Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance

by Michelle DePaepe

  The woman glanced around the room as if searching for anyone who might have heard such provocative words. Then, she rushed to the door and held a finger to her lips before fumbling with the lock.

  "All right," the woman said, still eyeing them with suspicion. "I'll let you in, but if you cause any trouble, I'll make sure they know you lied to me."

  "I've got a friend with me," Cheryl said after she opened the door.

  The woman looked startled when she saw Aidan. She hesitated, then went ahead and let them in.

  "We're very grateful," Cheryl told her, as the woman locked the door behind them and lowered the blinds. After the woman turned to face them with wide brown eyes, Cheryl introduced herself and Aidan.

  Without giving them her name, the woman said, "You can stay down here." She led them down a hall and showed them an office where they could crash for the night. As she walked away, she pulled a phone out of her pocket and began to dial.

  "Not very friendly," Cheryl said after she left.

  "Just a little freaked out," Aidan said. "I think we're okay."

  True to his intuition, the woman came back a few minutes later. "I talked to Ruth. She said she didn't send you, but she knows who you are, so you can stay the night. She and Vinnie will be in around eight." Without another word, she left and began vacuuming in another office. After she was done, they heard her lock the door and drive away.

  They looked around for some way to get comfortable on the hard floor with just a thin layer of industrial gray carpet. After failing to find anything acceptable to use as a pillow, Cheryl leaned her head against the wall. Aidan sat down next to her, his leg touching hers. She instantly stiffened and pulled away.

  "I'm sorry," she said, after seeing a wounded look in his eye.

  He held his arm out, and she allowed herself to fall into him, leaning her head against his chest. She felt like she'd held herself together for the last couple of hours by pieces of gossamer thread and the sheer grit of her determination. The fabric of that will was breaking down now. Feeling her whole body tremble with weakness, she began to sob.

  "I'm sorry," he said, brushing his fingers through the blonde strands on top of her head. "I know you loved him."

  She was quiet for a few seconds, trying to regain some measure of control of her emotions. "He didn't love me anymore, though," she said in between heaves of her chest. "He was so worked up about the apocalypse and who started it…he just didn't want to care about anyone, not even me."

  Aidan was quiet, not seeming to know what to say to comfort her. He held her for a while and continued to stroke her hair. Then, he put his lips to her forehead and said in a low whisper that she almost couldn't hear, "I care about you…"

  Chapter 23

  In the morning, Ruth greeted them with a couple of pastries and orange juice. They thanked her and tried to eat without dwelling too much on the things Paige had told them the night before about the food possibly being contaminated.

  "Clyde is going to be here in half an hour," Ruth said as she turned a chair around backwards and straddled it. She took a sip from a steaming mug. It was dark brown like coffee, but smelled like an herbal concoction. "He's a lead Beast trainer, and he's swinging by to pick you up as new recruits. That's why I'm not giving you much to eat this morning—you might heave up your breakfast the first few days you work with him."

  "Thanks for the warning," Cheryl said, feeling her stomach already lurching from the thought of spending any amount of time in close proximity with the walking, oozing dead.

  "So, you want to tell me what happened last night?"

  They told her about the run-in with Jake.

  "So, you're sure he's not dead?"

  "Yes," Cheryl said. "I just knocked him out, and we left before he woke up."

  "And you're sure he doesn't know anything about you meeting with any of us?"

  "I don't think so," she replied, trying to reassure herself as much as Ruth.

  "Well…we'll send someone by the apartment to check things out. In the meantime, you're both off to work. "She stood and smoothed down the fabric of her khaki pants then stared at Aidan." You need to lose the pirate garb," she said, pointing at his patch that he'd begun wearing again. "It makes you stand out as a donor…but it also just makes you stand out." Ruth left the cubicle then returned a minute later, holding a large, square bandage in her had. "This will be a little less obvious."

  Cheryl flinched when Aidan removed the black patch. The freakish sunken scar where his left eye had once been still sent a shiver down her spine. As she watched, Ruth helped to affix the bandage over the empty eye socket.

  "There are only about five weeks until the big event," Ruth said when she was done. "But that's plenty of time to get you worked in as regular Beast trainers before you get further instructions from the RT. The hazard pay is good, and you'll be set up with temporary lodging with the other trainers. Clyde will be here shortly. By the way…neither Clyde, nor the trainers, nor the other new trainees are involved with the RT, so keep a lid on it."

  They promised they would. Then, Ruth gave them a slip of paper containing their assigned names, new identities in case Jake had tipped the authorities to watch out for them. After that, she left them to take care of some business in the shop, and they tidied themselves up in the restroom. Then, they waited anxiously by the large shop doors for their ride.

  A few minutes later, they found themselves in the back of a windowless van, sitting on a bench with six other new hires. Half of them were teenaged boys, laughing and joking about what fun they were going to have bossing around the Beasts. The others were men, haggard-looking fellows with long faces who didn't seem too joyful about starting their first day of training.

  When they arrived at the pyramid, Clyde parked in an adjacent lot and led them down stone steps to an underground chamber. As they descended, Cheryl had a feeling of déjà vu as she was reminded of the Baiting Stations back at Fort San Manuel. They were nasty buildings placed around the fort to lure and kill Eaters. Now, they were going below the earth to some sort of dungeon where they didn't kill them—they trained them! The idea almost had her more curious than afraid.

  On the way down, Clyde told them he used to be a cowboy down near Casa Grande. Now, as he explained…he wrangled Beasts for a living. When they reached the landing and stood before a closed door, he started waxing long about his younger days on the ranch. Every few minutes, he spat tobacco juice on the floor, not seeming to mind too much whose shoes he splattered. When one of the young men in the group started to whine about it, Clyde shot out a hand and grabbed him around the throat.

  "Son…if I was a Beast and my box was broke, you'd be dead right now. Nothing more than a piece of chewed beef. You got it? You stay alert…or you die!"

  The teenager stared at him with a slack jaw.

  "Drop and give me twenty."

  Without hesitation, the kid hit the brown-stained floor and began grunting through the set.

  "Now…like I was saying back in the van…these Beasts ain't got no pain, no fatigue. We like to say, 'they work themselves to death'." He laughed so hard, he doubled over for a few seconds. When he recovered, he went on. "Technically, these things don't need to be fed, but we make an evening meal part of their routine, assuming it gives them something to look forward to at the end of the day." He chuckled again then drew a stone face. "Don't be that meal. It takes three Beasts just eighteen minutes to turn a live man into nothing but a skeleton. You screw up around here, and you might not be punching your time card at the end of the day. Get my drift?"

  Every head bobbed up and down.

  Clyde took them to another chamber to show them some of the Beasts in training. As he explained, it was a remarkably simple, but tedious process. Once fitted with a black box that controlled brainwaves, each Beast could be taught various tasks such as moving progressively larger bricks, using a wheelbarrow, and even using a chisel to shape stone.

  Cheryl and Aidan stared as wide
-eyed as the others. Seeing the quiet Beasts up close as they worked with their lifeless eyes was surreal. Like automatons, they went through endless repetitions of each movement without being distracted by the presence of their audience.

  Within a couple of hours, Clyde had them doing some simple training exercise—teaching voice commands and using buttons on a remote to increase their speed, slow them down, or halt their work altogether. Being a Beast trainer was a bit like playing God, Cheryl thought. There was a perverse thrill that first time she got a ghoulish middle-aged woman to walk ten steps across the room without faltering.

  As they worked on their training, Cheryl remembered that there was no benevolent purpose to what they were doing. O.N.E. was creating these slave monsters only for their own self-interested purpose. She also made mental notes about the layout of the pyramid rooms, remembering that every little familiarity might help them to accomplish their task for the RT.

  At the end of the day, Clyde loaded them back into the van and took them to the worker's dormitory. The conditions were Spartan— rows and rows of parallel bunks with no privacy. There was no doubt that the place was bugged too. Cameras were mounted in every nook and cranny, including the cafeteria, making it hard for them to talk openly.

  The next morning, Cheryl whispered to Aidan as they walked to the van. "You trust them?"

  "The RT?"

  "Yeah. I mean…what if we just get stuck here as Beast trainers…and that's it. What if nothing else ever happens?"

  "We'll give it a few more days, before we raise any red flags. Until then, let's try to be happy employees." He grinned through clenched teeth.

  They muddled through the next few days, leaving exhausted and smelling like the stink of the Beasts each night. At the end of the first week, they got their first paycheck. The other employees whooped and hollered after they opened their envelopes and found out that they got a night on the town that Friday night. Some of the guys said they were going to blow most of their salary at a strip bar while others just wanted to get slap-happy drunk. Cheryl and Aidan joined a group that went to the Blue Scorpion, because it was familiar.

  It was around 3 a.m. when they stumbled back to the designated location for the van to meet them. Before Cheryl could comment on the fact that they were the first ones there, and their ride was late, they heard a whisper coming from around the corner of the building behind them.

  "Psst…"

  It was Vinnie. He talked fast while looking from side to side to see if anyone was coming. "We need you to test one of our new disabling chips." He handed them what looked like a wrapped chocolate bar. "Everything you need is in this. You just unscrew a black box, pull the chip and insert this one. Then you hit the red button on the bypass remote, and the Beast should collapse. If it works, do nothing. If it doesn't, then give me a signal by putting two sticks in an 'X' shape on the street in front of the dormitory. Either way…get rid of the chip when you're done."

  "Sounds easy enough." Aidan said. "But how do we get a Beast in seclusion for the experiment?"

  "That's where you'll have to use your creativity. You're going to have to find a way to isolate one and run a quick test."

  Aidan threw his hands up and sighed as Vinnie disappeared into the shadows. "How are we going to do that?"

  Cheryl thought for a moment then said, "I have an idea."

  ***

  On Monday, they waited until it was near the end of their shift and many of the trainers who'd completed their protocols early had left for the day on one of the shuttles going to the dormitory. Then, Cheryl told Clyde they had a Beast that could be ready for assignment on the Pyramid if they could just work with him for another hour.

  "Fine," he said. "But, there's no overtime pay."

  Their chosen subject was a man-Beast that had the decayed physique of a boxer with a street-wise resume, based on the plethora of tattoos running up and down his beefy arms. No longer a man with a name, he was now called Number 3022.

  Using her gloved hands, Cheryl held the Beast's pliant arms behind his back while Aidan used the plastic screwdriver he'd found in the candy wrapper to open the black box on the Beast's head. The creature struggled a little and growled, but didn't resist more than she could handle. After Aidan removed the chip and inserted the new one, she let him go. When she did, he started to walk towards the pile of bricks that he'd been working on before. He was half way there when Aidan hit the red button on the remote.

  The Beast crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap.

  "Ha!" Aidan said, nearly leaping off the ground with joy. "It worked!"

  "Yeah...and thankfully, his head didn't explode. Now quick….let's get him back online before Clyde or someone else comes."

  Aidan switched out the chip and reassembled the black box. Then, Cheryl pressed the green button on the remote. After a couple of seconds, the Beast lifted his head. He rose to his feet like he'd just awakened from a short nap. Then, he returned to the task of moving the bricks from one side of the room to the other as if nothing had happened.

  ***

  The flyers appeared on every bunk in the dormitory on April 23rd. It announced the momentous day of May 1st when the pyramid capstone would be installed, the Cyclops project would be activated, and all citizens would receive a joyous enlightenment and great reward. There were tickets attached to each paper with names on them. Aidan and Cheryl's read, Alan Smith and Shari Welton—the new identities they'd taken on when they started working as Beast trainers. The tickets were barcoded, an obvious sign that all citizens would be tracked and accounted for to make sure they were in the square next to the pyramid before the ceremony began.

  That day, signs were also posted on every street corner instructing that E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E had to attend the event, insinuating that horrible consequences would result for anyone who disobeyed and failed to show. Every time she saw another flyer, the knot of dark energy in Cheryl's gut whirled round and round, threatening to spin up into her throat and spew out like some vile emanation from those creatures she used to call Eaters.

  More and more….the plaza was the last place Cheryl wanted to be on May 1st.

  Every day, they waited for some message from Vinnie, Ruth, or Paige about what their big Special Forces assignment was supposed to be for the RT. They began to wonder if they'd been set up as some sort of sacrificial lambs for the cause, and things were going down without them. They decided to find any way possible to bail out of town on the evening of April 30th if they hadn't gotten any further instructions.

  Vinnie finally made an appearance the day before they were set to panic and flee. He showed up during their lunch break, appearing next to them as they sat a few yards away from the others, eating some sort of mystery stew out of cans given to them by the Beast lunch servers. He was wearing a black apron like they and the other Beast trainers wore, and seemed both agitated and excited as he whispered to them. "Let's talk about bombs, baby."

  Aidan set his can on his lap, perking up immediately. "I got some ideas about that." There was a devious look in his one green eye, and a smirk above his chin that was now covered with dark whiskers. It was the expression of a man who had been conniving enough to blow up toilets in an Army latrine. "I'll tell you where we put them," he said, his mouth blooming into a smile. "We'll tape them onto the torsos of some of the Beasts and—"

  "That's funny," Vinnie chuckled. "I wish we could do that. Blow them up, using their own Frankensteins. But, we got something else in mind. It's going to take some serious ka-boom to knock this abomination down and destroy the Cyclops machine." He took a deep breath then continued. "Tomorrow …you're going to use your trainer I.D. badges to get past the guards and drive a truck into the pyramid's garage."

  "A truck?" Cheryl asked as she saw her fantasy of being some sort of silent, ninja-like operative sneaking into the pyramid and tucking explosives into strategic locations fade away.

  "Yeah. A truck filled with 50-gallon drums of explosive material."

&n
bsp; "Oh," she said after a quick inhale.

  Aidan's eye got all twinkly again.

  "Security is going to be extra tight that day. They're not supposed to let so much as a cricket get near the building. So, you're going to have to come up with some sort of ruse to get past the guard at the gate. The good news is…we've heard they've got a lot of their firepower diverted to securing the secret location of the Cyclops, so hopefully cover will be thin at the pyramid until the next morning when everything starts to go down there."

  This was it. This was really it. Adrenaline tingled through Cheryl's limbs, making her fingers and toes feel numb.

  "You all right, hon?" Vinnie asked, staring at her.

  "I'm good," she said. "Just tell us what to do."

  Vinnie spelled out the details about where to pick up the truck and gave them some ideas for bluffing their way past the guard, but her own ideas were already formulating in her mind. None were foolproof, but they all were certainly creative. She was going to have to rely on her intuition to choose the best plan.

  "Imagine," he said. "Waking up on May 2nd…the pyramid is a heap of rubble. O.N.E. is neutralized, and we can start to rebuild life just like the good old days. Sounds peachy doesn't it?"

  "Sounds like a dream…a dream I've been having for a long time," she replied.

  "Me too," Aidan said.

  "Now, the suck-ass part. If this thing don't work? We're all either dead…or living in a new hell." He didn't say another word after that. He cupped his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. When the work crew was called back in from lunch, he darted around the other side of the building and took off.

  ***

  Early the next morning, people were already trickling into the square, setting up blankets, tents, and coolers in the coveted areas where they'd have the best view of the ceremony that would be held the next day. Wearing their Beast trainer aprons and I.D. badges, baseball caps, and sunglasses, Cheryl and Aidan passed the square and pulled up to the guard station in a white truck, identical to the ones they used to see roaming around with armed men and Beasts before they entered Sedona. Cheryl was in the driver's seat—a hard won role she assumed after an argument with Aidan that got way too loud in the dormitory the night before.