Time to move.

I tailed him for a couple of blocks, threading through the crowd, staying close. His steps began to waver, leaving a serpentine trail in the snow. Finally, he stopped to lean against a doorway. He shook his head a few times and tried to move on again, but lost his balance and fell over.

“Hey, easy now buddy.” I grabbed him under the arms and hauled him to his feet. He turned to look at me with bleary, unfocused eyes.

“S’wa doon?”

“Come on man, you can’t pass out here. Let me help you.”

I put one of his arms over my shoulders and gripped him by the belt. He offered no resistance. A policeman up the street took notice of us and made his way over.

“What’s going on here?” he demanded.

“Sorry officer. My friend here had a few too many. I’m gonna walk him home.”

He eyed Dills with a mixture of pity and irritation. “See that you do.”

“Yes sir.”

As we stumbled away, I smiled.

SIXTY-ONE

I let Tyrel handle the unpleasant part.

The Navy trained him for that sort of thing, after all. Interrogation was a particular skill he and the others never went into with me. I did not blame them. It is not exactly the kind of thing you teach a young child. “Here, Caleb. This is how you heat an iron over a fire. This is how you drill a hole in someone’s kneecap. This is how you twist skin with a pair of pliers until it bleeds. Tomorrow, we’ll do an introductory course in waterboarding.”

Not that I was above it. If I was right about Tom Dills, and where he got his medallion, those were the least of the agonies I would inflict upon him. It was not squeamishness that kept me from participating. Tyrel knew me well, and he did not want me doing something drastic unnecessarily. We needed Dills alive for the moment.

There was not much screaming. A little, but not much. Ty had to make sure Dills knew he was not messing around. He wanted answers, and if he was not satisfied with what he heard, consequences would follow. That was the key. Consequences.

I sat on the ground in front of a round stone fire pit and poked the coals with a stick. The cabin behind me had once belonged to Tyrel’s grandfather. Ty supplemented his income by renting it out as a hunting shack before the Outbreak. We were on the side of a mountain somewhere west of Pike’s Peak. If I had paid more attention, I could probably have memorized the route we took to get here. But on the ride over, I had been too preoccupied with the unconscious man under the tarps, and what he knew, to concern myself with logistics.

Presently, Tyrel emerged from the cabin and took a seat next to me. It was dark outside, and cold, the stars shining brightly above. The hanging road of the Milky Way was a broad swath of purple-white cosmos floating against the endless black of the sky. Ty poured some water over his hands and I watched red stains sizzle into the coals, turning them dark, extinguished. The wind shifted direction, blowing smoke into my eyes. My breath steamed in the air when I said, “What did you find out?”

The firelight cast shadows under the crags and valleys of Tyrel’s sharp face. “You were right.”

“So he was part of the group that ambushed us in Boise City?”

A nod.

“Where are the rest of them?”

“Didn’t get that far.”

“Are we sure he’s telling the truth, and not just saying what he thinks we want to hear?”

Tyrel took a sip of water from his canteen. “He knows details. Stuff you told me about. He was there when it happened.”

I drew my knife and stared at its black blade in the orange glow of the fire. The steel felt cold in my hands. “I want to know where the others are. All of them.”

Tyrel stood up. “Let’s see what we can find out.”

Dills looked terrified. He sat in a pool of light thrown by the room’s single dim lantern. We came through the door and shut it behind us and stood staring stone-faced at the doomed man. The naked blade of my knife dangled from my right hand.

Dills’ boots scrambled across the wood-plank floor as he struggled to push himself further into the corner of the cabin. Not that it would do him any good. The chains restraining him to the thick support posts were anchored by deep-driven eyebolts. He was not going anywhere.

“You have a choice.” My voice came out flat, harsh, and cold as the winter wind. “Die quick, or die slow. Tell me what I want to know, and you’ll go fast. Make me work for it, and you’ll die screaming until you can’t scream anymore.”

I waited a while. When you tell a man he is going to die, and you want information from him, you have to give him time to accept it. He begged for a few minutes, but when he figured out it was having no effect, he began spitting and cursing.

“Fuck you bastards,” he said, eyes aflame with defiance. “I ain’t telling you shit.”

My smile felt dry and dead, and I watched some of the fire leave Dills’ eyes. His snarl sagged and grew brittle.

“We’ll just see about that.”

*****

Every man has a breaking point. Dills took less time than expected to reach his.

There are certain pains you can inflict that leave a person intact, physically speaking. Others do permanent damage, something from which a person will never recover. It happens, and they know they will never be the same again. There is no healing from this.

I took no pleasure in it. Much like killing the infected, it was a means to an end. But unlike dispatching the undead, I did not consider it a kindness. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Small droplets of blood spattered my pants and the legs of my chair. Three fingers and a thumb lay on the ground in front of me, neatly arranged. It was important he see them lying there. Dills huddled over his ruined hand, moaning. The smell of burnt flesh was heavy in the air.

“I’m going to leave you here with Tyrel,” I said. “I’m going to check out what you’ve told me. If you told the truth, you’ll die quickly. If you lied to me,” I pointed to his severed fingers, “those are just the beginning. So if you’ve lied to me at all, unless want to die knowing what your own dick and balls taste like, now would be the time to confess.”

“I swear to God,” Dills sobbed. “I told you everything.”

“For your sake, I hope you’re right.”

Outside, Tyrel grabbed me by the arm and walked me away from the cabin. “Caleb … you sure about this? I know a thing or two about revenge, son. It leaves you empty and cold and you get back nothing you lost. And it’s a damn good way to get yourself killed.”

“Doesn’t matter now.”

He stepped closer, looking me in the eye. “It matters to me, Caleb.”

I almost pulled away until I saw the concern in his eyes, the affection he had invested in me since I was seven years old. You do not simply dismiss someone who has cared for you for that long. A lump rose in my throat and my eyes stung in the chill night air. “Ty, I have to do this. I can’t live with it. The anger. I have to do something or it’s just going to burn me up inside until there’s nothing left.”

An understanding passed between us, then. Tyrel still had the bloodstains on the sheath of his knife. I had seen the sniper rifle hanging in his home above the fireplace. There were no words necessary. We shared the simple acknowledgement of two people who had been in the same place and knew what it had cost them. And when you find yourself there in the depths, down in the darkest place, you make a light any way you can. Even if it means burning down the world.

“Take the horse,” Tyrel said. “He’ll let you know if there’s infected nearby.”

“Thanks,” I whispered.

He let go of my arm. “Ride fast, son. And if it comes to it, shoot straight.”

I embraced my old friend, and then set off down the mountain.

SIXTY-TWO

A wave of murders struck Colorado Springs.