Jim had blamed zombie movies. When the dead rose again, people were sure they knew what they faced—an undead scourge that would end life as they knew it.
Some of the old stories were true. The Infected could not be easily killed. They carried the pallor of death, the faint smell of rot. Their bite could infect the living. They fed on meat, preferably raw, and while they had no particular hunger for human flesh, it was true that, if driven mad with hunger, they had been known to do what they would otherwise never consider.
But, unlike the zombies of legend and lore, they were still alive in every way that counted, still cognizant, and they could be reasoned with. The same could not be said for the living—for the Others.
The Infected had been hunted to near extermination and now, when Monica finally set eyes on the Others’ camp, those seemingly infinite tents, she knew their end was at hand.
“We can’t fight this,” she whispered to Gareth.
“But we will.”
And that was what it came down to. They would fight, hopeless or not.
They started back for the fort. She let Gareth take the lead, her mind whirring with everything she needed to do. She didn’t notice when she veered slightly off course. Didn’t notice the tripwire. Didn’t notice until her foot snagged it and she heard Gareth’s shout and saw him diving toward her, shoving her out of the way, heard the explosion, saw the flying debris and saw him sail backward, hitting the ground hard enough to make the earth shake.
She raced over and dropped beside him.
“Shit,” he said, rising on his elbows to look down at his chest, his shirt shredded, the flesh below shredded, too, a mangled, cratered mass. “That’s not good.”
She let out a choking sound, meant to be a laugh, but coming out as a sob. It’d been a small blast, a homemade bomb designed to do nothing more than shoot shrapnel, but all that shrapnel had slammed into Gareth’s chest. If he hadn’t been Infected, he’d have been dead before he hit the ground.
She waved the medic over, but one look at his face told her all she needed to know. They could recover from most injuries, but if the damage was too great, too extensive …
Oh God. Not Gareth. Please not Gareth.
She stayed beside him as the medic took a closer look. The soldiers ringed around them, solemn-faced, a few shaking, arms around each other.
When the medic looked up to give his report, Gareth waved the soldiers back out of earshot. They hesitated, but obeyed at a growl from him.
“I can make him comfortable,” the medic murmured. “Get him back to the fort …”
“Waste of time,” Gareth said. “Someone’s bound to have heard that blast. Get them moving before—”
“No,” Monica said. “You’re coming if I need to carry you myself.”
She expected him to argue, but he gave a slow nod. “You’re right. They don’t need this. Not now. Take me back, tell them I’ll pull through.”
That wasn’t what she meant at all, but he had a point. Their best warrior—a man who’d single-handedly annihilated mobs of Others—killed by a simple tripwire bomb? That was a blow to morale they could ill afford.
The medic bound Gareth’s chest while the soldiers fashioned a makeshift stretcher from branches and clothes, and they took Gareth back to the fort.
Monica stood on the guard’s balcony overlooking the stockade crammed with Others. Prisoners of war. That had been her policy from the start. Leave as many of the enemy alive as possible. Bring them here. Keep them alive and comfortable. Use them as bargaining chips and as proof to the Others that they weren’t monsters.
It hadn’t mattered. Her missives to the government had gone unanswered, as they always had.
For years, she’d tried to reason with the Others. First to negotiate, then, as their numbers dwindled, to beg for mercy. She understood that they posed a threat. So they’d go away, far from the living.
The Others might as well have been getting letters from a colony of diseased rats. Eventually, she’d realized that was exactly how they saw the Infected—diseased rats that somehow had the power of communication, but rats nonetheless. Subhuman. Dangerous. A threat requiring swift and thorough extermination.
She looked out at the Others and thought of what Gareth had said. The final option. Back when she’d first started arguing for the taking of prisoners, the other commanders had seen the possibilities. Horrified, she’d fought until the option was off the table. Only it wasn’t really. It never had been.
She left the guardroom and walked through the fort. She passed the rooms of soldiers playing card games, of civilians mending clothing and preparing meals, of children listening to stories at the feet of the old ones. Everywhere she looked, people were carrying on, hiding their fear, laughing and talking, just trying to live.