Chapter 15: Interrogation
Thomas Garter
When Thomas gazed into the face of the man they had been searching for, he almost didn't believe it. He never had good luck. It looked as though Parker felt the same way. The other men and women in the room seemed confused by the reunion, but they could see all four of them had the same confusion.
For the most part, Parker looked the same as he always did, with a toothpick jutting out of the right side of his mouth, except his smooth blonde hair hung down in disarray, and what had been his confident face could now be seen slightly more afraid. There was a white strap wrapped around his head traveling over his right eye. The glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose were bent.
"Who are you?" The man standing by the door asked. Though he looked older than life, he had no trouble lifting a shotgun to Will's head. "Tell us how you found this place."
"God, Cecil, put your gun down." Parker barked at him. He frowned and lowered his gun to his side. "Where the hell have you guys been?"
Thomas walked up to the man, right past Cecil's gun and extended his hand. Parker took it and shook hard. "Good to see you too, man."
"Would you mind telling us what's going on?" Will asked, in an irritated fashion.
"Come inside first." He sighed, flicking the toothpick around his lips. "We can't have the door open for too long. Could let a draft in."
"And a couple hundred dead guys." Smirked one of the other guys standing in the semicircle. He had curly dark red hair and piercing blue eyes. Every word he said put a certain echo of uneasiness in Thomas' mind.
"Trevor..." The woman with the same shade of red hair standing beside him sighed in distaste. Thomas assumed she was his sister.
Usui closed the door behind them and Cecil walked out to grab something from the floor. He noticed it was a tiny lasso tied tightly to the wall. When Cecil hung it around the door handle, it kept the door shut as tightly as the rope would hold. It was a good defense. "Why don't we just invite everyone in then? That would be a good idea! You know, Parker, we only got so much food. So much space. All our beds are full. Where are they gonna sleep?"
"Wherever there's room." Parker replied. "We're military. Sleeping on the ground ain't exactly beneath us."
"We're in an enclosed space, for God's sake." The old man exclaimed. "The more people we cram in here, the worse our living conditions are going to get."
"They're staying." Parker spoke definitively. "You all agreed I was calling the shots around here. Now let me fucking call them." Some of the people standing around shook their head in agreement. Cecil only looked angered. "Yeah, I thought so."
Thomas gazed past the crowd of people in front of him and saw a few other people sitting around in the lounge area beside the service desk. The hallways ran for a hundred feet on either side of him with doors to the rooms scattered evenly throughout them. There were a number of different types of people in the room, some of them doctors, and some of them patients. Some were only there to visit their loved ones. When Thomas did a head count, he estimated there were at least thirty people in the room.
"Listen...Cecil..." Will started. "We'll leave you alone if we can bring Parker with us. He's on our squad."
"It's fine with me." Cecil barked.
"I ain't leaving, Doc." Parker sighed. "That's just the fact of the matter. They are staying. This is not negotiable." He gestured to the three of them. "Now give us some space. I need to talk to them."
Most of them walked away to the lounge area and sat on the couch, but Cecil grudgingly marched away. It was very obvious he was bitter about Parker leading the group. From his clothes, Thomas inferred he must have been the chief doctor. He would have been angry about the power not being his anymore.
"Well it seems like you've got things squared away here." Will chuckled as Parker took the three of them aside and sat down at a system of couches in the corner of the room. "Now will you tell us what's going on?"
"Well that's a long story." He replied.
"How did you people survive up here?" Thomas asked. "There's gotta be thousands of walkers out there, let alone in the hospital. This is where it started, right?"
"Take a look at where we're at Tom." Parker answered. "We're on the top floor. Since the infected were the major threats, they kept them close to ground floor. None of them got up here. All we really had to do was seal up the entrance to our floor and we're safe up here. Those boarded up doors you saw on your way up... Me and a couple of other guys put those up this morning after we cleared out the stairwell."
"Cleared out the stairwell?" Usui asked for clarification.
"Yeah. We took 'em out. There weren't too many-"
"You killed them?" Usui exclaimed. "How? Guns don't work on them."
"Sure they do." Parker scoffed. "You just gotta hit 'em in the head. Works every time."
"The head?" Will asked. He heaved a sigh and brought his fingers to his forehead. "I thought it had to do with draining their blood."
"That would work too." A man walked over into the conversation. He had a full head of brown hair and looked to be about the same age and height as Thomas. He was wearing the clothes of a doctor with a large patch of dark black blood splattered across his left shoulder. He sat down in the seat next to Usui and held his fingers together. "Theoretically, nothing can move without blood. If you managed to drain it all, that would kill them. But it'd be much quicker to put a knife through their skull."
"Guys, this is Brandon." Parker introduced him. "Brandon, this is Will, Swee and Tom. They were my squad back at the base."
Thomas was the only one to reach out his hand in an offer of friendship. Brandon took it and shook hard. Thomas had only ever received such a strong handshake from Will, and he hardly ever gave them. "So you know what they are?" Thomas asked.
"Sure I do." He replied. "They're dead people. Do I know how they got here? No clue. What I do have an idea about, is why they do what they do."
"And what's that?" Usui asked.
"I don't think I've seen a single biter out there that isn't bleeding from somewhere. Everything needs blood to move. And that blood keeps leaking out every time it gets hit with a bullet or stabbed or some shit. And so they eat... Get more blood in their system, and they can live a bit longer."
"You've got it all figured out, don't you?" Will crossed his arms and laid back in his seat.
"Not in the slightest." He shook his head. "That's just my idea."
"Why does Cecil hate us?" Usui asked, turning back to Parker.
"He's just a senile old man who refuses to retire." Parker answered him. "I heard from Oscar that they just let him think he was in charge before. You don't have to do anything he says. Like I said, I took charge of these people because I'm in the military, and most of them don't know how to think for themselves."
"You're the leader?" Will raised an eyebrow. "You're not a leader, Parker, you're a soldier. A damn fine soldier... but I've never heard you give an order in my life."
Parker chuckled. "All due respect sir, but I don't give orders because you're the one doin' it." At this comment, Will looked slightly threatened, but that went away when Parker continued. "You can have the leadership role, sir, but these people don't trust you yet. If you become leader now, they'll look at it as an active takeover and rebel against you."
"I never said I wanted to be the leader of your little top floor community." Will replied. "You're coming back to the base with us. These people can fend for themselves."
"Are you fucking serious?" Parker frowned.
"Watch your tone, soldier." He scolded him, yet Parker ignored the protest.
"No, I won't." He said. "These people can fend for themselves? Cripples, sick, old, and a bunch of people who went to medical school their whole lives and have never lifted a barbell before. The people who can fend for themselves are the military. They've got guns! They've got men! All we got here is one gun, a bunch of syringes and maybe three or four fighting men."
"The military are our people, soldier." Will spat at him. "You spent the last four years with them. Does loyalty mean nothing to you?"
Parker slammed his fist down on the table, creating a shattering noise beneath it. The weak and sick on the other side of the room, turned around. What once had been a room filled with noise was now void of it. Everyone listened intently to the words he spoke. "Damnit, Will! I have more loyalty than you could know. Of course I want to go back, but these people need me more... Need us more! Now, you do whatever you want, but I'm staying here."
"Parker! That's desertion!" Usui cried. "You know what they could do to you for desertion?"
"I know what they would do, Swee, but with the world like it is, I doubt there's gonna be anyone left to do it."
Will stood up from his chair and stared down at the man with a look of disgust. "I don't believe you, soldier. I thought you knew better than that. If that's how you want to play it, fine. If you're going to abandon us, we'll abandon you too. Come on, squad." He held his hand up in the air and waved for them to follow. Usui looked to Parker for a moment, but ultimately decided to stand up and follow Will. It was only Thomas who remained in his seat. When Will noticed this, he shouted at him. "Garter! We're heading back to base now."
[A. Side with Parker.]
[B. Side with Will.]
80% of readers chose to [A. Side with Parker.]
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"Garter!" Will called. "We're leaving now."
Thomas didn't want to betray the forces, but Parker put up a good point. These people needed their help. They wouldn't make it without people to help them. He sucked up his gut and turned to Will and Usui, two of them men he'd spent the last couple years with. "I'm not leaving."
"Excuse me?"
"These people need us more than the military does." Thomas told him. "I don't know about you, but I joined the army to protect my country. That doesn't mean protecting the land, or protecting the buildings. The country is the people. Protecting them is our job. If we can't do that, then what do we do?"
"Shoot at shit." Parker laughed.
Will shook his head for a few moments, not responding. Usui looked hurt. "Tom, this is desertion. They'll arrest you!"
"Then let them arrest me." He told him. "I'm doing what's right here."
Thomas looked towards his Sergeant and saw him welling up with rage. He didn't say a thing, only stared violently. "Don't you care that all your friends back on base? They're going through the same shit we are."
"Fine!" Will barked, ignoring Usui's rant. "We'll stay here. But that only goes until the walkers stop walking. We're getting up and walking out of here the first time we get a chance."
"But sir..." Usui started.
"Dammit Ousawa, they're right." He sighed. "As much as I hate to admit it, they're right on this one. These people are defenseless."
"Yes they are." Parker added. "They need our help. You can go out there if you really feel it necessary, boy, but my suggestion is, if you have any common sense, you stay here with us."
"...Fine..." Usui finally grunted. "We'll stay here. But if any of my friends die back there, it's on your heads."
"Fair enough." Parker sighed, thinking of no way to counter the statement with a witty comeback.
"Come on, soldier." Will barked, turning back around, harshly. He left a path of rage behind him as he walked toward the window looking down upon the city below. Usui followed him. There were always just those people who would hold a grudge like no other. Will was one of those people. Though he liked to hide it behind a wall of toughness, he really was just the same as any of the rest of us here... Scared and alone.
"Thanks for sticking with me, Tom." Parker told him after the two of them left.
"The hospital is lucky to have you." Brandon added. Thomas had almost forgotten the man was there. He hadn't spoken up through the conversation, since he didn't have anything to say. "How many of those things did you kill out there anyway?"
"It's rough to say..." Thomas replied. "I wasn't counting. A hundred maybe?"
Parker winced and Brandon looked back down towards the ground in solemnity. "That's a hundred more people who are dead two times over... With everything that's happened, it has gotten so hard to remember all those monsters in the street used to be people. I didn't even know there were that many people in Savannah..."
"And that's not even counting the number of assholes who fled to Atlanta." Parker added.
"I found it easier if we don't think about 'em." Thomas suggested to them. "They're clearly not the people they were anymore, and they were trying to kill us..."
"I'm not faulting you for killing them." Brandon said. "I'm just saying it's a hard thought to stomach."
"Yeah..." Parker sighed. He reached his hand up and scratched his cheek just under his eyepatch. He used his working eye to gaze over at Will and Usui huddling in the corner, away from the rest of the group. "Hey, Tom, you know what this reminds me of?"
"What's that?"
"The Christmas party." He smiled. Thomas laughed because of the story he was about to tell. He knew exactly which one it was. "Remember the Secret Santa we all did? Will didn't want us to take part, but we pressured him into it. And Swee didn't fucking know what to do. They all sat in the corner while we exchanged gifts."
"I remember that like it was yesterday..."
"Well I mean, it was only a few months ago." He replied. He turned to Brandon, knowing that Thomas had heard the story a dozen times. Brandon rubbed his shoulder in a strange pained way and listened in. "Me and this guy, we got presents for each of them over there, saying it was from the other. We were in a dead argument at the time. It was something stupid... What was it, something about laundry? Anyway, instead of getting our own gifts for Will, we tried to get fake gifts from the other person, trying to see who could bring down Will's wrath more. He was even more butthurt than he is right now..."
"Ah, really." Brandon laughed, moving his shoulder around. "What did you get him?"
"I got a toy plastic bugle for him." Thomas answered. "There's no one else that hates the sound of the horn call in the morning more than Parker."
Parker shared a laugh. He had been so angry at the time, Thomas would have never thought they would forgive each other. But he did eventually. "I got him a pack of prank beer. Left the taste of shit in his mouth for weeks..." Parker told his side of the story. "Eventually, we realized the whole thing was a completely fucking stupid way to get at each other and we just wrestled it out."
"Who won?" Brandon asked.
Parker paused for a moment, as if wondering whether or not he would lie. He must have decided not to. Best to be honest with each other. "He won. Doesn't mean I didn't shit in his socks the next couple days."
"So how does that have to do with this situation?" Thomas asked him.
He glanced over toward the other half of the squad. "Because, with the way Will is looking at me over there, I wouldn't be surprised to find shit in my socks tomorrow..."
"Sucks to suck." Thomas heaved a quiet chuckle, then picked up when Brandon and Parker joined in with him.
Parker wiped his face just over his lip and ran a hand through the hair that had fallen severely out of place. "You know, Tom, you and me have been going at it for a while. I don't know why it took a fucking undead apocalypse for me to realize you're not such a bad guy."
"Thanks..." He replied. Compliments like this barely ever came from Parker. This was rather unusual, and he didn't know what to answer with.
"Well, if that's all, I'm gonna check on the sick." Brandon said, standing up from the couch. He began to walk back, but Thomas spotted something on his back he hadn't noticed before. It was a spot of black blood.
"What's that?" He asked.
"What?" Brandon questioned, shaking his head. He cranked it around and saw the blood on his right shoulder. "Oh, that's just from a biter I killed this morning. You never seen a stain before."
Thomas knew he was lying. When Brandon was standing in the circle of old and sick, his back was turned then. Thomas didn't remember seeing any stain during that time... It must have just happened, and there weren't any biters up here. "Take your shirt off..." He spoke hesitantly.
"Whoa, Tom..." Parker started. "I didn't know-"
"Take your shirt off..." He repeated, this time slower and more precise.
"I don't know if I should-"
Thomas put his gun hand on the pistol hanging at his belt just obviously enough that the man could see it. "I said take it off."
Parker's eyes started to widen, and he saw the blood stain on the shirt. "Just do it, Brandon."
He complied reluctantly and began to take his coat off his shoulders. When his dress shirt left his body, not only did it reveal the strength underneath, it also revealed a large bloody wound the size of a fist on his right shoulder. It had just been reopened, and was oozing black blood over his arm.
Parker stood up and backed away instantly. Thomas did the same. "You're goddamn bit..."