She thought that her arms might give out on her before she could reach the ship’s deck, but somehow she made it and flopped over the railing with a thud. She may have laid there forever if not for the bright splash of red that caught her eye.
There was a trail of blood all along the floor, leading down below deck. There was quite a lot of it.
Only one possibility came to the forefront of Nancy’s mind. She found that she couldn’t breathe. She began to shake. She didn’t want to know. But she
had
to know.
The stairwell was dark, but there was enough light filtering down for her to see that there was blood on the steps and along the wall. It might have been her imagination but it seemed much, much colder down here below deck.
And there he was. Nancy stared for a long time, denying, bargaining, wondering if she was dreaming,
praying
that she was dreaming. After a while she walked forward and placed a hesitant hand on Greg’s cold, pale face.
Nancy’s own body felt like ice. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t cry. She felt that the last little bit of her was shutting down. All she could do was stare at the pale, dead face of her friend, her brother. Gently, as though frightened that she would harm him in some way, she brushed a strand of hair out of his face and closed his eyes.
Half of her mind was screaming to find the baby, that surely Greg would have used the last of his strength to ensure Sarah’s safety, but the other half of her mind was entranced in the scene before her. Greg was slumped in a chair behind a desk, his head covered in so much blood that she couldn’t discern where the wound was. The gun he had taken from the farmhouse had dropped to the floor beneath where his hand now hung limp. He’d shot himself, she realized, and found a flare of anger filling her chest. She wanted to scream,
How dare he?! How dare he give up like this?!
But a moment later she saw the bigger picture. There was a large gash torn across his chest, and upon further examination one of his arms was torn partially off at the elbow. After taking all this in it wasn’t long before Nancy noticed the note on the table in front of him. The paper was spattered in blood and the writing was wobbly and unsure, but she could make it out.
Nancy and Ken,
I’m so sorry. I was stupid. I let my guard down. The owner of the boat was here when I came aboard. I wasn’t quick enough. I got him and tossed him overboard, but I wasn’t quick enough. I’m dying and I’m scared. I don’t want to be one of them. I’m sorry, but I’m going to shoot myself. I can’t become one of them.
Nancy, thank you for everything. I love you like you were my real sister, but if there’s a heaven I’ll be with my own family soon. I’m sorry I couldn’t hold out until you got here, but I can feel myself getting weaker. I just pray that you get here soon because Sarah needs you and I can’t be with her much longer.
Please forgive me. I love you.
-Greg
A few teardrops landed on the paper and made the blood spots run.
And then there was a groan.
It took Nancy a long time to lift her eyes, to look up at the thing that had been Greg. It was staring at her with wide, lifeless eyes, it’s mouth hanging open. It lifted the arm that was still whole and reached forward.
“You couldn’t do it,” Nancy whispered. She looked at his blood-soaked hair and realized that it wasn’t his, but from the zombie he’d fought. “You tried to kill yourself and you couldn’t do it.” Tears rolled down her eyes.
He looked at her, moaned at her like a wounded animal who was hungry and confused. His fingers opened and closed as he reached. For just a moment Nancy imagined that he recognized her, saw a future where she somehow managed to cure him of this postmortem disease. Then he opened his mouth wider than a human mouth should open and screeched an unholy screech, and the image was shattered.
He lunged over the table at her, and there was no time to think, no time to deliberate. She rolled to the side, snatched up the rifle that Greg had tried to use to end his own suffering, and fired.
There was half a moment during which she thought she’d missed, during which the zombie that had been Greg stared at her with something like shock on it’s newly-bloodied face. And then the body crumpled to the ground.
And Nancy screamed. She screamed out her pain and misery, her anger and frustration. She screamed for lost love, a lost brother. She screamed for the end of the world and the senseless death and destruction. She screamed until her chest ached and her throat went raw, until her breath was gone and her lungs refused to continue. When she couldn’t scream anymore she took a deep breath that rattled her chest and made her body shiver, and then she began to search for the baby.
Though she didn’t think she could feel anything anymore, panic soon filled her chest again. The baby wasn’t here! She wasn’t anywhere around Greg or the desk, she wasn’t amongst the scattered supplies that had been dropped on the floor, or amongst the contents of the desk that Greg had scattered in his search for pen and paper. She wasn’t in the bathroom or in the kitchenette. She wasn’t in the tiny bedroom. She was nowhere to be found. Nancy was just about to scream again, her heart ready to burst from the strain that had been put on it, when she heard footsteps above deck and realized that she had company. She took the stairs two at a time, burst through the door, and saw him.
At first she was too taken aback to react. Then she really
looked
at the man standing near the boat’s stern and she bit her tongue hard. He may have been a handsome man at one time, his lean body showing through a plain white shirt and jeans, his short blond hair ruffling in the wind. Handsome, perhaps, if not for the death-like pallor of his skin and the red liquid that seemed to swim behind the surface of his eyes.
Nancy hadn’t even completed the thought process that told her to run back below deck and grab the gun when the man turned his head sideways at her and a voice filled her head: “I wouldn’t do that.” Before she could react he shifted his body and she saw, with horror, that he was holding a bundle of blankets through which a small head was poking.
“Sarah,” Nancy whispered, voice hoarse. Her mind and body warred with each other. Should she run to the baby? Would this man - this
creature
- hurt either of them if she came closer? Should she run for the gun despite his warning? All she could think to do was to ask, “Is she alive?”
The man nodded. He did not move his lips, but his voice filled Nancy’s head, an intruder in her brain. “For now.”
She realized that he was poised and ready to drop the child over the railing if he so desired. The thought filled Nancy with rage. “Who the hell are you?” she cried. Her voice was saturated with hatred.
The voice that came back to her was impassive. “We are the watchers, the emissaries. We do the work that must be done. We complete the tasks given us by the Above.”
“The A-” Despite herself, Nancy found she was at a loss for words. Her mouth hung open, dumbfounded. After everything she’d seen and experienced she now desperately wanted to spit sarcasm and disbelief. What she eventually managed to say was, “Are you trying to tell me that you’re an angel sent from God?”
The man looked at her sideways again, moving his head slowly as though to examine her. “You may call us what you wish,” said the telepathic voice. “Whatever makes it easier for you to comprehend.”
“To comprehend
what
?” Nancy demanded. “If you want me to understand what you are, just
tell me what you are
!”
The man shook his head, just a tiny movement, almost imperceptible. “It does not matter to us that you comprehend what we are, merely that you comprehend what we have done.”
For a moment Nancy meant to demand that he drop the cryptic speak, but then his words poured over her and her heart beat like mad with rage. “
You
...” she hissed, her eyes narrowed, her blood boiling. “You things, whatever you are,
you
did this, didn’t you?” With an accusing finger that was shaking from the well of emotion beating in her chest, she pointed toward the shore where dozens of zombies were wandering around mindlessly, searching for their next victim.
The man did not answer, but the look he gave her was enough.
Nancy couldn’t hold the emotions in. She wanted to rush the man, to knock him on the floor, climb on top of him, and bash his face in until there was nothing left but a bloody pulp. She wanted to have her hands around his throat, to feel her fingers squeezing into his windpipe. The only thing that held her back was the fear of putting Sarah at risk, so instead she dropped to her knees and put her fists to the floor. She punched the deck of the boat again and again until her knuckles were raw and bleeding and one or two of her fingers felt like they might be broken. She bit her lip and tasted blood on her tongue. She squeezed her eyes shut until she saw spots and had to force herself to open them again.
When she finally looked back up at the man, who showed no emotion at the display he’d just witnessed, she could only force out one word: “Why?”
His response was immediate, as though he’d been waiting for the question and prepared the answer in advance. He said it simply and in a matter-of-fact tone: “Humanity had grown too corrupt. A purging was the only way to save your species.”
Nancy was shocked into silence. She stared at him, waiting for more information, waiting for some kind of
punchline
that never came. “Corrupt?” she finally repeated. She couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her voice. “You brought the apocalypse down on us because you think we’re
corrupt
?”
The man’s eyes widened, a strangely frightening sight. “Can you honestly disagree?” asked his mental voice.
Nancy didn’t get a chance to spit back a reply before her mind came under a sudden and vicious attack. In front of her eyes flew images. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, flashing in and out like brainwashing propaganda. She began to hyperventilate from the shock of it, but slowly the images began to come into focus, become clear enough for her to really
see
them. What she saw made her shoulders slump and her chest constrict.
What he was showing her was a compilation of the worst moments of mankind. She saw the ravages of war, armies cutting down women and children, mercilessly and without concern. She saw bombs destroying cities and razing entire civilizations to the ground. She saw men raping young girls before slitting their throats, and women drowning their children in bathtubs. She saw people ruining lives for financial gain. She saw psychopaths taking lives just for the thrill of it. And amongst the images of atrocities that had happened all over the planet, she saw reminders of things she herself had witnessed throughout her journey. She saw William dispatching his undead brother before taking his own life. She saw Aria ordering her cronies to murder Sarah’s birth mother in cold blood. She saw Jake attempting to rape her in the middle of the night. She saw the farmhouse family, screaming and struggling as the father shot them all one by one. The last image she saw was one of her parents, so happy and in love, being struck by a drunk driver in a transfer truck. She watched, chest tight, as her parents bled out, trapped in their crushed car, while the truck driver simply drove away.
“Enough!” she cried. It was more a plea than a demand. Tears were pouring down her face and she had to wrap her arms around her body to keep the heaving sobs to a minimum. “Please, enough!” She dropped her head to the ground and wept into the deck until the images began to fade away.
“Can you honestly disagree?” the voice asked again.
“No,” Nancy admitted without raising her head, and she was telling the truth. She could not truly argue. Humans, on the whole, had proved themselves time and again to be a truly despicable species. “But,” she added through her tears, “a lot of good people have died so that you could...
purge
the corruption.”
“Sacrifices must be made,” the voice said simply.
She had no fight left in her with the images of death, destruction, and a hundred kinds of evil still fresh in her mind. But she raised her head to look the man in the eye. “The sacrifices you took were too many,” she insisted. She saw in her mind’s eye her neighbors, who had been good people for the most part. There was Terri-Lynn, whose only sin had been giving up too easily, and Marshall who had tried so hard to keep her and Greg moving forward. There were the people who had gone to Aria’s hospital simply looking for shelter. And of course, there was Greg, sweet Greg, and Ken, who she had fallen in love with and who had taken a part of her to the grave with him. “You took
too many
.”
She had expected some kind of response, some kind of argument, but none came.
Eventually she let her gaze wander away from the Angel of Death and toward Sarah, unmoving in her bundle of blankets. “So you’ve been collecting the babies?” she guessed, remembering the words of the red-eyed girl from back at the farmhouse. “You’re going to, what? Start humanity over?”
The man made a movement, not quite a nod, but a motion that indicated that she had the general idea of it.