Journalstone's 2010 Warped Words for Twisted Minds (14 page)

For a moment, his pleading didn't register in her mind. She continued her assault. The tire tool was raised above her head like the sword of a charging samurai and, like those legendary weapons, seemed to demand a taste of blood before allowing itself to be lowered.

The man's hands shot to the rifle slung over his shoulder and snapped it into firing position as his knees braced himself against the force of the attack.

“Damn it, I'm not one of them!”

His sharp tone cut through the haze of battle, and she stopped so suddenly that momentum almost caused her to stumble forward. They stood facing each other for what seemed to be an eternity: she with the tire iron poised and ready to strike, he with the bore of his rifle staring at her like a dark, unblinking eye. “Please, I don't want to shoot you. But I will. I swear to God, I will.”

“You're . . . you're really alive?”

“No, I'm the smartest damn zombie that ever existed. What the hell do you think? Of course, I'm alive.”

She felt a hand on her shoulder and a familiar voice whispered in her ear.

“It's okay, sweetie . . . “

She'd been so focused on her attack that she hadn't even heard him stir. But it stood to reason that the flurry of activity would've awakened him. Mama, too, most likely.

“Look, folks, I'm here to help. I really am.”

Together, the two of them lowered their respective weapons. She was breathing heavily now, her chest heaving with each breath, and for some reason tears had begun to make the world around her swim in and out of focus. She blinked rapidly, trying to focus on the bearded man in the tattered clothes whom she'd been mere seconds away from killing. But he wavered as if she were viewing him from the other side of a waterfall, and the first tear had just begun to leave its warm path down her cheek as he unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt.

“Eden Team, this is Serpent Six, over.”

There was a hiss of static and then his voice again. “Serpent Six to Eden Team. Come in, Eden Team. Over. Serpent Six this is Eden Team. Over.”

The voice was thin and soft, but it was the voice of someone else like them. Someone left alive in a world ruled by the dead.

“Eden Team, I have three survivors. Two female, one male, none apparently infected. Repeat . . . I have three survivors. Over.”

“Serpent Six, rendezvous at Alpha Base One at oh-nine-hundred hours. Reanimate activity in sector seven high. Advance with extreme caution. We'll notify The Garden that the mission was successful, and we're coming home. Over.”

“Copy that, Eden Team. Serpent Six, out.”

There hadn't been much time for conversation, but she'd learned the man's name was Donnely. He was apparently nothing more than a small cog in a much larger machine – what the man on the other end of the radio had referred to as The Garden.

The Garden, Donnely had explained, was a collective that had established a fortified outpost about half a day's walk from their current location. Whereas the dregs of humanity seemed content with cowering in the shadows like frightened animals, The Garden had loftier ambitions. They were going to rebuild society, reclaim the coveted position at the top of the food chain, and re-establish mankind's dominance over the world.

The human race, he said, had been decimated, and the undead far outnumbered the living. But in the future they envisioned the tide would be turned. Children would be trained as efficiently as soldiers. Once their numbers were great enough, they would rise up against the undead in one, final battle. Within 15 to 20 years, tops, the world would be theirs again, and the blight of the living dead would be no more than a chapter in history books yet to be written.

It had sounded so promising: a place where they would be sheltered from the horrors of the outside world, a society that still functioned, that sent out teams to find those still left alive and bring them back . . . no wonder they referred to themselves with terms like Eden and The Garden. True, their ambitions sounded lofty. But at least they still had goals and plans. At least they could envision a world that consisted of something more than picking at the carcass of civilization like nomadic scavengers. At least they had hope.

So, they had followed this man, Donnelly. She, Jeremy, and Mama had allowed him to guide them through the maze of mangled cars and toppled buildings. They had slipped through the wreckage of the city like ghosts, skirting around enclaves of rotters so skillfully that the dead never realized they were there. For the most part, they progressed in silence. But every so often, when Donnely decided they were well out of harm's way, they would stop for a quick rest. During this down time, they would whisper to one another, and she slowly began to grasp the full extent of The Garden's plans.

“To beat your enemy,” Donnely had told them, “you first have to understand him.”

He was part of Eden Team, whose job was to search out those wandering the wastelands that would be able to assist in repopulating the cities of the earth. But there was also a group he referred to as The Tree of Knowledge. Their entire purpose, he said, was to study the undead menace. But they didn’t just study the ways in which they could be dispatched. No, The Tree of Knowledge wanted to know everything they could about their adversaries.

“Everyone knows a bite will kill your ass and bring you back. But did you know that any exchange of bodily fluids will do the same damn thing? You kiss someone who's infected, for example, and get even the smallest amount of spit in your mouth, and you're done for.”

When he spoke about The Garden and its various projects, his voice rose slightly in pitch, and the words came more rapidly. Breathlessly, he told them about the actual gardens where they grew crops, the kitten nurseries with their self-replenishing sources of meat, and the various ways they had of collecting and purifying water. The entire time, his green eyes shone with the light of the true believer.

His enthusiasm was as contagious as any of the corpses in this God-forsaken land. As they pressed on, her mind was filled with images of what The Garden would be like – how she would never have to know the sharp pangs of hunger or the fear of darkness again. Perhaps she and Jeremy would be able to recapture the sort of life that, just hours ago, she was sure they had been robbed of. Only, hopefully, it would be better than she'd ever dreamed.

Her stepfather had never really approved of her boyfriend. He'd said Jeremy was weak and unfocused, that she could do so much better than a guy whose major goal in life was to beat the most current level of whatever video game he was playing. And, on some level, she'd kind of agreed with Denny . . . even though she would never outwardly admit it. She'd silently hoped that someday her boyfriend would tire of being just another telemarketer tethered to his cubical by a headset. Maybe he'd start to dream of management or even actually creating the games he loved playing so much. A little time at the gym wouldn't have hurt either . . . even before fresh food had become as rare as gold, Jeremy had been thin and gangly. He’d been kind of like a tall, pubescent boy, really.

But maybe The Garden would have the positive effect on him that had somehow been lacking in their previous lives. Perhaps there he would find something he was so passionate about that his eyes would spark with excitement the way Donnelly's did. He might even decide that he wanted to become part of Eden Team and those thin arms might bulk up with the same sinewy muscle that strained at the sleeves of their guide's T-shirt. Not that she wanted him to be exactly like their new-found benefactor. She did love him for who he was, after all. But a little maturity wouldn't hurt, would it?

After what seemed like hours of walking, the group finally crested a small hill that overlooked a valley lush with trees and a patchwork of multicolored foliage. The sun was hanging low in the sky but the temperature had already begun to climb which caused her skin to be coated with a sheen of sweat. From this distance she could just make out a stream that snaked its way through the valley below. Its waters sparkled as if millions of pixies bobbed on its surface, and it was all too easy to imagine how cool that water would be as it lapped against her sunburned skin, how good it would feel as it quenched the dry harshness of her throat.

“Wait here.”

Donnely's command had pulled her thoughts away from the meandering creek and back to the cluster of camouflaged tents just within the grove of trees before them. Three men walked out to meet him, each with a rifle slung over his shoulder by a thin strap. All of the men were similar in build to their guide: muscular, seemingly well-fed and healthy, and obviously selected for Eden Team because of their athletic physique.

However the center of attention seemed to be a short bulldog of a man with a neck so thick and brown that it could have passed for the trunk of a small tree. As the others spoke, this man kept shooting glances at the newcomers through his spectacles, and something about his gaze had made her feel like an insect beneath a microscope.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot and kept discovering new patches of skin on her arms and face that needed scratched. Something about this little man and his cold, hard eyes made her uneasy.

“Must be their leader,” Jeremy said. “Kinda looks like a general, huh?”

She'd nodded in response, maybe uttered some non-committal answer . . . she couldn't be sure. All she knew was that, for reasons she couldn't understand, she now felt as uneasy as if they were standing among a group of ravenous rotters. But that was ridiculous. These people were here to help, right? They were Eden Team. From The Garden.

The group of men disbanded, Donnely disappearing into the woods as the others walked slowly toward them. The one Jeremy had referred to as a general seemed to be smirking slightly, and she'd gulped hard, trying to tell herself that it was simply thirst that made her feel as if her airway was constricting.

Maybe if they'd actually said something, she would have felt better. But, no. General Bulldog and one of them men stopped several yards away from them and seemed to study the small group with their eyes. At the same time, the other man circled around them, and for some reason the image of a pack of dogs came to mind. It was the way they would circle their prey, cutting off any means of escape before lunging into their attack.

But that was silly. Of course these men would be wary. The world was full of people who saw the apocalypse as a handy excuse to simply do whatever the hell they wanted. Rapists, murderers, thieves: as the number of survivors had decreased, the sins of those left alive had grown exponentially. It made sense that they would be very careful about the people who were brought into their fold.

It was all entirely logical. But logic did little to assuage the nervous tightening in her stomach and even less to silence the voice in the back of her mind which whispered that something just wasn't right.

General Bulldog's eyes studied her for a moment, and for some reason she felt the same way she had when she'd walked through the din of catcalls and innuendo of construction workers. Like she was nothing more than a piece of meat, something to be had and discarded.

“Useable. Good hips.”

His voice was gruff and abrupt and somehow sounded as if he were passing judgment on her. She immediately felt herself stiffen as her hands balled into fists. She wanted to spit some caustic remark back at him, but her mind balked and left her simply standing there with her mouth agape.

The little man's eyes darted to Jeremy, and for a moment he almost seemed to wince.

“Weak. Bad stock.”

Then onto Mama.

“Too old.”

There was a moment of silence before the man spoke again.

“Tree of Life has an adequate number of test subjects. These two are useless.”

It happened with the quickness of a lightning strike. One moment, these two groups of people were simply standing on the hillside staring at one another as a cloud passed across the sun. The next, General Bulldog and his underling had their rifles shouldered as if by magic. Two shots rang out and echoed through the valley below, startling a flock of birds into flight as twin puffs of spent gunpowder filled the morning with their sulfuric odor.

Jeremy and Mama's heads snapped back as a crimson mist seemed to spray in slow motion from the dime-sized holes that had appeared in their foreheads. Their bodies crumpled to the ground, falling atop one another while unblinking eyes stared at the boots of the men who'd killed them.

She'd screamed and turned to run then, spinning around just in time to see the stock of a rifle racing toward her face. There was a flash of pain, and dark spots that had exploded like antimatter fireworks in her field of vision. She felt the sensation of falling backwards and then nothing but darkness.

When she came to, her forehead throbbed as if her heart had taken up residence just above the bridge of her nose. Her entire face ached, and she could feel something tacky on her bangs, something that felt like half-dried glue. Reaching up, she winced as her fingertips brushed her wound. Streaks of pain radiated from a central point, and her head immediately felt as if it had tripled in size. She was nauseated, as if her stomach were on the verge of purging what little food it contained, and she viewed the room she was in as if through a fog. But even so, she realized that the dark stains on her fingers were partially congealed blood.

“Just cooperate.”

The voice was familiar, but not overly so. Where had she heard it before?

“It'll be easier if you do.”

She turned her head toward the source of the words, and it seemed as if it took the world a fraction of a second to catch up with her. But when it did, she saw Donnely. He was on the other side of the door, looking in through the little window with his hands wrapped around the bars. For a moment he became nothing more than a blur before snapping back into sharp focus.

“You should feel honored, really. They don't select just anyone.”

He seemed to be looking everywhere but directly at her. As if he couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze.