“Why didn’t you kill all of them?”
“That wasn’t my decision to make.” He looked the captain in the face, without any hesitation. “If it had been my choice, they’d all be dead now. John is the one who showed them compassion.”
“Aren’t you afraid they’ll tell about you? That I’ll tell my superiors in the military?”
“I can’t stop you, Captain. I think it would be a mistake on your part, but I certainly can’t stop you.”
“You could kill me.”
“I could. I won’t.”
The man was trying to stay calm, but Roland could smell his anger, his confusion. “I don’t understand you.”
“No, but I understand you, Captain. I know your type, as it were. We’re a lot alike.”
“How do you figure?”
“When you’re out in the field, you do what you are told, you follow your orders and you accept what your conscience will allow you to accept. You live by the rules of the military organization and you fight for what you believe is right. And I’d lay odds that if one of your men is killed in combat you go through all of the proper paperwork and you handle the phone calls to the soldier’s family yourself. Am I right?”
Fulford nodded.
“I do the same thing with my people. I care for them, I give them their orders and I handle whatever crisis comes my way.” He paced, restless again. His kind was always restless. “Here’s the thing you need to know, Captain Fulford. Even if you told your military superiors that you had the perfect recipe for soldiers that couldn’t be stopped, even if you told them and they believed you, it would never work.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you think I’ve done some checking? Would you go into a new combat zone without at least looking at a map? There’s nothing to differentiate us from perfectly normal human beings. There aren’t any traceable markers in our cells and you can’t grow a culture on a petri dish that will give up the secret to why we are.”
“So what is it then? Magic?”
“That or something science still can’t quantify. I really don’t know.”
“Let’s change subjects. What happened to Cheryl and Mark’s kids?”
“They’re safe and at another house. We didn’t want them anywhere around you and Lassiter’s families. You don’t have to worry about them.”
They sat in silence for a few moments before Roland asked a question. “What would you have done in my situation, Captain? What would you have done if it had been Sarah, or one of your children?”
Fulford looked at him and answered immediately. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I would have killed all three of them.”
The wind caught the side of the building and pushed at both of them with an arctic chill. They stood outside together and waited for Scott Lassiter to come back and give them his answer.
Editors’ Note
Thanks for reading this Cohesion book.
We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we did putting it together.
Please consider leaving us a review, or even sampling the rest of what Cohesion Press offers, as everything is packed full of action, monsters, and creatures that wish you harm.
Geoff Brown — Director, Cohesion Press.
Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum
Beechworth, Australia
Amanda J Spedding — Editor-in-chief, Cohesion Press
Sydney, Australia