The List

by Christopher Coleman

  “That was on purpose!” she screamed. “The next one is in your fucking eye socket!”

  The soldier nodded and put up his hands.

  “Get up! Lay your weapon on the table and move there!” She flicked the barrel of the rifle toward the front of the shelter.

  The second soldier had no play to make on Danielle, since in his hands he held a long metal pole with a ring that had been clasped around the neck of a crab. The beast had it eyes directed forward, toward Dominic, and it appeared at the moment to be relatively stable.

  “You let go of that pole and I swear to god I’ll make you watch that thing eat you from the inside out.”

  The soldier shook his head slowly. “I’m not moving, ma’am.”

  With the crab and soldiers under control, Danielle brought her attention to the commanding officer.

  “Throw your weapon to me,” she instructed. “And if I have to ask again, there will only be two people alive in this shelter to comply with my orders.”

  The CO threw his hands in the air, shoulder height, showing his immediate deference, though Danielle could see the mockery in his movements.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, composed, something close to a smile on his lips. “Never argue with a woman with a gun, that’s my motto. Especially not if it’s bigger than mine.” He pulled his pistol from his holster and tossed it at Danielle’s feet.

  She looked at Dominic and saw that he had no restraints around his body or legs. “Dominic, let’s go.” She then looked at James. “You too, young man.”

  James stood first, and as he did, the CO moved like a panther and snatched the pole from his inferior officer, taking the reins of the enslaved crab and turning it toward Dominic, shoving it close, perhaps a foot or two away from his face.

  The creature began twitching furiously now, snarling in its muted, grotesque way, the proximity of a human body appearing to have awakened its ferocity, as seemed so often to be the case with the beasts.

  “You see my finger right here?” The CO nodded to his hand. “I’ve got it pressed down on this button that controls that collar around its neck. You know what that means? It means it’s a grenade now. You shoot me, and this old boy gets loose on your friend’s face. If that’s alright with you, then have at it. Otherwise, drop that goddamn rifle. And I won’t ask again either.”

  Dominic had begun to stand just before the CO had made his move, and Danielle could now see the zip ties around his wrists.

  “Sit down, Dominic,” the CO said, nothing but contempt and command in his voice now. He looked back to Danielle. “Here’s what you’re going to do, miss, you’re going to lay that rifle on the—”

  In an instant, before she could consider any of the unintended consequences of the action, Danielle aimed and fired a round, striking the yoked crab in the back of its head, just to the right of center.

  The crab went limp in an instant, its dead weight pulling the restraint down to the floor, forcing the CO to release the yoke which fell impotently to the ground. The crab collapsed at Dominic’s feet and lay there like a puddle of speckled milk, the blood from its wound seeping to the floor in a river of red.

  “Guess you didn’t think that out too well, huh?” Danielle asked.

  The officer looked at Danielle with a mixture of rage and awe, and then he shook his head, his jaws clenched. “Stupid bitch. Stupid fucking bitch! You’re the ones responsible for this. You’re the reason those things are out of the cordon now. Escaping past the fucking lab for Christ’s sake!”

  Danielle raised the rifle again and took three steps forward until the point of the gun was pressed against the officer’s head. The officer to her right, the one who’d given up the reins of the crab, made an instinctive move toward her, but he needed only a stern look and a smooth shake of Danielle’s head to back off.

  “This is your fault you piece of shit,” she said. “And before you and I part ways, you’re going to tell me the name at the top of the list.”

  The officer’s eyes were closed now, and Danielle could smell the fear rising in him. He hesitated and then shook his head, his brow crinkled. “What the fuck does that mean?” he asked quietly.

  “Just what I said. I already know about Stella Wyeth and the company she worked for. Well, I know the name anyway. D&W, right? But what I don’t know is the person at the top. The person in charge of all of this.”

  The CO scoffed. “You think I know that guy? Why would I know him?”

  “I’m not implying you go skeet shooting with him on the weekends, but my guess is you know a name.”

  “It’s some jackoff in Belgium. Shit, I don’t remember his name, but he’s the head of the parent company that owns D&W. It’s not a secret. You can get it off the fucking internet.”

  “Yeah, well my internet’s been down for a while.”

  “You’ll never get past the bridge. There’s soldiers everywhere.”

  “Really? Because from what I can tell they seem a little preoccupied at the moment.”

  “They’ve got it under control.”

  Danielle ignored him. “Also, I’m going to need your clothes. All of yours. So let’s get to stripping.”

  Without argument, the CO began to undress, and the two soldiers beside him followed his lead.

  “Just a question for you though, sergeant. Something that’s been bothering me every day that I’ve been inside.”

  Without looking at Danielle, the CO said, “It’s major.”

  “Who gives a fuck?” Danielle asked rhetorically and then got to her actual question. “I want to know how this was possible. How this is possible. I want to understand how no one has stopped this. Where are the elected officials? Where are the whistleblowers? How could all of this corruption not be exposed by now?”

  The CO stopped undressing and stared up at Danielle. He gave her a bemused smile, genuinely confused by the questions. “Whistleblowers? Stopped it? What in Satan’s hell are you talking about? Stop what? We’re the ones trying to stop it.”

  “But you were the ones who started it!”

  The CO shrugged. “It’s a lot more complicated than that, but even if that were true, which I’m not admitting it is, it doesn’t matter at this point. Nobody on the outside cares now. A few conspiracy nuts on TV maybe, but not the masses. Maybe in a decade they will, but not today. People just want their world to be safe, to keep the evil contained, so when they see tanks and jeeps and men with guns surrounding a piece of land, they know that’s what we’re trying to do.” He paused. “Y’all have made that a lot harder to do though—you and Mr. Dominic. But my men will clean up the mess you’ve made, because that’s what they do. And if they can’t clean it up, if one or two of them get past, we’ll just move some folks out and extend the cordon further. We’ll take over the state if we need to.”

  “How can you do this? Under whose authority?”

  He shrugged again. “I just follow my orders, ma’am, and my CO just follows his. That’s the way it’s always been.” He pursed his lips. “But if you’re asking how the public can go along with what’s happening here, it’s like I said, they just want to be safe. You’d be surprised how effective a leaked snippet of drone video can be. Every few weeks or so just drop a few seconds of grainy footage of a couple of these mutants running around the streets of Maripo, it tends to get everybody back in line. Better in here than loose in their cul-de-sacs.”

  “You’re the fucking monsters,” Danielle quipped, seething now, almost wishing the man would lunge at her so she could shoot him between the eyes. But he was sitting on the floor now, stripped to his underwear with his arms draped over his knees, no longer a threat. Danielle turned to the soldier on her left. “Where are the zip ties?”

  The soldier looked sheepishly to his CO for consent, but the unit leader had lost interest in his command, so the soldier moved quickly to a short foldout table containing a variety of loose items. He picked up a handful of ties and then returned to his spot.

  �
�Tie up your boss and then move on to your brother there,” Danielle ordered.

  Danielle watched as the soldier pulled the nylon cords tight around the wrists of both men, and when he was done, she said, “It’s your turn now. James, you got this?”

  James nodded and tied the remaining man’s hands quickly.

  “Michael’s waiting for me,” Danielle said, “so let’s do this and get out of here.”

  She cut the ties from Dominic’s wrists and then picked up the shorter of the two inferior soldier’s uniforms, and then Dominic and James each grabbed their bundle of clothes, silently figuring out which size was most appropriate. In a few minutes, the three companions were donned in their respective uniforms, indistinguishable from any other soldier in the camp.

  “Let’s go,” Danielle said, and the three walked to the front of the shelter.

  Danielle opened the door, but before she walked out, she looked back to the men on the ground behind her, their hands in front of their t-shirted bodies, bound at the wrists.

  “If I see any of you outside of this shelter,” she ran her eyes up and down the men, “—and you won’t be hard to miss—I’ll shoot you in the chest. And I won’t hesitate.”

  She thought of her list again as she met the eyes of the CO. And then, somewhat irrelevantly, said, “Belgium, huh?”

  Find Dominic

  1.

  Find Dominic.

  Kill Stella

  1.

  Danielle studied her list for the first time in days, and she felt a surge of pleasure at the progress she had made, thankful that she had taken the time to put her goals down on paper. That had made all the difference, she thought, paraphrasing a line from her favorite poem.

  This latest goal wasn’t her accomplishment, of course, though she figured she had played at least some part in it. And besides, it was all about results, right? Hitting your numbers. And she was a company girl, so who cared who got the sale?

  She moved the pen from Dominic’s name to the one just below it and then drew a line through her goal, feeling the sting of a tear as she made the mark.

  Kill Stella.

  That was that.

  “I’m ready.”

  Danielle was jolted back to the moment by the sound of Michael returning from a cluster of trashcans which he had used as cover while he relieved himself.

  She spun around and looked at Dominic and James, sitting up stiffly in the back seat. “You guys good?” she asked.

  Both men nodded, though it was obvious that Dominic was still shaken by his captivity, and Danielle now feared whether he would be ready for the next challenge, only minutes away.

  Danielle nodded back and smiled weakly, and then stuffed her list into the breast pocket of her uniform.

  Two more goals to go, she thought. And then she would be done.

  The first goal was an original, but the second one was a recent addition, unwritten.

  Danielle tucked her hair tightly into her cap and then turned the key to the jeep, and as the engine rumbled to life, she let loose a scream, a staccato burst of vocal energy for the battle ahead, and then sped toward the bridge and the lab on the other side.

  *Rescue Scott

  1.

  Rescuing Scott Jenkins wasn’t on Danielle’s original list—obviously, since she’d only met the man within the last week—but the instant Michael Jenkins saved her life and became her charge, it quickly became an ad hoc mission to save the boy’s father.

  She’d also decided the new goal was even worthy of its own line on her list, and she made a mental note to add it later, an addendum below the last goal.

  Danielle brought her attention back to the bridge and pulled the jeep to the edge. She shifted it to park and idled, still on the forward-base side of the river. The group had already made the decision to turn the headlights on as they drove across, figuring that keeping them off would only attract unnecessary attention on the lab side. But the commotion across the span—which had seemed to be spiraling into chaos less than twenty minutes ago—now looked to be placid by comparison, brought under control by the soldiers, just as their CO had declared.

  But the sudden quiet was wrong, almost impossible based on what Danielle had witnessed earlier, and she sensed there was still confusion spinning around the lab. In any case, they would know soon enough.

  Danielle shifted the jeep back into drive and began the trek, accelerating slowly, using this new window of disorganization to begin the crossing. She drove at a steady pace, and in less than a minute, they were across the bridge.

  From there, she followed a dirt road toward a large gravel parking lot that had been built on the east side of the lab, in the opposite direction of a group of four soldiers who were standing nervously over two dead crabs.

  That’s only two, Danielle thought. There were a whole lot more than that a few minutes ago.

  She anxiously began scanning the rest of the grounds for signs of other crabs, other groups of soldiers. But there were none.

  The prints by the cordon gate had suggested ten times as many crabs had escaped, but she quickly realized why the area was so calm. The crabs had fled, and the rest of the soldiers had followed them. They could be a mile away by now, more, dispersed into a dozen different directions, wandering down suburban side streets like rogue bands of Guinea baboons.

  Danielle shuddered at the thought but quickly forced her attention back to the mission. Crabs on the loose in society was a problem—for sure—but it wasn’t hers to deal with at the moment.

  She shut off the engine but left the keys in the ignition and then immediately looked to Michael, giving instruction that he was to stay quiet and low while the adults went inside. He was the only one not in disguise, she explained, and he was far too young to pull off the charade even if he was.

  “We tried that before and look what happened,” he complained, referencing the same instruction she had given him inside the cordon: to stay put in the pick-up truck while she ventured off to attack the barrier.

  Danielle smiled. “What happened was you saved me. Remember?”

  Michael frowned and dropped his head, knowing he’d unintentionally set Danielle up for that reply.

  “What do you think would have happened if you were with me and not in the truck? Who would have come in at the last minute and mown those bastards down like crabgrass?”

  Michael grinned and his eyes grew wide. “Crab grass?”

  Danielle exploded in laughter, not intending the play on words. When she settled, she put a hand on Michael’s face. “Just please stay here. Please?”

  Michael sighed and nodded. “Fine.”

  She gave a loving pinch of his cheek. “Good.”

  “But Danielle...”

  Danielle waited, searching the boy’s eyes.

  “Bring him back. If he is alive, if he isn’t one of them, don’t leave without him. Please.”

  Danielle felt a panging constriction in her chest, but she took a breath before it turned into physical emotion. “He is alive. I have a very good feeling about that. And if I didn’t plan to bring him back, we wouldn’t be here right now. Okay?”

  Michael nodded.

  Danielle looked to Dominic now; his eyes were distant as he stared out the side of the jeep.

  “Dominic?”

  Dominic met Danielle’s eyes, but his stare was vacant.

  “Hey!” she snapped, trying to bring him to life. “You know this place, right? You need to be the one leading this thing.”

  Dominic swallowed and nodded, but Danielle was unconvinced.

  “Listen, I know that was terrifying, Dom, what just happened back in the shelter. Trust me, I do. But we need you to be good now. I need you to be good. I need you to be the Dominic that convinced a group of scared strangers to leave Tom’s Diner all those months ago. The Dom that jumped into an icy river to save James, someone you barely knew, and then later infiltrated a military unit to save me.”

  Dominic nodded again. “I go
t it, Danielle. I’m fine.”

  Danielle could still see him wavering and she sighed. “Remember the day we left the diner in the box truck and drove you to your house? You found your wife that day, just as you had hoped, except it wasn’t your wife. You remember?”

  Dominic closed his eyes, fighting the memory. “Of course.”

  “Do you remember how close you came to it that day? And also how close you came to dying?”

  He nodded. “I remember that too.”

  “But you didn’t die. You left shaken that day, for sure, but that fear quickly turned into strength. And it was that strength that helped keep you and the rest of us alive. You led us to the bridge and found a boat to cross the river, and then you fought off those things with, may I say, stunning bravery when they attacked us from the water. It hadn’t been a day since you saw your wife cruelly changed into something...less than human...and you were amazing. And then you found Tom and James again. And a way out of the cordon. You did all that, Dominic, and that’s the guy we need now.”

  “I only made it out of my house that day because of you,” Dominic reminded. “Don’t forget that, Danielle. It was you that saved me that day, not the other way around. You’re the strong one in this group, not me.” He snickered and gave a bemused smile, not understanding how she couldn’t see the obvious truth of his words.

  “We’re both strong, Dom. That’s why we can do this. That’s why we’re going to do this.”

  Dominic shrugged, a show of conceding the point, and then said, “And there’s something else you’re forgetting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That day, in my foyer, I didn’t know about the whole contact thing. The way it can spread through cuts in the skin.” He swallowed and inhaled, holding the breath in his lungs for several seconds before exhaling. “Not that it would have mattered, I guess. I was in a different state after I saw her.” He frowned and flickered his brow. “I really just wanted to die.”

  Danielle sighed and nodded, giving his words a moment to settle. “I know you did, Dom. And yet here you are. You didn’t die that day and you didn’t die back at the shelter a few minutes ago. And that’s all we can really hold onto right now. The fact that we’re alive. What else is there?” She shrugged. “We just keep going. That’s all we can do.” She paused and then added “And since you’re the one that led us out of the cordon, we’ll call it even on who saved who.”