Chapter Twenty Seven
“It is now inarguable that our initial assumptions were made in error. HBRS-15.21 has accomplished its purpose for some infected subjects. The result just wasn’t what we were expecting.”
–Dr Ava Sherman. Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado. 4 Months After.
* * *
Another successful trial.
Mother studied the infected human as it scratched against the cell door of the settlement it had once protected. The eyes were white and lifeless, and it moved with a perpetual stagger, just like the majority of others they had encountered after breaching the outer walls. What made this one unique was its body, however. Not a single scratch or bite could be seen.
“Okay,” Hades said, “you’ve kept me in suspense long enough. How’d you hollow these guys?”
“I took the blood of a recently infected subject and dried it under a vacuum seal,” Mother explained. “This allowed the HBRS pseudo-cells to get ‘frozen’ in a compacted form that could survive briefly when aerosolized. This process loosely matches the conditions of the initial outbreak.” She stared at the empty husk in front. “They never saw it coming.”
Hades stroked his chin. “So you managed to make the Hollowing airborne, huh?”
“I wouldn’t go that far. Even in its most stable form, this product will degrade fourty-eight hours after creation. Once the seal is popped, it will decompose in less than a minute.”
“Still gonna have to come up with a cool name for our new bioweapon.” He turned around. “What do you think, Leah?”
She jammed her knife into the skull of her most recent victim, barely paying them mind. “I don’t give a shit.” One of the newer recruits, she had already demonstrated an affinity for mass murder.
“Ah, come on. This is a pretty sweet development. We can remotely destroy any living shithole now.”
Mother winced. “The material cost is steep for every hundred milligrams, and there is a high margin for error during manufacture. We’ll need to use this weapon sparingly.”
Leah yawned, still slicing away. “Just save this shit for the real fights then. Smaller settlements are barely a threat as is.”
Hades stepped closer and gleamed. “I’ve got it. We’ll call this one ‘Raw Hollowing’.” He waved his hand in front, as if he were the CEO of an advertising firm, and this was his flagship idea.
“I suppose that is accurate,” Mother conceded. It bore no surprise. Hades enjoyed playing the simpleminded brute, but he understood more than twice the science than he let on.
He frowned. “This almost takes the fun out of it though. You think Mother has us Hunters outclassed for good this time, Leah?”
She scoffed. “Please. You know how many survivors I downed fleeing this place? All we’ve got is another way to shock and awe. Hunting won’t end until there’s nothing left to Hunt.” She wrenched the skull of her victim open, as if to accentuate the point.
If only that weren’t true. Leah had made the comment in passing, but there was a bitter truth below that only Mother could see.
“Where you going now?” Hades asked.
“Elsewhere,” Mother said, not interested in extrapolating further.
This fortress had been designed more effectively than most. Based inside a former federal prison, the living inhabitants had used everything from reinforced concrete walls to cisterns to solar panels on the roofs to sustain themselves. With a population of over three hundred, it had seemed nigh impossible to breach, at least without a high blood toll from her kindred.
And yet, Mother had destroyed it in a single night.
She ran a finger along the concrete wall. Fresh blood was splattered throughout, no doubt due to the uncontrolled outbreak. Her tongue salivated at the sight in spite of herself.
How will this game end? Since Cheyenne, Mother and Hades had recruited many rezzers into their group. It was growing by the day, and there were even plans to wall themselves in to create a real community. One for the undead. But their species had a natural enemy, and it was the living that they fed upon. In order to combat this threat, the Hunters had been formed. How else were they to survive, were they to not protect themselves? What would their living counterparts do in response if they were given the opportunity to organize against them? Preemptive assault proved the best defense.
And yet, while Hades and Leah and all the others were trapped in their sustained bloodlust, all Mother could wonder was what would come next.
A cough resonated nearby. Mother paused, peering around the empty hall she’d wandered into. There was a single door where the sound could have emanated from, a maintenance closet locked from the outside. Curiosity got the better of her, and she moved to open it before calibrating the risk.
The knife struck before she saw it coming.
Mother instinctively withdrew a step as her body shuddered, but it was her attacker who became the most disquieted. She was a living girl in her early teenage years with tanned skin and black, wiry hair. Her arms were covered in bruises, and her brown eyes stared wide at the creature in front.
“How?” the girl squeaked.
Mother studied her wound. The stab had come from an improvised shank, straight through the smooth fabric of her lab coat, between the ribs, and into the soft heart beneath. Had she been human, death would’ve been instantaneous.
The girl blinked. “You’re not one of them, are you?”
“One of whom?” Mother asked.
“The Jailors,” she whispered with a shudder.
Mother deduced the rest. This settlement had specialized in trafficking others of their race, and based on the condition of this girl and the cell she’d been left in, she was no doubt a member of some rival group before her incarceration by them.
The girl was so tiny, and so frail, and Mother was not sure what to do. Her body would need extra nourishment to resuscitate itself and her stomach still craved living flesh. She could do as she had done so many times before and embrace the meal for what it was. That was the cold, rational decision.
Instead, Mother stayed in place. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The girl leaned an inch forth. “You won’t?”
“You’ve been through enough.” She knelt low, the shank still poking out from her chest. “What’s your name, little girl?”
The girl swallowed the lump in her throat. “Evelyn. My name is Evelyn.”
* * *
“–right, Mother?”
She snapped back to the present. “Hm?”
Mr Clean sighed. “I asked if you’re doing alright. You’ve been quiet tonight.”
“I’m fine.”
“If you insist.”
Ever the Hunter, Mr Clean went back to butchering a doe in silence. He was not one to waste time with empty words, which was why Mother had originally contracted him to manage her protective detail. Well, that and the cleanliness of his work. He had used cosmetic enhancements to delay the natural degradation of his skin like so many others, but where most made such rituals weekly, Mr Clean would purify himself twice a day. He had even named himself after an old-world brand of cleaning supplies after noticing a similarity in likeness between himself and their mascot.
Twilight engulfed the Coloradan foothills as the two sat under a starless night. Her outpost was still holding strong, at least. Built from the ground up inside a plateau on Cheyenne’s western ridge, a set of palisade walls surrounded the camouflage tents where Mother and her companions could base themselves without ever raising a high profile. The location was hidden from all directions but up, they had vision for as far as eyes could see, and radio signals carried farthest here. It was also isolated. Not even hollows wandered near.
“How goes the search?” Mother asked.
Mr Clean gave his bald head a rub. “We’ve got a few new prospects. Give us a couple hours to have them ready for inspection.”
“Remember, we cannot afford errors.”
“You really think a body swap will fool Hades? Even with the best creams, you can only make hollows look so fresh.”
Mother shrugged. “Whether Hades thinks that Liam has hollowed or not is less relevant than what his Hunters believe. If enough become convinced that this contract is a waste of their time, his forces will dwindle and he will lack the manpower to push much further. We’ll make the swap once Leah arrives.”
Mr Clean raised an eyebrow. “Once? Or if?”
Mother grimaced. It had been almost a month now since she had fled Pandemonium and tasked Leah with the impossible. Hades would never allow a living human to disappear on his watch. Not without a fight. He would go to the ends of the Earth and burn everything along the way to see his vision reached, if for no reason other than to prove Mother wrong. Only Leah stood a chance against him, but she and her party had been missing for weeks.
Doubt became an inevitability after so much silence. Had they been killed along the way? It seemed unlikely, given what her scout had witnessed at Reno. Leah had managed to get the car from Vaughn, and was last reported escaping east as planned. They should have been stocked with enough biofuel to have reached Cheyenne in days, broken bridges or not. Mother had made the trip hundreds of times herself. It should not have taken this long.
Mother began to consider the chemistry of the company that she had hastily thrown together. Her mental image of Liam Fenix was incomplete, but she had seen enough from him to know that he was entirely driven by the hope of seeing his family again. He would not deviate without cause. Mastermind and Kurt were both proficient Hunters handpicked by Leah, and they were acquiescent enough to persevere in the face of hardship.
But that still left Leah herself. Mother knew everything about her. About the rezzer that had been born into a world filled with chaos, trying to find her own place as those around her perished, one after another. She knew how far Leah would go in pursuit of seeing the Hollowing end. Her struggles had been the most trying of them all. But her greatest strength was also Mother’s Achilles heel. Leah would fight for Liam until the bitter end… Or until the moment her own safety was put into jeopardy, and not a second after.
Mother considered the possibility. Was that what had happened? Had Leah merely surrendered the potential of a future for her own solipsistic present? Were rezzers so fundamentally incapable of growth?
No. That can’t be. Mother had to trust in her own intelligence. She had to believe that the information she had leveraged was sound, and that both Liam and Leah were still sufficiently motivated. She had to trust that, at the very least, they would have cleared Aspen by now. Any alternative was unacceptable.
“What is the cost of failure, Mr Clean?” Mother asked, more for her own benefit than his.
He paused from his work. “What do you mean?”
“If Leah does not arrive, and this mission is a failure, then what do you believe will happen next?”
“Back to Pandemonium, I guess, patching the holes as they form.”
“You are half correct,” Mother explained, peering into darkness. “Listen carefully for the full answer.”
“There’s nothing out there.”
“Indulge me.”
Mr Clean stared into that same open, empty night. “What am I supposed to hear?”
“Silence. When we first arrived, this environment was replete with sounds. Birds, bears, coyotes, wolves. All manner of fauna could be heard from this very spot. And now? Nothing. We are six fully nourished rezzers, camped out for little more than a month, and already we have destroyed the local environment. Our mere presence is like salt in the earth.
“Regardless of how long we may keep ourselves stable, the end result will be the same. Our reservoirs will all one day drain, and our sentience will be no more. That is the consequence of a race with no progeny. When we are gone, there will be nothing left in this world but that empty noise you hear now. No rezzers. No philosophic debate on a warm night. No future. Only silence.”
She met him in the eyes. “That is what will happen if Leah does not arrive, so let us hope that her return is still a matter of when.”
Mr Clean matched her gaze. “And when she does? You can only keep the truth hidden from them for so long. What will you do once it comes out?”
Mother steepled her hands. “Whatever is necessary, just as I have always done.”
The radio suddenly went off. Three quick pings of static in rapid succession. Mother’s veins tightened as her dead heart erupted with a phantom beat. Mr Clean tossed his knife aside and went for his assault rifle, and she considered doing the same. Both knew the code that had just been sent.
Someone was coming.
