Well Fed - 05 (35 page)

“So what happened?”

“We don’t know. As far as we can tell, that untested serum had an above-average probability of successfully immunizing its subject, but there might’ve been a wee chance of mutation. Wallace noticed the changes in his skin tone. I have to say, when you’re out in the middle of the apocalypse, a thousand klicks away from safety… well, he handled it well and decided to continue the mission. There weren’t any internal adverse effects, according to him. We eventually located the remains of the initial recon teams in a courthouse in Ottawa—all dead or newly undead, in among a mess of terminated zombies. Having done that, we scouted out a good chunk of Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba, taking stock of survivors from a distance. We helped them fight off roving packs of undead, leftover Norse elements, and other batshit crazies bent on God knows what. During the latter part of the year, Wallace’s lips started to retract from his teeth, like you see now. And his eyes became increasingly sensitive to daylight. His sense of taste diminished as well as he experimented with… well, raw meat whenever we managed to bag some free-range chickens or rabbits. Needless to say, this was cause for concern, which prompted us to return to base, only to discover the Whitecap’s entrance had been blown and reduced to rubble. Something went down there, and neither of us wanted to investigate what, despite Wallace’s deteriorating condition. We figured the virus somehow got loose in there and everything went to hell. All the while, Wallace was getting a little slower. And I…”

Collie stopped for a moment, gathering her thoughts. At a soft
whump
on the ceiling, Gus looked up, but nothing followed.

“I started watching him for signs of completely going over to the other side,” she continued. “Til now, only his joints and strength have been bothering him. The stabbing was new—and the most disturbing instance thus far.”

“You know if he’s gone over?” Gus whispered.

“He hasn’t. Not yet. You saw him.”

“I did.”

“He’s still himself.”

Gus didn’t add his thoughts on the matter. The guy
had
manhandled him into this improvised bunker. No deadhead would have done that.

“Yeah,” he muttered and let his head droop, where it bumped a wine bottle.

Outside the cellar, Wallace kept an eye on the laundry and rec room. His night vision had improved greatly over the past few months. Overhead, things crumpled and fell, hitting the floor. Some smoke had seeped into the basement quarters but not much. Most of it drifted in through the debris that had collapsed and now blocked the staircase to the lower level. Wallace didn’t have a gun on him, but he did have his combat knife, not that he figured he’d have to use it on anyone.

Wallace didn’t know what had come over him when he pulled that chuggernut stunt in front of Gus. Such a breach of professionalism, in front of a civilian no less, was unforgivable. At the time, however, he’d felt only a morbid curiosity and acted purely on impulse, counterintuitive to his usual self-control. Wallace had long since accepted he was going to die.
How
was the only question, whether it was from a gunshot inflicted by himself or Collie. Lately, Wallace suspected that
any
shot would be to the head.

Standing there in the darkness, he could hear Collie talking on the other side of the wine-cellar door. Her voice was low but comforting in a way.

When he’d been sizing up the dead men in the hall, he completely zoned out and was brought back only by Collie’s voice. If she hadn’t called out to him, he would have…

A wintry freeze stropped the length of Wallace’s spine.

Jesus Christ
.

He might’ve tried eating those bodies, downing them like an “old lung in a bag,” what soldiers used to call the disgusting-looking IMP ration of omelets in mushroom sauce.

He hefted the blade in his hand. A single beam of light leaked in from the outside, probably through a broken window. Wallace took a breath, discovering he could still do so, and leaned against the cellar door, thinking about what was happening to him and how much his condition had deteriorated.

He lifted the knife. The blade came up like an exclamation point struck by lightning. Wallace regarded his still-working arm, not feeling the wound he’d made before.

Sniffing and catching a whiff of smoke, he sat down and placed his back against the cellar door. The men above might think Wallace and the others had escaped out the back, or they might think they died in the house. Or they just might decide to be certain and search the place after their shelling. That didn’t really concern Wallace at the moment. What bothered him was his wife being alone with Gus in a wine cellar at his back—alone with a man he knew she liked. And the knowledge that he’d pushed them in there didn’t help. That sandpapered his emotions.

Wallace regarded the knife. Then he looked at his torso.

Slowly, he pushed aside the plate of armor, unbuttoned his combat fatigues, and pulled one tail up out of his pants, revealing skin. He angled the knife past the plate and cloth, the tip touching a bare patch of flesh. Wallace held it there, wondering… wondering how badly things had progressed and listening to the evil murmurs of conversation behind the cellar door.

He stabbed himself, feeling a pinch as the knife slipped in, right up to the first serrated tooth. Blackness oozed around the steel—but very little—dribbling down to the waistband. With clinical determination and a little morbid curiosity, Wallace forced the steel knife deeper, taking his time, the serration sawing the edges of the slit like a card in bicycle spokes. The weapon pierced the muscle tissue of his oblique then found the curls of his digestive tract. A dull pang that felt more weird than painful caused him to straighten his back and take a breath, but he kept on pushing, pushing the knife farther into himself, guiding it home. The razor-sharp edge and teeth were gently ruining him without so much as a
flicker
of the agony he searched for.

“Oh, Jesus,” Wallace whispered in horror at his half-assed attempt at seppuku. Perhaps, just perhaps, he’d stabbed an area that wasn’t sensitive at all, even though that sounded like complete bullshit. He twisted the blade, now half its length deep. The
wrongness
of the probe depressed and panicked him until he regained control of his emotions through a blast of willpower. He sawed deeper, striking toward a kidney, remembering the leak he’d taken two days before and how his urine had dribbled out like watery toothpaste.

The knife was into a kidney now, or so he figured. There should be
pain
. He should be unconscious on the floor.

Instead, he twisted the knife again, screwing it into himself as though he was reaching for a set of keys and his fingertips had nudged them farther out of reach. The steel caressed bone, and that sensation wasn’t lost upon Wallace, but it didn’t hurt at all, as if his entire abdominal cavity had been pumped full of an anesthetic agent. The blood seepage had ceased. He pushed down on the weapon’s hilt, angling the steel upward, feeling the tip clicking off what might have been his backbone, and he stopped with a jolt.

What the fuck am I doing?

Anxiety flared, and he gasped and placed a hand against his side and pulled the blade out between pinched fingers until he freed the weapon. Nothing bled between his fingers. What would have been a killing wound on any battlefield had only brought on a brief panic attack.

He inhaled deeply, feeling his lungs expand––at least he hadn’t punctured them––and inspected the slit in his side, which looked like a child’s dirty mouth. Wallace prodded the cut, squeezing the edges until tiny beads ran southward. Then, on another morbid impulse, he inserted two fingers.

Nothing. No pain.

Other than the usual arthritic ache in his bones and joints, he didn’t feel a thing. He widened his fingers, hooking the edge of the cut back to see, glimpsing dark meat.

That was enough.

Wallace sighed, fighting off his swelling panic, and began taking deep breaths, holding each for several seconds and releasing it in a slow breath. That still worked. And the fact that he recognized it still worked meant something.

He held the knife up to his face, his surprising night vision making out the streaks on the steel.

Overhead, the world smoldered.

Every so often, Gus heard Collie lean toward the door of the wine cellar and whisper. She then informed him of Wallace’s reply.

“Still quiet topside,” she said after the latest report.

“How long we been here, you think?”

“Two hours, give or take a few minutes.”

“I don’t smell smoke,” Gus said.

“Well,” a smile accompanied her words, “that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“Maybe they’re still outside, waiting for the fire to die down.”

“You’re a real positive thinker,” Collie noted sarcastically.

“I’m just tryin’ to think what they might be up to.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll either think we ran out the back or died in the explosions. They’d already be in here if they thought we were still alive.”

“You’re pretty relaxed about all this,” Gus said.

“This is nothing,” Collie replied. “Back in the day, we ran operations in Colombia and Nigeria. Along the Ivory Coast. Mali. We assisted SEALs on incursions back in Kabul. So, no, I’m not really concerned with a few idiots with guns or grenade launchers. It’s not like what you might read in the books or the movies. The apocalypse wasn’t picky about who it turned, and of the people remaining, hardly any know how to really fight. They try, and some do learn hard lessons, but most don’t know what they’re doing. Even those guys firing the grenade launcher probably didn’t have proper training. They did a fine job all the same, though.” She ended with a chuckle.

Gus supposed they had.

“Where they got that thing is something I’d like to find out, however,” Collie added as an afterthought.

The silence droned on for minutes. Gus rubbed the side of his face and felt the cool glass of a wine bottle on his cheek. It was right there. That made him shake his head. It was a test—had to be.

“Well, if we don’t get out of this soon, I’m going to have to take a leak in a corner,” he said.

“Just let me know which one,” Collie replied. “We could be here for a while. At least until the sun goes down. We’ll move then. Back in training, our final mission was a seventy-two-hour evade.”

“Special ops training course?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“That include like stealth kills?”

“Yeah,” Collie said simply. “It did, actually.”

That surprised him, and she paused long enough that Gus started to think he’d asked the wrong question.

“Those guys upstairs got the jump on me. Scared the shit outta me,” Gus said, changing the subject. “Especially the machete.”

“Well. You’re still alive. Fear isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s a defense mechanism. I’ll give you this advice, especially true if your opponent has a machete or a knife. You ready?”

“Sure.”

“Walk away.”

That floored him. “That’s your fuckin’ advice?
Walk away?
What good is that?”

“If you don’t have a gun, get out of there. I’m serious. A knife fight is the last thing you want to get into. If your opponent looks like he knows how to use a blade? Run. And I mean
run
like your ass was dipped in gasoline and hell’s on your heels.”

“Well, that sounds completely dickless to me.”

“Hey, if you have a gun, shoot. Or if you know how to use a knife and there’s no avoiding a fight, then go in looking to kill. I mean ready to stab for the heart, throat, eyes, or balls—whatever is closest—with whatever you’ve got. There are a lot of people who don’t know how to fight, have no idea of the mechanics involved. They think it’s like the movies. Or a game. It isn’t. Nothing’s choreographed. In a life-or-death situation, forget honor. Mr. Machete upstairs? He was scary—no doubt, crazy—but not stupid. You’re talking about a person who decked himself out in a scary-looking outfit and put on a mean face. Great against most civvies, but against professionals? No. Not gonna work.”

“Care to teach me some things?” Gus asked, forcing humor into his voice.

Collie chuckled, the sound like bells. “You survived on your own for
years
. That does count for something. Anyone who can hold their own didn’t just get by. You’re already a badass, son.”

“Don’t feel like one. Was drunk most of the time.”

“Uh-huh. That worked for you?”

“Yeah. To a point. Until I tried to drink myself to death.”

She paused. “How do you feel these days?”

“Well… better, except for what just happened upstairs. Living on the farm was a good thing. Balanced me. I had people around me then. Some good people. A few assholes.” Talbert invaded his mind then. “But even they were okay in their own way. In the end.”

“That’s why we came back,” Collie said. “After finding Whitecap gone, we decided to try and put what was left of humanity back together again—at least try for some semblance of what was lost. And the only way to do that was finding the good folks still out there, trying to survive. I don’t think I would’ve returned to base anyway, knowing there were people out here needing us. In a way, I’m glad the chain of command broke down. Made things less black and white.”

“Well,” Gus muttered, stretching out his legs. “Thanks for saving me. Again.”

She didn’t answer, but he thought she might be looking in his direction.

“Sun’ll be going down soon,” she finally said.

They waited another hour. Wallace eventually tapped on the door before opening it, a wraith sticking its head into the cellar’s gloom.

“Time to go.”

“All clear?” Collie asked.

“Yeah.”

Her shadow passed before Gus’s eyes, and he struggled to follow. Remembering the wine, he paused on the threshold and looked back, barely seeing the bottles.

Not a drop. He’d gotten through that without sampling a single drop. The little victory put a smile on his face.

“Happy about something?” Wallace asked, startling Gus.