Marnes sank into himself a little more with every word until he had collapsed onto the ground, a weeping mess.
“A court of your peers has sentenced you and those responsible for the worst of your crimes to death. Have you anything to say in your defense?”
Marnes crawled forward, his spindly, veined hand reaching out for Ennis’s boot.
“Please don’t kill me,” Marnes whispered. “Don’t kill me.”
“What about the rest of you?” Ennis asked and looked around the group for anyone who would say anything in their own defense. None would meet his gaze. “Very well. You are sentenced to death. However, it has long been in the purview of the president of the United States to pardon convicted criminals from their sentences, if he felt them worthy. Because of your former service to your country, I will offer you a commutation of your sentence: exile. You will leave the bunker, leave Pennsylvania altogether.”
A medium-sized MOLLE pack hit the gravel beside the former president, and Ennis could see it was about two-thirds full. Marnes pulled his knees under himself and leveraged himself to a standing position. One of the president’s guards moved forward, but Ennis waved him back. Marnes wobbled for a moment and then stood straight.
“In this pack are enough rations and equipment to let you survive for about two weeks, if you’re smart about it. No more. I suggest you take the pack and go while this offer stands. There are no weapons in the pack of any kind, so don’t think you’re going to take back the bunker. You’re done here.”
“You’d send me out into the wild with no protection? No weapon? What about the walkers? What if they find me?”
“Then you’ll experience the same fate as the hundreds of people you’ve murdered, and justice will be served. But at least you’ll have a chance.” Ennis stepped to one side to look at the others kneeling and restrained. “The offer goes for all of you. Leave now—right now—and you have a chance. If you choose exile, you’ll each receive a pack like his. Or stay and be executed.”
“That’s no choice at all,” one of the men, a former soldier, said. “You’re condemning us to death either way. One slow and horrible, the other quick and hopefully painless. Right?”
The president shrugged. “You have a chance, however small, with the one. With the other, you’re just gone.”
The soldier shook his head. “Forget it. You can execute my ass. I ain’t no walker bait.”
Ennis looked back at Marnes, and Marnes couldn’t or wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“The rest of you, choose. Now!” Ennis yelled, his fury barely held in check and only by the knowledge that there were so many witnesses.
Marnes reached down with a trembling hand to lift the MOLLE pack and stumbled as its weight hit him. “I choose life.”
“Good for you.” His voice held nothing but derision for the former president. “Anybody else?”
A few of the men and all the women picked up the packs that were now provided by the soldiers. Those soldiers also removed the prisoner’s wrist restraints while being covered by another soldier. All but four of the men were leaving, and those looked nervous at their choice. Ennis turned to the group leaving.
“May God have mercy on your soul. May you find the justice you so richly deserve in whatever form it takes. May your days be ones of repentance and reflection, and may you eventually find peace.” He pointed to the woods. “Leave now, and do not return.”
Only Marnes hesitated for a moment, looking back at everyone. “I did what I thought was right,” he said, barely audible. “I did what I thought was right!”
From the reaction of the crowd, Ennis knew that if Marnes didn’t leave, they’d tear him apart. Marnes must’ve realized it too, because he turned his back on his home for the last twenty-five years and walked into the forest. His few remaining cronies tagged along, and soon, they were gone.
Ennis walked back over to the men who’d elected to die rather than be exiled. He took a small plastic box from his pocket and showed them a collection of small white pills. “This pill has no official name,” he said, pitching his voice low so it wouldn’t carry. “It hasn’t needed one. The end result of taking it is that you will feel pretty darned good for about twenty minutes, then drift off to sleep, a sleep from which you won’t wake up. It’s the most humane option I have for you. You’ll be restrained and guarded until we’re sure you’re gone. Then you’ll be added to the reclamation tanks in the bunker. Any questions? Any changes of heart?”
The men glanced at each other, then shook their heads.
“Then we’ll do this quickly and get it over with.” He walked among the group and deposited a pill for each man in their open mouths. One of his soldiers stepped up to each man, a gloved hand over the mouth and nose of each man until they swallowed. When it was done, Ennis stepped back and spoke aloud for all to hear.
“You have chosen not to accept the clemency offered, and your sentence of death has been carried out. May God have mercy on your souls.” Ennis motioned to the men Graves had assigned for this detail. “Take them away.” The dead men walked to the back of a Humvee that would take them to the reclamation tanks at the bottom of the bunker.
Ennis turned to the assembled crowd and motioned for silence. As a skilled orator, he was able to project his voice so that most of them could hear once they’d quieted down.
“My friends, the traitors are gone, one way or the other. The long night of tyranny is over, and we can rest now and begin to rebuild our lives in support of one another. Today should not be a day of mourning or of sadness, but rather of joy and celebration. For life begins anew for not just us, but all humanity today.
“I know that most of you have spent the better part of twenty-five years inside those walls,” he said, pointing to the bunker doors, “and that you haven’t been allowed to leave, because it was ‘too dangerous on the surface.’ I know what Marnes and his people told you. But none of it is true. To show you what I mean, I’ve invited some friends of mine from the area.”
He nodded to Graves, who spoke into his shoulder mic. A moment later, dozens of vehicles from the surrounding towns arrived. Most of them were horse-drawn wagons, with the few remaining trucks alongside.
“These folks are going to take some of you back to their towns and villages—the ones that have been providing you with some of your food and supplies—and show you what the world is like now. But first—” He yelled, trying to get their attention over the growing noise from the crowd, but it had little effect. Finally, Graves and his men fired off several shots into the air, which shut everyone up quick.
“But first, I have to warn you. As changed as our world is, there are still dangers we need to be aware of. There are still walkers out there, not to mention animals come to reclaim their ancestral homelands from encroaching humans. So be careful. Stay with the soldiers assigned to your groups. Do what they say, and you’ll all be fine. Welcome home!”
The cheer from the crowd was so loud, he wanted to cover his ears, but he didn’t, because happiness like that, freedom like that, should never be curtailed.
“Sir, we’ve had a transmission from Bunker One, sir,” Graves said as he walked up. “It’s about Bunker Four. You need to hear this. It… Well, it’s bad, sir.”
“You couldn’t give me even a few minutes of happiness, Admiral?” Ennis said with a sigh. “Not five minutes?”
“No, sir, I’m afraid not.”
“All right, let’s go,” he said, climbing into the waiting Humvee to head back to the bunker. “This better be important.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Level Six—Officer’s Country
Bunker Four
The smell coming from the room was the first thing that Eden noticed as she moved down the hall. The light, cream-colored walls and the concrete flooring did little to ease her mind as her lizard-brain recognized the smell of death that permeated the hallway’s end.
Marquez had assigned her this section of the bunker to clear at ran
dom, and now she was beginning to wish she’d been elsewhere. Just what in the fuck was down here that smelled so bad? There were two doors left that she hadn’t cleared, one at the end and the other on the side. The smell was definitely coming from the side door, so she avoided that for the moment and motioned for Foretti to watch it. He nodded, and she continued down to the final door. A sign next to the door listed the room as 06-001 - Commander.
“Hunter One, Alpha Four,” she whispered. She tried to ignore the twinge in her healing arm and crouched down to rest her elbow on her knee.
“Hunter One, go ahead.”
“Commander’s barracks located, sir. And there’s some seriously fucked up smell coming from the room next door.”
“Roger. We’re working our way to you. Do you need help?”
She looked over at Foretti, and he shook his head, pointing two fingers at his eyes, then at her—he would watch her back.
“No, sir. See you when you get here. Four out.”
Eden reached up and tried the door, not surprised to find it locked. But this was an interior door, standard strength, not a security door. She could take this one without any help. Readying her weapon, she stood back and eyed the section of the door next to the handle. She bounced on the balls of her feet, once, twice, then threw her leg forward, all her weight behind the strike on the door. The lock ripped out of the door frame, and she spun to the side just in case someone inside objected to her intrusion. Foretti had her covered from down the hall too.
Nothing. Silence. No shots, no nothing. She glanced around the door, and when nothing happened, she rushed into the room. She ended up in a crouch against the wall and looked around the spacious quarters. Spacious for a bunker, anyway.
Empty.
She cleared the small suite fast, knowing the layout from the similar quarters her parents shared in Bunker One. She could’ve navigated the rooms blindfolded in the dark if need be. There was no one here. This worried her, because they still hadn’t found Dagger yet.
“Hunter One, negative contacts. He’s not here.”
“Roger, Four,” Marquez replied. “Proceed at your discretion.”
She couldn’t help but hear some unknown strain in his voice. Something was going on. Where the fuck was this Dagger guy? She moved back out into the hallway, knowing that whatever was up Marquez’s ass, she still had a job to do, and they had the shit-smelling room to clear yet. She walked over to stand beside the last door, on the other side of it from Foretti.
“What the hell is in there, do you think?” she asked.
Foretti shook his head. “Fuck if I know, but it ain’t gonna be pretty, that’s for damned sure.”
Eden sighed. “Let’s get it over with. Get the door?”
Foretti nodded, and his eyebrows shot up when the handle turned in his hand. He glanced at her and shrugged, and she readied her rifle. Foretti turned the handle all the way and pushed the door open. A wave of noxious odor wafted out, and Eden coughed and covered her mouth.
What had been horrible with the door shut was now toxic.
“Hunter One, be advised, MOPP gear recommended. Something fucking died in one of these rooms, and you’ll need it.”
“Understood, Four.”
Eden reached down to the pocket on her leg and pulled her MOPP mask from its storage. Sliding the full-head mask on, she adjusted the collar and filter and looked out the plastic eyeholes. She saw Foretti doing the same thing and nodded. There was no way either of them could go in there without protection. The smell was just too bad. When she was sure that Foretti was ready, she turned through the doorframe and covered the room. It was a small suite, similar to but not as large as the commander’s quarters.
The living room with a built-in desk area to one corner appeared normal, if old and dirty. Unknown stains and trash lay strewn about, and the furniture was torn and broken in places. Even one of the lights was out overhead, but nothing they’d found explained the smell. Even trash left to rot for years wouldn’t be that bad. The door to what Eden knew was the bedroom was closed, and the kitchenette was empty except for, again, trash. The single bathroom door stood open, and Eden motioned for Foretti to take that as he came through the door.
She maintained cover on the bedroom door while her partner investigated the bathroom. The light clicked on and off as Foretti glanced around, but when he came out shaking his head, she knew that whatever it was had to be in the bedroom. They both approached the single door in the wall, and the smell got much worse, even through the filters. She felt her gag reflex start to act up, and she swallowed hard to overcome it. There were few worse things than losing your lunch in full MOPP gear.
Foretti didn’t appear much better, his eyes tearing up from what she could see through the mask. But he was there with her, ready to open the door and find whatever horror lay within. She squared her shoulders and almost took a deep breath before thinking better of it. She held up three fingers, counting down for her partner, and on one, they burst through the door, each taking a side and covering the room.
Eden’s mind couldn’t register the scene right away. It came to her slow, as though her brain were filtering out the worst in bits and pieces so she wouldn’t run screaming. The room was dark, only a single lamp to her right in one corner providing dim illumination through a red shade. What little light it provided was enough to show what she thought at first was dark maroon paint on the walls until she realized it was dried blood.
The carpet was gone, and the concrete flooring underneath was stained the same color. There was a layer of human waste covering most of it. The only furniture was the lamp in the corner. Some sort of metal contraption hung against the wall opposite the door, with the framework extending onto the ceiling midway across.
Her mind finally filled in the gaps and let her see what it had been protecting her from. What had once been a man was naked and hung by his wrists from shackles fitted into tracks on the ceiling framework. His feet were shackled to tracks on the wall, running vertically until both sets of tracks met at a curved section near the ceiling.
The man could be rotated from a vertical position to one hanging face-down from the ceiling. Not that the word “man” applied in this case. He was dead, his skin dried and paperlike, almost like the images of mummies she’d seen in old movies. His hair was gone, as was most of his scalp.
She noticed other things in flashes. He’d been castrated. His fingers were almost gone, except for nubs. Same with the toes. Tubes entered and exited his body through multiple orifices, all tied together with neat zip-ties, leading across the metal framework and down to a hole in the wall that must’ve led to the kitchen on the other side.
His teeth were missing, at least as far as she could see, and both ears. The eyes were gummy and white, staring out of his skull at nothing. He wore a spiked dog collar with a tag. A flash of gold on his forehead drew her attention, and she found an AEGIS uniform nametape stapled to his forehead. The gold stitching of his name and on the border of the badge was what had drawn her attention, and the name matched that on the collar’s tag.
“Celero, Alpha Four, how copy?”
“Little busy here, Four. What can I do for you?”
“Can you have one of your guys run a check in the bunker roster for someone named Davies? I’ve found his body.”
“On it. I’ll get back to you. Ops out.”
Eden hadn’t moved from her position near the door. Movement caught her eye and she spun to face the door, where she saw Foretti coming back in, even though she hadn’t seen him leave. He was coughing and adjusting his mask.
“Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Couldn’t take it. Almost got my mask off in time. At least the sink still had running water.”
She nodded, a small part of her envious that he could just get past it like that.
“What do we do with him?” Foretti asked.
“You leave him there, Hunter,” a new voice from behind them said, and Marquez strode into the room, his
MOPP gear in place. “Who knows what that son of a bitch did to this poor bastard, but we have more important thi—”
A gasp and moan from the figure chained to the wall cut off whatever the captain had been about to say as all three of the Hunters spun around. Eden only just stopped herself from pulling the rifle’s trigger.
“Holy fuck, he’s still alive,” she said. “No fucking way. No fucking way!”
The thing that had once been Davies thrashed on the metal framework, and where it got the strength, Eden had no idea.
“Hunter Four, this is Celero. Got that info for you.” When Eden didn’t respond, Celero continued. “Get this, he was Dagger’s XO up until about ten years ago. There’s nothing more about him in the files after that. What killed him?”
“Uh…” Eden didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter.
“Never mind that, Lieutenant,” Marquez said. “Get back to what you were working on.”
“Yes, sir. Ops out.”
Marquez stepped closer to Davies, who thrashed harder, biting and moaning at the Hunter. “Did you see this? This bite?”
Eden stepped closer, willing herself not to look away, to look where her CO was pointing. There, on the side of the man’s neck, a clear walker bite that she’d somehow missed. It didn’t surprise her, given the horror of the scene, but it made sense. No wonder he—it—was still thrashing around. She was surprised it hadn’t torn itself loose somehow.
“Dagger chained this guy to this… whatever this is, tortured him for who knows how long, and then made him into a walker. Probably tortured him after that too. How did this fucking guy ever pass the AEGIS psych evals?” Marquez stared at the chained walker as he spoke.
Eden knew it was a rhetorical question and didn’t bother answering. But she also knew what had to be done. It was, after all, a walker. Before either of the men in the room could react, she drew her knife and plunged it into the temple of the dead man, releasing him from the hell to which Dagger had consigned him.
The Dying of the Light (Book 3): Beginning Page 33
