by Joe McKinney
He was tall, and though he walked with a limp, he nonetheless moved with the unmistakable menace of a bird of prey hovering over a kill. The red paint that covered every visible inch of his body—it had to be paint, Richardson thought, not some weird form of rosacea—glistened on his bald head and on his back. And when he turned toward Richardson there was a self-amused smile on his face that betrayed a capacity for great cruelty and malevolence. Staring at him, Richardson felt a chill move over his skin.
The two captured men were on their knees in the middle of the street, heads down, the black-shirted soldiers forming a ring around them. Even from thirty feet away Richardson could see that the prisoners were trembling. The Red Man walked behind his soldiers, watching the two men, as though he were trying to make up his mind which one was the weaker.
The zombies followed the Red Man with their eyes, never looking away, and it was their single-minded fixation on him that fascinated Richardson the most. He had seen plenty of Stage III zombies in the past eight years. Some of them were even capable of limited cognition. They responded to their names. They were capable of delaying an attack, or working in teams with other zombies, if it meant making a bigger kill. Once, years ago, in the flood ruins of Houston, he’d been part of a small group of survivors flushed from a building by some Stage III zombies who were using a pack of Stage I zombies the way English fox hunters used to use their dogs. He respected the threat they represented. But he had never seen anything like this. The Red Man seemed to have them under his complete control.
He stepped through his line of soldiers and came up behind the man in the St. Louis Cardinals hat. He slapped the hat off the man’s head, then grabbed his chin and turned his face toward him.
The man panicked and tried to scramble away on his hands and knees, but the Red Man grabbed the back of his shirt, lifted him bodily into the air, and threw him facedown onto the street. Richardson could see the man’s eyes go wide. He could see the man’s whole body shake.
The other man tried to get away, but the troops grabbed him by the shoulders and held him down on his knees.
“Turn him this way,” the Red Man said. “I want him to watch this.”
The Red Man knelt down next to the prisoner, lowering his face so that he looked like a question mark bent over the man, who was kicking and thrashing for all he was worth now. The Red Man’s eyes were vividly white against the red of his skin. He still wore a hideous self-amused smile, though now he seemed to be smelling the man, drinking in his fear.
One of the soldiers, his combat gear rattling against the nylon rigging he wore over his chest, ran up to the Red Man and stopped. He shook his head. “We didn’t find them,” the man said. “There are some tracks through the mud over there, between those two buildings, but we lose them at the next street over.”
The Red Man didn’t seem to acknowledge him. Instead he made a sound that was part moan and part growl. The trooper glanced to his right and saw three zombies advancing into the inner circle. He stepped back quickly.
The zombies stopped right behind the Red Man and waited, their eyes fixed on the back of his head. The captured man continued to kick and punch the air beneath the Red Man, but as desperate as he was he couldn’t break the grip that held him fast to the asphalt.
“Please,” the man begged. “Get them away. Jesus Christ, please!”
Richardson was breathing hard, a cold worm of dread burrowing its way through his bowels.
“Where is Niki Booth?” the Red Man said. “You need to talk fast so you don’t waste my time.”
“I never heard of her,” the man said. He was trying desperately to claw the Red Man’s hands from the back of his neck. “We’re on our way to the trading outpost at Herculaneum. Jesus Christ, get those things away from me.”
The Red Man leaned in close to the prisoner’s ear and whispered something that caused the man to stop fighting for a moment, then to start up again even harder.
The Red Man grunted at the three zombies behind him and they fell on the prisoner as though they hadn’t fed in days. They tore at his back, at his ears, at his hands. The man’s screams filled the street, echoing off the buildings. Richardson felt every single gut-wrenching sound, like somebody was jamming a needle deep into his ears.
Richardson closed his eyes.
He opened them when the screaming finally stopped. And he had to force himself to keep them open. The three zombies were feeding, the prisoner’s body jerking as they bit into his back and arms and tore off strips of his flesh with their fingers.
Moans went up from the zombies all around them, but none moved.
The Red Man let go of the dead prisoner and stood up.
He backed away slowly, his hands and arms dripping with the prisoner’s blood. He was opening and closing his fists, breathing hard, almost like he was aroused, his tongue dancing on his lips. He never blinked.
Richardson stared in confusion. He had long since resigned himself to the knowledge that men were capable of all manner of cruelty toward their fellow men. That wasn’t what shocked him. It was the unmistakable control this man seemed to have over the zombies. How was that possible?
The Red Man motioned to his black shirts to bring the other prisoner forward. They threw him down in the street a few feet from his dead partner and pinioned his arms and legs so he looked like a scarecrow dropped on his face. He kicked and thrashed but couldn’t move under the weight of three soldiers.
The Red Man knelt down next to the man and shoved his bloody hand in his face.
“Stop,” he said. “Stop now. Stop fighting.”
Richardson could see the veins standing out in the prisoner’s neck. The man’s face was taut with fear and rage. His lips were twisted into a grimace that showed his teeth.
“Stop it now.”
The Red Man stroked the back of the man’s head, smearing blood into his dark hair. The man turned his face away.
“I want you to tell me now where Niki Booth is. I know you know.”
“Just kill me,” the man said defiantly. “I don’t know who the hell you’re talking about and I’m never going to.”
“Of course you know.” The Red Man paused a beat, then said, “Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
The man tried to pull away, his face still turned in the opposite direction.
The Red Man grabbed the hair on the back of the man’s head and twisted his head around, forcing the man to stare him in the face. The man kept his lips shut tight. He refused to cry out.
“That’s better,” the Red Man said. He touched a bloody finger to the man’s cheek and ran it from his earlobe down to the point of his chin, leaving a dark smear behind. “Now you’re gonna tell me what I want to know, okay?”
“You’re insane. He was telling the truth. We’re turkey farmers. We were headed down to the trading market in Herculaneum.”
“You’re no turkey farmer. Not armed with brand-new AR-15s like these.”
“We have to protect them from wild dogs and thieves.”
“And where are these turkeys now.”
“We found a hog farm, down by the river. North of town. We left them there.”
“Why?”
“We wanted some vodka to celebrate for after we sold the birds. We were going to come back for them after we searched the liquor stores here in town.”
The Red Man sat back on his haunches and sighed. The sunlight glistened off the thin layer of sweat that had formed across his back. There wasn’t a hair on him, Richardson realized. Not a one. Just red paint slathered over every inch of skin.
“You try my patience,” the Red Man said. “My people have been following you since you left Ken Stoler’s camp. I know you are with Niki Booth. Now do not make me ask again.”
Ken Stoler? Richardson wondered. Not the Ken Stoler? The same one Eddie Hudson had described in his book on San Antonio. The one who founded the People for an Ethical Solution foundation that Sylvia Carnes and her doomed expedition to S
an Antonio belonged to. It couldn’t be.
“Fuck you,” the man said. “Go ahead and kill me.”
The Red Man wasn’t smiling anymore. He slammed the prisoner’s face down on the pavement and held him there, the heel of his palm grinding into the man’s ear.
The Red Man turned slightly and motioned to one of the black shirts. A soldier came forward, pulled a hunting knife, and handed it handle-first to the Red Man. The Red Man took it, adjusted his weight on the prostrate prisoner, and then ran the tip of the blade around the back curve of the man’s ear.
“There are a lot of ways to die, my friend. But you know what? You are not going to be given the luxury of any of them. You are going to have a long life ahead of you. And I fucking own it.”
With a sudden, fierce effort he jammed the tip of the blade behind the man’s ear and cut it off with a few rapid back-and-forth sawing motions.
The man screamed for a long time before fading off into a series of whimpers.
The Red Man rode the writhing prisoner’s back like he was on a startled horse, waiting for the man to stop moving. When at last he did stop the Red Man let out a stuttering moan, and one of the zombies rose from the dead prisoner and approached, where he waited by his master’s shoulder. Richardson could see the zombie was missing an ear. Richardson scanned the motionless zombies that surrounded the Red Man and saw that most of them were missing an ear. The skeins of leather necklaces around the Red Man’s neck suddenly made hideous sense. He’s branding them, Richardson thought as a shudder went through him—like cattle. The Red Man stood up and cupped a hand under the zombie’s chin. He forced the zombie’s mouth open and then stuck his fingers in there, like he was rooting around for something.
His fingers came away dripping ropes of blood and saliva.
“What in the hell?” Richardson muttered.
The Red Man knelt again next to the living prisoner and said, “Tell me where Niki Booth is. I won’t ask again.”
The prisoner’s eyes were wide. He stared at the ooze dripping from the Red Man’s fingers, shaking his head. His lips were clamped shut. Tears fell from his cheeks and the muscles in his neck twitched.
“No? Okay then. I want you to know you chose this,” the Red Man said, and he jammed his fingers into the man’s mouth, smearing the gore on his gums and on the inside of his lips.
When the Red Man took his hand away the prisoner dropped his face to the pavement and sobbed, defeated. Richardson thought he might vomit. He knew what the man’s future held. Depending on his blood pressure and his overall health, he had anywhere from a few minutes to four hours of hell to look forward to. The necrosis filovirus would course through him, affecting his muscle coordination first. He would experience cramping and bloating. The muscles in his back and legs and neck would ache to the point that most men curled up in a fetal ball, unable to keep from crying. Next his breathing would turn ragged, phlegmy, and he would start to smell like rotting food. He would cough constantly, sometimes bringing up big black wads of phlegm. Depersonalization would follow, and the more he lost of his personality and his memories, the more aggressive he would become. By the time the change was complete, there’d be nothing but a hollow husk remaining.
Listening to the doomed man sobbing, Richardson could hardly breathe.
The Red Man stormed across the road unexpectedly. He was looking to the east, where red brick apartment buildings were crumbling into streets thick with weeds and blowing sand. He wheeled around, studying the faces of the black shirts nearest him. None of them dared look him in the face. Only the zombies failed to shrink from him.
“They are on foot,” the Red Man said. “I know she hasn’t gotten far. Search every street, every house, every shed, until you find her. And when you find her, bring her to me. I want her alive.”
Soldiers and officers exchanged nervous looks.
“Now,” the Red Man snapped.
His soldiers scrambled out of the street in their haste to leave. It was obvious to Richardson that they moved quickly not simply to obey his orders, but to get away from the violence gathering in his expression.
As the soldiers started their search, Richardson watched the Red Man. The zombies stood like terra-cotta soldiers all around him, following him with their dead stares. In eight years of wandering and collecting stories from survivors and studying every aspect of the outbreak, Richardson had never even imagined that something like this was possible. If someone had told him about it, he wouldn’t have believed them. Whatever this was, whatever this man represented, it was completely unprecedented. This was either a new beginning, or the worst sort of ending.
He just didn’t know which.
He heard voices and the sound of boots crunching through rotten wood coming from the other side of the building to his right, and he knew he had to leave soon. If he stayed here, they’d be on him in minutes.
Slowly, praying his knees wouldn’t crack and give him away, he rolled over onto his butt and climbed to his feet. He slid his back up against the wall of the Pizza Hut and was making his way down the narrow gap between the buildings when a zombie stepped around the corner, blocking his path.
Richardson sucked in a breath.
Three more zombies rounded the corner behind the first, each of them missing an ear.
The lead zombie extended his hands out toward Richardson, opening and closing his fingers like he was begging Richardson for something. The man’s neck was bent to one side, the muscles in his face slack, the skin a jaundiced yellow. Flies swarmed around his head, and his clothes were so soiled Richardson couldn’t tell what color they had once been. For a moment, Richardson was lost in the pale white deadness of the man’s eyes. He was still thinking of the downward slide the man out in the street was just beginning, and he wondered what, if anything, was left of the person this zombie in front of him had once been. Was there a part of him that still thought and felt and watched through those dead eyes, horrified by the murder and death that surely lay in its path?
“I’m sorry for you,” Richardson said, and drew his machete as the man began to moan.
CHAPTER 3
Without warning the zombie broke into a sprint, running straight at Richardson, arms outstretched. Richardson let out a startled gasp and slashed at the man with the machete. The blade glanced off the zombie’s left arm, cutting into the meat but doing nothing to slow him down. His momentum carried him headlong into Richardson’s chest, and when they hit, they both went tumbling over backward, landing in a pile of bricks and rotten plywood and tall weeds.
The attack caught Richardson completely off guard. Watching the zombie’s slow, staggering gait and jerky movements Richardson had thought he was dealing with one of the slow ones, the recently infected. But they were face-to-face now, rolling around in the weeds and the busted lumber, the man snarling and snapping his teeth just inches from Richardson’s nose, and he could see the threads of red veins in the eyes. He could see the intelligence, too. Anger and insanity and intelligence. This was a Stage III zombie, and he had tricked him by pretending to be one of the slow movers. He never would have let the man get this close if he’d known he was dealing with one of the smart ones; and as the zombie managed to roll over on top of him, the stench of his fetid breath in his nostrils, Richardson had the terrible realization that the zombie must have known that, too.
The man had tricked him.
He grabbed the zombie under the chin and pushed his snapping teeth away with the heel of his palm. The man snarled like a fighting dog, a wet, snapping sound. His fingernails dug into Richardson’s arms with unexpected strength.
“Get off, motherfucker,” Richardson hissed.
Come on, he told himself. You gotta fight. You’ve got to.
Grunting, bicycling his knees up into the man’s gut, Richardson broke the zombie’s hold on his biceps. He turned his head, looking for the rifle, and saw it partially buried in some tall weeds. It was just out of reach. He rolled over to his right, creati
ng distance from the zombie, and scrambled to his feet.
The zombie rolled off in the opposite direction, landing with his back against the wall of the Pizza Hut. He climbed to his feet easily and lunged for the machete in Richardson’s hands. His fingers caught in the sleeves of Richardson’s Windbreaker and for a moment they spun around an invisible pivot point as Richardson struggled to break loose from the man’s grip.
The other zombies were halfway down the alley now. Too close. He had wasted too much time. Pushing the zombie’s hands up and out of the way, he kicked the heel of his right boot into the man’s gut, knocking him backward. When the zombie came at him again he swung the machete down on the man’s outstretched hand and felt the blade whisper through bone. Two fingers and part of the zombie’s hand hit the wall of the redbrick building with a dull thud and landed in the grass, the fingers curled toward the sky like the legs of an upturned crab. The zombie’s arm dropped to his side but otherwise the man showed no reaction to the damage. He continued forward. Richardson swung the machete twice more, hacking at the zombie’s outstretched arms. Then he stepped to his right and brought the machete down on the zombie’s head with a two-handed overhead chop. The blade connected right above the man’s missing ear and sank into the skull down to the top of the mouth.
The zombie fell to his knees, bringing the machete with him. Richardson yanked at the machete’s handle frantically, causing the dead body to jerk and twitch like a poorly handled marionette, but the blade wouldn’t come free.
The other zombies were too close. He felt one of them drop a hand on his shoulder and he twisted away, toward the front of the building. The zombies were grabbing on to his backpack, pulling him backward, but he was able to wrest free.
