“Dammit!” Zach said as they stopped.
“Tell me that wasn’t the tires,” Cheryl said as she felt a sickening lurch in her stomach.
“Do you want me to lie?”
Zach and Diego got out at the same time to inspect the damage. They hopped back inside a couple of seconds later, completely drenched. “Both front tires,” Zach said. “No accident. There’s a strip of road spikes underneath all that garbage.”
They sat there for a moment, paralyzed with indecision as rain streamed in through the driver’s side window and the back, soaking them down to their bones.
“Why would someone booby trap a road in the middle of nowhere?” Vinnie asked.
“No clue,” Diego said.
Deflated, they remained sitting for a few more seconds, then Zach opened his door. “Guess we’re on foot from here.”
There was a round of groans as they all got out and headed for the trunk to grab the packs they’d made up back in Quimera. They’d only gone a few yards up the road when the view seemed to grow darker ahead of them. The rain blurred the image, making it look like a black cloud that had settled onto the ground and stretched across the road as far as they could see on either side.
“What is that?” Cheryl said to Aidan, who’d stopped right beside her.
“Don’t know...”
They stood in the rain as a wall of blackness advanced upon them. What sounded like a low hum underneath the rush of water falling from the sky began to grow louder and coalesced into a cacophony of moans.
Vinnie was the first one to take a step backwards. Cheryl was the next, and the first one to voice the command. “Run!”
They all whipped around, instinctively heading towards the car then skirting around it as they sprinted and stumbled down the road that was turning into a slippery mess. They hadn’t gone far when there was an ear-piercing wail behind them.
“Wait! Help!”
Recognizing Vinnie’s voice, Cheryl slowed and looked back over her shoulder. She could barely make out his silhouette several yards back. He was in the mud on his elbows and knees, and the toes of his shoes kept skidding in the muck as he tried to get back on his feet. He got half way up and fell again. He was on his knees, trying to pry his nail-studded board from the earth when the first figure appeared behind him, emerging from the curtains of rain like a ghost from the mist.
As Cheryl ran towards them with her board, the creature fell on top of him. Vinnie began to scream and thrash, throwing back elbows and feet. The two of them struggled in a macabre wrestling match, and there was such a tangle of flying limbs she couldn’t get a clean swing at the zombie’s head. Her chance came when Vinnie was in a lunge, trying to get to his feet, and there was a foot of space between him and the rising creature. She swung and the board connected at its temple. Vinnie scrambled to his feet, and the Eater remained on ground, looking like a soggy Halloween decoration.
Zach and Diego were beside them now, having apparently come back to help. Before they could run, figures appeared all around them and crowded in closer. There were so many, it was like a solid wall of corpses with no daylight between them.
Diego let out a feral howl and began swinging his board. Zach stood back to back with him and did the same. After toppling a few of the figures surrounding them like bowling pins and creating an opening, Diego screamed, “Go! Run!”
Cheryl and Vinnie took off through the opening in the ring as the other two men continued to whack and kick at the innumerable figures around them. As they ran, their shoes became so caked with mud their feet grew heavy, sinking deeper into the gooey soil with each step. Despite their best efforts to escape, they were slowing down to little more than a march.
It’s over, Cheryl thought as she lifted a heavy leg, feeling the suction of the mud grabbing at her like quick sand. This is it. It’s all—
She braced herself for the first touch of claw-like fingers…the teeth from foul, hungry mouths to clamp down on her from behind. There was one beside her now. It was barefoot and wasn’t burdened by mud-filled shoes, so its skeletal feet sliced through the muck with more ease. To her surprise, it passed right by her. It kept going like she wasn’t even there. There was another. Then another. Each one went right on by…
No teeth.
No tearing of flesh.
No blood.
She realized the Eaters weren’t attacking them and stopped trying to run. She stood still and watched. The rain began to ease up a little. Instead of torrents, it was now cascading in fat, individual drops. As the seconds went by, the drops began to diminish until they became a light shower…then a mist…then almost nothing as the spring rain cloud ran out of ammunition. With her visibility increased, she could see what looked like hundreds, perhaps thousands of ghouls around her. They came in solid waves like a herd of buffalo. Although they were charging towards her and her friends, it now seemed like it was simply a coincidence. They weren’t being pursued; they were simply in the path of this massive horde.
Then, she realized something else. They weren’t Eaters—they were Beasts. Every single one of them that she could see had a black EM box affixed behind one ear (or near the spot where their ear used to be).
There was something else strange about them, but she couldn’t take the time to study them anymore. Zach and Diego were still butchering them right and left, swinging their boards and bashing in heads. Blackish blood, teeth, and mud flew in a spray all around them.
Cheryl ran back to them as fast as she could. “Stop! Stop! They’re not attacking us!”
They didn’t acknowledge her presence at first; they were in warrior mode. Kill or be killed. There was no stop in their heads. She screamed as loud as she could, and Zach turned towards her. His board was raised high over the top of his head, and he was ready to swing again. From his head to his toes he was caked in reddish-brown slime, a mixture of earth and death, and his eyes were wild with rage. He paused for a few seconds, panting heavily, and stared at her like he was seeing a mirage.
She stretched her arms out, palms up, and twisted from side to side, showing him. There’s no danger. They’re not trying to eat us…
After another second, he seemed to get it. He lowered his board, and the look on his face went from one of fury to an expression of amazement. He looked over his shoulder at Diego. His soaked blond hair was whipping around his head like strands of rope as he kicked one of the Beasts to the ground and twisted around to swing at another behind him.
Zach tried yelling to him. When that didn’t get his attention, Zach threw his board at Diego’s feet. He saw it and turned in their direction with his weapon raised as if he was ready to beat the hell out of whoever had just disarmed his friend. Then, seeing Cheryl and Zach standing there staring at him, his jaw dropped and his muscled arms lowered slowly inch by inch. He looked at the Beasts stumbling past him and down at the ground at the ones he’d slaughtered who made up a wide arc of bodies around him.
Cheryl took a step backwards to avoid a head on collision as one of the Beasts, a teenaged girl with her hair in a ponytail, came close to smacking directly into her. For a moment, she’d been face to face with the girl who was about the same height. Her appearance was typical for the walking dead; her complexion was an ashy shade of gray and her skin was loose and peeling, but there was something odd about one of her eyes. The eyes of the dead were usually opaque with a whitish or yellowish cast. This girl’s left eye fit that description. It looked filmy and lifeless, but her other eye socket contained a small, round piece of embedded dark glass.
A camera.
She looked around at the other Beasts and realized that each had a similar eye.
“They’re not attacking us,” Diego said.
Zach and Cheryl shook their heads in unison.
“Look at their eyes,” Cheryl said.
“Are those cameras?” Zach asked. “How? But…but…why?”
She understood his confusion. It seemed absurd on the surface. Why woul
d anyone go to so much trouble to wire up so many Beasts with a programmable chip and camera to turn them into mobile spies? Why indeed? Zach and Diego hadn’t been in Sedona. They hadn’t seen how O.N.E. had turned Eaters into Beasts—mobile corpses who could be made into just about any type of slave to sweep streets, serve drinks, and even do back-breaking labor like moving slabs of stone to build a pyramid to host their mind-control technology. It was no stretch of the imagination to see why One New Earth might want to fit a herd of Beasts with eyepieces and let them roam freely about the countryside to be their scouts. Apparently, they’d been able to mass produce their technology and make it feasible to use it on considerable numbers of the dead population.
Diego’s rage changed to amusement. He started getting close to them, blocking their path, staring into their camera eye and making faces.
“Stop it!” she said. “We need to get away from them.”
“What’s the hurry? They’re wandering around like idiots.”
She took his arm, pulling him away from a decrepit young woman who still had a macabre aura of beauty even after death. “You don’t understand.” she said into his ear. “If they have cameras, they’re watching us.”
He snickered for a moment, still not getting it. “They…” Then, the light bulb seemed to go off. He recoiled from an elderly, hunched man thumping past them. “They’re watching us…”
“Come on,” she said. Let’s find Vinnie and Aidan and get out of here.”
They wandered through the crowd, searching for their friends. It was hard to be amongst so many of the dead shambling past her and remain calm. Every Beast that brushed against her put her on edge. The stench of being amongst so many dead bodies was overwhelming—she hadn’t noticed it when she running for her life, but it was enough now to make her pull her wet shirt up over her nose.
About ten yards away, they found Vinnie crouched under the branches of a thorny shrub with his hands covering his head. He was soaked to the bone and covered in mud, looking much like a turtle who’d retracted into its shell. It took several minutes to convince him that his life wasn’t in danger and get him to rise to his feet.
“Where’s Aidan?” Cheryl asked once he seemed to be paying attention to her.
His eyes stared back at her. They were wide, blank. There was a slight shake of his head.
She glanced at Diego and Zach. Their grim, tight lipped mouths seemed to agree there was no point in trying to interrogate him further. With Vinnie in tow, they kept moving and had no better luck trudging through the thick mud than they did when the rain was coming down.
Cheryl began to call out, “Aidan!” Then, the others joined in, shouting his name.
If he was anywhere nearby and fighting out of instinct against these grotesque but docile creatures, it seemed like it would be easy to spot his frenzied board swinging above their heads or hear his shouts. But, after going a few more yards, they were surrounded by so many trudging bodies, it became apparent that it might be impossible to find him until the horde had passed through. She was about to suggest that the four of them stop searching and stay put when something caught her attention on a low hill in the distance. It was a square shape wobbling to the left and right as it bumped over the ruts in a dirt road.
“Somebody’s coming,” Zach said.
“A truck,” Diego said, shielding his eyes as a beam of sunlight pricked through the passing clouds.
The shape became more distinct with every passing second. It was a large vehicle, dark in color. At first, it looked like a large SUV. Then, as it came closer, it was apparent that it was an armored truck, one of O.N.E.’s mine-resistant vehicles with bullet proof glass and a gun turret. Armageddon on wheels.
For a second, she hoped that it was military, or someone who’d regained control of the area and was coming to rescue them. Then, a jolt of fear coursed through her.
She grabbed Zach’s arm. “Move like them.”
“What?”
“Hunch over. Stagger your walk.”
After looking at her for a second like she’d lost her mind, he complied by distorting his limbs and making his steps more awkward. Diego smirked as if they were mocking the crowd around them, then he did the same. Vinnie was already looking half dead as he walked, so they didn’t bother trying to tell him to alter his movements.
“You think it’s O.N.E.?” Zach asked with his crooked head.
“With the cameras around us?” Cheryl whispered back. “Who else?”
“We could run,” Diego said as he nudged a waif like corpse out of the way and came up beside her.
“I don’t think we—”
At that moment, every Beast within ten yards of them stopped in his tracks and turned around to face them, forming a circular wall of bones and rotting flesh. If they’d had any thought of running, that option was gone now. She could see Zach and Diego’s eyes flitting around, looking for a weak spot.
“Don’t,” she said, knowing that if they tried to escape now, all it would take was someone in a control room far away or inside that advancing truck to push a button that would set the Beasts on them like hungry demons.
They didn’t have to wait long for the truck with the triangular O.N.E. symbol on the side to reach them. When it did, the Beasts parted to make a path for it. It rumbled to a stop in front of them. Six men hopped out of the back, wielding automatic rifles. Cheryl and the others put their hands in the air
In a gruff voice, one of the soldiers ordered them to get into the back of the truck. Cheryl felt the barrel of a gun in her back when her steps were too slow for their liking. She wished she had some pinprick of light in her thoughts to hang onto but this time…it looked like their luck had truly run out. This wasn’t some filthy cattle truck headed towards a jail cell in some small town. This was an inescapable combat vehicle from a well-oiled operation run by maniacs who’d decided to reduce the population and take over the world.
There was a moment of shock when she reached the back of the truck and saw Aidan sitting inside. He didn’t look at her. His head was down, and he seemed zoned out like his mind was somewhere far away.
Before she allowed herself to be forced into the truck, she turned around and faced the gunman who’d been prodding her along like a piece of meat on its way to the slaughterhouse. “Why are you doing this? We haven’t done anything to—”
He gave her a shove up the back ramp. “We’ve got orders. You’re wanted in Denver.”
“Denver?” she asked. “As far as I know, everyone I’ve ever known there is dead. So who could possibly—”
“Luke Marshall.”
PART III
Chapter 14
They huddled together inside the truck as it rumbled away. Garish interior lighting emitted a sterile-looking white light that did nothing for their haggard faces and caused black shadows to fall over the hunched forms of the O.N.E. soldiers. With a few politely worded questions, Cheryl tried her best to extract more information out of them about what was going on in Denver with Luke Marshall and One New Earth, but she got nowhere. They just stared back at her with looks of disdain.
It was boggling to think they had come so far, escaping so many encounters with zombies and attempts on their lives just to be scooped up like detritus now and transported off to some unknown fate. Her companions seemed just as stunned. Vinnie and Diego sat with their eyes open, but hazy as they stared at nothing in front of them. Zach remained stoic, sitting there quietly like he was either deep in thought or was reciting some mantra over and over in his head. And Aidan looked haggard. When a jolt from a bump in the road forced his head upright, she could see the hollow look in his eye that seemed part of a vast space where his deeper thoughts had once been.
A couple miles down the road, Vinnie kneaded his hands together, working them back and forth like dough. He spoke in a low voice to no one in particular. “We’re going to be punished. They’re going to make an example of us. We’re going to die when we—”
�
�Shut up, amigo,” Diego said. “Panicking isn’t going to help anything.”
But, Vinnie get kept on rambling, his voice growing louder. “They’ll make a sport out of it like the Christians being fed to the lions. Eating us while we’re still—”
One of the men with guns shouted, “Can it, asshole…or you can ride on the roof.”
“So no free speech anymore, either? You’re just a bunch of monkeys with guns. A bunch of—”
Cheryl put a hand on his shoulder to stop him and held up her other hand towards the soldier that was starting to rise to his feet. She wondered what had gotten into Vinnie. Was he trying to goad them into killing him?
Vinnie opened his mouth to speak again and Diego leaned forward with a fist. “We got a long ride ahead of us. Either you shut up…or I help you sleep part of the way.”
He leaned back in his seat, arms folded. Cheryl didn’t doubt that Diego would have slugged him and the soldier would have roughed him up if he hadn’t quieted down. She hoped he would keep his cool and not make things any worse, because there was a long drive ahead of them. She estimated that a drive in a normal car on good roads from the Albuquerque area to Denver would take around seven hours. In this heavy vehicle, it would require more frequent fuel stops. There also might be delays if roads were impassable and they had to take detours. That would give them a lot of time to think…to come up with some sort of plan to get out of what seemed like an inescapable situation. They had managed to get out of a jail cell and escaped other close calls in Quimera. Could some creative thinking get them out of this tangle as well?
Glancing at their captors again, she could see that they were all very young, none looking much over the age of twenty. Even so, they looked like battle worn, well-fed mercenaries. They were muscled up like they’d been through a hardcore boot camp in the last few months, and the way they talked and carried themselves gave the impression that a sort of robo-soldier mentality had been instilled in them. She searched their eyes as they talked amongst themselves and saw coldness. Unlike the rookie with Camacho’s men who might have been sympathetic to an escape plan, all of these guys looked like the kill or be killed program was fully loaded. Her gut feeling was that there’d be no bribing, no seducing, no reasoning with them. They were here for a mission and didn’t seem to care who their captives were. As she listened to more of their banter, they boasted about women they’d been with and Eaters they’d abused like factory animals before turning them over to become Beasts with electro-magnetic implants. Their detachment from the inhumanity of it all disgusted her and made her hate them all the more.
Eaters: Resurrection Page 19
