by Tom Calen
“What you said earlier about having a lot to talk about with Paul,” he began as he had rehearsed for the past hour. When the thought first moved into his mind, he had dismissed it as impossible folly. But the idea had left its seed and quickly claimed his attention. “So much has happened since… well since the outbreak. None of us are who we once were. We’ve all done things, had to do things, that would have sent us running years ago. Maybe who we were before isn’t as important as what we’ve become.”
“What are you saying, Mike?” she asked.
“I’m saying that when you talk to Paul… I’d understand if you decided not to tell him about your work with the project. I don’t think he’d react badly if he knew, not like me at least. He’s a better man than me. But you both have been through so much, and well, I’m just saying I’d understand.”
Even in the dim white light of the half moon and the unsteady streams of headlights, he could see the pools of tears that swelled in her eyes. Softly, she spoke, “Thank you, Mike.”
“I know Erik won’t say anything, and I doubt Derrick will either. Nothing you have done in the past can outweigh how much you’ve done since,” he told her with unfeigned sincerity.
“Thank you, Mike,” she repeated. “But, I intend to tell him. I have to tell him. I love him, and we’re going to have a baby, and he deserves to know all of me. Not just the parts he’ll easily accept. It means a lot to have your forgiveness—if that is, in fact, what I have?”
Pausing, searching his thoughts, his emotions, and finding no argument, he replied. “You do.”
More may have been said, though he had shared what he had intended, but a voice from one of the lead cars shouted. “They’re coming to bring us in.”
He fixed his eyes toward the camp’s lights, closer now than he had expected. Twin beams of white broke off from the encampment and made a steady approach along the road. As the vehicle neared, he felt Lisa’s hand grasp his own in a grip that revealed her anxiety.
Chapter Seventeen
“It doesn’t necessarily mean Tils,” Matt offered weakly, after a long moment passed as the pair stared at the bloody limb. If he meant the comment sincerely, his voice betrayed his true belief.
“True,” Michelle replied. “It could have just fallen off while someone was walking.” She knew all too well the signs of an infected attack.
“I meant it could be from someone that Duncan’s men killed.”
“Maybe.” Michelle eased another handgun from its holster. “Duncan’s office is on the fourth floor. We need to make our way to the main hall.”
With Matt guarding their rear, Michelle led them through several side corridors. Many of the rooms they passed stood open to reveal chaotic messes of upturned furniture and strewn papers. Evidence of violence streaked red along the walls and floor. Unlike past trespasses through Til feeding grounds, she saw no remnants of feasting. Beyond the severed leg spotted earlier, she found no other human parts. Wounding to infect, not kill. Just like Tumi said. The dark thought knotted her nerves.
Save for their own soft footsteps, no other sounds disturbed the eerie stillness. “We’re almost to the main hall,” she whispered, more to hearten herself than to inform the man behind her. As the narrow passage ended and opened itself into the vast central room, Michelle stopped abruptly.
The towering statue, La Estatua de la República, which served as the focus of the main hall, had once been a beacon of strength and inspiration for Michelle. With each passing, at the start and end of each work day, she had stood before its base and found proud calm in its Athena-inspired features. Now it resembled the goddess of Hell.
Draped around the statue’s base and extending in a vast, uneven circle, lounged dozens of the infected. Their bodies, some clothed in tatters while others wore only victims’ blood, splayed immodestly in orgiastic relief. Limbs and bodies intertwined with each other in bestial sleep. Others huddled together around a lifeless form, tearing and shredding flesh and muscle with teeth and hands. Several pairs grunted and panted in the throes of violent mating. Michelle knew of no artist in time’s history, no painting or film, that ever depicted a scene of more deprived damnation. Her vision swallowed all these burning images, yet her gaze was drawn immediately to the statue’s feet.
Seated in victory as a throne-less king, a well-muscled Til reclined with casual ease as he oversaw the sycophants beneath him. His face, unmarred by battle, sneered with superior dominance. It was a face that had visited her dreams often in the last weeks. This Tilian king had once stared at her with cold emptiness from behind a glass cell wall.
Matt pressed behind her, his breath hot against her neck. Feeling his warmth and presence, Michelle was drawn out of the hypnotic scene. She glanced to the stairwell at the far wall. The vast chamber would allow no cloaked movement towards the stairs. Searching her mind for other options, she felt Matt draw his breath in a quick gasp.
She looked back to Death’s dais to find the emotionless stare of the Til had once again fallen on her. The creature made no discernible movements, save for the narrowing of his eyes. Pushing her weight back, she felt Matt retreat a slow step. Seeing its quarry attempt escape, the Til roared an unintelligible command. The dozens surrounding him, previously preoccupied in garish works, sprung to their feet.
“Run!” Michelle screamed. In one swift motion, she and Matt turned and retreated down the hall from which they had come. Heartbeats later, Tils crashed against walls as they hunted in pursuit. Swiveling, she raised her weapons and expelled five un-aimed rounds. None of the attackers fell, nor did they fall back. Their frenzy was too strong.
Matt grabbed her roughly and pulled her into a branching corridor. A longer series of doors lined the walls, all matching in nondescript similarity. Bewilderment and disorientation brought her to a stop, but he dragged her forward. “Come on,” he urged her. At the fifth door, she pulled free from his grasp.
“Wait!” Discovering the door locked, Michelle directed a bullet into the mechanism. Matt finished the task by kicking the door open. The room beyond was a large office, furnished with a massive oak desk, endless built-in bookshelves filled with books, and twin double doors on the right wall. With a quick offering of thanks to her memory’s service, she turned the handles of the doors.
The pair entered a circular room, two stories high with a spidery chandelier anchored in the ceiling, and began to climb a short flight of marble steps to the second floor. At the landing, four highly polished, dark wooden doors led them into a chamber which, even in the chaos, awed the senses.
The gilded ceiling, layered and designed in gold and green, with dark flairs at their peaks, curved in a half-moon arc. Brilliant columns of bleached-bone marble stood sentry from the second floor balcony to the ornate ceiling. Below, on the chamber’s main floor, semi-circle rows of red leather and cherry wood seats faced the one flat wall in the vast room. The gold and green of the ceiling continued on the wall, framing a rectangle of pale blonde and detailed marble-carved relief. Once used to house the old government’s Senate, Michelle had spent several long hours listening to orations from the Councilors of New Cuba.
Hearing the hungry growls behind them, Matt pushed the doors shut. In a concerted effort, the two upended heavy marble pedestals that supported bronze busts of figures unknown. Crashing loudly to the floor, small pieces of marble cracking from the corners, the pedestals pressed against the doors.
“Follow me,” Michelle directed. Running across the second floor balcony, the grating whine of stressed wood echoed through the chamber. Not yet halfway around the arc, she heard the doors finally surrender in a loud crash. Maddened Tils poured through the splintered opening. A second front, this coming from the far end of the balcony, likewise forced their way in the Senate room. Opposing waves raced toward her and Matt, stranded as they were mid-way along the balcony.
“We have to jump!” Matt shouted above the sickening voices approaching. Michelle leaned out over the rail. The distance se
emed cavernous and there would be little cushion offered by the marble floor below. “Hurry!”
Holstering her weapons, while Matt employed his to slow the enemy advance, Michelle swung herself over the rail. A moment’s hesitation held her frozen before she battled down her instincts and released her grip. Hitting the smooth floor with a jolt that rang through her toe to top, she managed to avoid serious injury in the descent. Seeing her below, Tils began throwing themselves down after her. Regaining her feet, Michelle once again gripped gun handles and fired left and right across the lower level.
“Matt!”
“I’m coming,” he shouted back to her. A blur of clothing crashed next to her as he dropped down. Pulling him up with her left hand, Michelle helped him to his feet and the two mounted the backs of seats and tops of desks and crossed the depth of the room. Tils continued to rain down, though in their blind desire, failed to navigate the plunge as well as their prey. Several howled in pain as legs and arms shattered on impact. The majority immediately resumed the chase, many with jagged edges of bones exposed through torn skin.
Leaping to the next desk row, a Tilian hand flew out and managed to get a loose grip on her foot. While not enough to maintain a hold, the act disrupted her movements, and following a misplaced step, Michelle crashed down upon the seats. With little space to maneuver in the narrow alley between desk and seat, she rolled herself upright in time to drive a bullet through her attacker’s skull. The dead woman’s weight slammed onto her, stealing the breath from her lungs. Matt called out to her, but she could not answer as she struggled to push the body off. A burst of adrenaline strengthened her arms and a grunt of exertion passed her lips as she fought herself free from the crush.
She kept down, army-crawling her way to the end of the row. As the confines of the narrow gap broadened into the floor’s center aisle, she was once again able to return to her feet. In the fall she had lost one of her weapons, but its absence was soon negated as she drew another from its hiding place. Matt was still atop the desks, firing into the convulsing melee that sought to devour him.
For a brief moment his eyes found her and he shouted, “GO!” Michelle’s brief disappearance from sight had forced the Tils to focus their mounting rage toward him. If she ran, she knew she had a clear shot at the doors. Again, he shouted for her to move.“Find the ARCs!” After the words left his mouth, a Til noticed her return to the fight. Before it sounded its cry, she raced towards the doors off the left wing of the chamber.
Safely on the other side of the thick oak, she could hear the continued gunshots and incoherent utterings. Knowing the press of the Tils would eventually dislodge the door from its hinges, Michelle forced herself into action. She could not allow the thought of Matt’s inevitable fate to enter her mind. The pain of yet another loss would cripple, and the ARCs still needed to be found. And Duncan—if he yet lived—was owed a reckoning.
* * *
Capitalizing on the time Matt had won her, she cut a direct route to a side stairwell she recalled seeing on this side of the building. Serving mostly for emergencies, the stairway was the blank gray concrete with gray metal rails that could have belonged to any official building. Taking a moment to examine her injuries, minor cuts and scrapes, Michelle shrugged out of the pack on her back and retrieved a small roll of duct tape. She applied small patches to her wounds; not the most delicate of remedies, but it would keep her safe from accidental exposure to Til blood.
They had gained and quickly lost a floor in a flash of time, and the endeavor had been costly. Feeling the weakness of mourning, Michelle drove the thoughts towards Duncan. Letting hate consume her sorrow as fuel, she slipped her arms through the pack’s straps, reloaded her weapons and began to climb the steps before her.
Bypassing the second and third floors, she pressed her ear against the entrance to the fourth story. The lack of sound meant little, though. The metal door was solid and would conceivably mask any activity. Her breath held, she holstered one gun and slipped her hand around the cool steel door handle. Hoping to maintain silence, her thumb applied fractionally increasing pressure until the latch finally descended. Fortune smiled and she found the door unlocked. Tugging gently, the door eased along its hinges and slowly allowed an ever expanding bar of fluorescent light into the dim stairwell. Using her foot to wedge the door open, Michelle returned the second weapon to her hand.
The space beyond the doorway was yet another long corridor, though the full illumination of it immediately caught her notice. So the power’s still on up here, she commented silently. The discovery added to her hope that Duncan was still alive. Moving with cautious determination, she took several steps towards her destination.
In the earlier chaos, Michelle and Matt’s movements had been forced towards the wrong end of the National Council building. Duncan’s office lay nearly at the opposite side from where she stood. Two turns, one left, the other right, brought her to a wider corridor that ran the full length of the immense structure. Barely a step and a half later, a voice barked behind her.
“Hey! Don’t move!”
Dammit! She cursed herself for not keeping a better watch behind. Turning to the voice, Michelle found a soldier clad in desert camouflage, and holding a standard-issue assault rifle, its sights clearly trained on her.
“Drop the weapons!” he commanded with clipped words.
Letting them fall from her hands without hesitation, Michelle launched into what she hoped would be a life-saving rant. “Oh, thank God! Please, I think they’re following me! My mother works here. I haven’t seen her since those things came back. I don’t know if she’s alive. Her name is Rita Johnson.”
She continued the lie, clutching her chest in desperation as she tried to force tears from her mask of worry and relief. Michelle knew her words had to draw the man’s eyes away from the arsenal strapped to her body. With each word she advanced slowly towards the soldier, studying his eyes for belief. “Please, do you know her? Rita Johnson. Those things chased me. But I had to find my mother.” Just a few more steps. Just a few more…
Barely a pace away, and seeing a momentary slackening in his posture, Michelle crossed her left foot with her right. Giving herself fully to the feigned unbalance, her left arm flew out to clasp the soldier’s effort to break her fall. Her right hand slipped low to her calf and the hunting knife strapped to it. With one quick motion, the knife left its sheath as she swung the blade up and across, slicing into the exposed throat of the soldier.
In shock, the man stared with confusion at the pulsating gushes of red that splashed to the floor. Knees already bent in his effort to catch her, the soldier fell to a kneel as his hand went to the wound. His eyes bored into her as the realization of her actions and their mortal consequence, stole over him. Slumping forward, the soldier twitched once, and then no more.
Sickened by her own savagery, Michelle fought the urge to empty her stomach. She knew wisdom directed her to retrieve the assault rifle, but the thought of untangling it from the corpse dissuaded her. Instead she turned away, wiped the bloodied knife on her jeans with a shaking hand, picked up her own firearms from the floor, and continued towards Duncan.
Each step brought recriminating and rationalizing thoughts. He might have helped me. If he knew why I was here, he might have. No, no he was Duncan’s man. I don’t know that. I never gave him a chance. What chance did Andrew have? My family? Matt?
Silencing the errant thoughts of her warring soul, Michelle stalked down the hall with purpose and awareness. She needed to believe that Duncan lived, and that soldier was indeed part of his protection. Operating under that assumption, she understood there was but one path to reach the man who wore the blood of the world upon his hands.
Slipping into a rhythmic jog, she imagined herself a tigress trampling across the earth, each stride pulling her further along the hunt. The marble floor was the grass of dusty plains, the ceiling the blue openness of sky, and the men now standing before her were merely obstacles on her w
ay to the prize. Wordlessly, and pausing little, her arms shifted from one target to the next. From column to column, the tigress slinked; her metals claws ripping through the air. Her aim had never been as true as it was in now. Perhaps all that had gone before had been to train her for this moment. The girl who had lost everything would deliver death to the man who had taken it.
Finding herself in the large atrium outside Duncan’s door, Michelle was forced to cover as a dozen armed men, guarding the Devil’s gate, opened fire. Quickly pulling ammo from her pack, she was amused by the steadiness of her breathing as she reloaded her weapons.
“Cease fire!” a voice bellowed. “He wants her alive!”
Michelle’s mind barely received the words when a deafening boom, and a flash which seemed from the sun itself, robbed her of sense and consciousness.
Chapter Eighteen
The Jeep quickly the space that separated the Horde camp and the returning caravan. In the passing minutes, Paul felt his anger rise dramatically. He had spent the day planning a defensive strategy that even with complete success would still likely result in a victory for the Tils. The inspiration for him, and the others of the camp, had been the knowledge that their actions, however inescapably futile, were going to spare the lives of those that had headed south. The return of the caravan risked unnerving even the most stalwart.
As the vehicle pulled alongside the lead car, Paul stepped from the passenger seat, his guards shadowing him, before the vehicle came to a complete rest. “Where’s Derrick?” he shouted icily.
“He’s walking up, sir,” one of the men answered.
Paul fought the urge to storm forward and seek the man out. Instead, he crossed his arms and waited in the blinding cross beams of headlights.
Though he could not yet discern features, Paul assumed the man approaching on foot was the source of his frustration due to the throng that trailed behind him.
