The Gunslingers #8: Saul and the Great Escape
“Get out of here, take them back the way we came, I’ll find you.” Jace says, and I nod, draping Annie over my shoulder. Alex and I, with Annie on my back, turn tail and head back the way we came. I look at the blonde, almost-teen who’s head is bobbing an inch away from mine. After all this time, I finally have her. Cedric said I would never find her, I would never secure The Cure, but now it’s within my grasp. At least, now that those bastard Paladins don’t have her.
“Saul, where are we going?” Alex’s annoying voice brings me back to reality. With my free hand I grab the handle of my sawed-off and pull it out.
“We’re going to shoot everything out there that moves.” I thrust the gun forward and it makes that oh-so-beautiful-sound as the shells inside it slide into place. “Let’s go.”
Just outside the door that we came in, the Paladins are failing to kill many more zombies than we’d intended to let in. I know that my shotgun is full, and Alex is deadly with a bow, but even with the Paladins help, the tide of zombies seems immeasurable. I set Annie down near the door and start to blast zombies as they pour in through the wall. Half the Paladins are shooting with their pistols and the other half are using the small hammers that the other two we encountered were using, neither making much of a dent in the zombies assault. “Assault!” I hear someone say from over the sounds of battle. Something from a garage on the other side of the courtyard comes to life and slowly walks over to the carnage. Ten feet tall and made of steel, it looks like something straight out of a science fiction novel. The legs stretch from the ground to the top of the cockpit, which has two large chain-guns attached to it. The legs spring slightly as they move, allowing the cockpit to stay perfectly still. The whole thing is painted a ghostly white, except for the black glass on the cockpit.
“Oh my god…” I head Alex say, but I don’t stop shooting, I’ve heard of these things, mechanical walkers designed to be more versatile than a tank, and more deadly. That man we saw, the engineer, he must have designed this monstrous machine. It rips the freaks apart with its chain guns like they’re made of butter. The horde starts to thin out until finally, the monsters stop pouring in. The paladins gather around the machine to take stock of who’s died.
“Let’s go,” I say to Alex and she nods. We take one step forward as a Paladin turns around.
“Hey! They’re taking the prisoner!”
Before I can say anything, Alex notches an arrow and sends it flying at the war-suit, piercing some sort of fuel tank or battery cell. The resulting explosion covers my body in intense heat, but I feel fine when I see the state of the Paladins in front of us. I pick up Annie and we walk over to the bodies. I kick a few that are still fairly assembled, but they don’t move. They’re all dead.
“For the love of god…help me…” I turn and see a man with no legs and one arm reaching out towards me. “Please, sir.” I rest the end of my gun on his bloodied forehead.
“Where’s your god now,” I pulled the trigger and added one more to the death toll. “We’re leaving,” I say, without looking back.
Without having to deal with too many biters, we make it back to the apartment building unscathed. I lay Annie down on the couch and sit on one of the chairs. I set my briefcase down on the coffee table and enter the ten digit code. It opens with a click, my precious samples. Jace, Alex, and Annie. Two true Guardians, and whatever the hell Annie is. I open the small lockbox inside and pull out one of the green vials. The needle stings as it goes in, but sweet relief fills me as I push the liquid into my blood stream.
“What is that stuff, Saul?” Alex asks.
“It’s the cure.”
“The cure for what?!” She says, standing up, almost yelling.
“The Guardian Serum.”
“What the hell is that?”
“If you must know, it was intended to unlock the hidden potential in people’s minds, allow them to grasp their true power. Except, it didn’t work. Ninety percent of people lost all cognitive function, they became husks, worker bees for the virus. Those walkers that you call infected, the virus compels them to bite people, turn them into secondary husks, who lose all cognitive function except the most primal emotions, rage, anger, survival, stuff like that. They feed on humans because they think it will help them survive. Nine-point-seven percent of people were completely immune to the virus, it would enter and exit them, as if they weren’t good enough, and then, like you and Jace, there are the zero-point-three percent of people that the serum actually worked.”
“What… I never took any serum.”
“It’s airborne, Alex. The Guardian Serum has affected every living human on earth by now.”
“So you’re the first one than, you’re infected.”
“Yep.”
“How do you have a cure? Can’t we make it work for other people?” She sounds so hopeful, it almost hurts how hard I am fighting back my laughter.
“I made the cure. It’s easy to cure a disease that you invent. Well, temporarily at least.” I rub the needle marks on my arm, “It only lasts seven hours before I need another dose.”
“You…made the virus?”
“Not alone. The company I work for and I created it to sell to the military.”
“Why… this is evil, Saul, pure evil.”
“Some say evil, others say evolution.”
“What is there to gain from forcing evolution?!” She sounds hysterical now.
“Alex, if I really wanted to know, you could tell me exactly where an arrow would do the most damage to me without actually killing me. You could put enough force on specific parts of my body and send me into a coma. Your brain can see and perceive things faster than anyone else. This is evolution, Alex.”
“So that’s why Jace can create fire like that? His brain is advanced? If humans were meant to conjure fire, Saul, we would have been born with it!”
“Alex, progress is a way of life. You need to accept it.”
“This is bullshit Saul! You caused all of this!” She swings her arms around. “You need to use that cure you have to save all those people out there!”
“I can’t do that Alex. The Organization wouldn’t like that.” She stands up, and I act on impulse, the butt end of my shotgun clipped her on the temple. She falls to the ground, not dead, but she won’t be getting up for a while. “It’s all part of The Plan.”
“What’s going on here, Saul.”
I turn around and see Jace standing there, looking at me standing over the limp body of Alex.
“Answer me, Saul!”
With my shotgun in one hand, I grab Annie and jump out the window.
No comments:
Post a Comment