This Broken Veil (Ran Book 2)

by Joshua Guess

  And that was super not great.

  “You don’t have any training,” I said softly enough that only he and I could hear. “Do you?”

  Shock momentarily passed across his face, overwhelming the anger. “I was in my first few weeks of school to be a mechanic when Zero happened. I’m doing the best with what I have.”

  The words were harsh and hurried. Intuition made me think the guy might have padded his application once the shit hit the fan. I could have been totally off base, though. At the end of the world you take what you can get and hope for the best.

  “We should talk privately,” I said. “Maybe have the rest of them go do something else?”

  His eyes searched my face intensely for a second as if looking for some outward sign I was trying to trick him. “If you’ll keep quiet about this, then I guess. Don’t try anything stupid, though. The guards on the wall are expert marksmen.”

  After handing out orders for the others to go retrieve tools we might need and scare up some breakfast, the two of us were alone.

  “I’m Ran,” I told him, putting out a hand.

  He shook it, quick and without emotion. “Jones.”

  No rank, no first name. Fine with me if he wanted to play it cool. “Okay, Jones. Is this how it is all over the fort? No specialists for stuff like this? No one to repair vehicles, repair the walls, do maintenance?” His eyes narrowed and I realized he thought I was fishing for weaknesses to exploit. “I have to live here, too. If some shit goes down, I need to know where I can help the most.”

  His icy expression thawed at the edges. “We’re not even all from the same service branch. We have a little of everything here.”

  I nodded in understanding. “Whoever put this outfit together was taking whoever he could find. Couldn’t be picky about it.”

  “Yeah,” Jones said with a one-armed shrug. “We’ve been here four months and have had to do a lot of learning on the job. The gate used to freeze open completely until I figured out how to decouple the lock. Had a herd of dead come in through it. Got nasty.”

  “What?” I said, alarmed. “I thought the smell of the Reavers here kept them away?”

  Jones looked at me as if I were a child scrawling on walls with her own poop. He pointed to the west. “Lady, the great plains start a few dozen miles that way. The wind comes across them and hits this hill like a fist. Blows away the smell for days at a time. Sometimes that lets a herd build up and head this direction. Once they get in a big enough group, the Reaver smell doesn’t keep them away. The docs say it has something to do with population density.”

  “Wonderful,” I muttered. The situation was much worse than I thought.

  I was stuck here with people whose capacity for violence was unmatched by the civilian population. In that regard I considered myself a talented amateur by comparison. But I had a smattering of skills and a library of knowledge in my head that made me a strong generalist. I might not know a lot about any one thing, but I knew enough to work out solutions to a lot of problems. There would be people among the soldiers who had skills acquired in their civilian lives that would probably translate, but from the sound of it, no concerted effort was being made to sort those people. At least not until a problem reared its head.

  And if you wait until a problem becomes a threat, you’re putting lives in danger. My life being one of them.

  “Okay, let’s get to work on this thing,” I said. “We’ll start there. I’m pretty sure the lock mechanism is corroded and flaking in places, and that a piece of metal is sort of welded between two parts that shouldn’t have anything grinding between them. We’ll take it apart, clean it up, and hope for the best.”

  Jones stared at me hard for a handful of seconds. “You’ll explain everything you’re doing? I need to be able to figure this stuff out on my own. I’m not stupid.”

  He said it like he was trying to convince himself. “I don’t think you are. If you were already in training for this, you had to pass aptitude tests. You probably really do know more about it than I do. What you need is objectivity so you don’t make assumptions that waste time and effort. I can help you with that. It was pretty much my whole job before Zero.”

  Oh, yes, I would explain my reasoning to him as we worked. I’d do it in as much detail as he would allow. I didn’t want to become zombie chow any more than he did. Not knowing how long I would be a guest at the fort, I made the conscious decision to be as useful and informative as possible. For my own sake if nothing else.

  9

  Over the next week I became more familiar with the soldiers around the fort than the people I shared a living space with. My dorm mates displayed no curiosity about me whatsoever. A list of residents tacked up near the door leading the medical center gave me their room numbers and names—though clearly some were made up, like the guy using Elvis as a mononym—but aside from seeing them shuffle off for testing or coming out to grab their trays, they paid me no attention at all.

  The really weird thing was that they didn’t seem all that interested in each other, either. Aside from the occasional glance or muted nod, they might as well have existed in wholly separate dimensions.

  Eight days after my arrival, I had settled into a comfortable routine. Mornings generally included light testing with a different biological sample taken every session. Why they needed such a variety or needed them so often, I have no idea.

  Afterward I went outside to tend the potatoes. The season was getting late, but you can grow the damn things right up until Christmas sometimes. Tending them was easy and almost meditative for me. The plants required only light work with the occasional dollop of new soil to encourage more spuds to grow beneath it.

  I was working my way down a row, the knees of my jeans grass-stained and wearing through, when a familiar voice called my name. I looked up to see Garcia trotting across the courtyard toward me.

  “What did I do now?” I said as she approached, leaning back to rest my ass on my feet. “Doctor John not happy with my physical exertion test this morning or something?”

  “No idea,” Garcia said as she stopped a few feet away. “I was doing guard duty in the clinic and he got a message. Seemed excited, asked me to come get you.”

  “Mmmkay,” I said, putting out a hand. She hauled me up with ease. “This ought to be good.”

  When we got into the office, though, it did not look good. Not bad, either, but surprising. In the apocalypse, surprising is usually bad.

  Three of my dorm mates stood in a neat row next to John’s desk. Each wore black BDU outfits with wires trailing from the inside of their clothes, through the necks of their shirts, and over the shoulder into a small backpack.

  “Ah, Ran,” John said as Garcia and I darkened the door. “You haven’t triggered today, correct?”

  “I was in here two hours ago,” I said in mild confusion. “You know I haven’t.”

  He nodded with uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Yes, well, I knew you hadn’t then. I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t had an episode since. It’ll ruin the baseline.”

  A familiar ball of ice formed in my stomach. “Baseline for what?”

  “A field test,” John said. “We do them whenever the opportunity arises. Eight soldiers, four test subjects. Two of them Triggers if we have them available, two who are not.” He gestured to a man and woman. “Davis and Janelle are what we call active carriers. They aren’t immune to Nero and the virus reacts to their body chemistry. Samantha,” he said, pointing to the last of the three, “is also a Trigger. So let’s get you suited up and put the leads on.”

  I put up a hand. “So we’re sparring or something?”

  John blinked, his exuberance stalling. “Oh, of course. You don’t know.” He looked at Garcia, eyebrows raised.

  The soldier let out a sigh. “He means zombies. Sometimes when we spot a small group of them coming this way, they use them as a way to see how test subjects react in a fight outside the confines of the lab.”

  I ga
ped at her. “Wow. That’s some barbaric shit. Who gives the coliseum the thumbs-up to show the gladiators have done a good job?”

  Garcia grimaced. “I’ll be there. We won’t let anyone get killed.”

  I took her words to mean this wasn’t optional, and I swallowed the hot, angry reply trying to work its way out of me. Instead I shook my head sharply and took the bundle John had picked up from his desk.

  I changed behind a screen in silence, letting the doctor place the leads before buttoning the shirt up over my tank top. I said nothing, and I said it loudly.

  The trip took all of ten minutes once we set out on the back of a truck. They were not idle minutes; the soldiers spent the time attaching pieces of armor to our bodies. They did it with depressing efficiency, as if the act were so old it was reflex. How many people had they forced to fight this way? It might not actually be for some sick entertainment, but it was still wrong. No one should be coerced into fighting zombies. It was one of Bastion’s founding principles. If you weren’t willing to fight, or couldn’t, no one would put a gun to your head. That was why we had walls.

  Granted, I understood how much trouble we’d have been in if no one did volunteer, but the necessity wasn’t lost on most of the population and plenty did. Which allowed us to maintain our ethics. But this? This wasn’t necessary. I recognized there might be some biological significance to the difference between a controlled reaction and one in the wild, but I didn’t see how it couldn’t be reproduced with a sparring match against a soldier rather than a shambling corpse.

  The other three maintained their weird silence as they were fitted with armor, not raising objections when hands tugged straps tight and fingers dug in to make sure the pieces were snug. They were expressionless. The only person on the back of the truck with anything approaching cheer was John.

  We rolled up on the herd of zombies and stopped a solid hundred yards away. There were six or eight of them, hard to judge at that distance, and had clearly noticed us.

  “The rest of you know the drill, but this is Ran’s first time so I’ll briefly explain,” John said. He turned to me. “The soldiers will go with all of you to make sure no one gets in a situation beyond our control. Each of you will be given a melee weapon to use. No guns or knives, sorry. You’re to engage with at least one of the dead. That should be sufficient for our purposes, though you’re welcome to fight a second if you’re able.”

  I met his eyes the entire time he spoke and continued to say nothing.

  We stepped off the truck and Garcia exited the cab carrying an enormous duffle bag that clanked and clattered when she threw it down. “Take your pick,” she said as she leaned over and unzipped the bag.

  It was filled with a variety of weapons, from homemade to store bought. The others seemed to choose at random. I sifted around for a few seconds until my hand fell on a familiar shape.

  I pulled the wooden bat out of the bag like the sword from the stone.

  “Janelle, let’s have you go first,” John said.

  The woman looked up at him curiously, her head cocked slightly to the side, then nodded. She trotted off in front of us to open up some distance, the stout steel bar in her gloved hand wobbling in small circles like a wizard’s wand as she jogged.

  The zombies were strung down the road in a ragged line, the closest of them ten yards from his nearest partner. Janelle slowed as she approached it, also thirty feet or so from us.

  Her weapon dropped to the ground with a thunk loud enough to be heard even from that distance.

  Garcia, walking next to me, stiffened. “Is she okay?”

  Midway between the last two words, Janelle showed everyone that no, she was not fucking okay.

  Her hand shot to her neck and in a graceful motion the straps of her neck guard were pulled loose. Then the gorget and helmet were gone, leaving her golden hair flying free in the breeze. She turned on her heel, eyes raking us before they closed. The zombie’s hands wrap around her, snapping closed like a bear trap. Its head reared up and back in what felt like slow motion, jaws wide and eyes dead.

  I was already moving when the teeth clamped into her flesh.

  The normal euphoria washed over me, this time unwanted. I pushed it aside with an effort of will, forcing my focus on the woman in front of me. The bite wasn’t far enough forward to hit an artery, not yet, and I was eating the distance between us.

  The wood creaked in my hands. Unlike Janelle, I slowed down not one bit. Instead I put every joule of power from my forward motion into the overhead swing and brought thunder down on the zombie’s skull with the sound of breaking stone.

  My strike drove its head into her neck and shoulder, eliciting a pained cry I ignored entirely. There wasn’t time. Janelle might be bleeding out, but if so there was nothing I could do about it with another handful of hungry zombies smelling her blood.

  I have never been into sports, but I felt myself slide into the mythical zone as I rushed past her crumpled form.

  I trusted the armor to protect me from the claw-like fingers of the next zombie as I slid sideways and swung the bat into its knee. The sound of ligaments and tendons snapping reminded me of yanking a Thanksgiving drumstick free but turned up to eleven. The thing toppled over onto its stomach and I jumped onto its neck, driving my boot down with killing force.

  I whirled and struck as fast as my body could move. This was not the mindless frenzy I had all too frequently experienced when fighting under the influence. I didn’t have the clarity so many people talk about at moments of extreme stress or while experiencing peak performance. I just felt like me, but better.

  A major mistake a lot of people make when fighting groups of zombies is believing you have to make every shot a killing blow. Just because a zombie can’t feel pain doesn’t mean the laws of physics and some bedrock body mechanics don’t apply to it. If you break the right bones or do enough damage, you can almost always work faster by crippling them.

  So I swung the bat at hands and wrists. I stopped now and then to level kicks at torsos and knees. Most zombies aren’t as uncoordinated as the ones in Romero movies, but they also don’t have the full capacity to react like a human does. They’re insanely strong—because they lack the pain which usually governs the restraint of human muscles—but they’re slower as a group. Less adroit.

  I badly crippled three in a row before rushing toward the fourth. I hesitated for half a second when I saw it; the thing had the weird horny growths Jem and I had seen a little over a week earlier in a field. Except this one was mobile.

  The patches growing from and through its skin were heavy and thick. I brought the bat down in another overhead strike, planning to crush its skull, but it got a misshapen forearm up just in time. Rather than the sound of splintering bone, my hit was met with a dull thud instead. I knew the extra padding had spread out the force of the blow through the tissues. It wasn’t a calculation that required conscious thought on my part.

  I sidestepped, throwing an elbow into the face of a zombie trying to flank me. I enjoyed a flash of satisfaction as the hard plastic armor there hit home, snapping its head back. I whipped the bat back hard, left hand snaking back to grab it, and swung sideways into the mutant zombie’s knee.

  When it fell, I swung at its head again, connecting this time. I wasted no movement turning to take a swat at the zombie I elbowed.

  I didn’t let the rage and artificial joy take over, but things did begin to blur together. I felt the creak and strain of muscle and bone as I pushed my body past the red line genetics had coded into it. I knew I was going too fast, swinging too hard, and I didn’t care.

  When the bat broke against the shoulder of a zombie, I held on to the broken shard at its base and leaped onto it, jamming it through the dead woman’s eye. I yanked it free and spun to find the next enemy.

  But there were none. All around me stood people. Soldiers with knives were finishing off the crippled zombies. Doctor John fucking Pickles crouched over Janelle’s still form, t
he other two prisoner patients staring at her with sad but similarly still faces.

  I thought for a few seconds that John was trying to help her until I noticed the gaping wound in her neck and its lack of blood flow. The doctor was fiddling with the backpack she wore, trying to reach the recording device inside it.

  The rage did take over, then. Self-preservation evaporated in a nova of unbridled fury that this man could be more interested in the data than the woman who died for it. I threw myself forward, knocking aside a surprised soldier with one hard shove to the chest, and raised the broken bat high.

  Someone slammed into my midsection like a truck and took me to the ground. Another piled on.

  Then Garcia appeared over me, raised the butt of her rifle, and drove it into the side of my head.

  10

  I was a prisoner in truth.

  The fort contained several cells modified from storage rooms. Rather than old-fashioned bars like a jail or prison, mine had the heavy steel door with a slot in it of a modern one. I didn’t care either way. It wasn’t like I had a cup to rattle across the bars in any case.

  I sang to keep myself sane, a habit from my youth I never thought I’d need in quite this context ever again. Mostly older songs. ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ was a recurring motif, but when I started to feel the darkness creep in at the edges of my thoughts, the stand-by was Disney songs heavily favoring Aladdin.

  For two days I sat in my cell, ate three meals without a word from the guard who brought them, and contemplated what I would do if my incarceration was to be a permanent situation. As a teenager I’d escaped using what was supposed to look like a suicide attempt. Had someone decided not to rock the boat and involve the authorities, it would have turned into a real one. Once I was free, the hospital staff did the rest. It’s amazing what results you can get when you ask the nurse for privacy before telling her you’ve been kept prisoner off and on for a few years.

  Even if it had an outside chance of working, I had no inclination to try. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to see what reaction I would have to even a halfhearted attempt. The virus living in me like an invader was an unpredictable bastard.