Page 23 of Redemption (Devil Dogs of the Apocalypse #4)

They threw Lance Corporal Balor in here with me the other day .

We’ve been friends for a few years now, and, sadly, he’s one of the few who’s actually still alive from my platoon.

The gruesome events surrounding the insurgence have hit us all hard, but none so much as Balor.

Even though he had survived, his constant, unrestrained screams filtered loud and clear from the other room, causing Waverly and his sycophants to throw him in here with me for relief from his perpetual torment.

PTSD is no joke, and he’s in the thick of it.

The symptoms vary throughout the day. He could be seen looking at a picture of his girlfriend early in the morning, quiet and reserved.

Then, just a few hours later, he’d be clawing at the walls to be let out.

“ The screams ,” he’d say. They’d echo around in his mind, bombarding him with a constant reel of pain and torment, refusing to stop their torture until he snapped out of it or eventually passed out from exhaustion.

I had to wake him up just yesterday from a nightmare, his fingernails dragging across his temples as he yelled with tears in his eyes, “Make it stop! Please!”

You might survive a fight and live long enough to leave a battlefield, but it never truly leaves you.

The memories resonate and dig deeper, burrowing into your mind like a parasite while refusing to be forgotten.

I, too, can’t forget the sounds of our fellow brothers dying all around us.

The terror in their voices as the swarm overtook the group.

Their cries for help. Their screams of pain.

The growls and screeches they bellowed as they turned before our very eyes.

The bullets whizzing past to counteract their newfound aggression against us. The explosions.

And then the silence.

Nothing hits you more than the debilitating sound of silence in the aftermath.

Thundering steps make their way down the hall, stopping at my door. The handle jiggles a few times before it slams open, revealing Waverly on the other side with a sadistic grin on his face.

“Time to earn your keep, Cruz.” He turns his gaze to Balor, standing to my right and looking out the window. “You, too, Balor.”

Nick silently turns to the side, barely acknowledging Waverly’s existence, while I stare back at him from my seat on the floor against the wall, my arms crossed over my chest, refusing to play any part in whatever he has planned.

“Oh, come on now.” He throws his arms up, unimpressed with my lack of enthusiasm.

“The plan worked. It’s nothing but sunshine and rainbows on this street.

And the next street over. And the street after that.

The only thing we’re missing is provisions.

Which means we need a few good volunteers to take their happy asses to the commissary on Main Side, or the Staff Club, or take a scenic hike on over to the Officer’s Club at Paradise Point and get some chow. Lord knows I’m starving.”

The fucking audacity.

“And why the fuck do I need to do it? Didn’t you just say that the streets are clear?

You could all get out of this building and even take over the officer’s club if you wanted.

It’s definitely bigger than this place, has a ton of rooms, there’s even a golf course over that way if you’re feeling bored.

In fact, if you don’t mind, y’all can fuck right off and leave my ass here for all I care. ”

He shakes his head opposingly. “I said the streets next to us are clear. I have no idea if the rest are, and it’s a long way for these tired old legs to walk just to get taken out at the last second by a crusty, flesh-mangled walker.

” I narrow my eyes at his description, but he jumps on my curiosity to elaborate.

“Oh yes, they’ve started to...,” he smacks his lips together, eyes darting away for a moment before he snaps his fingers.

“... decay . That’s the word. In fact, after recounting their symptoms, violent preferences, and obvious physical deterioration over the past few weeks, I think it’s safe to say these.

.. infected people are actually a form of zombie . ”

Zombies. I had the same thought not too long ago. While I didn’t reflect on it too much at the time, the similarities are uncanny. Their mannerisms. The unquenchable hunger. How they can kill a man and at the same time reanimate him into one of their own.

Waverly takes my quiet deliberation as doubt and provides more proof to back up his theory.

“Think back to what happened when the base was first overrun. They feasted on flesh. You could only kill them with a blow to the head. I sunk a knife deep in a man’s chest and it did fucking nothing .

People don’t live naturally without a heart.

A circulatory system. A fucking breath in their lungs.

Yet these dirtbags are able to do so just fine and then turn more healthy people into others just like them.

I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a fucking zombie. ”

Well, fuck me.

It’s true, then.

It’s not just a contagion or a viral epidemic.

We’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

“Anyways,” he continues, “I’m going to need you to go and check out the lay of the land, so to speak.

If it’s clear, and you make it back with some good news, we’ll let you go.

Fair and square, free as a bird. If you don’t?

Well, we get our answer either way. There were too many out there at the start to give you any chance of getting off this base on your own, let alone surviving out there with the entire country overrun. ”

“So you want us to be your fucking guinea pigs? The canaries in the mine shaft?” I scoff.

“You fucking asshole.” It really shouldn’t surprise me.

Why wouldn’t he throw us under the bus with the rest of them?

We’re just another casualty. A means to an end.

Fucking bastard. “And what do you plan to do? What’s the end game?

Find a plane and leave? Move to Mexico?”

“Oh, no, no, no. We don’t want to leave.

We like it here. No, in fact, the only other thing we’re missing.

.. is a purpose. See, here’s the thing. We’ve sent out multiple distress calls and transmitted SOS daily for weeks now, with no response from anyone.

There’s been no government intervention.

No military movement. Not even any help from FEMA, the United Nations, or the WHO.

That only means one thing: the virus spread like wildfire and took them all out.

Or at least most of the upper ranks needed to combat something on a scale as large as this.

Let’s face it, most of the people in Congress who have the power to launch a counterattack are senior citizens.

Wouldn’t take anything more than a strong gust of wind to wipe them off the board.

Imagine what a horde of flesh-eating zombies would do when they reached their doorsteps. ”

Waverly’s grin spreads across his face, growing with sadistic, evil intention.

“But that’s where we come in.... I’ve had time to reflect on everything, and I’ve come to realize that everything happens for a reason.

Natural disasters have a way of correcting what we’ve done wrong as a civilization.

” He walks in a circle, his boots scuffing against the floor while he lifts his fingers one by one.

“The Black Plague of the thirteen hundreds. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the resulting massacre at Pompeii in 79 AD. The tsunami that sunk the Greek city-state, Helike, the winter of 373 BC. Even as recent as the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed 780,000 people and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake that caused a tsunami so great it killed as many as 280,000 people, natural disasters have turned the tides on several of Earth’s civilizations, demanding a clean slate.

” His pacing stops, his gaze dropping to mine as my heart just about stops at his insinuation.

“This time, it is our reckoning. The world has become entirely too overpopulated, Cruz. Within a matter of years, there won’t be enough land, due to capitalism and corporate greed, to feed the exponentially growing number of mouths being birthed every year.

More people also means inadequate housing and poor sanitation.

I mean... that’s a lot of shit to handle.

And it’s only getting worse each and every year.

A growing population creates a massive strain on the environment when it exceeds production capabilities and, in direct correlation, a massive strain on our limited food supply.

Oh yes, hunger makes a person irrationally aggressive.

And an aggressive person can eventually lash out, shoot their neighbors, start a coup, even start wars in order to find nourishment and survive.

“Even with the decrease in fertility rates over the past few years, overpopulation and greed have already made an impact. A cataclysmic impact. One that needed a swift remedy before the scales tipped into an all-out nuclear war zone. No, the politicians didn’t find a way to fix the problem.

Neither did the World Economic Forum, whose members were all worried about climate change and the polar ice caps and how many times a cow can fart before it ruins the ozone.

Not once did they look at the overpopulation and think, Maybe, we should focus on the actual problem instead of the result of said problem.

” He stares his beady eyes down at me. “We... Are... The problem, Cruz. All of us. This epidemic was a means to an end. A way for the earth to save itself from final destruction. This world has had enough, and it wants to start over. From the beginning. From scratch. It is now our purpose, as the last to stand guard, to make sure her future is set by exterminating every last one. We are the end. And from our sacrifice, a new beginning can commence.”