by Brown, TW
“You have ten minutes. If I think you are bullshitting me, all your friends die. That includes the ones just outside.”
“You knew?” Catie asked, only partially astonished.
“We brought you here. And if you think this is my actual compound, then maybe you aren’t as clever as I thought you to be. This is simply one of our observation posts. We keep it manned so that we can keep tabs on Montague Village and two other nearby settlements.”
Catie had to clench her teeth to keep her mouth from dropping open. Not only had she basically been led here, but if this man was not bluffing—and at this very moment, she had no reason to believe that he was—then this was not even his actual camp.
Catie explained to Elliot her plan. She talked quick and kept worrying when it did not seem like the man was going to ask her any questions. At last she finished. Elliot sat back, his fingers steepled under his chin as he thought.
“Terry!” he called. A man stuck his head inside the tent.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Execute the prisoners.”
“What?” Catie yelped.
“Just kidding.” Elliot shot a wink at Catie. “Give them the injection. Then, go out and bring in the rest of the intruders. Take them to the cells.”
“Injection?” Catie asked.
“We have a serum that we have refined over the years.” Elliot actually laughed like he was truly amused. “Hard to believe that we just used actual zombie blood in the early days. Hell, that crap has more contamination and infectious crap than you can believe. It probably resulted in a few people that might have been immune actually getting sick enough and dying. And of course we already know that even if you are immune, if you have been infected, you will turn when you die no matter what.”
“Wait,” Catie gasped, holding her hands up. “Are you saying that you inject people with something that turns them or proves they are immune?”
“How else will we be certain? Don’t worry, if a person is actually immune, then it is perfectly safe.”
“I think you are missing the point.”
“What point is that?” Elliot seemed to be honestly perplexed.
“You are turning people into zombies. I think that explains the problem in one sentence,” Catie snapped.
“Wait.” Elliot held up his hands, a smirk falling into place so quickly that it seemed like that might be more natural than anything else. “You are on board for going in and being part of a coup to overthrow Dean and his band of idiots where we might slit throats, hack people up, or fill ‘em with a few crossbow bolts. Yet, and let me see if I am just missing something here, you draw the line at dosing them with something that will kill them or prove that they are immune?”
“Turning a person into a zombie is an agonizing and slow process. That is torture. Why would you think anything about that is okay?”
“You do know that there are people in that compound that are immune, right? And some of them know damn good and well that is the case. Sandy was going to reveal the names, but somebody killed her before she could talk. That points to some people high up in the command structure. I would be willing to bet that one of them is the illustrious leader, Dean Stockton.”
Elliot still had that same nasty sneer on his face, but somehow, he had become even uglier. What Catie saw was a man obsessed with revenge; consumed by anger. He was toxic. That was never a good thing for somebody in a position of power. If she had learned just one thing in her years, it was that anything to an extreme was bad.
“So, let me see if I have this straight. You want to go in, inject the entire community—men, women, and children—you want to shoot them up with this serum that you have and then see who is left standing?”
“Let me respond with answering your question with my own. You are okay with going in and killing people outright?”
Catie ran her hands through her hair. Her mind was whirling with all sorts of things. At the center of it was the death of Kevin. He’d died at the hands of a group that was bent on wiping out people who showed immunity. He’d died caught up in somebody else’s fight. He had died a horrible and violent death.
A few weeks later, she stumbles into this situation. She still had not really taken any time to deal with her loss. Could all of this be weeds that have sprouted in her garden of misery and pain? And was Elliot right? What made his way any worse than hers? She wanted to go in with a ‘Trojan Horse’ plan and launch an assault on the people of Montague Village. She was using her anger at seeing the immune relegated to some lower class than others as fuel to her fire.
Somewhere along the way she had become irrational. Was she ready to become the villain? Because, when you stripped it down to its core, that would be exactly how she would be perceived by most sane and rational people. If she was on the outside looking down on these actions, she would be waiting for the good guys to save the day. Wasn’t that always how things ended in the movies?
Catie began to laugh. It was just a giggle at first, but it grew into something more. Pretty soon, she could not stop. Tears rolled down her cheeks and her vision was blurred. She noticed Elliot stand up, she thought he came to her and put his hands on her arms, but she pulled away. At some point, she ended up on the floor. Through it all, she could not stop laughing. Her mind spun and tried to anchor itself to anything, put the current was too swift and everything she reached for would slip away before she could actually get a grasp.
Her emotions were coming fast and furious. Happiness, sorrow, and rage. It was the rage that came on greatest and began to crush everything else. It smashed her happiness like some massive monster. Her mind flashed on an image of Godzilla stomping through some Japanese city. That only pushed her faster down the stream of madness.
Madness.
Catie knew that was where she was headed. She knew that to continue on this path would be her undoing. She would cease to be Catie. She would become something else. Something dark and evil. She would become Erin!
Was this how that poor little girl became the leader of an army that sought to destroy something simply because it was different? Catie could hardly breathe now as she fought herself. Part of her did want to let go and embrace whatever might come if she allowed the madness to assume control. Yet, part of her knew that to be wrong on every level.
Catie felt hands on her. She heard voices, but she could not understand them. She felt something stick her arm, and then she felt the world begin to slip away. She was sliding into darkness. She welcomed it. Perhaps she would find answers there.
9
Dancing on the Head of a Pin
I have heard the phrase, “like shooting fish in a barrel” before. I just never really gave it much thought. For one, who would keep fish in a barrel in the first place? At least now I am pretty certain that I know what they are trying to allude to with an analogy like that.
We cut the escorts down so fast that none of them had the chance to do more than bleed and die. However, I think the biggest surprise to those who had been tasked to escort me and Jim came when Jim yanked his machete free from its sheath and actually sprinted up behind Maddy.
You would think that his first instinct would be to free himself once and for all and run for cover. Apparently he is just as cool as I have always believed him to be. He slammed the pommel of his weapon into her temple and dropped her in her tracks. That meant that we had a prisoner.
The rest were afforded no such mercy. The killing was swift and violent. I was beginning to see the people that I lived my life with, grew up around, in an entirely new light. Inside the walls of Platypus Creek, everybody knows each other. We all smiled and shared good times. The select few that were chosen to venture well beyond our little area have known the world as it really is and not how those inside the walls believe (or wish) it so.
The truth is harsh and horrible. The world is chaos, bloodshed, and death. I think that, over the years, those who decided to stay inside and farm or make clothes, or whatever…they have all lost sight of—
or, more likely suppressed the memories of—the brutal world we live in.
It has not taken me long to realize that we must be prepared to do whatever we can to survive. But much more than that, we must be prepared to do things that make us into something else. To combat those who wish to destroy our way of life or harm those we love, we must be able to commit acts that are unspeakable.
It seems an eternity ago when I took that first human life. I recall the warnings from Jim and Jackson. And now I think I might understand why they tried to keep me from killing that man. As sick as it seems, once you have crossed that bridge, you will be able to continue to do so much easier. Not because you enjoy it (at least that is not the case for me), but rather because a little bit more of your goodness and compassion dies each time.
We came out from where we had hidden to lay the ambush and I saw almost the same expressions on every single face. Acceptance. And as we walked to Jim and gathered around the unconscious body of Maddy, I felt another little piece of my soul wither, dry up, and die.
“Tie her up,” Billy ordered.
Paula went to work on that job and I decided that I needed to talk to Billy away from the others. I wanted him to know that the leader of that army in the valley knew his name. That seemed oddly important.
“Whatever it is, hurry it up, Thalia,” Billy said once I managed to pull him away from the group.
“They know your name. That lady? Suzi? She knew who you were,” I blurted, not knowing any other way.
Billy seemed to think it over for a long time; way longer than I would have expected considering he was the one saying we had to hurry and get moving back to Platypus Creek. He rubbed his stubbled head and cocked it one way and then the other like a dog hearing a strange sound.
“I wonder if she knew Winter…or if she knew Jon?” he mumbled.
Of course I was familiar with those names. They were part of the history of our community. One stood for all that was bad, and the other for heroism and good. Sunshine had never moved on after Jon. She rarely went a day without mentioning something about that man. I did not really remember him. There were flashes of the man they spoke of, but most of my memories centered on Steve and Emily, the girl who had become my sister in many ways.
“Well, I guess I will never know,” Billy mumbled.
“What do you mean?”
“Huh?” He looked at me and his eyes focused like he had forgotten that I was there. “Oh, nothing. Don’t give it another thought, Thalia.”
“But don’t you think that they might have a spy in our community? Maybe somebody has been living with us the whole time and reporting back to that horrible woman.”
“I don’t see that as very likely,” Billy said with a tired smile. “More likely, some random person that I crossed paths with at some point. I ran with Jon and Jake and Jesus, quite a bit in the early days. And we didn’t necessarily take down all of Winter’s people.”
“But how would she know that you are in charge?” I pressed.
“Lucky guess? Hell, I don’t know. And it is likely that I never will.”
With that, Billy gave me a pat on the head and just walked away. He did not seem to know, and more important, he sure didn’t seem to care. He and Jim got Maddy up after making sure that she was tied up nice and tight. They carried her off the road and into the woods after telling Paula to round us up, get everybody fed, and prepare to move out.
The two returned less than twenty minutes later. Alone.
I really wanted to know what they found out, so I ignored Paula’s demands that I move up with some guy named Morris and take point for the team, and instead walked over to the two men who were still basically whispering back and forth so intently that they did not even notice me until I was right up on them.
“…and I say it is the only choice,” Billy hissed.
“Hey there, Thalia,” Jim said much too loudly.
He might be really cool under pressure and excellent in a fight, but he is lousy when it comes to being truly phony. For one, he never calls me by my name unless he knows I have caught him at something or there is a serious problem. The thing was, I had no idea what I’d just caught him doing wrong.
“What did you find out?” I demanded, shaking off Paula’s hand as she tried to pull me back.
“Not a damn thing,” Billy said, his face grim and tight with agitation.
“Where is she?” I asked. I’m not stupid, I had a good idea. I just wanted to see if these two would at least give me some semblance of a straight answer, or if they were going to continue to treat me like a child.
“We couldn’t risk leaving her behind, we don’t have the time to bring her along, and we didn’t think she deserved going down to the next passing zombie.” Jim looked me in the eye as he spoke. It did not escape me that Billy was very obviously displeased by Jim’s apparent honesty.
“She didn’t have any useful information at all?” I pressed. “Not even how they know about Billy?”
I saw a look flicker on Jim’s face for a second that let me know that he was perhaps not aware that Suzi knew about Billy; or at the least how she knew his name and that he was our leader. Billy flushed just a bit for some reason.
“We didn’t get to that part. It isn’t mission critical,” Billy finally said after he glared at me and then rolled his eyes at Jim as if to indicate I might be a little bit crazy.
“How do you not ask something like that?” I insisted. I glanced over and saw looks on both Jim and Paula’s face that let me know I was on the right path in my questioning. It seemed as if they might be curious as well.
“Look, I was Jon’s shadow for a while. He wanted to mold me into a Marine or something. Kept telling me that I had a lot of potential. He also let that tidbit of information slip way back before we knew that Winter and his men were bad guys. It is highly doubtful that every single one of Winters’ men died when that compound fell after he and Jake and I went there and they poisoned the water supply or whatever. The number of living people these days makes it likely that you will cross paths with somebody that knew you or knew of you if you were in any way active in those early days. Our group, for those of you who were not there in the beginning…” he glanced at Jim and Paula before continuing as if to make some sort of point, “…was very active in these parts. We also dealt with the military. We were hooked up with a man named Randall Smith of the CDC. He was the head honcho at the first place we thought we would call home.”
He continued to ramble on for whatever reason. It just sounded to me a bunch of “blah, blah, blah” stuff. However, when he mentioned Randall Smith, it made me once again remember my sister of the apocalypse: Emily. I could still see her laughing as we played in the snow, and then that creeper got her. They kept me away from her after that except for one time when Steve let me see her. Then she was gone.
I heard Dr. Zahn and Sunshine say once that she had turned and that Steve had not been able to kill her. I thought that had to be wrong. He would not want her to walk the world as one of those things for the rest of forever. However, I’d also heard a story from Billy one night when he was drunk. In that story, he insisted that he saw her in La Grande with a bunch of other zombie children…and cats. That was when I decided that the story was just Billy being drunk. The thing about the cats was too weird.
“Thalia!” Paula snapped.
“What?” I shot back a little more aggressively than I probably should.
“You and Morris get moving. We need to get back to Platypus Creek as soon as possible. We are marching straight through.”
I had to fight back the urge to stomp my feet as I stormed to where the man I assumed to be Morris was waiting. He looked like a real creep. He had stringy hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a month. His mouth looked weird like he was kissing somebody, and his left eye had a patch over it. Once I got closer, I felt just a little bit bad.
His mouth looked that way because he did not have any teeth in front. I could te
ll by looking that he had suffered something rather violent to end up that way. I seemed to recall that Morris was one of the people who were out on field operations a lot. In fact, he was gone almost as much as Jim. He often bypassed the offered rest period of two weeks after a run and signed up to leave with the next group. I seem to recall something about how he had been searching for his wife since he arrived at our community on a stretcher with a group that we took in almost five years ago.
We started out after Paula gave us instructions. Even though Morris and I were a team, they wanted us to separate by about a quarter mile. I guess our little ambush had everybody on a state of hyper alert. It stood to reason that, with all the activity in the valley, some of the groups in the area might be a little nervous. With Morris and I separated, we would not likely both end up captured or killed.
Comforting thought, that.
My day went by in a blur. I was doing my best to be alert, and early on, I was pretty focused. My problem came towards the last half of my shift on patrol. I kept finding my mind wandering. At last, I reached the marker that Paula told me to stop at and wait for the rest of the team.
We played leap frog like this for the rest of the day. As darkness fell, it was once more my turn to be out on point. I was given the landmark and told that, unlike earlier, Morris and I would stay close. I walked along for a ways before Morris finally broke the silence.
“You really had folks worried back home,” he started.
“I’m sure they were upset about the others. Jim and Jackson are much more important, and I imagine that losing them would hurt the community more than just my being gone,” I said with a shrug.
“Yeah, but Jim and Jackson didn’t have their mom in the town square chewing poor Billy a new one in front of God and everybody.”
“Melissa came down to the square?” I was honestly blown away.
“Came down? More like exploded into. She was pissed that Billy sent you out there on a mission that was a sham to begin with. I guess word got out that it was some personal issue between Billy and one of the science geeks.”
