Life Sentence: Two Tales of the Living Dead (4 page)

Monica’s weapon of choice was a throwing knife, and she had one in each hand as she followed Gareth. At the rustle of undergrowth, he stopped, and she peered around him to see a figure rising between the trees.

“Oh, thank God,” a girl’s voice said. “Oh, thank
God
.”

The figure wobbled, then dropped with a cry. They found her on the ground, clutching her leg as she lit a lantern. She was no more than eighteen, thin-faced and pale.

“I thought you were the Infected,” she said, her voice breathy with relief. “They got the rest of my troop. I-I tried to fight--”

“Shhh,” Monica said, moving closer.

The girl looked up at them. Seeing Gareth’s scarred face, she gave a start, but Monica nudged him back. He slid into the shadows.

“They took the others,” the girl said. “They took them all.”

Monica crouched beside the girl. “We’ll get you back to your camp. We just arrived ourselves. Reinforcements.” She offered her most reassuring smile. “You’ll have to show us the best way to go. In case more of them are out here.”

The girl nodded and reached up. Monica tucked the throwing knives into her waistband halter and tried to take the girl’s arm, but the girl clasped hers instead, fingers biting in as she rose slowly.

Then she yanked Monica toward her. Silver flashed as the girl’s free hand pulled a knife from under her jacket. Monica’s foot expertly snagged the girl’s “wounded” leg and she went down, the knife flying free. Monica kicked it out of the way as the girl grabbed for it. Another kick to the girl’s stomach and she fell, doubled-over and gasping.

“Did you really think I didn’t know what you are?” the girl snarled between gasps. “Did you think I couldn’t
smell
what you are?”

“No,” Gareth said, stepping forward, machete whispering as it brushed his leg. “And did you really think we wouldn’t smell an ambush?”

He swung the machete as the forest around them erupted, Others lunging out from their hiding places. The girl tried to scuttle back, but he was too fast. Her head flew from her shoulders. Blood jetted up, her body convulsing in death. The Others stopped, all frozen in mid-step, staring.

“What?” Gareth boomed, bloody machete raised. “Isn’t that what you do to us? Lop off our heads? The only way to be sure we’re dead? Well, it works for you, too.” He smiled, his scarred face a pale death mask against the night. “Any volunteers?”

“You may want to consider it,” Monica said, her quiet voice cutting through the silence. “Because, if you look over your shoulders, you’ll see we aren’t alone. And they won’t kill you. They’ll turn you.” She looked around, her perfect night vision picking out each face, her gaze meeting each set of wide eyes. “They’ll infect you.”

Gareth roared, giving the signal for attack and the forest erupted again as their soldiers leapt from the undergrowth and swung from the trees. In that first wave of attack, some of the Others bolted. More ran after a few half-hearted swings of a blade. She had invoked the greatest weapon they possessed: fear.

Fear of becoming Infected.
Fear of becoming like us
.

Without that weapon, they’d have been massacred. Even with it, the fight was long and bloody. Finally, they were left standing among bodies, some their own, but most not and that was really all they could hope for.

They continued on. They’d come to see the Others’ camp and they weren’t turning back. It was a slower walk now, trudging through the forest, some of them wounded. Nothing was fatal--few things were for them--but injuries healed slowly and imperfectly, like Gareth’s broken leg and scarred face. It was, as with everything about their condition, a trade-off, in some ways better than life before, in others worse.

As a teacher, Monica had been one of the first to be inoculated, along with her family. One of the first vaccinated, one of the first infected, one of the first to die. The virus had hit with lightning speed, leaving her writhing with pain and fever, listening to her daughter’s screams, unable to get to her.

Then, a miracle. Or so it seemed at the time. Death and rebirth.

Before they could even decide what to do, the soldiers came, the first squads deployed with orders to annihilate the Infected. They’d gone into hiding, staying one step ahead of the death squads, squatting in abandoned homes, certain if they could just wait it out, the authorities would realize their mistake and
help
them. But the order to kill all Infected stayed. Then came the bounty. Then the gangs of blood-crazed bounty hunters. They’d escaped the death squads, but not the gangs.

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.

Just trying to live. That’s all they’d ever asked for, and that was all she ever wanted for them. So how far was she willing to go? Not to save them--she wasn’t sure that was even possible anymore--but to give them every possible chance for survival.

How far would she go? As far as she could.

#

Three days later, she was back on the balcony overlooking the stockade. Gareth was beside her.

“I need to be there,” he’d said. “They need to see me standing there.”

So the doctors had done what they could, binding him up, and she’d done what she could, washing away the worst of the stink of rot that had set in. They’d cleared the hall and carried him on a stretcher to the stockade door. He’d taken it from there, finding the strength to walk up to the guard post. He stood in front of a pillar and she knew he leaned against it, but to those below, their champion was back on his feet. And, now, with this new hope she’d given them, so were they.

Once again, she looked out over the men and women packed into the room below. Only this time, they looked back at her. More than one hundred and fifty trained soldiers on their feet, watching her.

In those faces, she saw fear and uncertainty. She saw hate, too, but less of that, surprisingly less.

Guards ringed the room. Civilians walked up and down the aisles with trays of meat. Cooked meat because, for now, that would make them comfortable. They gave the hostages as much as they wanted. That would help. So, too, would the doctors slipping along, silent as wraiths, watching for signs of trouble, others in the back room, dosing the meat with mild sedatives.

The transition had gone smoother than she’d expected. The doctors assured her it would, but she'd seen one too many hellish deaths and rebirths to truly believe them. They were right, though. After all these years, the virus had mutated, ensuring its own survival by making the process faster, less traumatic. One shot of the virus. Then a death-inducing dose of sedative. Within a day . . . rebirth. And now, two days later, an army to command.

She started her speech with a history lesson. How the Others had driven them to this place. How they’d fought the sporadic incursions, killing only those they could not capture. How they’d treated the prisoners of war humanely. Every man and woman there could attest to that. But now, with the wolves at their door, refusing to negotiate, they’d been forced to do the unthinkable.

“We need soldiers to fight,” she said, her voice ringing through the stockade. “Right now, I’m sure you don’t feel much like helping us. But you won’t be fighting for us, you’ll be fighting for yourselves. You are us now. You are Infected. Every one of you is now free to walk out our front gates. But you won’t. Because you know they won’t let you. Your brothers-in-arms, your friends, your families--everyone one of them would lop off your head if you walked into that camp because you are no longer human. You are Infected.”

She paused to let her words sink in. Behind her, Gareth shifted, struggling to stay on his feet. She glanced at him. He smiled and whispered that she was doing fine.

She turned back to the troops. “To everyone you left behind, you are now dead. Do you feel dead?”

They shuffled, the sound crossing the stockade in a wave.

“To everyone you left behind, you are now a monster. Do you feel like a monster?”

More shuffling, sporadic grunts.

“To everyone you left behind, you have no right to live.”

Another glance at Gareth. He stood straighter, chin lifting. He was dying. They all were and this was how they had to face it: stand tall and refuse to let Death win so easily. They’d cheated it before. Now they had to cheat it again.

She turned back to the crowd below. “Do you want to live?” She paused. “Are you willing to
fight
to live?”

The answer came softly at first, her own troops calling back. Gradually, more voices joined them, the new soldiers joining in, their shouts boosting the confidence of the others until the cry ran through the fort.

Gareth moved up behind her, his fingers sliding around her waist, his touch ice-cold now.

“You gave them hope,” he said. “You gave them a chance.”

She nodded. It wasn’t much, but it was the best she could do. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.