by P. S. Power
Or if they did, they wouldn't know the location well enough to set one of those headed his way in time.
So it was up to him. It had been for a while now though, hadn't it?
Jake let go then, just standing there, emptying everything out of himself. All thought, all care. Everything he'd ever wanted, or needed, he let go of it all. There was nothing left inside him at all when the first of the white things ran out of the woods. It wasn't moving that fast, just jogging up to the door. It had its back turned to him though, so the shot hit it in the head cleanly, dropping it. The second one slapped him to the ground though, before trying to move past, toward the beacon. Something in his right shoulder broke, but not badly. He could still use the arm alright, it just hurt. That one got taken too, another shot to the back of the head.
Then the things paused, as if realizing he might be a threat or something. Go figure right? They gathered around him in a circle, packing in tightly, the numbers growing by the second. There were ten to start with, but in a few minutes the whole field was packed with them. Most of them headed for the back door, as if knowing he couldn't stop them. They started pounding, which meant they'd be inside soon. After that they'd kill Lois and Burt, and then probably run off into the night.
Well, they'd stop to eat him first, but after that.
Jake didn't bother to grin, he just fought then, a wall of shifting, writhing white, as brilliant as the snow, showing a thousand limbs, all looking too long and out of proportion to the bodies, skeletal faces and bald heads coming into focus just long enough for him to fire. He felt himself hit, even knocked out a few times, but didn't let that stop him from doing what he needed to. Even unconscious he kept going, until the ammo ran out. Then he pulled the knives, knowing that he'd never be able to reload again anyway.
Something grabbed him and started to eat his right arm. It should have made him scream, or panic, but he didn't, just stabbing it in the eye. His heavy clothing had protected him from the worst of it, so no flesh came off, but the stinging was bad enough to be distracting. Finally enough of them had grabbed on to him that he couldn't move at all. His arms pinned and teeth found him in different locations, many times. It was agony, so he did the only thing he could.
He laughed.
"I forgive you. I forgive you all! It isn't your fault. This was done to you. They made you into this... Into these things. I forgive you!" The words held all the joy inside him, bursting out as he started to die. He surrendered to it, knowing that it didn't matter what happened then, he couldn't stop it at all.
Something fell on him then, from above. It was black compared to the white wall of death around him, and it screamed, a male voice, as the Windigo creatures started to rip into him too. A single hand reach down and grabbed Jake by the face, already slick with blood.
Then he found himself inside the House.
Morten was on the floor next to him, still screaming, since he was pretty messed up. His right eye was missing it looked like. He held a hand over it, crying. What he screamed wasn't about his pain though, it was something very different. He yelled into a shiny bit of metal on his right sleeve cuff.
"Now! Inside!" He gasped the words, ten seconds later half a dozen people were in the room. Along with something huge and metallic.
Jake couldn't make out all that was happening, but Cam grabbed him, which, he saw, got her clothing all bloody. Standing by the metal thing was Colleen, looking grim as death. She had her hand on a switch, a simple metal lever about half an inch long.
"Go, get him out of here. Then I'll set it off." She was screaming too, trying to be heard over the howling that came from beyond the walls. Morris yelled something, but Jake couldn't make it out.
He got what she intended to do though.
"No." His voice almost didn't work, a quiet rasp that no one noticed.
"No!" He stood, shaking Cam off, walking toward the thing, the bomb he guessed, shaking his head as Colleen looked at him with death already in her eyes.
"No, I won't let you Colleen. This is my mess." He didn't know why he said it, because it wasn't true, but it was Lois that got to the device first, Tessa. For a second he thought she was going to try and hurt Colleen, to stop her, but instead she put her hand on the little lever and started counting down from ten.
"Nine, eight, seven, six," She didn't slow and it wasn't a full second for each one, which was good, since the door was starting to buckle already. They didn't have ten real seconds.
Tess looked at Colleen and screamed at her.
"Go with the Travelers! I'm sorry about what I did to you!" Who she meant exactly he couldn't tell, since Morris jumped in and took Colleen by the shoulder, then vanished. Half a second later he was gone too, the world shifting in front of him in a way that made him fall to the ground, retching.
Cam had his arm, crying. They were... Somewhere. It wasn't the tent city, or the Lake, but he didn't recognize it at all other than that before he went dark. He couldn't tell what had happened at all.
When he woke up it was dark still. For a few moments he wondered if he was blind, or in a cell somewhere, but the moment he moved the lights came on. The bed was comfortable, forming to him perfectly, but strange, made of a material that was different than anything he recognized. There were blankets and sheets too though, and it sat on the floor, which was some kind of hard packed earth, not stone or tile. He stood, a slow movement that was all he could manage, feeling like someone had starved him for a long time.
He was wearing cool clothing that was tight fitting, all in tan. A top and pants of it that reminded him of long underwear, except that it was lighter and more form fitting. Technologist clothing. That didn't really make sense though, did it? He searched the room with his eyes, looking for his weapons, but they weren't there at all. Some knives were, which made sense. He hadn't kept his nine or the forty-five at all.
They were lost in the fight. Hopefully he just wouldn't need them anymore.
It didn't take even a minute for someone to come into the room. To his surprise it was Heather, not someone sane. It wasn't a nice way to think of her though, so he let himself sink into a feeling of total compassion. That let him realize that he'd judged her too harshly most of the time. She was a product of the world that she'd been thrust into. He loved her. Just like everyone else.
"Jake. Decided to stop scaring everyone with that whole coma patient routine I see? About time. It's been weeks you know. I was just coming to get you. After you go to the bathroom I mean. Can you walk?" She said it far more kindly than her norm, almost as if she knew the answer was no and might never be again.
He was standing, which meant he could do it. Maybe poorly, but something the Technologists had given him seemed to make a huge difference in how fast muscle degraded or something. Taking a few steps he nodded.
"Probably not up to running for a bit. I can walk I think. What's up?"
She shrugged.
"What isn't? Everything has changed. The Technologists, the ones that made the zombie plague, they're all in custody. The others have come back from that alternate reality to help us, since Burt told them to do it. He's in jail too. Kind of. It's really more like they're all locked in their rooms. They aren't even really locked in though. They were just told they couldn't leave. Odina Victoria nearly had a fit that we didn't kill them all."
Jake tilted his head.
"Odina Vicki? Since when? Is Yalla..."
"She stepped down to take a place on the new ruling council. Vicki is the Valkyrie leader now. I told you a lot's changed, didn't I? Anyway, let's walk and talk. Everyone will want to see you." She went to the door at a quick pace, then had to wait for him to catch up. She didn't say anything about it though.
He smiled at her, noticing that she'd bobbed her hair off and dyed it a golden blond.
"Like the new hairdo. So, the bomb?"
"A nuclear one, Lois set it off. The House is a hole in the ground now that no one can visit for generations. The Technologist we
re not happy to hear about that, but several people offered to shove another one up their behinds if they whined about the destruction, since it was their people that had made us do it. No one is really happy with them. Not even the ones that came back to help us. Kind of blaming them for what Burt and his people did."
That got a nod from Jake, a thing he shouldn't have been thinking popping into his head. That they were probably going to have to kill the ones that had done it all. It wasn't a good thought though, and he decided to try to save them if he could. Once the danger was past they'd need all the help they could get rebuilding. It wasn't fair punishment, but it made sense for Burt to spend the rest of his life trying to fix what he'd done.
After all, this wasn't over. Not by a long shot. They had so much more left to do. More than he'd probably live to see. As it was he was kind of surprised that he'd survived that last bit. That was probably down to some pretty advanced medical tech, no doubt.
The room he was taken too was small, and filled with a dozen people. The only Technologist there was Hal though. The rest were his people, the ones from the House. Not all of them though. Ken was there, looking a lot better than he would have thought, standing next to Dave and Carley. Nate was with Carl and Samuel, all of whom turned to stare at him as if they thought he was dead or something.
The rest of the people descended on him in one group, patting and holding him tightly as he laughed and returned the moves as well as he could. It was a good thing after all.
"Mickey! I was so scared. Heather said you'd live but..." Colleen kissed him, her lips warm on his.
It took a second to realize that the others were trying to get his attention too, Cam holding him from the side, not letting go, looking ready to steal him away if she had too. Sammi had his left hand, her eyes glowing a little, but smiling.
"Jake. We have work to do, as soon as you're ready." That comment got a groan from the room, or at least half of them.
Cam huffed at the Bawdri Princess.
"He just got out of bed, can't you, I don't know, just be happy for a minute?"
She nodded but had a serious look on her face.
"Sure I can. But we still have things to do. The first one is showing everyone that Jake is alive and well. He's the glue holding this all together. Then we need to see about the trial. Waiting won't help anything. There's so much to do. We haven't even really stopped the zombies yet. That will take decades. There are still Windigo, the new kind, out there as well. The Technologists are working on a way to stop them as well, but it could take time."
That... Jake stopped, his body going still for a minute. It was more serious than he'd thought then.
"Right, we need to stop them as we can. We need new Cleaning techniques for them... Maybe if we can set beacons that aren't attached to people? For that matter how is it that Burt isn't being attacked right now?"
Heather pointed up at the ceiling.
"This is Australia. Up on the surface I mean. Surrounded by water. They just can't reach us here. Burt can't leave though. Not until the last of the Cannibals is gone. I told you that they were scary. Way worse than zombies. No one believed me though, did they? Crazy Heather and her stories. I didn't think you'd try to fight them all yourself though. I never saw that happening at all. And they call me insane?"
"OK. So, if I can get something to eat, I guess we should start planning how to take care of all this stuff. This isn't going to be easy." He smiled.
"I mean feeding me, I'm starving."
It got a polite chuckle, but he was taken to a food assembler in what looked like a cafeteria, feeling pretty good about the whole thing for some reason he ordered pizza, wondering what would come out. It turned was plain cheese with white sauce on it, but was good for all that. A bit like a grilled cheese sandwich really. The whole thing was hot and it was just once slice, but it was probably more than he should eat, unless he got out to collect some bio-material himself soon. It wouldn't do to make more work for someone else.
He picked at the food for a while, starving, but feeling a little sick from all the grease on it. He wouldn't waste it, he couldn't, even though it could have been put back in the hopper on the top of the assembly device without losing anything from it at all. The idea made him feel even worse than being sick did. So he went slowly, taking almost forty minutes to get it all down. No one questioned him on it, but they didn't leave either, or even eat, just sitting around him as if he was supposed to be doing something and they were waiting for him to get to it.
There was need to hurry though, he knew that. Not so much he had to force himself to be sick though, or waste food.
When he finished, the small white plate the food had come on going back into the top of the machine, he stood, feeling a little better for the food. It wasn't really enough, but it was a start. Jake didn't know where to go next, or what the plan was at all, but one of the Technologists came in, a girl that looked to be about fourteen or so, one of the people that had stayed behind like the Linsters, with her family.
That was clear because no one glared at her like everything bad in the world was her fault.
"This way please?" She didn't wait, just heading down the hallway outside the room, making Jake speed up a bit to keep up, everyone else following along. They were delivered to a much larger space, that was set up to look a lot like the floor of the U.N. Tiered seating with members from each group waiting at their own table, ready to go. In the front there were three seats. Yalla had one of them, Morris on the far side. In the middle was Darian.
Of course. The Bawdri did like to lead after all and they felt almost entitled to the job. It wouldn't have been who he would have picked, but that wasn't fair. Darian wasn't a bad guy, just a little old. Even if he didn't look a day over forty, the man had been around for thousands of years. It didn't really seem to have made him a better person though. Just one that had more reason to distrust others.
"Thank you all for coming. We've held off passing judgment for the accused until we could all be present. If they could be brought in?" The Bawdri looked across the room at a doorway, one that had a stream of people come through it. They wore Technologist tan, but Jake realized he did too. In fact they all looked to be identical to him. Not as skinny, but that had to do with other things, like the fact that they'd never had to go hungry.
Except for Burt. He was skinny too. He'd let himself starve with everyone else in the House, for some reason. Maybe as penance for the rest of what he'd done?
There were no guards and they weren't shackled or held in any visible way. It didn't really matter though, did it? They couldn't run fast enough to escape the rest of them, not starting from the room they were in. Following behind them, also dressed in tan, was Morten. He had two eyes now, but one of them was metallic silver, not made of flesh. He held his head proudly enough, until he saw Jake, then he looked down at the ground, taking his seat without making eye contact again. There was a gallery to the right, where the rest of them sat, spectators it seemed, not expected to talk or give any testimony.
The event wasn't a court case at all. No one was denying that they'd done it, tried to kill all Humans everywhere. Or that the way they'd done it had been chosen to play on Human fears on purpose. Burt explained why it had been zombies though, his voice serious and a little sad.
"We needed something that would spread and keep being transmitted, so we created a vector that wouldn't stop. Hunters that would seek out uninfected populations, so that even hiding wouldn't work forever. I see now it was a cruel thing to do, but even the base fear they produced was on purpose, keyed into the terror centers of the mind so that people wouldn't be able to resist as effectively." He didn't sound proud of himself at least.
Each person accused got a chance to talk. Not all of them were exactly contrite about the whole thing either. The woman that had been in charge of the remote base they were in just laughed at them for instance.
"Why bother with this farce, just kill us like the barbarians you
are and be finished with it. I don't really care if you feel good about it later." She sounded a bit bitter, which wasn't fair, considering it was her fault that most of the world was a disaster area.
Jake kind of liked Morris's answer though.
"Why bother? Because as hard as it might be for you to see, we're desperately hoping that one of you can say something redeeming. That in some deep recess of your being there lies an ember that we can fan into a flame of hope. That's why were bothering."
The woman didn't seem to be impressed by that though, not at all.
"Hope? You do have hope now. You have a chance to fix this wreck of a world, if you make it happen. Your chances would have been better if you could have just waited another three months, but who knows, maybe you can pull it off? Just don't get lazy or let people guide an entire planet with greed again."
They just went down the line, the third to last man standing as the others had, his voice firm and loud enough to be heard without amplification. It was a decently large room, but not a stadium or anything, for all that it looked like one.
"Excuse me please? I don't understand..." He pointed down the way at Morten, gesturing with his whole hand.
"That boy isn't one of us. I used advanced conditioning protocols on him, against his will. He acted in our interest, but it was never his choice. Punishing him for it is incorrect. Punish me for what he did if you must. It's where it's due." That actually got a stir from the seats out in the gallery. Finally a voice spoke up, strong and commanding in tone.
"We should see to having him checked for signs of such before passing sentence. Perhaps the Linster Family would see to that?" Vicki was wearing a white outfit, one tailored to her, but no sign of rank or badges. Some of the other people had things like that, but not her. Nothing that might get in the way during a fight.