tearing into a side of deer jerky makes me ignore the setting sun and risk exposure for the sake of a meal. With my fever on the rise, I stand too high of a chance of keeling right over if I don’t get some protein in me.
The infection in my left arm began not long after I stumbled my way out of the other end of the train tunnel the morning I killed Gunner. I’d located a small puddle of rainwater and tried to clean my wounds but a leaf wrapped with a partially clean strip of torn cloth wasn’t the most sanitary tourniquet but it was the best I could do while on the run.
I heard the roar of the military trucks behind me, echoing through the tunnel not long after I emerged from the dark and knew the soldiers wouldn’t be far behind. Their pursuit pushed me to my limits and I struggled to remain ahead of them, terrified by their relentless pursuit. My hope that they would give up after they found Gunner’s body and return to their base died when they caught my trail the following day.
While the wound on my cheek and deeper laceration in my right arm have begun to heal, the bullet wound in my shoulder has grown red and inflamed, festering after only a few days. That’s when the fever and chills set in. The vomiting and nausea came not long after that. I attempted to burn out the infection, heating my blade in a small fire that I dared to build in the light of the day with the hopes that it wouldn’t be seen as clearly as it would at night but I passed out long before the job was finished. I knew I wo
uldn’t make it through a second attempt and there was no way I could cauterize the exit wound on the backside of my arm by myself.
As my rising fever led to whacked out hallucinations, desperation forced me to search a town not far from the Kentucky and Tennessee border, but it had been picked clean. There wasn’t so much as a single tablet of pain medicine to be found. Though I’d stumbled from house to house, digging through medicine cabinets, bedside tables and dead ladies purses, I came up completely empty handed. Whoever cleared that town had been very thorough in their sweep.
Many of the houses had been torched and razed to the ground and the bodies stacked in plastic wrapped piles. The small town looked sanitized and I knew the only people likely to do something like that were the military but I suspected that this town had been cleansed a while back. The soldiers tracking me seemed less inclined to do cleanup work.
As I push forward through the brush, I consider for the thousandth time if the soldiers know who I am and that I played a part in the destruction of the base outside of St. Louis. Technically, it wasn’t my fault that the base was blown to hell. I wasn’t the one who set the bombs or fired the tank at the walls, but I highly doubt that the military will let those crimes slide on my good word alone.
They want my blood, end of story, but there is no way that I am going back to another lab to be poked and prodded like an animal in a cage. I will go down fighting before that happens.
Despite my ailing health, I have managed to stay one step ahead of the soldiers. Apparently, Cap was right about Gunner being their go-to man for tracking, but over the past two days, I have noticed headlights in the distance and know that they are still gaining. When they hunt me down this time I won’t be able to outrun them.
My only option is to hide after I bag the deer.
Just this morning, I returned to the woods, skirting along a deserted road until I came to an overpass that led directly to Interstate 24 and split off toward Clarksville, Tennessee. The southern road is the one that I will need to reach Nashville, but I have a long way to go and far too little supplies to keep me on my feet.
