Mass Extinction Event (Book 11): Days 349 to 356

by Cross, Amy

  Looking ahead, I see an open door at the far end.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask.

  The only response is another shove in the small of my back.

  “Where are you taking me?” I yell, turning to the first of the two guys, who immediately grabs me by the shoulders and spins me round, forcing me to keep walking.

  “I'm not supposed to here,” I stammer as I try to figure out how I'm going to get free. “You have to let me go.”

  Reaching the doorway, I look through and see a metal bed in the middle of the room. A large man is standing nearby, arranging some knives on a trolley, and I stop as I realize that this entire room is coated in blood.

  “Move!” one of the guys says, pushing me into the room with such force that I trip and land hard on the ground. I barely have time to notice the fresh blood glistening in the gaps between the cobbles, before I'm pulled back up and someone grabs my legs.

  I start struggling again, but I'm quickly set down on the bed, and then I'm chained into position.

  “What do you want this time?” one of the men asks.

  “Is he the new one?” the larger man asks, coming over to peer down at me.

  “Fresh in, about an hour ago.”

  “Then we'll go for the right arm, to begin with.” Grinning, he holds up a large knife for me to see. “You might have heard of me,” he continues. “My fame has spread far beyond the walls of this humble kitchen. I'm known as the Master Carver, and I feed men, women and children alike. To be in my good books, to be my dependent, is to know the best possible life in these trying times. Unfortunately for you, to be on my table is to... Well, I shouldn't gloat. It's just that exceptional circumstances call for exceptional sacrifices. I'm sure you'd be perfectly happy with the arrangement if you were on the receiving end, so to speak.”

  “Let me go!” I snarl.

  “No.”

  “Let me go!” I yell.

  “No,” he says again, still sounding very calm and confident.

  “Let me go!” I scream, trying desperately to break the chains.

  “No,” he says for a third time.

  “Let me go right now,” I sneer, “or I swear I'll kill you!”

  He pauses for a moment.

  “No,” he says finally, and then he looks down and starts cutting the sleeve from my shirt. “There's not so much on you, is there? Still, that can sometimes be a blessing in disguise. It's not just about quantity around here, we also give some consideration to quality. I mean, we're not barbarians. Not yet, anyway.”

  I pull in every direction, straining desperately as I try to get free, and then I scream as I feel the knife slicing into my upper arm, just below the shoulder.

  “Wriggle all you like,” the Master Carver says. “Sometimes it actually helps improve the quality of the finished cut. Now, let's have a little taste, shall we?”

  He cuts up toward the top of my arm, and then I hear him setting the knife turn. Turning, I watch with horror as he holds up a strip of meat, which he examines for a moment. He mutters something under his breath, and then he slips the meat into his mouth and starts chewing. As he does so, a trickle of blood runs from one corner of his mouth and dribbles down the side of his chin.

  “Yes,” he says, before swallowing, “that's fine. Very fine indeed.” He grins at me. “Very nutritious, too, I'm sure. The children will be pleased.”

  “Please,” I whimper, “don't do this.”

  “It's nothing personal,” he replies as he picks the knife up again. “You must understand that. I just have so many little mouths to feed, and they don't stop begging me for food, over and over every day. What else am I supposed to do? Let them starve? What kind of monster would do that to children?”

  Before I beg him again, he starts cutting a larger piece from my arm. All I can do is scream and try to pull away, even as the knife slices deeper and deeper and finally scrapes against bone.

  Thomas

  Shivering on the cobbled floor, back in the cell, I stare at the dead woman on the floor. Her whole body is covered in blood, and bare bone is visible in several areas. She looks to have been carved up, with most of her muscle missing, and even her cheekbones have been taken. She somehow looks even worse than the bodies we found by the car the other day.

  “I wish I could say that the first time is the worst,” Roger tells me, “but that's not true at all. It just keeps getting more and more horrible as it goes on. The first time is actually the least agonizing, for some reason.”

  Turning to him, I see that he's still watching me from the far corner.

  “They'll come for you again,” he explains, “probably in an hour or two. Those children just never seem to get full, they're always asking for more. At first I fooled myself into believing that they didn't understand where the meat comes from, but now I'm not so sure. Now I think they just accept it.”

  “They're cannibals,” I stammer.

  “The question is, do they realize that?” he asks. “They're just kids, some of them are only five or six years old. Maybe they don't quite put two and two together.”

  Still not quite able to believe what's happening, I turn and look back over at the dead woman. So much meat has been carved away from her body, and she's been badly burned in places as well. I want to close my eyes, but for some reason I'm drawn to stare at her horrific injuries. It's almost as if I'm seeing a vision of what will happen to me if I don't find a way out of here.

  Suddenly her eyes open and she lets out an agonized gasp.

  “She's not dead!” I shout, pulling back against the wall.

  “Nobody said she was,” Roger replies, as the woman continues to struggle for breath. “Erica was here when I arrived, she was in about the state that I'm in now. I told you, the Master Carver knows exactly what he's doing. He's almost done with her, but I think he can keep her going for perhaps one more day. He has his little tricks that keep his victims alive for as long as possible. I guess since refrigerators are hard to come by these days, the best option is to make sure your meat stays fresh on the bone.”

  “How do you know she's not a zombie?” I ask.

  “Because I used to talk to her, in the early days,” he explains. “Besides, zombie meat's a whole other thing. They say the Master Carver has cooked and presented zombies for discerning guests. If you do it right, it's harmless, and apparently there's a rather nutty taste. That's the thing about humans, isn't it? Wherever we go, whatever we do, we always find stuff to eat. Sometimes I think that's the defining trait of our entire species.”

  Erica lets out another pained gasp, but I'm not even sure that she knows we're here. The guards didn't even bother to restrain her, which I guess shows just how far gone she must be, and when I look at her legs I see that most of the muscles have been cut away. There's a fresh wound on her left thigh, and I guess that's where the latest chunk came from. Even now, as I look at the wound, I see a bead of blood running down onto the floor.

  Suddenly the door opens and the guards come back into the room. They march straight toward me and immediately loosen my chains, before hauling me back up.

  “No!” I yell, trying desperately to get free. “Not again! I won't let you do it again!”

  “Sorry,” Roger says as I'm dragged out of the room. “They always go a little crazy with the new ones on the first day.”

  ***

  “Look at this,” the Master Carver says, leaning over me and holding up another strip of meat. This piece, however, is quite discolored. “Have you ever eaten zombie?”

  Struggling against the restraints, I try to find some way of getting free.

  “Of course you haven't,” he continues. “There are parts of a zombie's body that are extremely dangerous to eat, but it's like any good cut. You have to know what you're doing. The flesh itself carries no risk and can in fact be eaten raw, and the taste is unlike anything I've ever known before. In my previous life, when I worked at some of the finest restaurants in the city, I woul
d have killed for the chance to serve something like this to my guests.”

  He puts the piece of flesh into his mouth and chews, and after a moment he lets out a faint moan of pleasure.

  “You're insane!” I sneer.

  “No, I'm simply adapting to the ways of the world. I'm surviving, and that's what matters.” He reaches over and grabs another piece of zombie meat. “Are you sure you don't want to try some? I hate seeing someone pass up a great experience just because of some foolish prejudice.”

  “Go to hell!”

  “Oh, that's nice,” he replies with a sneer. “Where were you raised, in a barn? Just for that, I'm going to make sure that this next little cut hurts more than it should.”

  He eats the piece of meat, and then he pulls away more of my shirt.

  “I usually wait until the second day before I take meat from the chest area, because I want to ease my subjects into the pain, but I think you deserve a crash course.” With that, he drives the tip of the blade into my shoulder, and I immediately scream. “Haven't you got any self-respect?” he asks, leaning closer to my face. “You're blubbing like a little girl, you know. If you apologize now, I might be willing to show a little mercy, but you need to get a move on!”

  “Never!” I yell.

  “Pity you're too stubborn for your own good, then,” he replies, leaning even closer. “You have decent cheekbones, I guess. The area around the eyes is always the most tender. I have to confess, I like to keep that meat for myself, because the kids just don't appreciate it. They get the rougher pieces, the gristle, the tougher chunks. But your cheekbones and your eyes... I very much look forward to biting into those.”

  He twists the blade a little more, and I scream again.

  “I could be done by now,” he adds, “if only you -”

  Suddenly he gasps, and then he lets out a slow groan. For a moment, I have no idea what's happening, but then his head slumps down and I see Krex standing right behind him. The Master Carver cries out as Krex twists a knife in his back, and then the bastard slithers down and slams against the floor.

  “That bastard,” Krex sneers, “has been giving cannibals a bad name for too long.”

  He steps toward me and starts loosening my restraints.

  “Sorry it took so long to come and find you,” he mutters, “but I had to find some back-up. When I met you earlier, I realized you were a prime candidate to get abducted and brought to this place. I've been trying to locate the Master Carver's base of operations for a while, because he's been causing trouble for some friends of mine. At least now he's out of the way and -”

  “I won't let you do this!” the Master Carver gurgles from the floor. “I'm the top -”

  Krex stamps down on his face, and I hear bones shatter. He stamps again, then again, and finally I roll over and look down just in time to see Krex's boot press through the dead man's face and dig into his brain.

  “Disgusting piece of crap,” Krex mutters. “I won't have things like this happening, not on my turf.” He turns to me. “You might think I'm some kind of monster, but even I have limits. It's one thing to bring in people for bounties, and to eat people who are already half dead, but this guy was kidnapping perfectly healthy folk straight off the street, and if you ask me that's bad manners. And before you ask, no, I won't be eating him. I've got standards.”

  He pauses, before grabbing me and hauling me off the table.

  “Come on,” he adds, “there's no time to hang around like this, you must have places to be and I know I do. Besides, you need to get those injuries looked at.”

  He helps me limp toward the door, although after a moment we stop next to a table where several zombie body parts have been laid out.

  “Tell me this sick bastard wasn't eating zombie meat.”

  “He said it... tasted... nutty...” I gasp.

  “There's really no end to some of the depravity in this world,” he says darkly, and then he leads me out into the corridor. “Maddog and Blayde are getting the kids out of here.”

  “There are other prisoners,” I stammer as we pass the door that leads into the cell. “They -”

  Stopping suddenly, I see the bodies of Roger and Erica on the floor.

  “We put them out of their misery,” Krex explains. “She was virtually dead already, and he wasn't going to be far behind. Sometimes you have to do things like that, if you want to minimize the pain in the world. We won't eat them, either. Out of respect. I'll make sure they're buried somewhere proper.”

  He helps me out into the late afternoon sunlight. I want to go back and check if there's anything I can do for Roger and Erica, but deep down I guess I know that it's too late for them. At least their pain is over now. I just can't help wishing that I'd been the one who got to slice that knife straight into the Master Carver's back.

  Thomas

  “This is as far as I go,” Krex says a while later, as we stop at the end of the street and I see a familiar building ahead. “You're staying here, right?”

  Wincing, I let go of him and take a step forward. I've lost a fair bit of blood and I'm worried I might collapse at any moment, but I tell myself that I can't show weakness. Not now.

  “You know it's not going to get better, right?” Krex adds.

  I turn to him.

  “This is the end of the world,” he continues. “People can fool themselves in all sorts of different ways, but we're not coming back from this. Humans, I mean. Our species. Look around, you won't see a civilization that's starting to rebuild itself. We had our time, and now we just have to manage our decline the best we can. There aren't going to be any saviors, no miracles, no gods or angels, no hope, no resurrections. We're on our own until the end, and then all that'll be left will be the ruins we leave behind.”

  “Do you really believe that?” I ask.

  “I know it,” he replies. “There's only one thing you can do for yourself now, and that's find a decent way to go out. Starving's no good, I've seen that happen to people and it's hellish. Why do you think I finally took the cannibalism route? You've got to find something worth dying for, and die for it, otherwise someone else'll come along and take the decision out of your hands. Does that make sense?”

  “We're going to make it,” I tell him. “I still believe that.”

  “Then you're a fool,” he replies. “See you around, maybe, although I doubt it.” He turns to leave, and then he hesitates. “By the way, I don't know if I just forgot it, but I don't think you ever told me your name.”

  “Thomas,” I stammer.

  “Thomas.” He pauses, and then he nods. “Right. I remember. You should think about changing that, maybe coming up with something a little cooler. Not that I'm trying to tell you how to live your life, of course, but there's no harm in shaking things up now and again.” He stares at me for a few seconds, and then he smiles. “T-Bone.”

  “I'm not calling myself T-Bone,” I reply.

  “See you around, T-Bone,” he says, turning and walking away. “Maybe. Maybe not. Just remember to die well before this is all over, yeah?”

  ***

  “Is he going to be okay?” Martha asks again, for what must be the hundredth time since I limped into the building. “Is there anything I can do?”

  “He's going to be just fine,” Lucy Hoyle replies as she finishes sewing the wound shut on my shoulder, “provided he keeps it clean. I can't believe you ended up on the Master Carver's table, Thomas. People have been talking about him for months, but I wasn't even sure he was real. And he seriously ate a piece of your arm?”

  “It was too easy for him,” I reply through clenched teeth. “He should have suffered longer.”

  “At least he didn't live long enough to poop you out,” Martha says, and I turn to glare at her. “What?” she adds. “I'm just trying to look on the bright side.”

  “I'll ask around and see if anyone knows what happened to the children who got released,” Hoyle continues. “This whole situation is just a little too weird
for me to get my head around, but I guess the most important thing is that the bastard is gone.” She sighs, before sitting back. “You're all done, Thomas. That guy might have been a barbarian, but his cuts were surprisingly neat and tidy. He obviously knew what he was doing.”

  Wincing, I get to my feet, although I still feel a little unsteady.

  “Katrina's downstairs in one of the rooms,” Martha tells me. “She seems different this evening, like she finally accepts that Riley's gone. I wanted her to reach that point, but now I feel pretty bad for her. I think she's heartbroken.”

  “We should think about getting out of here,” I reply, before turning to Lucy. “I don't think we're gonna stick around much longer,” I explain. “Thank you for the hospitality, but we're going to head south. We want to see what's out there.”

  “Why?” Lucy asks. “We have everything here that you could possibly want.”

  “Are we not allowed to leave?”

  “It's more complicated than that,” she replies. “We're preparing for a big push. We've spent months preparing, and now we're almost at the stage where we're ready to go and force our way into Project Atherius. If we're going to succeed, however, we need to get all the help we can, and the rewards will be astonishing.” She pauses. “Tell me, Thomas, Martha... What exactly are you heading south to find?”

  “Peace,” I reply. “Safety. Security.”

  “Food,” Martha says. “Water. A future.”

  “I see.” Getting to her feet, Lucy heads to a window at the far end of the room, and for a moment she peers out. “What if I told you that all of those things and more are waiting for you, just a couple of miles away? What if I told you that this isn't the end, that it's actually a new beginning?” She turns to me. “Peace. Security. A good future. All those things are waiting inside the Project Atherius compound, and we just need to make one little push in order to get our hands on it all.”