by J. W. Vohs
Stanley’s eyes teared up as he asked, “Can I do anything for you?”
Hiram laid back and closed his eyes. “You know what you can do, when the time comes.”
Bundled up against the cold and wearing dark sunglasses, Luke walked briskly through the settlement. He stopped briefly on the middle of the bridge and peered out at the banks of the Mississippi, still littered with hundreds, if not thousands, of corpses of the infected. Smoke rose from several locations where the still busy clean-up crews were cremating the remains of Barnes’ army as quickly as they could. Bodies and body parts continued to wash into the shallows and pile onto the bobbing mounds of carnage. Luke appreciated the chilly temperatures as he pulled his scarf over his nose and imagined how much worse the stench would be in warmer weather.
Even though there weren’t many people outside in the main section of the community—mostly small groups of soldiers—Luke felt as if he was alone in a crowd. He craved nature and solitude, so he set off for the woods bordering the Louisiana side of the river. The fresh air energized him, and he trotted along at a slow jog. When he reached the western gate in the protective wall around the settlement, he waved at the guards as he passed them. They waved back; their job was to keep danger out, not restrict the free movement of citizens.
The attack from Barnes had come from the east, but hunters on the other side of the river had still been attracted by the helicopters. Compared to the armies of infected that had swarmed the area on the opposite side of the river, the groups of monsters that had to be dealt with near the western wall were small in number and never posed much of a threat to the settlement. Most got tangled up in the barbed-wire Harden’s men had strung along the tree line, where they were easily dispatched by the few troops assigned to deal with the Louisiana hunters. Luke circled around the collection of generally headless creatures still stuck in the concertina, but with his heightened sense of awareness there was no way to avoid all of the carnage.
Luke noticed that he could still smell the settlement and the nearby corpses, but new scents were also discernable. He pulled down his scarf and sniffed the air. The stench of the dead was powerful, even though the nearby corpses were mostly frozen in the razor-wire entanglements that had trapped them before they were killed. The slight breeze out of the west caused rows of iced-corpses to sway gently and lightly smack into each other, reminding Luke of the chimes his grandmother kept on her porch throughout the cold Ohio winters. His memory was abruptly cut short by a new sound in the woods, a pitiful moan that was floating through the bare trees to the west. Luke cautiously and quietly followed the cries, eventually finding a small, child-hunter feebly struggling against the cruel, bladed-wire that sliced into the suffering creature’s skin with every move it made.
Luke pulled his bow and put an arrow to the string, then realized that he didn’t need to keep his distance, and there was no reason to risk losing an arrow on this monster. He slung the bow and pulled his trusty trench axe, keeping a wary eye on his surroundings as he drew near to the trapped flesh-eater. Something was wrong with this situation, and Luke was having a difficult time figuring out what was bothering him. He could sense no presence of infected nearby, nor did he have one of his ‘feelings’ that he was in danger. Finally, he realized why he was experiencing such cognitive dissonance: he felt no visceral enmity toward the trapped hunter.
Apparently, the exhausted, bloodied creature felt the same about Luke, because it stopped moaning and thrashing. It now stared at the approaching human with large, black eyes that seemed to be almost a reflection of those Luke had earlier seen in the mirror. This creature, Luke realized with a jolt of surprise, was certain that help had arrived. The most disturbing aspect of the situation, in Luke’s view, was that he had absolutely no desire to kill the young hunter. In May, when the virus struck humanity, this flesh-eater had probably been engaging in Little League and looking forward to summer vacation. Somehow the youngster had managed to consume enough protein to develop into the robust killer it had most certainly become, but for the first time since the war began, Luke considered what this creature had once been.
In all of the fights Luke had participated in since the start of the outbreak, he’d been a paragon of courage and strength when facing the enemy. He’d never once committed a cowardly or dishonorable act, but now, he realized with another shock, he was about to do just that. He sheathed his axe and walked away from the trapped beast. The hunter wasn’t a threat to humanity now, not anymore. Blood loss, hunger, and the elements would kill him soon enough. Luke decided that he didn’t need to hurt the poor creature. Then a sound reached his ears that he hadn’t heard in any of his experiences with the infected. A mewling cry spilled out of the youngster’s mouth, stopping Luke in his tracks as he somehow recognized the noise. He couldn’t identify the sound in his mind, but his heart knew that it was a call for help. The flesh-eater wanted Luke’s help.
Luke took three more steps along the path away from the scene, but the cries continued. Finally, he turned and began to slowly walk back to the trapped hunter. Luke swore that he could see relief in the beast’s eyes when it realized he was returning. This time, Luke looked over the situation and wondered if there was any way to free the creature. Jack had once told him that the only thing to do when you hit concertina wire was freeze and evaluate; the more you moved, the more the stuff cut and entangled you. The hunter was caught fast in dozens of strands, black ooze dripping from scores of wounds.
Maybe, Luke thought, if he had some means of tranquilizing the monster and a good set of wire-cutters, he might be able to free it from the trap. But he didn’t have those things. Then he thought about what he would do with the creature if he did free it. This sad little hunter was a killing machine now, hardwired to consume flesh, preferably human. Sadly, Luke accepted that there was only one possible course of action here. He carefully unsheathed his trench axe again, deliberately avoided eye contact with the young hunter. In a flash of skill and power, he cleanly cleaved head from torso before looking away from the small fountain of blood that was the usual result of such wounds.
Luke walked away from the scene and carefully worked his way past a thin spot in the wires. He continued a hundred meters further into the woods and then sat down, dejectedly, against a large tree trunk that allowed him to lean back a bit and close his eyes. He found himself remembering a very sad moment in his life, when he and his dad had put down the next-door-neighbor’s dog after it had been mortally wounded by a passing vehicle. The accident happened on a Sunday morning, and nobody knew how to find a veterinarian to euthanize the suffering canine. The neighbor knew that Jerry, Luke’s dad, was a police officer, and figured that a cop would be able to take care of the problem. Luke remembered that Jerry had an expression on his face that he’d never revealed to his son, and his eyes caused Luke to begin shedding tears long before the deed was done. They’d wrapped the whimpering dog in a blanket and drove to the edge of the city limits. Once there, Jerry had used a shotgun to put the stricken animal out of its misery, but there was nothing to be done for the wretched emotions of both father and son. Luke had known that they’d done the right thing, but that had done little to assuage his sorrow and grief.
He’d never known, until this very moment, just how far down he’d buried the memory of that terrible experience. Why, he briefly wondered, had it come back to him now? Luke was a smart kid; within seconds he put two and two together, but didn’t like the answer he came up with. A violent, even righteous, anger and hatred toward the infected had driven him to kill since the first time he’d seen what he’d considered abominations. The flesh-eaters had no place on God’s earth, and Luke had decided then and there that he would devote his life to destroying the monsters for as long as he lived. Now, for the first time, he felt conflicted about killing one of the creatures.
He wanted to believe his feelings were due to the circumstances in which he’d found the little killer: trapped and suffering. But no matter how ha
rd he tried to avoid thinking about the look in the hunter’s eyes, he couldn’t avoid the fact that he saw his own eyes looking back at him from the anguished face. Luke often felt that the word “epiphany” was overused in the old world, but no matter how he chose to describe the last five minutes of his life, his paradigm had just been shifted. The worst part was that he knew it wasn’t grounded yet; there were more experiences to assimilate into his world-view before he was firmly rooted into a belief structure that made sense to him. Luke Seifert, he realized with a shake of his head, had been fundamentally, and permanently, altered by his brush with death from a hunter-bite.
After what seemed like hours, but was probably no more than thirty minutes, Luke dragged himself to his feet and continued walking through the woods. As with Jack, Carter, and every other soldier he knew, Luke had developed, or perhaps been born with, the ability to put traumatic events behind and move forward with the mission. Of course, in this instance he didn’t really have a mission, so when he saw three whitetail deer enter a thicket near the river he decided to focus his mind on hunting.
Luke had never learned to hunt; Jerry had taught him to shoot, and then encouraged his son’s desire to acquire archery skills, but none of these abilities had ever been put to use in bringing down big game. But now, even the thought of fresh venison set Luke to salivating, and he briefly wondered what the best way would be for taking one of the deer down. The bow was the obvious choice of weapon, though part of Luke wanted to just run one of the animals down and jump on it. He remembered the fever-dream he’d experienced the night before, and couldn’t shake the thought that he should be hunting that way. Of course, he immediately realized he would be seriously injured or killed if he jumped onto the back of a full-sized whitetail deer, but in the dream, Gracie had carried an axe. The rational part of his brain knew that an axe was no match for a bow when killing a large animal at any appreciable distance, but before he actually thought the situation through, the axe was in his hand.
Oh well, he thought, I am pretty good with this thing. The deer had been moving parallel to the river, and hadn’t seemed to be spooked or alarmed in any way when they entered the thicket. He looked over the landscape and tried to predict what the animals would do. At the far end of the thicket was what looked to be a grassy area. The grounds the deer had left behind were heavily wooded, and Luke remembered from somewhere that deer liked acorns. Also, he figured that eventually there had to be agricultural fields past the most flood-prone areas near the river. Deer loved corn and other crops, and few humans were available this fall to harvest what had just been planted before the outbreak started. The bottom line was that the animals had probably been feeding and were now returning to a bedding area. Luke decided that if he was a deer, he would enjoy lying in a grassy meadow as opposed to a forest floor covered with sticks and other obstacles.
His decision made, Luke moved quietly but quickly toward the grassy area. He was closer to what he hoped was the deer’s destination than they were, so perhaps he could set an ambush for the animals. He was somewhat surprised at how quietly he was moving in the woods, considering the fact that the ground was littered with frozen twigs and leaves. The previous day’s light snowfall muffled some noise, but Luke felt as if he was somehow stepping in all the right places as he moved to cut off the deer. Soon after reaching the transition zone from woods to meadow, Luke noticed an obvious trail leading out of the thicket about twenty meters ahead and to his left. He would make his stand there.
Luke could hear the deer moving through the brushy thicket, and he felt certain they would indeed be coming out of the exit path he’d found. Moving even more quietly than he had before, he made his way to a fallen tree lying about six or seven meters from the trail. He carefully set the shaft of the axe on his shoulder and waited, now easily picking out the sounds of the deer snapping twigs as they pushed through the brush. Again, Luke discovered that he was salivating and growing excited at the prospect of fresh meat. Actually, he realized, he was salivating as he considered eating, but the excitement was all linked to the hunt.
Finally, the first deer cautiously stepped into the grass, a large doe with her nose lifted to smell for nearby threats. Unfortunately for her, Luke had instinctively taken a position where the wind was blowing toward him. Ironically, he was able to pick up the distinctive, musky sent of the doe while she was left clueless. Luke had never heard hunters describe the odor of their prey before, and he briefly wondered if this was normal. Then, the deer stopped and her tail flicked halfway up. She had her own refined senses, and right now they were telling her that something was wrong.
For a few seconds the doe stared right at Luke in spite of the hiding spot he’d carefully chosen. He thought for sure that the animal was about to bolt and the hunt had failed, but then the deer looked in the opposite direction, presenting Luke with a broadside target he figured would never get any better. With thousands of hours of practice under his belt, he expertly and powerfully hurled the trench axe at a spot just behind the doe’s ear. With a loud “thwack” the blade buried deeply into the animal’s skull, and she dropped kicking to the grass a few seconds later.
Luke was shocked at what happened next. For some reason, he sort of screamed in joy as he pulled his knife and leapt toward the fallen deer. He buried the sharp steel to the hilt in the side of her neck before ripping the blade outward in a stroke the severed the arteries and trachea she needed to be functioning if she was ever to regain her feet. But that was never going to happen now; Luke had just killed his first deer.
Barnes leaned back and folded his arms across his chest. “We’ll start with your first question. So what do you think, Ms. Carrell? How could my creatures make the world a better place?”
“You’re asking me how a horrific disease that turns people into flesh-eating monsters improves our planet? How unspeakable misery is somehow good for the human condition? It isn’t. Honestly, all I can think of is the ridiculous ‘we had to destroy the village to save it’ argument. Do you have anything other than self-serving, illogical foolishness?”
Barnes chuckled condescendingly. “Ah, you remind me why I never read military history written by women.” He leaned forward and glared at Andi with a menacing stare. “You are making a classic mistake, confusing what is advantageous for the human condition with what is best for our planet. It’s that kind of thinking that was truly destroying our world.”
Andi resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “So your solution to problems like overpopulation and environmental pollution is to replace humanity with mindless predators that consume any living thing they come in contact with?”
“If your home was infested with termites or some vermin that threatened the very foundation of the structure, what would you do? You would call an exterminator, that’s what you’d do.”
“So you’re saying that the infected are just exterminators, getting rid of the human infestation in the world? Do exterminators exponentially increase in number as they eradicate their targets? You know that healthy ecosystems maintain a balance of interdependent plants and animals—remove or introduce one seemingly insignificant life form and the whole system can come crashing down.”
“And how do you know this, Ms. Carrell? You know this because humans have wiped out species and destroyed ecosystems. Do you know what happened when wolves were reintroduced in areas where humans had wiped them out?”
Andy shook her head. “The infected are not wolves; they aren’t going to restore balance in their natural habitats. They have no natural habitats. So let’s move on to my next question—in your mind, what will the world look like in five years?”
“The number of humans will be greatly reduced, to a number appropriate for rebuilding civilization. My creatures don’t have particularly long lifespans. After a few years, they’ll start to die off. They literally fall apart—an arm here, a leg there. As the president of the United States, I will lead the global reclamation of the planet. Within a decade, I will
embody Plato’s ideal: I will be a benevolent dictator, guiding our world to a new golden age.”
Andi’s heart was racing, but she managed to sound nonchalant when she asked, “How do you know that the infected will die off in a few years?”
“I am a physician and a scientist, my dear. Scientists perform experiments to test hypotheses. Do you seriously think that I would unleash an untested virus?”
Andi quickly fired off a series of questions. “So you were able to recreate the conditions of this outbreak? You observed a significant sampling of the infected over a period of years? You witnessed your creatures grow stronger for a while, then deteriorate?”
Barnes dismissively waved off the questions. “Perhaps we’ll continue this conversation later.” He stood, crumpled his napkin, and tossed it on his half empty plate. “Enjoy my hospitality for the next few days. When I return, you and I will be taking a little trip.” With that, he turned and abruptly left the room.
Alone at the table, Andi was flustered by his hasty exit, and she was unexpectedly looking forward to her next conversation with the mad general.
CHAPTER 21
For at least a full minute, Luke just stood over his prize, chest heaving in exultation as he looked at the fresh kill lying at his feet. He could no more put words to how he felt than he could describe the feeling of Gracie’s lips on his own. He did know that he felt right, almost as if he were coming home after a very long journey. He was salivating as he considered the deer, but at the same time he instinctively realized that something in his world had been lost as well as gained. Slowly, he knelt down near the head of the fallen animal, and found himself drawn to the eyes of what he suddenly and completely understood to be one of God’s creatures, a living animal that had basked in the indescribable joy of living the life it was hard-wired to experience.