TORMENT (35 page)

The other side of the hill dropped more than one hundred feet. The valley below, now full of shattered pine trees, had concealed the gleaming white surface of an EEP. The backside of the large Earth Escape Pod faced them, hiding the front hatch.

“It’s the third escape pod,” Mia said. “It’ll have food and water.”

“And guns,” Garbarino said.
“Lots of guns.”

Austin stood. “Let’s take this slow. Something down there stinks.”

They followed him down the hill, weapons drawn and eyes wary.

“Could an EEP stand up to the horde?” Mia asked.
“To Henry Masters?”

“You mean if we have to hide inside?” Garbarino asked. “The things were designed to take the impact of multiple nuclear shockwaves.
So, yeah.”

“I’m not talking about hiding inside,” she said.

Austin looked at Garbarino. “She’s talking about living inside.”

“
There’s
only three of us now. The food and water would last a long time. If there are vents anywhere, air wouldn’t be an issue. Maybe we could outlast them?”

“Or live as long as possible without being torn apart,” Garbarino said.

As they approached the bottom of the EEP, the smell grew stronger. “Don’t get your hopes up,” Austin said as he stopped, looking down at the ground. A streak of wet, black goop cut through the carpet of brown leaves, arcing around toward the front side of the EEP.

Austin squatted down next to the streak, picked up a stick and dunked it in. A wad of dark ooze clung to the stick as he lifted it up. He sniffed and winced. “This is what smells.”

The tip of the stick bent and then dropped away.

Mia winced. “It rotted.”

The dark rot spread up the stick, turning the next few inches to black ooze before dropping away, too. Austin tossed what was left of the stick into the trail of goop and it sank in, rotting as though captured by a time-lapse camera. In ten seconds, the whole stick was gone.

Austin stood. “Try not to step in it.”

One by one, they carefully stepped over the rotted earth and continued moving around the EEP. Several more streaks crisscrossed around them. The area of rot grew dense and then became impassible up close to the EEP. Austin led them back, and then circled around further away.

They stopped when the hatch came into view. It stood open, the interior beyond beckoning them closer. Someone had left, and that meant someone had survived. But the black rot covered more than a hundred square feet of earth around the hatch and criss-crossed even further out.

“We’ll never make it to the hatch,” Garbarino said.

Austin turned away. “We should go.”

But Mia had seen something else.
Someone
else.
“Who’s that?”

Garbarino and Austin followed Mia’s pointed finger. A body lay on the far side of the rotted patch. The deeply tanned skin of the naked man made him hard to see in the brown leaves that surrounded him. His hair was slick and pulled back. His eyes were closed and his mouth wide open, as though singing opera.

“Vicano,” Austin said. “Robert Vicano.
Secret Service.”

“I’m sorry,” Mia said.

Garbarino tossed a stick into the black tar-like ooze. He watched it sink. “Don’t be. The man was an ass. So in love with himself that he hardly noticed anyone else.
Probably closed the EEP door behind him without letting anyone else in.”

Mia looked at Vicano’s swollen body. Aside from the tan, he looked like the average American couch potato. “He doesn’t look like the type.”

“She’s right,” Austin said. “Something’s wrong with his body. If he wasn’t on duty, he was working out. Now he looks...not swollen...fat.”

The heat lightning above increased in violence for a moment, casting them all in brighter light. The light reflected off of Vicano’s body.

“And wet,” Mia said. “He looks like he’s covered in—”

The man’s eyes opened. His mouth snapped shut.

Mia, Austin and Garbarino took a quick step back.

Vicano’s eyes darted around. Then he saw them, looking each one of them in the eyes. He stopped on Austin. “Austin? Is that you?”

“Vicano,” Austin said in greeting. “Are there any other survivors with you?”

The man looked around, feigning a search.
“Ah, no.
Just me.
Just me.”

“He’s not moving,” Garbarino whispered.

Mia had noticed it too. Vicano was stark naked. But if he was as vain as they said, maybe he really didn’t care.

“Are you injured?” Austin asked.

“No. No.
Just, ah, just lying down.”
He looked them up and down, licking his lips. “You know
what,
I am having a hard time getting up. Can you come over here and help me?”

Austin looked down at the black goop. “The black rot,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”

Vicano looked disappointed, but the expression lacked the desperation of someone in need of help. He looked more like a spoiled child who didn’t get what he wanted for Christmas.

“What happened to the others on board?” Austin asked.

Vicano glanced at the EEP. “I was alone.”

“Why didn’t you get in touch with the other EEPs in orbit? You were trained to—”

“I...didn’t make it. I barely got into the EEP before the launch started. I don’t think—I don’t remember getting strapped in. I was standing, I think, when the first Orion burst hit. After that...I was here. Maybe that’s what happened to my legs? Maybe that’s why I’m like this?” His voice was pleading.
Desperate.

Austin thought,
like what?
Sensing something was off, Austin thought they should leave, but the weapons and supplies inside the EEP offered a temptation nearly impossible to resist. Feeling a little like Hansel before the candy house, Austin stayed rooted in place, eyeing the EEP’s open hatch, hoping to find a way inside. “How did you get outside?
Past the rot?”

Vicano looked at the streaks of black. “I hadn’t noticed them before. I don’t recall it bothering me.”

Garbarino placed a hand on Austin’s shoulder. “I think we’re just going to take a look around.” He stepped away and was glad to see Austin follow his lead. Something was very wrong with Vicano and they needed to leave before that something tried to kill them. “We’ll come back soon.”

“No, wait!” Vicano shouted, lifting his head. The sudden motion made him roll onto his stomach. He slid down a small rise leaving a trail of clear slime behind him. His arms and legs stayed limp, as though boneless. The leaves beneath the slime rotted, turning black and wet, then became just another trail of ooze.

Austin and Garbarino took aim. Mia held her gun ready, but didn’t raise it.

“Don’t move, Vicano,” Austin said.

But the man didn’t listen. Instead, he slithered forward through the muck, unaffected by its ability to rot.

“He’s the source of the rot,” Mia said. “Some kind of slime is covering his body.”

Vicano’s fatty exterior slid forward, as though moving over his bones, pushed down, and then pulled. Each undulation moved him further through the muck.

“Like a slug,” Garbarino said.

“Shut up!” Vicano shouted, scooting forward another foot. “You’ll never look as good as me.”

“He’s not a survivor,” Mia said.

“Shut up!” Vicano shouted.

Mia stepped back again, this time stepping over a trail of rot. “He died during the launch and came back, as this.”

When they reached the edge of the rot and backed up the hill, Vicano grew furious. “Get back here!” he screamed. “I’m better than all of you! I’m going to fucking eat you!” When Vicano reached the edge of the rot, he opened his mouth and bit the dry leaves in front of them. As he chewed, they could see the leaves rot in his mouth. He swallowed and a moment later, the rot oozed from his anus.

Mia covered her mouth.
“Oh my God.”

“Fuck,” Garbarino said, staggering back. Austin caught him and pulled him up.

Vicano quickly ate, shat and slithered his way toward them, but was far too slow to ever catch them. Between mouthfuls, he shouted, “Get...back...here! You don’t deserve to walk! You’re not good enough!”

They left him there, chewing a new trail of muck, rotting the earth with his touch, and they never once regretted not gaining access to the supplies inside the EEP. Despite the food, weapons and shelter just a stone’s throw away, despite being hunted by a horde of killers and Henry Masters, and despite losing everyone they cared about, they did not share Robert Vicano’s fate.

And that counted for something.

42

They walked in silence for nearly an hour after leaving Vicano behind, each digesting what they’d seen in their own way. But not one of them wanted to talk about it. Finally, Mia broke the silence. “Maybe he’ll slow them down?”

Austin, who was still in the lead, looked back.
“Who?”

“Vicano,” she said. “Maybe the killers, or Masters, will walk into the rot and be eaten by it.” It was the only silver lining she could think of—the only way her mind could come to terms with what she’d seen. If Vicano’s fate somehow saved them, she might be able to live with it.

“Maybe,” he said.

“Somehow I doubt we’ll get that lucky,” Garbarino said.

“I know. I just—”

A loud snap interrupted her. Austin disappeared, falling from view with a shout.

Mia dashed after him, but Garbarino caught her arm. “Joe, let me—” She looked down and saw an eight foot drop. Austin lay at the bottom, rolling onto his back and catching his breath. She looked back at Garbarino. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, he said.

Although Austin had been the group’s champion, Garbarino continued to surprise her. She and Austin had him pegged as trouble from the beginning. He’d nearly shot Paul while they were in orbit and had seemed to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But his hopelessness-fueled breakdown had slowly reversed as things got worse. Not only had he saved her life on one occasion, and cared for Elizabeth, but they had somehow become friends. She couldn’t say that for Austin, with whom she’d connected initially—as things got harder for the group, his skin got thicker,
his
personality more abrasive.

Garbarino knelt by the hole in the ground and peeked in. Austin lay on a cement floor. A sagging wooden framework hung above him. “Looks like an unfinished foundation,” he said. “Branches and leaves collected on top. As good a place to rest as we’re going to find.”

Austin looked around the dim space. Tiny shafts of light filtered through the foliage cover, illuminating the cement floor, which held its own leafy carpet. Dry organic dust filled the air and tickled his nose, but it was safe. They couldn’t be seen from the outside, even from a few feet away, and he doubted they could be smelled with the heavy scent of earth concealing their scent. As long as someone didn’t fall in like he had, they would be safe. “We’ll sleep for a few hours and then keep moving.”

Garbarino helped Mia into the hole created by Austin’s fall. After plucking a bushel of dead ferns, he slid inside and used the ferns to cover the hole. “There,” he said.
“Home sweet home.”