by A. Giacomi
When Gavin finally speaks, his words are brief, “I’m like you two, aren’t I?”
“Yes Gavin, you are. I’m sorry. My question is, what do you want to do about it?”
Gavin looks at me bravely. “I want to end this now.”
“Are you sure that’s what you want? Or is that what your training has taught you?” I say trying to change his mind. I couldn’t fathom this eighteen-year-old being ready to die, I would hide the truth; I could help him.
Gavin shakes his head. “It’s what I want. I don’t want to be one of those things. I don’t want to live like this.”
“Maybe you won’t have to. Maybe they’ll find a cure.”
“Do you really believe that, Eve?”
I don’t answer, he had me there. Instead, I give a small smile. “You know, it’s not all terrible. I learned some pretty neat tricks along the way. I’m like the Hulk meets Wolverine. Being strong and healing really fast could make you an asset.”
Gavin laughs. “You mean it will make me a freak. Nah, I’d rather just head on over to whatever comes after this. I don’t think I could trust myself around people ever again.”
“Then why not just disappear?” I beg. “I’ll let you off right here and you can run as far away from all this as you want. I’ll tell everyone you died. It’s sort of the truth anyway.”
He shakes his head once more, standing now and readying his handgun. “No, I don’t think you understand. Being out there, like this, I’m a threat anywhere I go. I joined the army to save lives, and I’m going to stick to that promise. No room for selfishness. When it’s your time it’s your time, you know?”
“I completely understand you, Gavin. I wish I could do the same right now…but unfortunately, it’s not my time to rest yet. I still have more people to save, you sure you won’t join me?” I ask one final time, although I’m certain Gavin has already made up his mind.
“Eve, I appreciate the offer and it’s been a real honor fighting alongside you. I didn’t think I could respect someone who eats people,” he says with a faint chuckle, “but you fight yourself as hard as you fight the dead. I hope you find your peace soon too.”
I want to call after him as he hops off the truck, but what else could be said?
Gavin walks off until I can no longer see him in the distance, and soon after he disappears from view a gunshot echoes through the trees, forcing distressed birds to flee above.
“Goodbye, Gavin,” I say wistfully. One day it would be my turn, and I hoped I would be as ready for that bullet when that day came.
***
Arriving back at camp without our men feels like an empty victory. As Vincent and I exit the vehicle, many onlookers wait for others to exit, but there is no one else. It’s just us.
The confused onlookers wait for an explanation, some even appear to be angry with us, but I simply push past them. I needed to talk to those in charge and had no time to ease their minds, it’s clear this situation was getting worse, and some of our men were now playing for the other team so to speak.
Corporal Clark Campbell finds us first, without a word he escorts us to a nearby house where many guards are posted outside.
“Hey Campbell, what’s with all the watch dogs?” I ask sarcastically.
He stares at me without expression. “For your protection, dumbass. You think those soldiers out there are going to believe that you’re both innocent in all of this? They’re loyal to their own and they’re going to want your blood. Now typically I’d say let them have at ya, but unfortunately, I need you. The Prime Minister is on speaker phone right now awaiting your arrival. He wants you to explain the situation.”
I nod, but as soon as he turns his back I stick out my tongue. At least it amused Vincent.
Prime Minister Lessard is notified that we are now in the room and placed back on speaker phone.
“Eve, Vincent, what the hell is going on out there? I’m told my best men are gone. All of them?” he asks exasperated.
He wasn’t wrong, we had taken his best men out with us today, we didn’t fear to lose because these were soldiers that had never lost before. Today was different.
“Yes, sir,” I say with some remorse. “We were outnumbered and underprepared, I’m afraid. It seemed no matter how many I killed, more would arrive and when they began to take down our own men, well you can understand how that would add to their head count.”
Silence fills the other end of the call. I could tell he was angry, but I hadn’t been hired to protect his men, I was hired to destroy as many undead as I could. That was all.
After many more moments of silence, Lessard asks, “So what’s the plan now?”
“I need to get to Cam,” I say bluntly.
“Out of the question, Eve. We need to complete this mission and secure the Capital first!”
“Well that’s all fine and dandy, Prime Minister, but I don’t think the two of us will be able to stop all of them, and if your men are any less able than the ones you gave us before, then they will perish and become part of the problem too. I need to get to Cam and get to the bottom of all this. I’m telling you, there might be another way to stop all this.”
I can almost hear his pulse racing as he thinks long and hard about what I’ve said.
Vincent gives me the thumbs up for standing my ground.
Finally, Lessard responds, but it’s not the answer I was hoping for. “I simply cannot risk you going after him. If your instincts are wrong, we’ll lose two great soldiers. I can’t have that.”
“So what are you saying? I’m not allowed to go and find him? That was part of our deal remember? What makes you think I’ll fight for you, if you betray your promises so easily?”
“I think you need to think on this a bit more, Eve. Cam is most likely already dead. Why are you abandoning people who need you in order to find a corpse?”
And that’s when I lose my shit… “Corpse? No that’s what I am! I know he’s still alive out there because it feels like these zombies are trying to keep me from him. There’s more that I can’t explain, or that you wouldn’t even be able to understand, but we’re cursed to keep dealing with these things until I find us a way out of it. You need to stop seeing this as a war you can win. Yes, you need us, that’s true, but not here, we need to find out how to truly stop this…and guess what…you breathers aren’t going to be able to help shit!”
With that finale bit of frustration unleashed, I storm out of our meeting and out of the house. No one dares to stop me, perhaps they could sense the heat behind my eyes and how I meant business.
***
A few hours later, Vincent finds me sitting on a swing in an unfinished park. This was to be the social hub for the neighborhood kids, but it clearly had been abandoned when zombies started to show up. It was a little creepy staying in a cookie-cutter neighborhood crawling with military personnel, felt sort of like those Terminator films on Judgement Day. Tons of rubble everywhere and not a single sign of anything normal or safe. Yup Judgement Day indeed.
“So here you are, of all places I find you on a swing, hmmm…what brings you here? I’d think you’d be hiding or something. This seems too much like you want to be found,” Vincent says shaking his rotting finger at me.
“Har, har, Freud. Stop analyzing me. It’s just this is how I clear my thoughts…back in Little Lake we had this park I’d go to all the time. It was my place to think and I guess this is the closest I’m going to get to that same feeling.”
“You know nostalgia is dangerous, Eve.”
I punch him in the shoulder and hear a slight crack. “No shit, I’m just trying to calm down so I don’t murder anyone. That’s just about as calm as I can get these days…less mur-der-ry.”
Vincent laughs hard. “Alright fine, I’ll shut up now.”
We continue to stare at the sky as the sun sets, not a w
ord is uttered and I could spend some time semi-alone with my thoughts. Between the demonic screams of, “kill, kill, kill,” I could also faintly hear Cam’s voice in my ears. I hold onto that as I shut my eyes and try to think of what to do next.
***
I feel Vincent shaking me violently.
“Wake up, wake up!” he repeats again and again, but I can’t seem to open my eyes, they’re sealed shut and stuck in a vision of my hometown. I see Cam before me; he wears a grim look on his face as Marcus appears behind him.
I yell for him to run, to get away from Marcus, but he doesn’t budge. Instead, he embraces Marcus and then sits atop a gravestone. I knew exactly where I was! Little Lake Cemetery, but why had my dream taken me here? Why was I dreaming at all? Zombies didn’t dream because zombies didn’t sleep. I would pretend sleep from time to time out of habit, but there was no need for it anymore, so how could all this be possible?
Marcus takes out a knife and holds it above Cam who looks as cool as a cucumber as Marcus begins to carve a nice hole into his chest. I scream, but no sound comes out, I try to run to him, but my feet are stuck. I can only watch as Marcus pulls out his heart as it still beats. Cam sits there smiling, looking brainwashed, and then he collapses. I watch in horror as Marcus begins to ingest the heart himself, filling his mouth with my love’s blood. I would destroy him for this.
Bolting upright, I see Vincent holding my wrists. My eyes are now open, but all of that had felt so real.
“Are you alright? You were thrashing around violently and I thought you were about to turn for good,” Vincent says with a hint of sorrow.
“Don’t worry you won’t get rid of me yet,” I say winking at him. “What I don’t understand is how I was dreaming. I haven’t had a dream in ages. Zombies don’t dream right?”
Vincent nods. “That’s right, we don’t have the capacity to dream, so whatever you were doing was definitely something else.”
“I think…I think it was a vision, Vincent…I think I need to go home…” I say scratching my head.
“And what if you’re wrong, Eve? Little lake is a long way from here.”
“I have to know, Vincent, if it’s true and Marcus is holding Cam there, then I need to go.”
Vincent nods, but looks exhausted, I could tell he was tired of this back and forth game. He was tired of not having answers and not getting anything resolved, I couldn’t have agreed more, but I also couldn’t ignore my instincts.
“Okay, Eve, we’ll go check it out, but how do you think we’ll be getting out of here? They’re watching us like dogs in a kennel.”
“Let me worry about that, Vincey, you just find us a nice vehicle,” I say with a wink.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
MARCUS/ THE DARK KING
Taking Cameron Jackson home felt like the best way to regain his memories, the only issue that remained after that would be if he would trust me. I needed him to, even though I was mostly unstable these days. I was aware of this, but it was part of me now. I was both toxic and heroic and some days I couldn’t differentiate between the two. I guess this was what madness felt like.
“Where are we?” Cameron asks in a sedated stupor. I had been feeding him any narcotics I could find. I needed to keep him calm and compliant. Having him fight me the whole way would not have been productive. Clearly, I wasn’t going to get him to trust me, so this seemed the only route to take.
“Cameron, we’re home, buddy. Your hometown.”
He stares out the car window without expression, did nothing strike him? Were his memories truly dead and gone?
“Does any of it seem familiar, Cam?” I ask him as I eye him curiously.
“Nope, I don’t know this place, sorry,” he says sounding mildly disappointed as well.
I wasn’t done quite yet, I had a few tricks up my sleeve to get his memory back. Our first visit would be the cemetery, perhaps seeing his parent’s graves would jolt an emotional response that would spark a memory or two, or perhaps it was wishful thinking.
Entering the cemetery gave me something reminiscent of chills, not because it was full of death, but because it was full of a sort of peace that I wasn’t warranted to receive. Conquering Cam would be my last mission and then I was promised rest. I craved the final death these days, I had come so far from my human side that my memories barely felt like my own. For a moment I felt jealousy surge through me as I gazed upon the gravestones that stood before me as I exited the vehicle. Kicking the dirt in envy I cease in front of the gates waiting for Cameron to catch up. He looks up at me quizzically but says nothing as I lead him through the gates and into the heavily treed cemetery. He stumbles in a zombie-like manner, the drugs still clearly in his system, but they would wear off soon enough. I had simply needed to get him here, and now that I had succeeded, I would have no need to medicate him, hopefully.
Reading each tombstone as I try to recall the direction of the clearing where Cameron’s parents were laid to rest, I get a sense of something ominous following us. Almost as if a dark cloud was looming overhead, yet the sky remained clear. I had sensed something following me for a long time now, and it wasn’t the other voices in my head. The Dark King spoke from time to time, telling me to do his bidding, but he was quiet now that I had acquired Cameron as he wished. As for the other voices, they hissed, they spoke of evil, they wanted me to ingest every part of Cameron Jackson. Strange how the voices contradicted one another, and it was enough to drive a dead man mad, and I suppose I was. The last time I had felt a slight sense of normal was back in Vegas when Eve was desperately trying to save my life. She had loved me then, I had known that, and perhaps I loved her then too, but I was much too dead now to recall. Eve was just a means to an end now. I needed her to come after Cam, I knew she would.
After ten minutes of hunting, I find the clearing I sought. “Cameron, this way,” I shout to him. He stumbles after me in obedience. Once reaching the graves I have him sit between his mother and father. “There!” I say pointing to each gravestone. “Do you see why I’ve brought you here?”
Cameron squints as he tries to read the carvings. “Mr. and Mrs. Jackson? What about them?” he asks unamused.
“They were your parents!” I spit out impatiently. “One of them, unfortunately, shared my fate, but you and Eve put a stop to that now didn’t you?”
“So wait, wait, wait…you’re saying my parents are both dead and Eve and I helped make it that way?” Shock fills Cameron’s eyes.
“Not exactly…you see your mother had been dead long before your father. Henry here had been bitten and then decided to dig up your mother and reassemble her. You can understand how playing Dr. Frankenstein would be horrifying in itself. So really destroying your father was necessary, not that it was a great loss either way…I hear he wasn’t the greatest man,” I say with a humph.
Cameron’s reaction to this revelation is quite unexpected. He begins to laugh hysterically as though he were a madman. I allow him to laugh hysterically, after all, it could be a side effect of the drugs he had been commanded to consume. I would have let him laughed until it ached, but something was stirring. I could smell death at the tip of my nose, they were coming for us.
The Dark King’s voice enters my ears, It’s time to go, the dead are coming for Cameron’s flesh.
I was well aware that they had been after Cameron. They wanted him dead, that way the devil would win and death would roam the Earth until all life became un-life. Little did anyone know that I was trying to be the good guy in all of this.
“Cameron, shut up!” I say, trying not to be too loud.
His laughter doesn’t cease, but he does cup a hand over his mouth to pacify it slightly. I lift him to his feet and ask him to follow me. We barely reach the center of the cemetery before the earth beneath us begins to rumble slightly. It wasn’t something you’d notice unless you were looking for it, but for s
omeone linked to them, you could feel their hands grabbing at the dirt below, sniffing their way to the surface, desperate to rise and feed.
Grabbing Cameron’s arm, I attempt to drag him further faster, but he cannot compose himself. Earth breaks behind him and fingers slide out of the fresh grave. The hands emerge grabbing at the soil and dragging itself up from its slumber. When its head emerges, the eyes glow a bright red and its mouth hangs open in preparation. It hisses as it views us. Cameron’s mouth hangs open, he is stunned by our new visitor, enough so that the laughter no longer plagues him. Instead, he begins to run, I chase after him as he heads toward the car. Another one rises from a mound of dirt. Rather than stop to dispose of them, I felt it better to run. If there were to be more, we would be outnumbered in no time. Running was definitely our only option.
When we reach the car, Cameron throws himself inside dramatically. I turn back to view our newly revived visitors. They were slow, rotten, and reeked of evil. They had been sent here to stop us, but they would have to wait another day. We jump into the car and are off.
“Where are we going?” Cameron asks panting and wide-eyed.
“To your former home. Sound good?”
Cameron nods. “Anywhere but here please.”
***
The drive to Cameron’s house is one filled with tension as the drugs begin to wear off. I can see his gentle compliance fading as he eyes me suspiciously. I knew he was thinking up a plan to escape, but hopefully, a brief visit to his old home would make him change his mind. Even an ounce of curiosity would help. As we roll into the driveway Cam nearly presses his entire face against the window.
“Do you recall anything, Cameron?” I ask desperately.
He gasps, “I think so.”
Before I can ask another question, Cam bolts out of the car and up to the front door of the small home. He was clearly drawn to it. He fiddles with the handle of the front door and is pleased to find it unlocked. Following close behind him, I see Cam take in every nook and cranny. For the first time, I could see he wants to remember, he wasn’t fighting it so hard. As he takes himself on a tour of his own home I can sense his pulse quicken. He grew more and more panicked as he viewed more rooms in the house.