Toxic (49 page)

“Welcome. I’m Annie. Would you please follow me?”

She didn’t seem to have been mistreated. So long as the toga didn’t reveal any parts of her body, the nurse reflected. They followed a hallway. After a few steps, Elaine couldn’t contain her questions.

“What’s going on here? It looks like... a cult.”

Her hostess stopped. “Never say those words in front of the Reverend. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

She accompanied her words with a disapproving look and then invited her to follow until reaching her new quarters: an austere alcove with curtain filled with holes as a door

“This place, is it a sort of harem?” Elaine questioned with a slightly provocative tone.

“I pray of you, hold your tongue.”

The spark in her eyes and the woman’s scowl convinced her to change her attitude.

“I’m Elaine. Before the invasion, I worked in a hospital. I was a nurse. I could care for those who need it. You men also seized my medical supplies.”

Annie started by folding a cover and then arranging the things in the room, even though they weren’t disorganized. Visibly annoyed by her arrival, she got to it actively all the while taking in information in the guise of not doing so. Elaine felt like she was listening and that she wasn’t missing anything.

“I can help you get out of this hole. But I need to know what has happened to my friends. When I was kidnapped, I was on an island with them, other survivors, like you, like many others.”

The young woman left the alcove and then came back with clothing, which she left on the edge of the cinder block bed on which an old foam mattress and covers lay.

“You must prepare.”

The wooden cross, very obvious on the top of the pile, and the string, meticulously curled up like a serpent, inspired a remark that she regretted almost instantly.

“So, a sort of guru and nymphs disguised as nuns... Do I really need to put this on?”

“Yes, the Reverend is going to come. You must welcome him as expected.”

Elaine grabbed her hand. “I need to know what is happening, where I am and what I can expect.”

The young woman wanted to move away, but Elaine held her back. “Don’t leave. Please.”

“The Reverend will explain the rules to you.”

“What rules?”

“Those of the game.”

“
¡Hijo de puta!
” Hector grumbled, putting a bullet between the eyes of an L-D.

Not far from him, a gunshot resounded. The trafficker raised the barrel of his gun. Masters joined him.

“She’s not here,” he told him, looking serious.

The two men were combing through the area of the island not underwater searching for the nurse. The others were waiting on the roof of the shopping mall, safe from danger.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

Hector raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of things that don’t make sense, how did the
chino
 manage to scare off
los muertos
?”

“Later. First of all we have to find Elaine,” Masters ordered.

The Latino, accustomed to transactions with clever minds, detected the soldier’s discomfort. He knew, he thought to himself, observing his profile under the dawn light. They had spent the night methodically searching through each building still standing. Even though the area had been quite small since the storm that cut the island in two, there were still many hiding places on the island. But why would
la chica
 hide? The soldier agreed: that was absurd. And where did the living dead come from? They had to have come from somewhere.

Hector was thinking out loud. “They didn’t get here themselves. The highway is destroyed, so boats are the only way to get to the island.”

“Yeah,” the colonel said. “The area has more pontoons to dock at than it does houses. We couldn’t watch them all. It’s better that we keep to the shopping mall perimeter and prepare to pack up and leave as fast as possible with the semi-sub.

“If they come back, they will be discreet.
La chica
, she knows how to navigate.
Su padre
 was in the navy, ¿
verdad
?
”

Masters understood what Hector was implying. “To go where? She would have never abandoned us, not without Alison and Dewei.”

“Most of all the Asian... I was wondering why she risked her life for him.
Ahora entiendo
.”

The soldier shot him an annoyed look. “He saved us just in time,” he thought he should remind Hector.

“
Sí
, even if he should have died,” the trafficker replied, charging his tone with an inquisitiveness that Masters pretended to ignore.

They decided to return to the mall and join the group after a few minutes of walking around watching for any signs of danger. Alva and Alison were leaning on Bruce, whose bandaged foot lay on a pile of bricks. Dewei was separate from the group, his back against the wall and his knees folded to his chin. He seemed to be elsewhere. Petrified. He hadn’t said or wrote anything about his exploit. Hector remained behind. Alva shot him an inquisitive glance. He shook his head.

“We didn’t find her,” Masters announced.

Alison grabbed the singer’s arm. Bruce frowned, turning towards the marine. “She went to go find cigarettes, for fuck’s sakes! She didn’t fly away.”

“The cigarettes,” Masters mumbled. “How could I miss something like that?”

“What about the cigarettes?” Alva asked, annoyed.

“When I searched the dining room, I didn’t see the red bag or the two with the medicine.”

The Reverend appeared before the curtain, which he moved aside with a calculated slowness. Elaine, sitting on the bed, observed him, wondering what type of pervert she was going to have to deal with. He lowered his hood, revealing white hair. With skin so light that he was almost translucent, he looked like an albino with intense, blue eyes. He also had the carnivorous smile of a car salesman talking to a customer. She would have preferred that type of nutjob. Right away, she felt a sort of discomfort in his presence. She felt like the Devil’s messenger was inviting himself into the tiny cell and that the temperature had just dropped a few degrees. Elaine shivered.

“You understand that we can’t let you move around freely among us.”

“I don’t see why not. I thought we were in paradise.”

The naïve response seemed to amuse him for a moment and then his face hardened.

“I know women like you, those who call themselves liberated and active, ready to take power to the detriment of men to humiliate them. You’re one of those selfish, lonely people who took our dignity away from us without worrying about the consequences for civilization, transforming men into weaklings. Luckily, God has announced the end to that playtime. It was about time.”

Elaine opened her eyes wide. She would have never thought she would hear such a speech. Her comeback burst out. She regretted it right away. “So you like your women nice and obedient and young, right? Preferably virgins?”

Her words cost her an authoritative smack that snapped through the air. Off balance, she almost fell off the bed.

The reverend massaged his hand. “You are putting yourself in a very delicate situation,” he declared before leaving.

He exchanged a few words with Annie. Her new friend came back and told her that she was going to take her to the surface in a few minutes. All the better, she told herself. That room gave her goose bumps.

Outside, she changed her mind. It was even worse up there.

The Reverend was stirring up a crowd that she guessed contained a little less than a hundred people, most of them men. On a stage on the side of a pit dug by a bulldozer, he preached his pseudo-religious fervor intermixed with passages from the Bible. The mechanical posture and gestures reminded her of old black and white images. The lecture combined the living dead, the aliens, misfortune, the coming of a messiah and the promise of a better world rid of all of these plagues. How could people lap up such stupidity? A stone’s throw away from extinction and people were reverting to this? Elaine understood that she had to get out of this repulsive place as fast as possible.

She scanned the area. Armed guards blocked the exits to the camp. This wasn’t going to be easy. Annie wore an emotionless face as if her brain, wrung dry from her spiritual education, could no longer find the keys to return to reason.

And then the unthinkable happened.

Annie took her by the hand and invited her to approach the pit.

The two women stopped before the wire fence that surrounded it, the last barrier plunging down towards a spectacle of horror. Elaine gagged. The Reverend continued with his passionate speech.

“The doors to hell are open. Demos and savages will purify our blood. May the impious join the legions of Lucifer and may the damned souls feed on their flesh...”

Elaine saw three cages suspended above the moat. Three humans in togas were gripping at the bars. Women. Below them, beyond a perimeter surrounded by barbed wire, was a horde of infected awaiting the feast. They moved rhythmically, elated by the fresh bodies exposed for everybody to see.

“Oh my God,” Elaine whispered. “They are crazy.”

Annie didn’t react. Elaine kept her eyes on the pit. All around her, the spectators shook the fencing, bellowing left, right and center. The first cage shook. Inside, the girl screamed, begging for her freedom. The horde lost control and the excitement of the zombies doubled. They pushed against the fence, which trembled under their repeated assaults, indifferent to the lacerations it caused their wound-covered flesh. Their behavior was similar to the feeding frenzy of sharks except that the uncoordinated movements were slower. The other cells plunged down into the arena in turn. Elaine noticed two machetes left on the ground, half-way between the captives thrown to their mercy and the horde. On the Reverend’s signal, which consisted in raising a thumb as a mockery of judgment, the grills were raised.

“You all know the rules!” he yelled.

“He who survives, cleansed by blood, deserves to be saved!” the crowd responded like a unified being.

Two machetes for three prisoners was an unsolvable equation. Those who managed to get a hold of a blade would defend their luck. The three women rushed towards the weapons like shrews aware of the fate reserved for the unlucky third. In front of them, the putrid tide moved forward with a whole other objective written on the primary circuit of its brain.

While one combatant got ready to pick up her machete, her counterpart pushed her over, enticing delighted shouts from the crowd. Faster than the other two, the first woman moved away, holding her precious device. The intoxicated audience encouraged the two rivals, who were rolling on the ground, hitting each other to the cheering of the crowd and with exclamations punctuated with swear words. The infected were approaching, putting more psychological pressure on the combatants, adding to the excitement and entertainment of the spectators. The outcome of the battle remained uncertain until one of them, blonde and larger, Elaine noticed, managed to get the upper hand by slamming her opponent face-down against the ground with a knee against her back. She only had time to get back up to grab the machete, which was barely two meters in front of her. Fate decided otherwise.

The clamor of the over-excited audience attracted the attention of the golden-haired Valkyrie perched on top of her victim. When she turned around, she got off, screaming as an L-D threw itself onto her, grabbing her ankle. One moment later, the creature ripped off a piece of her forearm. Elaine heard someone say, “Well done, bitch.”

Smaller and clearly more agile, the brunette, who the nurse thought was doomed, managed to extract herself crawling. Her fingers dug grooves on the ground while behind her, a crowd of intertwined bodies closed around that of her adversary, who was fighting and screaming in pain. Overcome with fear, the lucky woman groped around and then touched the blade with her left hand. In a sweeping movement, she cut off the head of an L-D that was already leaning over her, coveting the flesh of her thigh.

The half-gnawed head rolled in the middle of the arena. The crowd let out an enthusiastic “Oh!” at the moment when the survivor got back up onto her feet, the torn toga revealing her meager chest.

The two women, who had become teammates in these horrific circus games, grouped together at the far end of the pit, taking advantage of the brief respite offered by the meal. The brunette tried as best she could to arrange her tunic as a sign of modesty. The two women stuck together, back to back. They held hands.

The audience calmed down until someone yelled, “That’s it! Why don’t you fuck while you’re at it!” which made everyone laugh.

“I can’t take any more of this,” the nurse told Annie.

“Now you know the rules. This is what happens to women who are rude or try to escape.”

T
he terror on the human’s face deformed his features, demonstrating the elasticity of human skin. He wanted to scream, but Jave held out his vibroblade, forcing him to keep silent. Urgency made him act as fast as possible. The driver had been bitten, which meant that the transformation would take place right away, even if the first signs would appear a little while later. The incubation period varied from one person to another, but the results didn’t change one bit. The virus had a one hundred percent mortality rate if he was to believe the information provided by the tera-servers. The emissary didn’t have any reason to question the scientific evidence.