by Cross, Amy
“You have to burn them,” I tell him. “You can't keep them alive!”
“Let me show you something,” he replies, holding his hands up and then clapping three times.
Down in the pit, some of the creatures stumble across the mud until they're directly below us. Mark claps again, attracting the attention of the others, and after a third clap he finally manages to get them all twelve of them to come and pay attention.
“It took me a long time to train them this way,” he explains. “They're not as smart as dogs.”
“But if -”
“Watch,” he continues, clapping one more time before shouting: “Down!”
Slowly, one by one, the creatures start to it on the muddy ground, while still staring up at us.
“Isn't it remarkable?” Mark asks, turning to me with obvious excitement in his eyes. “They know four commands so far, two of which are actually verbal.” He looks back down at the creatures. “Up!”
With obvious difficulty, the creatures start getting to their feet again.
“Up and down,” he continues, “those are really the only two word-based commands that I've instilled in them so far. I'm working on others, but they also know to assemble when I clap and -” He waves his hands in a broad, exaggerated circle, and the creatures start walking away again, as if they've lost interest in us. “I spend hours out here, teaching them these things,” he explains. “It's therapeutic, in a way. I've trained them to regard me as their absolute ruler.”
“This is insane,” I reply, taking a step back. “You have to kill them right now!”
“After I spent such a long time luring them here and then trapping them? Are you crazy?”
“What are you going to do with them?” I ask.
“I have a few ideas,” he continues. “The biggest problem is keeping them alive, but that's where...” He glances over at Jacqueline's body. “Do me a favor. Go and drag her over here.”
“You're going to feed her to them?”
“She's already dead,” he points out. “Don't you think it'd be a shame to waste all that meat and bone? Feed her to the creatures, feed her to the worms, there's not a big difference. Everything gets eaten eventually.”
“What about dignity?” I ask. “You were going on and on about dignity earlier!”
“The creatures need dignity too,” he replies. “The needs of the living outweigh the needs of the dead, don't you think?”
“Those things aren't alive!”
“They're more alive than poor Jacqueline.”
“I'm not feeding anyone to these creatures!”
“I understand your reticence,” he continues. “I imagine you've lost some people to the disaster, so it's only natural that you react with fear.” Making his way a little further along, he reaches down and unhooks one end of a rope ladder, which he throws over the edge of the pit. “You need to train your mind, Thomas. You need to recognize the limitless potential that's going untapped in the world around us.”
“What are you doing?” I ask, hurrying toward him.
“Relax,” he says, starting to climb down the ladder. “They can't use these things. They lack the necessary level of coordination, and besides, I've trained them to obey me completely.”
“Stop!” I shout. “Mark -”
I watch in horror as he climbs down. Moving around to another side of the pit, I see that he's already reached the bottom, and that he's standing calmly while some of the creatures start lumbering toward him. He seems to be waiting for them to reach him, as if he's not worried at all.
“Down!” he shouts suddenly.
The creatures stop, and slowly they begin to sit down again.
“See?” Mark calls up to me. “They obey me completely. Can you believe that such a thing is possible? Come down and see for yourself, Thomas! Break through that barrier of fear!”
I shake my head, still convinced that at any moment one of the creatures is going to attack him.
Making his way past them, he stops and picks up a piece of bone from the mud.
“You're insane!” I shout finally. “Get out of there!”
“Calm down,” he replies, laughing as he heads across the bottom of the pit and picks up a couple more bones. “I'm just cleaning out a few more of the carcasses from their last feed. I don't really need to do it, but I like to keep their pit relatively tidy. Sometimes they go back to old bones and start chewing on them, and I'm worried that might be dangerous. There might be some sharp pieces.”
Horrified, I watch as he grabs one more bone on his way back over to the ladder, and finally he starts to climb back up. When he reaches the top, he pulls the ladder up and tosses the bones to one side, before making his way over to me with a smile on his face. It's clear that he's proud, and that he thinks he's achieved something wonderful.
“You'll get used to it,” he says, patting me on the shoulder as he makes his way past me.
“What do you want them for?” I ask.
“Oh, I've got a few ideas,” he calls back to me. “When life gives you lemons, Thomas...”
I watch as he reaches Jacqueline's body. Grabbing one of her arms, he starts hauling her across the mud, heading for the edge of the pit.
“You want to give me a hand?” he asks, sounding a little out of breath.
I stare in shock as he brings the corpse closer. Dropping it next to my feet, he takes a moment to catch his breath.
“She was a fairly large woman,” he continues. “That's good, the creatures need fat as much as they need muscle, but it doesn't make my life any easier. Do you want to do the honors?”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Smiling, he steps around Jacqueline's body and then gives her a good kick, rolling her over the side and sending her corpse tumbling down into the pit.
“You can't feed people to those things!” I shout.
“She was already dead,” he replies, peering over the edge. “We can't afford to waste resources these days, Thomas, this isn't like the profligate days of old. A human body contains vast amounts of nutrition, and if we don't eat human meat ourselves, the next best option is to feed them to creatures that work for us.”
Hearing a ripping sound from below, I look down into the pit just in time to see that several of the creatures have already reached Jacqueline's dead body. One of them is in the process of ripping her left arm from its socket; when he finally tears it away, he stumbles over to the far corner and starts chewing on the torn meat, only for another creature to lunge at him and fight for the foul prize. Tearing the arm in half, they each manage to get something. By the time I look back at the corpse, I see that Jacqueline's belly has been torn open and that several creatures are feasting on her intestines.
“Life,” Mark says finally, staring down at the scene, “is beautiful in all its forms. It's such a shame that the human animal has trained itself to see ugliness in the natural world. That'll change, though. These creatures were sent to us for a reason. God wants them to be among us.”
Hearing footsteps nearby, I turn and see that two other men from the campsite are approaching through the forest.
“It's okay,” Mark tells me, “they already know. They're part of the inner circle.”
“The what?” I ask.
“Bobby,” he continues, stepping toward the men, “Luke, I want you boys to meet Thomas. I think you've met before, briefly, but Thomas is one of us now. He knows the whole situation.”
“Look at that fat bitch getting torn apart,” Bobby says, grinning as he leans over the edge of the pit. “I bet they're loving a bit of her...”
“I asked around camp,” Luke adds, “and so far no-one else seems sick.”
“I'm sure that'll change soon,” Mark replies, clearly a little disappointed. “We need to keep looking for that Quinn woman too, I can't shake the feeling that she wouldn't have gone too far. I always prefer giving live meat to the creatures if possible.”
“There wasn't much fat on Quinn,” Bobby
points out, still grinning as he turns to Mark. “I swear, those things down in the pit go way more crazy for the fat ones.”
“Just like you,” Luke replies with a smile.
“From now on,” Mark continues, “Thomas is to be treated as an equal. He's one of us, and he's already given me his word that he'll be able to keep this situation secret.” He turns to me. “That's still the case, I trust?”
“Sure,” I reply, figuring that I have no choice but to go along with him for now, “but -”
“Excellent,” he adds, before peering back down into the pit. “They work so fast,” he continues. “It's good to keep them hungry, the last thing we need is to let them get lazy. Still, we'll need something else for them in the next few days. If any of you hear of someone in the camp who's sick, you have to let me know at once. We need to keep an eye on that sort of thing.”
“I think I heard someone coughing in the night,” Bobby replies. “I'm not sure who it was, but it sounded like a girl.”
“That's better than nothing,” Mark mutters.
“Or we could just...” Bobby pauses. “Well, you know... They don't have to be sick, do they?”
“We're in the business of respecting life, remember?” Mark replies, patting him playfully on the shoulder before looking back down into the pit again. “In all its forms.”
“I should get back,” I tell him. “I promised someone I'd help cut more firewood.”
“I thought we already had more than enough,” Mark replies with a frown.
“We do, but...” Worried about drawing suspicion, I force a smile. “There's nothing wrong with working extra hard, is there?” I point out. “Maybe that way, someone'll get sick sooner.”
“I like the way you think,” Mark replies, smiling as he turns to the others. “Hear that? He's already turning into one of us!”
***
“Quinn!” I shout a few hours later, scrambling across the rocks as I head back toward the buried bunker. “Quinn, we have to get out of here! Mark's insane!”
Reaching the door that's embedded in the rock, I look around for a moment but there's no sign of her. Figuring that she must still be up on the top, I clamber up, only to find that the air-vent is no longer covered. Quinn's scarf has been moved to one side, and there's blood on the metal. Looking back down, I realize that there's more blood smeared across the rocks. Following the trail, I find myself back down by the door again, and this time I spot a few more patches of blood on the metal.
Reaching out, I run a finger across one of the patches, only to find that it's still wet.
“Quinn?” I whisper, taking a step back as I stare at the small glass window in the door. “Quinn, where are you?”
Elizabeth
“The tests so far have proven inconclusive,” Doctor Kennedy says as we stand at the window, looking in at the room where Rachel is hooked up to various machines. She turns to me. “Please don't ask me to offer a prognosis, though, because I just can't. Hopefully we'll know more tomorrow.”
“When you were with her before,” Patterson continues, turning to me, “did you see anything that made you think she might have become infected? Even the slightest thing.”
“I... I don't know,” I reply cautiously, keen to save Rachel from being poked and prodded too much. “Why do you ask?”
“When you arrived here last night,” Kennedy explains, “we noticed certain... unusual signs. She seems to stare a lot, and a few of the nurses said they felt she was watching them. It didn't take long for us to realize that we at least need to monitor her for a while in case she's sick.” She forces a smile, even though it's clear that she's worried. “It's probably nothing, but as I'm sure you'll understand, we have to take every possible precaution. If the infection got loose in the base, we'd have to completely evacuate, and we want to keep this place running for a few more weeks.”
“And you definitely didn't see anything unusual?” Patterson asks me.
I stare at Rachel. She's been through so much already, and I refuse to believe that she might have been infected, even though she started to scare me the other day in the farmhouse. “No,” I say eventually. “I didn't see anything.”
“Poor little thing,” Patterson mutters, watching as Rachel wriggles in her plastic crib. “What has it come to when even the children end up suffering like this?”
“She might be absolutely fine,” Kennedy replies, setting her clipboard down. “Let's focus on the positives, okay? With the limited resources at our disposal and the need to err on the side of caution, false positives are absolutely possible. We just have to wait and see, and hope that over the next few days she just turns out to be a normal little girl.”
With that, she turns and heads out of the room, leaving us alone for a moment to contemplate Rachel's predicament.
“What future does she have?” Patterson asks. “If the world stays like this, is she just going to grow up and face misery?”
I shake my head.
“You're an optimist?” he asks.
“I just can't imagine that things won't get better,” I tell him.
“I wish I could say the same,” he replies. “I'm the opposite. I can't imagine things improving.”
“Do you have a family?” I ask.
“I had a wife and two daughters.”
“And are they -”
“Dead,” he replies, interrupting me. “I haven't actually seen the bodies, but they were living near the Ocintro nuclear plant in California, which is one of the two plants that have ruptured so far. The chances of them having made it out alive are next to zero.”
“But you could still -”
“And I can't leave my post to go look for them,” he adds. “Only the very top people are able to go looking for their family members, only the council members who are running the show in Boston.” He pauses for a moment. “This Toad person... Does he mean something to you?”
“We were friends,” I reply, still watching Rachel.
“But does he mean more than that?” He pauses. “I shouldn't say this, but if it's really important to you, I could maybe send an extra patrol out today to take a more detailed look for him. Obviously the chances of finding him are next to zero, even just finding a body would be almost impossible, but it's the best I can manage.”
“Please,” I reply, “you have to find him.”
“But if we do find him and he's not...” He pauses again. “Well, you know what I mean. If we find a body, do you want to know, or would you rather be allowed to think that he's still alive?”
“I want to know the truth,” I reply. “Whatever it is.”
“Of course,” he continues, “if he's really smart, he'll just come here anyway, under his own steam.”
“I doubt it,” I reply. “He told me he wanted to keep well away from this place.” I pause for a moment, imagining Toad out there somewhere in the wilderness. “What if he goes back to the farmhouse and finds that I'm gone?” I ask, turning to Patterson. “Did you leave anything behind to let him know that you brought me here? He might just think that I upped and left, that I abandoned him!”
“I'm sorry, Elizabeth, we didn't leave anything. If this guy is smart, though, he'll rethink his decision to keep away from the base. We're the only people who can help him.”
On the other side of the window, Rachel starts to cry.
“Can I go in and hold her?” I ask.
He shakes his head.
“She sounds so scared,” I continue. “Please, even if it means I have to stay in there until we're both cleared, I'm willing to take the risk. I can't just let her cry like that.”
“I'm afraid I can't let you in there,” he replies. “I have strict orders to -” He pauses, as if he caught himself just in time. Checking his watch, he seems uncomfortable for a moment. “You can trust Doctor Kennedy,” he continues. “She'll take good care of Rachel, and I'm sure the kid will be fine. Speaking of which... I need you to come with me.”
“Can't someone
go in and comfort her?” I ask, as Rachel continues to cry.
“This isn't a world where people get comforted so much,” he replies. “Not anymore. I hate to say this, but maybe it's better if she learns that sooner rather than later. However, there's one thing I need to show you that I think might bring a little relief. You'll be surprised to learn, Ms. Marter, that sometimes miracles do happen.”
***
“This is the central command post for the entire base,” Patterson says a few minutes later as he leads me through another door. He waits for me to catch up, while holding the door open. “The brain of the whole place, or at least what's left of it.”
“But you can communicate with other people, right?” I ask, stopping and leaning against the wall. I feel breathless and my right foot is starting to hurt, but I don't want to show any sign of weakness. “I spoke to some guy on the radio yesterday. There are definitely survivors. He said he was by Lake Erie, on the western edge of the southern shore, and he said there were other people.”
“We'll keep that in mind in case we have a chance to go looking that far north,” he replies, “but to be honest, we don't have the resources to go searching far and wide just yet. We're focusing on the immediate area at the moment. We have a few power plants up and running on the east coast, but not nearly enough.”
“But you managed to come barging into the farmhouse so you could grab me,” I point out, watching as a couple of technicians work at a computer terminal.
“That's different,” Patterson says, a little evasively.
“How is -”
“Ready for a sweep!” the nearest technician calls out.
“Let's see what's out there,” Patterson replies. “I hope we actually find something this time.”
I watch as the technicians activate some kind of computer program. On a nearby monitor, a map of the area comes up, and a moment later a red line passes across the screen. One of the technicians mutters something, before pressing some more buttons and bringing the red line back. He does the same thing a third time, before sitting back and sighing.