Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance

by Michelle DePaepe

  It took a major effort for Cheryl to force a laugh. "Wow. Sounds like an event!"

  "'Tis," the woman said before walking to the conveyer to pick up a long skirt and blouse, and a pair of sandals.

  Aidan was half dressed when Cheryl gave a quick look his way out of the corner of her eyes. He'd already pulled her clothes off the conveyer for her. She put them on as fast as she could. When they were fully clothed, they followed the others towards an outer door, hoping to escape from the group, so they could find a place to embed themselves without feeling like they were under a microscope.

  A very tall man, with cropped hair and gold-rimmed glasses manned the exit. Cheryl was sure he was the man who'd acted as the high priest during the execution ritual. Uncloaked and smiling, he looked so friendly and benign, it was hard to believe that a short time ago, he'd been cruel enough to rip a man's beating heart from his chest.

  He held a flyer out to them as they approached. "Well, folks…I hope you enjoyed tonight's execution." He stared at Aidan, pausing with the flyer still in his hand. "Oh…you're a donor? I didn't notice you before. Well, be sure to come for next week's event. Donors get priority in the queue."

  "Thanks," Aidan said, taking the flyer from him.

  Cheryl took one too as they stepped into the warm night air. "What was that about?" she asked him after they were a few feet down a sidewalk and out of earshot from the others who were departing.

  "I don't know," he said. "But, I think it has something to do with my eye."

  Most of the people passing them were chittering like anxious squirrels as they looked at their flyers. Still trying to look like the other citizens, they paused under a street lamp and looked at theirs.

  Witness a new method of enemy execution when the MEDIEVAL RACK makes a comeback. Some lucky attendees will get a chance to participate!

  "That's just sick," Cheryl said. "How can they be so coldhearted?"

  "They seem to enjoy taking vengeance against anyone who tries to thwart the master plan. Maybe, it's part of the group think—adapting to whatever keeps you alive. Eventually, what you once abhorred becomes a part of you.

  "This place makes me think of Nazi Germany," she said with a shudder.

  "Yeah," he replied. "Had enough? We could try to find a way back out."

  She shook her head. "Not yet. If it's true that the enemy you know is better than the one you don’t, I think we have some more reconnaissance to do. We don't know enough about what's going on here."

  Aidan agreed and seemed glad that she wasn't ready to bail just yet.

  As the last stragglers filed out of the building, they decided to move further away before someone tried to engage them in conversation. They stood in the shadows underneath an orange tree, covered in sweetly scented blossoms and looked into the blackness before them, a city dotted with orange and blue lights that looked like torches, but were likely to be more of the LED lights that the ones they'd seen in the building. Loud growls and moans rumbled from somewhere near the city center where the pyramid was being built. They were punctuated by the occasional blood-curdling shriek that raised the hair on the back of her neck and caused a ripple of adrenaline to tickle through her veins.

  "Where do we go now?" he asked.

  "Anywhere but towards that sound."

  Chapter 20

  They spotted more than a dozen cameras during their search to find a place to spend the night. Some were obvious like the ones perched inside glass globes on the corners of buildings. While others were more covert—embedded in tree trunks, on the sides of parked trucks, or affixed to street signs. They hoped not all of them were being monitored in live time, because it was a difficult task to stroll around, trying to make themselves look like any of the other couples on the sidewalks out for an evening walk, while also scouting for somewhere to spend the night that would be secure enough for them to get a little sleep.

  They eventually settled on hunkering down underneath a set of bleachers in a small outdoor arena. The earth was hard and compacted underneath, but there was no trash in the spot they chose…and hopefully no spiders. Cheryl only took small comfort in thinking they were probably too far north now for scorpions to be an issue. They had much bigger things to worry about anyway…

  It was only after Aidan wrapped his arms around her to protect her from the wafts of cool air, she relaxed enough to breathe and think about Mark and the others they'd left outside Sedona. They really hadn't thought their reconnection all the way through, had they? No time limit had been settled upon for their investigation in the city. When would Mark, Zach, Diego, Jordan and Kai give up on them and head for Sabre? She and Aidan could be in Sedona for days, even weeks before finding out what they wanted to know and discovering a way to make a safe escape.

  Like someone clearing their mind before meditation, she tried to sweep away all the anxieties out of her monkey brain so she could concentrate on listening for Mark's voice. It took a few minutes before she tuned into something. It was warbled, distorted. She could hear his voice in her head, but what he was saying was chopped up into a staccato of syllables that didn't make sense.

  Troub…road…hey..

  When she closed her eyes and tried to focus on the message, it became an even worse jumble. The tone was obviously agitated, though, and didn't seem to indicate that he was just checking in on her.

  Please be okay, Mark.

  She wanted to tell Aidan about the weird one way telepathy she'd had with Mark ever since he returned from his last tour in Afghanistan, just before the start of the epidemic. She wasn't sure he'd believe her, though. It was more likely he'd think she was starting to lose it.

  When dawn came, Cheryl was still in a hazy world somewhere between consciousness and dreamland. A loud moan and the sound of dragging feet made her snap alert. Hopping to her feet, she banged her head on the metal bleacher above. Then, wincing from the pain, she frantically searched the ground around her for her gun. It took another couple of seconds for her to remember that she had no gun, and she was inside Sedona.

  "It's okay," Aidan said as he stood next to her and peered through the seats. "It's a worker. Looks like he's headed towards that street crew over there that's setting up cones."

  Mesmerized, she watched the lumbering figure, a man who looked like he'd once been a strapping guy in his twenties at the peak of fitness but now had a hunched stance, opaque eyes like peeled grapes, and grayish flesh, head towards the men—some who looked quite alive and others who looked dead like him. If the state of physical decay didn't distinguish them, the black box fitted to their scalps made for quick identification. "Beasts? Like beasts of burden?"

  "It's hard to believe they control them and live side by side, isn't it?"

  "Yes," she said, not sure if she could ever get used to the idea.

  As they began wandering the streets, they saw more of the Beasts mingling with the townspeople. They were all involved in some sort of labor—sweeping the sidewalk, following the trash truck and emptying bins into it, washing cars, pulling weeds, and many other mundane tasks. It seemed they were programmed to do any repetitive task that did not involve complex thinking. After more than an hour of watching them, it still seemed weird. Even stranger, none of the residents seemed to be alarmed at their presence or give a second look at any that were particularly horrific looking.

  "Why couldn't they just have built robots?"

  Aidan shrugged. "They're a renewable resource, I guess. Albeit, a gross one."

  As peaceful as the system seemed to work, it wasn't long before they witnessed a flaw. There was a reasonably fresh-looking zombie serving coffee at an outdoor kiosk. She was a teenager with short blonde hair and a far-off look in her slightly cloudy eyes that could have been natural indifference to her task if it wasn't for other obvious clues that she was dead like the mushroom pallor and the black box affixed to her head. After pouring an espresso for an older gentleman, the girl bared her blood-stained teeth as her lip curled into a snarl. Th
e man withdrew his outstretched hand as the coffee splashed to the ground at his feet. Then, she lunged for him over the counter, nearly climbing on top of it. The man scurried away as her body went limp, falling to the ground.

  One of the other workers approached. The young man, barely older than the girl, but definitely alive, punched a few buttons on a remote then he spoke into his cell phone. "Need to send one back for reprogramming."

  Cheryl and Aidan watched from a bench across the street as a couple of guards drove up and hauled the lifeless body away in a truck. Then, they began wandering again, taking in every little detail they could.

  Although, on the surface, the city seemed normal enough, there was something very off about it. Underlying the sweet-smelling scent from the flower pots on the street corners, there was the sour smell of rot and decay. Every hedonistic pleasure seemed to be offered in the shops along the main strip, all sorts of sex shops, co-ed Roman-style bath houses, restaurants with decadent menus, and even smoke houses where you could blow your mind with unlimited hashish. Cheryl wondered if the seductive offerings were a way to bribe and numb people into obedience. Which of the temptations had been the drug that had turned Jake into the monster he'd become? It was the first time she'd thought of him since they'd entered the city. Now, it occurred to her that they could run into him anywhere and needed to stay alert.

  As if the thought triggered something, the WHOOP of a siren sounded behind them. They leapt out of the way to let a policeman on a bicycle pass by. When he was a few yards past them, Cheryl said, "How are we not going to look like a couple of homeless vagabonds? We can't keep wandering and sleeping outside."

  "Well…Ashley. Perhaps we can find out where you and I live."

  "Bah…" she said. "We don't look anything like them. We can't just assume their identities."

  "Maybe we can. If not, we can have a good story as to why they left and we moved in."

  It seemed like a longshot, but they headed into a residential area and began searching names on mailboxes and the boxes in the lobbies of apartment complexes. After several hours, they realized the futility of the task and began daring to ask people if they knew where Ashley Garrett and Philip Downey lived, saying they were old friends just trying to hook up with them again. It was late afternoon when they were finally directed to an apartment building.

  "Hope they lived alone," Aidan said as he took a pocket knife out of his pocket and began to fiddle with the lock.

  "I really hope Zach and Diego didn't kill them," Cheryl said as he worked.

  "Probably didn't, unless they got out of hand. Either they're still holding them hostage or they've taken them back with them to Sabre and are trying to de-program them from their O.N.E. indoctrination."

  Minutes later, they were inside the apartment, gorging themselves on food in the couple's kitchen. Afterwards, they took stock of the clothing in the closets and were happy to find most of it to be close enough to their sizes to be wearable. A search of the desk in the living room yielded something else useful.

  "See this?" Aidan said, holding up a piece of paper.

  "What is it?" she asked, squinting from across the room.

  "It's a job app."

  She stared at him, not understanding.

  "Looks like Philip was going to apply to work in O.N.E.'s technology center."

  "And?"

  "I got his resume right here. I'll fill it out and apply myself."

  "You do that, and I'd say you got some big balls on you."

  "That's pure conjecture. Oh wait…you've seen them."

  She blushed, turning away. "Tell me more about the job."

  "Thankfully, it's not in programming, because I know nothing about that stuff. It's for a repair technician. Computers, electronic stuff. I know enough to bluff my way through a lot of that."

  "Sounds risky."

  "Just being here is risky. Not being here is risky. What do I have to lose?"

  "Maybe you should give it some more thought. After all, we haven't said we were planning on staying here."

  "I thought the plan was to get on the inside. Find out whatever we can about this O.N.E. operation."

  "Yeah…" she said. "That was the idea." She tried to envision herself making this O.N.E.-controlled town her home. Despite having to live shoulder to shoulder with Eater slaves, there certainly were enough comforts to make it livable. Then, she stopped herself from going down that road. Remember…these are the people that started it all. They're the reason you've lost your former life, the reason your relationship with Mark unraveled, and the reason your father and aunt are dead. Murderers, all of them. She wasn't here to join these people—she was here to destroy them.

  "There's an open call for interviews tomorrow afternoon. I'll go as myself, that way I won't have to pretend I'm this Philip guy and accidently screw up."

  After picking out a shirt and pair of slacks, he tried them on. Cheryl admired how well they fit, but said, "I don't think the Grizzly Adams hair and beard go with it."

  He walked over to a mirror and laughed. "You're right. How about helping me with a cut and a shave?"

  Cheryl helped him find some scissors as she had a strange déjà vu, remembering how they'd once cut their hair to keep Eaters from grabbing onto it. A half our later, after Aidan's transformation, she hardly recognized him—he was as clean cut as a new military recruit and seemed to enjoy the new look as if it was some sort of disguise.

  Later that night, they ventured out of the apartment, lured by the numbers of people they saw down on the street heading towards the area of the pyramid. A horrible, acrid scent permeated the air. (It was a smell that Cheryl knew all too well, having once visited the site near Fort San Manuel where they burned the bodies of dispatched Eaters.)

  "What's going on?" she asked an adolescent boy hanging out on the sidewalk in front of their building.

  He took another lick from his ice cream cone, ignoring the drip running down his chin. "Same thing as every night. Change of the Beasts."

  She dared not ask another question for fear of drawing attention with her ignorance. The boy trotted off, and she and Aidan followed the crowd to whatever macabre attraction they were headed towards.

  The people were shoulder to shoulder when they reached the building area, but they managed to squeeze and elbow their way near the front of the mass. Eventually, they found themselves ringside, shoved against a chain link fence that bordered a deep pit as large as half a football field. She couldn’t see into it, because of the acrid, dark smoke blowing over it. It came from a smaller pit that was adjacent, and the smell was enough to make her retch as she covered her nose and mouth with the collar of her shirt.

  The crowd cheered as a dump truck pulled up to the smoking pit. Seconds later, it began to unload a heap of Beasts that were so ravaged from their strenuous work on the pyramid they looked like lifeless heaps of bones with just a few tatters of rotting flesh flapping in the breeze. As bodies tumbled out, the crowd began to chant, "Dump…dump…dump…dump…" Cheryl saw some in the heap flail their limbs as they fell towards the flames. She imagined them feeling utter despair at their plight, even though she knew they didn't feel anything. It was still inconceivable that the crowd could watch them being discarded like nothing but refuse and cheer it on. It was another example of how O.N.E. had influenced their minds, warping them into following the new order of things without question.

  After the truck left, the crowd turned their attention to the larger pit. A crane was poised over the center of it, holding a platform the length and width of a semi-truck with waist-high steel rails. It hovered there, swaying a little as the crane operator prepared to lower it.

  A chant spread through the crowd. "No smoke. No smoke…"

  Seeming to obey their command, a few seconds later the wind picked up, shifting the smoke away from the pit. Cheryl looked down, and her whole body went numb.

  There had to be several thousand Eaters/Beasts (she didn't know what to call them now)—
many more than the terrifying numbers that had attacked Fort San Manuel. All of their miserable heads were turned upwards, staring at the crowd with their dead eyes. Their bloody mouths were open wide as their gnarled hands stretched towards the sky.

  "My god…"

  It didn't take long for her to put the pieces together from the conversations around her. Each night, any worn out workers were tossed into the fire pit. Then, to replenish their numbers, more were scooped up from the holding pit to be enlisted as slaves. The process turned out to be more complicated than she had anticipated, and she soon realized the morbid appeal it had to the onlookers.

  First, the platform was lowered into the pit. It remained there for a few minutes, functioning like a fishing rod because of the strips of raw meat dangling from a wire stretched across its center. When it came back up, there were more than a hundred Beasts scooped onto it. Very carefully, the crane operator swung the platform over the heads of the crowd and down into a high-fenced pen. Human workers were ready inside with grabber sticks. They began wrangling the Beasts into a narrow chain link enclosure. When there were five to seven inside, the door was shut and powerful showers rained down a spray of hot water mixed with disinfectant. It sloughed off scraps of loose flesh, blood, and other oozing fluids. The powerful blow dryers that came next seemed to be the crowd's favorite—there were cheers and whoops as they watched the Beasts struggle to stay upright against the strong wind.

  When they emerged from that enclosure, they looked cleaner but more skeletal and just as creepy.

  One by one, they were allowed to go into the next area where they were forcibly chained to a brick wall by their wrists and ankles. The first was an older man, probably in his mid to late sixties when he had been infected. He had wispy gray hair and a forest of short, silvery whiskers covering his chin. If it wasn't for his filmy eyes and sickly pallor, he'd be a dead ringer for her father. All humor from her pun disappeared when she saw what came next. She had to look away for a couple of seconds as a worker drilled a hole in the Beast's head. When she dared to look back, the worker was fitting a black EM box into position, shoving down hard and screwing it in tight.