Chapter 13

A scream for help and two pops. I snapped my head in the cry’s direction, just in time to see two bodies slump to the ground. I covered my mouth to stifle whatever fought to escape and closed in on myself like a turtle. The sight left me wondering which monsters would kill me first.

Four men walked past the bloody site on the roadside less than 100 feet from the dump-truck. Trash littered the area with stained boards, and red brick crumbles strewn across the roads. A man and woman laid over a concrete bench, hands tied behind their back with a white cloth.

The armed men wore military uniforms, but they didn’t look like the military. They didn’t have the demeanor or discipline of soldiers. Each step they took was as sloppy as a wobbly drunk. Only the man leading the way showed a serious face, and he didn’t seem amused with the others.

The two people lying on the ground weren’t wearing hoods to cover their faces; they didn’t have abscesses or sores; they weren’t scabs. On the base, the military had death pits. Soldiers dragged scabs to the pit’s edge, shot them, and threw their bodies into the hole.

Occasionally, officers brought scabs with hoods, compliant scabs, who everyone knew weren’t scabs. Nobody spoke up, though. As long as they kept us safe, we didn’t dare say anything. We didn’t want to become the next compliant scab. The next body in the pit to serve as an example.

Life was too valuable. The roadside victims went to parks and schools like me. They had family cookouts, birthday celebrations, and costume parties when they were kids. Nobody thought they’d die on their knees, shot execution-style, and have their bodies left to rot in the sun.

No child blew out the eight candles on their cake and saw themselves being tortured to death. Those things happened in our world, but they were rare before the breach. They shocked us on the 24-hour news stations and social media.

Now every one of us that waited nervously for their first bus ride would die horribly. Every person who played duck, duck, goose as a kid would never make it to old age. The kids playing red light green light would suffer painfully until the end. I was one of those kids. It was a terrible thought. I didn’t know why we hurt each other, especially with so few of us left.

The lead man barked orders I couldn’t hear, then jumped in the passenger side of the rust-yellow dump-truck. The same dump-truck a year before would spread salt on the roads and keep the thruway clear of snow. There’d be no going outside this winter, though.

Two more armed men led a line of people held together by ropes and chains to a black and silver horse trailer, hitched to a white pickup truck. There were at least twenty in the line, and a dozen in the trailer already. All they were missing was the white jumpsuit with black stripes.

Everyone’s face looked dead. They gave up on running and accepted what would happen. Sometimes uncertainty was too hard to handle. I struggled against it as well. One by one, they climbed in, and the gate locked behind them without a fight. With that, they accepted whatever happened to them from that point onward.

Six men and two women rested in the back of the dump-truck, and each carried a gun across their chest. Not as long as mine, but not a handgun. Some type of military gun. Still, I didn’t think they were soldiers—more like a militia of armed guards.

I couldn’t imagine where they found so many people. I wasn’t the only survivor, but 30 people wouldn’t survive in the lake town. Not unless the town hid large bunkers, which I doubted. The armed men must have captured them from different places. It didn’t look like a survivor run, either.

A whistle pierced the air, and one of the wobbly guards gestured to open the horse trailer again.

Survivors of Albany and surrounding areas escaped to a military fortress built into the cliffs. That’s all I knew. That’s the only thing I heard from base officials before the hordes destroyed it. Nobody doubted that information, and the few of us that survived bet with our lives. We had nowhere else to go.

Traveling in groups was smart and stupid. There was safety in numbers, but crowds drew attention, and they needed supplies. Too many stops and we moved slow—humans were like herd animals, herd animals that lost their survival instincts. It was silly to think we’d all make it if we worked together.

Scabs and beasts picked off the edges and split us apart. Groups of five became pairs, and eventually, I was alone, raiding a store I didn’t know was a trap. I’ve beaten scabs, but monsters and essence beasts were far beyond me, and I had never beaten a human in a fight. I still wasn’t sure I could.

Through the rifle, I couldn’t tell if the people in the trailer came from the base. I didn’t recognize anyone’s face, but they were too far to make out, and I was too distraught when we escaped to remember anyone.

Three more captures exited a side street with their hands behind their heads at gunpoint. A pudgy man and two teenagers, perhaps a father and his two children. How he stayed overweight was something I wished to learn. The boy tripped and fell, but one of the armed men ripped him from the dirt and shoved him forward.

The father stopped and shouted something, dropping his hands and running to check on the boy, but he didn’t make it. A guard kicked the father in the leg, causing him to fall to the ground hard. When he tried to stand, the other guard pushed him to the ground and cursed loud enough to get his point across to anyone in the valley.