Good thing that I wasn’t much for cuddling with the enemy because as soon as she was done—and me, too, I had to admit—she got off me, traipsing into the bathroom to rudimentarily clean up before she dressed once more. I remained lying on the bed, watching her, trying very hard to hold on to the mind-wipe bliss for a little longer.
Apparently I had done a sufficient job because once she was dressed again, Marleen gave me an annoyed look. “I like you right as you are, but some people might be opposed to this level of nudity when they see you follow me around like a loyal dog all day.” When I barely grimaced at the insult, she laughed. “Oh, come on. Lewis got your sense of humor, too?”
“No, just not too fond of canine comparisons in general,” I told her as I rolled off the bed, looking for a fresh set of clothes.
Once I was done, Marleen had one more thing to explain before we left. “So you really want to help us bring them down? It’s not going to be pretty, and I have to say, while I don’t give a rat’s ass either way, once you’re in, Guinevere will expect you to contribute your best. Any doubts you still have, now’s the time to back down and sit this one out on the sidelines.”
It was a tempting offer, but since it sounded like that would leave me locked in for good…
“I’m in,” I agreed.
Marleen led the way, into the corridor and back the way we had come the other day when the hospitality manager had shown me to my room.
“I give you three questions to ask until we get to the interrogation room,” she chirped as she kept walking in front of me. “I know you must have more but we only have time for so much.”
My, didn’t that sound comforting? I did my best to rake my brain for what best to ask, but the first one was rather obvious.
“Exactly what didn’t Miller do to make Guinevere so fucking mad at him that she wants him dead now? I presume that’s the end goal here.”
“You presume correctly,” she perfectly trilled. “And he didn’t rape her.” She must have guessed I’d draw up short at hearing that because she turned around, walking backward now, smirking at me. “Of course it’s all much more complicated than that. The short version is, Decker, in his endless wisdom, thought he needed to round off his masterpiece—and backup—by finishing completely dehumanizing the boys, and to impress on them that, however great they were, he was still top dog. So he had a bunch of his loyal dogs tie them up and beat them up good while forcing them to watch as they raped little sister dear. They offered Miller a chance to cut it short and end her ordeal but he was too good of a man to do the deed. Of all the times he could have chosen to pretend to have a conscience, he chose that. My guess is, he figured his position as top dog would be even more cemented now since the entire setup certainly crushed what was left of Hamilton’s spirit, thus taking out the only competition he’d ever faced.”
That… explained a lot, particularly the whole insanity of the arena and all the unspoken things I never needed nor wanted any confirmation for. It also made it obvious why Miller and Hamilton had both come out so utterly convinced that it was Decker who was still pulling the strings. After all, old dogs don’t learn any new tricks, right?
I maybe should have inquired about anything else—like the layout of this fortress or something similar—but something she’d just said stood out too glaringly to ignore. “You’re convinced Miller’s a psychopath, too? As in, that whole redemption thing he has everyone convinced is going on is bullshit?”
Marleen had in the meantime turned around once more but cast a look back over her shoulder as she rounded a corner. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you of all people fell for this? I thought hanging out with me has taught you a few things.” She snorted when I didn’t react. “Yes, I’m sure. Like recognizes like, right? Plus, we have a certain authority on such things around who has confirmed it. She must know.”
That was cryptic enough that I almost took the bait and asked, but something else was more important. “Decker’s dead, right? Guinevere already took her revenge.”
I got a bright smile for my guess. “So bright you are, and that in such a pretty package. Yes, of course she killed him. From what I hear, it was a rather easy kill—not that killing is hard once you have no remorse whatsoever left. Probably not a surprise; any young, healthy woman with a little bit of training can off an old geezer who thinks he’s untouchable. Her only problem was, her remaining targets were much more elusive, and the top two way out of her league. You see, she may be insane, but she’s very tactical about it. And yes, that’s a fourth answer you might not have deserved, but see it as a token of my good faith.”
So much information and so little time to make sense of it. That she must have been talking about Miller and Hamilton made sense—and proved my earlier guess right that Lewis was, indeed, just collateral damage—but who else was she referring to with “remaining targets”? I presumed that list must have become a rather short one, with the zombie apocalypse and all that shit going on…
I stopped in my tracks when the implications set in. Call me jaded, but there were few things in this world that could still surprise me, and even less of those fell into the “unthinkable” category. Kicking off the apocalypse as a misguided kind of revenge was one of them.
“This can’t be true,” I heard myself utter as if from far, far away.
Marleen, almost at the next intersection, halted, then came sauntering back to me, her head cocked slightly to the side, a beginning smile playing around her lips. “What, already getting cold feet about helping the righteous end her crusade?” she taunted.
“How can you be so utterly unaffected by—” I started to say but then cut myself off, answering my own question. “Right. Never mind. But why are you helping her? Whatever her reasons, this is insane!”
Marleen shrugged, clearly unperturbed. “From the start, I’ve been mostly a curious bystander. You don’t meet a woman ready to tear apart the world any day now who offers you to hitch a ride alongside her, right? But really, this whole undead and end-of-the-world business was more of an accident than a plan. She’s as smart as she’s insane, but she made the mistake of trusting that scientist who had devised the initial start of the serum project when he said he knew how to specifically target everyone who had ever been inoculated. Turns out, he was right—you are all dying slowly now, one after the other. The problem is, the lag phase until then is a little too long. And, of course, the collateral damage is a little inconvenient.” She pursed her lips, her apparent ease to dish suddenly gone. “Enough now. I have a bunch of intel to run by you to see how much you really know, and how much I can trust you. If you are a good boy and tick all the right boxes, you might even get a treat later.”
I didn’t say anything as I trailed after her, my mind reeling too much to come up with witty statements… or anything that wouldn’t immediately brand me as an undercover traitor to her cause. “Cause,” really. Just… Grasping that was beyond what my mind was ready to take.
It occurred to me that Lewis in particular might have known about this—or at least most of the parts, those not directly connected to Hamilton’s sister. To us, she might have become a pain in the ass, but her personal mission had always involved finding out more about the virus outbreak. Why, I’d never asked—some of it seemed to have been morbid curiosity, but her actions in France and during the talk with Emily when she’d given her all the data she’d collected plus the conclusions she’d drawn while working through it on the way back home, I’d gotten a feeling that Lewis was also lugging around a massive amount of guilt. Not quite deserved since she hadn’t been directly involved with the serum project or the virus, but as a stand-in for scientists everywhere, but quite possibly also because had she been approached to do all the shit that others, including Miller’s brother, had contributed, her hands would have been dripping with the spilled bloods of millions.
And, just like that, another piece of the puzzle that was Bree Lewis clicked into place. Right now wasn’t exactly a go
od time to mull that over—or how I could exploit the fact that I was ninety-nine percent convinced that I wasn’t wrong about Miller’s state of mind and personality. Sure, he had his moments—and was exceptional at ignoring sentiments like remorse—but underneath the hard exterior that years of training had shaped, I was convinced that an actual heart and soul were still flourishing. It was entirely possible that it was the coincidence of crossing paths with one intrepid scientist that had turned him upside down, but while Nate Miller was a lot of things, he was not that kind of a monster.
Now I just had to find a way to survive in here—and make sure that Lewis, Miller, and Hamilton got a chance to finish what they’d set out to accomplish, even though they very likely still had no clue who was really waiting for them. How I could accomplish this, I had no fucking clue, but one thing I knew: it had to be done.
If worse came to worst, I could always use them as a distraction to finish the work for them. Yet to get into a position to do that, I’d have to get much, much closer to the madwomen who ruled this bunker, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t manage that without seriously compromising my principles.
Oh well, how does the saying go? All is fair in love and war.
The next two days were nothing short of grueling—mentally, but since I couldn’t sleep at night, it quickly became a physical issue as well. Part of it was the—expected—stress of what was going on. Like dumping me in the interrogation room that, in accordance with its designation, only had terribly uncomfortable steel chairs and tables, with lights that were set way too bright for anyone’s comfort, providing not just too much illumination but also increasing the temperature beyond what was easily ignored. Marleen, of course, freely got up and left whenever she felt like it, leaving me to brood in too-bright, too-hot isolation. Add to that the fact that she conveniently “forgot” to give me breakfast, and lunch was barely more than two thin slices of bread with minimal cheese between them, that didn’t favorably contribute to my situation. I got as much water as I wanted, which only helped me so much; there was a toilet installed in the corner so I couldn’t even escape for a quick trip to the bathroom.
What was far worse was the monotony of the questions she asked me, over and over again. It was obvious what she was doing—asking me simple stuff repeatedly to lull me into boredom and a false sense of complacency to make it either harder to lie, or much easier to slip up on repeating the wrong lies. As soon as I realized what she was doing, I tried my best to stick to the truth wherever I could without dishing anything that would actually hurt myself or those I was trying to help, with as few embellishments as possible. At first most of her questions weren’t anything I needed to compromise on, or not much. Going on what I had found out about the people running this operation here—mostly Guinevere herself—I assumed that all official details concerning the army and quite a bit of the unofficial stuff was common knowledge here. I also didn’t see why I shouldn’t relate my experience with several of the bases I’d visited, or how relations with the traders and scavengers were handled regularly. I also presumed that every scrap of paper I’d ever handed in, like all the mission reports including France, were something Marleen had read as well. Not having had a chance to actually speak with Gita, I had no idea how she’d gotten here or where exactly her allegiance lay, but since my life likely depended on it, I had to rely on the belief that she’d somehow gotten herself invited here to help Lewis and Miller. She hadn’t officially been working with the army but I had no illusions about her having had easy access to our computer systems—probably before she’d come to the base in Canada for the first or second time. It was quite known that Gabriel Greene had established himself as the universal intel broker of the North American continent, and Gita herself likely had been a part of that. From what I’d gleaned on the day I’d gotten here, Marleen abused her to print out current intel reports—which was a far shot from what Gita was capable of. Far was it from me to inform Marleen of that.
I was finally fed properly when Marleen dropped me back off in my cozy, comfy prison cell, a good eighteen hours after she’d fetched me. I wolfed down the sandwiches, stew, and a small slice of chocolate cake without any hesitation before hitting the shower, but once my head hit the pillows, sleep was as elusive as was any kind of real information.
All day, I’d mostly been busy with whatever questions Marleen asked me, but now my mind inevitably returned to the few revelations she’d let me be privy to this morning, mostly what had motivated Guinevere to, quite possibly, end the world in her spree of vengeance. Tackling that was too much for me; all it would do was make me scream in rage and frustration, so I quickly put a lid on those thoughts. Instead I tried to figure out if I could work with what else Marleen had let slip: that she was convinced that Miller had all of us fooled and was absolutely an uncaring, egotistical killer.
I knew that was bullshit. Why? Because I’d been around him long enough to realize that he did have feelings, and a conscience—at least as long as his wife kept him on the straight and narrow. It had been the worry about her he’d been incapable of hiding while she’d been on Emily Raynor’s operating room table that started to make a difference of how I viewed him.
Looking back to those hours—and, more importantly, knowing now just how much of a psychological nightmare what Hamilton had put him through right beforehand must have been for him—I couldn’t help but admire the balls Miller had. On some level, he had likely been glad that he’d borne the brunt of the altercations instead of his wife, although I wasn’t sure she saw it this way. But Hamilton’s stunt hadn’t just been the ultimate “see how I can fuck with you, however I want” but I now realized it had gone a step further—an unspoken “and look what I could have made you do to the one person in your life that means the world to you.” It made sense now why Miller had acted perfectly cowed for the first few weeks afterward, while Lewis had been in recovery. I’d thought he was simply trying to keep everything calm as not to call down any repercussions on her. In reality, he must have been fuming, a powder keg ready to blow—except that he had a strong enough hold on himself to never let it come to that. In fact, he’d stood by and had let Lewis do her thing; had let her be the one who got into Hamilton’s face and raked in victory after small victory.
No wonder he’d made it through the humiliation, cruelty, and tribulations of the slaver camp. Compared to what he’d already dragged along for years, that must have been, if not peanuts, then at least a bearable weight. Just maybe, he’d even found a flicker of redemption, because the man I’d observed for that week it took us to get from the slaver camp into the depths underneath Dallas had been a much more carefree man with a very narrow focus on what was still important to him—to finish one last mission.
What had I done in the meantime? I’d lusted after his wife who had never shown any indication that she appreciated the attention nor reciprocated the sentiment, and counted me among her friends instead. I’d also been a step away from chickening out and asking him to kill me because the very idea of a few hours of what he’d been through for weeks had been almost too much for me. And as if that hadn’t been enough, after that I’d hit rock bottom, feeling sorry for myself and borderline losing all hope.
In a sense, this here was my own shot at redemption… if I just managed to clear my mind and keep a cool head about things.
The next morning, I felt like crap from the thoughts that kept swirling through my head all night, sleep deprivation, perpetual hunger, and little to no chance for exercise for over a week now. I finished off the second half of the candy bar left from my first night here as I waited for Marleen.
She was acting the same way as the previous day—very neutral in her portrayal of emotions, but ready to whip out the playful side when it seemed to afford her any advantages. Since I’d settled on going by the jaded-defector playbook, I had to keep up that pretense—including reacting favorably when she suggested a repetition of yesterday’s tumble in the sheets before we’d get back to
the boredom of the interrogation room. Did I feel like sex? Absolutely not, but since I knew I could play to her egotism and focus on her own needs, that didn’t make much of a difference. It wasn’t like just because I felt emotionally traumatized from the repeat hits I’d sustained the previous day that I couldn’t lose myself in physical pleasure for a while—which I did. Just because I felt dead inside didn’t mean I couldn’t get a hard-on. What that said about my psyche, I didn’t want to contemplate. I had much better targets right in front of me.
That second day of interrogation was just as dull as the first, and Marleen went through the almost exact steps, right down to starving me further. In the evening, it was back to my cubbyhole that I started to absolutely hate by then. Sleep was a long way from coming again so I finally caved and turned on the TV to let wildlife documentaries flicker by all night.
I could really have used a drink. Water—even the fresh sparkling stuff that someone must have prepared that day and left in a carafe on my desk—wasn’t cutting it.
I was trying to get ready for another day of more of the same, but Marleen didn’t show up as expected. At first, I chalked it up to her varying her plans, although my mind was running rampant with ideas of what else could have gotten in the way of this incredibly boring task. By midday, I was considering eating some toilet paper to keep my stomach from rumbling when finally the lock on my door disengaged.
Marleen looked tired although it was barely 1 p.m., as if she’d had an early morning. She regarded me levelly for almost half a minute before she jerked her chin toward the door, foregoing any carnal activities altogether. “You want to prove how useful to us you can be? Now’s your chance.”
The idea made my heart soar with a hint of a thrill—not because I finally got a chance to do as she suggested, but I had an idea what might have caused it.
True enough, she led me to a different room now, one filled with monitors and blackboards, everything arranged around a long desk with chairs all over. The table was overflowing with print-outs and handwritten notes. It looked like more than one person had been poring over them but they were gone now, leaving just the two of us. Marleen left the door open as she indicated for me to take a seat. A few moments later, an equally tired-looking Gita came stumbling in, joining us. She was eyeing me warily but remained silent as she handed Marleen another stack of papers. Marleen stared at them without making a face but I could tell there was residual tension in her shoulders that hadn’t been there the day before. Something was bothering her, and since I doubted she had suddenly grown a conscience, I figured it could only mean one thing: failure. She was livid because something hadn’t gone according to plan.
Beyond Green Fields | Book 6 | Red's Diary [ A Post-Apocalyptic Story] Page 15