The Dying of the Light (Book 1): End (10 page)

I don’t know if it was the drinks, the girls, or the stress we were all under at the time, but I don’t remember much after that.

I remember catching my breath yet again as the girls walked in. Dalton was in much the same state, though we both tried (and failed) to appear calm and cool at the table we had selected near the dance floor. Angelo had disappeared into the crowd as it got busier, and we’d let him go.

I remember the girls sitting down and us ordering drinks, starting a tab with our waiter. I clearly remember laughter and conversation while resting between dances. I remember Rachel leaning over to whisper in Dalton’s ear, and him flushing as she took his hand and led him out to the dance floor. He glanced at me, and, feeling pretty good, I grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. He smiled, looked down at Rachel smiling back up at him, and whirled her out amongst the other dancers with a confidence I was certain was faked.

Damn him, he was a good faker.

I looked back over at Kim just in time to catch her looking at me, at which point she blushed and looked away. I still don’t know where I got the courage, but I offered her a hand. “Care to dance?”

Her eyes shone as she looked back at me, and she led me to the dance floor. I don’t remember us getting to the dance floor, but I do remember a slow song starting to play as the salsa band took a break from the usual pace, and her arms wrapped around my neck as we danced, her head resting on my chest.

Suddenly, she chuckled and nodded towards the other dancers, and I saw Rachel and Dalton in a similar pose. The difference in their height didn’t seem to bother either of them in the slightest, and I was struck by the change that I’d seen come over my big friend. I looked back at Kim to comment on it, and saw her looking at me thoughtfully once again. This time, she didn’t turn away.

That’s one of the things I remember most from that night — realizing that the two of them, Rachel and Kim, had planned this whole thing from start to finish. Apparently, the dawning realization was evident on my face, because Kim placed one slim finger across my lips, stifling whatever I had been about to say. Not that I knew what that would have been.

She took in a relaxed breath and nodded almost to herself. “None of us know what’s going to happen in the weeks to come, David. You and I both know what our mission means to the rest of the country, possibly to the world. What if we fail? We can’t just put off our private lives while we hope that things turn out all right.”

I started to object, but she shushed me again. “We didn't plan it, but it looks like some of the women in AEGIS are 'choosing' guys. Rachel and I just found out, and we're not about to get left out of the process. Not all the other girls have come on board with the idea, but we’ll find a way to make it work,” she said, then paused. “And yes, we know about Reynolds. He’s not the only one. It’s done.”

She bit her lip as she leaned back, looking more fully into my eyes as we moved across the floor, and took another deep breath. “I’ve… I’ve chosen you, David. Rachel has chosen Dalton.” I stopped, awestruck by her words. I felt her tense against me when my silence continued. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, don’t tell me…”

I interrupted her as she had stopped me, with one finger across her lips, and smiled for what felt like the first time in a long time. “I understand.” It was her turn to be surprised as I leaned down and gently kissed her, pulling her close to me. Her response was tentative, at first, and then grew more intense as the kiss continued.

No,
that
was what I remembered most from that night.

When we finally came up for air, I nodded across the floor to Dalton and Rachel. “You know he’s absolutely head over heels for her, right?”

She laid a hand on my chest, smiling. “I know, but she can’t see it. She feels the same way about him, though. Does he know?”

I laughed. “Not in the slightest. He gets nervous just at the mention of her name. It’ll be interesting to see who breaks first.”

“Yes, yes, it will,” she said, smiling.

We danced and laughed and drank and danced some more until they finally kicked us out somewhere on the other side of two in the morning. There was early morning breakfast at some little diner I don’t remember the name of, and the stumbling, bumbling walk out to the street to catch two more cabs — though this time the pairings were somewhat different.

We arrived back at the base the next morning in a disheveled state, the girls still looking beautiful and Dalton and I looking happier than pigs in… well, pretty darn happy. Reynolds met us at the barracks door, looking nearly as bad off as we were but somehow managing to make it seem dashing rather than reprehensible. Oh, how I hated him for that.

I don’t remember seeing Martinez in the barracks, but he was there when we reported to the briefing room. I don’t know that any of us were particularly clear-headed, but I noticed a good many more smiles and a generally lighter feel to the room than before our weekend pass.

We managed to pay some attention to that day's briefings, and as we ran through some fairly dry details of historical actions against walkers, I glanced over at Kim to see her looking back at me with a smile.

It was then that I knew we had a fighting chance. A chance to take down this menace before it killed us all. It wasn’t going to be easy, and some of us wouldn’t make it all the way through, but we had a chance.

No one can ask for more than that.

Chapter Five

Fort Carson, Colorado

As our training continued, we learned more about the classifications of walker incursions. It turned out that what happened at Fall Creek was just the tip of the iceberg, and there had been a pattern of behavior by the government to conceal the existence of walkers since the late 1800’s. They’d even gone so far as to discredit witnesses who either refused payment in exchange for their silence or spoke out anyway.

One bit of AEGIS history that particularly disturbed me was what had happened to Harry Stafford in the Washington Territory in the 1930s. I shivered when I read his account, feeling close to the man who had gone more than a little mad at what he had seen, and what he had been forced to do.

I hear them too, Harry. I hear them, too
. I hoped I wouldn’t end up as he did; I hoped I was stronger than that. Our stories were too similar for me to completely discount any possibility of my going crazy, but then again, Harry hadn’t had a full company of soldiers helping him, either.

There was, of course, no reference to any survivors other than Harry Stafford in the histories and files that we read. It seemed I was unique, and as I told my story again and again to the soldiers, I found it became easier to bear those memories. I would never forget the time I spent during those two days in Fall Creek, but it no longer haunted me as it once had.

One day a couple of weeks after our weekend pass, my team was led into a small room that reminded me of execution viewings. A large curtained window, closed at the moment, faced two rows of chairs that looked profoundly uncomfortable. A switch on the wall, presumably for the curtain, completed the room’s sparse adornments. We took our seats, curious about this new training, but we kept quiet and attentive, ready and able to take on any challenge.

Or so we thought.

We stood to attention as Maxwell entered, waving us back to our seats. He looked us over with a critical eye as always, and then nodded to Anderson, standing near the curtain control.

“I guess they’re ready, Frank.” Turning back to us, he stepped to one side, motioning to the window. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet Chauncey.”

There was a collective gasp as the curtain drew aside to reveal a very old zombie that had rotted away almost to nothing. One of the soldiers in our company bolted out of his chair and was three steps away before even he realized it.

“Siddown, Jones!” Maxwell yelled. “That’s bulletproof glass, son; the big scary monster can’t get you.”

Jones reddened with embarrassment and returned to his seat.
He’ll hear about
that
for weeks
, I thought. It was only when we all turned back from Jones’ distraction that I realized what the walker —
Chauncey
— was doing, and I wasn’t the only one who turned a little green.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, I’d seen it before. Still, the sight of a zombie feeding wasn’t something you could just ignore. I glanced around the room, and saw the iron will these operators embodied as they steeled themselves against the horror.

I just swallowed hard and looked away; I’d seen enough already to last anyone a lifetime. I was trying to emulate these men and women, but even I had my limits. Taking more than a few deep breaths and gathering what resolve I had, I turned back.

Chauncey appeared to have been a male, from the lack of breasts and enlarged upper torso, but as to his age, no one could guess. He was so decrepit and rotten that bits seemed to be dropping off him even as we watched.

“We found dear old Chauncey here thirty-some years ago in eastern California, wandering around a campsite that appeared to have been attacked. By him or some other zombie, we don’t know. Unfortunately, we didn’t find any bodies or other walkers, except for one poor girl who apparently called it in to the locals but subsequently turned shortly thereafter. We took over the case, and brought Chauncey back here for study. Much of our more recent knowledge about the walkers was learned from him.”

“But
feeding
him, colonel?” I asked, surprised as he at my questioning. “Why feed it? It’s not as if it would die of starvation, after all. And how did it last this long anyway? 31 years? That’s impossible.”

“Dr. Adamsdóttir theorizes that the reason it’s still… alive… is that in an enclosed environment like this, the normal decomposition process is slowed to a near crawl. Bacteria and the other bugs don’t seem to take to walkers as well as regular humans. The doc thinks it could be something in the blood changed by the prions, but no one knows for sure. No injuries, except for that collar and the wrist restraints. No outside forces like weather, heat, cold, etc. Just the same air conditioning, day in and day out.” He shook his head as he looked at the walker.

“As to why they feed them… well, the doc has tried to explain it to me several times. Seems to be something about these prions being more active and replicating faster when the walker is feeding or has just finished. They don’t give them much, just enough to see whatever it is they’re looking for. Frankly, I’d rather they just put him down, but that’s not an option. At least not now.

“All of you need to get used to this,” he said. “You will all be participating in acclimatization exercises with Chauncey here over the next few weeks, to prepare you for live combat. We need you functional out there, not falling apart in the face of the enemy.”

Chauncey had finished his meal, and now stood at the metal table, his hands and neck linked to steel cuffs on chains, their other ends embedded in the reinforced concrete of the lab floor.

A door opened in one wall of Chauncey’s cell, and a short, bored and average-looking technician came through with a long pole in one hand. The pole had a hook on one end, and just as I was wondering what he intended to do with it, he hooked a special loop on the bucket of ‘food’, pulling it toward himself and leaving the room with the feed bucket in hand.

Afterward, we were also briefed on some new developments in the labs, designs created specifically by AEGIS technicians. Dr. Adamsdóttir gave us a tour, stopping near a mannequin outfitted with an ACU that was much thicker than normal.

“This is a special type of Kevlar weave we’ve been looking at incorporating into your uniforms to help with bites from the walkers. It’s great for preventing heat and abrasions, but not so good with the way biting combines pressure with tearing; we haven’t worked out all the bugs yet.”

She held up the jacket for our inspection. “Your new uniforms will be substantially stronger than the classic versions, but they’ll also be thicker and heavier. That’s something else we’re trying to address.”

She moved over to a nearby table, covered with what looked for all the world like electronic packs of cigarettes with an elastic band on one side.

“So what we have here, boys and girls, is essentially a mini-computer that tells this gun not to fire at you,” she said, pointing at what we now all recognized as an automated M2 ‘Ma Deuce’ .50 caliber machine gun on a ground mount. “Now for a demonstration. Ears please,” Mary continued, and we all put on our ear protectors and watched as she pointed down-range.

A training dummy began crossing the range at normal zombie speed, and we watched in amazement as the gun tracked briefly before chattering to life and taking out the target. I was impressed even more by the gun’s accuracy, given its automatic targeting — it had fired at head height, and used minimal ammunition.

“Now watch what happens with the device attached to a dummy with a simulated heartbeat.” Mary yelled, pointing to the next training dummy, wearing one of the devices around its bicep. The gun tracked the target, but didn’t fire.

I looked over at Kim, who was watching the system like a kid in a candy store, and I grinned, giving her a thumbs-up. She returned the gesture and turned back to Mary, pointing at the headsets.