A nod.
“Where are the rest of them?”
“Didn’t get that far.”
“Are we sure he’s telling the truth, and not just saying what he thinks we want to hear?”
Tyrel took a sip of water from his canteen. “He knows details. Stuff you told me about. He was there when it happened.”
I drew my knife and stared at its black blade in the orange glow of the fire. The steel felt cold in my hands. “I want to know where the others are. All of them.”
Tyrel stood up. “Let’s see what we can find out.”
Dills looked terrified. He sat in a pool of light thrown by the room’s single dim lantern. We came through the door and shut it behind us and stood staring stone-faced at the doomed man. The naked blade of my knife dangled from my right hand.
Dills’ boots scrambled across the wood-plank floor as he struggled to push himself further into the corner of the cabin. Not that it would do him any good. The chains restraining him to the thick support posts were anchored by deep-driven eyebolts. He was not going anywhere.
“You have a choice.” My voice came out flat, harsh, and cold as the winter wind. “Die quick, or die slow. Tell me what I want to know, and you’ll go fast. Make me work for it, and you’ll die screaming until you can’t scream anymore.”
I waited a while. When you tell a man he is going to die, and you want information from him, you have to give him time to accept it. He begged for a few minutes, but when he figured out it was having no effect, he began spitting and cursing.
“Fuck you bastards,” he said, eyes aflame with defiance. “I ain’t telling you shit.”
My smile felt dry and dead, and I watched some of the fire leave Dills’ eyes. His snarl sagged and grew brittle.
“We’ll just see about that.”
*****
Every man has a breaking point. Dills took less time than expected to reach his.
There are certain pains you can inflict that leave a person intact, physically speaking. Others do permanent damage, something from which a person will never recover. It happens, and they know they will never be the same again. There is no healing from this.
I took no pleasure in it. Much like killing the infected, it was a means to an end. But unlike dispatching the undead, I did not consider it a kindness. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Small droplets of blood spattered my pants and the legs of my chair. Three fingers and a thumb lay on the ground in front of me, neatly arranged. It was important he see them lying there. Dills huddled over his ruined hand, moaning. The smell of burnt flesh was heavy in the air.
“I’m going to leave you here with Tyrel,” I said. “I’m going to check out what you’ve told me. If you told the truth, you’ll die quickly. If you lied to me,” I pointed to his severed fingers, “those are just the beginning. So if you’ve lied to me at all, unless want to die knowing what your own dick and balls taste like, now would be the time to confess.”
“I swear to God,” Dills sobbed. “I told you everything.”
“For your sake, I hope you’re right.”
Outside, Tyrel grabbed me by the arm and walked me away from the cabin. “Caleb … you sure about this? I know a thing or two about revenge, son. It leaves you empty and cold and you get back nothing you lost. And it’s a damn good way to get yourself killed.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
He stepped closer, looking me in the eye. “It matters to me, Caleb.”
I almost pulled away until I saw the concern in his eyes, the affection he had invested in me since I was seven years old. You do not simply dismiss someone who has cared for you for that long. A lump rose in my throat and my eyes stung in the chill night air. “Ty, I have to do this. I can’t live with it. The anger. I have to do something or it’s just going to burn me up inside until there’s nothing left.”
An understanding passed between us, then. Tyrel still had the bloodstains on the sheath of his knife. I had seen the sniper rifle hanging in his home above the fireplace. There were no words necessary. We shared the simple acknowledgement of two people who had been in the same place and knew what it had cost them. And when you find yourself there in the depths, down in the darkest place, you make a light any way you can. Even if it means burning down the world.
“Take the horse,” Tyrel said. “He’ll let you know if there’s infected nearby.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
He let go of my arm. “Ride fast, son. And if it comes to it, shoot straight.”
I embraced my old friend, and then set off down the mountain.
SIXTY-TWO
A wave of murders struck Colorado Springs.
The first of them I caught up with on the way home from a drinking hole I heard about when I worked for the Civilian Construction Corps, a place called Flannery’s. It was a dingy, stinking bar made of two shipping containers with the center walls cut away by an acetylene torch, a foot-wide length of steel welded over the top joint to keep the rain out, and it had cheap grog, a tiny stage, and a few desultory strippers. It did a good turn of business.
I hung out in the place downing drinks that tasted like turpentine and nightmares and listened to the mark get rowdy with his friends. The description fit, and he lived in the part of town Dills said he did, but I needed the name to be sure. It did not take long to get it.
“Hey Ryan,” one of the roughnecks at his table said. “You got the next round or what?” He held up his empty glass and shook it.
The mark, Ryan, held up a hand. “Fine, fine, you thirsty fucker. Be right back.”
When he bellied up to the bar, I turned to him. “Your name Ryan?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Who’s asking?”
“Dan Foley, out of Austin. Your last name Bromley?”
He shook his head. “No. Martin.”
I feigned a look of disappointment. “Dang. Sorry to bother you. You look like someone I knew from … before. When I heard your name was Ryan, I thought …” I looked down into my glass.
“Don’t sweat it,” Ryan Martin said. He patted my shoulder with genuine sympathy. “I got one of those faces. Hope you find your friend.”
The bartender brought him his drinks, and he went back to his table. I stayed in my stool, nursing grog and pretending to enjoy the gaunt, limp-breasted women gyrating on stage. At an hour before curfew, the bartender turned off the cell phone connected to a small speaker playing old hip-hop songs, plugged the phone into a solar trickle-charger that would do absolutely no good at all until morning, and announced the bar was closed. The last dancer picked up her tips—a collection of small but fairly valuable trade—and tiredly left the stage.
The few remaining patrons complained loudly, but finished their drinks quickly. Minutes later, Martin and his group got up and walked out. I paid my tab with four .308 cartridges and followed.
My hands were steady. The few drinks I’d had kept the shakes away, and probably would continue to do so for at least another hour. I had a pistol and a knife under my coat, but contrary to my normal operating procedure, the knife was primary and the pistol was backup. I wanted to do this quiet, but I would take it any way I could get it.
Martin’s two friends broke off from the pedestrian road at separate intervals, leaving the ex-soldier walking alone toward his corner of the refugee districts. I kept my distance until he turned down his street, then I sped up. If he had been less inebriated, he probably would have heard me coming and I would have had to resort to the pistol. As it was, I managed to sneak up behind him just as he was about to climb the ladder to his roof hatch.
At the last instant, he either heard me or sensed something was wrong, and half turned in my direction. There was an alarmed question on his lips, but he never got a chance to ask it. My feet were set, heels dug in, hips twisting, arm following through with the momentum of a right hook that clipped him squarely on the chin, my fist striking with only the first two knuckles to avoid breaking my hand. I put everything I had into that punch, and I am fairly certain it would have dropped a rhino.