The Last Blade Of Grass (33 page)

“Do you people want us to let those that helped Stockton and his people free? Then we can return to our ranch so everyone can await the proper response from authorities, or should we stand together as the decent people we know we all are and deal with the threats we now face in the only manner we have available? The world has changed. Life as we once knew it is gone and it isn’t coming back.”

“But it is coming back. At least it can if we work on it,” Dave says forcefully. “The infected are dying out, and we can start reclaiming the world.”

I shake my head slowly, wondering why these people refuse to understand what’s going on. “There are runners now,” I say, leaving a moment for it to sink in. “We aren’t facing the same numbers of the infected, but the ones that are left are more dangerous.”

Everyone starts shifting and looking at each other.

“They don’t just slowly come after us anymore. They are hunting us and coordinating with each other to do it. They run fast and can use their hands to manipulate things.”

“When I arrived this morning, we knew about just three, the one that attacked me yesterday and two others we killed on the way here. But today, while we were working on your release, my people were split up into smaller groups. Three different runners were seen circling the area, trying to sneak up and attack.

“What this means is the only people we can rely on are those we can turn our backs too without them stabbing us. Those people that had Stockton’s protection traded your lives for their own safety, and they will do it again if given the choice.”

“You don’t know that!” the first woman that spoke says, with tears in her eyes. “We can’t kill them. We have to trust them. They could have been us. How is what we are planning to do any different from them? We are trading their lives for our own safety.”

“No,” I say with an angry finality. “We don’t have to trust them and it wasn’t you. Did any of you agree to turn on other survivors to end your rape and torture? Did any of you agree to work with those bastards in order to keep yourselves or your family out of the cages? All of you could have done it. Why didn’t you?” The group is silent. “The world is more different now than the first few months of the infection. Before these things started to run, we always had the chance to come back. All of us could have survived with the infected dying off. We could have eventually overcome the criminals and opportunists to rebuild society. But we don’t have the luxury of giving people the benefit of the doubt anymore. Any threat to our survival has to be destroyed now, not just avoided.

“Voting to kill these people for our own safety will do nothing to end society. It has already ended. But voting to let these people live could be the end of the dream of the life we once lived. Letting a known threat live is no different than letting a rabid animal go because it hasn’t bitten you yet. I don’t want to take that chance. You have to decide amongst yourselves if it’s a chance you will take.”

“Can we at least have time to think about it?” another woman asks.

“I want to speak with them,” Dave says. “At least give those people an opportunity to explain their situation. We have to take into account each individuals behavior and should have every one of them come forward to speak for themselves.”

“That is an excellent point and something I can completely agree with you about, Dave,” I say while nodding. “We will hear what they have to say for themselves before any vote is made. What we do with the four children is going to be especially difficult for us to decide on. From what I understand, they are all the children of the people that directly hurt you.”

This discussion has given me a headache. If we didn’t need the extra manpower so badly, I would just say
fuck it
and kill everyone that was with Stockton. I’m not the type of person to just take all of the supplies and leave the freed prisoners to fend for themselves, though, so I’ll have to keep my desire for expediency in check and continue listening to their concerns. Plus I have to admit, as much as I dislike Dave, speaking with those other people should have been considered much earlier in the discussion. I’m glad he brought it up. I turn to walk to the other side of the store to get some more sleep and stop in front of Samantha.

“I’m sorry we lost Emily, Samantha,” I say and walk around her.

“Eddie?” she says.

I keep walking. I just can’t take anymore of anything right now.

“Are you going to be all right, Samantha?” Simone asks.

“It’s my fault we’re here,” she says, and she drops her head and starts to cry again. “Emily is dead because of me, Simone. This is my fault.”

Simone grabs Samantha in a strong hug and lets her cry onto her shoulder. “There isn’t anything you could have done here, Samantha. You know it isn’t your fault.”

Pulling back and straightening up, Samantha looks Simone right in the eyes. “You’re wrong, Simone. My daughter is dead because of me.” The serious tone and stern look concerns Simone.

“About two months ago, Connor, Jake, and I were scouting at the edge of Grants Pass to check the area for infected numbers, and I spotted this group. I saw them take someone prisoner, but I didn’t tell anyone about it. Even Conner and Jake didn’t know what I saw. When we returned, we just said that there were some people holding up in the Wal-Mart here, but weren’t positive if they were criminals. I even convinced myself after a while that they were probably good guys that were just catching someone that had attacked them.”

“But why, Samantha? You knew if Emily were alive she would have to come through here to make it to our place.”

More tears flow. “I never believed she was alive. It was just easier to think she was already gone than trying to live with this false hope that so many of the others have when they talk about missing family. But now I know that she is dead, and it’s my fault. Erde and Emily were captured here a couple weeks after I was here. Stockton only had twenty-four people working with him back then. The rest of his group has only been here for three weeks. Everyone that died here and was raped or beaten is my fault, because I could have stopped it. Your husband would have had all of us come down here and wipe out the potential threat of these guys back then. The way he is trying to do right now.

“It was a choice I made not to say anything. I am not only responsible for Emily, but I put our entire group at risk by not telling you and Eddie about Stockton earlier. I’m sorry.”

*

The rest of our group and the survivors did individual interviews with the remaining seventeen people of Stockton’s gang, while I got more sleep.

“It turns out none of the complaining was necessary,” Arthur says to Simone and me. “It was like you guessed, Eddie. All of them had some involvement in capturing the people. Most of them acted as lookouts, and they said they got bonuses when they spotted someone to be captured.”

“They told you that?” I ask in amazement.

“Some of them did, yeah. It’s amazing what people will tell you when they think they won’t be punished. They would get extra food or snacks if they saw someone. But the kids were the worst part of it all.”

“I know. It must have been difficult to deal with. I mean, they’re just kids,” I say, unaware of what he means.

“No, no. It’s not what you think. I mean, we all thought the kids were going to be heartbreaking interviews, and how would we deal with putting their parents to death and expect them to understand. The problem was, the kids were horrifying. I mean, they just felt evil. They didn’t care what was happening to the people in the cages. Those kids had dead eyes. We took a vote after the interviews and everyone but two people voted for them to die.”

“Let me guess, Dave, and that lady?”

“You got it.”

“What do you think about those two, Arthur?”

Arthur looks at Simone and me for a bit, thinking before he answers. “I don’t think they should come with us. People like that seem to enjoy being problems in the lives of others. Now I hate to suggest turning away people that are in their poor physical condition, but there are a lot of new people and extra mouths to feed if we let them all come to the ranch. We should check out each of them to see who probably won’t work well with our group at the ranch. I’m sure if we let them all come, some of them will eventually be told to leave for one reason or other, and that will be a bigger problem for us. Maybe even a potential threat.”

“I trust your judgment, Arthur,” Simone says.

“I do too. Let’s deal with any problem people we can before they all find out where we live and what our security situation is like. Can you speak with all of the people we freed here to get an idea of what they’re like? Anyone that seems untrustworthy—like that woman and Dave—I’ll deal with before we leave. As for the rest of them, we should try to convince as many as possible to join us.”

“I’ve spoken with a lot of them already. It won’t be a problem to talk with the rest.”

“It is a lot of new people to place our trust in at the ranch, Eddie,” Simone says. “Are you sure we should take them all in?”

“I would prefer to only bring in people with skills we can use to better survive, but there will be more groups like Stockton’s that we will have to deal with, and we need numbers. Every person we bring home from here is a potential foot soldier in any upcoming fight we have.

“Arthur, one more thing, be absolutely certain about who you think we should exclude and why. If any of them choose to stay here, that is one thing. But anyone that we won’t allow to come with us to the ranch will be a potential threat, like Chad was, and I won’t leave them here alive and able to track us down.”

Chapter Fifteen

Experiments

I walk over to the bakery section of the store where we are holding Stockton and his people.

“Take off the pillow cases,” I say to the men guarding them, and they begin walking among the groups of prisoners—pulling the covers off of their heads. “This whole ordeal is finally over.”

The prisoners of Stockton’s group turn their heads toward each other, with a happy confidence that comes from not knowing my next words. I just smile with them and let them in on the bluff.

“I want you all to know that I am a man of my word. As an officer of the United States Military, I have promised you your freedom in exchange for releasing your captives peacefully. Unfortunately for you, I am not in the U.S. Military, and from what I know it no longer exists.” A few puzzled looks stare back at me from the crowd at that statement, and I continue filling in this crowd, enjoying every moment of their growing unease.

“There was no nuclear detonation destroying a large group of survivors as there was no large group of survivors that we have ever heard about. And there is no Idaho territory for you to travel to. You are all going to die for your crimes.”

This news, of course, stuns and angers the crowd of bound prisoners. Among the yelling and curses being yelled at me, a woman calls from the crowd, “Wait, what about me and my children? I have two kids with me. My son is only eight!”

“Yes. Your son is only eight. And he ran around this store playing with his sister while other children were being raped, tortured, and killed. We were told by your kids that they took most of the food that was supposed to go to the people you were abusing, and they ate it, or threw it out. You taught your children to be indifferent to the suffering of people. In their interviews they were considered cold, aggressive, and even evil in the way they acted and responded to questions. The way you people behaved is disgusting, and human with your traits aren’t wanted or needed in this world.”

“You can’t kill them! They’re just kids,” the father of the children yells. His proclamation is particularly ridiculous considering the statements of his victims. This man is responsible for raping three of the children that were held captive here, as well as the murder of four others. His particular kind of sickness won’t continue in this world through the actions of his spawn, since they won’t be living through the day.

“I am perfectly willing to kill the children of monsters like you so that the evil you represent is completely dead. Besides, the information we gain from researching their deaths will possibly help the rest of humanity survive.”

“We were just trying to survive! I was trying to protect them! You call me a monster? You’re the monster saying you will kill my kids! You can’t do this to me!”

“Everyone is trying to survive, lady. Not everyone is willing to allow the rape and abuse of innocent people in order to survive.”

When we moved his people back here we had to secure them in a way to allow just a few guards to control the whole group. So we had them sit in five rows, bound their feet, and tied a line along each row so if one person managed to get up, they would have to drag everyone else with them.

Stockton is in the middle of the front row and is quiet while everyone else is struggling and yelling. In a way I think he knew this was a scam. It was just too good to be true.

Mr. Fleischer is in charge of organizing the tests, so he explains to us all what he wants to do, and what he will need from us.

“To do the testing, we have to split everyone into different groups. There are people that had exposure to cats that are the hopeful group to study. They will most likely be a long term study group since it took six hours for Mr. Keeper to reach fever stage, we should assume the same for each of them. Thirteen people had regular exposure to cats. Eight of them were probably exposed to toxoplasmosis because they changed their cats’ litter. The other four we aren’t sure of. This is a list of their names, pull them out first, and secure them individually by that wall over there. Please separate these four from the others,” Erde says while pointing to his list, “as they have a low probability of immunity.”

When Erde says to separate them, we all look at him.

“Separate them, how?” Donald asks.

Donald, Karen, and their son, Jake, are here to help with the experiments along with Conner, myself, and Simone. I have to be here because I need to see if I’m contagious, but running these experiments on living people doesn’t bother me the way it might bother the others.

Hannah walks in with Mike right behind her. “I want to watch, but also help, if I can,” she says. “Mike wanted to come with me.”

I raise my eyebrows at his seeming attachment to Hannah and remember him sitting next to her and Lilly at the house, even though there were other seats available. I let it go for now.

“These four will most likely turn quickly once infected,” Erde explains. “Once they turn, we have to do a quick test to see if they become regular or coordinated infected, say by giving them something small to hold in their hands—like a pen. Once we have our answer, we can terminate them immediately.”

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s move the ones that will most likely become the infected quickly over by that loading door, so once we are finished and kill them, we can lift the door and roll their bodies out.”

“This is so creepy,” Karen says. “I mean, how we’re talking about these people, and dealing with their bodies. I just never thought I would be doing anything like this.”

“I don’t think any of us thought our lives would end up like this,” Simone says.

“We are crossing a line,” I say as Erde waits. “The chills you are all feeling and the deep pit in your stomachs is what lets you know that you still care about humanity. Intentionally infecting people is wrong on many levels, but it will help to keep us alive, and that is why we have to do it.”

We separate the people as we were asked and the results are as Erde expected. The four people he thought would turn did turn. They didn’t have enough exposure to the regular
Toxoplasma
parasite. The nine remaining are bound and waiting for the fever to hit. Hannah is sitting by them, with a watch, and checking their temperatures every 30 minutes.

For my part in the testing, I have to do three different types of exposure trials. Some of my blood will be placed in an open wound of one person and saliva in the wound of another. I also have to physically bite someone to make sure there isn’t a difference between plain saliva and something activated during a bite.

As I walk past Stockton to grab those on his left for testing, he gives me an anguished and ridiculous plea. “Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just kill us?”

“Hammurabi’s Code, Stockton. An eye for an eye. You tortured those people out there. I can’t let you off easy by just shooting you in the head. But don’t worry. I’ll make sure you don’t survive.”

The testing goes quickly for the rest of the group. We experimented on them six at a time and none of them were immune. The bad part of the results is that all of them turned into infected that were coordinated and fast. We had some of them bitten by a slow infected and some by a fast one we captured. They all became the fast infected. We determined that they moved fast by securing their mouths and hands, putting bags over their heads so they can’t see, and freeing their legs to see them move. The all could move fast.

So Simone’s hypothesis about it being the cold making them fast was wrong. This means that the parasite has changed in how it affects the body.

Mr. Fleischer doesn’t know how the parasite had such a quick mutation period. “Typically only viruses can change so rapidly, parasites need a much longer evolutionary period to make such a dramatic transformation,” he said. “It must have something to do with my alterations to the parasite to speed up the mechanisms for stopping pain and blood loss.”

The floor by the rolling door is slick with blood. A scene of disgusting and morbid comedy occurred several times over the night as one of us would slip in the red gore of brain and blood after rolling a body out.

The blood and lingering burnt gunpowder gives the air in the back room a metallic smell and taste. There is also the unpleasant odor of feces and urine that came from the fear these people had of being infected.

Most of the former captives that came into the back room to see what was going on left right away. They had seen enough violence enacted upon themselves and the world that they wanted to see no more. A few of them stayed throughout the testing, however. Their eyes were glued to the turning, and then dying bodies of the men and women that tortured them these last weeks and months.

In the morning, Mr. Fleischer turns to me before he addresses everyone. “Mr. Keeper, you are not contagious.”

He then turns to everyone and says in a serious manner. “A bite from any infected person, whether they are fast or slow will result in a fast moving infected person. They still have all of the qualities of their slower counterparts—lack of blood loss, no reaction to pain, and the ability to live and even move with multiple major trauma injuries to the body. Blunt force trauma to the head is the only way to put them down, but now they are moving faster, so they will be harder targets to hit. They will also be more dangerous as they will have the ability to open doors, climb fences, and maneuver around the basic types of obstacles that have so far kept us safe from attacks.”

The news about the infected is hard to take for all of us. It seems like our species just can’t catch a break.

After some further discussion about the new dangers we face, I look at everyone, and say, “Today we will be finishing the loading of the trucks and heading to the ranch. I said you have your choice to come and go as you wish, but there are some of you here that I don’t feel comfortable with leaving behind.”

“Are you going to hold us hostage now?” Dave asks.

“No not at all. As I was saying, you are all free to go your own way right now if you choose or come to the ranch, and you can stay or leave at any time. There are those of you however, with more serious health situations that I think need more recovery time before being on your own, but the choice is still yours to make. We need to know now so that we can set you up with the appropriate supplies before leaving. The medicine, food, and sporting goods sections will be empty when my group departs, so anything one of you staying behind needs from those sections should be mentioned now.”

              “Why don’t you leave more stuff for the people staying?” again Dave interrupts.

I really am starting to hate this guy.

“This is the most likely base camp of those staying, so they should get to keep more of the store’s resources.”

“Dave, I want you to shut up,” I finally say.

“What…”

“I said shut up, Dave. Look, I have been playing nice, but there is something that you just don’t seem to understand. Anyone that stays here is dead!”

“Do you understand that, Dave?” I say it slowly and with heavy sarcasm. “I mean, look at yourselves!” I say while pointing at the group. “You’re a bunch of skeletons. You were all probably barely surviving before you were captured, and then this group starved, beat, and raped most of you into the poor physical conditions that you are today. I doubt many of you would win a fight with a squirrel right now, let alone a running infected. And I am not about to leave shelves full of precious supplies that can be used by us living people, just to make the walking dead feel better.”

“I don’t want you to leave it for the infected,” Dave says. “I mean, leave it for anyone that wants to stay.”

“The walking dead aren’t the infected. The walking dead are those of you that are staying behind while we go to the ranch. That is how I see it. I give any one of you a one in ten chance of survival in the physical condition you are in. The fact that you survived the torture of your captivity speaks to your strength and will to live, but your captors also kept the infected out of here, and made sure the area stayed somewhat clear. That will be on you now.

“Throughout the day yesterday, I had my people speak to everyone in your group, and they put a list together of those individuals that will not be welcome at the ranch due to clashing or abrasive personalities, or just plain strange behavior. Those of you that choose to stay will be joining the individuals on this roster.” I turn and look around behind me. “Arthur, do you have the list?”

“Yes, I’ll go ahead and read it, Eddie. If that’s okay with you?”

“Sure,” I say and move away.

“Dave Cromwell, Phyllis Marshall, Madeline Estabrook, Preston Johnson, Cynthia Ortman, and Sheila Jackson. We have set aside supplies for you to look through and need you to check them over and tell us if there is anything specific not in there that you will need to help you survive. Anyone else that would like to remain here, please let me know in the next hour, so we can get supplies ready for you as well. Are there any questions?”

“Who made the list and why?” a woman asks. She’s from the survivors group but not one of the people on the list that isn’t welcome.

Arthur replies, “I made the list after speaking with each of you and asking my people what they learned about you, to discover if any of you would have excessively bad attitudes. I brought it up to Eddie yesterday that I thought Dave would cause problems at the ranch, because of the accusatory tone of his questions. He doesn’t ask questions to learn anything, he asks for attention, and to be abrasive.”