Chapter 153: Diogo

A cold windy rain hits me, sinking through the layers I'm wearing. I glance toward Skye who stands with me on the line at the edge of Old Tucson. She's shivering in her coat and hat, her shoulders hunched and her hands stuffed in her pockets. Bishop stands on my other side along with a dozen of my men. Skye's people are maintaining the line while we work. Our visibility is diminished by the rain, but we've decided to move forward with our project anyway. Months of planning have brought us to this point, the turning point in our war against the Primitives.
An eerie silence has settled around us. Almost as though the enemy knows we're here and knows we're coming for them.
"They're out there," Skye mutters, as if confirming my thoughts.
According to her they ebb and flow, they run recklessly at the line in an attempt to drive the refugee camp back and pick off the survivors. With each failed attempt they learn. A fact that we've had to acknowledge and come to terms with. They're more intelligent than we gave them credit for. The evidence points toward some part of their human brain remaining intact enough that the Primitive is able to tap into some form of reasoning behaviour. They are thinking, learning and communicating. We're beginning to see patterns in the way they attack nuclear power plants and the way they attack our city. On the outside, the attacks look suicidal, unthinking and entirely instinct driven, but now we believe differently. There's no other explanation for their ebb and flow attacks.
"On my mark!" I shout at my men.
They scramble to take their places. Some reinforcing the line while others flank the nearest weak points at the gate and the mess hall. We prepare ourselves for the onslaught. Skye pulls her knife and a gun, holding them loose at her side. Wolfe must have taught her the practice that works best in this kind of attack. Shoot to kill, then decapitate the enemy while they're down.
I do the same, the weight of my weapons against the palms of my hands giving me a sense of peace. I am a warrior, a protector and a Warlord. This is my place. Taking down the enemy that could rise up and attack my city, that could take down my family.
"Release!" I shout the next command.
We look over our shoulders toward the giant pen housing three quarters of our animal stock from Sanctuary. Goats, cows and sheep rush out and hurtle toward the back of the line. We leap into action, herding them across the line with shouts and the occasional discharge of a weapon. Mud from the wet ground is kicked up as they run.
I use my sleeve to wipe muck off my face. As the last animal moves out of the pen and follows its brethren out into the rainy afternoon, I turn and move to the edge of the line. Men from both Sanctuary and Old Tucson line up their weapons at the ready.
"Do you think it'll work?" Skye takes her place at my side again.
"We'll find out in a few minutes," Bishop says, stepping up to my other side. He's wearing the heaviest, warmest coat we could find for him. Intended to protect the old man while he waits with us for the results of our experiment. This is his baby and he wanted to be out here to watch the action and take notes for research.
Injected in each animal is a dose of the vaccine Doctor Bishop worked tirelessly to develop. We're using the city's stock to lure the Primitives into ingesting huge amounts of the vaccination. They are too far gone to be cured, but the vaccine might kill them. I don't know or care about the particulars, but Bishop has assured me that his experiments in the clinic have been promising. He believes once the Primitives take the vaccine that their bodies will try to fight the disease. Of course, like Emery who had weakened and died after getting a dose of immune blood from Taran, they won't survive the transformation back to human.
One of my concerns with this plan occurred when Bishop told me that the vaccination contains trace amounts of Necrotitis Primeval. "To stimulate the body's immune system to fight," he explained. I had been sceptical but then he'd given me a long lecture on the history of disease and vaccinations. I ordered him to stop talking, told him I trusted him with the safety of our city and allowed him to move forward with the plan.
The animals weren't harmed by the injections as they are only carriers for the disease. The only animal that we know of that experienced any kind of Turn is canines, and they were eradicated from Sanctuary cities long ago. Most people haven't even seen a dog in their lifetime.
At first the silence coming from the other side of the line is disappointing. We should be hearing something as the Primitives tear into their fresh meals and go into a blood frenzy. Then the first horrific sounds of an animal dying reaches our ears. Skye flinches and then rolls her shoulders and stands a little straighter. She knows, we all know, that this is for the good of humankind.
Taran was horrified by the plan and had begged us to think of another way. Logically she knows there is no other way, but her soft heart bled at the thought of this sacrifice. Some people are hunters and others are not. My wife is no hunter. I didn't point out to her that the animals would have been eaten anyway. Sooner or later, they would become food. They obviously would have been killed in a more humane manner, but Primitives are fast, the animals won't suffer long.
Soon, the sounds of dying animals fades into the rainy evening, then nothing.
"Brace yourselves!" I shout, anticipating that once the Primitives have eaten their meals, they will be immediately drawn to the next food source. Us.
Nothing happens though. The men on the line hold themselves tensely at the ready, their weapons drawn and pointed in the direction where the sounds came from. The mist is obscuring our view. Still nothing. Could it be possible? Did the vaccination work quicker than we thought?
We wait in silence, straining to hear something. When several minutes pass and nothing occurs, I give the order to advance. Almost as one we move forward, 50 strong, a mix of my people and Skye's people. We walk slowly, keeping formation, prepared to move quickly if a threat hurtles at us out of the dusky rain. But nothing does.
What confronts us when we finally arrive at the massacre sight is both terrible and wonderful at the same time. The animals have been torn apart until they're unrecognizable, teeth marks all over their flesh, organs and bones. Laying all around the dead animals are dead Primitives. Or so they seem. I bend to one of them and check for signs of life, but there's nothing. No pulse, no flicker of an eye, no snarl or growl. Just death.
And peace.
The zombie in front of me used to be a young woman, perhaps late teens or early twenties. Her blond hair is dirty and matted to her scalp where sharp objects have been thrust through her skin. Her clothing is in tatters on her body and her skin shows advanced signs of necrotitis, or rot, telling me she'd been a Primitive for a while, perhaps even years. But it's her face my gaze is drawn to. The ravaged features, probably once quite lovely, are still and peaceful.
The men follow suit all around me, checking on the Primitives and then shouting back to one another that they are all dead.
"The vaccine seems to have worked almost instantly," Bishop says, his voice taking on a musing tone. "Perhaps the adrenaline that constantly fuels them is the first thing that is stopped, which would result in instant death if they've been running on it for long enough. Or maybe they..."
"You can figure it out later, Doctor," I tell him and he falls silent.
I stand and Skye comes to stand with me.
"Now that we know the vaccination works as not only an immunity to the disease but a killer to those that are infected, we can work on eradicating the disease entirely." Skye's voice holds awe in it, as though she can't believe this is a possibility. The threat of Primitives has been around for our entire lives. The thought that we may not have to live under the blanket of fear they cause is almost unimaginable.
"The other Sanctuaries will need to be told, the vaccination handed over to them," I say to her.
"I will take it to them and spread the word," she offers.
Skye has been making moves to leave Sanctuary for a few months now, so I'm not surprised by her offer. Taran will be devastated, but she'll understand. Skye hasn't been happy here in Old Tucson or even in the Sanctuary with her sister. There always seems to be a desperate air of misery around her. I don't know what she's looking for but it's not here.
"You are a carrier for the immunity," I remind her. "A very precious commodity."
She bristles. "Are you going to stop me from leaving?"
I think about it. I could, and I probably should. If anything happens to Taran, or my son, who also carries the immunity, then Sanctuary and the wider world would need Skye. But I won't stand in her way. Instead I will help ensure her success. "A party of the best men from here and from Sanctuary will be assembled and sent with you on your mission. You will be protected while you journey to the other cities and give them the vaccine."
She nods her head but doesn't say anything. She's not grateful, but she's not blind to the gift I'm giving her. She will face many dangers that her immunity won't protect her from.
"Make sure you say goodbye to your sister before you leave."
"Of course!" she snaps, insulted that I might think she'd do otherwise.
A sound stops our discussion, a scuffling in the darkness and then a strange animalistic noise. We brace ourselves lifting weapons and preparing to take down anything that attacks. But out of the growing darkness saunters a single sheep. Weapons lower and we stare in amazement as it wanders over to our group and stands, waiting to go back to its pen. The lone survivor of a massacre that may just be the beginning of the end of our apocalypse.