Fanfic: A Hunter Captured Chapter 5: Day One: Accommodation
Day One: Accommodation
Chapter 5
A stark circular room, with a diameter of about fifteen feet, the paint on its wall fresh enough to still carry a plastic scent. High reinforced one-way mirrors that ran across the span at the top twenty feet from the bottom. A steel-kevlar composite mesh wrapped in front of it, anchored inside the wall above and below the glass, thin enough that it didn’t impede sight. Several cameras with microphones lined across the wall at key angles, hidden from view yet catching everything, its video relays broadcasting at the observation room above and at Parker’s station near ground level.
Dr. Stacey’s suspicions of CEDA were becoming harder to ignore if they just had this built before doomsday, just because. “Nice set up. Looks pretty new.”
Reilly smiled at their good fortune. “Yes, it is. The construction was a bit of a mess. Nobody could really do any precision work with all of the drilling and shaking.” She toggled some switches familiarizing herself with how the system worked. Happy, yet evasive.
“So this came in with that other stuff, the tables and restraints. Even an electric-proof suit?” This base wasn’t the first one to think up studying the infected for the cure. It was simply the only one really prepared for it. “Why did your bosses decide to splurge on, well…all this?” He spread his arms wide at the myriad of computer screens and out towards the empty labs with scientific equipment worth in the hundreds of thousands.
She leaned up and shrugged noncommittally. “Don’t know. Might be a bureaucratic thing. Messing around with the budget to get a bigger government payoff during the next fiscal year.” She walked up to him and beamed brightly, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Perhaps like the Highway Commission fixing roads that don’t need it. Budgets need to be justified.”
He leaned down to her level and spoke at the same tone. “And they justified this how? What was it supposed to be for?” A well of anxiety was blossoming in Stacey, his drug-fogged mind slipping from out of its haze. He was never really a paranoid man, but he grew up watching X-files and other shows that painted scientists in a less than pretty light. “I mean, before this was more of disease control place, everything under a microscope.”
A quick chuckle, her eyebrows quirked in wonder. “Yes, it was. I never did get the memo, being that I was more of a worker bee for the big bosses. I guess they planned to combine this place with a facility that dealt with animal experimentation.” She switched off the screens and wrapped her arms around the doctor’s left one, pulling him out of the room. “The outbreak put a damper on that plan since no one showed up. Better for us, if there were animals to take care of, we’d be out of food in no time.”
Incredulous laughter bellowed out of him. “Better? Did you…Seriously?” He reached into his pocket and popped a white oval pill out of a packet and crunched it between his teeth, the acrid taste numbing his tongue and ruined cheek. “You are a doll, did you know that, Dr. May?” He patted her hand in a friendly manner and squeezed her arms between his upper arm and chest, his mind reeling at the implications and deciding to just go with it.
Stacey was always such a flatterer. She enjoyed being around people that understood the benefits of staying positive. “Do you think Peter will be comfortable on that cold floor? We can scrounge up a blanket, don’t you think?” Her patient was getting a little photo session as a ‘Before’ picture and to track any physical changes. She had heard that the sudden bright lights focused Peter’s eyes into pinpricks which left him wailing. Light sensitivity would add to the ‘hood usage’ as a symptom.
Choked amusement poured from Stacey as bits of the pill scrapped his dry throat. “Doctor, if you don’t stop, I might just kill myself.” He meant it too, but the problem with having a sunny personality is that nobody took you seriously when they should. “How about a pillow, too? He can have mine. Everyone knows I barely have time to use it.”
Her quick acceptance and gratitude was a good reminder that sarcasm wasn’t a universal tongue.
----
Parker sat at his desk, watching as the two doctors left the observation room, arm in arm. A push of his remote control switched the screen to an outside perimeter as the littlest soldier, young foul-mouthed and runaway-prone Mike, checked his not-quite-so-hidden stash of bullets, water and food. Jameson let him keep it since it seemed to calm the kid down to have an escape plan. Another click and Dogcatcher Lee was throwing up in the bushes, apparently unhappy with his new position. The next channel was blotted white as Benstein hummed merrily in the background; the virologist had used the camera as a coat hanger. Click, click, mundane scene of camp life, one after another.
He’d found the video feed of the impromptu modeling session, the hunter suspended midair with chains, its legs straightened out with planks. The doc had pointed out that the lack of blood flow would atrophy the lower extremities. So instead of keeping it strapped so tightly with knees bent, they could try the opposite approach and prevent poor Peter from bending his legs, thus unable to push out. It fulfilled its purpose of making the hunter look ridiculous. “Nothing good on TV.”
Parker eyed his watch, the plastic cover cracked in the middle, yet still functional. He flicked on a radio, the burst of static loud as the amplification antenna he improvised on top of a gun tower transmitted ambient noise as well. A few turn of some dials lessened the effect till he could catch his favorite station, about to interview a zombie killing celebrity. With his feet propped high, he popped open a vienna sausage tin and a warm high octane energy drink.
A loud voice boomed out, instantly recognizable to anyone who has listened to radio during the last half century, a disk jockey. “WELCOME TO THE COMMUNICATION NATION! This here is HoundDog and my partner in crime is Lonely Stu. Say hi, Stu.”
A meeker voice belched out. “Hi, I…” and was soon overridden by the DJ.
“And that’s enough out of you. Now it is the top of the hour here in Chicago and we have a special guest, the prodigal son himself, Chicago Ted!” Canned fanfare and applause.
A pleasant voice, slightly nasal, spoke out. “Hey HoundDog, love the show, been listening to it while on the road.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Thanks to our rebroadcasters out there in the Wastelands getting this show out to all you survivors. We are live and alive and on most stations, AWOOOOOoooo.” Parker tipped an invisible hat and grinned; he had helped cover most of the northern-east coast
A chortle and clapping rocked back and forth across the airways. “Man, I thought that was a sound effect. You really do howl.”
“It’s a gift.” A wolf whistle inexplicably rang out. “Now we’ve been getting calls about your exploits across the entire country. Reuniting families, killing hulks single-handedly, giving the sobbing bitch something to really cry about. How do you do it? How do you get around?” Parker could imagine HoundDog leaning forward, head resting on his palms in rapt attention. The man was a cad.
“Human ingenuity and Discovery channel programs. You’d be amazed how many survival tips you’d pick up just watching some guy eat raw fish in the middle of Alaska.” It was said with such blatant honesty, that Parker couldn’t believe it to be true.
Quickly moving on, can’t let it get stale now. “So what’s new? What can you tell us about the front lines?”
A deep sigh tempered Ted’s words as he got serious. “It’s getting nasty down south. I don’t know if it’s the humidity or what, but there are some new infected freaks down there. And they’re vicious. Military isn’t taking any chances and is carpet bombing, so if you’re headed south I say stop, find a nearby survivor camp and head there. The good ol’ boys aren’t playing around and if they don’t know you they will shoot you, immune or not.”
Summarizing in that way that newscasters do, Lonely Stu made a beeline for the important stuff. “I know earlier on the infection hit the north first, so the southern states had more time to prepare and were the place to go. What’s safe now?”
Ted laughed in that knowing way, the way people do at life’s ironies. “Definitely not down there. There’s infected policemen in riot suits, so bullets don’t do much, scientists in hazmat suits, so fire don’t do much. Even some mud men that spring up on you and can blind you worse than boomer vomit.” The voice deepened and spoke in measured tones. “Don’t head to regular military, their trigger fingers are itching. Head to a safe zone, especially the ones mentioned on this show. And beware rogues. Lying sons of bitches are giving out bad coordinates to ambush people.”
HoundDog interjected, as he used to when self-promoting his one-man shows. “That’s right. At fifteen before the hour we list down the safe zones we are in contact with and let you know their conditions before you get there. Real time news, not scrawled posters and walls you have no idea when they were made.”
“It’s a life saving service, can’t believe they tried to shut you down.” The zombie genocider recalled what happened about two months ago.
A gruff scoff, insulted by what happened, retold those events. “To any new listeners out there, I’ll give a quick recap of that. Some big shots wanted to keep radio silence. Save up the airways for their little broadcasts, for official news. Said we were too loud, would only attract the infected to our listeners’ holdouts. I say, screw that. Infected aren’t attracted to every noise. Just sudden repetitive ones like car alarms or a gas generator. And that’s what headphones are for, anyway.” A snippet of a Beastie Boys song snapped on, imploring people to fight for their right…to party.
“It’s kept me company and sane, I’ll tell you that.” Parker nodded in agreement with Ted, though he’s been in the company of Jameson’s survivor caravan since week two of the infection.
Feeling vindicated, HoundDog went into a tirade. “Damn straight. That’s what people want. Co-mmu-ni-ca-tion. There are no phone lines, no internet, no texting. Just CB radios and satellite phones that can’t call anybody else. This right here is a hub. We have fifty two people here at the radio tower, and we’re pooling our resources and knowledge to stay safe and help you, out there, stay safe too. I remember when we got that radio call in from Oklahoma, Bob Stenton. Told us how to really purify water using a drum, charcoal and sand, seems obvious in hindsight, don’t it? And Susie Miller, little girl with her daddy’s rifle and radio, found by Bill and Margaret Applehorn as they headed out of Nebraska into Kansas in a beat up truck before it got too cold, both listeners and callers of our show.”
Chicago Ted chimed in quickly before HoundDog kept talking. “I’ll admit it. I cried when she thanked you for helping her. She’s at Theta base, isn’t she? Hey, honey, make a call to the show. Last I heard you had a new puppy. What’d you decide to call him?”
The DJ kept going on his rant, instead of following Ted’s lead into lighter topics. “Ain’t no shame in that. Not that many kids left. We got to keep them safe. There’s a cold part of my heart that’s thankful that this godawful disease is nearly a hundred percent fatal for the young. It’s bad enough shooting your neighbor.” A rumbling cough tried to hide his sudenly tear choked voice and failed. “But our true neighbors are no longer the zombies at the door. It’s you, our fellow radiophiles and survivors and there are thousands of miles between us. So when that tank showed up -where the hell was that bad boy when we had a big’un pounding at our walls, I don’t know- when it showed up and we got our orders to turn off the lights and all of you radioed in and cried out ‘NO’…” Silence filled the airways, with a few deep breaths buzzing in the background.
A soft voice lingered barely out of hearing range. “Hey, HoundDog, its okay, I can finish up.”
Returning strong and loud, the jokey voice chided the other man. “No, Lonely Stu, don’t try stealing my job now. I know you’ve been eyeing my seat for a while now. Used to think it was just you being lonesome and desperate.” Chicago Ted laughed long at Stu’s expense as HoundDog finished the story. “When you all called in and that motherboard flashed white and red, I knew we are not alone. Nobody is alone. And some of those calls were of people stuck in their bunkers, waiting for the all clear, or in an attic without a friendly face in sight. This is human connection and we need to keep it alive to keep our souls alive, so when a solution comes up, we’ll all know of it together and we’ll prepare for it together and we’ll survive together. We will rebuild together, every single one of us.”
Stu contributed some more to keep the ball rolling. “That tank turned tail and ran when that general guy radioed in. Johnson, was it?”
The Dog was better with names, knew every single caller, especially those that reached out one last time before their doors caved in and death fell upon them. “Jameson, now located on one of those secret bases, computer whiz Parker is at the same one…” Parker felt pumped for the shout out. “…used to be in charge of ECHO before it got overrun. How he managed to secure an open town with cornfields all around him for over a month, I’ll never know. Man had a set of lungs on him, could hear him clear as day as he outranked the commanding officer of the tank and told them to back off since they were disrupting his camp worse than any music ever did.”
A rustle of papers muffled Stu’s words. “He has an announcement to make later, doesn’t he?
“Yeah, that’s right. We got him scheduled in…” more shuffling papers “…two days from now.”
A hand slammed on a table, the voice teasingly gruff. “Hey, I thought that this was an hour meant for interviewing the great Chicago Ted.”
“Sorry, oh Great One. So what else do you have for our listeners?” The sounds of an orchestra fine-tuning their instruments ended when a slim baton smacked a hard surface several times. The conductor about to start.
“Ever hear of a little technique called crowning a witch? The foursome at Theta Base thinks that they came up with that and I’m calling bull. Half of their stories don’t even make sense. About the only thing I do believe is that they pop whole bottles of pills. Crazy people, saying that first aids are all they needed after getting slammed around.”
The radio suddenly cut off, Parker nearly toppling backwards as he noticed Jameson standing behind him. “It’s not your downtime yet. Keep to your duties.”
Parker slammed his feet down, a startled breath teetering out through his nose. “This is part of it, you know. Keeping up with the latest news, compiling data, gathering survivor statistics. Maria’s meditation hour is going to start after this show. How about a little leeway, Sir?” He smiled nervously as he eyed the open door. He hadn’t heard it creak like it usually did.
“Postpone that and get all essential personnel to level two. Benstein has his new samples and Dr. May wants to introduce the mutt to the cell. Give it some running space.” Deep seated discontent contorted his face into a grimace, he would have rather given the beast a five by five foot cage to wallow in, keep it restrained enough to jab a needle into whenever they needed to pull it out for some tests. Now they’d need to figure how to stop it jumping around. At the very least he was going the get something worthwhile out of it. “I want people there to see how it moves and learn a thing or two about guessing its attacks. You make sure to record and edit it all as I’m sending that video out as a training measure.”
Microphone in hand, Parker nodded his assent and typed some commands in to look busy. “You got it, boss.” Once Jameson left the room, the door closing with a slight click, he let go of heated breath and gulped once. “Heellllooo, happy campers. If you have Z-clearance, head on over to the second level. I repeat, if you have Z-clearance, head on over to the second level. For everybody else, satellites are reading clear so I have some smooth tunes I jacked out of an Ipod I finally got running. Enjoy the playlist. This baby is on shuffle.”
----
Captured over thirty hours ago, the hunter was more physically and emotionally exhausted than it has ever been during its second life. Livedeath kept poking it, a fiery pain that flowed through its veins and took away the little movement it had left. Brighlight blinded it, worse than sunlight, and its need for cover grew into a desperate hunger that made it consider biting its tongue off. Womantrap kept touching. Smallstrongbeast kept hurting. The only prey had a loudstingdeath and kept clicking it in its face, the sting never hitting. Sometimes prey wasn’t prey and did things like Livedeath and that scared the hunter. Loudstingdeath was bad, livedeath was worse. There was no runjumppounce, just wait, rest, cringe, rest, wait, pain.
Hunting grounds were simple life, with simple prey and simple enemies. The hunter understood the mobpack and the longtongue and even knew not to slash at the killcrier that sounded like prey but wasn’t. Even the stupid brothers that stole its kills were simple to get rid of. The hunter didn’t know what to do, how to intimidate, how to escape, nothing made sense. If it got caught then it should have been killed and eaten, even prey follow this rule.
Its body was full of livedeath but not sleepdeath like that time after greatpain when it awoke to a clean mouth, the proof of its skill ripped away as though it was a weakling that couldn’t feed. Brothers would laugh, then slash, then kill. The hunter needed to pounce and eat big prey before returning to hunting grounds. They could tell when it was only small on four legs. It would return with bloodsoaked cover and a full stomach and red teeth, and beat a strongbeast and rule a pack of brothers. It will be strong and intimidating, and happy. It will be happy again. It will escape and be happy and strong.
The soldier, actually a trained corporal not a last minute recruit, named Smith hauled the left side of the hunter’s lax body into the cell through a featureless pressurized door with no handle on the inside. “Is it me or is Fido crying?”
“Probably just irritation from all the lights.” Wesson, his backup and all around best friend, shrugged uncaringly as he carried the right. They’ve been around each other since basic; pretty sure their combined names amused the higher ups enough to transfer them as a team. “Okay, ready to do this?”
“Hell, no. What do we have left? Five minutes?” They tugged at the restraints till they loosened, unfastening straps and belts. The knots that held the planks behind the hunter’s knees were cut to speed things along.
“Less if you keep yapping. Turn him over” Face down, the hunter’s face dug into the muzzle, a thin strip of gauze doing nothing to cushion the metal from the ridge of its nose. “Okay, all clear?”
Smith carried all of the restraints bundled up in an arm towards the only way in or out; his free one held a pistol aimed directly at the back of the infected’s head. “Got your back.”
Suddenly tight, then loose, the muzzle fell free as the hunter’s head smacked the coarse floor. “We’re good. Open up and let us out.” Two quick bangs at the door, the pair fighting every instinct in their bodies to kill the infected monster they were currently trapped with.
It slid open for less than five seconds, leaving Peter alone under bright fluorescent lights behind high-density plexiglass in the ceiling. Beaten, starving and naked, recorded by a dozen cameras as a small crowd watched the scene from above. Against the curved wall were a tattered blanket and a flat pillow; across from that, a plastic jar full of water and a metal plate with a sliver of cooked meat; a quarter of the way along the wall was another metal plate with a similar portion of raw meat; by the door was a ring of keys all useless except to see what the hunter would do with them.
----
Mobility started with tremors that jerked the scarred torso and flickered at the fingers. Not long after, a flailing arm twisted the body backwards landing the hunter face up. Its howl at the painful lights still weak. The legs jerked as spasms propelled Peter across the floor, a sudden lurch standing it up for a moment before it collapsed forward, arms too slow to cushion the fall.
It lay still as rapid breaths burst through its mouth, growls and shrieks almost merry as it methodically placed its limbs in order to crouch. Still unsteady and uncoordinated, it took several tries to reach the blanket which it wrapped around its head and torso several times over, tightly wound and looking like a toga wearing ninja. The next half-hour was spent with Peter rubbing the blanket over its head, securing it, straightening it, and smoothing it out. Like a bird cleaning its feathers.
The hunter shuffled slowly after awhile, snuffling and growling, disregarding the food and drinking the entire jar of water in a single go. It couldn’t really see the door as it was nondescript, the same color and texture of the wall. But it could see the reflective glass and it remembered breaking through windows and surprising prey.
There were many hardoors, but not many hardglass. Stupid brothers jumping again and again through hardglass, mashing their faces and breaking their teeth. This hunter was smart and strong and intimidating and it only needed to check once to know if it was hardglass. And it’s near brightlights and the cover was badcover that let brighlight shine through, but it was also goodcover that the hunter was never ever going to lose.
Brightlights hurt so much for so long, that the hunter wasn’t scared of them anymore. It was prepared and would jump through the glass and kill all the prey and eat and return to hunting grounds and stay there. Alone is not good. The hunter had learned, alone is not good and manymanymany prey is bad.
It took two jumps - one to gain height, the second to gain momentum - to mash against the one way mirror. It took about thirty attempts after that till the hunter’s bloody fists settled on the ground, agonized groans seeping out from its chest as it pulled the cover over its head in defeat. From time to time it would run at a wall and scratch at it, gouging chunks of paint off and scrapping at the reinforced cement underneath.
A sudden crazed pounce slammed the pillow beneath the hunter as it ripped at it maniacally, the scent of Livedeath still on it as it wanted to kill the prey that wasn’t prey and trapped the hunter. Prey had taken everything and left nothing, not even red teeth. Why, why did prey take red teeth? A feeling Peter could no longer describe coursed through him. Humiliation. It burned worse than the fear and pain, worse than hunger and despair.
It was the first exclusively human emotion Peter had felt in a long time.
----
Chapter 5
A stark circular room, with a diameter of about fifteen feet, the paint on its wall fresh enough to still carry a plastic scent. High reinforced one-way mirrors that ran across the span at the top twenty feet from the bottom. A steel-kevlar composite mesh wrapped in front of it, anchored inside the wall above and below the glass, thin enough that it didn’t impede sight. Several cameras with microphones lined across the wall at key angles, hidden from view yet catching everything, its video relays broadcasting at the observation room above and at Parker’s station near ground level.
Dr. Stacey’s suspicions of CEDA were becoming harder to ignore if they just had this built before doomsday, just because. “Nice set up. Looks pretty new.”
Reilly smiled at their good fortune. “Yes, it is. The construction was a bit of a mess. Nobody could really do any precision work with all of the drilling and shaking.” She toggled some switches familiarizing herself with how the system worked. Happy, yet evasive.
“So this came in with that other stuff, the tables and restraints. Even an electric-proof suit?” This base wasn’t the first one to think up studying the infected for the cure. It was simply the only one really prepared for it. “Why did your bosses decide to splurge on, well…all this?” He spread his arms wide at the myriad of computer screens and out towards the empty labs with scientific equipment worth in the hundreds of thousands.
She leaned up and shrugged noncommittally. “Don’t know. Might be a bureaucratic thing. Messing around with the budget to get a bigger government payoff during the next fiscal year.” She walked up to him and beamed brightly, then lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Perhaps like the Highway Commission fixing roads that don’t need it. Budgets need to be justified.”
He leaned down to her level and spoke at the same tone. “And they justified this how? What was it supposed to be for?” A well of anxiety was blossoming in Stacey, his drug-fogged mind slipping from out of its haze. He was never really a paranoid man, but he grew up watching X-files and other shows that painted scientists in a less than pretty light. “I mean, before this was more of disease control place, everything under a microscope.”
A quick chuckle, her eyebrows quirked in wonder. “Yes, it was. I never did get the memo, being that I was more of a worker bee for the big bosses. I guess they planned to combine this place with a facility that dealt with animal experimentation.” She switched off the screens and wrapped her arms around the doctor’s left one, pulling him out of the room. “The outbreak put a damper on that plan since no one showed up. Better for us, if there were animals to take care of, we’d be out of food in no time.”
Incredulous laughter bellowed out of him. “Better? Did you…Seriously?” He reached into his pocket and popped a white oval pill out of a packet and crunched it between his teeth, the acrid taste numbing his tongue and ruined cheek. “You are a doll, did you know that, Dr. May?” He patted her hand in a friendly manner and squeezed her arms between his upper arm and chest, his mind reeling at the implications and deciding to just go with it.
Stacey was always such a flatterer. She enjoyed being around people that understood the benefits of staying positive. “Do you think Peter will be comfortable on that cold floor? We can scrounge up a blanket, don’t you think?” Her patient was getting a little photo session as a ‘Before’ picture and to track any physical changes. She had heard that the sudden bright lights focused Peter’s eyes into pinpricks which left him wailing. Light sensitivity would add to the ‘hood usage’ as a symptom.
Choked amusement poured from Stacey as bits of the pill scrapped his dry throat. “Doctor, if you don’t stop, I might just kill myself.” He meant it too, but the problem with having a sunny personality is that nobody took you seriously when they should. “How about a pillow, too? He can have mine. Everyone knows I barely have time to use it.”
Her quick acceptance and gratitude was a good reminder that sarcasm wasn’t a universal tongue.
----
Parker sat at his desk, watching as the two doctors left the observation room, arm in arm. A push of his remote control switched the screen to an outside perimeter as the littlest soldier, young foul-mouthed and runaway-prone Mike, checked his not-quite-so-hidden stash of bullets, water and food. Jameson let him keep it since it seemed to calm the kid down to have an escape plan. Another click and Dogcatcher Lee was throwing up in the bushes, apparently unhappy with his new position. The next channel was blotted white as Benstein hummed merrily in the background; the virologist had used the camera as a coat hanger. Click, click, mundane scene of camp life, one after another.
He’d found the video feed of the impromptu modeling session, the hunter suspended midair with chains, its legs straightened out with planks. The doc had pointed out that the lack of blood flow would atrophy the lower extremities. So instead of keeping it strapped so tightly with knees bent, they could try the opposite approach and prevent poor Peter from bending his legs, thus unable to push out. It fulfilled its purpose of making the hunter look ridiculous. “Nothing good on TV.”
Parker eyed his watch, the plastic cover cracked in the middle, yet still functional. He flicked on a radio, the burst of static loud as the amplification antenna he improvised on top of a gun tower transmitted ambient noise as well. A few turn of some dials lessened the effect till he could catch his favorite station, about to interview a zombie killing celebrity. With his feet propped high, he popped open a vienna sausage tin and a warm high octane energy drink.
A loud voice boomed out, instantly recognizable to anyone who has listened to radio during the last half century, a disk jockey. “WELCOME TO THE COMMUNICATION NATION! This here is HoundDog and my partner in crime is Lonely Stu. Say hi, Stu.”
A meeker voice belched out. “Hi, I…” and was soon overridden by the DJ.
“And that’s enough out of you. Now it is the top of the hour here in Chicago and we have a special guest, the prodigal son himself, Chicago Ted!” Canned fanfare and applause.
A pleasant voice, slightly nasal, spoke out. “Hey HoundDog, love the show, been listening to it while on the road.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Thanks to our rebroadcasters out there in the Wastelands getting this show out to all you survivors. We are live and alive and on most stations, AWOOOOOoooo.” Parker tipped an invisible hat and grinned; he had helped cover most of the northern-east coast
A chortle and clapping rocked back and forth across the airways. “Man, I thought that was a sound effect. You really do howl.”
“It’s a gift.” A wolf whistle inexplicably rang out. “Now we’ve been getting calls about your exploits across the entire country. Reuniting families, killing hulks single-handedly, giving the sobbing bitch something to really cry about. How do you do it? How do you get around?” Parker could imagine HoundDog leaning forward, head resting on his palms in rapt attention. The man was a cad.
“Human ingenuity and Discovery channel programs. You’d be amazed how many survival tips you’d pick up just watching some guy eat raw fish in the middle of Alaska.” It was said with such blatant honesty, that Parker couldn’t believe it to be true.
Quickly moving on, can’t let it get stale now. “So what’s new? What can you tell us about the front lines?”
A deep sigh tempered Ted’s words as he got serious. “It’s getting nasty down south. I don’t know if it’s the humidity or what, but there are some new infected freaks down there. And they’re vicious. Military isn’t taking any chances and is carpet bombing, so if you’re headed south I say stop, find a nearby survivor camp and head there. The good ol’ boys aren’t playing around and if they don’t know you they will shoot you, immune or not.”
Summarizing in that way that newscasters do, Lonely Stu made a beeline for the important stuff. “I know earlier on the infection hit the north first, so the southern states had more time to prepare and were the place to go. What’s safe now?”
Ted laughed in that knowing way, the way people do at life’s ironies. “Definitely not down there. There’s infected policemen in riot suits, so bullets don’t do much, scientists in hazmat suits, so fire don’t do much. Even some mud men that spring up on you and can blind you worse than boomer vomit.” The voice deepened and spoke in measured tones. “Don’t head to regular military, their trigger fingers are itching. Head to a safe zone, especially the ones mentioned on this show. And beware rogues. Lying sons of bitches are giving out bad coordinates to ambush people.”
HoundDog interjected, as he used to when self-promoting his one-man shows. “That’s right. At fifteen before the hour we list down the safe zones we are in contact with and let you know their conditions before you get there. Real time news, not scrawled posters and walls you have no idea when they were made.”
“It’s a life saving service, can’t believe they tried to shut you down.” The zombie genocider recalled what happened about two months ago.
A gruff scoff, insulted by what happened, retold those events. “To any new listeners out there, I’ll give a quick recap of that. Some big shots wanted to keep radio silence. Save up the airways for their little broadcasts, for official news. Said we were too loud, would only attract the infected to our listeners’ holdouts. I say, screw that. Infected aren’t attracted to every noise. Just sudden repetitive ones like car alarms or a gas generator. And that’s what headphones are for, anyway.” A snippet of a Beastie Boys song snapped on, imploring people to fight for their right…to party.
“It’s kept me company and sane, I’ll tell you that.” Parker nodded in agreement with Ted, though he’s been in the company of Jameson’s survivor caravan since week two of the infection.
Feeling vindicated, HoundDog went into a tirade. “Damn straight. That’s what people want. Co-mmu-ni-ca-tion. There are no phone lines, no internet, no texting. Just CB radios and satellite phones that can’t call anybody else. This right here is a hub. We have fifty two people here at the radio tower, and we’re pooling our resources and knowledge to stay safe and help you, out there, stay safe too. I remember when we got that radio call in from Oklahoma, Bob Stenton. Told us how to really purify water using a drum, charcoal and sand, seems obvious in hindsight, don’t it? And Susie Miller, little girl with her daddy’s rifle and radio, found by Bill and Margaret Applehorn as they headed out of Nebraska into Kansas in a beat up truck before it got too cold, both listeners and callers of our show.”
Chicago Ted chimed in quickly before HoundDog kept talking. “I’ll admit it. I cried when she thanked you for helping her. She’s at Theta base, isn’t she? Hey, honey, make a call to the show. Last I heard you had a new puppy. What’d you decide to call him?”
The DJ kept going on his rant, instead of following Ted’s lead into lighter topics. “Ain’t no shame in that. Not that many kids left. We got to keep them safe. There’s a cold part of my heart that’s thankful that this godawful disease is nearly a hundred percent fatal for the young. It’s bad enough shooting your neighbor.” A rumbling cough tried to hide his sudenly tear choked voice and failed. “But our true neighbors are no longer the zombies at the door. It’s you, our fellow radiophiles and survivors and there are thousands of miles between us. So when that tank showed up -where the hell was that bad boy when we had a big’un pounding at our walls, I don’t know- when it showed up and we got our orders to turn off the lights and all of you radioed in and cried out ‘NO’…” Silence filled the airways, with a few deep breaths buzzing in the background.
A soft voice lingered barely out of hearing range. “Hey, HoundDog, its okay, I can finish up.”
Returning strong and loud, the jokey voice chided the other man. “No, Lonely Stu, don’t try stealing my job now. I know you’ve been eyeing my seat for a while now. Used to think it was just you being lonesome and desperate.” Chicago Ted laughed long at Stu’s expense as HoundDog finished the story. “When you all called in and that motherboard flashed white and red, I knew we are not alone. Nobody is alone. And some of those calls were of people stuck in their bunkers, waiting for the all clear, or in an attic without a friendly face in sight. This is human connection and we need to keep it alive to keep our souls alive, so when a solution comes up, we’ll all know of it together and we’ll prepare for it together and we’ll survive together. We will rebuild together, every single one of us.”
Stu contributed some more to keep the ball rolling. “That tank turned tail and ran when that general guy radioed in. Johnson, was it?”
The Dog was better with names, knew every single caller, especially those that reached out one last time before their doors caved in and death fell upon them. “Jameson, now located on one of those secret bases, computer whiz Parker is at the same one…” Parker felt pumped for the shout out. “…used to be in charge of ECHO before it got overrun. How he managed to secure an open town with cornfields all around him for over a month, I’ll never know. Man had a set of lungs on him, could hear him clear as day as he outranked the commanding officer of the tank and told them to back off since they were disrupting his camp worse than any music ever did.”
A rustle of papers muffled Stu’s words. “He has an announcement to make later, doesn’t he?
“Yeah, that’s right. We got him scheduled in…” more shuffling papers “…two days from now.”
A hand slammed on a table, the voice teasingly gruff. “Hey, I thought that this was an hour meant for interviewing the great Chicago Ted.”
“Sorry, oh Great One. So what else do you have for our listeners?” The sounds of an orchestra fine-tuning their instruments ended when a slim baton smacked a hard surface several times. The conductor about to start.
“Ever hear of a little technique called crowning a witch? The foursome at Theta Base thinks that they came up with that and I’m calling bull. Half of their stories don’t even make sense. About the only thing I do believe is that they pop whole bottles of pills. Crazy people, saying that first aids are all they needed after getting slammed around.”
The radio suddenly cut off, Parker nearly toppling backwards as he noticed Jameson standing behind him. “It’s not your downtime yet. Keep to your duties.”
Parker slammed his feet down, a startled breath teetering out through his nose. “This is part of it, you know. Keeping up with the latest news, compiling data, gathering survivor statistics. Maria’s meditation hour is going to start after this show. How about a little leeway, Sir?” He smiled nervously as he eyed the open door. He hadn’t heard it creak like it usually did.
“Postpone that and get all essential personnel to level two. Benstein has his new samples and Dr. May wants to introduce the mutt to the cell. Give it some running space.” Deep seated discontent contorted his face into a grimace, he would have rather given the beast a five by five foot cage to wallow in, keep it restrained enough to jab a needle into whenever they needed to pull it out for some tests. Now they’d need to figure how to stop it jumping around. At the very least he was going the get something worthwhile out of it. “I want people there to see how it moves and learn a thing or two about guessing its attacks. You make sure to record and edit it all as I’m sending that video out as a training measure.”
Microphone in hand, Parker nodded his assent and typed some commands in to look busy. “You got it, boss.” Once Jameson left the room, the door closing with a slight click, he let go of heated breath and gulped once. “Heellllooo, happy campers. If you have Z-clearance, head on over to the second level. I repeat, if you have Z-clearance, head on over to the second level. For everybody else, satellites are reading clear so I have some smooth tunes I jacked out of an Ipod I finally got running. Enjoy the playlist. This baby is on shuffle.”
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Captured over thirty hours ago, the hunter was more physically and emotionally exhausted than it has ever been during its second life. Livedeath kept poking it, a fiery pain that flowed through its veins and took away the little movement it had left. Brighlight blinded it, worse than sunlight, and its need for cover grew into a desperate hunger that made it consider biting its tongue off. Womantrap kept touching. Smallstrongbeast kept hurting. The only prey had a loudstingdeath and kept clicking it in its face, the sting never hitting. Sometimes prey wasn’t prey and did things like Livedeath and that scared the hunter. Loudstingdeath was bad, livedeath was worse. There was no runjumppounce, just wait, rest, cringe, rest, wait, pain.
Hunting grounds were simple life, with simple prey and simple enemies. The hunter understood the mobpack and the longtongue and even knew not to slash at the killcrier that sounded like prey but wasn’t. Even the stupid brothers that stole its kills were simple to get rid of. The hunter didn’t know what to do, how to intimidate, how to escape, nothing made sense. If it got caught then it should have been killed and eaten, even prey follow this rule.
Its body was full of livedeath but not sleepdeath like that time after greatpain when it awoke to a clean mouth, the proof of its skill ripped away as though it was a weakling that couldn’t feed. Brothers would laugh, then slash, then kill. The hunter needed to pounce and eat big prey before returning to hunting grounds. They could tell when it was only small on four legs. It would return with bloodsoaked cover and a full stomach and red teeth, and beat a strongbeast and rule a pack of brothers. It will be strong and intimidating, and happy. It will be happy again. It will escape and be happy and strong.
The soldier, actually a trained corporal not a last minute recruit, named Smith hauled the left side of the hunter’s lax body into the cell through a featureless pressurized door with no handle on the inside. “Is it me or is Fido crying?”
“Probably just irritation from all the lights.” Wesson, his backup and all around best friend, shrugged uncaringly as he carried the right. They’ve been around each other since basic; pretty sure their combined names amused the higher ups enough to transfer them as a team. “Okay, ready to do this?”
“Hell, no. What do we have left? Five minutes?” They tugged at the restraints till they loosened, unfastening straps and belts. The knots that held the planks behind the hunter’s knees were cut to speed things along.
“Less if you keep yapping. Turn him over” Face down, the hunter’s face dug into the muzzle, a thin strip of gauze doing nothing to cushion the metal from the ridge of its nose. “Okay, all clear?”
Smith carried all of the restraints bundled up in an arm towards the only way in or out; his free one held a pistol aimed directly at the back of the infected’s head. “Got your back.”
Suddenly tight, then loose, the muzzle fell free as the hunter’s head smacked the coarse floor. “We’re good. Open up and let us out.” Two quick bangs at the door, the pair fighting every instinct in their bodies to kill the infected monster they were currently trapped with.
It slid open for less than five seconds, leaving Peter alone under bright fluorescent lights behind high-density plexiglass in the ceiling. Beaten, starving and naked, recorded by a dozen cameras as a small crowd watched the scene from above. Against the curved wall were a tattered blanket and a flat pillow; across from that, a plastic jar full of water and a metal plate with a sliver of cooked meat; a quarter of the way along the wall was another metal plate with a similar portion of raw meat; by the door was a ring of keys all useless except to see what the hunter would do with them.
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Mobility started with tremors that jerked the scarred torso and flickered at the fingers. Not long after, a flailing arm twisted the body backwards landing the hunter face up. Its howl at the painful lights still weak. The legs jerked as spasms propelled Peter across the floor, a sudden lurch standing it up for a moment before it collapsed forward, arms too slow to cushion the fall.
It lay still as rapid breaths burst through its mouth, growls and shrieks almost merry as it methodically placed its limbs in order to crouch. Still unsteady and uncoordinated, it took several tries to reach the blanket which it wrapped around its head and torso several times over, tightly wound and looking like a toga wearing ninja. The next half-hour was spent with Peter rubbing the blanket over its head, securing it, straightening it, and smoothing it out. Like a bird cleaning its feathers.
The hunter shuffled slowly after awhile, snuffling and growling, disregarding the food and drinking the entire jar of water in a single go. It couldn’t really see the door as it was nondescript, the same color and texture of the wall. But it could see the reflective glass and it remembered breaking through windows and surprising prey.
There were many hardoors, but not many hardglass. Stupid brothers jumping again and again through hardglass, mashing their faces and breaking their teeth. This hunter was smart and strong and intimidating and it only needed to check once to know if it was hardglass. And it’s near brightlights and the cover was badcover that let brighlight shine through, but it was also goodcover that the hunter was never ever going to lose.
Brightlights hurt so much for so long, that the hunter wasn’t scared of them anymore. It was prepared and would jump through the glass and kill all the prey and eat and return to hunting grounds and stay there. Alone is not good. The hunter had learned, alone is not good and manymanymany prey is bad.
It took two jumps - one to gain height, the second to gain momentum - to mash against the one way mirror. It took about thirty attempts after that till the hunter’s bloody fists settled on the ground, agonized groans seeping out from its chest as it pulled the cover over its head in defeat. From time to time it would run at a wall and scratch at it, gouging chunks of paint off and scrapping at the reinforced cement underneath.
A sudden crazed pounce slammed the pillow beneath the hunter as it ripped at it maniacally, the scent of Livedeath still on it as it wanted to kill the prey that wasn’t prey and trapped the hunter. Prey had taken everything and left nothing, not even red teeth. Why, why did prey take red teeth? A feeling Peter could no longer describe coursed through him. Humiliation. It burned worse than the fear and pain, worse than hunger and despair.
It was the first exclusively human emotion Peter had felt in a long time.
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