Maybe government officials with friends or family near the epicenter of the outbreak had made a call. Zero tolerance is a hard policy to maintain. Inevitably, someone will act on the knowledge that a lack of nuance is stupid. Hardliners talk tough about soldiers and service members never abandoning their posts. When the choice is to save a nation or save your baby, you’ll always save your baby first. You’ll disappear from your shift guarding a nuclear facility so you can get your wife and children far away from the blast zone. You’ll do anything for your family. Anything less would be monstrously inhuman. Only machines act according to a code. Humans are not machines. It only takes one person to scream, “Run for your lives! It’s a killer virus!”
But viruses — or, in this case, weaponized brain parasites — were not the only killers. The crowds along the side of the road hurried away from the LAV’s machine gun, but there was nowhere to go so they didn’t go far. The crowds were thick and viscous in their slow march west. The LAV had come to a halt. As it idled, I strained against the straps to lift my head an inch or two.
To my right, a yellow bulldozer had run into a tree. An Ontario Provincial Police cruiser was off the road beside it. The driver’s side door was open and a woman in uniform lay in the grass. She was still. I couldn’t see her blood but, even at this distance, I could smell it. My stomach rumbled. I would have to feed again soon and I dreaded it.
When I eat, I told myself, that’s not me. That’s not me. Daniel is dead. Something else has my body. Someone else is driving my bus.
I heard a woman yelling demands. The crowd had taken a hostage and he was a cop. From what she said, I gathered she held his gun to his head. I felt bad for the cop. Hamish had taken my gun and held me hostage. The woman had an army of scared people on her side. She was angry. There’s more power in anger than in fear. She had followers.
That’s how revolutions start, I thought. When things really fall apart, it seems to happen all at once.
“They pushed us off the road!” the woman yelled. “That bulldozer! There was nowhere for us to go but they pushed us anyway!”
Another woman yelled, “My father’s legs are crushed!”
A man with a high wavering voice as thin as paper said, “They crushed my car. My grandson …. ”
A Chinook buzzed in like a giant insect. The helicopter hung in the air as the pilot surveyed the field and then buzzed away out of my field of vision.
The crowd got eerily quiet at that. I heard footsteps behind me. Someone climbed up. I smelled aftershave, pungent and sweet. Strapped to the carrier, I was helpless to defend myself. I was as frightened then as I was when I’d spoken to the faceless thing in the darkness.
“Get out of the way!” the LAV driver yelled.
Alphonse. The way he said his name that made me think he was using an alias. He spoke too grandly, like an actor reading lines. His gestures had been a little too big to be believed.
“We’re on a mission to stop the epidemic!” he told the mob.
They didn’t believe him or they didn’t care. Mutters turned to rumbles. I could feel the energy go through the assembled like a dangerous wave about to crash, a force of nature built to drag its prey out to sea. The violence built in pressure, as if an unseen coil was depressed and would soon spring back.
The angry woman spoke again, defiant. “Your people did this!” Her tone told everyone she was very sure. She had the conviction of a leader. “Tell your superiors we won’t let you through until they send help. We need buses and food. And more buses! We need you to use your tanks and bulldozers to clear the traffic jam! Help us instead of hurting us … or we’ll hurt you!”
That was the moment when a dangerous situation could have been defused. If Alphonse had capitulated or lied, the worst may not have occurred. That moment passed and was wasted.
Chapter 25
CHLOE
On the LAV’s LCD screen, I watched the woman in the striped shirt use the butt of the officer’s revolver to smack him across the back of the head. The man in uniform winced but he didn’t go down. A couple of teenagers who might have been the woman’s sons hooted their approval. Bashing the OPP officer didn’t sit well with everyone in the crowd. Some muttered and murmured their disapproval and confusion.
The pair of teenagers rushed forward to push the cop down. The woman pointed the pistol at his head. “Get them to send help or we’ll barricade the road so nothing moves into Toronto. There are more of us coming from behind — “
Alphonse keyed his mic and his voice boomed through a speaker. “Get out of the way or I’ll open fire.” His tone was all wrong. He sounded almost pleasant, as if he was daring them to defy him, as if he hoped they wouldn’t take him seriously.
The woman handed the weapon to a young man standing beside her. The guy, a kid of nineteen with long blonde hair that hung in his eyes, knelt on the cop’s back. He shoved the muzzle behind his hostage’s ear. His gun hand shook. I understood that.
The woman in the striped shirt stalked forward and picked up a glass bottle from the debris strewn along Lakeshore Boulevard. It was a small bottle of Fruitopia, apparently empty.
She walked directly in front of the LAV. I could hear her clearly now. “We need to be evacuated and we need help for that to happen! What kind of people are you? We just want to be safe. You— ”
Gunfire.
Some refugees ran.
Then more gunfire, long and determined.
Then the helicopter came back and added more gunfire to the chaos. Its weapon didn’t bark like the LAV’s machine gun. This gun fired in a long hum that went on and on, spitting death every second.
Chapter 26
DANIEL
A man with the sharp and too-sweet aftershave climbed onto the LAV quietly. He wore no shoes, only socks. He squatted over me, working quickly on my restraints. He was a burly fellow with large hands, calloused and rough. He yanked off my muzzle and freed me from the straps that pinned me to the stretcher.
He might have let me go because he thought I was a prisoner of his enemies. Maybe he was just trying to sow chaos among his oppressors. I can only guess that he meant well. My liberator received his reward. I wrenched his neck with one savage twist and I heard a series of pops as I shattered his cervical vertebrae. My brain parasites needed to feed. Brain parasites are indiscriminate killers and so I’d become an indiscriminate killer.
Sorry, eh?
Then I thought of that androgynous voice, so calm and reasonable, from my dream. Where did that voice come from and where did it go?
The man who freed me was still shuddering in his death throes as I sank my teeth into his neck. I was revolted, just as before, but I felt relieved to hasten his end, too. He was already dying. There was no sense being coy about it.
Opening his jugular, covered in hot blood, I felt like I was being watched. Inwardly, of course, revulsion and shame ran through my heart like a serrated knife. Outwardly, I didn’t look ashamed. I looked like any other rabid cannibal feeding on raw human meat at the end of the world.
Chapter 27
CHLOE
I watched the woman in the striped shirt get cut down. The phrase that came to mind first was hail of gunfire. But the deaths of the desperate refugees along the boulevard did not come as hail. Everywhere I looked, metal parted flesh and erupted through bone. Hail is a force of nature, absent of malice and devoid of judgment. Human consciousness, determined and unrelenting, was the force behind the stream of lead spewing from the LAV’s machine guns and the helicopter gunship’s weapons. Every round carried out deadly intent.
The crowd scattered and screamed. Some dove behind parked cars. Others ran, not daring to look back.
Alphonse was not as good-natured as I had thought. Although his first victim must have been dead already, he made an example out of the woman in the striped shirt. The chain gun fired in bursts, again and again, tearing into her corpse. Then he moved on to the retreating crowds. A few collapsed where they stood or
rolled up into a ball. The fetal position is the most comforting thing we can do for ourselves when we are alone and cold and helpless. It’s a comforting remnant from the womb, a fiction we tell ourselves to feel safer. Those people weren’t safe from chain guns.
After what seemed like an eternity, the LAV’s chain gun stopped and the attack helicopter peeled away. Our engine roared as we plunged east toward downtown. The personnel carrier rocked slightly as we ran over the first corpse of many.
Thomas Dill and Ken Rigg stared at the floor. No one said a word. I looked to Shelly and she gazed back. She was a cop and we’d just witnessed a murder but what could we do? I think we were all in shock. They’d acted cavalier about dealing out death to scared civilians begging for help but Tom and Jerry couldn’t even look at each other.
After a long silence, Alphonse’s voice came over the intercom. “Ladies and gentlemen, the rules of engagement have changed. By necessity, all the rules have changed. Play with fire, you get burnt. That is all.” The mic clicked off, then back on. I thought he was about to defend his actions further. Then the mic clicked off again and the diesel engine revved as Alphonse kicked the LAV into higher gear, speeding away from his crime.
Play with fire, you get burnt. I wondered if that last remark was aimed at me. If I hadn’t invented AFTER, we wouldn’t be here. If Alphonse meant to silence me, righteous or not, it worked. I stared at the floor like everyone else. I’d never thought of myself as a coward until that moment. I told myself everything had changed. I believed that then.
It wasn’t until much later, after I spent a few years in isolation, that I changed my mind. Very little really changed that day. For the most part, life and death had always been like this. Death was a stranger. Like many others, I had deceived myself about the nature of the world, not what we’re told but how it really works.
I’d spent my free time collecting unused Pinterest recipes, working out and occasionally snacking at Cinnabon at the mall. For my working life, the sphere of the theoretical was home. I did not recognize until later that many believe the aphorism “might makes right.” There is good reason for that. Might doesn’t necessarily make right, but it does make the rules.
Chapter 28
DANIEL
I once saw a horror movie where a kid receives surgery and, though he appears unconscious, the anesthesia doesn’t take. Paralyzed and silent, he feels the pain of the incision. Even as his ribs are cranked open he is unable to scream against the misery. That’s what being a meat puppet is like. Though my body was powerful, I was truly helpless.
As the LAV’s guns continued to fire, I felt the reverberations through the armor plating beneath my bare feet. As I chewed on the flesh of my liberator, another man climbed up the side of the LAV holding a knife. He thrust it at me and I knocked the blade aside. In one smooth movement, I slammed my forehead into the man’s jaw. He let out a moan as he fell back and to the pavement.
An athlete who seemed accustomed to fighting, the man recovered quickly, jackknifing to his feet. I left my prey atop the LAV and leapt down to the road. The man came at me again. I sidestepped his next thrust easily and I grabbed his shirt, using his momentum to pull him forward so I could wrap my legs around his neck and bash his head into the side of the LAV. There is no give to armor. He was already unconscious from the concussion as I wrapped my legs around his throat and squeezed.
I’d never moved this fluidly. Something more had changed about me.
When you wake up, they’ll probably be vivisecting you. Or maybe you’ll be special. We’ve never attempted human trials before.
The woman at the staging area in Port Credit who took a blood sample, had she injected me with something, too? I was a white rat running a maze and they wanted to see what I could do. I leapt back on the personnel carrier to survey the scene and choose a target. This was my maze. What did they want to see me do?
Would you like to feed some more, Daniel? It was that disembodied voice again.
I had no thoughts I could articulate. All I knew was desperate hunger. I operated by instinct. My answer arrived in a green military truck.
Men began to pile out of the back of a van, each of them carrying a rifle. They had the bearing of soldiers and they wore fatigues but I saw no insignia. The man beside the driver hopped out. He carried a silver revolver in one hand and a bullhorn in the other. That triggered a memory of my superior officer, Mac. He’d been carrying a bullhorn when I shot him. I searched for some semblance of regret. I found none.
Was this lack of guilt because my actions were just? Or was it the brain parasites working on me? And again, I had the inkling that someone or something was watching me, witnessing my every action and reaction, taking my measure and making judgments.
“You people have to keep this route clear!” the man with the bullhorn shouted.
The young man emerged from behind a Dodge Charger. He held a pistol as he steamed toward the man with the bullhorn. “Look at what you’ve done! This is a massacre! You got any food in that truck? Didja bring some doctors? Jesus, we need to get out of here and — ”
I don’t know if the man with the bullhorn planned to shoot anyone approaching him. There wasn’t any warning or discussion. He just raised his weapon and fired on the young man. However, the kid was quick. He flattened to the asphalt and fired back.
They were barely in range of each other. Pistols are made for closer combat. The man dropped his bullhorn and slipped behind a parked car, ducking behind the engine block for cover. He was pretty safe from the kid’s rage. However, the kid wasn’t safe from rifle fire.
Two of the men in fatigues went right and left to flank the kid. He didn’t have a chance. One rifle shot took him under the left collarbone. The round must have tunneled through his body, deflating lungs and exploding organs. He neck went limp and the blonde hair that hung in his eyes was spattered with blood.
That might have been the end of the battle but now people — civilians, wounded, battered and disillusioned — called out from behind parked cars. Toronto’s refugees shouted from behind the cover of trees. Bitter and enraged, men and women alike protested.
“He was asking for help! For all of us!”
“You didn’t have to kill him!”
“You didn’t have to kill us!”
Somewhere, babies cried.
An older man came out from behind an overturned SUV. He had the craggy face of a person who had spent most of his life working outside in the sun and wind. His forehead bled copiously. I could smell the tang of his blood. The urge to leap on him, to feed on easy prey, sang through me as my heart raced with excitement.
The man raised his hands higher to show his empty palms. “The tank that went through here crushed cars and the bulldozer shoved people aside like they were garbage. And now, you …. ” Tears flowed down his cheeks. “Shame! Shame!”
A single shot took the old man down. He went without a sound, probably a lung shot. He’d struggle quietly a little, bleed for a bit and die. A collective gasp rose from all the witnesses but one. I did not gasp. I saw the violence coming. I watched events unfold in slow motion.
Then I went to work on the men in fatigues.
And somewhere, from the dim recesses of my mind, I thought I felt whoever was watching. It was as if they were leaning in with interest to examine me closer.
Chapter 29
DANIEL
The men I attacked must have been mercenaries. They carried rifles so at least they had a sporting chance. The pair who’d shot the blonde kid moved to the side of the boulevard and began firing at the crowd, driving them away, killing as many as they could. I wasn’t certain of their intent, not that it mattered. There had to be smarter ways to handle the epidemic but whoever was in charge had consistently chosen brutal and efficient actions to deal with the crisis.
Furious, barefoot and silent, I moved quickly on my targets. I refused to think of them as victims. They reacted a half-second too slow.
I cam
e up behind the first merc and grabbed his shoulder as I kicked the back of his right knee. He fell backward into my arms and I clamped my forearms around his neck like a vise, wrenching up as the rest of his body weight came down. The pop of vertebrae is a very satisfying sound. No wonder people want to be chiropractors.
As the man sank to the ground I took his rifle from him so it wouldn’t make any noise clattering to the pavement. I could have used his weapon to open fire on the next two mercenaries. Instead, I used the stock as a bludgeon.
The driver of the white van heard my attack and began to climb out. I ran at him and slammed the door on his leg. He cried out as I yanked him out of his seat and drove the rifle stock into his forehead. As he fell, I jammed my right knee into his throat twice, fast as a piston. I like the way you gurgle, you son of a bitch.
The man with the bullhorn ran around the front of the truck at that moment. I watched his eyes widen when he saw me launch myself at him. He brought up his pistol and, firing in a panic, got a shot off. The round went wide. When he pulled the trigger again, his revolver clicked empty. He’d already expended most of his ammo uselessly in his firefight with the poor kid with the long blonde hair. Bullhorn Guy should have reloaded as soon as he got to cover.
It occurred to me I didn’t like bullhorns or the people who liked to carry them. I wanted to ask, “You’re management, aren’t you?” I think my lips formed the words but no sound came out. I wrapped my hands around his throat, cutting off his air and blood to his brain as I bashed his head into the truck’s grill.
My next targets were the men shooting at civilians. They stood beside each other about eight feet apart. The one on the right shouted, “Run, little piggies! Run!” The one on the left had a high, grating laugh.
The NEXT Apocalypse (Book 2): AFTER Life: Purgatory Page 10