I had not seen that one coming—and would have greatly appreciated a warning—but my stunned look did a thing or two to ease some of the tempers that looked ready to explode amidst the murmurs that rose in the scavenger quadrant. At his wave, I stepped forward to join him, yearning for another mug of strong coffee to jump-start my brain. I could have done without the smirk on Hamilton’s face, too.
Turning to the scavengers, I did my best to sort my frayed thoughts. “All that I can tell you is speculation, built on what little we’ve managed to extract from one of the Chemist’s assistants. I presume you all got what you thought was an updated version of the serum?” Silence settled over the arena, hanging like the death shroud over us that I figured it was for some of them. A few of them nodded, and the alarmed looks on the other faces was confirmation aplenty. “As I said, it’s all speculation, but I don’t think that’s a stable, safe version of the serum.”
I’d expected one of the more vocal scavengers like Eden to speak up now, but she and Amos were like calm pillars of confidence next to Harris. It was one of the other leaders who got in my face. “Yeah? Well, we can’t all be like you and suck the right dicks to get celebrity treatment!”
I was sorely tempted to inform him in no uncertain terms that he was sorely mistaken of how I had gotten my dose, but at least the resulting anger that came up inside of me helped my mind to focus.
Mimicking his tone, I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yeah, but you were with us at the Colorado base where I struck a truce with the very people responsible and forced them to admit that one of their rogue elements had infected hundreds of soldiers with that shit! What’s your excuse to come knocking a few months later and ask to be next in line?” Deafening silence answered me, but I didn’t feel an ounce of satisfaction at that.
Harris spoke up when nobody else would. “But didn’t we do away with that asshole scientist who screwed over all those soldiers? And I vaguely remember you blamed him for the outbreak of the zombie plague as well.”
All I could do was nod. “Yes, we killed him. And yes, I thought he was the root of all evil and doing away with him would, if not negate what had happened, put an end to it continuing to happen. Soon after that I heard doubt from others, and it’s obvious that, whether he was responsible or not, someone else has picked up the torch. I presume you know about how the mindless worker drones became what they are? Some of them are the soldiers from back then. Most are your people who have succumbed to the virus, only without fully turning into undead killing machines.”
I expected the scavenger leader to get in my face again, but it was a woman standing a short distance to the side who spoke up now. “We knew the risks involved,” she insisted, her words drawing a few murmurs but only until she silenced the others with a glare. “We knew, but most of us didn’t care. Don’t realize you’re already dead versus being close to invincible? Even knowing what I know now, I’d get the shot all over again.” Several others agreed with her, and even those who remained silent looked determined to have chosen wisely. Frustration didn’t begin to describe what I was feeling.
“But how could you—” I started to say, only to be interrupted by my least favorite person on earth as Hamilton stepped forward to join me and Nate.
“Because they still have no fucking clue what they agreed to,” he said, not having to raise his voice much to be heard clearly throughout the arena. His smirk remained directed at me for a few seconds before he turned to the audience at large, stepping a little to the left to put physical distance between himself and Nate and me. “And they are not the only ones.”
This was getting better and better. I had the creeping feeling that I wouldn’t like what he was about to say—which got a million times worse when, rather than address the entire arena, Hamilton zeroed in on me.
“How are you feeling on this fine day, Lewis? How real is your concern for your fellow scavengers? Or are you simply vexed that someone did something you disagree with and won’t see reason even when you explain their own stupidity to them?” That didn’t deserve an answer, and Hamilton barely left me five seconds before he went on, his tone turning even more nasty. “And when, exactly, did your snowflake ass turn into a master interrogator and torturer? I’ve heard that, on your crusade to Colorado to presumably kick our asses into submission, you weren’t shy to dish out a few punches so they’d get some traitors talking, but pulling out a helpless woman’s teeth? Tearing out her fingernails one by one? Cutting off her fingers segment by segment, particularly considering how that must have echoed with your own, personal trauma? Or should I say, should have? Let’s not even talk about the fact that you can eat whatever you want without a hint of revulsion, or have a zombie’s low-light vision.”
My riling mind couldn’t come up with anything to respond with—and I meant really anything; my thoughts were completely wiped clear, the only thing remaining a latent sense of dread that kept rising as he continued, staring at Nate now. “And don’t get me started on your dietary requirements.” He snorted, sending a sidelong glance my way. “You still think he just got a taste for it? Think again. I watched him retch up what normal food he tried to eat several times over the last two days. You would have noticed, too, if you weren’t so damn lovestruck—or did you zone out a time or two and miss it because of that?”
The fact that Nate didn’t even try to protest gave me the heebie-jeebies, but as such things went, it was so much easier to get defensive than to think clearly. “All that can easily be explained with the shitload of trauma we’ve been through. And you’re not exactly a paragon of sanity, either.”
Hamilton laughed, and I hated that it sounded awfully like agreement. “Sure as hell I’m not,” he told me with what must have been the first borderline nice smile in my direction ever. I hoped I’d never see that again. “And why should I be different? Just like you, and him, and a lot of other people, I got inoculated with the serum, and I believed the lies that they told us. Not even lies—none of us knew any better. The fact, plain and simple, is that no single version of the serum was ever foolproof against the zombie virus. It just gave us an extension of life. But that first bite or scratch was all it took to sign our death warrants. Just like with anybody else.”
I wouldn’t have been surprised if a fanfare of doom-and-gloom music had started blasting from the speakers the arena was rigged with just then. It would have been the perfect baseline for how my heart started to race, loud enough to drown out all other sound—and there was quite the confused shouting going on all around us. I turned to look at Nate, sure that he would be full of the same denial that I was hanging on to with dear life—but only found grim acceptance. So back in Hamilton’s smirking face it was.
“That’s bullshit!” I shouted, loud enough to be heard over the din, which incidentally shut most people up. “Plain and simple! That can’t be true.”
Hamilton chuckled. “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t make it so,” he jeered—and was only too happy to keep rambling on with his bullshit theory. “Some—those who were lucky and only had a few encounters with the undead—still have a few more years until their time runs out. Others—like you, and Miller, and me—got up close with the zombies way too often for there to be much immunity left. Well, you’re possibly the worst, because I can’t think of anyone else who actually started rotting from the inside out, but he’s not that far behind. The signs are obvious, and I’m sure I’ve missed listing quite some more. We’ve had instances of unexplained instant conversion for years, and they have gotten awfully common of late. You were there in France when Rodriguez bit it on that blasted golf course and came back before anyone could put her down for good. How do you explain that?” He paused for a moment. “Don’t trust me? Trust one of your own.” He turned to the Ice Queen of all people, who stared back at him without a hint of emotion on her face. “Zilinsky, you tell her: how many of your people have turned over the past two years who shouldn’t have?”
She hesitated, glancing
at Nate for guidance, but answered when nothing came. “Five.” Reluctance was heavy in her tone, and it took me a few moments to identify it as my own dread’s twin. “Two could have been suicides. And a third might have died in the fire. But we had two instances of people dying in the middle of the night with no natural cause or explanation. And all of them came back.”
My need for denial was so strong that it threatened to choke me, but there had to be an explanation for this outside of what Hamilton was alluding to. Maybe voicing it would make it obvious just how ridiculous his theory was? “So what you are saying is that the scavengers aren’t slowly turning because the serum they got was faulty, but everyone who ever got inoculated is, only their version is acting at different speeds than ours? That makes no sense!”
The sardonic smile I got in return just added to the dread clawing at my throat. “Then why do you think they had me deliver a dose of the weaponized version we got from France to their primary testing facility?” Gears started spinning in my head, but not because his question was so hard to process—no. I hadn’t expected him to be that outright and honest. I was still gaping at Hamilton when he turned back to the gathering at large, but mostly glanced Nate’s way as if he was answering the questions Nate had posed minutes ago. “I can’t tell you the why and how of everything that has been going on here, but a few things are obvious. Whoever is behind this shit has been using this camp as a real-time testing ground for years, with fresh-blood guinea pigs lining up faster than they could have churned out serum versions to test on them.” I was certain his phrasing was deliberate, stressing the same term Cortez had used for the first-time arena fighters. I couldn’t suppress a shudder at the implications. Yet when Hamilton’s gaze zeroed in on me, I got the sense that he hadn’t even gotten to the worst part yet.
“You think those brain-dead workers are the negatives?” he asked, and I was sure that was a personal question directed at me. He went on talking without waiting for an answer. “I say, there’s a good chance that they are the independent alternate experimental setup.” His stare, unwavering, continued to bore into me. “Remember my warning? Dying to save others isn’t the worst thing that could happen to any of us.”
It took me a moment to make the connection—and when I finally did, my previous dread paled in comparison to the phantom fingers closing around my neck. “You mean, someone is turning their own army of super-soldiers who will do whatever they are told because they no longer have a mind of their own to consider whether the order they are following is one worth following?”
The hint of annoyance creeping onto Hamilton’s face didn’t make up for his belligerent smile. “We have a needlessly convoluted winner.”
It made sense—too much sense. And it was easier to focus on than the part that directly affected me. “And the drugs that they have been testing on you…”
“…is the shit that cuts through the extra protection of the updated version,” Hamilton stated, finishing my sentence. “Whatever they’ve been feeding those weirdos is the large-scale, low-dosage trial run.”
Maybe it was due to a certain level of cognitive decline, but my mind didn’t even bother with useless denial and went straight to agreeing with him. And it did make sense—the drugs that Harris and his people had been giving me had definitely worked on me, but the buzz had been comparatively low. Cortez’s men had shot me up with the undiluted shit, and the aftereffects of that still had me crawling up the walls. Anyone subjected to that who hadn’t gotten the full serum protection would likely have died. So much for Cortez’s interrogation plans that we’d crossed.
It all made sense—even though I didn’t want it to. And not just the camp and the turning tide of the scavengers.
“He sent you here to die because you warned us,” I muttered, too late realizing that I’d said that out loud when Hamilton’s gaze turned hard, the taunting quality of before gone. “Decker, I mean. That’s who we believe is running the show behind the scenes, right? You became useless, or more of a nuisance than you were worth, and they needed a candidate to run the full-scale experiments on. That you did them a favor and didn’t just up and die only helped them with continued testing.”
Someone else would have at least given me a hint of credit for that deduction. All I got was a sneer. “You think you’re so fucking smart—”
“And she is,” Nate interjected, coming out of his—definitely disconcerting—stupor that had been mildly disguised as attentive listening. “Cortez didn’t know who I was, so, more often than not, I got the low dose.” When he caught the confusion on my face, Nate shrugged. “I’m sure he’d figured that because I had the scavenger marks, I couldn’t have been part of the project when they rolled out the update that renders us immune to the mind-control shit. Everything they pumped me full of screwed with my mind, but more often than not I managed to fight through the worst of the haze before the end of the arena combat. That’s why the first time we ended up in the arena together, I managed to hold back from needing to kill him, and why around a third of my opponents went on to live another day. I had to turn it all into a massive, crowd-pleasing spectacle to keep myself alive, but that still means that more often than not I couldn’t hold back.”
I had a certain feeling that his last fight that I’d witnessed had been one of those, but didn’t ask. Plausible as Nate’s deduction sounded, it opened the door to another question. Turning to Hamilton, I couldn’t help but scrutinize him all over again, but except for more vitriol I got nothing from him, closed-off bastard that he was. That forced me to ask the question suddenly burning on my mind. “That explains why you are still alive. But what’s your excuse?”
I didn’t miss the sidelong glance he cast at Nate, as if the fact that he hadn’t killed him still amused Hamilton. Nate’s expression turned guarded, making me guess that the silent exchange between them had sent another message that I hadn’t caught. With his usual amount of scorn returning, Hamilton answered me. “Wanna know my secret? My one true super power? I have amazing self-control, which is what you owe your life to.” I couldn’t help but make a face—did he really think I’d buy that bull?—but he went on before I could call him a liar, his voice gravelly and low enough that it barely carried beyond where I could hear him. “Your asshole of a husband told you what happened before they shot us up? The moment I came to again, my entire world was consumed with the kind of homicidal rage that you will never come to understand. There was nothing and nobody that I wasn’t ready to kill, and right that very instant. Yet because my reaction must have been the most predictable in the world, Decker had given me a warning just before they put me under; that if I didn’t perform exactly as expected, and in fact keep excelling in every single detail, what happened would be child’s play compared to what storm I’d call down. And that thought—that fear—was enough of a lifeline not to lose myself even when every single fiber of my being was screaming to let go. Maybe it’s coincidence that they hadn’t perfected their drugs yet, but nothing Cortez shot me up with tore through that iron grip that I’ve always had on myself, and that’s the only reason why you’re not a widow or plain dead yet.”
A shiver ran up my spine, and not because of that last little detail. I got the sense that, for the first time—and probably the only time—I’d just gotten a glimpse at the real Bucky Hamilton, the man who Nate, on some level, still considered his friend, or at least worth keeping around until he stopped being useful. I’d never expected to say that, but I much preferred the asshole persona he usually rolled out around me. He was one of the few people who I never wanted to feel two things for: empathy and respect. What he’d just told me evoked something inside of me that came way too close to both for me to be comfortable with. Judging from how quickly his usual mask slammed back in place, he must have felt the same way, his smirk making me want to repeatedly wash myself.
Riding shotgun with that realization came a different, if no less uncomfortable one. “What you did at the base—and right up to our fu
n little training stint on the destroyer—that wasn’t you actually trying to force-feed me the tools I’d need to keep a grip on myself and not convert on all your asses where you were locked in with me in a tin can of a ship, now, was it?” I didn’t need any confirmation from him—and, in a sense, he had already given it in the past, only that he’d claimed that my hatred for him had been the one thing that got me through that eternity on the operating room table—but the way Nate’s eyes widened, if only a fraction, told me I was right.
Hamilton, of course, had to answer with a derisive snort. “Self-important little shit as always,” he drawled, his smirk now directed at Nate as he kept talking to me. “It was a win-win situation for me. Either he’s stuck with you—which should have been the ultimate worst-case scenario for any guy—or I get a front-row seat to watching him having to put you down like the bitch you are, thus crushing that last thread of humanity he’s been holding on to for ages. Nothing to lose for me, and everything to gain.”
This was getting way too personal for an audience in the high double digits, but I couldn’t help it; I just had to ask. “Is it me, personally, that you have issues with, or are you still playing some idiotic game that makes you think you have to come up ahead of him? Because, really, since it looks like we’ll have to work together, I’d like to know if it’s something I said or did. I know I have my share of much-deserved resentment present in this world, but I just can’t figure out why you’re always up in my business.”
Hamilton’s mouth twisted into something that in anyone else, under different circumstances, would have been a smile, but I knew that wasn’t the case here. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” And clearly, that was the last he was going to say on that topic.
Retribution: Green Fields #11 Page 7
