by Keri Lake
Usually, a prion only causes infection if a person happens to be a cannibal and makes a meal out of some poor sap’s brain. Not exactly a risk factor for the kind of decimation that wiped out most of the globe. But I guess some evil group of scientists somehow fused it with a virus, which made the disease easy to spread from one person to another, like the flu. And voila. A worldwide shit-storm that annihilated over half of the population.
Their twitching is one of the many symptoms, along with the chattering teeth, violent attacks and mottled skin. Papa says it takes several months for them to die, and because they’re not zombies in the true sense, they don’t always consume first. According to the journals I’ve read from the library, the early infection starts off like a mild cold, with some coughing and sneezing. Confusion sets in soon after, and progresses until the person has no connection to anyone, or anything. At that point, they become violent and psychotic. Psychopaths, with an appetite for human meat.
I read about a mom who threw two of her kids over a third story balcony because they wouldn’t stop crying. Had she waited until the final stages, she might’ve consumed them, though from what I understand, Ragers tend not to eat their own offspring. Their brains still function, but at a primitive level, driving two main objectives—to feed and breed.
One of the Ragers lifts his chin to me. His top lip is eaten away, revealing crooked, browning teeth. The final stages seem to turn their skin a strange, spotty color, and their pupils dilate so much, their eyes appear to be a soulless black. They physically look like demons, undead, even though they’re very much alive.
Lipless stumbles forward, toward me, chattering his teeth.
Although I’m a good thirty feet above them, I still cling to the branch, panic rising in my gut. The others follow him, all of them catching sight of me in the tree.
When the first reaches the wire, his body seizes from the electricity for a good ten seconds, before he’s shaken loose and backs away. Stretching his neck toward me, he clicks his teeth in a threatening stance and points. Unable to get to his food. For a brief second, my mind slips away from the scene, and I’m sitting crouched in darkness somewhere. I can’t tell if it’s a dream, or a memory, but it feels real. So real, a tight fist of dread squeezes my lungs and I screw my eyes shut.
The Ragers reach for me, but I’m tucked into some sort of hidden space, too small for them. The click click click seeps past my hands that cover my ears, and I’m praying. Praying for them to go away.
Go away. Go away. A pounding sound beats down my spine, and to the right of me, one Rager stands over the place I’ve hidden, holding a large club. He strikes against the roof of my hiding place. Over and over and over.
Stop! Stop, stop, stop!
The hard thumping that pounds in my ear stops the moment I realize it’s my fists beating against my temples, and I lower my hands.
The voices recede back into the shadows.
I open my eyes, and the scene disappears as quickly as it arrived. A dream? A memory?
A phantom ache gurgles in my stomach, and I swallow back the urge to vomit. The sting at my forearm draws my attention to the scratches I’ve gouged into my skin.
That’s the thing about zombies. Stories have everyone believing they’re these dead, mindless creatures. These ones aren’t.
They run.
They hunt.
And if you’re not fast enough, they have the brain capacity to toy with you in the process.
Once my head finally relaxes, convincing the rest of me that I’m safe, I scan beyond the crowd of Ragers. Two guard towers stand a good couple hundred yards off at either side of the corralled Ragers—too far to notice me hiding in the trees. I can just make out the black suits and guns over the top railing.
A building stands off in the distance—massive, with those smoke stacks I saw earlier, emitting clouds into the air. More buildings stand at either side of them, like a cluster of factories situated just outside the wall.
A half hour passes, as I sit studying the buildings while perched on my tree, ignoring the moans and clicks below me. Some of the Ragers have lost interest, stumbling and twitching off. The few that haven’t continue to watch me with the kind of unnerving stare that casts a ripple down the spine. The one from before jerks its crotch forward, grabbing itself over ragged, dirty pants, and it’s clear what purpose it sees in me.
I curl my lip, and a new wave of nausea settles over me.
Then anger.
I reach out and pluck two of the bulbous, bristle-head fruits hanging from the branch above me. From my hip, I tug the sling and drop the fruit into the leather pouch, slipping my finger into the loop at the end of the cord. I’ve gotten pretty good with my targets, and find the figure eight to be the most accurate hit versus swinging it over my head or at my side, but propped in a tree, I don’t have much of a choice. I release the end of the cord and the fruit hurtles through the air, hitting the Rager square on his forehead.
The impact, though not enough to cause too much damage, knocks him back a step, and he lurches forward, hissing. Fruit oozing down his cheek taunts a quiet giggle in my chest, while I load another into the pouch, and launch it again, hitting its nose.
“How’s that, shithead?”
Again, the Rager lurches, but this time he grips the barbed wire, and his body convulses the moment his ragged fingers curl around the steel.
I snap two more fruits from the branch, hurling them at other Ragers, nailing their heads every time. Another launched fruit bounces off the ear of a female, landing outside of the wire barrier.
When a hand reaches out to snatch it up, my heart catches in my throat.
‘The heck? Did one of them get through the fence?
I slide farther along the branch until the ground on other side of the wall is in view.
Crouched against the wall is a boy. Not a boy. A young man, wearing a pale blue jumpsuit, his head completely shaved. In the narrow gap between the corralled Ragers and the wall, his body is just out of reach of the monsters that would eat him alive. He holds the fruit in his palms, devouring it, as if he hasn’t eaten in days. It’s then I notice the dirt on his skin and sharp bones peeking out from his oversized suit.
He twists, and his eyes land on mine.
My muscles seize, and before I can catch myself, I slip from the branch, feeling the air rush past me. The bed of the forest slams into my spine at the same time wind blasts from my lungs, stifling my next inhalation. Stars drift before my eyes, dancing with the blinding orange sun-flares that explode behind my clamped eyelids. Despite the tug in my ribs, I can’t suck in the air, and for a moment, I stare up at the canopy of trees, mouth gaping for one single breath. I moan and turn on my side, my locked lungs permitting tiny gasps of air at a time. Small, panting breaths bat away the floating circles in front of my eyes, until I’m able to draw in a lung full.
That’s when I notice the breach.
My eyes zero in on a hole at the bottom of the wall that looks as if a few of the bricks have been chipped away. Small enough that only a hand could fit through.
An eyeball stares back at me.
I kick back, my heart bouncing like a ping-pong against my ribs. Grabbing my chest, I wheeze and bend forward, studying the boy through the small hole. His eyes are as blue as the sky above us, framed by long, black lashes—the thickest lashes I’ve ever seen on a boy. After a minute of staring, I crawl toward him, tipping my head to keep him in view, and sit beside the wall.
He backs away, toward the Ragers, as if I’m the more frightening creature.
“It’s okay. Are you … one of them?” I ask, peering through the hole, where I have a much better view of his face. “The Ragers. Are you infected like them?”
Keeping his gaze from mine, he shakes his head.
He’s definitely male, with his Adam’s apple and defined jawline, a slight bit of scruff at his cheeks. If not for the emaciated prominence of his bones, he’d be striking, with his olive tone skin a
nd pale blue eyes.
Over eighteen, for sure, though it’s hard to guess his age, as frail as he appears.
“What’s your name?” I scan his skin, an instinct I’ve developed from living with a physician, and notice an abundance of scars. Some of them sewn together with little care and haste, all jagged and sloppy. Papa would pitch a fit if he saw them.
He shakes his head again, turning away from me, and tucks his knees up into his chest. Black markings draw my attention to the side of his head where a series of numbers has been tattooed.
I look around the forest bed, over the figs that’ve fallen, and gather them up. Pushing them one at a time through the hole, I offer him the fruit and slide back to watch him scramble for it.
Hard to tell if he’s infected like the others. I’ve been told humans can go days, seemingly normal, not even knowing they’re sick, while the disease takes root, and then all of a sudden, poof, they change. Just like that. The twitching sets in. The aggression follows. And then the violence.
The boy hardly looks violent to me, though.
He eats all of the figs, and I gather more for him, shoving them through the small hole, from where he scoops them up.
“Is that a factory behind you?”
Perhaps it’s only gratitude that makes him pause long enough to glance back toward the buildings in the distance and shake his head, before going back to his meal. He devours the food, nostrils flaring, while his jaw flexes with his chewing.
Mesmerizing, in a way.
The Ragers hardly take notice of him, as they pace back and forth inside their pen, never once trying to grab at him.
Which leads me to wonder why. How can he be so close and not be one of them? They fight their own kind, and tend to be territorial, evident in the battle scars and festering wounds, but they never consume each other.
And why are they there, anyway? In such close proximity to the wall and those buildings.
I can’t begin to imagine what kind of building would have a smoke stack, but another glance at his outfit, and I’m puzzling the possibilities. “Is it a hospital?”
Mid-bite, he lowers the fruit from his mouth and stares off. He nods.
“Are you a patient there?” My questions have begun to dip into invasive, perhaps even annoying, territory, but in the time I’ve been inside these walls—as long as I can remember—I’ve never met someone from the outside.
And I may never get the opportunity again.
He nods a second time, and I’m feeling a bit victorious at the information I’ve collected so far. Once again, the fruit I’ve gathered is gone, and I nab a few more from the ground. Across the bed of vegetation, I scamper toward a leafy shrub and collect some of its berries. Returning to the wall, I offer all of the fruit to him, in hopes he’ll answer more of my questions.
He sniffs the berries and takes a bite, as though studying the flavor. Seemingly satisfied, he pops two more of them in his mouth, chewing quickly.
I focus on a scar along his neck, which seems to be older in the way it’s already pink and healed. A silver metal band around his throat digs into his flesh there, and I try to determine its function. “You don’t talk?”
The shake of his head is a disappointment, quickly tamped down when he bites into another fig, and the corner of his lips kick up into a smile that stretches the scar at his eye. As if he’d never tire of the taste.
“Do you have any family?” The moment the words pass my lips, my chest fills with regret.
The fruit in his hands falls to the ground, and I can see that he’s trembling.
He slams the heel of his hand against his temple, and an agonized moan is the first sound he’s made.
“I … I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Jolting up from his crouch, he paces, his bare feet kicking up dust clouds of sand, until he halts his steps. For a split second I think he’s going to sit back down, but instead, he dives between the wires of the fence and my breath catches.
“No! Wait! Don’t!”
He crawls on hands and knees, weaving between the mangled legs of the Ragers, until I can’t see him.
Oh, God. Oh, God.
Pushing to my feet, I will my heart not to gallop out of my chest as I reach out for the branch of the Sycamore. Bracing my foot, I push up and climb, pulling myself along the branches, higher and higher up the tree.
Finally reaching the top of the wall, I peer out into the pen of Ragers that seem rattled and twitching, pacing faster than before.
There’s no sign of the boy.
I scan the barren land at either side of the pen.
Nothing.
The snaking black smoke slithers into my periphery, as it does whenever bad things happen, and the darkness filters in. Voices bounce inside my skull.
It’s your fault! It’s your fault! It’s your fault! It’s your fault!
He’s disappeared.
Or perhaps he’s already dead.
And it’s my fault.
Chapter 3
Dani
Abel lies across my lap, sleeping, while I stroke his hair. His body jerks with the occasional sniffle, from his having cried to the point of exhaustion. We’ve traveled for nearly two hours, and I’m grateful to focus my attention on my sleeping brother, rather than all of the frightened faces that surround me. All of us packed in a truck, bound for a place that is both a curiosity and a terror.
Arid desert heat sits like a static cloud of misery, turning the cramped space unbearable with a thick, suffocating warmth that weakens the muscles and has my head feeling light. The overwhelming stench of body odor and piss from one of the younger boys’ wet diapers crinkles my nose. Not even the wind whipping through the tarp offers much relief.
Sweat dribbles down the back of my neck, but I refuse to wipe it away, for fear I’ll touch the stubble of what was once my long hair. Instead, I use the collar of my shirt and wick the moisture from my throat. I’d love nothing more than to lie down beside Abel and close my eyes, fall prey to the beast that tugs at my eyelids for sleep, but I can’t.
I have to stay awake.
I don’t like the quiet, though. It makes me think of my mother and Sarai. And I need to stuff them into a place where I can mourn them later, because I won’t cry in front of all these men.
The mood has shifted in the last hour, calmed for the most part, aside from a few younger boys who continue to ask for their mothers, and sob when no one has the heart to tell them they’re likely dead. A somber curtain of defeat hangs on the air, sapping away whatever fight might’ve been left in us.
It’s draining, not knowing what will happen to you, if you’ll be alive in the next hour, or wishing you weren’t.
Though it physically hurts to be here without her, I’m glad for what my mother did. The thought of Abel traveling alone with all of these strangers, being shuffled along like cattle and yelled at by those monsters, is a thought that spurs another sting in my eyes, and I have to blink away the tears itching to follow.
The words of my father drift through my mind, ones he spoke a number of times during our hunts whenever I’d sob while watching an animal bleed out of a wound I inflicted.
Where survival is concerned, tears have no place. Stay focused, and stay alive.
I’d give anything to have my dad here with us. He’d have answers, a plan. I’d feel braver with him sitting beside me.
My mother says he’s always with me, but that can’t be true. He’d never allow those men to hurt my mother and sister, to shuttle my brother and I off to a place that sounds like a nightmare, far away from our home.
If he were with me, he’d probably tell me to fight them, or find a clever way to escape.
My father was an inventor before the days of the Dredge. A computer programmer, who worked for one of the biggest companies in the world at the time. An innovator. He used to tell me that I was his young prodigy, the way I picked up on things at a much faster pace than my peers. Language, reading, hunting skills.
He called me his wonder-kid.
Yet, I can’t think of a single thing at the moment. My brain is so scrambled, I fear I’ll mistakenly refer to myself as a girl, when it’s clear, for whatever reason, these monsters only take men and boys.
The vehicle comes to a rolling stop, and the ruffle of movement wakes Abel, who sits up from my lap, rubbing his eye. A hiccup of a sob tells me he forgot about this nightmare while dreaming, and I pull him into my lap.
“Shh, I’m here Abel. You’re okay.” I kiss the top of his head, but pause, trying to remember if my father had been so affectionate with him. I have to make the guards think I’m a boy—that’s what mother said.
They only take boys.
Abel buries his face into my shoulder, and at his muffled cry, I stroke his back.
The door flies open with an invasion of bright light, and I shield my eyes from it, trying to see past the blinding flare. Two of the figures with masks stand at either side of the exit, each holding a gun, as they usher us out.
A combination of fear and anger creates a knot in my chest, which feels as if it might burst at any moment.
All of the men and boys file out of the vehicle, and I set Abel down, guiding him to follow. My head is desperate to formulate a plan, something clever like my father would come up with, but I can’t. When I see those monsters in their masks, and their guns, all I see is the blood pooling at my feet and my mother’s lifeless body curled into my sister’s.
We hop off the back of the truck onto the dusty gravel, and we’re instructed to line up as before.
Overhead, the sky is an array of oranges and yellows, while below, the silhouette of desert plants dot the canvas, as daylight settles toward night. Against the harsh colors are two smokestacks, with pillars of soft gray clouds that float toward the sky.
The smell that hangs on the air tugs at the back of my throat. For those of us who haven’t eaten well, it has the savory thickness of meat that’s been charred, a greasy, delicious scent. Like the few times my father hunted mule deer and cooked it on an open flame.