by D. J. Molles
His stomach heaved.
He pushed the door open a little farther.
No infected.
“Clear?” LaRouche croaked.
“Yeah…”
LaRouche fumbled past Lee—to his credit, still moving quietly. He went down to his hands and knees and stooped until his face was only inches from the pavement, and then he vomited. He’d had the presence of mind to spill his guts close to the ground so that it wouldn’t make a splashing sound.
Seeing LaRouche blow didn’t help, and Lee followed suit.
Between bouts of quietly purging mostly stomach acids, water, and bits of deer jerky, they both looked up and around but saw no threats. The ordeal lasted less than a minute before the two of them wiped strings of sputum from their noses and mouths and dragged themselves back into the building, along with Lee’s pack.
Feeling marginally better but still queasy from the inescapable smell, Lee slung into the backpack and closed the steel door behind him. He clicked on his rifle’s light and shone it down the hall, his face squeezed tight.
There, down at the end of the hallway, Lee could see that hunched thing he’d seen before, and also the likely source of the smell. It was so badly decomposed, the only reason Lee could tell it was human were the soiled clothes it wore.
“Stairs.” Lee burped and spat.
Directly to their right rose a stairwell. They moved to it and began to climb. The air in the stairwell may have still smelled like the corpse, but to their overwrought noses, it tasted cleaner and fresher as they rose. They took deep breaths and blew hard out of their noses, trying to clear their sinuses.
“Never get used to that smell,” LaRouche remarked.
They worked their way up the stairs and found the rooftop access. It was nearly identical to the roof of the business college, but here they found something interesting: a couple sandbags, some empty 5.56mm ammunition cans, and some discarded aluminum box magazines were scattered in a corner. Brass shell casings made a glittering carpet in the corner. A few feet away were the remains of a case of MREs and a case of bottled water.
“Looks like some of our boys picked a nice overwatch,” LaRouche commented and poked at the empty box of MREs with the toe of his boot.
Lee eyed the discarded brass. “They hosed somebody down.”
“Bet I know who.”
They moved to the edge of the roof, crouching low, and peered over at the intersection where they’d seen the infected crossing earlier. They could see the building where the infected had entered—the likely location of their den. The streets were pockmarked with bullet strikes. There were a few old corpses off to the side but not enough to justify the expenditure of ammunition sitting at their feet.
“Where are all the bodies?” Lee wondered.
“Maybe they ate them.” LaRouche glanced at Lee. “The infected, that is.”
Lee scanned up the street a little farther in the direction they had seen the infected coming from. He tapped LaRouche on the shoulder and pointed, hunching low and trying to keep his body flush with the roof’s abutment. “There. You see ’em?”
About two blocks west of the intersection, there was a large box truck, halfway embedded into a storefront. Lee could not read the words on the side, but he could clearly see the enlarged picture of a cornucopia of grains, vegetables, fruits, and meats.
A grocery truck.
The back end of the truck hung halfway open, and all around it and inside of it was a crowd of tattered, filthy souls, all clambering to get inside. Lee could hear them occasionally barking at each other, but they were quieter than normal, he thought. There were perhaps fifty of them. They would climb into the back of the truck, disappearing inside. Then they would emerge a moment later, their arms full.
“They are rat-fucking the shit out of that truck,” LaRouche whispered in amazement.
Lee watched, quiet and still.
He was overtaken by the pure oddity of what he was seeing. Lee’s first instinct was to try to explain it away, but he couldn’t deny it. They were gathering food from the truck and taking it back to their den, or what Lee assumed was their den. It was not a free-for-all. They were not eating whatever they got their hands on.
And Lee didn’t know how he felt about this.
Fear.
Uncertainty.
Loathing.
Fascination.
“Those are cans they’re carrying,” LaRouche mumbled suddenly, as one of the infected passed by on the street below them.
“Jacob said he’d seen them get into cans,” Lee breathed out. “They understand that it’s food.”
LaRouche turned and looked at the captain. “What else do they understand?”
Lee didn’t answer.
“Where’s the rest of them?” he asked.
“I dunno.”
“You know what else?”
“What’s that?”
“No females,” Lee said.
LaRouche took a long moment to look but could find none for himself. “Not a goddamned one,” he confirmed.
CHAPTER 14
Evolution
Another moment of observation passed.
Lee sidled a little closer to LaRouche and pointed in the direction of the truck. “You see the one across the street? Standing on the car? He’s got a red hoodie on.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s keeping watch.”
“How do you know that?”
“He hasn’t moved. Everyone else is gathering food, and he’s been standing on that car, looking back and forth the whole time.”
“Keeping watch,” LaRouche repeated, as though testing to see if the words made any sense. “What the hell are they keeping watch for?”
“Prey, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
Their answer came only a moment later when it suddenly let out an eerie, ululating cry unlike any Lee had heard come from the infected. At first Lee thought they had been spotted up on their high overlook, but somehow he knew that was not right. The noise from this infected was not a screech or a bark. It was a scream.
“The hell…?” LaRouche jumped back at the noise but didn’t take his eyes off the scene unfolding.
All at once, the fifty infected gathered around the box truck began to stampede for the den. The ones carrying food dropped it to the concrete. Boxes and packages spilled out and were trampled underfoot; canned goods went rolling and scattering across the road. As each of the infected horde began to run, they echoed the cry from the watcher.
“What are they doing?” LaRouche looked like he wanted to run too. “Should we get the fuck out of here?”
“No!” Lee put a hand on his arm. “Stay put!”
“What are they running from?”
“I don’t…”
Any further words were cut off.
From a side street just behind the box truck burst three figures. None of them wore but the barest tatters of clothing, and even from this distance Lee could see the lean, almost athletic musculature. Were they regular people? No… there was no mistaking that animal run, the sprinting form of a hunter. But it had been months since Lee had seen an infected that appeared so…
Well fed?
The truth hit him like a slap in the face.
“Holy shit,” he said out loud.
As the running horde of infected came abreast of Lee, he watched as two more of the larger infected loped around the corner directly across from them, cutting off a portion of the fleeing horde. The horde slowed partially as they began to try to squeeze by.
One of the first three who had attacked from behind, a powerful-looking dark-skinned man with wild tangles of black hair down to his shoulders, leaped straight forward and tackled a member of the horde from behind. The two of them tumbled across the asphalt, the victim lashing out like a cornered dog, biting and kicking and slashing viciously. But the dark-skinned infected was too large and too strong for it. It pinned its flailing prey to the ground and placed one of its ma
ssive hands on its prey’s head and the other on his chest, and the muscles in its back rippled as it flexed, forcing the smaller infected to expose his jugular.
The hunter opened its mouth inhumanly wide and lunged.
In one quick twisting motion, it ripped out its prey’s throat.
* * *
The sun was a red ball hovering just above the horizon, a retreating source of heat, taking the relative warmth of the day with it. Cold dark approached from the east, doggedly borne in on gusting winds that cut right through the fabric of Harper’s jacket and made him pull the collar up over his face and swear that he would find himself a fucking pair of gloves or convince someone to make a pair for him.
The group of twenty volunteers stood, cold and tired from a day’s worth of exercises. Beside them, just inside the Camp Ryder gate, their vehicles ticked and cooled from the drive back. The smell of cook fires surrounded them, emanating from Marie’s kitchen and from a few others strewn about the camp.
“All right, folks.” Harper jerked a thumb toward the Camp Ryder building. “Dinner should be ready in a little bit. We’re done for the day, but we’re doing it all again tomorrow. Make sure you get some sleep.”
The group began to disperse with quiet mumbles of “Catch you later” and “See you in a bit.” Harper watched them disappear into the streams of people walking about, packing everything in for the day and setting up for another cold night. He adjusted the strap of his rifle, felt the cold metal on his fingertips, and turned toward the Camp Ryder building.
Devon’s words from earlier rolled through his head.
What was Jerry up to?
Sure, Jerry didn’t make a habit of leaving the gates—he was a bit of a pussy in Harper’s opinion—but that didn’t mean that he didn’t occasionally go out if he needed something. After all, everyone had to have something to trade nowadays. Perhaps Jerry just wanted to find himself a little creature comfort or something he could trade up for it. Case in point, he’d gone through a lot of trouble just to get his mattress.
Harper hadn’t made a big deal about it when he spoke to the kid, because honestly, he didn’t know what to make of it. But he thought he had better talk it over with Bus anyway. Bus would know what to do. The big guy didn’t give himself much credit for being a leader, but there was a reason that everyone in the Camp Ryder Hub deferred to his judgment.
Harper made his way into the building. It was warm inside, to the point of stuffiness, and crowded, which didn’t help. Whatever Marie was cooking had a strong, robust smell to it. For some reason, it turned his stomach. Harper smiled and nodded at the people he recognized and quickly made his way upstairs.
As he walked, he realized why the smell cloyed at the back of his throat and soured in his gut.
It smelled like chili.
He stopped halfway up the stairs and looked down at all the people milling about, getting in line for food. It was noisy, and busy, and underneath the scent of the food, a million other smells wafted. He breathed shallowly, as though he might escape the smell of the chili and thought to himself that this was a strange reaction, even as his tongue became suddenly dry and his knees felt weak.
Screaming.
Skin parting under a blade.
Panic.
The sensation of concrete, scraping the very tip of the bayonet as he ran the kid all the way through. The feeling in his hands of the rifle jumping as the young savage tried desperately to push the blade out of his belly. Wide, animal-like eyes, staring down at the mortal wound.
Screaming and blood.
“Hey!”
Harper jerked and grunted like he was being pulled back through some invisible membrane that separated the real world from the world of his memories. It had felt so real in that moment that he’d had the fleeting, maddening thought that everything he had experienced after and up to the present had in fact been a jumble of daydreams, and that in reality he was still there, spiking a kid to the ground with the rusted blade at the end of an SKS.
“Huh?” Harper looked up the last few stairs and found Bus standing at the top, his bushy eyebrows narrowed as though he were suspicious of Harper. “Yeah?”
“You okay?” Bus asked.
Harper nodded and felt sweat, cool and greasy, across his receding hairline. “Fine.”
Bus flicked his eyes out to the floor of the building. Then he jerked his head toward the office. “Come in and talk to me. I’ve got news.”
Bus retreated into the office without another word and Harper stamped up the last few risers, trying to shake that hollow, stretching feeling in his stomach, that sensation that had no name. Like a backlog of emotions that you just can’t process so you leave it in a dark corner, forgotten and spoiling as time passes, and you maintain your unwillingness to dissect it. The more wretched it becomes, the more you try to ignore it.
In the office, Bus collapsed into the chair behind the desk with a great huff.
Harper stepped up to the desk, trying to discreetly wipe the sweat from his head, but Bus took notice anyway. He gave Harper that same strange look he’d given him on the staircase.
“Everything okay with you?” he asked.
Harper nodded. “Yeah. Fine. What’s been going on with you?”
Bus shook his head. “Just the usual—every problem under the sun. Jenny’s running low on antibiotics and this flu thing going around camp is ending with half the older folks getting pneumonia. Keith Jenkins misplaced that little .22 revolver he had and now he claims someone stole it, but who knows…”
Harper raised an eyebrow. “You call me up here to talk about antibiotics and missing revolvers?”
“Just venting.” Bus sighed and jabbed a finger at the radio. “Captain Harden just reported in.”
Harper wiped his moist fingers off on his pants. “Is everybody okay?”
Bus stroked his beard for a moment. “As far as our people go, yes. Everything is fine.”
Harper waited for him to continue.
“In fact,” Bus continued, folding his hands on the desk, “from Captain Harden’s recon on Sanford, it sounds like they’ll be able to clear the place sooner than expected.”
“That sounds like a good thing.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Bus didn’t look happy. “He said there were approximately fifty infected in the horde and no evidence of a larger group, at least on the northern side of the city. They located what they believe to be a den, but they haven’t been able to get inside.”
“Only fifty?” Harper was taken aback.
Bus pointed. “Close the door.”
Harper stepped back and pushed the door closed. The rumble and scrabble of people moving and talking and laughing below them was suddenly diminished to a quiet background hum. Harper stood there, facing the door for a moment, feeling certain that he would not like what came next.
He turned back to the desk. “Where’d the others go?”
Bus looked at the map. “Eaten, it sounds like.”
“Eaten.” Harper took a breath, still too confused to truly have a strong reaction to the news. “They’re eating each other?”
“Yes and no.” Bus met his gaze. “According to the captain, he watched the horde of fifty that had managed to break into a box truck, and they were taking foodstuffs. Things like canned goods. And they were taking them to the den. Then in the middle of all of this, the horde was attacked by a small group of what the captain referred to as ‘hunters.’ He described them as slightly larger and much more aggressive than the infected in the horde. He told me they showed no signs of malnutrition.” Bus’s nose curled in disgust. “That they appeared well fed.”
Harper stood very still and looked straight ahead.
Bus leaned forward. “We have multiple problems here, Harper. We’ve got these infected, not only scavenging our food, but they’re showing the intelligence to do so.”
“Frankly…” Harper swallowed against a dry throat. “I’m more concerned about the hunters.”
Harper finally took a seat in one of the folding chairs. “We don’t have the time to let them wipe each other out. It could take months, even years for that to happen. Besides, if they run out of other infected to hunt, who do you think they’re going to turn to? The infected are easier prey for them now because they’re undefended and they can’t think like we can. But once that food source is gone, they’ll come after us. In the meantime, the hunters are getting stronger, and that creates a problem for me.”
Bus seemed confused. “Which is…”
Harper could feel himself getting flustered, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint where it was coming from. His neck felt hot and his shoulders felt tense and his face and scalp prickled. He was getting pissed, but why?
He stood up out of his seat and put both palms against his eyes and groaned. “Because they were dying, Bus! All the infected we’ve seen over the last few months have been getting skinnier, and weaker, and sicklier. It was the light at the end of the tunnel that one day after a good, long, cold winter we’d wake up and they’d all be gone.” His voice hitched. He realized he was feeling the shock of crushing disappointment. Something so close to his grasp had just been ripped away. “This doesn’t mean they’re going to wipe each other out! All it means is that they’re adapting!”
“But they’ve always hunted.” Bus stood up. “These packs aren’t anything new…”
“It’s not about the packs.” Harper turned to face him. “You heard what Jacob said about them. They might be fucking crazy, but their bodies haven’t changed. Their bodies can’t process all the crap they eat, he said.” Harper hung his hands on the back of his neck and shook his head. “That’s why he said they were skinny and always hungry. But if you’ve got these ones, these hunters, the ones who look ‘well fed,’ that means they are changing. They are processing what they eat, and they are getting stronger.”
Bus seemed to realize that his friend was taking this news harder than he was, albeit for different reasons. His face softened and his head hung.
“There’s something else he mentioned. Something that bothers me.”