Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance

by Michelle DePaepe

  "Bill…" Aidan said to one of the men sitting around a large fire pit. "We've got guests."

  The man acknowledged them with a nod while continuing to turn a long spit which held roasting lizards, snakes, and rabbits. He smiled a toothless grin when one of the returning men dropped a pile of dead squirrels and rabbits nearby and took out a knife to start skinning them.

  Seeing the meager catch of small game, Cheryl was concerned that their arrival would be taking food away from the camp. "We've got a few more MRE's in our packs."

  "Don't worry," Aidan said. "We've got a good store of beans and rice. If we want more meat, some of your guys can join ours in a hunting party later."

  Combined hunting party? Cheryl knew sending Zach and Edmond out together with guns was definitely a bad idea. And, after Patrick's story, she wasn't sure she liked that Diego fellow. He looked, sounded, and smelled like trouble. Putting any combination of the three of them together for a hunt might end in a smaller number returning.

  While Aidan stopped to chat with one of his guards, Jade guided Cheryl's group to a hole, several feet deep that had been dug in the earth and lined with a heavy, plastic tarp. It was used to store water hauled from a nearby creek. After taking a refreshing swig from an old margarine tub that sufficed as a cup, she studied Jade. He had lost a bit of weight since she'd his days serving firewater at Black Todd's. He was still bald and sporting a lightning bolt tattoo over one ear, but his mud-stained jeans sagged low, hovering perilously below his waist like they were only held up by a prayer.

  "I barely recognized you too," he said, after catching her staring at him. "Your hair's longer and you're stronger looking like you've been lifting weights or something."

  "Six months on patrol duty at Fort San Manuel. They put us through basic training and Combatives every few weeks to make sure we stayed in shape."

  "Must have been nice there…while it lasted."

  "It was all right. Not exactly home sweet home."

  "Shit. Ain't no such thing as that anymore. We've been scraping by out here for months…just hoping to make it through another day."

  And now she was too. What spoiled luxury she'd had back at the fort in comparison to this group, roughing it outdoors, totally exposed to every element and danger. She made a mental note not to complain, no matter what the weather or how Spartan the camp conditions were.

  Over the next hour, her group settled in, trying to assimilate but finding numerous things to pick squabbles over. Edmond, who'd never camped a day in his life (excepting last night after the helicopter crash), balked at the idea of having to use a trench latrine, a frayed twig as a toothbrush, and a teepee for sleeping quarters. He expressed his displeasure in colorful terms, even kicking back at Kai and Jasmine when they tried to remind him that he was lucky to be alive. Patrick wasn't comfortable hanging out with what he called, a bunch of damn cutthroats and heartless beasts. He warned everyone within earshot that they were probably all going to be murdered in their sleep. Ben and Chip fought over a tent. Flipping a quarter started out as a pragmatic solution until Chip got cocky, saying that the winner got Jasmine to keep him warm too. Then, of course, Zach and Diego found numerous things to kick up dust about. Zach couldn't refrain from giving his opinion about how things could be run better around the camp, and Diego, who'd done much of the planning and construction himself, defended his handiwork with a volley of insults. Only Jake, Mark, and Jordan kept cool heads, ingratiating themselves with the camp's inhabitants, working together to get as much information as they could about their surroundings and the troubles they'd encountered.

  Two hours later, much of the bickering had settled down and everyone had gathered around the fire pit. Every eye and ear was on Aidan, Mark, and Jake as they talked.

  Aidan took a stick and drew a triangle in the dirt with the number one inside. Next to it, he drew the symbol again. But this time, he drew a second triangle upside down on top of the first and drew an elliptical circle around the number one inside. Cheryl thought it looked eerily like a pentagram with a slitted eye in the center.

  "O.N.E.," he said. "O…N…E." After an ominous pause, he continued. "I've heard it stands for 'One New Earth', but if you ask me, it stands for 'Organized New Evil'.

  Edmond leaned forward, his eyes bugging out like they were going to pop out of his head. "Who are they?"

  "I'm not sure I can really answer the who or the why, but I've got some clue of the what. They've got trucks all over the area. They're heavily armed, and they've been raiding building and houses for supplies, stripping them clean of food, furnishings, electronic equipment, everything."

  "I knew some guys back from the fort who went on safaris," Mark said. "They told me they saw O.N.E. trucks in Tucson and always avoided them, because they weren't known to be friendly. They supposedly blew up a power plant, set fire to a police station, and destroyed some fire trucks in town."

  He turned towards Cheryl and glared at her. Now, she knew why he wasn't happy about her plan to go out on another safari. Why didn't he just tell her some of this stuff? She could have handled it.

  Kai shook his head. "I don't get it. Who are they? Some paramilitary group? Taking over and working towards their own survival, everyone else be damned?"

  "After Mark told me some of what he'd learned, I got to thinking," Jake said. "What if they're just protecting their own? Maybe we could find a safe way to approach them and—"

  "No," Aidan said, cutting him off. "If they had any goodness in them, why would they destroy the infrastructure of a city? Why wouldn't they just clean the town out and rebuild? And why would they want to take down Fort San Manuel?" A chuckle erupted inside him and evolved into an uncontrollable guffaw.

  "What's so funny?" Cheryl asked as his laughter wound down.

  "Fort San Manuel. When I was there, I thought that place was impenetrable. I thought they had it locked down so damn tight they could kick back and file their toenails while the rest of the world went to hell."

  "And yet…you left." Mark snarled at him.

  Leaning back, Aidan put a pensive finger on his chin, not seeming at all offended by his insinuation of stupidity. "I've never walked a line straight enough to make it in a place like that where someone tells you where you sleep, what you eat, and where to piss. I chose to go on my own, rather than die a slow death in a prison."

  Cheryl tried to return the conversation back to the topic. "So, why would O.N.E. cause so much destruction?"

  "The principle of survival," Jake said. "Resource control. He who gets all the cheese wins."

  Gears spun in her head. "Okay…maybe they're some kind of organized religious group that wants to go back to simpler times, so they're trying to recreate things the way they used to be a few hundred years ago."

  That idea generated murmurs all around with several in the group adding fuel to the theory, talking about the Amish, Quakers, and such.

  Instead of supporting the idea, Mark and Jake were quiet, pensive, as if they had a buzz of thoughts in their heads, but were weary of stirring things up further.

  "There's something that stinks about that," Aidan growled. "I believe if you want to survive, you join together. I know for a fact they'd kill us on sight if they knew we were here. If they did, they'd be on us like stink on a skunk. They'd either take us away in their trucks or send Eaters in to finish us off."

  "Send Eaters in?" Several of them said it at once with dropped jaws.

  "Send them in?" Cheryl asked. "What do you mean?"

  "They've found a way to control them." He let that statement sink in, watching the mix of expressions all around the circle. "They use them like bloodhounds. We've seen them herding them over the mountains like they were on a cattle drive."

  Even Mark was incredulous. "That just doesn't make sense. How do you control N.E.U.s? There's no viable brain matter left. And how would they not turn on their handlers?

  "I have no idea…" Aidan said, throwing up his hands. "…but somehow they're con
trolled…and they must have some serious use for them or they wouldn't have bothered to figure out how to do it."

  Eaters…controlled? The idea sent a shiver down Cheryl's spine. She couldn’t imagine how some mad scientist could manage how to do such a thing, and the concept was downright frightening. Whole armies of the walking, hungry dead? It was inconceivable.

  "That sounds pretty crazy," Jake said.

  "Insane," Mark agreed as others nodded their heads.

  "You'd have to see it to believe it, but I don't think you'd want to. If you were close enough to view such a site like we did looking down on the valley a few days ago, you'd probably shit your pants. And if that many Eaters got wind of you, you'd be nothing but shards of bone now."

  Jasmine began to whimper, and Ben cocooned her with his arms.

  Edmond's voice went up an octave. "What…what if they send them up this way?"

  "Hopefully, we'd have some advance notice. We post scouts by the road every day. If it happens, then I guess we make like bats out of hell and fly out of here."

  "Not all of us have motorcycles," Cheryl reminded him. "We'd never outrun them."

  Aidan looked at her with his one eye. There was compassion in it, or maybe it was pity. "I don't think you should stay here. We've considered moving on ourselves, but we just aren't sure which direction to go. This area seemed pretty safe until the O.N.E. patrols started coming out this far. Food is going to become an issue pretty soon too. We've scavenged all the cabins in the area, and it's not safe to go anywhere near the fort or down to Tucson. Game is getting scarce. Even the tarantulas seem to run when they see one of our hunting parties coming."

  The idea that they all had to move on soon prompted multiple discussions.

  Then, Aidan looked to Mark and Jake. "What's your plan, man?" You're welcome to hang with us for a little while, but you know our food situation.

  "We got nowhere to go," Mark replied. "We can't go back to the fort."

  Jake was more decisive. "I think we should head north, whether we plan on going all the way to Nebraska is debatable. But, we sure don't want to stay around the Tucson or Phoenix areas if O.N.E. is stirring up trouble, and we don't want to head down to Mexico where we've heard things are even worse."

  "I agree," Cheryl said. Then she looked at Aidan. "But, what about you and your group?"

  After some discussion, Neither Aidan or Diego seemed ready to uproot their camp and start over. Though, they admitted it was inevitable at some point.

  "We really wanted to build a more permanent shelter here, but since there are so many O.N.E. patrols around, and due to the hordes you said infiltrated the fort, it's not looking like that's such a good idea anymore."

  Cheryl waited for Mark or Jake to extend an olive branch to Aidan. Surely, it would be prudent for both groups to officially join forces and map out a plan for the near future.

  But, as they talked, the offer never came. Both sides seemed content to stay uneasy with their own doubtful trajectory.

  When they ended their conversation, Cheryl felt torn, not knowing which group had the best chance of survival. Who knew what dangers she'd head into if she went north with Mark and the rest of her group. Then again, Aidan's comfortable camp might someday be surrounded by an inescapable horde of Eaters or O.N.E. troops.

  As the groups dispersed, only Earl remained seated, seeming to be lost in thought. When Cheryl walked by him, he stopped her. "How do you think they do that? How could they control their dead meat brains?"

  "I don't know," she said.

  Earl got a wild look in his eyes. "Bones. Heh heh…some of them are nothing but bones anymore. There's barely any muscle left to hold them together." After a second, he snapped his fingers. "I got it! Formaldehyde. Yep. They'd have to inject those corpses with some sort of preservative to keep them from falling apart."

  "I could buy that, but I still don’t know how they could control them. That's beyond me."

  "Ahhh. I read all kinds of science fiction. Just think, if they can program a drone to take out a specific target by remote control, then why couldn't they animate dead flesh to do the same?"

  The idea was quite unnerving. Cheryl used to figure there was nothing worse than a group of hungry Eaters coming after you, but it was infinitely worse to think of the same group, animated by some evil source, with the intent to destroy you…specifically you.

  Her thought process was interrupted by heavy staccato breathing behind her. She whipped around, prepared to defend herself.

  It was no Eater. It was someone a little more comical.

  Diego had taken off his vest and was on the ground. He was doing a set of fast and furious pushups. Cheryl stared, wondering what the numerous tattooed cross hatches on his back meant.

  Earl watched Diego's showboating too and came to stand beside her. "One hundred forty-two kills. That's what he's up to."

  She didn't think that was so impressive. If he'd encountered the numbers of Eaters she had and had an automatic weapon, his whole body would be marked up. By now, she'd probably—

  "He takes them all down by hand. No gun."

  Now, she was impressed. "Maybe I need to do a few more pushups," she laughed. "It might help my record."

  Earl chuckled. "But, you're a girl. It wouldn't matter if—"

  She lunged out and grabbed his hand, twisting it behind his back. Her other arm went around his neck, forcing him into a choke hold, a quick move that came from the muscle memory she'd gotten from Combatives training back at the fort. "Wouldn't matter if what?"

  "Sorry, Ma'am," Earl whimpered after struggling to free himself and finding it impossible. "I apologize."

  She let him go. He took a step back and glared at her as he rubbed his neck. Then, without another word, he stomped off. She hadn't humiliated him just for the fun of it. Without looking, she knew a half dozen pairs of eyes had seen Earl's takedown, so she was satisfied that her effort hadn't been wasted. She'd seen the way some of the men in Aidan's group looked at her since she arrived, salivating like she was a piece of meat, ripe for the taking. Her own little bit of showboating was a warning to them to keep their distance.

  ***

  After a meager dinner of cornmeal and shreds of game, the Vultures started retiring for the night. It became apparent that there weren't any extra tree bunks for Cheryl's group as the fire was snuffed and people scrambled up to the tree tops. No one who had a claim up high was willing to give up their perch, so her group, the Pterodactyls, as Zach jokingly nicknamed them, had to sleep in the teepees and tents. (Aidan offered his tree perch to Cheryl, but Mark said he could handle things on the ground, so she'd be perfectly safe in a tent with him.)

  A schedule was made up for guard shifts. Six people at a time. Two hours each, so no one got too tired by trying to stay awake all night. Cheryl volunteered for a late shift that started at 3 a.m. Afterwards, she had second thoughts, thinking she'd picked the devil's hour when the whole world seemed steeped in death and every little natural sound around them was going to sound ominous.

  Not feeling tired, she sat around with Mark and some of the others, talking for several hours. Then, she and Mark went to their assigned tent. Dust clouded the air, making her cough as they shook out the sleeping bags and blankets, inspecting them for spiders, snakes, and scorpions.

  "This tent is filthy," she said. "Stinks too."

  "Yeah. I don't think they use much of their water storage for bathing. Can't say I blame them, though. I'd rather be alive then clean."

  After sitting in the funk for a couple of minutes, she got used to it and it became less annoying.

  When he seemed sure there were no creepy crawlies lurking around, Mark stretched out on his back and stared up at the light of the moon shining through the fabric.

  "This isn't exactly what I had in mind for our next camping trip."

  "No," he said. "Me neither.

  It was the first time she'd been alone with him since before the fort was attacked. She started to lie
down beside him, but quickly popped up when she felt something hard poking into her hip bone. Her first thought was that it was a tree root, but then she realized what it was.

  "It's after midnight, isn't it?"

  "If you say so. I'm not keeping track of time anymore."

  "I say it is, and that means it's your birthday."

  He rolled onto his side and groaned. "Some birthday…"

  "It's not all bad," she said. "I've got a present for you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the bronze dice.

  "Sweet," he said as he cupped them in is hands and rolled them around in his fingers. "Where'd you get these?"

  "I won them at The Tavern. Well, not exactly won. I got sharked at a chess game and these were my consolation prize. I had some wrapping paper but—"

  "So that's what happened to your earrings."

  "I didn't know you noticed," she said, reaching up and feeling one of her ear lobes.

  "I'm not always as oblivious as I seem."

  "Neither am I." She hadn't wanted to follow Mark's birthday gift with an inquisition, but felt the bile rising up in her throat, pushing it out. That woman on the helicopter…"

  "Carmen? I suppose you heard her flirting with me at the barbershop."

  "You were flirting back," Cheryl countered.

  "I was just being nice."

  "If you didn't meet up with her that night…why was she with you in the chopper?"

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Does it really matter now?"

  "Yes," she said. "It does. That is…if you and I still matter."

  "You thought she was with me," he said after a pause. "Is that why you threw her out like that?"

  She thought for a moment. "She'd been bitten. You shouldn't have allowed her on board." Hindsight had dissipated some of her guilt; she'd done the right thing, but Mark still hadn't. "You haven't answered my question."

  "I didn’t meet up with her at the Dance Hall, if that's what you're asking about."

  I know that, she thought. I was there doing reconnaissance. "So how—"