Reversion

by Paul B. Kohler

  Clay squinted and tried again. In the silence that followed, he decided to try directing instead of destroying. He focused his thoughts on arms. And in jerky, uncoordinated motions, crazed all raised their arms as if in surrender. Clay held them like that for a moment before allowing them to collapse. As he let go, he realized he’d been holding his breath.

  “Wow!” Lane exclaimed. “You held them for like a whole minute. Try again? Something bigger this time?”

  Over the course of the next thirty minutes, he forced his mind into overdrive, experimenting with the legs and arms of the crazed, then controlling more precise movement. He found that he could control their fingers; he could tilt their heads. By the end of it, he began to spin them around in a macabre dance—something that had Lane holding her sides from laughter.

  It had been a long time since Clay made someone laugh. He liked the feeling. Impulsively, he named them. “Larry, Curly, and Moe. Just like your silly candy stores,” he told Lane. And then, tried a Three Stooges’ show, making them dance and spin and fall on the ground. Lane laughed until she cried.

  “You’ve almost got it, Clay,” she gasped. “I reckon you’re pretty close.”

  “I need more time to practice,” Clay said, finally releasing the crazed. They began to roar their frustration at their lack of control. “Just a bit more time.”

  Chapter 59

  Sherman, Quintin, and Rex returned to the farmhouse about an hour later, their pickup stocked with still more food. Piles of crackers, cans of soup and other necessities. The three men unloaded, passing supplies to Agnes, Alayna, and Megan, who organized them into piles.

  On the other side of the truck, Maia and Brandon spoke in hushed whispers. Every once in a while, Brandon touched Maia’s upper shoulder in an almost intimate (but maybe just friendly? he hoped) way.

  Everyone seemed too comfortable there at the farm, and Malcolm was speeding away.

  “No fuel,” Rex grunted to Clay.

  “Shit,” Clay said. He was genuinely unsure if they had enough to get them to the base. Eyeing the sun, he reasoned that they still had plenty of daylight to get up there. “Well, there’s no point sticking around here,” he said.

  “Except to rest up,” Megan replied. “You all must be exhausted. I can’t imagine—”

  “Right now, we’ve got surprise on our side,” Clay insisted. As he thought about it, about the hours they’d wasted at the farmhouse, he realized it had been a poorly conceived plan. Malcolm was racing ahead, maniacal and wild, thinking only of the ways he and the general could rule what was left of the world.

  “Clay’s right,” Alayna said. “We can’t sit back on this. Malcolm’s out of his mind, and that works in his favor.”

  “He’ll probably drive almost all the way to the military base before stopping to plan his own attack,” Clay said, nodding firmly.

  “I mean, we don’t know how big the military base is,” Quintin interrupted. “It could be a futile mission all around for us.”

  Clay shrugged, unsure of how to respond. “Sure. Fuck it. You’re right,” he said. “But regardless of all that, we won’t know the truth until we get up there. And hemming and hawing at this farmhouse isn’t going to do anything for us.”

  “How far do you think we are from the base?” Rex asked, spitting on the dried-out and cracked soil of the driveway.

  “A few hundred miles,” Quintin said.

  “And fuel? We can find that on the way,” Rex said, his eyes sizzling with the kind of manic energy Clay felt brewing inside himself. “Fuck it, we’ll make it happen, Clay. Even if that bus of yours is a piece of shit gas guzzler, I guess it’s all we’ve got.”

  Sherman stepped in front of Rex and glowered. Everyone froze. Looking down at Rex from his considerable height advantage he growled, “You want to talk shit about my church’s bus again?”

  The sentence was such a surprise, such a shock, that both Megan and Alayna laughed. Even Clay felt a smile escape. Rex clapped his hand on Sherman’s shoulder, shaking his head.

  “At the end of all of this, Sherman, I hope you stick around. I think I like you,” he said.

  Chapter 60

  Sun. Beating down on my back. I lick at my chin, feeling for leftovers from my last kill. The blood of that woman, oozing down my face, my neck. I drew it in, ripped at her flesh, hungry almost immediately for more. MORE.

  But as I try to lurch myself toward the STENCH OF FLESH, I cannot move. I push all my energy toward my arms, my legs. GO. EAT, I tell myself. The way I always have, I always have. But nothing moves. I try to turn my head to see more, but even my neck is paralyzed.

  On either side of me, there’s more of me. Equals, like me. I see that we’re all erect, standing straight up and down—our limbs rigid, and our tongues so suddenly returned our mouths.

  Aaaaah!

  HUNGER rips and tears into my brain, I can do nothing. I cannot even wail.

  We are in a row, staring forward. And then, my right leg moves. Then my left. I’m moving forward. And incredibly, the men on either side of me move too. We seem to move mechanically. LEFT. RIGHT. LEFT. RIGHT. I cannot stop it. It’s just happening—

  Again, I try to see. Just to know! But my body is no longer my own. Just this ravenous, crazed mind …

  Suddenly, we turn about-face, finding ourselves in front of a FIELD of FLESHY MEN. I smell their blood, pumping in their veins. I KNOW what they taste like. I yearn to rush toward them, my arms outstretched. I know they couldn’t outrun me, if only I had control. If only I could FIGHT …

  But no. This invisible force pushes my feet to the ground, and I remain erect, straight up and down, surrounded by others just like me. What are we? Are we puppets? Whose machine is this?

  Will I ever eat again?

  Chapter 61

  “I hear them,” Clay muttered to himself, leaning back in the passenger seat of the bus. They were coming up on a cluster of parked vehicles—all scattered pell-mell across the pavement. He held his head, feeling the crazeds’ thoughts crash through his mind.

  “Well, this is as far as we can go,” Sherman said, tapping the fuel indicator. “If we don’t siphon out some gas, we’ll be fucked in the next thirty miles. Crazed or no crazed, we’ve got to get off this bus.”

  Clay knew he was right. Reaching for his walkie-talkie, he connected with Rex behind them. “You see this cluster?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Rex’s voice crackled.

  “We’ve got to siphon,” Clay said. “We won’t make it if we don’t.”

  “Roger that.”

  At the edge of the cluster, Sherman cut the engine. Clay turned to the exhausted, crumpled faces of the people in his bus. “We’re going to have a few of you help siphon, but the rest you stay on the bus.”

  Maia gave him a look, one that spoke of “wanting to help.” But Clay kept going, slicing his palm through the air. This wasn’t going to be where Maia died—at the edge of some cruddy field, in the middle of nowhere. No way in hell.

  “Maia, Marcia, Lane, Leland … Hank, if you want one, I’ll give you a pass here,” he said.

  But Hank sprung to his feet, rifle in hand. “I’m standing guard,” he said, bolting down the aisle.

  To Clay’s surprise, Lane was only a few steps behind. She pressed her palm against his chest, almost shoving him. “You fool,” she said. “If you run into the crazed, I can’t trust you to handle them yourself. You need someone to talk you down. Try to control them.”

  Lane put her hand on her rifle, showing she was prepared for whatever came along. Knowing this was practice he might need, Clay nodded, then gestured at the vehicles.

  “Let’s be quick,” he said, his voice hushed. “Quick and as quiet as we can. You know they can smell us and hear us. The sooner we’re back on the bus, the better.”

  With a last glance at Maia, peering through the dingy windshield, Clay ducked between the cars, with Lane in tow. They spread out like spiderwebs, curling around the cars beneath the burning
sun. They worked in pairs, one standing guard while the other siphoned gas. No one spoke much. Alayna and Megan held hands atop the bus, surveying the fields on either side.

  “They’re coming,” Clay whispered to Lane, feeling the aggressive thoughts stirring. “I know they’re coming. They smell us.”

  He wasn’t sure how he knew it, but he did. He jostled the last of the gas into his can and returned it to the bus, watching the horizon. He knew they would appear in just seconds.

  “You have to control your mind, if you’re going to control them,” Lane told him. Her knuckles were white, showing her own fear, but her voice was firm. “Concentrate. Remember how you trained your thoughts.”

  Clay walked toward the edge of cars, staring at a thicket of pines. Sure enough, a dozen or more of the crazed sprang from the shadows, their arms thrashing. He heard their guttural cries, could literally feel their pain, their need for flesh. His own tongue almost tasted it: this craving.

  But, there was something else. The innate desire to feel something. To be something more than a monster.

  There was something almost human about them. An otherness.

  He couldn’t explain it.

  Agnes raised her gun first, firing one shot, then another. The second one tore into the skull of one of the front-running crazed. Lane followed suit, crying out to Clay. “DO SOMETHING. YOU KNOW YOU CAN!”

  Clay’s crew ran back toward the bus, their eyes showing white. They couldn’t move quickly enough. The crazed were far too swift, like gazelle across the plains.

  Clenching his fists, Clay forced himself to concentrate. He stared at the skeletal arms and legs, at the way they moved, and his face scrunched with concentration. Initially, he pushed too hard. Once again, a head exploded, splattering blood only inches from Brandon’s feet. Holding back slightly, trying to balance it, Clay began to push against the crazed. Suddenly, their bodies leaned backward, away from him.

  They slowed, became mechanical. Like robots, with Clay holding the controller.

  Clay pushed a little harder, walking toward them—like a shepherd to his sheep. As he neared them, that growing feeling—that they had THOUGHTS, that they were still IN THERE, in some capacity—seemed more and more evident. At fifteen feet away, he could see something glimmering in their eyes.

  Something painful. Something beyond the hunger.

  “CLAY! STOP SCREWING AROUND AND GET IN HERE!”

  It was Lane, yanking him back to reality. He lost his concentration. The crazed were dopey for a moment before recognizing their surroundings. Clay back stepped up onto the bus and closed the door tightly behind him. The remaining crazed charged the bus, rocking it back and forth.

  Rex’s voice came from the walkie-talkie. “Clay, whatever the hell you did out there—you saved us,” he said. “Damn. Maybe you have more control than you thought.”

  Chapter 62

  As Sherman drove, Clay collapsed in the seat immediately behind him, exhausted. His hands continued to shake. He leaned his head back, wanting to catch just a moment of sleep before they arrived at Earlton.

  But within seconds, Megan appeared beside him. Her eyes were haughty, removed. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned closer to him, almost breathing down his neck. Clay waited, knowing that anything she said, anything she tried with him, he could master. She was still just a stick-thin woman from Carterville, a snake of a woman who’d left Alayna behind.

  Clay couldn’t trust her.

  “What is it, Megan?” he asked.

  “I know about Alayna,” she said, her voice low. Clay could hardly hear it over the bus engine.

  “Oh?” Clay asked, giving her a small shrug.

  “I know she’s—she’s pregnant,” Megan said. “She didn’t keep it from me long, you know. Told me straight out what happened. And now she’s telling me she has the nanites inside her. Just like you.”

  Clay nodded. Megan’s face crumpled slightly, showing her fear, her sadness. She fell into the seat beside him, staring straight ahead as she continued her speech.

  “First of all, I can’t believe the two of you. How could you possibly—”

  “Don’t do that,” Clay said. “There’s a lot of fingers that could be pointed around here, and a lot of those fingers would be pointed directly at you.”

  Megan didn’t speak for a moment. Again, her chin quivered, showing her apprehension. Smashing her fist against her thigh, she said, “I just don’t want Alayna to wind up like you. With all those—things—in her system? I mean, she’s going to go crazy, too. Isn’t she? She told me how you destroyed that church, Clay. You can’t control yourself. And in Alayna’s state, she has far more to care about than just herself. She has to keep herself alive—and sane—for the sake of the baby.”

  “Lane’s explained that it’s a bit different with Alayna,” Clay said, surprised at Megan’s apparent compassion. He saw the love in her eyes. “Because Alayna’s pregnant, it’s possible that her body is protecting the baby instead of allowing the nanites to take over. I guess we have to trust that, for now.”

  Lane got up, hearing her name. She brought Jacobs with her. “Clay!” she exclaimed, interrupting the moment. “Hey! Jacobs and I were just discussing something. Something pretty incredible. He was running through the numbers and thinks that maybe, just maybe, if we got you and Alayna into a fully-functioning lab, we could reverse the effects of the nanites.”

  Clay gaped. “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. The bus bumped over a deep pothole, shaking them.

  “It’s not for certain, of course. And finding a functional lab will be a pretty difficult task. But if we can get you and Alayna into one in the next few weeks, I think we can actually leech the nanites out of your cells, on a DNA-level, and contain them. It has to do with the molecular structure of the nanites themselves.”

  Lane continued to prattle on, her hands whirling around her face as she dove into the science behind the extraction. But all Clay felt was hesitation, and disappointment. The power he’d used out on the field: the incredible capacity he had to direct hands and legs and elbows, an entire army of mostly-dead people—had been absolutely incredible. He’d never felt more superhuman.

  But Megan was alert, listening. She gripped Lane’s wrist, staring into her eyes. “You absolutely have to do this, for Alayna's sake, and the baby,” she said.

  “We’ll need better tools to pull it off,” Lane said, slipping a pair of glasses she rarely wore over her nose and grinning a wide, almost cartoonish smile. “But if we can get back to Helen—”

  “Hey, gang?” Sherman called, making Clay’s heart pump wildly in his chest. “Looks like we’re coming up on the base. It’s showtime.”

  Chapter 63

  “You see that, Rex?” Clay muttered into the walkie-talkie, leaning forward in the passenger seat as the bus began to slow.

  “I see it, all right,” Rex answered. “Just a few shit-looking buildings that should have been knocked down a long time ago. I forgot that Earlton was so small. Ain’t no cultural mecca, is it?”

  “No. Cultural mecca, it’s not,” Clay said, finding himself chuckling. “Looks more or less deserted from here. But I guess we know better than to judge a book by its cover.”

  Earlton was no more than a collection of a few slanted brick buildings and some fast food stops, each with their bright logos stretching into the sky. Clay positioned his walkie-talkie on his hip and squinted, trying to take in the horizon line. “Something up there,” he said to Sherman. “Some kind of perimeter. Let’s keep driving.”

  They neared a barbed wire fence, nearly two-stories high, without an obvious energy field. There was what looked like a dilapidated guard shack down the fence line, its windows boarded over. The bus sputtered to a stop, allowing Clay to hear the murmured complaints behind him. “What the hell kind of place is this?” Brandon asked Maia. “I thought we were coming to a military base?”

  “Seems like they left this place long ago,” Agnes whi
spered doubtfully. “I don’t think we’re going to have much luck here. If Malcolm’s coming here next, he’ll just tear through us and then drive on somewhere else.”

  Clay felt the growing discontent. But, a guard leaped from the guardhouse, armed with a massive automatic rifle. The weapon was pointed directly at the bus, fully capable of pulverizing anyone inside.

  Clay raised his hands, trying to show they came in peace. The guard shouted into a megaphone.

  “MOVE ON, NOW,” he boomed, “YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS HERE.”

  Clay glanced at Sherman, whose hands gripped the steering wheel tightly, showing the first moment of fear he’d seen from the burly man. Clay took their bus “megaphone,” which Sherman had told him he’d used for the church years before and said, “I’VE COME TO SEE COLONEL WALLACE.”

  The guard didn’t react. From the back of the bus, Lois said, “It’s GENERAL Wallace, now.”

  Clay felt his eyes roll. Lifting the megaphone, he said, “SORRY. THAT’S GENERAL WALLACE WE’RE HERE TO SEE.” There was still no reaction. “LET THE GENERAL KNOW THAT IT’S SHERIFF CLAY DOBBS FROM CARTERVILLE. I’M PRETTY SURE HE’LL REMEMBER ME. HE KNOWS WE HAVE A FEW THINGS TO CHAT ABOUT.”

  After a long, uneasy pause, the guard lifted a walkie-talkie and spoke into it. What he said, Clay could only imagine. Perhaps it was a request to murder them all.

  Feeling a wave of impending doom, Clay lifted his walkie-talkie and began to speak to Rex. “Rex. I’d like for you to pull back, if you can. Maybe stay on the outside, just in case we need backup.”

  He should have thought of that before. He was playing too many of his cards at once. Rex began to ease backward, trying to distance himself from the base. But before he got far, a military Jeep pulled up behind him, and blared its horn, forcing Rex to stop. They had nowhere to go.

  “MOVE FORWARD,” someone blared from the Jeep.