42. Pulling On Strings

                                    

                                          
"Shit," Chris muttered from the passenger seat. "We haven't even been gone that long. They must've been waiting for an opportunity... Do you think it's them?"
                          
"I can't think who else it would be," Pilot replied. 
                          
I looked around the truck and the spacious vehicle suddenly felt claustrophobic. My breathing began to increase and I could feel my legs begin to shake. 
                          
"This is my fault, isn't it?" I said in a low voice.
                          
Chris' head snapped to me. "No," he scowled. "Don't even think that for a second."
                          
I tried to snap myself out of it but my body wouldn't obey the simplest of actions. I couldn't believe his words and I couldn't fake it either. 
                          
"He's right," Pilot said. "We don't have time to worry about whose fault this is. We all need to be on guard here."
                          
"How close are we?" Chris asked, pressing a hand against the dashboard in front to steady himself against Pilot's erratic driving. 
                          
"It's not that much furth— Shit!"
                          
The brakes screeched as he hit the pedal at force. I braced for impact in the backseat, squeezing my eyes shut but none came. 
                          
When I opened them, a group of Infected crowded the centre of the road, blocking our path. They stood still as their bodies wavered in the wind, tattered clothing covering their slashed and ripped bodies. 
                          
"Why don't you just drive through them?" Chris urged with clear agitation and stress in his voice.
                          
Pilot gestured a hand to the scenes in front of the truck. "We'd be swarmed and we wouldn't make it out alive. That's why."
                          
"He's right," I spoke up. "You make one wrong move and they'll turn."
                          
"So, what are we supposed to do?" Chris scowled. "Just sit here and wait for someone else to come along? I don't know if you heard, but anyone that could help us right now is back at EDIN burning alive by the sound of it." A set of deep creases had appeared against his forehead and he didn't try and hide the stress his expression showed. 
                          
"I'd love to hear your ideas," Pilot replied. "I'm all ears."
                          
Chris' voice softened. "Do you really think we can take on a heard like that? There has to be another way."
                          
I looked down the middle of the truck through the windshield. The Infected stumbled and stared out aimlessly at the dull landscape. Not even the rumbling engine had stirred them from their hibernation. I felt a pang of sympathy towards them. There was someone inside those bodies screaming, pulling on desperate strings that wouldn't respond to their touch. 
                          
Maybe in a different circumstance, they would have survived. But not this one. 
                          
I raised a hand to my left eye and pulled out the contact lens that covered my pupil, dropping it into the small vial I kept in my pocket. Within seconds, I'd done the same to my right and the two blue contacts were submerged in their container, staring back at me. 
                          
"What are you doing?" Chris asked, watching me put away the vial. His eyes darted to mine but they didn't linger there long. 
                          
"I need your knife."
                          
His brows furrowed and there was a hesitation before he reached for his belt. 
                          
"Don't say anything," I said as his mouth opened. "Just give it to me."
                          
He passed over the blade and I gripped the handle tight in my palm, tightening and untightening my grip before I looked to Pilot in the front seat.
                          
"Yours too."
                          
His dark eyes flashed to Chris before looking back at me. My hardened expression didn't change as he pulled the knife from its holster and passed it to me. 
                          
With a blade in each hand, the two men looked at me as I held them tighter, trying to fake confidence I didn't feel. My breathing was increasing with each second and my heart hammered faster but it was the adrenaline that charged my veins, surging and pulsing through my bloodstream. 
                          
"We're not going to like what you're about to do, are we?" Chris asked with narrowed eyes. 
                          
I shook my head. "I wouldn't expect so, no."
                          
"What the fuck are you doing, Harrison?" Pilot seethed. "You're going to get yourself killed. 
                          
My fingertips brushed the door handle and as I pulled, it clicked open. 
                          
"You'll thank me for this," I replied in a low voice. "At least, I hope you will... Lock the doors behind me."
                          
I pushed the door open and the cold breeze wrapped around my skin, tightening and constricting where it could. The air was silent but my head pounded as I took slow steps towards the beings that swarmed the road. 
                          
I didn't let myself think about it, I just did it. 
                          
It was a rage that overcame me instead of sympathy. I raised the knife and pressed it into the skull of the first one I came across. She was a woman, middle-aged maybe. She dropped to the ground and her limbs sprawled against the tarmac but the others barely turned, not even interested in the member they'd lost. I yanked the blade back from her head and it was coated in thick, black blood. 
                          
The next one twitched as I came into its peripheral. Upon noticing my pupils, which matched his perfectly, the Infected relaxed. I slammed the second knife into its head. Its pupils glinted a shade of forest green before rolling backward, finally truly lifeless. 
                          
The others followed one after the other, dropping to the ground like a domino of bodies. Chris and Pilot watched on from the truck but I didn't turn to see their expressions. I would've liked to think in another lifetime these beings may have been cured, that they'd get the second chance I had. Every sacrifice had to be worth something now, or what would be the point?
                          
I pulled the bodies into the grass that towered the side of the cracked tarmac. They almost looked peaceful covered by nature but as they piled higher it looked more like a massacre. 
                          
A couple had strayed further towards the truck, meandering down the road away from the bodies. In a few strides, I reached them and plunged both blades into the two Infected at the same time, watching them drop as I pulled them free. It was a clean attack, one that any other person would have been proud of. Just not me. 
                          
The doors to the truck unlocked and I pulled myself back inside. 
                          
"Em, what the fuck was that?" Chris exclaimed with wide eyes as Pilot watched me carefully. "You're a certified badass."
                          
Dark blood now splattered my face and clothes and I could feel it drying against my skin. I could only be grateful that it wasn't mine. I wiped the blades against the leg of my trousers and passed them to the front. 
                          
When I said nothing, Pilot turned to the front and the engine rumbled to life once again. 
                          
Chris still watched me in the back but there was a look of concern in his eyes, panic even. 
                          
"I wouldn't say anything about this to anyone at EDIN yet," he said finally. "For your sake."
                          
I only nodded as I pressed my forehead to the window once again, letting the cool glass consume me as the bodies on the grass shrunk into the distance.