November 28
If there’s a constant in this post-apocalyptic world, it’s this: the moment you think everything is going just fine, it goes to shit. And never in the way you expect.
So yesterday, the second day of clearing, went just as we planned. A few more passives, then three stalkers that Cujo smelled fifty yards away. We just let him bark. They came racing out—so emaciated that it was hard to believe they were actually alive—and straight into our guns. I think one got to within twenty yards of us; she was small and fast and took four rounds to put down. We found utility and town survey maps in the glove compartment of a public works pickup truck, and now had a precise bird’s eye assessment of every street and every building. We were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.
Today started the same way. By noon, we’d cleared most of the more developed part of the town center. After that, it was either a branch of the main road going east or the one going west. We headed west because we were considering landing at St. Anthony’s Bay tomorrow and rolling up the east branch of the main road from that side. Hell, we were already making plans for how to handle the airport, now that we had real maps.
But as we headed west, we started realizing that, as Tai put it, we were now “in Brazil for real.” Which meant that we started seeing buildings that weren’t on the maps, a lot of which were pretty sketchy structures. If one in three were built to code, I’d give up my carb ration for a week.
End result: things slowed way down. It wasn’t as bad as the first day, though. With Chloe and Jeeza on water towers, we were usually able to compensate for what the maps didn’t show. But not always, and that uncertainty is what eats up extra minutes and makes them extra sweaty.
So we were always a little relieved when we were going into one of the buildings that was not only on the map, but faced right on the street. That may have been what had us a little less ready for the unexpected.
Cujo didn’t make any sound until the door opened. Then he yipped like he’d stepped on a tack and started growling, hair standing straight up all along his spine. That had never happened before, so we defaulted into a defensive wedge, me in the front and low, Steve and Tai behind and to either side of the doorway.
Nothing. Cujo was still growling but sniffing high in the air, from side to side, as if he was confused.
Then he lunged to the left.
As Rod hauled him back in, all of us—like dopes—aimed left.
But the rush of movement came from the right flank. We turned and fired: pure reflex.
The figure—a female—sprawled, and then scramble-crawled into the room to the left. We kept blasting rounds after her; none hit, despite the close range. Given how shaken and jittery we were, I’m just glad we didn’t vent each other. (Well, vent me, since I was the only one out in front of anyone’s muzzle.)
The radio went nuts. Prospero wanted a report. Chloe was shouting to find out if anyone was hurt. But we didn’t have time to wait for that chaos to resolve. I called for a staged magazine swap. First Steve and Tai, then me. Then we swept left and entered the room into which the stalker had disappeared.
I should have known this entry would be different. Cujo’s initial confusion, the stalker fleeing across our field of fire: looking back, it was hinky. But when the adrenaline is pumping and you’re worried that you might get buried under a horde of pseudo-zombies, you’re not tracking the details. You’re just doing what you think will keep you alive. And that meant finishing the job we had started.
So the last thing we expected to see when we came around the door was the female on the floor, curled into a fetal position and, well, wailing. She didn’t jump up or threaten us; she just stayed there, writhing from multiple leg wounds, it seemed. The only reason none of us fired was because in some part of what they call the lizard hind-brain, we knew this was a position of submission. So we were looking at a passive. But rather than flee—we had seen there was a window on the back wall, busted clear of all glass—she had charged into this side room from which there was no other exit.
Then her writhing grew wilder, and she seemed to be pawing at the floor under her—right before a kid popped out of the hole she’d been lying across. And that kid did not move like a passive; he came straight at us. Reflex took over: we shifted aim and blasted away.
At a kid.
I thought I was going to throw up. Partly out of fear—he was fast and small and as ferocious and deranged as any stalker we’d yet faced—but mostly out of revulsion at what I was doing: shooting a child.
And then I was falling on my ass. The instant we started firing, the female came roaring at us, talonlike fingers raking wildly. I thought I was a goner: being the smallest and in the lead, I was the natural target. But she knocked me over in her rush to get at Tai.
Tai turned and fired, missed, and was down under the female. Steve staggered back a step, shocked (there’s a first for everything) and paralyzed by indecision as the female’s jaws snapped down at Tai’s neck. The yellowed teeth missed Tai’s makeshift gorget by an inch.
I wish I could say my actions were cool and collected and deliberate, but they weren’t. I don’t even remember thinking. I just rolled up to my feet, pulled my HP-35, stepped to point blank, and fired into the back of the passive’s skull. Three times.
Just like that, it was over.
But panic followed. The passive had torn Tai’s seals and my rounds had sprayed infected blood and brains all over the place. The truck raced in. Frenzied, Tai wanted to jump up and start wiping herself off. We had to hold her down until Prospero got there with the field decon kit, did a quick survey, and then doused her with the mix. Tai kept shrieking at him to tell her if she’d been bitten or if the blood had gotten on her; Prospero just kept asking her to stay calm, because he couldn’t see well enough to answer her question.
One of our disciplines was to report any and all cuts and scratches, from whatever source. That way, we could hopefully discriminate between a wound that had been incurred in the normal course of day-to-day living (on a boat, that means a lot of scrapes) or something that had been inflicted by a stalker. But Tai wasn’t much for protocols and she’d been pretty lax about this one. And now, in her panic, she couldn’t remember which cuts and scratches she’d had at the start of the day. Most of them looked old, but when you sweat from dawn onward in the tropics and you’re wearing abrasive makeshift armor, you rub off a lot of scabs. This day had been no exception.
Within thirty minutes, we had Tai in the truck, Chloe and Jeeza down with us as well, and were driving like mad for Praia do Cachorro and the Zodiac. There was no way to be subtle about the way we kept the Rexios trained on Tai, or that we kept Cujo close to her, figuring he might smell the onset, if she turned. We sped out to Voyager, fell into the roles we’d assigned and drilled for just such an occurrence, and acted calm even as we were all shivering right down to the bottom of our guts.
Tai didn’t turn. Didn’t get sick. So, as we’d thought, she had not been exposed. But in the same moment that we were grateful and hugged her for joy, we were also furious at her. I was composing my “get your shit together or else” speech in my head but never had the chance to deliver it. Jeeza, happy tears still on her face, switched into den-mother-from-hell mode and tore Tai a new one. Who, for a change, sat and took it like a naughty child, nodding occasionally, not daring to look the High and Imperious Giselle in the eye.
We didn’t even need to discuss how this changed our plans. Everyone knew that tomorrow’s op was on pause. And that it might remain that way until we had more help. Prospero made his feelings pretty plain when he looked up from under his brows and growled, “We should wait for your friends. They might as well enjoy this experience, too.”
I couldn’t disagree. The part of my mind that was still planning, plotting, assessing, also saw the advantage of making that change; Vila dos Remédios was three quarters cleared, now. Any increase in our numbers would make the last twenty-five percent easier. It could also become an optimally controllable “live fire” training environment for any total newbs that Willow might be bringing with her. But the deep-down reason we had to stop was because of what we—what I—had done: we had shot a child.
Yes, it was a ravening child who would gladly have feasted on our livers, but the fact of the matter was that we hadn’t prepared ourselves for this scenario. We’d never even seen a child among the stalkers. We had come to believe, like everyone on Ascension, that they suffered the same fate as the wounded, the aged, and the passives: eaten as easy prey.
I tried to tell myself I wasn’t to blame, that I’d taken the only possible action, under the circumstances. The others told me that I’d done the best and most important thing I could have; I’d saved Tai’s life. But I keep coming back to the fact that I broke one of our culture’s most basic taboos: that children are to be saved, not killed. And if that’s one of the moral changes we need to make in order to survive in this post-plague hell, then I haven’t yet found a way to make that leap.
Chloe tried to get me to come to bed almost an hour ago. I couldn’t. I still can’t. I guess I’ll sit here until I can. But I don’t know how I’ll get to that point. I keep thinking about all that we have done and seen since we left Husvik in September. Not just the killing, but the signs of how selfish and barbaric humans became during and after the plague. But it seemed that we were better than that, that we were the good guys, the protectors and champions of what little was left of civilization.
And then I went and killed a kid. Yeah, I know the reasons why, but still: I killed a kid.
Now, for the first time, it really does feel like the end of days.