November 24
We were still pretty shaken when we got back from Wizard’s Tower Three or, as Rod called it (and the name stuck) Almost the Alamo.
Part of that was because of how many things went sideways. There was the obvious stuff: the sudden, big wave of stalkers that made a mess of our plans; how they almost managed to crawl up their own dead to get to Chloe’s roof team; my protective gear coming loose. But what I think really spooked us was how many of those near-disasters were the result of things we just didn’t know, or guessed wrong, about the infected. From little stuff all the way up to macro-scale mysteries.
For example, when things got hairy on the beach, why the hell did the wounded stalker come after and tackle me? How he did it was mystery enough; that second, much-vented limper somehow accelerated into a double-overdrive sprint, even though infected never seem to hold anything in reserve.
But stranger still, he had not just been closer to Tai than to me; he came rolling in from way out on her flank. So why the hell did he totally ignore her and cross to leap on me? Don’t know. What I do know is that if Tai hadn’t been quick and accurate with her machete, I wouldn’t be writing this now. I’d be dead or waiting to see if I turned, with all my adopted family pointing guns at me. As it is, when the stalker was beheaded, the spray of blood mostly arced over and past me; I got only two drops on my facemask and a thin spatter along the left sleeve of my fireman’s coat. The protection had done its job, even though I screwed up at doing mine.
Then there was the large-scale mystery: how and why such a large mob of the infected came at us in that one big wave. We know they come in numbers. We know that when they start getting excited, they work each other up and start moving in packs. But how did these gaunt, recently torpid stalkers get roused and riled all at one time and in one place? Because they sure as hell didn’t meet up at the town square to get organized before they came rolling down that hill.
Had the St. Anthony’s Bay Massacre awakened all these stalkers too late for them to shake off the torpor and join the fun? Or did the infected share some weird hoodoo, like animals whose individual behavior changes when their group takes heavy losses—even if they are not present to see those losses occur?
Yeah, I know: all pointless wondering, since we had no way of figuring out which, if any, of our theories might be right. But it was a way to pass the time, from the moment we started scooping up whatever spent brass we could find. After that, we used what was left of the slip-n-slide motor oil sludge to start the bodies burning. And the gabbing and theorizing grew more lively as we did.
It was a mental health reflex, I think. Specifically, people who survive a sudden life-threatening crisis will jaw about anything—anything—to distract themselves from aftershocks of panic and fear as their brains struggle to get distance from the incident.
By the time we sailed back to Ilha Rata, washed up, and sat down to eat, we had ridden that hyper, post-action sine wave down to inward-focused silence. I can’t even tell you what we ate or what few still-born conversations sparked and faded while we were huddled around the commons’ table. Only when the carbs came out—lightly sweetened tapioca—did we reanimate, mostly because we had to figure out what to do the next day.
The infected body count had been well over two hundred. So, according to everything we had ever observed about them, there should have been no more than one or two hundred remaining on FdN. Maybe three hundred, since, clearly, we still didn’t have a solid understanding of how much prey had been available, how soon a shortage triggered torpor, and just how much (or little) of their reserves they lost while semi-hibernating.
In the end, we decided that we needed another look at the bar and the area around it before making any firm plans. So the next day, we rolled out of our bunks and readied our gear as Rod steered us back to Ilha da Conceição, giving Tai some basic sailing lessons while he was at it.
Once there, we dropped anchor and broke out the telescope and binoculars. The smoke from the fire—heavy, greasy, black—showed us that the core of yesterday’s makeshift pyre was still flickering. The bar was intact but covered in soot, the back wall a solid mass of black. No chance that we could use it the same way today.
But it was obvious we didn’t need to: dozens of new infected had come down to gorge themselves on their own dead. And I mean gorge: their bellies were distended, and their staggering progress was not the result of torpor but front-heavy guts. Chloe glanced over at Ilha da Conceição’s upper reaches; it was high tide, so the steep-sided knife of rock was separated from the mainland by about thirty yards of water. “Is there a way up there?”
Rod nodded back at her. “Yeah. Spotted a few paths leading up to shelves overlooking the beaches.”
“Can we get close enough?”
Prospero squinted, pointed at its flinty, northernmost skirts. “There are tidal pools around the base. More than sufficient for the Zodiac. And paths from them wind upward.”
Chloe nodded. “Good. Time to go hunting.”
There is no way to turn a turkey shoot into an interesting story. Particularly when the turkeys don’t have enough sense to run away.
After Zodiac-ing in to where she and her team could get on Ilha da Conceição’s paths, Chloe, Jeeza, and Steve ascended to a safer, more distant, version of the Wizard’s Tower. From there, the range to the bar was almost exactly two hundred yards. So Chloe settled into a likely sniper’s perch, Jeeza set up to spot for her, and Steve got out his shotgun, just in case the stalkers had learned how to swim. Or fly.
Chloe missed the first two shots, but after that was zeroed in; the wind speed and direction were both pretty steady. The infected began to fall over, about one every twenty seconds. Chloe wasn’t in any rush. About half of them required a second shot. Some got agitated and stormed down to the edge of the water, yowling up at the three distant figures on one of Ilha da Conceição’s highest rock-shelves.
The gunfire did attract a few more of them, but by one o’clock, Chloe was out of targets. Forty-two infected had joined the corpses of the others. At three p.m., we decided that it wasn’t worth waiting any longer, so we sailed back for Ilha Rata.
We brooded over all the maps of FdN as we picked at our dinners. Probably because we all knew what was coming next, and none of us liked it.
Chloe stood, her palm circling over the northern end of the biggest map we had. “We killed at least six hundred sixty or six hundred seventy in the past four days. Almost all of them must have come from around here.” She drifted a finger over to the cluster of buildings that was labeled Vila dos Remédios. It was the third corner of the island’s most populated triangle, the other two vertices being St. Anthony’s Bay and Ilha da Conceição. “It’s hard to imagine how any could be left snoozing up there.”
“Unless,” Prospero mused, “some are so torpid that they start out too weak to even move. They might not have been fully awake until all the noise, and killing, was over.”
Jeeza shuddered. “And so could now be waiting to jump at us from any closet or back room in the whole damn town.”
“Or,” offered Rod calmly, “the others may be scattered throughout the outlying houses and pousadas. Or down at the airport and the housing attached to it.”
“Or all of the above,” I added. “And let’s not forget that we’ve seen that some of them avoid contact. And that there are probably other scenarios we haven’t even imagined yet. But if we take what we saw on Ascension Island as a crude model, there can’t be that many left. Four months ago, FdN was thirty days post-plague. The casualty rate that most communities reported at that point on their own infection timeline is pretty consistent. On FdN, that would mean about one-thousand-eight-hundred people left. For a while, the infected would have hunted. When they ran out of prey, some of them would probably turn on each other. That’s probably when the first start going into torpor. But how many would be left by then?”
Prospero studied the map with narrowed eyes. “That depends upon how early most of them reach the inflection point that triggers the transition.” He frowned. “If it takes even a month for them to start becoming torpid, the remaining population would have already been heavily reduced by preying on each other.”
Rod nodded. “I just wish we knew if the ones that remain awake sniff out and chow down on the hibernators.”
Tai frowned. “Prolly when they hung’ry ’nuff.” She shrugged. “But who know when that is?”
“Not us,” Steve said, staring at the maps.
I crossed my arms. “We could try playing the music again tomorrow. See if it brings down any who woke up toward the end of today’s activity.”
“Worth a try,” agreed Jeeza eagerly. Then she sighed. “But let’s put a name to the growing elephant in the room: house-to-house clearance.”
I was grateful it was Jeeza, of all people, who gave a label to what we were all dreading. She’s never made peace with the career that fate has forced upon us: exterminators of ex-human beings. So for her to be the one to bring up the inevitable next step—aggressively rooting out any that remained—took a lot of guts. I nodded. “Yeah. After tomorrow, I think we’ve got to go for it.”
Chloe leaned over the map. I tried not to get distracted by what that change in position did to the outline of her body.
“Alvaro?” she asked.
“Um…yeah?”
“Any thoughts?”
I had plenty, none suitable for sharing in public.
She stared at my silence. “You know, on how we handle CQC?”
I had used that abbreviation for “close-quarters combat” so much that she had picked it up, too. It was also an ironic question, since Chloe knew I had been worrying/obsessing about shifting into those operations ever since we’d returned to FdN. “A few,” I admitted.
Prospero grinned. “I will just bet you have.” He leaned forward.
I shook my head. “For now, let’s just focus on tomorrow.”
After three hours, I gave Steve a break and took his role as security for the sniper team.
Two hours after that, Chloe hung her head and glanced over at me. “Can we go now?” She sounded like a little kid being dragged around a museum full of stuffy old paintings.
I looked back at the bar and the bodies littered around it. Today, the only visitors had been birds. Gulls, mostly. I knew they ate carrion, but wasn’t aware that included dead human. Maybe it hadn’t in times past, but now I guess it was too frequent a source of protein for them to ignore.
“Alvaro. Please. Can we go now?”
Jeeza sighed. “She’s right, Alvaro. They’re done coming to us. Now, we have to go to them.”
I sighed, too. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s pack it up. Time to make a new plan.”