Rotter World (26 page)

Chapter Forty-four

Robson entered his room and flicked on the light switch. A soft voice startled him.

“It’s about time you showed up.”

Robson spun around. Natalie lay in the bottom bunk, the blanket pulled up around her. He immediately noticed her shoulders were bare and smiled in anticipation. “Have you been waiting long?”

“Long enough. And I’m chilly.”

Robson slid out of his leather jacket. “Is it too cold in here?”

“That’s not the reason I’m chilly.” Natalie pulled the blanket down to her waist. She wore nothing underneath. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders, the tips resting on her breasts. He admired how beautiful she looked. For so many months he had thought of Natalie as a soldier, the leader of the group’s rotter hunters. Only in the past few days had he seen the other side of Natalie — the passionate, vibrant, exciting woman she truly was.

“Hurry up and join me.”

“Patience,” said Robson as he began stripping out of his shirt. “Good things come to those who wait.”

Natalie ran the tip of her tongue across her lips. “I can’t wait.”

“What would the Angels say?”

“They’re happy for me. But that’s because they think if I’m getting laid I won’t be as much of a hard ass on them.”

“Come on. I love your hard ass.”

Natalie frowned. “You’re such a romantic.”

Robson sat on the side of the bunk to take off his boots. Natalie scooted closer, running her hand along his back. “Why didn’t we do this sooner?”

Robson didn’t immediately respond. He knew the reason why. It was because of Susan. The guilt flooded his conscience. He had not acted earlier on his feelings for Natalie because he didn’t deserve to love again.

Natalie sensed his mood and drew closer. Her tone was tender. “It’s Susan, isn’t it?”

He sighed deeply.

“You can’t go on blaming yourself for what happened. You couldn’t have saved her.”

“I didn’t even try.” It was the first time Robson had admitted that to anyone. He shifted on the bunk so he could face Natalie, but kept his head lowered so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes. “When we were trying to escape, she couldn’t keep up. I got ahead of her, and when I looked back she was being chased by swarmers. Half a dozen were closing in on her. She screamed for me to help her, begged me to save her. Instead of going back, I ran on ahead. I… left her to die.”

Robson looked up, expecting to see Natalie glaring at him in horror and revulsion. Instead he saw only sympathy and understanding. Tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “You’ve been living with that the whole time?”

All he could do was nod and avert his gaze again.

Natalie placed her hands on Robson’s face and raised it, forcing him to look at her. “Stop beating yourself up. You have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“How can you say that? I killed Susan.”

“No,” Natalie said forcefully. “The swarmers killed Susan. You couldn’t help her without getting yourself killed. All you did was watch her die. Everyone here has watched a loved one die because they couldn’t help them.”

Robson clasped Natalie’s hands and gently pulled them away from his face, then lowered his head in shame. “The guilt is killing me.”

“Don’t let it. You may not have been able to help Susan, but look how many lives you’ve saved since then. None of us would have survived as long as we have if it wasn’t for you. Everyone at camp owes their lives to you. So don’t fall apart on us now. They need you.” Natalie cupped his face and turned it towards her. “I need you.”

Robson felt nothing but adoration and respect for Natalie. Instead of condemning him, she had offered him acceptance and understanding. It was more than he could have hoped for, and so much more than he deserved. If Natalie could forgive him his sin and still love him, then maybe he could afford to do so. At that moment, all the pent up emotions that had eaten away at his soul dried up. Anger. Guilt. Self-loathing. Solace filled the void, a solace he had not known for months. He burst into tears, relieved that his pain could finally be reconciled.

Natalie reached out, wrapped her arms around him, and pulled him close. She comforted him until his crying devolved into a series of heavy sobs. Maneuvering Robson so he laid beside her on the bed, she wrapped the blanket over them and held him close until they both fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Chapter Forty-five

What a fuckin’ waste of a day.
O’Bannon yanked open the door to the dorm building with enough force that it slammed against the outer wall, the bang echoing throughout the facility. Cracks spider webbed through the glass pane. O’Bannon could give a shit about the door or whether he woke the others. He didn’t even bother closing it behind him. Instead, he stormed down the corridor heading for his room.

After his shift monitoring the surveillance cameras in the security office, he found himself with nothing to do because the Angels would man the remaining shifts. He went to check in with Robson, hoping to help him plan the route back to camp, only to find out that not only had Robson and Natalie plotted the return trip without him, but that he and the colonel had then gone topside to check on the radio antenna.
So much for being third in command.

Jennifer had suggested that the fuckin’ bloodsuckers were packing the convoy for the ride back and could use his assistance, but he’d be damned before he helped them. So he grabbed some rest, or at least tried to. The shift work had screwed up his schedule. He had laid there for two hours but still couldn’t fall asleep. Saying the hell with it, he decided to take a tour of the facility. Rather than occupy him for a few hours, it merely provided him time to stew in his own anger.

He had a right to be angry. He had spent months tolerating Paul’s turn-the-other-cheek bullshit when it came to the bloodsuckers. When Compton first arrived at camp, he could sense that the doctor and the colonel knew the score when it came to dealing with them, and hoped that maybe they could get Paul to see the light and finally purge the world of this evil. Instead, this mission had only embedded the tolerance for the bloodsuckers into the others. No one seemed upset about how Dravko and the others had savaged those bandits back in Pennsylvania when given the chance. That could just as easily have been their group, and more than likely
would
be before too long if someone didn’t stop them. Rather than see the bloodsuckers for the monsters they were, Robson and the others thanked them. Like a pack of sheep thanking the wolves for inviting them to dinner. Even Thompson seemed to have a change of heart after Tibor had saved him. Big fucking deal. The bloodsuckers had saved a few of them during this mission, but that couldn’t possibly balance out the billions of humans turned into rotters due to them.

However, the free time did give O’Bannon a chance to think things over. He knew he couldn’t stay any longer with Robson and the others, waiting patiently for Dravko to turn on them. As difficult a decision as it was to make, especially after seeing how dangerous the world had become, he had made up his mind that if an opportunity presented itself on the way back to camp, he would set out on his own. If not, then he would ask Compton to take him back to Omaha where at least he’d get the chance to do something good for the country.

Entering his room, he found Tatyana waiting for him. She lay across the bed, the covers pulled up around her waist. Her clothes sat in a pile on the floor. As he closed the door, Tatyana rolled over and propped herself on one arm.

O’Bannon looked away and slid off his jacket. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.” Tatyana pulled down the covers to reveal her naked body.

As attractive as he found Tatyana, she was not human, and right now he wanted nothing to do with her. “Not tonight.”

Tatyana partially morphed into a vampire, allowing her teeth to grow into fangs. She bared them at O’Bannon and snarled, the gesture meant to be one of seduction. It had the opposite effect, however. In that moment, Tatyana represented everything he hated.

“Come on,” she cooed. “It’s been a week since we’ve made love.”

“We don’t make love. We fuck.”

“So let’s fuck.”

O’Bannon turned his back to her. “I’d rather throw myself into those things around the front gate.”

“You can’t mean that,” Tatyana whined.

“Stop deluding yourself.”

“But I love you.”

“Love me?” O’Bannon spun around. His fists clenched in anger as he fought back the urge to step over to the cot and cut off Tatyana’s head. “You’re not even human. You have about as much emotion as the rotters.”

“Why are you trying to hurt me like this?”

“Because your kind destroyed my world.”

“I had no part in that,” Tatyana cried. “At least you’re still alive.”

“No, I
exist
. My life is now a daily struggle to survive in the rotter hell your kind created. And the worst part is that the only thing that cares for me in this miserable world is a fucking inhuman bloodsucker.”

Tatyana rose to her feet slowly and deliberately. O’Bannon noticed that the pain and anguish she had felt a moment before was now replaced by a sneer of revulsion.
Good
, he thought. That emotion he could deal with. She fully morphed into her vampiric form. Her fingers elongated into talons, the palms out to her side and ready to attack, as her lips curled back to expose the mouth full of fangs. Her eyes turned crimson, intensified by her hatred. She growled as she moved toward him.

Without taking his eyes off of Tatyana, O’Bannon reached up to the top bunk, stuck his hand under the mattress, and removed a pair of stakes. Holding one in each hand, he assumed a knife fighting stance. His eyes showed no emotion because he didn’t feel any.

“Bring it on, bitch.”

Tatyana stopped and eyed him. He couldn’t place the emotion he saw in them, uncertain whether it was fear or disillusionment, not that it mattered. When she took a tentative step backwards, he knew he had won.

“You’d really kill me?” she asked.

“In a heartbeat.”

Tatyana reverted back to her human form, a shattered expression on her face. “Didn’t I ever mean anything to you?”

“You’re just a mattress, hon. Something to sleep on.” Still holding the stakes in each hand, he used his right foot to kick her clothes across the floor. “Now get out before I stick this in you.”

Bending over, Tatyana scooped up her clothes and raced out of the room, forgetting to close the door behind her. Once the sound of her running feet faded down the hall, O’Bannon stepped over to the door to shut and lock it. He strolled back to the bunk and crawled into bed, still holding a stake in each hand in case Tatyana or one of the other bloodsuckers tried to even the score later that night. He didn’t have much time to contemplate that option, though, since he fell into a deep sleep shortly after his head hit the pillow.

Chapter Forty-six

The rotters wedged between the two perimeter fences shuffled along in one mass, each following the other in a glacially-slow clockwise movement that after several hours would bring them back to where they started. According to the log books, they had been trapped between the twin gates nearly two weeks ago so the convoy could slip out of the facility unscathed, and since then had been endlessly circling the enclosure. It reminded Ari of the cattle she used to watch on her grandfather’s farm as they were herded into a confined area before being shipped off to slaughter. Except these things didn’t evoke the same empathy in her that the cows did.

Even so, Ari could not take her eyes off the monitor that belonged to the security camera focused on the front gate. She had been transfixed by the horde for most of her shift in the control room, unable to avert her attention. This was the first time she was able to truly study the rotters up close, or at least as close as the camera could get her. By zooming the lens in and adjusting the angle to track them, she watched select rotters for fifteen or twenty minutes at a time. It left her feeling empty and depressed.

At one time each of these things had been an individual just like her. They had loved ones, they had jobs or classes or something that occupied their lives, they had felt love and anger, happiness and despair. They had harbored dreams and aspirations that didn’t include joining the ranks of the living dead. But the key word here was “had”. As she watched them hour after hour, she saw nothing that indicated any feelings. No signs of physical pain. No signs of emotion. No signs of individual thought. They huddled around each other, a mindless mass stripped of every last shred of humanity. The only tenuous link they had to the living was their instinct to feed.

At one point a deer wandered out of the darkness and approached the fence, coming to within a few feet before the rotters saw it. Those closest to the deer began moaning and clutching at the chain links, sloughing the decayed flesh off their fingers. The others around them joined in, oblivious as to what caused the commotion, generating a mass frenzy. As expected, the deer bolted back to the safety of the forest, and once it was gone the rotters quieted down and resumed their shambling.

Then something caught her attention. She noticed it at the far end of the monitor. Shifting the camera to the right, she focused on the female rotter pressed up against the fence and wearing a soiled and torn hospital gown. It moved more awkwardly then the others because it protected something cradled in its left arm. When the rotter shifted slightly so it faced the camera, Ari saw that it clutched a baby. The umbilical cord was still attached, draping down from the infant’s belly before disappearing under the gown. Its tiny arms and legs twitched, while its tiny mouth suckled on the mother’s emaciated breast.

Ari wanted to weep from despair. She reached up with her right hand and fingered her mermaid pendant, a gift from her own mother on her sixteenth birthday, and now her only link to humanity.

Daytona entered the room, holding a thermos of hot coffee. “The cavalry has arrived.”

“Thank God.” For the first time in hours, Ari looked away from the monitor.

“Watcha doin’?”

“Studying the end of mankind.”

He glanced over at the monitor. “Jesus, kid. Why are you torturing yourself like that?”

“They’re hard to ignore.” Ari glanced back at the monitor. “Don’t you ever imagine who they were when things were normal?”

“No.”

“But look.” Ari pointed to the monitor. “There’s one rotter in there wearing a cheerleader’s outfit. One is dressed in a tuxedo. Another one’s in a business suit. I can’t help but wonder what they were doing when they were turned.”

“I don’t think about it because I don’t want to think of them as human. They’re not anymore. If I think of them as people, I wouldn’t be able to kill them.” Daytona placed his hand gently on her shoulder and squeezed. “And you shouldn’t be thinking of them that way either.”

“It’s hard not to.”

“They’re dead, kid. Their souls are in a better place. What you’re seeing there are walking corpses.”

Ari wanted to believe him, wanted to reassure herself that there was nothing human left in their shells of a body. But then her eyes fell on the rotter mother clutching her dead infant, and she started to doubt.

“Come on, kid. Shift’s over. Go get some rest. You need it.”

Ari turned away from the monitor and stood up. She wished Daytona a good night and headed back to her room, trying to force the image of rotter maternal instincts from her mind. Though she doubted she ever would.