Moses winced as if the comment had been a physical blow. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You need to get control of this situation,” King pressed. “Senseless violence is no way to launch your dream of a free Africa. It just confirms what everyone already says; that you are savages.”
The young Ethiopian’s eyes were like daggers. King knew his harsh words had struck the right nerve, but he also knew that they were probably already past the point where Moses might be able to reason with his confederates.
As if to underscore King’s suspicion, one of the men abruptly grabbed Felice’s arm and dragged her away like chattel. King’s muscles bunched, reflexively struggling against his bonds, but as he started after Felice’s abductor, another of the rebels rammed the wooden stock of an AK into his gut. King saw the blow coming and managed to turn his body just enough to avoid serious injury, but the assault doubled him over and put him on his knees.
Moses seemed paralyzed by the sudden violence, but as Felice began struggling in her captor’s grip, he overcame his shock and leapt to her rescue. He got a hand on the man’s shoulder before the rebel who had clubbed King went after him, thrusting him aside disdainfully. The other two rebels cheered their comrade on, covering both Moses and King with their rifles.
As he tried to get his feet back under him, King saw the look of despair in Moses’ eyes; the realization that his carefully laid plans had gone up in a blaze of lust and violence. He had delivered the prize to the freedom fighters, expecting to be embraced as their visionary leader, but now he was simply in their way.
King knew he had only a few seconds in which to act, to do something, anything, to prevent the men from gang raping Felice, and probably killing him as well. Moses, willing though he now appeared to be, probably wasn’t going to be much use in a fight. Nevertheless, the young man’s ill-conceived attempt at chivalry had diverted the attention of the rebels, if only for a moment, and King wasn’t going to let that moment go to waste.
He lowered his head and somersaulted toward the rebel guarding him. The AK cracked loudly as a bullet split the air where he had been an instant before, but before the man could adjust his aim, King, with his back flat against the ground, drove both feet up into the man’s gut.
As the man staggered backward, King was moving again, using his bound hands to push off the ground and spring to his feet. But even as he moved, he saw the other rebels’ guns tracking him, and knew that he’d lost whatever advantage he’d had.
Then Felice screamed, and he realized that getting shot by the rebels just might be the least of his worries.
18.
King could see, in his mind’s eye, the seven zombie-like members of the original research team, rushing from the depths of the cave, responding to the threat to Felice. They were like warrior bees, instantaneously mobilizing to defend the queen.
But before that could happen, the man assaulting Felice abruptly fell back, as if he had received an electrical shock. He then got to his feet, and turned woodenly toward his comrades. Although the latter were poised to shoot King, their eyes were drawn to the would-be rapist. There was no fear in their eyes; instead, they seemed amused, as if they thought their friend was playing a joke. King knew better; in the icy white glow of the electric lantern, he could see that Felice’s assailant now wore the same blank expression as the zombies in the cave.
Moses must have noticed it as well, for he scrambled back as if the approaching man was a venomous serpent. The man ignored him and advanced toward his comrades- former comrades, King thought-his face and body language betraying nothing of his intent. One of the rebel fighters said something in Amharic, perhaps asking for an explanation for the odd behavior, but none of the three Ethiopians seemed to sense that something had gone very wrong.
The only answer came in the form of an attack. The changed man approached the closest rebel and started raining blows with closed fists.
The rebels stumbled back, gripped by confusion, and for a moment did nothing to intervene. The punches were brutal, filled with primal energy, and the target of the attack was rendered senseless before he could so much as raise a hand in his own defense. The two remaining rebels, still unable to process what was happening, leapt forward to restrain the man, but he wrestled free of their hold and began directing his fury at them.
At last, the two rebels seemed to understand that their friend now meant to kill them, and as one of them also went down under a rain of fists, the remaining man brought his Kalashnikov rifle to bear. He took a couple steps back, and then took aim.
Before he could pull the trigger however, reinforcements arrived. The seven zombies emerged from the cave and descended on the gunman like warrior ants. The rifle discharged with a thunderous crack, but the bullet zipped away into the night sky as the man went down under the combined weight of his assailants. From the midst of the tangle of bodies came the sickening crunch of bones breaking.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds, time in which King sorted through his options like a bad hand in a poker game. Moses had fled the scene, running flat out toward the parked SUVs. He would be no help, but despite his betrayal, King wasn’t ready to count the young idealist as an enemy. Felice was probably safe; the zombies had come in response to a threat to her safety. Their sole purpose seemed to be protecting her from harm, but King got the impression that they no longer possessed any ability to discriminate friend from foe.
But in the cave, they had responded to her commands; would that work again? Or would approaching Felice make him the primary target of the zombies’ wrath?
As he pondered this, he contorted his body and threaded his legs through the circle formed by his bound wrists. There was no time to wrestle with the knots, but with his hands now in front of him, he would be able to use them in his own defense. It wouldn’t count for much if all seven-make that eight-of the zombies attacked en masse.
He jogged over to where Felice lay. She was sobbing, but did not appear to be in the grip of another episode of catatonia. He knelt beside her. “Felice. It’s okay now. You’re safe.”
She looked up at him, her eyes wild in the grip of an adrenaline fugue, but after a moment she began looking around to verify what he was telling her.
“You’re safe now,” he repeated. The sound of footsteps scrabbling on the hard lava rock signaled that his actions had not gone unnoticed. “No one is going to hurt you. But you need to call them off.”
“Call them…?”
“The zombies.” He winced at his use of the term, but didn’t know what else to call them. “Tell them to stop. Send them back to the cave.”
Comprehension dawned. She glanced over his shoulder at the approaching horde and raised a hand.
The crunch of footsteps stopped immediately and an eerie silence descended over the plain. King looked back cautiously and saw the group arrayed around him, only a few feet away. He breathed a tentative sigh of relief, but when he looked back at Felice, all he saw was horror. Her eyes were riveted on the form of the man who had, only a few moments earlier, been trying to rape her.
“What have I done?” she whispered, hoarsely. “I did that to him. I made him that way.”
“You protected yourself.”
She shook her head, and then hugged her arms around her torso as if fighting back a wave of nausea. “I thought that it was something that happened to all of us when we found the remains in the cave…that we were all changed by what we had discovered…but that’s not…it was me. I did this to them. I destroyed their minds.” She looked into King’s eyes again. “I can’t control this.”
“Yes you can.” He put every ounce of certainty he could muster into his tone, but deep down he wasn’t sure at all. “You didn’t change me. You were being hurt and you fought back. That’s all. You have to believe that.”