It all sounded good in theory. God help them carry it off.
Dejah pushed the barn door open a crack. Immediately three infected guards lurched toward her.
“I need to speak with Bal Shem.”
“Go inside. Stay.”
“I’m the mother of the child who heals the eaten people,” Dejah said. She waited, her heart beating hard against her ribs. What if it isn’t Selah in there? What if all of this is for nothing? But then she knew that, for everyone else, it wasn’t about Selah, it was about getting out of this hellhole. Shame burned her cheeks. She was as selfish as she’d accused Thomas of being, but she prayed that it was Selah in there, only because it meant she was alive and there was a chance for them. And if it wasn’t – if by some insane twist of fate it was some other child – she would follow through anyway, and save that child as if it was her own.
The infected guards grunted between each other uncertainly before one shoved open the door. Two guards came into the barn; the third took Dejah by the arm and escorted her outside onto the path.
Everyone tried to relax. Tried to breathe easy. But it felt like everyone was holding a collective breath.
Dejah and her escort were out of earshot on their way to the trailers at the far end of camp.
Brooks snapped into action. Before the infected guards closed the doors, he lunged from the shadows and punched the nearest guard in the gut.
The infected man doubled over, gasping, and then Brooks unleashed a barrage of punishing blows worthy of a champion kickboxer. The other guard lumbered into the fray, but Brooks backed up in time for the hay bale to drop onto them. While Abbott and a few other men jumped the guards now struggling beneath the fallen bale, Robbins and David slipped through the hole made by the loosened slats in the back of the barn. They splashed out into a rut of mud and ran, dodging for cover from tree to tree until they reached the dilapidated barn behind the trailer.
Thunder boomed overhead and a loud crack broke the heavens wide open sending a cascade of rain pouring to the earth.
* * *
Dejah walked through the rain, trying to keep her face directed away from the infected guard pulling her along. She could not look at him after she’d caught a glimpse of his eroded face. She could barely keep from shuddering at the touch of his skin, the flesh of his palm like gel upon her arm, his fingertips like wet bone. At the same time, she fought her curiosity in wanting to see if Robbins and David had made the run for the barn yet by keeping her eyes focused straight ahead, watching the path and the clinic trailer that grew closer as they approached. She tried not to inhale too much. The foul stench from the infected guard’s body was nauseating, but the rain seemed to lessen the odor.
Mist lay over the camp, and mud was sticky in the dirt path between the rows of tents. Her boots made sucking noises at each step. She heard the groans of the dying and the infected issuing from the far corners of the camp, and the shouts of the people and guards in the barn behind.
Several of the feral infected wandered around in the rain, staring into the distance. When she went up the path, they spotted her. She resisted the urge to bolt. The guard clasped more tightly than before and held up a hand, staying the mindless ones shuffling near the path. They obeyed him. It was clear to Dejah that strict order had been established between the talking infected and the feral. She could only hope for the sake of their plan that Bal Shem truly was the one calling all the shots.
From the side of the path, three other infected guards made a semi-circle behind her, perhaps under orders to herd escapees instead of attacking them. They followed her like stray dogs torn between hunger and fear.
They reached the steps of Bal Shem’s trailer. Water poured over the metal stairs, forming a huge puddle around the front of the trailer. She reached for the cold, wet handrail, and then froze. A wall of stink slammed into her: the smell of rotten flesh. She swallowed and resisted the urge to gag. Rain dripped from the eaves, rushing over her head and body. Although freezing, the water washed the filth away, providing her a sense of renewal and hope. Her teeth began violently chattering, as the guard pulled her the rest of the way up the slippery stairs and shoved open the flimsy door.
She was inside. Lighting was poor, murky and brown through the curtains. The door banged shut behind her as her eyes adjusted. The talker walked into the room with her, still clinging to her arm. The man Dejah assumed to be Bal Shem sat behind a desk on the far side of the grimy room, staring vacantly at the wall to his left. The guard pushed her into a chair, and then went to speak with Bal Shem.
Dejah suddenly regretted coming here. Oh God, what had she been thinking? They’re going to eat me again and again and again. Doubt washed over her as fast and furious as the rain had, and she knew the plan hatched in the confines of the pseudo-safety of the barn would never work. There were just too damn many of them. She glanced around the room. Office furniture was shoved to the sides. The floor was stained by dark smears. Two zombies sat in chairs facing the desk, and the infected guard she came with stood next to Bal Shem discussing, she assumed, her claims about being the healing child’s mother.
Dejah’s line of sight roamed from the infected deciding her immediate fate. The rest of the trailer had become a gruesome abattoir.
To her right was a kitchenette with a dining nook. Clearly the trailer had been intended for temporary housing before it was converted into a clinic. Cupboard doors swung on hinges, medical supplies stashed on the shelves. One quick look around revealed an examination table piled high with mutilated flesh. Dejah gasped at the awfulness of it, and the only thing that enabled her to look as long as she did was the fact that it just seemed so unreal. Gnawed bones, some with fleshy bits stuck to them, lay here and there. Cracked-open skulls dripped brains like tapioca. A striking Asian woman, beautiful even in the throes of infection, gripped a supple female thigh, blood dripping from her hands and smeared over her face. Dejah wondered if the thigh had once been a part of Lauren’s body. The infected woman took the time to lick the congealing blood from between each of her fingers.
Dejah felt the surge and it happened quite suddenly; she vomited all over the floor. She closed her eyes in her sudden throes of revulsion, couldn’t bear to look again at the gruesome table, or the ground around the table thick with unrecognizable clumps. Her bout of vomiting didn’t seem to faze any of the other occupants of the room, and the woman at the table didn’t stop her grisly feast.
Wiping her mouth on the back of her sleeve, Dejah hugged her aching stomach and blinked away tears. She focused on the infected guard and Bal Shem. They were still talking. Despite her resolve not to look again at the awful horrors in the kitchen nearby, gazing upon the visage of the infected terrorist wasn’t much less revolting.
Bal Shem’s body was a mutant blasphemy of rotting flesh. Arms bulged with muscle that wasn’t quite covered by thin layers of skin, patchy in spots, blackened in others. The infection was taking its toll on his body, just as it had done on the rest of the infected. He may have remained more lucid than the others, but he obviously couldn’t stop the physical ravishment of the disease. He wouldn’t be so remarkably rational without Selah’s touch, Dejah thought. Selah is keeping his mental faculties intact. Remove Selah from the equation and Bal Shem wouldn’t be any more intelligent than the other talkers. And it wouldn’t be long until his mind broke down and he turned into another of the feral infected roaming around on the other side of the cow pasture.
Bal Shem’s chest was broad, and a network of muscle overlay a sinking ribcage. His skull was a patchwork of hair, one side of his face wet bone and cartilage, the other side peeling, dying flesh. He gave a lipless smile at the vision of Dejah before him.
“You don’t like how I look, no?” he said to her, laughing. “A few hours ago, I barely looked ill. Only my thumb was beginning to rot. And now — now, look at me. This infection spreads so quickly. Some of these around me now will be dead in a matter of days.” He gestured to the infected seated in
the chairs before the desk.
Dejah didn’t respond. What was she supposed to say?
“Bring her to me,” he growled to the infected guard.
Dejah realized what a terrible mistake this was coming here like this, but there was no going back now.
The talker brought her to Bal Shem. Without warning, he lunged from his seat, grabbed her, tilted her head back, and savagely bit her throat.
Dejah reflexively inhaled with the shock of the sudden attack. Her windpipe filled with blood. She coughed as it filled her lungs. Bal Shem dragged her across the room, blood gushing from the hole in her throat, and then threw her on the examination table atop fresh piles of human remains.
He ripped the legs of her pants until they hung around her in tattered strips, and then tore into her leg, ate her thighs, and ripped open the skin of her stomach to spill some of her guts over the edge of the table. Laughing maniacally, he straightened himself, flesh and entrails smeared over his cheek and slipping between his hands. Then he seized her leg and arm, and tossed her with a half-circle twirl into the corner.
She cracked paneling as she crashed against the wall. She fell into a heap, gurgling blood as consciousness slipped away.
* * *
Dejah came back to life in a cage of barbed wire, chicken wire, and aged, paint-peeled wood. She was in another room of the trailer. The light through the windows was a darker gray so she either regenerated through most of the day and it was now a dusky twilight or it was very early the next morning. Her hands were tied behind her back. Her body was screaming pain like it usually did after regeneration. She was disoriented, dizzy, and struggled to piece together what happened.
She’d announced herself as Selah’s mother, but it seemed clear that Bal Shem recognized her, probably from information he’d been given by Evelyn, no doubt.
He didn’t kill Dejah, and he hadn’t dragged her off to Selah — God, let it be Selah – to be healed and “reused.” Since he’d caged her, she could only guess one thing: the madman must have wanted to see if what he’d been told of her regenerative powers was true. And if so, he intended to keep her for a very long time.
Or as long as he survives.
Her cage was not far from the doorway of her room. She could see down the hall, past the slaughterhouse kitchen, into the main room. The talkers stood in a line on the other side of the room, but she couldn’t see why they were lining up. Bal Shem rose from behind his desk and took his place at the head of the line. Dejah situated herself so she could see whatever it was that was happening in the other room.
Her heart caught in her throat.
Oh my God.
She wondered if she’d finally lost her mind. Was she hallucinating?
Bal Shem stood on the other side of the room where a disheveled, dirty girl was brought in on a wood platform, locked in a cage. The girl was thin, surrounded by her own refuse and the remnants of whatever scraps of food the infected fed her. They were keeping her alive, but not doing a very good job of it. The girl turned around toward some noise near the door.
Selah.
As soon as she saw her daughter gazing despondently through the bars of her cage, Dejah broke into violent, hitching sobs. “Selah!” She tried to speak, but her throat was still healing. Her voice emerged as a mere whisper. “Selah!”
Selah’s arm was tied so her hand protruded from between the metal squares in the filth-covered chicken wire used to construct her cage. Bal Shem knelt beneath her, forcing her hand to touch his repulsive head. Dejah watched the transformation.
Oh God, she thought. Dejah closed her eyes to the memory of Selah’s christening. Selah being blessed by the pastor. Selah healing the cancer that had spread through the man’s body, leeching the life slowly from him. “Oh, dear Jesus,” Dejah groaned.
Her fears were realized. Bal Shem somehow discovered Selah’s gift and used her to rise to power among the other infected. He probably started out as a talker, she mused, maybe a bit smarter, until he was touched. It was evident, from the short line of infected waiting their turns, that Bal Shem allowed a chosen few limited access to Selah’s touch — just enough so they could become an elite squadron fulfilling his wishes.
Now they were lining up for their promised rations.
Across the room, Selah’s tiny hands, her precious little fingers, touched putrid flesh and gave it unholy life. Dejah focused in on her daughter’s vacant stare. What she saw there ripped her very soul.
“Selah!” she cried. Now her voice came out in a harsh rasp. Bal Shem’s chosen infected few jerked their pustule-covered faces toward her. “Selah!”
The sound of her mother’s voice stirred Selah from near catatonia. “Mommy?” She started to cry. “Mommy?”
Dejah struggled against her bonds, but she was tied fast. “Selah! I’m here. Mommy’s here!”
Bal Shem focused in on her, eyes swimming as he spotted her at the end of the hallway, bound in her cage. “Mommy?” His tone mocked her desperate words. He looked from daughter to mother, something working in his twisted mind. Nearing Dejah’s cage, his gaze narrowed as he pointed at her, and then at Selah. “This girl is your daughter?” Then he muttered, more to himself, or a dim hallucinatory companion. “The woman before told the truth. Is this the truth?”
“What reason do I have to lie?”
He shuffled into the room at the end of the hall and knelt to examine her. This close, she could see too well that the right side of his face was in ruins, falling apart. His lower lip hung loose as the skin began to separate from the chin. It gave him a toothy sneer, gums blackening at the roots of his teeth. He breathed on her and it smelled like a dumpster in August.
Dejah spit in his face. She cursed and struggled against her ropes. The dirty fibers gave way, snapping amidst her struggle. Hands free, she grabbed the wire cage and shook her prison’s walls.
Bal Shem watched her with a hateful smirk on his face, and then pointed to the door.
“Everyone out,” he commanded firmly.
Grumbling that they were cheated from Selah’s touch, the chosen infected few stood around for a moment, looking lost. One infected guard, whom Dejah recognized from the food delivery detail, placed his oozing boil-ridden hand on the doorknob, but was hesitant to leave. They wanted Selah’s touch. They gazed longingly at the child.
“Get out,” Bal Shem growled. His voice was low, guttural, evil. He balled his fists tightly, his body shaking as if he were on the verge of losing control.
The others filed from the room. Their boots clanged on the metal stairs. The last one slammed the door closed and shook the trailer. Dejah rocked her cage, pushing against the opening. It was wired shut.
“Mommy!” Selah screamed, terrified.
Bal Shem’s body shuddered with rage as Dejah shook the cage again. “Stop it,” he roared, his face a twisted puzzle of decaying flesh. Menace gathered around him like poison mist.
“Let me out, damn you!” Dejah rocked the cage to one side. It almost tipped over. Bal Shem kicked it back into position.
“Mommy,” Selah continued to wail.
“Silence!” Bal Shem commanded. Selah recoiled into a corner, whimpering and sobbing.
“Let me the hell out of here.” Dejah found strength in her anger, courage in her rage. “Damn you! Let me out!”
He reached a diseased hand toward her through the wire cage. Flesh hung in rotting strips from his bones. His body was failing him despite the constant renewal from Selah. The virus was potent. Selah could heal cancer that was killing Reverend Forbes, but against this virus all she could do was stave it off, buy some time for these monstrosities. Touching Selah was like popping a pill: they got just enough energy and renewal from her to continue living in their diseased state, but not enough to be completely healed before her affect on them wore off.
Dejah could tell Selah’s powers were weakening, too, and that could have been part of it. Her poor sweet girl was exhausted, pushed to her absolute limit by these fien
ds. Bal Shem already confessed that his body had begun a rapid deterioration. They’re using her too much, she thought. Dejah looked at her daughter, a waif, a mere shadow of the beautiful girl who’d left home with her father what seemed so long ago.
Bal Shem was killing her. Draining her last drops of life.
Dejah kicked, rocked, banged, and shook her cage like a wild woman. Bal Shem laughed as his hands flailed around in the cage, trying to latch onto her throat or hair.
Dejah pressed against the distant side of the cage to avoid his clutches, slipped her hand into her jean pocket, and pulled out the whistle Brooks had given her.
With all of the strength she could muster, she blew the whistle.
CHAPTER 43
“I say we go in,” David said, eyeing the back door to the trailer. “There hasn’t been anyone at that door, or even looking through that back window all night. I’ve got to go. I can’t take this anymore. Something’s wrong.”
“The plan is: we wait for the whistle,” Robbins said.
“Damn it, it’s been too long. What if she lost the whistle? Maybe Bal Shem found it, or God forbid something worse happened. We’ve got to do something. We can’t let her—”
“Ssh. What was that?” Robbins smacked David in the chest and he shut up.
The loud, shrill sound of a whistle sliced the damp morning air.
“That was it.”
“Let’s go!”
David led the charge as he and Robbins dashed from the secondary barn toward the back door of the trailer.
* * *
Abbott had been watching throughout the night. He’d had a chance to mull over his decision to join the military last year. It was lauded by his father (“Now, you’re a man, son,” and he’d patted his back and blew cigar smoke into his face, sauntering off to claw another beer out of the fridge), and decried by his mother (“Abe, damn it do something, not our boy”, and to Dad’s deaf ears she’d cried all night about how they’d ship him off to Afghanistan, or Pakistan, or Iraqistan or some god awful place and they’d never see him again). He didn’t regret it, now. It was all that had kept him alive.
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