The next group ran at us from around a corner. There were no telltale sounds, but in a blink, there were twenty on top of us. I should’ve smelled them, but the miasma hung over the whole town; the stink was horrendous, and they were near starvation. Some had gnawed their own flesh—or maybe they’d done it to each other—but the bites were infected and livid, sour milk flesh imprinted with savage red teeth marks.
Our drills held up, though. The men fell into a circle as we had practiced, forcing the enemy to push through if they wanted to surround us. I expected Zach to falter again, but this time he brought his knives up and held the line. We were outnumbered, but these were creatures of madness and hunger, the way the old Freaks had been. They knew nothing of tactics or strategy, only of the need burning like fire in their blood. The fight became an intricate dance of death. When Tegan swung her staff to sweep the legs and knocked one down, Thornton finished it with an efficient blow from his hatchet.
I worked with Zach, keeping them off him while he discovered his confidence. He might not be a natural warrior but he was determined, offering a block and feint to draw the snapping teeth. That opened the throat, and I cut it, then followed with a kick to avoid the spraying blood. Some spattered on my pants, but it couldn’t be helped. Spence worked as he usually did with knife, gun, and boot. I didn’t count how many I killed; I just fought until they all lay dead.
“Injuries?” I asked. “Any bites?”
There was a heavy, fraught silence while everyone scrutinized their fellows.
“Me.” Danbury was one of the new men, recently recruited. He cradled his forearm, and as I stepped closer, I saw the purple bruise with a scarlet heart where teeth had broken the skin. The wound would heal, but I glimpsed raw fear in his eyes.
“You can’t become a Freak through bites,” I said, though it was a hollow reassurance. “Maybe this isn’t catching the same way.”
Tegan offered, “I told you to avoid the blood as a precaution. These people went mad after exposure to that potion Dr. Wilson created, not from biting each other.”
“You should shoot me,” Danbury said. “Just in case.”
I shook my head. “We’ll finish clearing the town, then I need to have words with Dr. Wilson. I’ll ask him if there’s any risk.”
Danbury curled his hand into a fist. “If I go wrong, promise me you won’t let me turn into that.”
I gazed down at the bodies. “I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.” The statement sounded tender when it was, in fact, a pledge to end his life.
“Let me clean and wrap it.” Tegan took the soldier’s arm. She put on thin leather gloves, then poured antiseptic into the bite to flush it. Afterward, she smeared some healing salve and bound it with a length of cloth. The soldiers watched her as if mesmerized; I didn’t know if it was the grace of her movements or the silent threat of what might lie beneath the bandage.
Spence holstered his gun. “This is no challenge at all. I’m surprised the townsfolk couldn’t handle them.”
Thornton added, “It helps that they’re stupid and weak.”
“The people here aren’t trained to fight,” Zach put in.
He was right; it made a difference. Most folks, when confronted by a nightmare, tended to run and hide. It was a rare soul that took up whatever weapon came to hand with no prior experience. But somebody else might be able to explain why most people fled and one in a hundred decided to do battle.
After that, we met only stragglers, one so weak he was on his knees when we encountered him. Spence murmured, “Poor sod,” and put a bullet in his head. The madman tipped over backward, and I swear at the moment of death, he was relieved to have it done—or maybe that was just what I wanted to see in his tormented features because otherwise this day would create a weight too heavy to carry.
“I’d like to speak with this Dr. Wilson, too.” Thornton smacked the haft of his hand ax against his palm, which I took to mean he wanted to lop off the scientist’s head.
I held up a hand, signaling quiet. After few seconds, I was certain. There were more nearby. How many, I couldn’t be sure. I wished Stalker had been able to provide a more accurate count. The men moved behind me, their fang-and-bone necklaces rattling. Down the street I found the source of the noise. This house had proven unable to withstand the onslaught, and the front door stood open like a gaping wound. A blood trail led inside.
I swallowed back my dread, whispering, “There won’t be room for all of us. I need four with me, six outside on guard.”
“I’m with you,” Thornton said.
Spence didn’t answer, but he stepped closer. Then Zach moved in … and Danbury. Those two wouldn’t have been my first choices, but it was better for squad morale if I didn’t play favorites. The house was dark with the windows shuttered, shadows heavy as the souls of the dead. I inhaled, tasting the air; it was sick and stale, tainted with decay. Then I heard movement deeper within, and all the hair on my nape stood up.
A few seconds later, the creature that shuffled into sight, dragging a severed arm, barely registered as human. Her skin was too tight, bloated from the feast we’d interrupted. Her eyes were bright but sunken in her swollen face and so smeared with blood that they were the only bright points in a ruddy mess. She lumbered toward us, and we scattered, giving Spence a clear shot. There was no point in letting her get close enough to bite. He leveled the gun and took the safe shot right in her chest, but it wasn’t enough. Despite that wound, she kept coming.
“Again,” Thornton snapped.
Spence fired another round, nailing her right between the eyes. She dropped like a stone.
I pushed out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “I doubt she left anyone alive, but we should make sure. Thornton, with me. The rest of you, watch the door.”
“Yes, sir.”
It was a moderate-size home. From what I could tell, it had originally been all one space, almost like a storage facility, but it had been repurposed as a house and someone had built rickety partitions. A lot about Winterville reminded me of down below. Unlike many settlements, this one looked like it didn’t belong; it was more than half made up of old salvage, used by people who didn’t fully understand what to do with it, and those foreign materials struck a strange note in the new world.
The whole house was awash in blood and feces, as if the madwoman who had broken inside had been a wild animal. She ate and excreted, and from what Thornton and I saw, that was all. In the sleeping area, I stumbled into the worst scene I’d ever encountered.
Is Appleton worse than this?
Thornton caught my shoulders as I rammed into him in an instinctive recoil. Chunks of meat and bone were everywhere, and the former residents were so chewed up that I couldn’t tell what parts belonged to which person. It was a slaughterhouse of a room, a scene that would haunt me forever. The sheds where they slaughtered the meat in Soldier’s Pond had more kindness. Then the woman, who was half devoured from the waist down, opened her eyes and whispered, “Kill me.”
“Let me,” he said.
I couldn’t have gone into that room—my feet were frozen—so he strode across the blood-smeared floor, and with a clean stroke of his hatchet, ended her misery. I moved back until I couldn’t see the massacre anymore, squeezed my eyes shut, but the images didn’t go away. Hard tremors shook through me, and I was ashamed of my weakness, until I felt Thornton’s big hand on my arm.
“Girl, I’d be worried if you could handle that. Only reason I could is because I’ve worked in the animal sheds, butchering beasts.”
I didn’t ask what mental tactic he’d employed, but I suspected he must’ve pretended she was one of those animals and he had a duty to make it quick. Thornton kept a hold of me as we stepped out and cleared the rest of the building. My heart was in my throat, fearing there would be brats, but I found none. I hurried back to the front door, and I guessed my expression gave away how bad it was because nobody asked me a single question.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We have more ground to cover before dark. I can’t speak for the rest of you, but I’m not making camp until I’m sure we’ve killed all of them.”
“You’re dead right about that,” Spence said with a hard look.
That day, I killed six more feral humans; after what I’d seen in the house, I was only just functional. My squad accounted for more, but the situation was tense. I had Danbury fretting about his bite while the rest eyed him like they wanted to cut his throat as a precaution. Finally, I called it, after we searched every structure in our part of town. It had been exhausting, and the sun was already gone, darkness driving out the streaks of vibrant color.
“This whole town is cursed,” Zach said, his skin washed red by the sunset. “There are old-world relics all over the place, no wonder they came to grief. God has forsaken them.”
“None of that crazy talk,” Spence snapped.
Before sharp words could burgeon into a full-fledged argument, I beckoned. “Let’s go find the others. I hope they didn’t run into more trouble than they could handle.”
That sparked a frank discussion of the other squads’ capabilities, which lasted until we reached Dr. Wilson’s lab building. Stalker’s crew was already waiting; they were bloody but relatively fit. Right away, Tegan went into action with her medicine bag and about half the soldiers looked like they would walk on hot coals for her. There’s just something about a girl who can heal you … or crack your head open with a staff.
As soon as he saw me, Stalker strode over to me to make his report. “We killed thirty-odd feral humans. Found some dead citizens. I’m not sure as yet how many survived the attack.”
I shrugged. “Hard to say. They’re unlikely to come out until they’re sure it’s safe.”
“True.”
When I did a head count, I belatedly realized he was down a man. “What happened?”
“There was … resistance inside one of the houses. By the time I got to him, it was too late.” From Stalker’s expression, he was taking the loss hard, so I just nodded.
Soon Fade’s crew joined us. He bore several new wounds, but after I scanned him head to toe, I was relieved to find no bites. There was no way I could grant Fade a merciful end, should it come down to it. I might as well ask Spence to shoot me. Morrow arrived last, also one man down. That put our current number at forty-two. I greeted Fade with a smile, though I wanted to kiss him. His dark eyes lingered on my mouth, and with effort, I recalled myself to business. We couldn’t carry on like Breeders in the field.
“Time for Dr. Wilson to account for this mess,” I muttered.
Lull
The door was bolted or barred from the inside, so I banged on the lab door with both fists until Wilson called out, “Who’s there?”
“Company D!” the men shouted, before I could reply.
That was enough to reassure him, apparently, because I heard the sound of latches being unfastened, then the door swung open. I felt safer once we all stepped inside, but not happier. If possible, the man looked older since the last time we’d been here, by years instead of months, and he was thinner too. They used windmills to generate power—that much I knew—but I wasn’t sure how well town commerce had stood up to the crisis. If the people who went mad normally worked at some trade, farmed, or crafted trade goods, then their supplies must be running low. Salvage could only take people so far.
