by Mark Lingane
While the men did an impromptu medical check, Sarge walked over to Sebastian, who was staring down at the former Charger. “Do you think this is the Peacemaker trying to test you?”
“It’s hard to know,” Sarge said. “Maybe the outlaws are part of it.”
“This infuriates me. If there weren’t more infected on the way, I’d go have a word with Mr. Peacemaker.”
“Can we go?” Chet said. He stood with the small group of young men from the bar.
Sarge looked over the sorry collection of inexperience. They weren’t good soldiers, but when you were a small town, you needed every body you could get. “No. It’s far too dangerous. You’re untrained and easy prey.”
“What if we go with Sebastian?” Chet said.
“What!” Sebastian and Sarge spluttered simultaneously.
“We’re not going that way,” Sebastian reminded them.
“You’re going part of the way,” Chet said. “We only need to get to Delta, and then we can take Route 6 onto 15 then straight up to Salt Lake. Sarge, you’re always saying this is the dangerous part and Salt Lake is safe.”
“Do you mind taking them to Delta?” Sarge said.
Sebastian looked at Memphis. She shrugged. “I guess not. It’ll be safer in a bigger group,” he replied.
51
IN THE MORNING, two trucks were loaded up with the young men, who were full of beans. And probably beer, thought Sebastian. There had been another two attacks in the night, but each had only one infected. Like pets, Sebastian thought. Sarge had quickly got the hang of swordplay, and several of the other men were training with makeshift swords as the town’s ancient metal workshop was brought back to life.
As the trucks and steambike pulled out of the small town, Sarge saluted them. Sebastian glanced back to see the men setting up new, stronger barriers at the entrance to the town.
Sebastian and Memphis were in front on the steambike, and Chet rode in the truck immediately behind them. After half an hour, Sebastian glanced back and caught a glimpse of something behind the second truck. He signaled and pulled over. The two trucks rolled to a stop behind him.
“Chet, what’s with the other trucks?” Sebastian said.
“They decided to come along. We put the word out to some of the other small towns. They liked your story. We’re going to the Peacemaker to set the record straight. He doesn’t mess with us.”
“They liked my story? But it’s all senseless violence.”
“Yeah. Totally wicked, man.”
“Did you know about this?” Sebastian said to Memphis.
She shrugged. “Enjoy it while you can.”
“Enjoy it?” He gave her a dark look.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “I find a confident leader very attractive,” she whispered.
When they got back on the bike and she wrapped her hands around his waist, he found his body tingling. He smiled, buoyed by her attention.
The convoy continued, with Sebastian continually checking over his shoulder for any more unexpected guests.
As the sun was setting, they pulled off the road. There were now three trucks and a dozen men. Sebastian had to admit it felt safer with the increased numbers.
After they had all eaten, Sebastian demonstrated several moves with his sword, much to the cheers of the assembled men, who appeared to have brought more beer than food. He told them stories about being chased by cyborgs, dragons, and sullivans, all things he had once thought of as monsters, and how he managed to defeat them single-handedly. No one quizzed him, and he lapped up the adulation. He left out the parts about how he single-handedly managed to wipe the cyborgs out to extinction by accident. And nearly blew up the planet in the same accident. His crowd enjoyed his victories and he was happy to let the cheers dominate his memories.
The men continued to drink. As the lone female, Memphis began to feel awkward, especially when she felt the eyes of some of the men gravitate to her. She stepped back into the shadows and retired to her tent, out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind.
The night settled in. The men settled down as the beer took its toll, and a quiet descended over the camp.
Sebastian awoke to shouts from the men. Memphis was next to him, curling into his body, and she also woke with a start. He gently rolled her away. He leaped up, grabbed his sword, and dashed out into the night. He struggled to get his bearings.
Shadows flashed by on the perimeter of the camp, caught only in the briefest flicker of the dying flames of the fire. The men began to panic as the sounds of hissing and clicking echoed around them. A thin green mist drifted in from the west on a slight breeze.
“Don’t breathe the gas. Cover your nose and mouth,” Sebastian shouted.
The men scrambled for rough pieces of material, anything they could wrap around their faces.
Then the infected attacked. One sprinted into the center of the camp. One young man was able to raise his blade quickly enough for the creature to run straight into it. The point of the blade exploded out the other side of the infected, but it just dragged itself along the blade, reaching for the man.
Sebastian’s blade swung around, and the creature’s eyes crossed as its head snapped free of its body.
“Did it cut you?” Sebastian demanded.
“I … I don’t think so,” the frightened man replied.
“Check. Get out of harm’s way and make sure you’re clean.”
Sebastian charged forward, intercepting another infected, slicing up through its arm and into its chest. He twisted, brought the sword around, and stabbed the blade into the head of the next one. He pushed the sword home, spearing another that was right behind it, and pinned them both to the ground.
He ducked as one flew over him. He chased it down and speared it in the back. It writhed violently, nearly twisting its own head off in an attempt to rip Sebastian apart. The creature cowered before Sebastian as he rose to his full height. He pulled his knife out of his belt and slashed down through the creature’s neck. For the first time, Sebastian saw fear in the eyes of an infected. Then it was dead. It tumbled to the ground as Sebastian pulled his sword free.
He felt a coldness rip through him. Until now, he had never seen the infected show anything other than primal desire amped up to maximum. Seeing the flash of fear was a shocking reminder that they had once been human.
“Is that all of them?” Chet asked.
“I think so.” Sebastian ripped the sword out of the dead infected and blood erupted skyward. He pulled out the outlaw medipack cloth and wiped the blood off the blade before sheathing it.
“That’s a very sharp blade you’ve got there,” Chet said.
“I sharpen it on the rays of the morning light.”
“Really?”
Sebastian smiled. “No. I think they have weakened bones. If they don’t feast often enough, the virus starts to eat the host.” He heard a noise. He spun around and stared out into the darkness. “I think there’s one left.”
“You just pounded these ones, won’t it run away?”
Sebastian shook his head. “They never give up. Stay here.”
“You’re a brave man.”
Sebastian ran between the trucks and into the desert. He slowed to a stop, then closed his eyes and listened, bringing his breathing under control. The murmuring noises of the camp floated over him, but he couldn’t detect anything else.
A voice whispered in his ear and he wheeled around. There was nothing there.
His gaze wandered deeper into the plain, making out a tall shadow. He stepped toward it. The shadow diminished. He ran toward it. The spot was empty.
Mist eddies rose and twisted around him, as the cold night battled against the warmth of the ground, dancing around him, taunting him in the darkness. There was a blur, and the mist dispersed as something charged through it. He spun around, but once again there was nothing other than the light patter of quick feet across the stony ground.
If only there was some light out h
ere, he thought, but the dark clouds hung heavy in the night sky. He circled around, using the faint glow of the campfire as a marker. Then even that vanished, leaving him stumbling over the uneven terrain. He quickly became disoriented.
Why had the firelight disappeared? Something must be blocking the light.
He lurched down into a shallow ditch. He stood deathly still in the tiny hollow. He could feel something behind him, standing in a dominant position. He wondered who could see better in the pitch dark.
Then the truck lights flashed on. Sebastian caught sight of his own and two other shadows. He dropped and rolled, ready to face both his foes. He was surprised to see only one infected, lean, desperate, and mad with depravation. The creature shook its head. It was more skull than face. Its red eyes rolled back revealing pink eyeballs glowing with thick veins.
There was a shout from the camp, followed by the shattering of glass. The truck lights went out.
Once again, Sebastian found himself in a sea of black. He had lost his night vision. His eyes strained for any light as they fought to adjust to the sudden darkness. There was a hiss to his right, and he swung wildly, but connected with nothing. He blinked, but whenever he closed his eyes, all he saw was a wall of red.
He picked out a light click at the edge of his hearing. He stepped away from the sound, putting space between him and it. He continued to step backward, away from the sound, swinging his sword wildly in the dark. He stepped onto a rock and his ankle rolled, causing him to fall on his side heavily on the ground. He heard quick and light footsteps approaching. He held his sword up in front of him. A blurred shadow sped over him, knocking the sword to one side, out of his hand. Defenseless, he rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled after it, searching manically in the dirt.
There was a hiss from behind him. He turned around slowly. He could see the outline of the creature now, its lanky arms. He scrambled backward, and the creature crouched, ready to pounce. It exhaled, and the green mist floated toward him, mixing with the moisture in the air. He slapped one hand over his mouth and held his breath while he frantically searched for his sword with the other. The creature raised its claws and leaped, baring its teeth. A glow seemed to form behind it, almost as though fingers were holding the creature back. It tripped and stumbled, crashing to the ground.
Sebastian was up on his feet. Faint light reflected off the edge of his sword. He lunged for the pommel, rolled as he clasped it, and brought it up and then down onto the sprawling infected body. He hacked off a flailing arm, which spun away and landed with thud. He cut the other arm free, then stepped back and drove the sword down through the neck into the ground beneath. He twisted it until the bones cracked and the creature lay still.
He considered how lucky he was that the moonlight had picked out his weapon. He had also noted how thick the clouds had been and there had been no break in the cloud cover.
Truck lights flared on again, shining out on what looked like a large dog, and an enormous man with the body of a bear and the head of a snake, easily the height of the trucks beside it. Sebastian screamed in rage as he ran toward the bizarre shadows. The large beast turned and took off in the opposite direction, away from the camp and into the plain. It moved slowly, but the large strides took it away and out of range before Sebastian was even halfway back to camp.
He staggered back into the camp, breathing heavily. The cold desert air cut into his lungs, making him wheeze. Chet was waiting for him.
“What was that?” Sebastian gasped.
“What was what?” Chet replied.
“The sulliva—the big monster-looking thing with the dogs.”
“I didn’t see anything like that. You sometimes get wild coyotes out here, but they don’t normally come near a camp unless they’re near death or starving.”
“Then who broke the truck lights?”
“Wasn’t that you?”
Sebastian shook his head. He speared his sword into the ground and sat down heavily.
“You look pretty shaken,” Chet said, looking pretty shaken himself.
“Yeah, it was all a little weird. Someone’s watching us, but they won’t come near.”
“Someone, not something?”
“In all honesty, I don’t know anymore. The more of them I kill, the more I become like them, and the more they seem to become like me. They’re unstoppable. You have to be so consumed by their destruction that you can’t see anything else. You kill them, you become like them.”
“Maybe we could capture one. See what makes it tick and work out its weaknesses.”
“We had a man back home who did that. In the end, we had to ask who the real monsters were.”
“But we could get some good tactical information against the creatures. What if we could train them and use them to fight back?”
“They were people once,” Sebastian said. “Somewhere inside all that hunger, desire and rage they still are those people, even if they do seem like animals. Just like your coyotes.”
While Chet guzzled down yet another beer, and talked aimlessly about the trucks, Sebastian let his mind unwind, gently, looking for a reading. But there was nothing, just the occasional slight harmonic he picked up. With the memory of the gentle moonlight, and what couldn’t possibly have been but looked exactly like fingers stopping the creature and saving him, the harmonic no longer felt like a warning. It now felt like a message.
52
WITHIN SEVERAL DAYS, the convoy had grown to a dozen trucks and fifty men. The men themselves were different. No longer were they fresh-faced youngsters looking for adventure, but thuggish men looking for trouble. Sebastian felt uneasy—an over-aggressive eagerness seemed to have crept in— but they were soon slapping him on the back and thanking him for the charge he was leading. And, all the while, Memphis beamed at him, close by his side.
Some of the early joiners, on their first major trip away from their hometown, had been unable to communicate with people in their hometowns. They became pensive and highly strung, and skirmishes broke out occasionally. Sebastian began to feel stretched, as he often had to step in to calm the situation.
“I’m not sure if I should tell them the infected have probably wiped out their homes,” Sebastian said to Memphis. “Unless they’re tracking us deliberately rather than just killing randomly. But the infected are never smart enough for anything organized.”
“Maybe you should keep that one to yourself,” she said.
“We can’t be being chased, so that means they’re swarming over like a green wave. How impenetrable is this Great Wall?”
“That one you should have definitely kept to yourself. Come on, you’ve got all these people behind you. They believe in you. You know we should go all the way. They need you. Without you as a leader, they’ll lose their will. Only you can do it.”
“Me? Do you think so?”
“Without a doubt. I’ve been watching you. They look up to you with real admiration. They all want to be your friend. All of them.”
“Really?” He grinned shyly.
“Yeah. You know they do. They all love the stories you tell around the campfire.”
“They are pretty good, aren’t they?”
“Look, we get to Delta tomorrow. See how you feel, but it might be the right thing to do to lead them to victory. Without you, they’d fail.”
“You think they all like me?”
“Definitely. Everyone wants to be Sebastian’s friend.”
“I’ve never had that before. Even so, at Delta I think we should go our own way.”
The convoy rolled into Delta, Utah mid-morning. The small trading town had little to offer beyond utilitarian services. Perpetual brittle winds roared down from the north, killing most of the plants that dared to grow above ankle height. The buildings looked new, but brutal in their styling—low and square to endure the elements.
The locals gave the travelers dark and suspicious glances as they made their way through. Several of the men peeled off and we
nt to the local hotel to top up their daily requirement.
Sebastian noticed strange-looking men with deformed ears and oversized heads sitting by the road. “What happened here?” he asked a local.
“Radiation. Plains towns like this got the worst of it. It’s been a tough road back for us and others like us.”
A group of men walked out and formed a barrier across the main road. One man stepped forward. He wore a long, heavy brown coat, and dark sunglasses that covered most of his face. “You look like trouble,” he said to Sebastian.
Sebastian thought for a moment. What would Nikola say at a time like this? “We look for no trouble,” he replied. He tried to fill his voice with the same kind of heft as his old commander.
“You sound strange. Are you an outsider?”
Sebastian coughed uncertainly. “I am. But these men travelling with us are your neighbors. They seek council with the Peacemaker and ask for his assistance.”
“I don’t recognize any neighbors, only mercenaries looking for a chance to flex their muscles. You’d better not be stirring up trouble.”
“Trouble is the one thing we want to avoid. We only want to talk.”
“What kind of council do you want with the Peacemaker?”
“We’re looking for medical supplies, and clarification over treaty alignment,” Sebastian said.
“Those are big words from a young man, and they seem at odds with the party you have.”
“What’s your standing with the Peacemaker?”
“He’s a powerful and close neighbor. I’m sure you can work it out,” the spokesman replied.
“He’s pretty indifferent to people who live further away.”
“That’s not our concern.”
“Will it be your concern when the invaders come?” Sebastian said.
The men looked at each other.
“What invaders?” the spokesman said. “You look like invaders.”
“There’s a sickness in the south, deadly and incurable. People are going to bring it here, and when they do, you’ll need to be prepared.”
