Serro’s eyes dart to the mother, “Shoot anyone living with them?”
“Target three down,” comes the voice of Morgan Gilmore.
“That’s correct, Hopper, out,” says Kowalski.
Serro takes out his earpiece and Drake follows suit.
The mother is cradling her little girl, “What do you people want?”
Serro doesn’t answer but looks at Drake expectantly, “Well?”
Drake shakes his head, “No way. I’m not doing it.” Softly but firmly he makes his position clear. “I can’t.” He is grateful that the Industrial music is drowning out this disgusting conversation.
“We’ve all read the reports on what this disease does. This may be a mercy,” says Serro, clearly unconvinced.
Drake smirks without a trace of humour. “Prevent death with more death?”
“Are you really that naïve? You know what happens once the body dies, don’t you? Or don’t you believe the reports?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“I’ve seen footage of the dead test subjects, they come back, Drake.”
“I’m not killing children.”
“Did you watch the footage of what they do when they wake up?”
“If you’re so sure, then you kill them.”
Serro nods, straightens his shoulders, and raises his gun when he feels the nozzle of Drake’s sidearm press against the back of his head. He freezes.
“Like I said, you kill them… but then I’ll kill you.”
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Drake’s hand is shaking so badly he can hear the gun rattling. “Serro, we just need to take a moment,” The child is still staring at them, but her mother has started to weep hopelessly.
Deep down Drake knows Serro is right. At least he’s right in theory. They have both seen the footage of the contaminants when they wake up. The horrible monstrous things they become are too hideous to contemplate; but executing a child is completely beyond justification. He can’t understand how his life has come to this point. He is a party boy that just loved having fun too much.
Comparative to shooting this poor little girl, killing Serro really does seem easy. He’s made his choice, he signed his life away. He tightens his grip on the trigger ever so slightly.
Serro hears the trigger move and his eyes widen. “Drake, easy.”
“Shut up!” he yells back.
The mother stands.
“You sit down! Sit now!” Drake voice raises and begins to crack with stress. She drops back into her seat, hands up before her in a placating gesture. Drake blinks hard. He knows logically the virus cannot be allowed to spread. It must not get beyond Gateway, the main entrance to the city.
This child’s body is, at this moment, being emptied of its humanity and remade into something hungry, reproductive and contagious. Prolonging this situation will only make the child suffer more. A mercy, he reminds himself. The thought feels so empty and hollow that it actually makes him feel worse, like the walls around him are closing in. He finds it hard to draw a breath.
Serro isn’t a child though. Serro made his decision to come here. If he dies, maybe Alexandra won’t have to. Drake has known Serro for over ten years and presses himself to believe that he will understand. The flood of emotion is making it difficult to discern any logical thought. He just can’t do it.
“Target four down,” is just barely heard on the dangling earpiece near Drake’s collar.
How can Caufmann do this day in and day out? Making choices for other people’s lives, people he’s never met, people he doesn’t have to look in the eye before he kills. Then again perhaps he does. Perhaps he has to. It’s the horrible truth of doing what’s necessary. Not many have that kind of conviction, whether it is right or wrong.
Drake aims and fires the silenced gun, not at Serro but past him, hitting the child square in the forehead. That single moment is frozen in time, indelibly carved into his memory along with a soul-rending rush of grief over his choice.
Serro turns to look at Drake, but his eyes are already shut, his gun falling to the floor, and his mouth is open, spewing a terrible howl of anguish.
The mother starts screaming. It is the worst sound either of the soldiers have ever heard, a cry so full of pain it demands you be drawn in to suffer with them. Serro, almost on autopilot, shoots her twice before also dropping his weapon. He turns to face his friend, trembling. Drake is still moaning in horror; his eyes are now wide and crazed, his fists pushed into his temples as if attempting to crush the image of the murder he has just committed out of his mind.
“Drake, Drake, listen to me,” says Serro stepping over to him.
“Oh god!” he howls.
“Drake, it’s okay. Drake, please.”
Another wail of sorrow and Drake shuts his eyes so tightly it’s like he’s trying to force them back into his skull, never to see again.
Serro grips him and holds him. “Drake, Drake, she was already dead, you know that,” tears start to roll down his cheeks, “she was already dead,” he starts rocking back and forth a little. Drake clenches his jaw so hard he can hear his own teeth grinding. “She was already dead, man.”
Serro switches off, feeling everything drain away back into the numbness that a soldier is supposed to feel while going about their job.
He’d killed women before but not a civilian, not a mother in her own home with her child.
Serro Hopper is switched off and feels no guilt now; it is somewhere else so far away from him. He isn’t sure if he’ll ever feel anything again.
“Already dead.” he repeats tonelessly.
When Rennin arrives back at his apartment he can tell Carla is still there as soon as he opens the door. He can smell her perfume and what could only be bleach. If she was cleaning, she must be feeling better. He walks into his puny apartment to sees her wrapped up in a blanket on the couch. She looks up at him with her bright baby blues.
“Hi,” she rasps slightly.
“I’ve passed logs of shit that look better than you,” he says blandly but his eyes betray his genuine concern.
Carla smiles, “You don’t look so good yourself.”
Rennin still looks terrible and he has the most intense cottonmouth, “Yeah…” he cracks his neck. “It’s my rugged viral nose paste that gives my skin its seemingly glowing sheen.”
“Or you’re a greasy euro.”
Rennin sniggers, “I’ve shot people for less than that.”
“Shot a pearl necklace, maybe,” she says with a fluidic cough.
Rennin takes a slow breath. He doesn’t want to know, he just wants to tell Caufmann she hasn’t been vaccinated, get the drug, and dose her up. “Have you been vaccinated for that flu that’s been going around?”
She sniffs, “Yes, and a day later I get sick. Typical.”
Rennin pulls his lips behind his teeth feeling something inside go dark, like a light turning off.
“What’s the matter?”
Rennin purses his lips and shakes his head. “I’m just worried about you.”
“Flu never killed me before.”
When Rennin was eating lunch earlier he remembers overhearing something one of the scientists said about the reactivation of the Embryon Protocol to find anyone infected. That means someone might look for her.
If Rennin knows the military, and he does bitterly, it is only a matter of time before there are hit squads out in the dark, removing the infected as fast as they can. I won’t let them get her. “Can you do me a favour?”
“Sure.”