by Joshua Guess
“Wake up,” Kell said as he slapped the young man hard across the mouth.
He woke slowly. Not much of a surprise given the state he was in; his femur was broken by a bullet, torso bruised where Laura pummeled him into submission with the butt of her rifle. Anyone would fight against waking up to that kind of pain, and Kell noted coldly this was barely a man at all. Just a kid, really.
“Come on, son, wake up.” Kell slapped him again, much harder this time.
The boy took a sharp breath as his conscious mind discovered a world of pain. His eyes shot open, then, and Kell watched with perverse satisfaction as the prisoner took in his situation.
Tied to a steel chair, a belt cinched down on his broken leg tight enough to make it numb, and sitting in front of an angry giant. Those things were enough to shake anyone. But the room itself, if you could call it that, was a whole other level of unnerving. Plastic sheeting hung around them, thick and translucent enough that it was obvious they were in an otherwise dark space. A single naked bulb hung from the ceiling, casting light on a small table full of tools.
Cutting tools, mostly. There was also a drill.
The boy tried desperately to keep from meeting Kell's eyes, head whipping around as if he expected help to arrive.
Kell sat in the folding chair next to the table covered in gleaming steel. “What's your name?”
The boy went still, the last resort of prey suddenly aware a predator has it cornered.
Leaning forward in the chair, Kell snapped his fingers. “If I have to say everything twice, this is going to take a long time. And I just don't have the patience for that. Now. What is your name?”
“B-Ben,” the boy stammered. “Ben Carpenter.”
“Ben, this is how it's going to be,” Kell said. “You're going to tell me everything. I want to know where your camp is, what the defenses are, why you're targeting people. Everything. I want details. I want to know everything you know.”
Fear on his face, Ben shook his head. “You don't know what they'll do to me if I give them up. I can't.”
With a sigh, Kell gestured to the table. “Look, son. You've seen enough movies to know where this is going. You're actually the lucky one in this scenario. You've got a chance to live, here. Your friends aren't going to be as lucky. You can tell me the easy way, with you and me sitting here in relative comfort...”
The plastic behind Ben's chair rustled and twitched aside. Kate and Laura came into the shrouded space, expressions grim as they stood on the other side of the table.
“The other option is I leave you alone with these two ladies and this table full of very sharp objects.”
From somewhere deep inside, the boy found some steel. “I can't.”
Kell stood as if to leave. “I have to say, I respect your willingness to suffer for the sake of your friends,” he said in a pleasant tone. “But I really should mention that my companions here were once captives of some very bad men. Men, I imagine, a lot like the people you're so keen to protect.”
Kell's voice broke into a growl. “I wish I could say it hurts my feelings that you're so loyal, but it would be a lie. I don't have a doubt in the world what happens to the girls you people steal. I'd also be lying if I told you I'm not looking forward to my friends here having a chance to see how the other half deals with the kind of abuse you've been so keen to dish out.”
The smile spreading across Kell's face held no warmth. “You're going to tell us what we need to know, Ben. It's your choice how hard or easy it's going to be.”
Kell left. He had expected the boy to give in at the last second. That was always how it happened in the movies, after all. As he made his way up the stairs, not at all eager to hear more than was necessary, a vague sadness fell over him. He, Laura, and Kate had agreed the room itself should be enough to scare the kid into giving them information, but on the off chance it wasn't, they would move forward as needed to find out what they had to know.
His stomach rolled, and he had to stop at the top of the stairs to suppress his rising gorge. The ladies would try psychology first, and even if it came to hurting Ben they wouldn't enjoy it no matter what kind of show they put on. He knew that.
But they would do it.
Which made him wonder for the thousandth time what they were becoming. Which led naturally to the far more disturbing possibility that they weren't actually changing, but rather simply being revealed.
He stepped from the stairs into the kitchen, but before reaching the other side of the smooth, heavy granite tiles a piercing wail filled the house. The power in it was unreal, loud enough that the intervening floor and walls did little to blunt the sound of it.
“I'll talk, I'll talk!” Ben screamed. “Jesus, just put that down!”
Kell's legs went weak with relief. He turned to head back downstairs, but something on the counter caught his attention, giving him an idea.
Three minutes later he sat in front of Ben once more, careful to appear upset that Laura and Kate didn't get to supply him with new scars.
“Came you your senses, I see,” Kell said. He took a bite of the sandwich he'd made. “Here's the deal. I'm going to have some lunch here, and you're going to talk. If, by the time I'm done, I think you've lied to me or held back, you're going to have a bad day. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Ben said, tears rolling down his face. The front of his pants was soaked, urine dripping onto the floor. The smell was powerful in the small space, but Kell had years of practice eating meals in the lab. Smells didn't bother him.
He'd eaten thirty feet away from piles of bodies enough times. A little piss wasn't anything to write home about.
Ben talked. Laura and Kate stood to the side taking notes as Kell stared at the boy without looking away once, slowly eating his sandwich. Every time Kell took a bite, Ben's words faltered.
Eating his sandwich, calm and collected and outwardly relaxed, Kell listened as Ben told them everything. By the end Kell was smiling. Partially because the volume and quality of the information was far more than they needed.
Also because it was pretty good sandwich.
The fire crackled and popped as the three of them sat in front of the warm hearth discussing the options before them. Ben was in the basement still, sleeping as best he could while tied to one of the posts supporting the house. Laura stayed with him for more than an hour to follow up on details, writing furiously to keep up with the endless sea of information flowing from the young man's mouth.
They had agreed on a basic strategy, which was their standard for any dangerous situation: scout first, observe and record, and adjust their plans as needed. That agreement was long-standing and required no discussion.
“What do we do with him?” Kell asked as he stared into the flames.
“I've been thinking about that,” Kate said. “It's not like we can turn him over to the local sheriff or anything, you know? We can't let him go, can we? I mean, look at what he's done.”
Kell frowned. “Much as I hate to say it, I've been thinking almost the same thing. I just don't see how we let him walk.”
“I don't know, guys,” Laura said. “I talked with him for a while. I get the impression he didn't know what he was getting into, and by the time he figured it out it was too dangerous for him to leave.”
“Do you think he didn't help them take people?” Kate asked angrily. “He outright told us what they've been up to. You know he didn't say a word against them.”
Laura scowled at her. “I know. But dammit, you saw the kid. He's scared out of his mind, and the look on his face when he told us about what those marauders have been up to said it all. He's ashamed. Guilty as hell. I don't think he'd be a threat to anyone after this. He knows he has a second chance.”
“No,” Kell interrupted. “He thinks he has a second chance. That's what we're talking about, isn't it? Whether or not we cut Ben loose or kill him in cold blood.”
“I vote to give him a chance,” Laura said fiercely. “There are f
ew enough people left. We shouldn't kill him unless we suspect he'll join up with other marauders and start the whole thing over again.”
Kate scowled. “I vote for killing him. It should be quick and painless since he's giving up a whole band of marauders, but that doesn't excuse him standing by and doing nothing when his group kidnapped and killed. He could have taken a stand, even if it killed him. He didn't. He's a coward who doesn't deserve any mercy from us.”
Suddenly Kell felt very tired. He ran a hand over his forehead and scalp, trying to see the right way forward.
“It can wait,” he finally said. “I'm not saying one way or another until we at least confirm the location of the camp.”
Laura smirked, which rubbed Kell the wrong way.
“Don't get cocky,” he said as he shook a finger at her. “I'm not convinced Ben has really seen the error of his ways. Kate isn't wrong. He admitted to being with these fuckers for months. Do you really think he couldn't have walked off at some point? Or gone out on a trip by himself and just kept on going? I don't buy it, but I'm willing to hear him out.”
Kate didn't react, but she rarely did. Kell rounded on her in his seat. “And you need to take a good, hard look at yourself. All of us do, really, but I'm not taking this lightly and neither should you. A few days of waiting aren't such a big deal when you consider we're weighing a man's life. But look at how you're reacting, Kate. You're angry at your best friend in the world because she thinks some compassion and understanding might be called for. You're willing to write off another human being without a second thought.”
He stood, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but in the house. “I'm going out for a while. You two need to...I don't know, talk this out or something. I'll tell you this much. I scared that kid today. We all did. I don't know how you feel about it, but I think I scared myself just as much.”
“We got the information,” Kate said in an even voice. “It was just playacting.”
“No,” Kell said. “It was only acting because we didn't have to take it any further. But we agreed to if it came to that. And while we knew we'd rather not have to hurt him, Ben was convinced we were disappointed. I put a lot of energy into being convincing, and it worked.”
“That's a good thing,” Laura said.
As he walked to the front door, Kell shook his head. “It isn't. Because at the time, I enjoyed it. I wanted him terrified.”
With that, he left the house.
The world outside was dark, the moon hidden by clouds. Snow had fallen, restoring the blanket over the land. Despite how terrible a place the world was, the illusion created by the pristine snow comforted him. The cold was simple, a problem he could tackle easily and without ambiguity. Even the undead were relatively uncomplicated, and as he took up the spear from its place hanging from the eaves of the front porch, he could hear them.
The frigid air burned his nose as it invigorated. He didn't want to fight, but made his way toward the sounds of the undead. Shirking his duty to clear out wandering zombies wasn't an option, even if killing was the thing he needed to distance himself from for a little while.
Halfway down the long and winding driveway, he spotted them. A small group, only four, and moving with the jerky weakness some of the zombies still showed in the cold weather. Many people in North Jackson had been reading observations someone had been making. A blog, as impossible as it seemed in the current circumstances. The author put a tremendous effort into cataloging changes and behavior in the victims of the plague.
Kell had seen them as well, though unlike everyone else in the world he knew what to look for and more important, why the undead were changing. The cold had been universally immobilizing at first, giving people a respite from the ceaseless zombie attacks, at least where it was cold enough to slow or stop them.
Then a mutation happened. Kell knew it for what it was, having seen Chimera subtly alter to fit a circumstance in the lab. He'd mentioned it to Laura not long ago, along with his theory that Chimera was changing so as to up the amount of sugar in the host body. She'd joked that the organism must have gotten the idea from a diabetic, which Kell agreed in total seriousness was a good explanation.
But these zombies were, at best, only halfway there. It was below freezing out and they moved, but it was a pathetic shamble barely sufficient for forward motion.
There was no anger in the killing, no art or passion. Like a farmer scything wheat, he moved around them in a constant circle as he killed them. One last step back as he moved into position around the last of the four, and he was staring into its eyes.
A dozen feet separated them. Kell waited, spear ready, as the staggering corpse tottered through the ankle-deep snow toward him. Knees bent, back arched, hands tight on the haft of his weapon but arms loose and limber, Kell tensed and drew back slightly as he prepared to thrust the weapon.
If not for the fact that all his attention was on his last victim's face, Kell would have missed the expression that flashed across it. The eyes narrowed, following the tiny jerk in Kell's hands as he readied to strike. Sudden as a lightning strike, the jerkiness was gone from the zombie. The tip of the spear shot forward like a piston, but the point met only air.
The zombie ducked to the side and leaped at him, dragging itself forward by grabbing onto the spear as it moved. The only thing that kept Kell from having his throat shredded by the thing's free hand—no armor, stupid, stupid—was he saw the change as it happened. As the zombie yanked itself forward, Kell threw his foot out wide and to the left, using the momentum provided by the zombie's pull to catapult himself in an outward spiral.
The corpse lost its balance and tumbled into the snow, scrambling to right itself. Kell gave it no time, running forward and bringing the spear down in an overhead arc, smashing the weighted butt into its head.
Fear and excitement raced through him, veins pumping and mind working. This was something new to him: intelligence. Not human-level from what he could see, but the cleverness of the predator. Feigning weakness, situational awareness, tactical thinking.
Something new.
Chapter Nineteen
“That,” Laura said in a low voice, “is a lot of men with guns.”
Following Ben's directions, Laura and Kell found the marauder camp. It was laid out exactly as described, with a main courtyard defined by the circle of vehicles filling both sides of the small valley. The hills on either side were not, in Kell's opinion, what he would call hills in the strictest sense. The peaks rose to a lofty twenty feet. Just high enough to hide the cars, trucks, and trailers from casual observation.
Ben's information came with a warning to watch from the south, at least half a mile away. The reason was clear: two men standing guard at the southern opening of the valley, watching the world through binoculars at regular intervals.
He and Laura were lying flat, nestled snugly together on the catwalk of a water tower in the small town south of the marauder camp. It was a lucky break for them that the ladder leading up the tower was facing away from the camp, allowing them to ascend unseen. There was little chance the guards below would see them, given the distance and angles involved.
Each of them studied the camp through a spotter's scope.
Kell grunted and lowered his scope. “I don't know how we can do this alone,” he said.
Laura grunted. “You did it.”
“I was lucky. And there are at least fifty people in this camp.”
Laura inhaled deeply, slowly letting the breath out. “Sixty two, if my count is right.”
“Too damn many, is what I'm getting at,” Kell said. “It would be different if we had ten, twelve people. Sharpshooters, maybe. As it is we've got me and you and Kate, and that's just not going to be enough.”
She eyed him askance. “Listen to you, sounding like a soldier. Guess you can't science them to death, can you?”
Kell laughed, but cut off suddenly. He wore a curious expression, a mixture of distant wondering and the beginnings of an idea she
had learned never to discount.
“What is it?” Laura asked.
A roguish grin spread across his face. “You gave me an idea,” he said. “Let's get down from here and I'll tell you about it on the way back home.”
After a careful descent and a mile walk back to their car during which they stayed as silent as possible, Kell explained.
“It's not so muc a solid idea yet,” he said. “More like you made me realize maybe I've been looking at things the wrong way. Maybe I've just spent too much time around you two, but my first instinct now is how to apply force to fix things.”
One hand lazily on the steering wheel, Laura flipped her free hand over. “What can I say? I'm pretty awesome that way. Two thousand years ago my powers of inspiration would have had me my own temple.”
“Hey, keep hope alive,” Kell replied. “We're basically living in a new bronze age, so the sky's the limit. I'm kind of surprised people haven't gone all Lord of the Flies yet.”
Laura sniffed. “I'm going to pretend you didn't just sort of compare me to a decapitated pig's head.”
“Very generous of you,” Kell said.
“What kind of ideas are you having? I know when that giant brain of yours is cooking something,” Laura said. Her tone was light, carefully designed to avoid distraction.
“I thought about maybe synthesizing or finding a heavy gas, at first,” he said. “There are several elemental gasses that would be pretty damaging. There are simple compounds, too. I'm not a chemist, but I know the methods well enough that with the right books and equipment, I could do it.”
“I hear a 'but' in there.”
“Yeah,” Kell said. “Thing is, if they still have captives, gas is going to hurt them as well. Then I considered the area, the way the north end of the valley slopes south, and realized it's just not practical. Outside, those gasses are going to roll right down that hill.”
The change in his manner was subtle but clear to anyone who had spent as much time with him as she had. His words grew more precise, his mannerisms more relaxed, and there was undeniable excitement in his voice.
