They dragged her out the front doors of the resort just after dusk. Made of sticks already, poked full of holes; not the sort you’d think capable of killing all those people. The entire southern perimeter patrol, plus the farm gate lookouts, a good chunk of the resort rotation too. All the bodies were theirs. The bitch had done it all herself.
She’d thought it’d be real funny to set the scarecrows loose. Been brazen about it; shot people’s legs out from under them, made waiting meals of them, held them at gunpoint and fed them right to waiting teeth. Real sadistic shit. So when they caught her by the cells, bleeding on the white marble, joining her smears with the bright red door, they pulled her all the way to the pool. One runner left chained and gnashing; shoved her forward and let it grab, pull, gnaw. And all the while she kept on laughing.
One of those crazy new-world kids, the old, shriveled ones said wisely. They’d been there in the times of order; laws, calendars, infinite ammo. But these post-outbreak brats were born and raised wild, life meaning nothing. Pain and death meaning nothing. Even the infected didn’t frighten them.
They stuck her in the fields. Bolted a collar around her neck and chained her to the ground with a reach-around radius far from the crop lines, but close enough to scare. A warning to the cattle; something to keep them in line as they worked the fields. Stop would-be thieves or escapees. Those rows were a minefield of grasping hands and teeth, generally cleared and replaced soon after they started clicking, at risk of sprouting spores.
There she sat, slumped; small and crusted over crimson. Laughing low.
Left there over buzzing night, they found it strange when in the morning she wasn’t twitching. Was hunched and nodding, though, muttering. Dying. Bloody hand knotted in her tank top to hide the bite that grew there. Another wept from her neck.
The guards passed her on their morning shift, herding cattle; chain-linked, jangling, panting already. Chattered and pointed from beneath their visors: That’s her. She’s the one who killed (insert name here).
She didn’t react. Had probably lost half her mind by now anyway. She made a sound under her breath beating be, be, be, be. Just spasms of breath as the fungus overrode her will.
The cattle trudged on, all braced for the whip. Set loose one by one, barrels trained on their skulls as they lugged rusted tools with dry branch-brittle arms. The odd fervent glance thrown back to the new scarecrow at the end of the crop row. Rumours spread fast; they already knew her. The storm that’d blown through fierce with a tailwind of blood. Didn’t look like much now. Wasn’t much left.
Most of the scarecrows were attempted escapees unfortunate enough to be spared from the pillars. Spared instead for the mad limbo of infection; weapons for their slavers. Examples to the rest. They’d all been caught trying to run from this place. You didn’t hear about anyone running the other way.
Whoever she’d been trying to rescue must have meant a lot to her.
Bodies stumbled down the line, rusted sickles and scythes in hand. Worn, raw hands, bone thin, scratched and burning. One swinging, another hacking away the excess, another collecting the severed harvest, little of which they would see again. A disjointed human machine working down the row until they reached her. Until she reached her.
One cog, just as worn into anonymity as the rest. Sunken, peeling, though there was a strength she somehow clung to, had held proud and broad when she was first dragged in. This place had sapped it from her slower than most. She glanced at the new scarecrow with the same idle, awed curiosity as the rest. No recognition. The meaning didn’t go both ways.
She gripped her scythe in both hands. Apart from being one of the strongest animals, they had her well under control. Leverage in the form of the scrawny kid they’d found her with on the road. She would never risk putting him in danger by stepping out of line. Raising the scythe, she kept focus on her task, her ragged breathing, pushing all pain and exhaustion far from her mind.
But when the metal between her fists caught the light on its upward arc, the sky flashed white, bit down cold. Swirled to dim drifts behind fogged glass dashed with fresh blood.
The scarecrow’s head jerked upright. She saw it all and it stole her breath. Stopped her muttering still.
Please don’t do this.
And the club came down.
“ABBY!” The scarecrow surged upright in a twisting lunge. Dry grass scattered with the sudden motion, made heavy with blood as she stumbled forward, screaming out a guttural, wild noise.
The bolt around her neck cut both sound and progress short. Her cry burst into a choke as her body seized rigid, clamped, then folded down. Quivered in the dust. Muttering again.
“I got you. I got you.”
Abby watched from a wary distance, scythe gripped loose and low, because the girl wasn’t a threat. What was her name again? They never said her name back then. It was just the girl; the host. The light.
She’d come all the way to this place, a place as far gone as the new world could twist, just for her. Killed a damn good lot of Rattlers, too. It was almost impressive. More than that it was just sad.
“See, she’s definitely turning now,” said one guard to another, attracted by the outburst.
“Took her long enough. She got bit on the fucking neck.”
“She’s a fighter.”
The scarecrow chuckled to herself, hacking up dust and bile and blood between heaves of stinging humour.
“I’m not gonna turn.” It was a splutter, barely heard.
“How the fuck is she still talking?”
The scarecrow clawed herself up onto her knees and shouted. “I’m not gonna turn, you assholes! I’m motherfucking immune!” Her laughs came breathless now, almost giddy.
“Crazy bitch.” The guard kicked her hard in her bleeding side. The other pointed his gun at the row of cattle. “Back to work.”
Abby couldn’t look away from the light. She could’ve been everything, could’ve saved the world. The worst thing was that she probably knew it.
What was her name?
She curled up on her side, chain slack, grass slick with a growing pool of blood. Saying, “Abby, Abby.”
“I said back to work!” The baton crunched into the back of Abby’s thigh, forcing her knee to the ground. She dropped the scythe. Swallowing her pain, as she’d learnt to do long before becoming a prisoner, she picked it up and rose slowly to her feet, turning away from the girl left injured on the ground half pleading, half cursing, all with a single word. Laughter creeping back in, hard to distinguish from the sobs. Maybe every emotion all at once leaking out of her with the blood, because for too long the only noise in her mind had been that word.
Abby almost joined in, couldn’t stave off the urge. They had to laugh. Miracle of science and the saviour’s daughter, murderer’s goader, rotting here under the same sun. Left at the absent mercy of the worst of humanity, somehow worse still. Worse than each other in some cyclic, stupid competition.
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