After (#3)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Max exhaled a deep and frustrated breath, the air burst between the gaps in his gritted teeth like a stretch of erupting geezers. As if the stress of an impending undead airstrike wasn't enough, he was having to battle his way through resistance and sneered comments from the very people he was trying to protect.

"For the last time, Brenda, I don't give a shit about your massage table, if it's made of wood or metal, it goes on the wall," he seethed, his authoritative words quickly running away from him into an exhausted sigh.

"I don't think you realise how hard these are to come by," Brenda started to argue for the umpteenth time. She had clearly come into the confrontation with a formulated argument and wasn't leaving until she had what she wanted.

Max was sick and tired having to treat these people like children, just because they hadn't experience the horrors beyond the walls first hand. It was as if many of them still doubted the extent of the threats out there, from both the living and the dead. If Brenda had seen even a second of what Max had, she would be nailing that table to the defences herself.

"Brenda..." Max puffed, composing himself. "I'll tell you what. You can keep your table, if you can answer me one simple question...?"

Brenda gave a little triumphant shake of the shoulders, standing several inches taller and prouder at the news she may have finally won the debate. "Ask away," she beckoned.

"Who the fuck are you going to be massaging when we're all dead?" Max whispered, more trying to mock her than scare her. He didn't feel bad. The time for a soft approach with these people had long since gone out the window.

Before Brenda could even think about coming back with a clever or convincing retort, Max had the wooden legs of the massage table unfolded and planted firmly on the ground. Within another second or two, he was up on top of it, purposefully dragging his muddy feet on the soft satin top, far more than he had to.

"Can I have everyone's attention," he waved calmly. Nothing. It would take a little more than a coffee morning style chit chat to get through to these panic-stricken folks. "Hey!" he bellowed. "Everyone who doesn't want to die a horrible death, get your arses over here!"

He didn't know where exactly Val was in the courtyard, but he could feel her glaring eyes on him nonetheless. She would claim he was only inciting the terror, but perhaps a little terror is what they needed.

He finally had everyone's attention, as they gingerly filtered around the makeshift massage podium, or gazed down at him from the tops of the four walls.

"I know you have all been briefed already on the dangers out there, and what is coming for us, but it seems some people are still struggling to get their heads around the impending shitshow heading our way," he threw a subtle glance towards Brenda as he threw out the nonchalant accusation.

"Many of you have never been out there. You haven't seen what we are describing to you, and I can forgive you for being a little hesitant in taking our words at face value. But I'm here to tell you, it's not bullshit," Max assured, catching one father covering his little girl's ears at the back.

"Don't cover your kids' ears. Don't cover your own ears. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who doesn't hear me right now, and I mean really hear me... well you may as well already be dead."

Gasps rang through the crowd like a split-second breeze. He expected that. He wanted that. Shock and fear would keep them alive.

"What's coming for us, it is death in its absolute purest form. And it's coming like a fucking tsunami. I can't tell you how many of them there will be. It could be hundreds, could be thousands, could even be more. What I can tell you is that they will outnumber us, that's a certainty. And they will tear through this place like a white-hot knife through butter if we do not protect ourselves. As soon as they can see you, as soon as they can smell you, they will do absolutely anything to sink their teeth into your flesh until you're either one of them, or just a cleanly plucked pile of bones."

Max looked down at the faces before him, faces of distress, horror, and dread. He wasn't scaring them for scaring's sake. He didn't get a thrill from instilling that ice-cold petrified feeling into their bones. But he knew full well that without every single able-bodied person pulling their weight, they may as well give up already.

"I'm not doing this to scare you. I'm doing this to wake you all up. I have been out there. I have lived out there... for far longer than I would ever wish on even my worst enemy. Those red eyes, those snapping teeth, there is no humanity left in these things, only killing. They have torn apart people I love, and if I have to be the bad guy now to stop them doing the same to you, then... well I'll do my apologies when this is all over. I'm sure that anyone who has been out there and seen what I have seen will back me up," Max cried, opening his arms for reinforcement.

There were a few seconds of silence, a few longer than Max was hoping for, but then somebody finally spoke.

"He's right. I've seen it!" One man hollered.

"Me too!" Another lady burst.

"They tore through every single person at my last camp in seconds," someone shouted from the crowd.

For the next twenty second of so, short but passionate cries of support for Max flooded from every direction. Stories about mothers, brothers, fathers, sisters, friends, co-workers... death.

"I am not lying to you. These people are not lying to you. Many of us have lost so many, so dear to us. Don't let it happen this time, please," Max spoke softly, before clambering down from his perch. "Now, T, get this fucking massage table on the wall."

T plucked up the table as if it were a tic-tac, before taking it over to one of the many stations that were working on strengthening particularly weak parts of their defences. Max looked into Brenda's eyes for a moment or two, but there were no words of defiance, no pleas for her table, not even a subtle urge to second-guess his pleas. Perhaps he had finally gotten through to them. Perhaps finally they had heard the sincerity in his words.

He just hoped they would live to tell the tale.

***

Saunders wasn't sure exactly how long it had been since he'd left his lab. After a week or so of travelling alone, the days all just blurred into one. Wake up, eat, walk, sleep. Wake up, eat, walk, sleep. The post-apocalyptic routine was both draining him mentally and physically.

He lived in constant fear. Fear that drove him to a forced few hours of sleep each night, but equally prevented him from a solid night of rest, well aware that the Brotherhood would be close behind. He took solace in the fact that they would need to hunt and rest far longer than he. They had become accustomed to good, full meals, and were too greedy and arrogant to go without by this point.

He didn't care about what they would do to him if they caught him, but the idea of the cure not reaching some kind of civilisation kept his body in a permanent state of trepidation. It was all that mattered. A few little vials and a notebook full of workings. What if the fate of humanity all hinged on this?

These thoughts kept him going through the days. His eyes seemed to roll back further and further into his head with every weary, sleep-deprived step, but no force could prevent his legs from moving.

There was one thing that unsettled him though. He had arrived in the city that morning and was still yet to come across a single undead hurdle. There was no sign of them. The streets looked like Christmas morning after a riot. Completely desolated but abandoned.

Silent chaos.

Nearly silent.

If he craned his ear, Saunders was sure he could hear a very faint and distant rumbling. Like a thunder storm rolling across the hills on the horizon.

A storm in which Novus was the eye.