Betrayal (5 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Jesus H. Christ,” Jonathan said as the Huey touched down on the roof of a long-since abandoned pawn shop. “This… this place is completely—”

“Man, we are
fucked
.” Jared chambered a round in his carbine and stepped out.

“Don’t get too cocky, kid,” Trevor said, resting his aviators in place with a smile.

“Really?” replied Jared. “This ain’t the time for your attitude, man.”

Trevor hopped out and rais
ed his arms high above his head, cracking his back. “Ah, damn that felt good.” He put a hand on Jared’s shoulder and motioned to the city with his other. “Hey, it’s not like I landed us on meteor with some snake-like monster trying to eat us.”

Craning his head,
Jared eyed the man. “Yeah, you just landed us in the middle of the city with thousands of people-like monsters that want to eat us.”

The pilot looked down to the streets. “Yeah, but at least we can kill these ones.”

“Don’t get too cocky.”

Trevor leaned his head back and held his stomach as he laughed. He slapped Jared on the back. “Now you’re getting it.” Turning to Jonathan, who was walking up to the two, he said, “We’re going to hold up here for the night and fight Zack and all his rotting relatives. There should be plenty of ammunition in the pawn shop. I want you t
wo to head down there, look for some twenty-twos and ammunition, and bring those up first.”

“Why don’t we just start scavenging?” said Jonathan, taking a look over the edge.
His eyes went wide.

“That’s why,
” Trevor answered.

***

Blinding light burned Mark’s eyes. He opened them to see swirls of dust shifting in the air forming various images. Blinking hard, he found his vision had come back to normal. His right shoulder throbbed, but was still numb.

The doctor walked into view. His pale skin hung from his cheeks, and his eyes were still a burning orange.

“Glad to see you survived the first stage,” he said with a smile that bared yellow and black teeth.

Mark raised a brow. “First stage?”

Footsteps echoed in the distance. The doctor turned and smiled again.

“Ah, Corporal,” he said. “You have impeccable timing. Our patient could use the comfort of a familiar face, I’m sure.”

“That so?” Corporal Payton stepped into view. “Hey there, bucko.”

“P
-Payton?” Mark said, blinking his eyes. “Spence said you… that you died out here.”

Payton
glanced to the doctor. “I guess you could say that.”

“What?”

“Where’s your C.O., corporal,” said the doctor.

“He’ll be her
e in a moment with the specimen,” Payton said.

Mark looked from one man to the next, and he noticed that
Payton’s eyes had the same orange tint as the doctor’s. A further glance revealed that the back of the corporal’s neck had been torn open. Dark crimson and black liquid surrounded the wound.

“
Payton,” said Mark, “what happened to you?”

“Is that Goodman?” said another
familiar voice.

The corpor
al stepped aside and revealed a recognizable face, only it was maimed with lacerations and bite marks.

“S-Sarge?”

***

“Why aren’t they back yet?” William North asked, holding his emaciated wife in his frail arm
s.

“Yeah,” said Mr. West
, who was standing next to the Cunningham twins. “They’ve been gone for nearly seven hours. It’s never taken that long before.”

Carol looked to the waning sun and sighed.

“Maybe they’re… they’re dead,” said an elderly woman whose name escaped her said.

Carol raised her hands as the growing crowd speculated on the fate of Trevor and the rest. “Calm down, people. Those men aren’t trained like
Bell and his unit was. They’re likely taking their time and avoiding any unnecessary risks.”

“We’re starving here,” a male voice yelled in the backdrop.

“I-I know,” said Carol. She turned to Helena. “Break out the emergency rations.” Then she made for her office, unable to stomach the sight of all the colonists.

As several of her people raised their voices in protest, Carol felt her eyes watering up. There was nothing she could do, she knew. The Colony was a dying horse in a barren, arid pasture, and she was the helpless tender to those who weren’t even able to help themselves now. She looked up to the gray sky and prayed that her Father would bestow a blessing of… hell, anything.

The first tear escaped when she realized that He may not be listening anymore. After all, how many people had prayed to their deities and had been left to fall prey to those abominations beyond the walls? That thought forced her eyes shut as she made her way into the house, abandoning her people as her god had abandoned her.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Rafael’s eyes fluttered open, and a labored breath blew past his
cracked lips. His lungs strained as he pulled in a short gulp of air which made his throat feel as if it had been coated with finely ground glass, and sat up. The strength it took to move upright made it feel like his body was weighed down by some ethereal force that sought nothing more than to keep him incapacitated. His forehead was on fire; rivulets of sweat poured down at an alarming rate. Glancing back to the cot, he could make out his outline in perspiration.

With a sigh, he set his feet on the floor, placed his elbows on his kneecaps, and buried his face in clammy hands. Each breath came out with a wheeze.

“
Muerto que anda
,” he muttered, feeling the life drain out of him as each second passed.

He thought of Kimberly.
Mi amor
.

Oh how he’d wanted nothing more than to take the sisters far away from this shambling outpost on the
verge of imploding. To take them out in the world and let them explore what beauty remained while they still could. Now, though, he knew his role would be played by observing them from the next life.

His sickness had spread too far and too
fast. Life had seen fit to take him from the one he loved before he could truly explain how he felt about her.

He stood, and it felt like the floor had been pulled from beneath him. Catching his balance on Carol’s desk, he noticed his nine millimeter staring back at him. Rafael eyed it, hated it,
but knew that it was his one and only peaceful escape. His last gift to young Kimberly.

The gun felt like an anchor. He pulled and pulled until finally it came into his grip.

“I’ll not let myself become one of them, my love.”

He set the barrel against his temple, feeling the life being pulled from
him in terrible increments by the sickness, and squeezed the trigger.

Rafael dropped as he received a click from the firing pin
. The empty pistol clattered across the hardwood floor and came to a stop under the cot on which he’d been sleeping. The head of security, the one man in the godforsaken place that actually
cared
about Kimberly and her sister, drew his last breath knowing what he’d become.

***

“I’ve got Denise Richards,” Jared said, sighting a once beautiful and busty dirty blonde in his crosshairs. Her arms were outstretched, her hands scratching and scraping at the brick wall. Her clacking teeth and vacant eyes were almost humorous from the roof. Holding his breath, he dragged his index finger across the trigger and gently squeezed. Denise’s head jerked back and she fell with the mass of the horde gathering around the store.

The hollers and moans crept up the wall like a swarm of spiders, and the collective of bashing reverberated up. For a brief moment, the walls appeared like Jell-O; waves of brick bounced and receded. Jared wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his jacket and targeted a half-naked
, rotund woman. Her wrinkly tits hung on the hump of her moldy stomach. He tried to take his eyes off her bloated nipples, but they were like the eyes of a hypnotist; he was briefly transfixed by their drooping gaze.

“We ain’t got all day
,” said Trevor from beside him.

Jared shook himself out his trance, focused on the bitch’s one good eye, and fired. She staggered back and fell on two
of the dead, effectively reducing their rotting bodies to mush.

Trevor slapped in a fresh mag
, chambered a round, and took ten well-placed shots.

“Wooh
!” He rested his rifle on the roof. Turning to Jared, he said, “You see that? Man, if those jarheads woulda just taken their time, they might still be alive.”

Jared scowled,
and Trevor raised his hands.

“Take it easy, bud,” said Trevor. “Enjoy it while you can. Another twenty minutes or so and the streets’ll be clear.”

“Whatever you say, man.”

Jared took aim at someone who had
a faint resemblance to Mark, the lost survivor.

***

The dead woman pushed her arms out as far as they could go and pulled at the air. Gunnery Sergeant Bell added to the imagery by puffing on his cigar and blowing smoke in front of him. The woman appeared as if she were jumping out of the darkness as tendrils of polluted mist rose above her. She wriggled and fought with the big man’s grip, moaning and swiping in Mark’s direction.

Mark felt his neck tighten and his heart trying
to punch through his ribcage. “What the hell are you doing with… with that—”

A slight pinch on his arm brought his eyes from the dead
woman to the doctor, who had just stuck another needle in Mark’s arm.

“Calm down,” said the doctor. He looked past Mark and nodded.

“No, wait,” Mark said as Bell lowered the woman onto him.

Her hands tightened around his shoulders and he let out a scream as her teeth clamped down on his neck
and pulled free a slab of flesh. He heard more than felt the skin peeling away. Crimson burst from the wound and formed sleek rivers that bled down from his neck to his chest.

“
What the
,” he screeched, feeling his entire body warm up.

“Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “When you wake up, everything will be much better.”

Mark’s neck went slack, his head lolled to the side. The doctor was smiling as he depressed the plunger of the needle down. An even more fiery feeling washed over his body.

“Close your eyes, Mark.” The doctor slid his glasses up his nose. “You have nothing left to worry about.”

CHAPTER NINE

Chandler Briggs, an ex-convict jailed for killing his wife and the piece of shit that was fucking her behind his back, crumpled the empty pack of cigarettes in his hand and tossed them. Taking one last drag from the smoke between his lips, he exhaled and leaned back against the door to Carol Beswith’s office. He dropped the butt and put it out with the tip of his boot.

Never bet on red
, he thought, remembering the last breath as it escaped that whore’s mouth as he choked her into the next life. His lips arced into a slight grin as he looked down the hall. Still, years after his passing, the farm home’s builder had his pictures hung on the dreadful, peeling, maroon and white wallpaper. Chandler wondered what good ol’ Jonah Swanson would think about having a criminal roam the halls where he’d built a life for his family.

Oh, but neither Carol nor any of the other colonists knew the truth. They’d likely throw his two-hundred-and-fifty-pound ass over the wal
ls if they found out what he’d done. Instead, much to his liking, they had made him a security watchman after only having been in this hellhole for a week. And the best part was that he was the person to take care of the killers, the rapists, and the thieves. There was no jail in the Colony. No, that would mean a use of precious resources that they’d never had. Rather than a judge and jury, the Colony only had Carol, Raphael, and him to answer to. And when your sentence was carried out, it typically meant banishment.

Chandler couldn’t count how many times he’d watched the scum of the earth, people much worse than he could ever have been, beg and plead to stay within the confines of this fine establishment. But once the gates were open, there was no coming back. There was only the deadlands.

With his position came a rightful feeling of power, and he never looked back. Not once. Fate had seemed fit with giving the man a second chance. After the jail pigs decided to bail, setting free every prisoner on their way out, he’d realized this wondrous truth.

Walking up to one of the pictures and studying a smiling family, hi
s lungs tingled. Chandler sighed. There were no more smokes located anywhere inside the Colony; his last pack had been from Bell’s personal stash. Hopefully Spence and the others—

A crash from Carol’s office set his eyes on the door.

“Raff?” he said, gingerly taking a few steps toward the door.

Receiving no answer, he leaned forward and knocked three times. Fearing the worst, Chandler wrapped hi
s hands around the knob and slowly pulled open the door.

***

“Over here, Alicia,” Kimberly said, tugging on her sister’s arm.

Alicia had no idea where they were going, but she found herself quite scared traversing the shadows.

Kimberly stopped them when they arrived at the fringe of the north wall. The two-story home in which all the leaders lived had only one window that was lit. Alicia focused on it as her sister told her to stay put and keep quiet. She wondered why the house was so dark. Maybe it had to do with all those people crowding at the detached garage. Was something wrong? The people, around this time at night, were usually hanging out in the slums, talking and arguing with one another. Sometimes fighting until one of the security guards broke it up.

A chill ran down her spine when she turned to see Kimberly approaching the security guard monitoring the two buses.
Something was indeed odd about this particular night in the Colony. Alicia placed her arms around her shoulders and hoped Kimberly knew what she was doing.

***

Mark came to and shielded his eyes from a blinding light.

Payton’s laugh echoed
off the hollowed-out space that might have once been a patient’s room.

Squeezing his eyes shut
and rubbing them with his fists, Mark sat up. His chest felt tight and he coughed.

“Don’t worry,” Payton’s voice said from somewhere nearby. “Just cough it all out and you’ll feel like a new man.”

Mark, with his eyes still closed, heaved and hacked until a slimy mass shot out from his throat and splattered on the floor. He sucked in a breath and tilted his head back.

“Before you open your eyes, Goodman,” said Payton, “you should turn around.”

A hand blanketed Mark’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. Mark, still unsure of where he was and what exactly had happened, fell to his knees heaved until more of the maddening substance spewed out of his mouth. He opened his eyes and, this time, wasn’t met with burning light. Instead, he saw a dull white wall filled with medical trinkets and a bed to his right.

The image of that rotting thing taking a bite out of him and the smiling doctor injecting him with…
something
came forth. Mark immediately threw his arm to his neck and felt his fingers run across a jagged gash.

Odd,
he thought.
Why the hell doesn’t it hurt? And why the hell am I still alive?
He looked up to see Payton staring down at him. The man had a strange blue-orange aura around him, and his eyes… they were no longer orange; they appeared the same steely blue as when the man had left the Colony a week ago.

“What… What the hell did
you assholes do to me, man?”

Payton grinned as he extended his hand. “Come with me. I’ll take you to the Doc so that he can explain everything. It’s a bit much to hear for the first time, and I figure it’d be best to hear it from the person who not only did this to you, but to us. All of us.”

As the Corporal opened the door to the hospital rooms, Mark furrowed his brow
. “All of us?”