Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance (27 page)

Chapter 20

They spotted more than a dozen cameras during their search to find a place to spend the night. Some were obvious like the ones perched inside glass globes on the corners of buildings. While others were more covert—embedded in tree trunks, on the sides of parked trucks, or affixed to street signs. They hoped not all of them were being monitored in live time, because it was a difficult task to stroll around, trying to make themselves look like any of the other couples on the sidewalks out for an evening walk, while also scouting for somewhere to spend the night that would be secure enough for them to get a little sleep.

They eventually settled on hunkering down underneath a set of bleachers in a small outdoor arena. The earth was hard and compacted underneath, but there was no trash in the spot they chose…
and hopefully no spiders.
Cheryl only took small comfort in thinking they were probably too far north now for scorpions to be an issue. They had much bigger things to worry about anyway…

It was only after Aidan wrapped his arms around her to protect her from the wafts of cool air, she relaxed enough to breathe and think about Mark and the others they'd left outside Sedona. They really hadn't thought their reconnection all the way through, had they? No time limit had been settled upon for their investigation in the city. When would Mark, Zach, Diego, Jordan and Kai give up on them and head for Sabre? She and Aidan could be in Sedona for days, even
weeks
before finding out what they wanted to know and discovering a way to make a safe escape.

Like someone clearing their mind before meditation, she tried to sweep away all the anxieties out of her monkey brain so she could concentrate on listening for Mark's voice. It took a few minutes before she tuned into something. It was warbled, distorted. She could hear his voice in her head, but what he was saying was chopped up into a staccato of syllables that didn't make sense.

Troub…road…hey..

When she closed her eyes and tried to focus on the message, it became an even worse jumble. The tone was obviously agitated, though, and didn't seem to indicate that he was just checking in on her.

Please be okay, Mark.

She wanted to tell Aidan about the weird one way telepathy she'd had with Mark ever since he returned from his last tour in Afghanistan, just before the start of the epidemic. She wasn't sure he'd believe her, though. It was more likely he'd think she was starting to lose it.

When dawn came, Cheryl was still in a hazy world somewhere between consciousness and dreamland. A loud moan and the sound of dragging feet made her snap alert. Hopping to her feet, she banged her head on the metal bleacher above. Then, wincing from the pain, she frantically searched the ground around her for her gun. It took another couple of seconds for her to remember that she had no gun, and she was inside Sedona.

"It's okay," Aidan said as he stood next to her and peered through the seats. "It's a worker. Looks like he's headed towards that street crew over there that's setting up cones."

Mesmerized, she watched the lumbering figure, a man who looked like he'd once been a strapping guy in his twenties at the peak of fitness but now had a hunched stance, opaque eyes like peeled grapes, and grayish flesh, head towards the men—some who looked quite alive and others who looked dead like him. If the state of physical decay didn't distinguish them, the black box fitted to their scalps made for quick identification. "Beasts? Like
beasts of burden?
"

"It's hard to believe they control them and live side by side, isn't it?"

"Yes," she said, not sure if she could ever get used to the idea.

As they began wandering the streets, they saw more of the Beasts mingling with the townspeople. They were all involved in some sort of labor—sweeping the sidewalk, following the trash truck and emptying bins into it, washing cars, pulling weeds, and many other mundane tasks. It seemed they were programmed to do any repetitive task that did not involve complex thinking. After more than an hour of watching them, it still seemed weird. Even stranger, none of the residents seemed to be alarmed at their presence or give a second look at any that were particularly horrific looking.

"Why couldn't they just have built robots?"

Aidan shrugged. "They're a renewable resource, I guess.
Albeit, a gross one
."

As peaceful as the system seemed to work, it wasn't long before they witnessed a flaw. There was a reasonably fresh-looking zombie serving coffee at an outdoor kiosk. She was a teenager with short blonde hair and a far-off look in her slightly cloudy eyes that could have been natural indifference to her task if it wasn't for other obvious clues that she was dead like the mushroom pallor and the black box affixed to her head. After pouring an espresso for an older gentleman, the girl bared her blood-stained teeth as her lip curled into a snarl. The man withdrew his outstretched hand as the coffee splashed to the ground at his feet. Then, she lunged for him over the counter, nearly climbing on top of it. The man scurried away as her body went limp, falling to the ground.

One of the other workers approached. The young man, barely older than the girl, but definitely alive, punched a few buttons on a remote then he spoke into his cell phone. "Need to send one back for reprogramming."

Cheryl and Aidan watched from a bench across the street as a couple of guards drove up and hauled the lifeless body away in a truck. Then, they began wandering again, taking in every little detail they could.

Although, on the surface, the city seemed normal enough, there was something very
off
about it. Underlying the sweet-smelling scent from the flower pots on the street corners, there was the sour smell of rot and decay. Every hedonistic pleasure seemed to be offered in the shops along the main strip, all sorts of sex shops, co-ed Roman-style bath houses, restaurants with decadent menus, and even smoke houses where you could blow your mind with unlimited hashish. Cheryl wondered if the seductive offerings were a way to bribe and numb people into obedience.
Which of the temptations had been the drug that had turned Jake into the monster he'd become?
It was the first time she'd thought of him since they'd entered the city. Now, it occurred to her that they could run into him anywhere and needed to stay alert.

As if the thought triggered something, the WHOOP of a siren sounded behind them. They leapt out of the way to let a policeman on a bicycle pass by. When he was a few yards past them, Cheryl said, "How are we not going to look like a couple of homeless vagabonds? We can't keep wandering and sleeping outside."

"Well…
Ashley
. Perhaps we can find out where you and I live."

"Bah…" she said. "We don't look anything like them. We can't just assume their identities."

"Maybe we can. If not, we can have a good story as to why they left and we moved in."

It seemed like a longshot, but they headed into a residential area and began searching names on mailboxes and the boxes in the lobbies of apartment complexes. After several hours, they realized the futility of the task and began daring to ask people if they knew where Ashley Garrett and Philip Downey lived, saying they were old friends just trying to hook up with them again. It was late afternoon when they were finally directed to an apartment building.

"Hope they lived alone," Aidan said as he took a pocket knife out of his pocket and began to fiddle with the lock.

"I really hope Zach and Diego didn't kill them," Cheryl said as he worked.

"Probably didn't, unless they got out of hand. Either they're still holding them hostage or they've taken them back with them to Sabre and are trying to de-program them from their O.N.E. indoctrination."

Minutes later, they were inside the apartment, gorging themselves on food in the couple's kitchen. Afterwards, they took stock of the clothing in the closets and were happy to find most of it to be close enough to their sizes to be wearable. A search of the desk in the living room yielded something else useful.

"See this?" Aidan said, holding up a piece of paper.

"What is it?" she asked, squinting from across the room.

"It's a job app."

She stared at him, not understanding.

"Looks like Philip was going to apply to work in O.N.E.'s technology center."

"And?"

"I got his resume right here. I'll fill it out and apply myself."

"You do that, and I'd say you got some big balls on you."

"That's pure conjecture. Oh wait…you've seen them."

She blushed, turning away. "Tell me more about the job."

"Thankfully, it's not in programming, because I know nothing about that stuff. It's for a repair technician. Computers, electronic stuff. I know enough to bluff my way through a lot of that."

"Sounds risky."

"Just being here is risky. Not being here is risky. What do I have to lose?"

"Maybe you should give it some more thought. After all, we haven't said we were planning on staying here."

"I thought the plan was to get on the inside. Find out whatever we can about this O.N.E. operation."

"Yeah…" she said. "That was the idea." She tried to envision herself making this O.N.E.-controlled town her home. Despite having to live shoulder to shoulder with Eater slaves, there certainly were enough comforts to make it livable. Then, she stopped herself from going down that road. Remember…
these are the people that started it all.
They're the reason you've lost your former life, the reason your relationship with Mark unraveled, and the reason your father and aunt are dead.
Murderers, all of them
. She wasn't here to join these people—she was here to destroy them.

"There's an open call for interviews tomorrow afternoon. I'll go as myself, that way I won't have to pretend I'm this Philip guy and accidently screw up."

After picking out a shirt and pair of slacks, he tried them on. Cheryl admired how well they fit, but said, "I don't think the Grizzly Adams hair and beard go with it."

He walked over to a mirror and laughed. "You're right. How about helping me with a cut and a shave?"

Cheryl helped him find some scissors as she had a strange déjà vu, remembering how they'd once cut their hair to keep Eaters from grabbing onto it. A half our later, after Aidan's transformation, she hardly recognized him—he was as clean cut as a new military recruit and seemed to enjoy the new look as if it was some sort of disguise.

Later that night, they ventured out of the apartment, lured by the numbers of people they saw down on the street heading towards the area of the pyramid. A horrible, acrid scent permeated the air. (It was a smell that Cheryl knew all too well, having once visited the site near Fort San Manuel where they burned the bodies of dispatched Eaters.)

"What's going on?" she asked an adolescent boy hanging out on the sidewalk in front of their building.

He took another lick from his ice cream cone, ignoring the drip running down his chin. "Same thing as every night.
Change of the Beasts
."

She dared not ask another question for fear of drawing attention with her ignorance. The boy trotted off, and she and Aidan followed the crowd to whatever macabre attraction they were headed towards.

The people were shoulder to shoulder when they reached the building area, but they managed to squeeze and elbow their way near the front of the mass. Eventually, they found themselves ringside, shoved against a chain link fence that bordered a deep pit as large as half a football field. She couldn’t see into it, because of the acrid, dark smoke blowing over it. It came from a smaller pit that was adjacent, and the smell was enough to make her retch as she covered her nose and mouth with the collar of her shirt.

The crowd cheered as a dump truck pulled up to the smoking pit. Seconds later, it began to unload a heap of Beasts that were so ravaged from their strenuous work on the pyramid they looked like lifeless heaps of bones with just a few tatters of rotting flesh flapping in the breeze. As bodies tumbled out, the crowd began to chant, "Dump…dump…dump…dump…" Cheryl saw some in the heap flail their limbs as they fell towards the flames. She imagined them feeling utter despair at their plight, even though she knew they didn't feel anything. It was still inconceivable that the crowd could watch them being discarded like nothing but refuse and cheer it on. It was another example of how O.N.E. had influenced their minds, warping them into following the new order of things without question.

After the truck left, the crowd turned their attention to the larger pit. A crane was poised over the center of it, holding a platform the length and width of a semi-truck with waist-high steel rails. It hovered there, swaying a little as the crane operator prepared to lower it.

A chant spread through the crowd. "No smoke. No smoke…"

Seeming to obey their command, a few seconds later the wind picked up, shifting the smoke away from the pit. Cheryl looked down, and her whole body went numb.

There had to be
several thousand
Eaters/Beasts (she didn't know what to call them now)— many more than the terrifying numbers that had attacked Fort San Manuel. All of their miserable heads were turned upwards, staring at the crowd with their dead eyes. Their bloody mouths were open wide as their gnarled hands stretched towards the sky.