by Joshua Guess
Kell twisted his hips and drove his right knee into its torso, knocking it sideways. The flailing claws found purchase on his jacket for a brief moment, but Kell was holding on for dear life. The tug was there and gone again, leaving him safe.
More zombies appeared at the window, and Kell sighed. This was going to be a long evening.
“You okay up there?”
Kell looked down to find one of his guards, a stocky woman named Evelyn, looking up at him. She stood in the middle of the short concrete drive leading to the garage doors below him, zombies crippled by the fall slowly crawling toward her. If Evelyn was at all concerned by this, she didn’t show it.
“I’m not hurt,” Kell said. “But I am kind of stuck. No weapons and a few are left inside the building.”
She raised an eyebrow. “I want to hear this story once you’re safe. Hang tight. I’ll take care of these guys down here then clear the building. Shouldn’t be long.”
The few zombies that hadn’t climbed through the broken window could be heard bumping against things inside the office. Despite her words, it would take time to properly clear the place. Kell was suddenly very glad he’d gone to the bathroom when he had the chance.
By the time she worked her way to the second floor, Kell was super bored. A body flew through the window without touching the frame, a feat made more impressive by the fact that a few seconds later, Kell heard her kill several more zombies. Evelyn wasn’t picked for this trip for nothing.
“Please tell me you have a canteen,” Kell said when she helped him back inside. “And something I can use to fight with. I left all my gear inside the church.”
Evelyn said nothing, only favored him with a sardonic smile before passing him water and a heavy baton. Together they walked back toward the church. Kell stayed silent the whole way.
It was an interesting silence. Such a simple thing, the absence of speech, but his was formed from an alloy of reasons. He was in pain, for one, his shortened leg now screaming at him for the abuse he’d put it through. Watching their surroundings so as not to be taken by surprise occupied much of his attention. The largest portion by far was simply that if Kell talked, conversation would turn to the people left behind at the church. And if it went there, he would ask about Emily. As long as he didn’t, she existed in a quantum state where she had even odds of being fine.
It was dumb and he knew it, but human beings have a remarkable ability to understand the logic of a thing without acting in accordance with that logic.
And when they arrived at the church, his heart pounded in his chest. Where was she? The roof was empty, its edge outlined in the dying light. Piles of zombies littered the street, guards still walking among them making sure they were all the way dead.
“Where is she?” Kell asked, his voice as steady as he could make it. One of the nearby guards looked up from his work, a smile on his face, and pointed down the road.
Down that dusty stretch of asphalt, Kell could see a fire. A vehicle of some kind was ablaze, and through the hazy evening and blowing smoke he could make out two struggling figures. “Evelyn, you’re with me. Someone give me a knife.”
Three people rushed forward to comply, and Kell took off at a jog. It would have been nice and a little poetic to say that in his worry he pushed aside all thought of pain and fatigue, but it wasn’t true. Lightning shot through the nerves of his bad leg with every step, slowing him. Fear and worry drove him forward regardless, a desperate need to be there for Emily if she needed him.
Ten yards from the burning vehicle, Kell knew that wasn’t the case.
Emily had pulled someone free of the burning mass of steel, dragging the limp form behind her as she walked toward Kell. Her red hair was pulled free of her ponytail in wisps and chunks, her face streaked with soot and dirt. Her expression was cold, however, the face Kell knew meant she had killing on her mind.
It faltered when she saw him, eyes widening and a smile curving her lips. “You’re okay!”
“Eh,” Kell said. “I’ve had better days. You look like you’ve had an interesting day.”
She shrugged with one shoulder, the arm not currently pulling an unconscious man along by the back of his coat. “Didn’t take long to thin the herd, so I grabbed the rifle and put a few more rounds into these fuckers. Luckily, one of them survived.”
Kell glanced down at the man she was hauling along. “Doesn’t look like he’ll be that way for much longer.”
Emily put her free hand up and rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. “World’s smallest violin. He wants to live, he’d better answer questions. Come on; let’s get him to the church.”
Kell helped her pull the man along, and something struck him.
They had been ambushed. He had to run, break into a building, hide and even fight. The totality of those experiences would, in the world before, have been something he talked about for the rest of his life. One of those memories you had to dissect with a therapist, not that such things didn’t still do their damage.
But she hadn’t asked about it. Not because Emily didn’t care, but because it wasn’t important. Not really. Shit like this just didn’t stand out in terms of severity. The rule of thumb seemed to be that if you walked away from it, you could probably deal with it. A grown-up version of a parent telling their child that if there wasn’t blood, they couldn’t be hurt that badly.
The kicker: he didn’t even try to talk about it. Felt no need. Instead he just grabbed on and began pulling their prisoner, a man who might live or might die, and helped share the burden of his weight. Because that was just the kind of world they lived in. Not without mercy or consideration for other people, just higher tolerances for when they were needed.
“Leg bothering you?” Emily asked after forty or so badly limping feet. “I can manage him. You don’t need to help.”
“It’s fine,” Kell assured her. Then, aware that Emily was no fool and had an excellent bullshit detector, he amended the words. “Not fine, but not in agony or anything. It hurts a lot, but once I get off it I should be okay. The faster we get back, the sooner I can lie down.”
She nodded. As with all couples who spent a lot of time with one another and who actually cared, they each knew the body language of the other. Where an outside observer might see a simple inclination of the head, Kell knew this nod had a particular meaning based on context. It said that she was happy to let him knock out as soon as he was able, that it would let her stop worrying about him. He knew she didn’t mind that worry any more than he resented caring for her, but it would have been stupid to pretend it wasn’t work to do so. Of course it was; that level of care would be worthless if it were easy.
The simple gesture also clearly told him that she had other work to do. A job she didn’t look forward to except perhaps for a small, dark corner of her that enjoyed taking the pound of flesh.
Kell tried not to think about the man attached to the hand he pulled on. Live or die, it would be up to him. Emily was many things, but dishonorable wasn’t among them. If the prisoner helped, she’d try to help him live. If not, well, the world was full of dead people. One more wouldn’t tip any scales.
Emily
Though she had never been religious in any sense of the word, Emily still felt uncomfortable interrogating a man in what had once been a preacher’s office. Then she considered the state of the world and decided that if there was a heavenly power out there and it let this happen, it probably also wouldn’t mind what she was doing now.
His injuries were bad, but not immediately life-threatening. Fresh burns, probably second degree, covered most of a shoulder, crawling up his neck a little and down his arm. He had a bullet wound in the other shoulder courtesy of Emily’s rifle, and his face was crisscrossed with light cuts from shattered glass.
He was awake, and not at all happy about it.
“I’m not going to torture you,” Emily said, leaning against the desk with her arms crossed over her breasts.
The prison
er looked up at her blearily. “I’m tied to a chair and hurt. Not taking your word for it.”
“I don’t need to,” Emily explained. “Torture isn’t really effective. Enough pain and you’ll just tell me what you think I want to hear. I know, I know, I should be saying that it’s inhumane and that we as a species should be better than that. Those should be my reasons. They’re not. Sorry. I don’t give two shits how much you suffer. I don’t care that you’re in pain right now. Whether you live or die is solely based on you answering me honestly.”
The prisoner pulled on his restraints. Not hard, but just enough to gauge their tightness and durability. Emily wasn’t new at this; he was going nowhere. She saw him reach the same conclusion, deflating as he realized it. “Okay. Fire away, I guess.”
“What’s your name?”
The prisoner blinked. “Really?”
Emily nodded. “Really. You’re a murderous piece of shit as far as I’m concerned, but I’d get tired calling you that.”
“Jack,” he said. “My name is Jack.”
“Good,” she responded. “Now, Jack, please explain to me how you were able to train those zombies to hold off an attack on command.”
Whatever he’d been expecting, this wasn’t it. He blinked in surprise. “Uh, sure. Well, a few months back, our leader Dave—the guy who was driving our jeep—he sees a bunch of those smart zombies setting a trap. Ambush kinda thing. He figures if they’re smart enough to do that, patient enough to wait, that we can maybe train ’em. So we do some hunting and bait them with...uh, deer.”
“People,” Emily said, the lie so obvious he might as well have shouted it. “You killed people and fed them to zombies.”
“Y-yeah,” Jack admitted.
“Go on.”
“Took us a while to get it right,” Jack continued, something like guilt creeping onto his face. “Eventually they seemed to get it through their heads that obeying would get them fed. We had to kill a few that wouldn’t fall in line. Lots of bumps in the road along the way, but it worked out.”
Emily looked at him with passionless, utterly dead eyes. “So no one told you to do this? No one aimed you at this place?”
She watched his body language as he took in the words, her own natural ability to read people helped along by some of the things Mason taught her to look for. There was no hesitance at all. A trained agent will always be ready to hear nearly anything in a situation like this. They won’t react for a brief time, working out a response. Jack flinched in confusion at once, clearly baffled. His facial features clinched into a purely negative reaction. Instinctive. Real.
“What?” he said. “Lady, we’re what you people call marauders. Yeah, we killed people, but not because anyone told us to. We staked out this place after a few weeks of noticing people coming back and forth here. Figured it was some kind of pit stop. Seemed likely a group would come in at some point, so we used this little burg as a base and always had someone watching it while the rest of us were out.”
Emily was sure he was telling the truth, which was why she paused and mentally reviewed every piece of information she had. His reactions were only the last step in the process. She’d checked the burned-out vehicle, searched Jack’s pockets and gear for any sign that he was actually a citizen of New America or a Rebound agent. Nothing said he was anything but what he appeared to be.
Either he was legit, or more talented at hiding his intentions than she was at sniffing them out.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I think you’re telling the truth. I’m not going to kill you.”
Relief washed over his face, but Emily raised a finger.
“I should kill you,” she said with emphasis. “I really should. You’ve been feeding people to zombies, killing them. Probably worse when you came across women. You tried to kill us. But here’s the difference between you and me.”
She leaned down, putting her face within inches of his. She should have been afraid. A cornered animal will strike out when it has no other option. But the fear radiating from Jack was overpowering. She refused to be afraid of this thing.
“I went through the same pile of shit you did,” Emily said. “All my people did. And yeah, we’ve done some fucked up things that make us sleep badly from time to time. But I actually have some shred of human decency and honor left, which means I’ll stick to my word.”
She straightened, the fire in her eyes dying. “But that doesn’t mean you’re getting away easy. I don’t want you out there hurting anyone else any time soon.”
It took them two days to be ready enough to leave. There were a few injuries that needed tending, and since they weren’t on a tight schedule Emily felt some time for general recovery was called for. Jack remained tied up for most of that time; only even halfway free to move for bathroom breaks and meals. He ate very little, because no one in the group was much inclined to feed him.
When the moment to leave finally came and all the trucks were ready, Emily led Jack out into the street. It was just the two of them. Him with ropes binding his wrists and ankles, with a long tether strung between them.
Jack eyed her warily, waiting for the hammer to drop. Emily understood it; despite the fact that he hadn’t been questioned in more than a full day, and that it did her no good to keep up any kind of ruse, he suspected he was about to die.
She was a woman of her word. Emily gestured toward the empty town. “Go on.”
Jack kept his wary eyes on her. “Not gonna untie me?”
“No,” Emily said.
When he finally turned to walk away, Emily pulled the .22 revolver from her pocket and shot him in the right leg.
Jack fell to the pavement screaming. “What the fuck, you bitch? You fucking shot me!”
“Promised I wouldn’t kill you,” Emily said, pocketing the gun. “Never said I wouldn’t shoot you. I doubt you guys managed to clear out all the zombies from the area. That gunshot probably attracted some attention. Better start looking for a place to hunker down.”
She turned her back on him and climbed in her truck, never even glancing at the writhing figure on the ground as she passed it by.
“Were you planning on doing that from the beginning?” Kell asked from his seat behind her.
Emily shrugged. “Wasn’t going to let him just walk. He has a chance this way.”
“Not much of one,” Kell said, sounding disturbed.
Emily turned in her seat, scowling at him. “More than he gave any of his victims, Kell. More than he gave us.”
She wanted him to leave it alone. Wanted it very badly.
“It would have been kinder just to kill him,” Kell said, and they were exactly the wrong words to come out of his mouth.
She turned all the way around, knees resting on the seat so she could hold his gaze. “You’re goddamn right it would have been. He didn’t deserve kind. I only let him live because once I start promising enemies mercy just to get my way; I’ll already be turning into them. That fucker out there would have killed every one of us for our supplies. I’m willing to bet anything you’d like me to put on the table that he’d have raped every woman here without a moment of hesitation. He might live, and if he does then every terrible choice he makes from here on out is on me.”
She paused, trying to take a calming breath. But the calm wouldn’t come. “If I hadn’t needed information, I would have killed him right off the bat. In cold blood, if you want to look at it that way. I can see the judgment in your eyes. Before you think about opening your mouth and saying something both of us will regret, let’s keep in mind what you have to do to rabid dogs, Kell. That man out there and everyone like him are animals. Rabid fucking animals. They’ll keep on until someone stops them, and you damn well know it.”
She stood up abruptly, done with the conversation. Done with the possibility of the conversation. There was no good way for it to continue. Instead of risking it, she grabbed the hatch in the center of the roof and tripped the lock, pulling herself up and closed it
behind her.
It was so fucking easy for him. Kell could slip between merciless killer and concerned citizen of the world like they were shirts. The kicker was that she knew his concern wasn’t for Jack. He wasn’t chiding her with what her actions would do to him. No. He was worried about what it would do to her.
He didn’t want her to grow any more cold or hard than absolutely necessary. Over the months learning to run their intelligence network, Emily had been forced to widen her vision. She understood better than Kell ever could the dangers inherent in seeing things in black and white. The pressure of her work, the decisions she had to make, the vast quantities of information she had to analyze and put into context was staggering.
It made her see things differently.
She did it so people like him could sleep at night. Emily made decisions that would haunt even the most dedicated and brutal survivor.
How would Kell react if he knew what she’d done to three of their planted agents in New America six weeks earlier? That their request to leave was denied, that they’d given in to their fear and worry. They had become liabilities to the mission. Dangerous loose ends.
What did you do when volunteers for a mission put every other person who had volunteered at risk? When they threatened the entire thing?
Emily sat on top of the truck and shivered.
She knew enough to understand that as long as these decisions haunted her, she was still looking at things from something approaching normal. They stretched her boundaries, pushed her limits, but Emily hadn’t yet fallen to whatever dark side might lay before her.
Things only had to hold together for a little while longer. The work her agents risked everything for was almost done. The rest would be up to her.
And Mason. Kell, too, though his part would be easier than any other aspect. Emily knew how much their plan had changed, the degree to which it relied upon shifting circumstances and new information. There was no masterful strategy that would halt Rebound and their new nation-state. Only small things cobbled together in a desperate attempt to prevent the war machines from rolling.
