Eaters (Book 2): The Resistance (15 page)

But, as they talked, the offer never came. Both sides seemed content to stay uneasy with their own doubtful trajectory.

When they ended their conversation, Cheryl felt torn, not knowing which group had the best chance of survival. Who knew what dangers she'd head into if she went north with Mark and the rest of her group. Then again, Aidan's comfortable camp might someday be surrounded by an inescapable horde of Eaters or O.N.E. troops.

As the groups dispersed, only Earl remained seated, seeming to be lost in thought. When Cheryl walked by him, he stopped her. "How do you think they do that? How could they control their dead meat brains?"

"I don't know," she said.

Earl got a wild look in his eyes. "Bones. Heh heh…some of them are nothing but bones anymore. There's barely any muscle left to hold them together." After a second, he snapped his fingers. "I got it!
Formaldehyde.
Yep. They'd have to inject those corpses with some sort of preservative to keep them from falling apart."

"I could buy that, but I still don’t know how they could control them. That's beyond me."

"Ahhh. I read all kinds of science fiction. Just think, if they can program a drone to take out a specific target by remote control, then why couldn't they animate dead flesh to do the same?"

The idea was quite unnerving. Cheryl used to figure there was nothing worse than a group of hungry Eaters coming after you, but it was infinitely worse to think of the same group, animated by some evil source, with the intent to destroy you…
specifically you
.

Her thought process was interrupted by heavy staccato breathing behind her. She whipped around, prepared to defend herself.

It was no Eater. It was someone a little more comical.

Diego had taken off his vest and was on the ground. He was doing a set of fast and furious pushups. Cheryl stared, wondering what the numerous tattooed cross hatches on his back meant.

Earl watched Diego's showboating too and came to stand beside her. "One hundred forty-two kills. That's what he's up to."

She didn't think that was so impressive. If he'd encountered the numbers of Eaters she had and had an automatic weapon, his whole body would be marked up. By now, she'd probably—

"He takes them all down by hand. No gun."

Now, she was impressed. "Maybe I need to do a few more pushups," she laughed. "It might help my record."

Earl chuckled. "But, you're a girl. It wouldn't matter if—"

She lunged out and grabbed his hand, twisting it behind his back. Her other arm went around his neck, forcing him into a choke hold, a quick move that came from the muscle memory she'd gotten from Combatives training back at the fort. "Wouldn't matter if what?"

"Sorry, Ma'am," Earl whimpered after struggling to free himself and finding it impossible. "I apologize."

She let him go. He took a step back and glared at her as he rubbed his neck. Then, without another word, he stomped off. She hadn't humiliated him just for the fun of it. Without looking, she knew a half dozen pairs of eyes had seen Earl's takedown, so she was satisfied that her effort hadn't been wasted. She'd seen the way some of the men in Aidan's group looked at her since she arrived, salivating like she was a piece of meat, ripe for the taking. Her own little bit of showboating was a warning to them to keep their distance.

***

After a meager dinner of cornmeal and shreds of game, the Vultures started retiring for the night. It became apparent that there weren't any extra tree bunks for Cheryl's group as the fire was snuffed and people scrambled up to the tree tops. No one who had a claim up high was willing to give up their perch, so her group, the
Pterodactyls,
as Zach jokingly nicknamed them, had to sleep in the teepees and tents. (Aidan offered his tree perch to Cheryl, but Mark said he could handle things on the ground, so she'd be perfectly safe in a tent with him.)

A schedule was made up for guard shifts. Six people at a time. Two hours each, so no one got too tired by trying to stay awake all night. Cheryl volunteered for a late shift that started at 3 a.m. Afterwards, she had second thoughts, thinking she'd picked the devil's hour when the whole world seemed steeped in death and every little natural sound around them was going to sound ominous.

Not feeling tired, she sat around with Mark and some of the others, talking for several hours. Then, she and Mark went to their assigned tent. Dust clouded the air, making her cough as they shook out the sleeping bags and blankets, inspecting them for spiders, snakes, and scorpions.

"This tent is filthy," she said. "Stinks too."

"Yeah. I don't think they use much of their water storage for bathing. Can't say I blame them, though. I'd rather be alive then clean."

After sitting in the funk for a couple of minutes, she got used to it and it became less annoying.

When he seemed sure there were no creepy crawlies lurking around, Mark stretched out on his back and stared up at the light of the moon shining through the fabric.

"This isn't exactly what I had in mind for our next camping trip."

"No," he said. "Me neither.

It was the first time she'd been alone with him since before the fort was attacked. She started to lie down beside him, but quickly popped up when she felt something hard poking into her hip bone. Her first thought was that it was a tree root, but then she realized what it was.

"It's after midnight, isn't it?"

"If you say so. I'm not keeping track of time anymore."

"I say it is, and that means it's your birthday."

He rolled onto his side and groaned. "Some birthday…"

"It's not all bad," she said. "I've got a present for you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the bronze dice.

"Sweet," he said as he cupped them in is hands and rolled them around in his fingers. "Where'd you get these?"

"I won them at The Tavern. Well, not exactly
won
. I got sharked at a chess game and these were my consolation prize. I had some wrapping paper but—"

"So that's what happened to your earrings."

"I didn't know you noticed," she said, reaching up and feeling one of her ear lobes.

"I'm not always as oblivious as I seem."

"
Neither am I
." She hadn't wanted to follow Mark's birthday gift with an inquisition, but felt the bile rising up in her throat, pushing it out. That woman on the helicopter…"

"Carmen? I suppose you heard her flirting with me at the barbershop."

"You were flirting back," Cheryl countered.

"I was just being nice."

"If you didn't meet up with her that night…why was she with you in the chopper?"

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "Does it really matter now?"

"Yes," she said. "It does. That is…
if you and I still matter
."

"You thought she was with me," he said after a pause. "Is that why you threw her out like that?"

She thought for a moment. "She'd been bitten. You shouldn't have allowed her on board." Hindsight had dissipated some of her guilt; she'd done the right thing, but Mark still hadn't. "You haven't answered my question."

"I didn’t meet up with her at the Dance Hall, if that's what you're asking about."

I know that
, she thought.
I was there doing reconnaissance.
"So how—"

I went to the poker game, just like I told you." He gestured with stiff hands, emphasizing his words. "Apparently, Carmen had lots of boyfriends. She was there with a couple of the other guys. Late that night, when we heard the first gunshots, everyone took off. She begged me not to leave her alone and followed me as I ran to find the others. When I saw there were Eaters everywhere and then came down a hall and saw men firing on our guys, I went looking for a safe place to regroup. Then, I remembered that Jake had told me to head to the roof if the shit ever hit the fan. I figured that was some
pretty big shit.
Carmen was still shadowing me. What could I tell her? Not to follow me? Stay here and die while I try to escape?"

"How'd she get bit?"

"There was an Eater under one of the stairwells, a little kid short enough to tuck underneath the third step. As we started up, he grabbed her hand through the rails."

"That's too bad," Cheryl said, feeling a small pang of remorse. If the woman's bite had been an accident and she had only been with Mark by chance, it was a tragedy. But, was that how it had really gone down? He'd had plenty of time to concoct a story, so she wasn't one hundred percent convinced. "I want to believe you…"

He shrugged. "I'm telling you the truth. Take it or leave it." .

That was it? No 'I love you'? No better reassurances? And, he was pissed because she doubted him…after hearing that flirtatious conversation at the barbershop?

"Do you still love me?"

Flat on his back again, he folded his arms across his chest, staring up, and sighed out a long breath. "It's not smart to love anymore. It's just a set up for pain."

As she fought for some way to defend their love—the need for
all love
to continue—a sharper edge crept into his voice. "How do you know him?"

"Aidan?" she asked, startled by the one-eighty turn in the conversation. "I told you…I met him in Colorado. He drove me down to Tucson to check on my aunt and my dad."

"You first told me you hitched a ride with an Army caravan."

"Okay," she admitted sheepishly. "I did lie about that, but it was because he'd left the fort by the time I found you there. I didn't think he mattered anymore and I didn't want you to be suspicious…like you're being right now."

"Funny thing that we ran into him in the middle of nowhere. Almost as if you two planned it." Mark sat up. His cheeks were fiery red, making his pockmarked skin look like some Martian landscape. "You sleep with him?"

"No," she said, meeting his gaze with unblinking eyes.
Technically, it was the truth
. There had been a few minutes of passion between her and Aidan…but the passion had been interrupted by a fort patrolman rolling up with a spotlight. "We were just road buddies...just trying to stay alive."

"It was mighty kind of him to drive you hundreds of miles down here. He wouldn't have done that if he wasn't expecting more from you."

Cheryl thought back to last summer, remembering waking up next to the fountain in an outdoor mall in Golden, Colorado with Aidan's gun pointed at her. He'd been a bit of an ass at first, but he'd given her a ride on his motorcycle when a large group of Eaters approached. He'd taken her and another couple in at his cabin and accompanied her all the way down to Arizona. There was just that one night in the desert when they'd been nearly naked together, but then…she'd thought Mark was dead.
How could she be blamed for that?

"Maybe. I don't know. He was hurting too. He'd just lost his girlfriend. Found her and her kid dead. And he had nowhere else to go…"

"I don't trust him or the rest of these
Vultures
." He said their name as if it caused a foul taste in his mouth and he had to spit it out.

"Why are you being this way?" she said, as her exasperation leaked out in a huff. "We've got to band together…to maintain hope if we're going to—"

"There's no hope if we stay around here. Jake says we gotta get out of these mountains or we're toast. I believe him. This isn't a safe area."

"Jake? What does he know?  It's stupid to think we're going to make it all the way to Omaha on foot. It might make better sense to dig in here…build some kind of underground bunker." Actually, she was already envisioning a town with a spider web of tree houses and traps to keep it safe.

"Well…that's where I'm going. If you want to stay here and play house with Aidan, be my guest."

Shocked by his venom, Cheryl looked away, feeling the sting in her heart.

Their conversation went downhill from there, both of them remaining defensive. It was obvious that Mark had withdrawn into the safety of a soldier mindset—a place where he could focus on his own survival and not care about her or anyone else. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong—that love was all they had left. Instead, she jumped up and ran out of the tent before he could see the tears forming in her eyes.

She stomped around the camp for a while, not wanting to talk to anyone. Then, after spending some time in isolation under a clump of shrubs, she began to calm down. Just because Mark was going off the deep end, that didn't mean she had to as well. If she wanted to survive, she was going to have to keep a cool head. Staring out at the darkness, she wondered how anyone could hope to make their way in the chaos of this world on their own. She started to feel pity for Mark's failure to see that.

Hoping to find Jasmine, or someone else she could talk to, she began to meander again. She spotted Aidan on the ground whispering up to Diego in his tree top bunk where he was perched with a rifle. Not wanting Mark to catch her talking to him, she turned and started to go back the way she came.