Spence holstered his gun. “This is no challenge at all. I’m surprised the townsfolk couldn’t handle them.”
Thornton added, “It helps that they’re stupid and weak.”
“The people here aren’t trained to fight,” Zach put in.
He was right; it made a difference. Most folks, when confronted by a nightmare, tended to run and hide. It was a rare soul that took up whatever weapon came to hand with no prior experience. But somebody else might be able to explain why most people fled and one in a hundred decided to do battle.
After that, we met only stragglers, one so weak he was on his knees when we encountered him. Spence murmured, “Poor sod,” and put a bullet in his head. The madman tipped over backward, and I swear at the moment of death, he was relieved to have it done—or maybe that was just what I wanted to see in his tormented features because otherwise this day would create a weight too heavy to carry.
“I’d like to speak with this Dr. Wilson, too.” Thornton smacked the haft of his hand ax against his palm, which I took to mean he wanted to lop off the scientist’s head.
I held up a hand, signaling quiet. After few seconds, I was certain. There were more nearby. How many, I couldn’t be sure. I wished Stalker had been able to provide a more accurate count. The men moved behind me, their fang-and-bone necklaces rattling. Down the street I found the source of the noise. This house had proven unable to withstand the onslaught, and the front door stood open like a gaping wound. A blood trail led inside.
I swallowed back my dread, whispering, “There won’t be room for all of us. I need four with me, six outside on guard.”
“I’m with you,” Thornton said.
Spence didn’t answer, but he stepped closer. Then Zach moved in … and Danbury. Those two wouldn’t have been my first choices, but it was better for squad morale if I didn’t play favorites. The house was dark with the windows shuttered, shadows heavy as the souls of the dead. I inhaled, tasting the air; it was sick and stale, tainted with decay. Then I heard movement deeper within, and all the hair on my nape stood up.
A few seconds later, the creature that shuffled into sight, dragging a severed arm, barely registered as human. Her skin was too tight, bloated from the feast we’d interrupted. Her eyes were bright but sunken in her swollen face and so smeared with blood that they were the only bright points in a ruddy mess. She lumbered toward us, and we scattered, giving Spence a clear shot. There was no point in letting her get close enough to bite. He leveled the gun and took the safe shot right in her chest, but it wasn’t enough. Despite that wound, she kept coming.
“Again,” Thornton snapped.
Spence fired another round, nailing her right between the eyes. She dropped like a stone.
I pushed out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I doubt she left anyone alive, but we should make sure. Thornton, with me. The rest of you, watch the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a moderate-size home. From what I could tell, it had originally been all one space, almost like a storage facility, but it had been repurposed as a house and someone had built rickety partitions. A lot about Winterville reminded me of down below. Unlike many settlements, this one looked like it didn’t belong; it was more than half made up of old salvage, used by people who didn’t fully understand what to do with it, and those foreign materials struck a strange note in the new world.
The whole house was awash in blood and feces, as if the madwoman who had broken inside had been a wild animal. She ate and excreted, and from what Thornton and I saw, that was all. In the sleeping area, I stumbled into the worst scene I’d ever encountered.
Is Appleton worse than this?
Thornton caught my shoulders as I rammed into him in an instinctive recoil. Chunks of meat and bone were everywhere, and the former residents were so chewed up that I couldn’t tell what parts belonged to which person. It was a slaughterhouse of a room, a scene that would haunt me forever. The sheds where they slaughtered the meat in Soldier’s Pond had more kindness. Then the woman, who was half devoured from the waist down, opened her eyes and whispered, “Kill me.”
“Let me,” he said.
I couldn’t have gone into that room—my feet were frozen—so he strode across the blood-smeared floor, and with a clean stroke of his hatchet, ended her misery. I moved back until I couldn’t see the massacre anymore, squeezed my eyes shut, but the images didn’t go away. Hard tremors shook through me, and I was ashamed of my weakness, until I felt Thornton’s big hand on my arm.
“Girl, I’d be worried if you could handle that. Only reason I could is because I’ve worked in the animal sheds, butchering beasts.”
I didn’t ask what mental tactic he’d employed, but I suspected he must’ve pretended she was one of those animals and he had a duty to make it quick. Thornton kept a hold of me as we stepped out and cleared the rest of the building. My heart was in my throat, fearing there would be brats, but I found none. I hurried back to the front door, and I guessed my expression gave away how bad it was because nobody asked me a single question.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We have more ground to cover before dark. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I’m not making camp until I’m sure we’ve killed all of them.”
“You’re dead right about that,” Spence said with a hard look.
That day, I killed six more feral humans; after what I’d seen in the house, I was only just functional. My squad accounted for more, but the situation was tense. I had Danbury fretting about his bite while the rest eyed him like they wanted to cut his throat as a precaution. Finally, I called it, after we searched every structure in our part of town. It had been exhausting, and the sun was already gone, darkness driving out the streaks of vibrant color.
“This whole town is cursed,” Zach said, his skin washed red by the sunset. “There are old-world relics all over the place, no wonder they came to grief. God has forsaken them.”
“None of that crazy talk,” Spence snapped.
Before sharp words could burgeon into a full-fledged argument, I beckoned. “Let’s go find the others. I hope they didn’t run into more trouble than they could handle.”
That sparked a frank discussion of the other squads’ capabilities, which lasted until we reached Dr. Wilson’s lab building. Stalker’s crew was already waiting; they were bloody but relatively fit. Right away, Tegan went into action with her medicine bag and about half the soldiers looked like they would walk on hot coals for her. There’s just something about a girl who can heal you … or crack your head open with a staff.
As soon as he saw me, Stalker strode over to me to make his report. “We killed thirty-odd feral humans. Found some dead citizens. I’m not sure as yet how many survived the attack.”
I shrugged. “Hard to say. They’re unlikely to come out until they’re sure it’s safe.”
“True.”
When I did a head count, I belatedly realized he was down a man. “What happened?”
“There was … resistance inside one of the houses. By the time I got to him, it was too late.” From Stalker’s expression, he was taking the loss hard, so I just nodded.
Soon Fade’s crew joined us. He bore several new wounds, but after I scanned him head to toe, I was relieved to find no bites. There was no way I could grant Fade a merciful end, should it come down to it. I might as well ask Spence to shoot me. Morrow arrived last, also one man down. That put our current number at forty-two. I greeted Fade with a smile, though I wanted to kiss him. His dark eyes lingered on my mouth, and with effort, I recalled myself to business. We couldn’t carry on like Breeders in the field.
“Time for Dr. Wilson to account for this mess,” I muttered.
Lull
The door was bolted or barred from the inside, so I banged on the lab door with both fists until Wilson called out, “Who’s there?”
“Company D!” the men shouted, before I could reply.
That was enough to reassure him, apparently, because I heard the sound of latches being unfastened, then the door swung open. I felt safer once we all stepped inside, but not happier. If possible, the man looked older since the last time we’d been here, by years instead of months, and he was thinner too. They used windmills to generate power—that much I knew—but I wasn’t sure how well town commerce had stood up to the crisis. If the people who went mad normally worked at some trade, farmed, or crafted trade goods, then their supplies must be running low. Salvage could only take people so far.
“Lock up, please,” Wilson said.
The soldier closest to the door complied, then we followed Wilson to the large room where he’d hosted us first. My men didn’t relax; none of them looked at ease in this place. It was strange to them, just as it had been to me, and I hoped the scientist wouldn’t give his windmill lecture again. That might be the last straw.
“Somebody string this bastard up.” The demand came from one of the scouts, but I couldn’t see who’d spoken.
I whirled, fixing a hard stare on them. “We’re here to help, not impose punishment. His own people will decide if he’s guilty of anything.”
Wilson slammed a hand on the counter, rattling his glass odds and ends. “Who do you think begged me to find a solution? I told them it would take years and that the mutants might have changed by then. They insisted on a live trial over all of my objections, and I had pressure from Emilia in Soldier’s Pond too.”
That shut everyone up for a few seconds.
For the first time, I noticed how quiet the lab was, no ambient snarls or growls, and there was no accompanying Freak stench, either.
“What happened to your pet?” I asked.
Wilson lifted one shoulder, the posture of abject weariness. “Old age. Once it sets in, they go downhill fast. I did what I could to make him comfortable.”
The rest of us were horrified; he had been nursing a monster while his people ran amok and ate one another? Wilson really was crazy.
But Tegan showed signs of fascination. “Did you learn anything about the creature’s physiology while you had it in captivity? I’ve never heard of anyone studying a mutant.”
“We study all kinds of things,” Wilson said. “Or we did. The last year has been hard on the scientific community.”
“What the devil are you talking about?” Tully demanded.
Wilson sighed. “Winterville has always been split along two lines, the scientists who gathered to study the Metanoia virus and eventually developed the vaccine to treat it, and the lay people who supported them.”
“You mean those who did all the real work,” Thornton muttered.
From the rumble of agreement, other men felt the same. I sensed the mood getting ugly, after everything we’d seen today. To prevent a hanging, I needed to divert their attention, but Tegan did it for me. She was plainly curious, moving about the room with apparent absorption.
“So this was a research facility more than a town?” she asked.
The scientist indicated the lab, stocked with all manner of gadgets. “That’s the only reason I have this equipment. Most of it has long since stopped functioning, of course, as the people who knew how to repair it are long dead. A few things, my father taught me how to maintain, and it’s the reason I was able to extract enough genetic material to create that serum.” His face fell. “As it turned out, that was an appalling idea.”
“Seems to me you didn’t pay nearly enough,” Spence said. “You made this mess, then you nearly got some poor fellow killed calling us to clean it up.”
“Did Marcus get there safely?” Wilson asked then.
That would’ve been my first question, and his belated concern didn’t endear him to the rest of the men. I was familiar with how humans thought; they wanted somebody to blame for the evil they’d witnessed here. A time or two, I’d been accused of things I didn’t do, according to that mob justice. So as much as I’d wanted to hang him myself, I couldn’t let my men make Wilson a scapegoat.
“He did,” I said. “He was resting in fair health when we left.”
“What’s the Metanoia virus?” Tegan asked.
“It’s what started the end of everything.”
“Ah.” Doubtless she remembered my summary of our conversation with Dr. Wilson and what he’d told us about what led to the collapse.
Red-eyed and fearful, Danbury cleared his throat, reminding me that we had a problem. I said, “I need to know how dangerous it is if we were bitten by one of the afflicted.”
“No more than any human bite,” Wilson answered. “The human mouth is filthy. But the mental deterioration you noticed sprang from adverse bioreaction to the mutant pheromones I released, not from viral or bacterial infection.” The scientist shook his head. “Regardless of the external pressures, I’m not reckless enough to experiment with viruses. They’re the most dangerous and insidious form of contagion.”
What he’d done with the potion seemed plenty irresponsible to me, but I didn’t know what a virus was, so maybe it was worse. From that moment, Tegan looked at Dr. Wilson like he wore a silver crown, and she pelted him with questions regarding things I might’ve wondered about too if my men weren’t tired and hungry and Winterville still such a mess.
“In the morning,” I said, “we’ll advise the townsfolk that it’s safe and help with cleanup. For now, find a place to bed down and eat whatever you have left in your pack. I’ll make sure we get a hot meal tomorrow.”
Danbury was frowning. He peeled back the bandage to stare at the bite on his arm. The afflicted must’ve died before he or she could really dig in. “What did all of that mean?”
“Just watch for infection. You won’t go crazy.”
That seemed to relieve him. All around the lab and in the hall, men laid out their bedrolls. I had no idea how late it was, but between the day’s horrors and the hard travel behind us, I was too tired to be hungry. On impulse, I left the lab and followed the turns of the corridor until I found the cages where Dr. Wilson had kept Timothy. They all stood empty, and they had been cleaned, so the room smelled sharply of vinegar, no hint of Freak at all.
Without turning, I recognized Fade’s footfalls as he came up behind me. “It’s so odd to think of them dying of old age.”
“Like people.”
That was part of what bothered me about all of this. The more the Freaks changed, the more they became like us. How many more generations before they spoke and thought as well as we could? At that point, their faster development meant they would outpace us in the breeding department. Another question ate at me—maybe the monsters were supposed to survive. Not us. And how could I fight nature on such a scale?
Weary, I leaned my head against the door frame. I should go back and lead by example, but I needed a quiet moment. Just one. Fade put his arms around me, looping them so that he could rest his chin on my shoulder. His warmth felt good, and the men were safe for the moment. That was a heavy burden, thinking about so many other people all the time. I didn’t ever want to be an elder if it meant this much pressure. Maybe it was why so many lost their minds and made decisions for all the wrong reasons.
“You were right,” he said quietly.