“A project manager doesn't necessarily lead men. But I'm good with schedules. Paperwork. I can keep things on track.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I was. I can prove it if you give me a chance.”
“Seems pretty useless to me,” Cyrus said.
“I can,” he paused, and then started nodding his head, “I am not useless to you. My skills are in managing schedules, assigning paperwork, things of that nature. Do you understand what I mean? I have a graduate degree, an MBA. I can help you, or you can let me and my friend go. Yeah, maybe we can't help you. We'd only be a drain. So, just let us go, okay?”
“I'll consider it.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
Cyrus turned to the tall man. “How about you? What can you do for us?”
“This!” the long-haired man said as he yanked the two guards holding him off their feet and rammed them together. When they collided, their heads bounced off each other, and they both staggered backward, stunned. But, before the man could do any more damage, another of Cyrus's guards struck the guy from behind with a baton and drove him back onto his knees.
“Spirited, wouldn't you say?” Cyrus said to Eve, raising a hairless eyebrow. “I'll give him that.”
She nodded absently. She'd seen Noah act much the same way as Cyrus. She knew that it was best to react with total positivity. Any negative reaction would blow back on her.
“Bring him here,” Cyrus said.
The long-haired man was drawn in front of Cyrus and forced again to kneel by a blow to his hamstrings. Even kneeling, the tall man came up to Cyrus's chest. The two men to either side held their batons up and ready to strike. One had blood running down his face and seemed very eager to hit the kneeling man.
“What should we do with you? What, indeed. You refuse my hospitality. You harm us. And yet, we still want you to join us. It might seem impossible, but we have charmed worse.”
Cyrus nodded toward the cage to his right. “Some of our raptors here need to be feed. Perhaps you would like to help us with this?”
The kneeling man scowled.
“Hey,” the former project manager said suddenly. “I'll join. You got me. Whatever you want. Whatever. I mean it.”
Cyrus addressed him. “What's your name then, friend?”
“Randy Milford. Please, call me Randy.”
“Okay, Mr. Milford. I want to thank you for being wise enough to join us. Being a college-educated project manager with an MBA, I'm sure we can find you an adequate position for a man of your talents. By chance, do you know how to write a Mission Statement?”
“Yes, oh yes. I've written hundreds of them.”
“Good,” Cyrus said. He returned to the long-haired man and lifted the guy's chin.
“Now, see, friend, Mr. Milford wants to join us. How about you? We could most assuredly use someone with your…abilities.”
The man slowly shook his head from side to side. His hair draped down over his eyes, and he blew it up and out of the way.
“Very well,” Cyrus said. “Too bad, really.” He signaled with his hand.
Two men seized Randy and held him tightly between them.
“Hey! What are you doing?” Randy asked with an edge of fright in his voice.
“Proving a point to our long-haired friend here. And… I appreciate your willingness to help us out here, Randy. Really, I do.”
“Do you need me to convince him? His name is Daryl. I met him in—”
Cyrus held a hand up, cutting off Randy. “Right now it doesn't matter.”
Guards used sticks to push raptors away from the door behind Randy. Another unlocked a padlock and opened the cage door.
“Hey, no, no, what are you doing? I said I'd help.”
With a shove, they pushed Randy inside and slammed the bars shut. The cage door clanked and rattled against its stops until the sound died off into silence.
“Come on,” Randy pleaded. “Let me out. Please. I said I would join, I said so. You heard me. Please! I can help. I'm good at what I do. I will, I will…have mercy! Please!”
“Randy, Randy, Randy,” Cyrus said. “But of course you are helping us. You are the best project manager we have.”
A pool of yellow liquid formed at Randy's feet. Eve wanted to turn away, but caught both Cyrus and David watching her with occasional furtive glances. She dared not appear afraid or appalled.
“Please, no,” Randy whined. “Please.” He reached out through the bars with his fingers splayed.
The first raptor leapt.
Randy screamed. The creature ripped into him from behind. He turned and staggered backward, unbalanced by the new weight on his back. He threw up his arms to protect himself. Another raptor joined the attack. It spun him around and struck with a hind claw, slashing sideways across his stomach. Two others attacked his arms from each side.
Screaming hysterically, Randy fought hard and turned back toward Eve with his arms raised. All of the meat on his arms had shredded into strips of flesh, looking like long, red strings. The bones showed through, and blood ran freely in streams. His back arched, and his gut burst open, spilling out a pinkish brown mass of lumpy tubes. He attempted to use his useless forearms and half-hands to keep the raptors away, but they all came at him at once, pinned him against the bars, and tore into the soft exposed intestines distending from his abdomen. His frantic screams morphed into a gurgling note of anguish.
It took every bit of willpower Eve had not to turn away. She understood everything so clearly now.
This was a test.
It was meant for her as much as for anyone else. Cyrus was showing himself to her completely now, unvarnished and unashamed. She knew that if she did not pass this final hurdle, he would abandon her to his men perhaps sooner than planned. She had to be strong. She had to approve of the necessity of the brutality.
Inside the cage, Randy's body continued to twist and writhe against the bars as the raptors fed. But he was mercifully dead and he no longer controlled his own movements.
The feasting raptors dug even deeper. The sounds of them eating made her sick to her stomach. The raptors in the other cages had been driven in a fury. They snarled and snapped and bit at their bars. Those that had attacked Randy slowed in their frenzy and ate more deliberately, pulling strips of flesh from his corpse and tipping their necks back and gulping it down.
She had finally seen enough. She lifted her chin, pursed her lips, and looked at Cyrus. She nodded blankly, showing him she understood fully and was okay with it. He smiled. Amusement glinted for a moment in his eyes. She glanced again at what used to be Randy. Then she noticed the long-haired man was nodding. He was also smiling.
Cyrus went to the man and raised him by the elbow. “I'm glad you have decided to join us. I hope you prove as useful, if not more so, than poor Mr. Milford, our former project manager.”
Wolfishly, the long-haired man grinned at Cyrus.
-24-
SPIRIT IN THE SKY
CORY FLEXED HIS neck to each side and rolled his shoulders to relieve the nagging pressure of the thin straps of his backpack. The new pack he carried was heavy and ill fitting. He had been walking for miles with it rubbing his shoulders raw. Stopping, he rested a hand against a lamppost and lifted each foot in turn to check the soles of his shoes. They had worn through, and the layer of cardboard stuffed inside was becoming frayed and no thicker than paper. He curled his toes until they cracked and waited for Jesse to come up alongside.
Many days had passed since they had left the truck behind, two weeks at least. Jesse's fever had broken and he no longer required constant attention, but he was still too weak to survive on his own. He did know the area well, though, so keeping him alive had not been a mistake.
So far.
Jesse stopped and propped himself up, holding onto the metal spear Eve had once carried.
“We need to get off the road,” Jesse said, wiping his brow.
“Which way then?” Cory asked.
> Jesse stepped onto a concrete curb and scanned the empty streets before pointing. “That way.”
“You sure?”
As if to answer, he rapped the butt of his spear against the curb and stepped in the direction he had indicated, trudging forward as if he had been walking that direction his whole life.
Cory rolled his shoulders and followed. “How much farther?”
“A few miles, I think, but we'll need to stop soon.”
“No, I would rather we keep going.”
“You would rather? Rather? What kind of word is that? Sounds like a college word to me. Or at least how you used it,” Jesse said. “Rather,” he repeated, shaking his head. “And, no, it's not smart to keep going. We need to stop. Find shelter.”
“Fine then,” Cory replied, letting the needling go unchallenged. “Where?”
Jesse said nothing.
They walked onward in silence for nearly an hour while Cory thought of his sister, of his trip cross-country, of what he would do for shelter that night, of what he would eat, of what he wanted to drink, of the past, of the future, and what he would do if Jesse did not get him to the bunker soon. They had been weaving east and west, sometimes backtracking north before moving south. It almost seemed they were going in a circle. But Jesse had said this was to avoid running into anyone along the way. Maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong. Ultimately, Cory returned to the same conclusion he had come to for the past three days. He would give Jesse one more day, maybe two, then he would leave this rodeo clown behind and strike out on his own.
Jesse let out a loud exhalation of breath and stopped. He leaned against the spear that served as his walking stick and looked back. Cory continued walking until they stood side by side.
At the end of the road, on a small rise, stood a cluster of four homes that were tucked into a shady grove of oak trees and had not been visible until now. There were no FEMA signs painted on the garage doors or the front sides of the houses, so they had remained untouched. From the look of them, they also appeared not to have been looted.
“That one,” Jesse said, pointing. “It looks defensible. We can hold up there for the night.”
“Can I see the map?”
Jesse withdrew the map from his pack and unfolded it. Their ultimate goal, the bunker, was to the west about sixty miles away. They had been slowly making their way southeast, which was taking them farther and farther away. Jesse had crossed off different areas on the map and shaded others in pencil, indicating the places to avoid and places they had already been. In all that time, they had found no vehicles, or at least none that Jesse could get running. They had found food and other supplies, but most of the homes and businesses they came across had been picked over or been destroyed by fire. The raptors encountered along the way had been rare, and it seemed as if the area had simply been swept clean of them, which was odd. Small songbirds were returning, and it was pleasant to hear them over the cawing of an occasional crow or distant screech of a solitary raptor.
“How long until we get there?” Cory asked, touching a spot on the map with his index finger.
Jesse pulled out the nub of a pencil from his shirt pocket and marked where they were on the map. After rechecking some previous marks he had made, he said, “Once we have Eve and Kate back, it should only take us a few days. That's if we find transportation.”
“We have to get to the bunker first.”
Jesse shook his head as he folded the up map. “I've already told you where we are going.”
“What I have to do is more important,” Cory replied, “and we must get there soon.” He did not want to restart the argument they had been having for the past few days. He shifted his pack and stepped toward one of the houses at the end of the asphalt driveway.
Jesse shifted positions and blocked the way forward with the tip of his walking stick. “You don't get it,” he said. “You just don't get it. All that college education, too. One would think you'd know a little bit better.”
Cory seethed. He absently reached for the handle of his missing sword.
“Yeah, thought so,” Jesse said, “and what about that damned sword of yours? Why don't you want to go get that back? They stole it from you, and it seems a hell of a lot more precious to you than anything else, that's for sure. We need to save them. Humans. People. Eve and Kate. Flesh and blood. Friends, maybe even family. I dunno how all that works, but it just feels right to me, deep in my gut. You telling me you don't feel it, too?”
“They are not my flesh and blood,” Cory said. “So, not my family. Not yours. What I have to do is far more important than going off and playing rescue the princess.”
“You know…you know how cliché you constantly sound thinking you are off saving the goddamned world with your insane quest? Like that windmill guy or maybe the whale one. I'm tired of that shit.” Jesse paused and gave him an appraising look. “You really are a special kind of asshole, you know that?” He unslung the shotgun he carried and raised the barrel and directed it at Cory. “We save them first.”
Cory marched forward until the barrel touched his chest and glared back, unmoving, rigid. He reached for the crowbar, knowing he could draw it, slide to the left, and jam the hooked end into Jesse's kidneys before the old man could get a shot off.
“If you want my help,” Jesse said, “we need to go after them first. Then, and only then, I promise that I'll help with this virus business no matter what I think about it. Deal?”
Cory bowed his head and walked away. He was not going to fight, not yet. And he certainly did not want to fight a tired old man that he had spent days nursing back to health. He would stay with him just long enough to skirt the gangs, and then he could find his own way to Bunker 12. If Jesse wanted to be an obstinate asshole and go charging off to rescue those women, then he was dead already and there was nothing that could be done about it.
“We good?” Jesse asked.
Cory secured the crowbar back into the sheath he had made for it and stepped over the virtual barrier Jesse had raised with his implied threat. He did not look back to see whether Jesse followed.
As Cory covered the distance to the house, he thought about what Jesse had said. Family? That was what was so important? His sister was family. She was worth it. But Eve and Kate? He barely knew them. He did not want to see them dead, but they were not part of his mission, his plan, and that made them expendable and a distraction.
Circling the house, he located a sliding glass door out back adjacent to a concrete and brick patio. He did not bother to check whether the glass door was unlocked. Instead, he drew the crowbar and shattered the glass then kicked it until it broke and crashed inward.
It felt supremely satisfying.
He listened carefully as the glass settled, but detected nothing alerting him to danger.
The interior of the house was like many others he had searched. Few had been as untouched as this one, though. This was a rare find, and he needed to check it carefully. He scraped bits of glass and grit off the soles of his shoes and made his way into the house and down the hallway to his left. That led to a tile entryway and front door. There he found another shrine to a merciful God, another series of pictures, another crucifix, another picture of Jesus. This one was staring up with tears in his eyes. That familiar forgive them Father for they have sinned pose. Forgive them? he thought. There was no forgiveness.
Throughout his life, he had had many religions cross his path, gone down many roads. He had tried them all on like clothes, but they all seemed not to fit right. They led to dead ends. Too many had gaping holes in their logic, chasms impossible to cross. And, no matter how hard he tried to believe, he could not get past the obvious flaws, the abandonment of truth, of science, of reason. Not a single one had given him what he truly needed. None of them had been able to chase the nightmares away.
He wanted to believe, truly, wholeheartedly wanted to believe, and many times before he had done so thinking the world was actually filled with good and
decent people, but each time he ended up losing that fleeting sense of goodness, seeing instead corruption and lies, which left behind only bitterness and hate.
But at least hate was an emotion he could understand.
The last religion he had become involved with had not called itself a religion, but it was in all actuality. It relied on belief, on people duped into thinking they were better than everyone else. That they knew more than anyone else did. That they were smarter than everyone else was. But they had been spoon fed the same us-versus-them bullshit common in all religions. Only, his religion was not based on some magical presence in the sky. His was based on climate change, on saving the planet, on a self-loathing hatred of humanity over how badly mankind had messed up the planet.
People were a virus that needed to be eradicated, exterminated.
The Society for an Environmentally Sustainable Population might not have been an official church, but it had a dogma that preached hatred cloaked in love. Truth was bent. Science was manipulated. At first, it had mostly been about money, about enriching a select few preying on the suckers of the world, but then the leaders of the new church bought into their own bullshit and really believed they were right. They had crossed over from being gentle and grateful stewards of the planet to haters of all who did not believe strictly as they did. Cory had bought into that hate. It fed on him. Preyed on him. He would have said he had been victimized by it, but what he had finally learned on his cross-country trek was the most important life lesson of all.
Being a victim was only a state of mind, and that state of mind allowed others to control him.
Never again, he swore.
When he had found Professor LaPaz, all of that latent self-hatred and victimhood had bonded him to the man. The professor had been one of the main proponents of the organization. His recruitment methods were simple, the message seductive.
Humanity sucks.
That message resonated with far too many who had been indoctrinated into shallow thinking and hatred by professors they admired, by life's bad circumstances, by thinking oneself a victim. That false belief became a mental plague that eventually led billions to their deaths. Professor LaPaz had made himself God with a capital G. But he was only a man, a man Cory had strangled to death.
Red Asphalt: Raptor Apocalypse Book 2 Page 19