Resurrection (Eden Book 3) (24 page)

“You’re providing protection for them now?”

“—and there will be an officer assigned to your friend’s room at all times. That officer has been instructed to accompany you whenever you leave the room. I hope you’ll understand.”

“He’ll starve. You know that.”

“I hope you’ll understand.” Weigand stood, taking her hat from the table. “Please understand.”

“I heard you, Lieutenant.”

“Good evening, ma’am.”

“So this is it, then?” Gammon pondered aloud. “We’re at war with Cosmo and his people?”

“Looks that way,” replied Thomas.

Anthony, his sister, and their two friends sat around the fire pit. They were tired, but they were grateful, and shared a meal with their saviors.

“What—who are they?” asked Riley.

“Cosmo and his family have been out there for a long time,” said Thomas. It had become clear to Anthony and the others that this white haired man, whose face was etched with hard living, was the leader of the group. “Probably a lot longer than all this. Before the zombies, that is.”

“They’re human?” Troi asked.

“They’re human,” said Gammon. “
Just
.”

“But they’re all…”

“Yeah, they’re all fucked up. Radiation will do that to you.”

“Inbreeding doesn’t help,” Red added contemptuously.

“That is true.”

On the walk to the camp, the little red-haired woman remained quiet, but the brothers—Keith and David—had done their best to assure the newcomers that they were safe, that they were beyond the reach of Cosmo and his murderous ilk. Together they had trekked well into the night, talking as they travelled, and after a few hours they reached the camp. The camp was comprised of dozens of log cabins of varying sizes. Outside each cabin rested washboards and stacks of firewood. Most cabins had some kind of fire pit, mostly made of stone, built into the ground outside them.

“We shot one of them like—I don’t know—a hundred times at least,” Troi was saying. “And it
still
got up.”

“Must have been Chilly,” Keith said to David.

“Tough, huh?” David grinned.

“There was a little one,” said Riley. “It was all…”

“That would have been Winslow. He must be, what, two now?”

“Cosmo said three,” amended David.

“Three.”

“He looked…”

“Anencephaly,” said Thomas.

“What is that?” asked Riley.

“Anencephalictic babies,” said Troi, “are born without most of their brain.”

“No forebrain,” said Gammon.

“Usually missing a piece of their skull and scalp too,” said Thomas. “It’s sad. How’d you know that?” he asked Troi.

“I work in a hospital.” Troi had learned about anencephaly and hydrocephaly and a thousand other ways a baby could go wrong.

“How’d Winslow live that long?” Gammon sounded amazed.

“Because Cosmo,” said Thomas, “as churlish and ill-tempered as he is, loves his children. In his own sick way.”

“You see babies like Winslow where you’re from?” Gammon asked the four.

“No,” replied Troi. “They don’t last that long.”

“A lot of anencephalics are miscarried or stillborn.” Gammon nodded. “Most that survive birth don’t last too long.”

“She works in a hospital,” Evan said approvingly of Troi.

“We—where we come from,” Anthony said, “when a woman gets pregnant, she has tests.”

“They test her and make sure the baby is okay?” Thomas appeared keenly interested.

“Yes.”

“And if the baby isn’t okay?” The older man leaned in.

“They abort it.”

“They murder it,” Thomas said matter-of-factly. “Is that what you mean?”

Anthony swallowed. “They get rid of it.”

“They
get rid
of it.” Thomas looked down. Everyone was silent for a moment and Anthony wondered what he had said. The old man spoke to Gammon. “You hear that, Ed? They still can’t speak honestly about what they do.”

“Doesn’t sound like they can.”

“Tommy, do your old man a favor and go and get Johnny and Phil. Bring ‘em out here, okay?”

Tommy rose from his spot and walked off into the night.

“Tell me something,” Thomas invited the four friends. “Take a look at Merv here.” Anthony and his friends looked at the young man seated on one side of Thomas, the young man with the hair lip. “Would a boy like Merv be allowed to survive in your society?”

“Well, yeah, sure,” Anthony tried not to stammer. “I mean, there’s no law—”

“There’s no law mandating abortion?”

“Not anymore.”

“Well look at that, Ed. Progress.”

“But most people wouldn’t…” When Evan saw how Troi, Riley, and Anthony were looking at him he shut his mouth.

“But most people wouldn’t want to have a baby like Merv.” Thomas finished his sentence. “That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“But that’s too harsh, isn’t it? I mean, Merv looks—
what
? Merv looks happy? Hey, Merv, you happy?”

“Yuh, dah. I’m huppy.”

“That’s good, son.”

“I think I was misunderstood…” Evan tried to undo any damage he thought he might have caused.

“Oh no, you were understood crystal clear,” said Thomas. “Merv was born with a cleft lip. That’s all Merv’s got going on. Would your society have encouraged Merv’s momma not to have had him?”

“No.” Troi thought she could iron this out. “There’s a simple operation—” Riley was shooting her warning looks, but Troi was unaware “—that could fix that.”

“See…” Thomas lit a hand-rolled cigarette. “
That’s
where we see things differently.” He said it to Troi and her friends, but he was addressing Gammon and Keith and Red and Tommy and his people. “Your society sees Merv here as someone that needs to be ‘fixed.’ We don’t.”

“Okay,” said Anthony. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah, how’s this—this cool?”

Evan inhaled sharply, startled by the four legged, four armed thing that walked into the circle of fire with Tommy.

“Hey dad,” said Johnny.

“Hi dad,” said Phil.

“Boys.”

“You wanted us?” asked Phil. Both looked like they had just woken up.

“Yeah, I wanted to introduce you boys to our guests. Boys, introduce yourself.”

“I’m Phil.”

“I’m Johnny.”

“Hi, pleased to meet you.” Riley didn’t miss a beat. “I’m Riley.”

One by one, Anthony, Evan, and Troi told the conjoined twins their names.

“Nice to meet you,” said Johnny.

“That’ll be all, boys,” said their father. “You all go on back to bed, now, hear? Merv, you go with ‘em.”

“Night dad.”

“Night.”

“Night, dah.”

“Goodnight, Merv.”

“Gu-night, Uncle Ed-uh.”

“Night, Merv.”

When the boys had gone, Evan tried to turn the conversation elsewhere. “You guys have any idea of how much radiation is in the atmosphere?”

“We’re all going to be dead before we’re forty-five, fifty,” replied Tommy.

“But kids like Merv? Like his brothers Johnny and Phil?” said their father. “They might have a chance. You see what I’m saying?”

“How?” asked Anthony.

“Ask Darwin,” said the old man. “Evolution. We’re going to change—as a species. Or else we’re all going to die of cancer like Tommy said. Except for people like me and Ed and Keith and David here, people who were already in our twenties or thirties when everything went down.”

“You think we’re going to…
evolve
to be able to handle this?” Riley asked.

“Yeah, sure. Mutation and random selection. Ain’t that what it’s all about?”

“I never thought about it that way,” said Evan.

“Okay, but follow me on this…” Thomas leaned in again, confidentially. “So when a society—either explicitly through its laws on the books, or implicitly, by unofficially encouraging and sanctioning it—when a society does away with its folk who are different, when it doesn’t even give them a chance, what is it doing to its future?”

“So aborting—murdering as you put it—these babies is wrong,” asked Riley, “because, what? It’s shooting ourselves in the foot?”

“It’s simpler than that,” said Thomas. “It’s wrong because they’re human beings. We’re human beings. That’s why it’s wrong.”

“Pretty elementary, huh?” added Tommy.

“You don’t have to believe in a god to know it’s wrong to play god,” said Gammon.

“That’s one of the many things I like about you, Ed,” said Thomas. “You got a way of boiling things down to a pithy sentence or two.”

“Glad somebody appreciates it.”

“I don’t know,” said Anthony, thinking of their encounter in the woods. “What about Cosmo and his...family?”

“Oh.” Thomas waved his hand. “They just ain’t right.”

“How long have all of you been out here?” Evan asked, still attempting to get on another subject.

“How longs it been, Ed? Twelve years?”

“Fifteen,” said Keith.

“Keith’s right,” confirmed Gammon. “Fifteen.”

“Fifteen years already…” Thomas smoked his cigarette. “Fifteen year. Damn. That’s quite a length of time, isn’t it, Ed?”

“It is.”

“Hey, let me see one of them rifles you’ll are carrying there.”

“Here,” said Evan, handed the old man his Model 7. He was glad to be off the whole topic of birth defects, prenatal screening, and abortion. It was obviously a sore spot for these people.

“Interesting,” said Thomas, hefting the weapon in one hand. “Don’t weigh but nothing. What is this—some kind of plastic alloy?”

“I have no idea,” admitted Evan. “I just know how to shoot it.”

Thomas had dropped the magazine. Checking to make sure the chamber was clear, he turned his attention back to the mag. “Case-less ammunition.” He nodded. “What they got in these as a propellant? Nitrocellulose?”

Evan held up his hands.

“That’s right,” Thomas said as if he were reminding himself. “You only know how to shoot it. Guess that’s all you’d need to know too.” It wasn’t menacing the way he said it, just an observation of the facts. “Bullpup magazine. Barrel mounted flashlight. What else can you mount on this rail?”

“Grenade launcher,” said Evan. “You can load it with modified rounds.”

“Modified how?” Thomas was genuinely curious.

“Everything from fletchette to gas to net.”

“Net?”

“Yeah, you know. Like if you want to catch something.”

Riley felt slightly uneasy since they’d arrived in the camp. Sure, she was glad to be away from the mutants in the forest, but there was something about these people that concerned her, something she couldn’t articulate even to herself. When Evan handed his rifle over to the old man, that feeling of unease intensified.

Thomas asked, “What might you catch with a net out of a grenade launcher?”

“I don’t know,” said Evan.

“Take a feel of this, Ed.” Thomas handed the weapon over to the other old man. “Don’t weigh much, does it?”

“No it does not.”

“So civilization continues, and that’s what ya’ll are still perfecting down there, eh? Ways ‘a killin’?”

“I’ve never had to kill anything,” said Anthony. “Until today.”

“Now is that a fact?”

“I think what happened today was self defense,” said Troi.

“
Mmmm
.” Thomas took a drag from his cigarette. “Abortion ain’t murder and killing is self defense. Well, to paraphrase the great Lynyrd Skynyrd, guns were made for killin’.”

“What kind of rifle is that you carry?” Riley asked him. She felt decidedly uneasy.

“Oh this…” Thomas picked up his Winchester. “This is a Winchester Model 1876.” As he spoke, he levered the rifle until all of the shells were ejected. “The United States government was making these in the fourth quarter of the nineteenth century. This particular model was unveiled to the public on the hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Hence its nickname.”

“Which is?”

“The Centennial Rifle.” Thomas handed the emptied rifle to Riley.

“Thomas handloads all his shells,” Gammon said.

“I have no idea how to do that.” Troi smiled nervously.

Gammon handed the Model 7 back to Thomas, who appraised the weapon one last time. “It’s a dying art, I guess.”

“Ain’t dead so long as someone is here to practice it,” noted Gammon.

“Ed’s always so optimistic. Just his nature.”

“So you really never had to kill a zombie?” Tommy asked Anthony.

“No.”

“Well, good for you. But if you ever have to—one through the head works best.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Burning works good, too,” said Keith, “if you can get the whole thing on fire and keep it on fire.”

“Napalm did a lot of them in,” said Thomas. “Unfortunately it burned down a lot of other stuff along with it. People too.” He looked at Gammon. “You remember that?”

“How can I forget it?”

“Is that a machine gun?” Evan asked Red.

“I really don’t know what it’s called.”

“It’s a Noveske Diplomat, model N4,” said Thomas. “That’s a three hundred round drum she’s got up under it too. Amy holds down that trigger, know about how long it’ll take to empty that drum?”

Neither Anthony, Riley, Troi, nor Evan proffered a guess so the old man told them. “About twelve seconds, give or take.”

“Damn.” Evan was impressed but nervous. Thomas still hadn’t handed his M7 back.

“Red prefers blades,” Tommy pointed out.

“Oh yeah?” Evan nodded to the N4. “How do you make out with that thing?”

“I do okay.” The four friends all picked up on the way she said it, like she felt obligated to reply.

“Show ‘em that Ninja weapon you got, Red,” David encouraged.

Little Red held up the fifteen inch, double edged weapon. Instead of gripping it by its cord wrapped handle, she let it hang with her finger through one of the two finger holes.

“How’s that work?” Anthony stared at the thing, confused.

“I can use either edge, or I can throw it.”

“Man,” said Evan. “I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of that.”

“No,” David conceded, “you would not.”

“You okay, Red?” Tommy asked her. “You’re kind of quiet tonight.”

“I just can’t stand the pretense.”

Gammon looked at Thomas and sighed.