“Mercer! Find him! Kill him!”
And each time the stories grew. Bigger and bloodier, the exaggerations mixed in with the truth. The fear was spreading among the food supply, taking root in the souls of men and women that had surrendered. They were becoming hesitant, doubts sprouting from their once-contented minds.
“Mercer! Stop him at all costs!”
He had to cross another town, and like the last few, he didn’t have to skirt around the edges to keep from being seen, because there was no one left to witness his passing by. It was just debris and the fading stench of smoke and gunpowder now, residues of a bloodbath from two days ago. The bodies were gone, removed to be fed on before the precious liquid in their veins became useless.
“Mercer!”
And as Mercer’s people rampaged, the agitation grew inside the hive. The brood was restless, the blue eyes swearing retribution, and yet their human collaborators seemed incapable of stopping the chaos. How, they wondered, could so few people cause so much destruction?
“Humans,” they said, “this is what they do.”
“This is what they’re capable of,” others agreed.
“Violence,” still others chimed in.
“Destruction.”
“They’ll slaughter even their own.”
“Even the ones bearing children.”
“They’re indiscriminate.”
“Animals.”
“Worse than animals.”
“Yes.”
“This is why we have to show them a better way.”
“Our way.”
“Yes…”
He moved along the piles of rubble, making sure not to touch the bullet casings that littered his path. The black eyes were out there (everywhere), watching and listening and feeling for every slight shift in the wind, every out-of-place item. They weren’t nearly as intuitive, their senses not nearly as heightened as his, but they made up for what they lacked in ability with sheer number. And there were so, so many of them.
The town receded into the distance behind him, and he circled buildings that once thrived with life. A faded yellow M seemed to almost glow in the distance, beckoning him, but he went the other way, avoiding the long, gray concrete highway that connected Houston to the cities along the coastline.
The voices had stopped calling to him hours ago, but even as he neared his destination, a surge rippled across his skin with the first hint of morning. It was coming, rising in the east as it always did night after night after night…
“Don’t make us wait very long,” the blue eyes had said. “You know how easily bored we can become.”
But he didn’t hurry. He knew they would wait for him. That was, after all, the whole point of last night. Capturing his friends. Danny and Gaby. And the boy.
What was his name again?
It would come to him, eventually. It always did.
He slept, and like all the other nights, he dreamt of her. The crystal blue of her eyes, the golden strands of her hair, the sweet taste of her lips, and most of all, the feel of her skin against his. She would cringe if she could see him now, he was sure of it. He wasn’t the man he once was. He wasn’t even a man at all.
Lara.
She was out there somewhere, waiting for Danny and Gaby. Maybe even waiting for him. No, not him. She would have given him up for dead long ago. Days ago. Weeks ago. Months (?) ago.
How long had it been since he died?
He couldn’t remember. The nights were a blur. Not that it mattered, anyway. The past was the past; he had to concentrate on the future. The here and now.
Mabry.
Out there, vulnerable. So, so vulnerable.
He had spent days in the city poking at their defenses, looking for ways in. A small sliver of access, a forgotten point of entry. Anything that would allow him to get close and do what he had to do.
Mabry.
He should have stuck to the plan and not left to come here. But it was Danny. And Gaby. And if he wanted to retain an ounce of his humanity (it was already so difficult; he could feel it slipping every night, every time he had to rest, to heal his wounds), he couldn’t leave them in the blue eyes’ hands.
“Don’t make us wait very long.”
He opened his eyes to gunfire in the distance, followed shortly by the very distinctive taste of blood in the air, carried to his position by the wind. He licked his lips, and every inch of him yearned to taste it. How many days had it been since he satiated himself on the raccoon? Too long ago, and it had been such a small creature; he’d been forced to spend so much of his energy on recovering from his wounds.
The gunfire rolled across the world like thunder. Close, but beyond his reach. He could feel the siren of daylight calling to him. He longed to embrace its warmth. It had been so, so long. It wouldn’t have taken much, and there was nothing to stop him.
Except her. And the future.
Not for him, no. The future was for her. Everything he did now was for her.
Lara.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on the blue of her eyes, the yellow of her hair, the sweetness of her lips…even as the pop-pop-pop echoed, then faded, only to start all over again…
Gallant, Texas.
A nothing city in a nothing part of the state. It was close enough to the ocean that the breeze teased at his skin. He ignored it — easy to do this far from the (killing) water — and pressed on through the darkness, moving toward the center of town.
The business district. Shops and glass storefronts. Car dealerships.
They were here somewhere. Danny and Gaby. Like mice, held against their will to draw him closer.
So he went.
There were nests in the bigger buildings around him. Fresh ones. They had only come here recently and were staying off the streets, though he spied a few of them on the rooftops leaning over the edges, watching and waiting to report in. The black eyes were always smarter when the blue eyes were around to command them.
“He’s here,” a voice said inside his head.
“Close,” another added.
Had they seen him? No. He was too careful, and he wasn’t “him” at the moment. Maybe they had sensed him. It was always a challenge to hide from the blue eyes when he was in close proximity, and “close” was a matter of perception. Distance, when connected to the consciousness the way he was right now, was not always easy to pinpoint.
“He’s wearing one of them.”
“The black eyes.”
“Clever boy.”
“Not clever enough…”
They knew. No.
No, no, no.
Hands reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders, and his arms snapped, the clacking of bones against loose skin as they converged, coming out of the shadows around him. Fingers groped at his face, slipping into his mouth and eyes for a foothold.