The Apocalyse Outcasts

by Peter Meredith

  Neil and Sadie had come back long before and had the water boiling and were busy re-sterilizing the instruments, keeping well back from the blood. “Is he going to be alright?” Sadie asked.

  “Hopefully. I’ve started him on antibiotics through his IV. We’ll keep that going until tomorrow and then we’ll go to something a little easier on the system.”

  “Thanks a lot for everything, But...” Neil paused, looking small and easily broken compared to the fearsome soldier, “Um…what do you plan on doing with us?”

  Grey gave him a shrug. “I hadn’t planned on doing anything with you.”

  “Then why did you follow us all the way down here to Georgia?” Sadie asked.

  “I didn’t follow you all the way to Georgia as much as you preceded me here on your own. The truth is I’m here on orders. I neither knew nor cared where you were going.”

  “But you were asking for us in Maryland,” Sadie said.

  “And you chased us down in your Humvee after that,” Neil added.

  “My orders were to investigate what was happening in New York, including the extent of the slave trade and the rumors of bounties being placed on people’s heads. I heard you were somewhere south of Philadelphia and since my team was in the area, I thought I would ask around to maybe warn you that there were people after you, but Neil, here did too good of a job lying to me.”

  Neil’s face took on a bit of pink shame. “Sorry about that…but, but what about in Hagerstown?”

  Grey shrugged. “We were tracking that bounty hunter and almost had him twice. The second time we had a sweet little trap set for him and then you guys got in the way.”

  “Did you get him?” Sadie asked, hopefully.

  “No,” Grey said. “The opposite really. That bounty hunter was too good. Mac bought the farm and Bull got holed a couple of times. He’ll be alright though.” He paused, shaking his head, slowly. “That just left me, and as much as I wanted to go after the bounty hunter, I received new orders. My C.O. wanted me to find out what the hell happened here at the CDC. The idea of another crazy virus leak has got what’s left of the country freaking out.”

  “And you think the alarms and everything was staged?” Sadie asked. “Do you have proof? Because if you’re wrong and there really is some sort of new super virus…”

  “Not hard proof, but the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. All the rumors say that the people fled from there in a panic; that no one was left within an hour of the alarms going off. But when I went in last night, every building had been picked clean, including the equipment in the labs, and the germs.”

  Neil folded his arms over his sweater vest, and said, “Maybe it was some scavengers looking for...”

  Grey stopped him with a shake of his head. “It wasn’t a few scavengers. If there were just some choice items missing I would agree with you, Neil, but it was everything. Only teams of men, organized and not at all afraid of germs, could have done this.”

  “Why would anyone want the germs?” Jillybean asked. She understood getting stuff, food and medicine and TVs, but getting killer germs seemed a dangerous waste of time.

  Grey stood and stretched. He was a foot taller than Neil and looked twice as broad. “I hope they took them to keep them out of the hands of others, but with Yuri, who knows. He’d sell his own mother if the price was right.”

  “So you’re going back to New York next?” Sadie asked. She was on her knees next to Nico and so had to cant her chin well back to look the captain in the face.

  “Maybe after I finish my work down here,” he said with a tired sigh. “Somewhere south of Atlanta, there’s a bunch of fruitcakes following around some Charles Manson-wannabe. They call themselves the Believers and from what I’ve heard they’re bad news. You know, the type of people who’ll show up at your door wearing nothing but a suicide vest full of explosives and a smile. Sometimes I have to wonder about humans. We have so…” he paused at their sudden silence. “What’s with the looks?”

  “We’re on our way to New Eden, too,” Neil said in a rush. “They—they have my wife and my baby.”

  “This is crazy,” Sadie said. “You’ve practically been with us this whole time. It’s like fate was trying to bring us together. Do you believe in fate, Captain?”

  He shook his head but with little conviction. “I believe in carrying out orders, and I believe that sometimes shit happens, but I’m not one of those guys who believes that everything happens for a reason. I’m sure God doesn’t work like that.” Whether he believed in fate or not, Jillybean could see the man wasn’t nearly as cocksure of himself as he had been only a minute before.

  Chapter 30

  Sarah

  New Eden

  Artie had been freed to go back to Maryland, but Sarah didn’t think he would make it. The land surrounding New Eden was so densely populated by zombies that a man on foot had almost zero chance of getting through alive, and a man, raving like a lunatic, had even less than that. Still, he was armed with his pipe and the .38 Smith & Wesson, something she had insisted on, more as a salve to her guilt than as a real hope that he would be able to fight his way home again.

  The guilt she felt for Artie was as fleeting as a sun-shower. She passed beneath the earth and into New Eden and, just like that, the guilt was gone, replaced by the knowledge that she had even less chance than Artie of ever seeing Maryland again.

  The home of the Believers had undergone some obvious changes in the six weeks since she had been there. The first of which was the number of people going to and fro. It seemed as though the population of New Eden had doubled or tripled. What Sarah had previously thought to be vast windowless hallways, now felt small and cramped. Though to be sure, walking with Abraham did complicate things. Unlike before, the Believers now stopped and knelt on the white tile when he passed by, causing traffic jams at every intersection.

  The second change that struck Sarah was the fear. Her own fear was literally palpable, as she could feel her pulse hammer in her temples, however it was the fear she saw in the Believers that struck Sarah as new. They eagerly dropped to their knees and eagerly put out their hands to Abraham and they eagerly cried Amen! at his simplest utterance.

  They were too eager. Sarah saw clear as day, that they were afraid of being deemed less than in some fashion; less religious, less of a fanatic, less of a Believer. It made her wonder what would happen to anyone who was seen as less than in Abraham’s eyes? Would they become “possessed” and would they be among those whose bodies couldn’t handle the exorcism? The more Sarah saw the Believers bowing and scraping, the more she thought: yes.

  This was all the more incentive for her to set her plan in motion and get out of there. Time was against her. Even if she could manage to fake worshiping a psycho like Abraham for very long, her appearance would give her away eventually. The last vestiges of her blisters and bruises would be healed completely in a day or two and her blonde hair would start to show through shortly after that.

  But what exactly was her plan? So far, its outline was the very essence of simplicity: grab Eve and make a run for the doors. It was in the details where things got sketchy. Where exactly was Eve? And where were the doors? After five minutes below ground she was already lost, and this time she couldn’t channel Jillybean. The little girl had what seemed to be a photographic memory, while Sarah had never been able to remember where she put her keys five minutes after walking in the door.

  Even with her head in a whirl of plans and fears and identical looking hallways, Sarah couldn’t help but react to the sound of her baby.

  She had been following behind Abraham and his two female bodyguards and they had just come to another of the many bisecting passageways when, from around the corner, came the throaty, low chortle that Eve made when she was being tickled. Without thinking, Sarah stepped forward so that she was practically abreast of Abraham, something that was clearly a rule that was never to be broken.

  One of the two women who flanked Abraham
shoved her back, savagely, slamming her into the wall. There might have been hard words exchanged between them but then Sarah saw Eve for the first time in more than a month, and her mouth fell open, and she was struck dumb.

  “There’s my princess!” Abraham cried.

  Because the words were so evil and so wrong, they hammered Sarah’s eardrums and sent a spike of loathing right into her heart. She burned with such hatred yet, at the same time, the sensation barely registered on her.

  There was her baby. There was Eve. That little child was the only thing pure and right in Sarah’s mind. She stared at the infant and wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. Eve seemed so big. Her cheeks had rounded into baby perfection and her hair was longer than it had been, curling just at the nape of her neck. And she had teeth! Four of them right in the front. They were little, stubby things which hadn’t been there before. Sarah was in shock. Her breathing came rapidly. Her hands opened and closed, and she did not notice right away when someone said the name, “Janice.”

  Her arm was shaken by a stranger. “Are you Janice?”

  “Huh? Me? Right, yes I am,” Sarah said, coming back to reality.

  The woman who had touched her was small and a little plump. She was dark skinned with black hair, and she introduced herself as Tina. “We should not stare. We should keep our eyes down, yet also keep them aware, in case we are fortunate enough to be spoken to by the Lord’s Prophet.”

  “Oh, right,” Sarah said, dropping her chin, but still flicking her eyes toward Eve. Seeing the baby set up such a longing inside Sarah that she thought she would strangle on the air in her lungs if she couldn’t hold her.

  “You look faint,” Tina said. “It can happen when you are around him. Come, I will show you to the preparation room.”

  “Preparation room?” Sarah asked, being pulled away by the little woman, feeling as light and empty as a kite. She tried to walk looking back at Eve, but in seconds the crowds had swallowed her up. She looked back to Tina. “What’s the preparation room? What happens there?”

  They took a turn down a hall that was far less crowded. Tina picked up speed, walking quickly on her short legs. “We will get you ready for tonight’s ceremony: your baptism into the family of believers. It is the first step in becoming one of us.”

  “Great,” Sarah said with sham enthusiasm. “Why are we walking so fast? Is it going to be soon?”

  “No. We have a little over two hours until the service,” Tina explained. “But dawdling is frowned upon, as is any expression of laziness. Idleness is a sin. The Lord wills and we works. That’s the saying we have and it’s a true fact that the people in New Eden are the most industrious in the world.”

  Sarah saw that Tina was very serious and believed every word, and yet they accomplished very little in the next two hours.

  The preparation room was two levels down and on the same level as the very bottom of the inverted pyramid-like church. There was even a little hall that led from one to the other. The room was a square and contained nothing more than a bathtub, a full-length mirror, and racks of white linen robes. She went to these first and made to touch the fabric but Tina pulled her hand away.

  “You’re still dirty with the filth of the outside world.”

  Sarah’s clothes were discarded without a thought or the least consideration, not that she had any special connection to them, beyond the fact that they were from the outside world. They represented something to her—a chance to go back. They were dirty but the dirt had come from a place that was free. New Eden, no matter how pristine, was clearly not a place of freedom.

  Still, it had its perks. Sarah was able to bathe in steaming hot waters until her toes were wrinkled like prunes. After being toweled dry, she was given a robe and anointed with heavy perfume that had her blinking from its strength. She was then inspected by Tina who looked at her short hair and made a face; there wasn’t much she could do with it.

  “You are still pretty,” she said.

  Sarah looked into the mirror and saw that, unfortunately, Tina was right. The bathwater had washed away much of her disguise: the dirt, the ash, and the ragged remnants of her Goth make up. Even her skin was almost as smooth as ever, but it was the denim-blue of her eyes where she looked most like herself.

  She tried squinting, which was better. She then added a nose-squinch to the squint and, although she looked as though she had smelled something nasty, she was practically unrecognizable.

  “Why are you doing that to your face?” Tina asked. “Do you need glasses?”

  “Yeah,” Sarah said, grasping at the ready-made lie. “I lost mine.”

  “Well, try not to do that to your face for at least for the next half hour or so. It’s almost time. See? Ten to six. We have service every night at six and every day at high noon.”

  Sarah felt her stomach heave with a case of the nerves. “So soon? I don’t know if I’m ready. I didn’t even know if he would take me. There was a rumor that he would only take people if they came in twos. When did that change?”

  “The Lord makes the rules,” Tina said, sharply. “They are handed down to the Prophet and they are not subject to our questioning, only to our obedience.”

  “Of course,” Sarah was quick to reply. Inwardly noting that any rule was to be given her whole-hearted support regardless if it contradicted an earlier rule or maybe even a current one, if that was what Abraham wished.

  Tina looked at her steadily until Sarah gave her a smile of apology, at which point Tina returned it as if nothing had happened. “Ok, I can hear the Believers coming in,” Tina said. “Yes…there’s the chanting. Just do what I do and be…enthusiastic.”

  Sarah pledged to herself that she would be enthusiastic to the point of crazy, but that was before she felt the walls of the preparation room vibrate with the thrum of hundreds of voices.

  “What are they saying?” Sarah asked. It was a rhetorical question stemming from her surprise and fear. The chanters were singing:

  My Life. My Death. For you.

  “Enthusiastic!” snapped Tina. “Don’t look so scared, Janice. Start chanting with the rest. It’ll be ok. Just do as I do and try to smile for the Prophet. You are pretty, he likes that.”

  Tina started for the door and Sarah, who did not want to be thought of as pretty by a psycho like Abraham, scrunched up her face again. After Tina said the chant once, Sarah tried to join in, however the words cut so hard against the free will ingrained in her that she stumbled over them and sounded like a teenage boy whose voice was cracking as he hit puberty.

  “Go with the flow,” Tina said. “Become one of us. My Life. My Death. For you. Just like that.”

  Sarah tried again, “My Life. My Death. For you.” She felt like crying.

  And then Tina opened the door that led to the church and the sound really struck Sarah. It was such a heavy noise that it draped on her like a weight and made walking through it like pressing into a side-slanting rain.

  At her core, she felt threatened by the chant’s fundamental insanity. She was about to be brainwashed. Here was where the process would begin and she knew better than most where it would end. In her mind she pictured Yuri’s cruise ship in the East River and she saw the cabin where she had found Abraham a month before. She could see the hand grenade cradled by his follower Timothy. He had been so happy to die for him. He had been so absolutely crazy.

  Sarah’s feet rebelled when they entered the main part of the church. It was almost filled. There were so many more of them, and their robes were nearly blindingly white. They were like an avalanche of people waiting to come crushing down on her if she made the slightest mistake. Just like Tina, they chanted with enthusiasm, each vying to be the craziest of them all.

  Tina reached back and grabbed her, chanting emphatically:”My Life. My Death. For you.” She nodded for Sarah to mimic her. Sarah tried, though her voice was so lost in the din she ended up just mouthing the words in order to hold onto her sanity.

  Then the c
hant grew louder as Abraham and his entourage of six sharp-eyed, stern women came down the center aisle. The people worshiped him. They reached out to touch him and he obliged those within reach of his long arms. He seemed part rock star, part politician and part demigod.

  “Do what I do,” Tina yelled into her ear. They were at the bottom of the main stair, right next to the shimmering pool of water. The smaller woman dropped to her knees and put her forehead to the floor. Sarah followed, afraid to even glance up to see what was happening. She didn’t need to. Abraham passed right next to her, his long robe sliding across the back of her fingers.

  He began to speak and instantly the crowd quieted. It was exactly as if a switch had been thrown. One second they were screaming their love and the next they were sitting on their hands with their lips zipped. Sarah marveled at this, wondering how a crowd could be so well trained, but then out of the corner of her eye she saw Abraham’s escort of women.

  They were the only ones not staring at the false prophet and hanging on his every word. Instead they each were watching a section of the audience and in their hands they held clipboards. Every once in a while one of them would jot a note and the people in that section would sit straighter and smile more broadly. They were afraid, but it was nothing compared to what Sarah was dealing with. She was very close to vomiting.

  “Janice, please stand,” Abraham said. Sarah was so disjointed and freaked out that she didn’t react when her fake name was mentioned. Tina shot to her feet and pulled Sarah after; she was so scared that she forgot to squint or screw up her face.

  “Yes?” she said. Abraham raised an eyebrow at this, while next to her Tina’s breath drew in sharply. “I mean yes, My Lord?” she added quickly.

  “Do not shake so,” Abraham said, smiling now that his new slave was so desperate to please. “We lose our fear when we join the family of Believers. What do we have to fear here in New Eden? Certainly not zombies, and not hunger, or disease, or any pain such as is the everyday fare in the rest of the world. We do not fear because we believe!”