The Last Blade Of Grass (22 page)

Early the next morning our four departed women return with Greg and Lilly. Everyone is happy to be reunited, but none more than Lilly and Jessica. It is nice to witness such genuine happiness in such a screwed up world.

“There’s more than a blade of grass today, huh, Eddie?” Randy asks me, looking at the reunions.

“Yes, much more than a blade, Randy, much more,” I say and smile.

*

After returning to the ranch we found out there was an attack by one of the infected. None of our people were injured, though. An infected wandered into the stable where Chad and the now toothless prisoner were tied up. We forgot to leave guards posted there, and when Simone walked in to check on them with Hannah, they found the man with the drilled teeth had been ripped open and gutted. There was only one infected carrying out the attack and had left his first victim once he died to start chewing on Chad’s bloody hand, which was now a bloody stump.

Simone killed the uninvited dinner guest and left Chad tied where he was. Since we found Kim in Rogue River, we have all wondered what the process is for someone that doesn’t turn right away, and Chad is just the person we were looking for. She said he started a fever six hours after first being bitten, just like Kim, and the fever lasted almost a full hour and then disappeared. After the fever he regained consciousness and didn’t seem to be infected. He was weak and disoriented, but could speak, and didn’t seem to want to attack anyone any more than he usually did. This new information gives us a small bit of good news that some people are immune to the illness. Unfortunately, without medical testing facilities, the only way we can find out if we are immune is to be bitten.

Greg, Jessica, and Lilly all chose to come to our ranch. They are staying long enough for Jessica to heal and regain her strength, and then they plan on going back to survive on their own. I would like them to stay and hope they end up liking things here. Besides them all being genuinely likable, we have a shared kinship since we were all injured by the same group of men. If they don’t stay, at least helping them makes me feel like we are accomplishing something from the mess Chad and his group brought on us. And we’ll be able to give them plenty of weapons to defend themselves as well.

Our new supplies have been sorted, and we have gained a great deal of defensive capability with the guns and ammunition recovered from the sheriff’s office. The grenades are the most shocking part of the stockpiles, though. Daniel and I have just finished looking over everything, and I have to ask him, “Why the grenades? What could you possibly need them for in dealing with the public?”

“We didn’t request them. They came in with some of the other supplies the week before the attack. Homeland Security sent them to us and probably every police station in the country. Our offices were getting taken over, and were going to be used as regional headquarters if things got really bad. They knew martial law was coming, just like that old memo said. All we could do was store the stuff they sent us, we couldn’t send it back.”

“You think every police station received the same type of stuff?” I ask, shaking my head.

Daniel nods, and replies, “The bigger the department or area the more stuff they would have gotten, I imagine.”

It’s not a comforting thought that people like the gang Chad was with have access to weapons like this, but then again, that means we do as well. I think we’ll have to try for the Medford and Central Point police buildings one of these days.

*

Chad is about to die. He survived my torture yesterday and the inadvertent attack by an infected. His three remaining buddies are tied up in the stable here next to him. I want to say that he will die a painful death and suffer greatly but his reaction to the infection appears to be what was originally intended with the Zeus drug. He no longer feels pain, his body barely bleeds when I cut or stab him, and his feeling of weakness after the fever is more accurately described as a general body numbness to resist reacting to trauma. So I am putting a spike in his head now that I realize nothing I do to hurt him from this point on will matter.

I wanted him to suffer, I wanted my rage and his pain to continue, but now his dead body is dangling like a discarded marionette by the ropes holding his arms in place. As much as I want to continue being angry at these other three, it just isn’t there. I am worn out, and most of my anger at Chad was my regret at being a decent person on the first day and letting him live. His death on that day would have prevented all three of the attacks we’ve endured so far.

I turn to Simone and shake my head with a frustrated expression on my face. She’s standing guard by the door, making sure no more unwanted infected people wander in while I deal with these guys. “I don’t think I have it in me anymore, Simone. I’m just going to kill them and get it over with.”

“Do you think that’s what they would do?”

I just shrug my shoulders at her question. I’m exhausted. I barely slept last night in the police station. As much as I wanted to, I was too much on edge from everything that had happened. My body was ready for sleep, but my brain refused to shut down long enough for me to get it.

“If they had captured us on the ranch, do you think they would just kill you, or do you think they would keep you alive and make you watch whatever they did to us? What they would do to me or to our daughters?”

“I get it Simone, I do. I know what they are capable of, but I don’t think I should keep doing it. I was really enjoying making Chad and the others suffer, but now…”

“But now it makes you feel dirty, right?”

“Yes.”

“Eddie, who do you think this is going to benefit? I mean, if you continue torturing them, what will it do?”

“It will make them suffer.”

“And who will know about the suffering these men endured at your hands? Will you leave any of them alive to go out as a warning to others?”

“No. None of these men are going to leave here alive. No one will know that I tortured them.”

“You can’t think of anyone, Eddie?”

I shake my head no, not knowing where she is leading me in this conversation.

“Our people will know what you did. If you continue torturing these men, then our people will know that even when we had our ranch secure, you tortured and eventually killed these men for no reason other than your desire to see them suffer for what they did.”

“So you think I should stop as well?”

“No Eddie, I think you should continue,” she says firmly while nodding her head.

She steps closer to me and speaks in a whisper to tell me what she means. “Not everyone will stay on this ranch. Eventually, someone will move away when things start to quiet down, and before that there will be trips for supplies. Every one of our people that survive will eventually come in contact with other people on the outside. If you want to keep us safe and this ranch secure, then when any of our people talk with people on the outside, they have to be absolutely certain that to come here and cause problems for us will not just result in their death, but in something far worse.”

I’m starting to see where she is guiding me but the odd expression on my face is enough for her to know I still don’t completely understand.

“Everyone here already sees you as a fair man, Eddie. These people trust you and rightly so. Being fair or decent doesn’t keep you alive in a world like this, however. The people on our ranch need to know that others should fear you. You need to torture those men until they die. You need to do it slowly, and you need to look like you are enjoying it for anyone that comes to watch or asks about it later. If our people believe you are capable of being a monster, then they will have no problems in the future telling people they encounter about it, and that will help keep our family safe.”

“You’re an amazing woman, Simone. Thank you for always keeping me on the right path.”

*

I’ve spent the last three days torturing our three remaining prisoners. They started begging me to kill them yesterday, but I kept on going, and actually got into a rhythm with things. After the first day of torturing them, I returned to the house, showered, and then stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night. I felt dirty and rightly so. What I was doing now was cruel, and I have never been cruel without intention before. Even the torture I performed right after the attack I could personally justify as needing to get information, it was to help us survive, but what I was doing now was different. I stared at the ceiling all night without sleep, wondering what I was doing, and couldn’t come up with a reason.

The torture yesterday went easier. I was exhausted and numb. I really didn’t care how much they begged, even though they increased their pitiful pleas for mercy. I started getting creative as well. I started smashing fingers and toes with hammers to make large blood blisters, which I would then drill. It caused them more pain. I raised their legs on supports and slammed the soles of their feet with a baseball bat. That one I saw in a movie when I was younger. Last night I was able to sleep. I slept well.

Today I was looking for ways to punish them specifically for raping Jessica and other women they had captured and killed. What I did was a brilliant yet simple idea that made me personally cringe when did it the first few times. I bent the men naked over a table with their legs spread and played ping pong with their testicles. I started with just light taps, the ones that hurt, but you can recover from after some deep breathing and a few minutes. By the end I was smacking them full swing, and all three men had bloody swollen scrotums that were probably more mush than testicle.

Joshua Langford has stayed in the stable with me while I have been torturing the men. He had avoided coming anywhere near the men we captured until this morning. He said he felt the men should suffer for what they did and knew he would kill them on sight if he came earlier.

I still haven’t found out what happened to his family or how his group was overrun before they could get to the shelter. No one has wanted to bring it up with him yet. Even Jason and Rebecca have given him his space, even though they must desperately want to know what happened to their son Christopher. I imagine he will probably tell us all tonight, with the events going on today.

It is funeral day. The group found the bodies of little eight year old Christopher, the thirteen year old twins, Steven, and Lauren, and thirty seven year old, Matthew. We are going to bury my mother at the same time.

“It’s time,” Simone says to Joshua and me from the entrance. I put down the cutters I just picked up and head out the door with Joshua, to attend the funeral.

*

We are all in a different mood now that the funeral is over. Joshua decided not to return here with me, but eight other people came with me instead. Hannah is back, and I am also joined by Randy, Arthur and Eleanor, Rebecca and Jason, Jessica and Lilly. I don’t bother giving them a warning of what is too come. They all know what I have been doing, and it is their choice to stay or leave.

I spend my time with rudimentary torture, alternating from one man to the next. With each action, I think of the bodies we just placed in the ground. I snip off a piece of toe with a thought of my mom. Remove a finger with thoughts of Christopher. I work slowly and methodically to ensure that each man is cognizant enough to know what is coming and remains conscious through each procedure.

They don’t bother begging for mercy anymore. They just scream and cry from the pain and none of it bothers me now. Torturing these men feels like a dirty chore rather than a grotesque violation of morality. It is like scrubbing the toilet or picking up dog poop in the yard. It is something I have to do, and I hate these men all the more that I have to do it.

I say I have to do it because I know there is a larger reason behind what I’m doing, and it isn’t because my wife said I should. The easier it is for me to torture them, and the better I become at making them suffer, the closer I get to understanding why it must be done. The meaning is floating there just beyond my grasp, but I will have it soon.

My cutters and drill have seen a busy day. None of the three men have any remaining fingers, toes, or teeth, now. Their hands and feet end in burnt stumps of cauterized flesh. Their mouths are nothing but bloody gums from where I used pliers to slowly extricate their teeth. Pulling the teeth was all I had left to do since I already drilled a hole through each one.

*

Today is the fourth day since I returned to the ranch from Medford with our prisoners. I haven’t helped with anything on the farm. There is probably another five days’ worth of tractor running to pick up and pile the bodies for burning, but I have my own task to do. I am walking to the stable now, and I am finally looking forward to my day. The first two days were difficult to make it through, even though they did get easier as I went. Yesterday was tolerable but still not a job I could say I liked or wanted to do, but today I am looking forward to hurting these men. I’ve given up trying to find justification for what I’m doing. I thought I was on some cusp of higher meaning yesterday, but realize now, that I just want to hurt them because I can.

Simone is walking next to me, and I reach out to hold her hand while we go.

“How are you doing, Eddie?” she asks me.

I stop and look at her, and realize I haven’t spoken to anyone for days, not even Simone. No hellos, no goodbyes. No words at the funeral and no responses to questions. I’ve just been doing my thing in the stable. I haven’t comforted my kids or reassured them even though I have held them in my arms.