“Don’t I? What then do you suggest I do?”
“
IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY IN THE NEXT MINUTE, CONRAD, WE WILL BE FORCED TO COME IN AFTER YOU!
”
Conrad said to Thomas, “Just let Kyle go.”
“Sorry, neighbor, no can do. He’s my insurance now. I’ll tell them I was working you this entire time. They can check my file, see I worked both sides. They can—”
Thomas’s head exploded a moment before Conrad became aware of the gunshot. Kyle screamed and tried to run toward him but James swooped in, grabbed his arm, and pulled him back.
“Got you,” James said to Kyle, holding him close. He’d ditched his rifle in favor of a pistol, which he’d just used to expire Thomas.
Gabriel sighed and said, “Oh thank goodness.” Conrad was just now aware that the zombie had taken off his mask; his face was soaked with sweat. Then Conrad noticed the zombie’s faltering expression as he said, “James, no,” and Conrad looked back to find James holding Kyle up in front of him, keeping the pistol aimed at his head.
“Sorry, guys, but I have no choice.”
Gabriel said, “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“This would be one fucked up joke, wouldn’t it? But no, this is the way it has to be.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to die. I really don’t, not even for some stupid cause that doesn’t even exist. I mean, I was with you, all the way up until we got Eugene Moss and talked to Harper. But when he bailed …” James shook his head. “No, now it’s just hopeless.”
“How?”
“After we’d come back up to the surface, remember I had to stay behind to take a piss? That’s when I called the Hunters the first time, talked to Philip Hager myself, explained the situation and said I wanted to make a deal.”
Gabriel laughed. “You really think he’ll deal with you? He’s going to kill you the first chance he gets.”
“No he won’t. Because I promised him Conrad, and I told him I had more information for him when we met, information that’s going to guarantee me at least a couple more days left alive on this earth.”
Outside, the voice on the bullhorn said, “
ALL RIGHT, CONRAD, MINUTE’S UP! WE’RE COMING IN!
” and James smiled first at Conrad, then at Gabriel.
“He wants you too for some reason. I don’t know why, but he said he wants you, and I’m going to give you to him. But you know what? I never really liked you a whole lot. In fact, if I could, I’d kill you right now for the pure satisfaction of watching you die. You fucked up my life more than the Government did, if you can believe that, because at least the Government wasn’t like me. But you were. You … shit, Gabriel, you’re the real traitor.”
And with that, he pointed the pistol at Gabriel and shot him twice in the leg.
Dying
With their wrists
bound behind their backs, Conrad and Gabriel stood on the very top floor of the Herculean, in what had once been The Restaurant, and leaned their foreheads against the window to stare down at the city below.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Philip asked. He stood directly behind them in the dark. “You can see over ten miles in every direction.”
Gabriel’s leg had been tied with a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood. It was strange to Conrad that for a while he had forgotten one of the true differences between the two of them, that while whatever blood inside Conrad was solid and cold, Gabriel’s was moving and warm.
“What do you think about when you see all those lights down there—all those lights stretching for miles and miles and miles?”
Neither of the men answered. Gabriel was having trouble standing, placing his entire weight on the window, his breathing irregular and his face very pale. Conrad was only half-aware of the zombie, instead staring out at the blanket of distant lights and thinking about his son. Thinking about how he had come so close to saving Kyle, and how when James had grabbed his son Conrad froze and just stood there, wanting to grab the weapon or rush at James but finding he didn’t have the strength.
“Well?” Philip said, his voice rising.
Gabriel said in a soft voice, “It makes me think of one of the temptations Christ faced in the desert.”
“Christ? What is a Christ?”
“A character in a book.”
“
Book
? Eventually, I will make sure that all books are wiped off this planet.”
“That’s a good idea,” Gabriel said. “If you don’t wipe off all the books, someday they’ll ban together into one great book monster and—”
Philip stepped forward suddenly and held the tip of his broadsword to Gabriel’s throat.
“That’s enough out of you,” Philip said. He smiled at Conrad in the dark. “How are we doing, Conrad?”
“Where is my son?”
“Don’t worry. He’s as safe as he can be. We’re taking very good care of him.”
“If you do anything to him, I will expire you.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Philip shifted the tip of the broadsword away from Gabriel’s throat and pointed at Conrad’s face. “You can’t do anything. I could cut off your nose right now and there’s nothing you could do about it.”
Conrad was silent, glaring back at him.
Philip shouted, “Lights,” and a moment later light flickered on all over the room, illuminating the half dozen Hunters standing there, armed with both broadswords and assault rifles.
The room itself had been stripped of The Restaurant’s usual décor, all the ornate and plush tables and chairs gone and replaced by one single folding table in the middle of the room. And on that table now was a large cardboard box. There was nothing written on this box, and for some reason this made Conrad nervous.
He turned around immediately and started to take a step toward Philip, because he somehow knew it was Kyle in that cardboard box, bent up and twisted to fit just so. But before he could take a complete step, Philip’s broadsword was thrust into his chest, right by his heart, Philip smiling at him and shaking his head.
“It doesn’t even faze you, does it? I have my sword lodged right through your heart and you’re just standing there like nothing’s happened. You know by now that there really isn’t anything such as pain. I’ve read the reports too. I know all about the research that’s been done. It’s fascinating stuff, really, and it’s unfortunate that it all has to be destroyed.”
Philip pulled the blade out and stabbed Gabriel in the arm, the zombie crying out and then clamping his mouth shut, squeezing his eyes tight.
“And look at that. Really, just look at that reaction. Be honest with me, Conrad, and tell me why it’s not obvious we’re the next step in evolution. What’s so great about him? The simple fact that he actually feels anything at all slows him down in the end. It makes him weaker. It makes him pathetic.”
“I’m expiring,” Conrad said, still staring past Philip at the cardboard box.
“We’re all expiring.” Philip studied the bloodied tip of his broadsword in the light. “I’ve read that report too.”
“No,” Conrad said, and looked straight at Philip, “I mean I’m decaying right as we speak.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not sure exactly. But the fact that my body’s decaying at a rapid rate, and his”—glancing at Gabriel—“is actually growing stronger … now you tell me how that’s not one step down the evolutionary chain.”
Philip stared at him hard for a moment, taking it all in. Eventually he rolled his eyes, shook his head, and snapped his fingers. A Hunter appeared at his side, handing him a white cloth, which Philip used to wipe away the blood on the tip of his broadsword.
Conrad said, “What did I ever do to you?”
“To me? Nothing. I’ve just never liked you. Well wait, that’s not true. At first I did. At first I knew who your father was—I mean, who wouldn’t—and I was excited to work by your side. But then I realized there was nothing special about you. Sure, you had a lot of kills on your record, you graduated at the top of your class, but under all of that you were just … ordinary. Except your old man was who he was and that opened all sorts of doors for you. You never had to work to get where you were, you just let daddy lead the way. And the worst part about it—at least from what I could see—was that you wasted every single second.”
Gabriel, leaning against the window staring out at the city, started to laugh, a low chuckle deep in his throat.
Despite the fact he’d just cleaned his broadsword, Philip stabbed Gabriel in the arm again. “What are you laughing about?”
His eyes squeezed tight, his mouth clamped shut to keep him from crying out, Gabriel didn’t answer.
Philip placed the tip of the broadsword to the back of Gabriel’s neck. “Tell me.”
“You just sound …”
“What?”
“Jealous.”
“Jealous?” Philip laughed. “I’m not jealous of Conrad.”
“So you say, but it certainly sounds like you are. And do you want to know something? Jealousy is an emotion, and if I’m not mistaken, emotions are only what the living—”
Philip stabbed the zombie once more in the arm, this time twisting the broadsword just a bit before pulling it back out, causing Gabriel to scream.
“Do
you
want to know something? From what I read about you I was expecting to find this … this great and all-powerful zombie. One of the rare naturally born zombies on this planet. But you’re nothing.”
Philip stepped back and watched the blood dripping from the wounds, soaking Gabriel’s shirt and the carpet below.
“As much as I’m enjoying this—and yes, I know that’s an emotion too—I really need to stop. I need to keep you alive for tomorrow afternoon, when I’ll publicly execute you in front of the world. After all you took away my chance of executing Eugene Moss, from what I understand.”
Seeing both men’s reactions to this, Philip grinned and said, “Yes, that’s right. James has told me everything. About that man Harper and what he plans to do. Well, I say to him good luck. I have over five hundred Hunters in this building right now, just waiting for them. That’s why I called that mandatory curfew, to keep the streets clear for when they plan to attack. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. It should be fun to slaughter them all.”
His eyes closed, taking slow, deep breaths, Gabriel said, “So what is the public going to think when they find out you made a deal with a zombie?”
“You mean James? I’m not worried. The public will think what I want them to think. And who knows, maybe I’ll even tell them about James. It’ll definitely be a blow to the rest of the living to see one of their own turned against them. In fact, would you like to know what he’s doing right now? He’s down in the subbasement working with my men in getting rid of all the Pandoras that were apparently stored away there. Can you believe that? This place has been sitting on nearly a thousand Pandoras for decades, and if it wasn’t for James, they would still be there.”
“But you’re going to kill him eventually.”
“Oh yes, that’s a definite. He knows it too, though he hasn’t said as much. But he wants to be the last living alive on this earth, and I’m prepared to grant him that wish. And when the rest of you are all destroyed, then it’s his turn. To be honest, I think he’ll go willingly, when it’s all said and done.”
“And then what?” Gabriel asked. “When all the living are destroyed and all that’s left are the dead, who then will you hunt?”
“Right now I can’t say,” Philip said, smiling, “but I’m sure by then we’ll have someone in mind.”
He wiped the rest of the blood off his broadsword with the cloth and dropped the cloth to the floor. He sheathed the sword, snapped his fingers, and said, “Get this zombie out of my sight.”
Two Hunters approached and grabbed both of Gabriel’s arms and lead him away, past the table with the cardboard box on top, toward the bank of elevators where Conrad had once stood with his wife what seemed a century ago.
“I’m not jealous of you by the way,” Philip said to Conrad in an almost whisper. “I just never thought it was fair you got where you were because of your father. Not like me, whose father wasn’t a world renowned Hunter but a stupid carpenter that didn’t know any better.”
Philip stepped back and motioned Conrad toward the table.
“Care to see what’s in the box?”
Conrad started forward, taking step after unsteady step, until he found himself standing right in front of the table and the box.
Using his broadsword to cut the plastic ties keeping Conrad’s wrists together, Philip said, “Open it.”
Conrad did. He opened it, quickly at first, then slowly, and when he had raised the flaps and looked inside he instantly stepped back and closed his eyes.
“You didn’t,” he whispered.
“It seemed appropriate at the time. In retrospect the man really did deserve more. He was a traitor, yes, but he had always treated me well. And no matter how many different body parts I cut off him, he never said a word. So yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have expired him like a zombie, but oh well.”
His eyes still closed, Conrad said, “Why am I here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why haven’t you expired me yet?”
“Because I’m having a lot more fun fucking with your head. I’m having a lot more fun
torturing
you, however that may be.” Philip stepped closer, so that he was directly behind Conrad, and whispered into his ear, “Mostly though, I want to see the offspring of the world’s greatest Hunter driven insane. I want to prove that you really aren’t the best. I want to hear you beg me for your existence.”
“Fine then—I’ll beg you. I’ll tell you I’m not the best, because I’m not. Now what?”
Philip shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. It’s not how I planned this to go.”
“How did you plan this to go?”
“First I need to show you something else.”
“My son?”
“No.” Philip smiled. “This is so much better.”