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ouldn’t have known where to look if they simply failed to return. It would have been nothing to me to kill them and either make it look like a zombie attack, or make them vanish entirely.”
The certainty with which he said it scared Dahlia. The look in his eyes told her that he wasn’t bullshitting. Those eyes told her that he had done that sort of thing before. Maybe many times. He had to be some kind of ex-military. Maybe special ops. He’d taken on the whole strike team without so much as being touched. That was freaky scary.
“How many of you are there?” asked the old man. “In your camp. How many?” When no one answered, he smiled and nodded. “Sensible not to share your numbers. But, for the sake of discussion, let’s say the number is sixty-seven.”
That jolted everyone. Despite the pain in her stomach, Dahlia shot to her feet.
“How . . . how . . . ?” It was all she could manage.
“Intelligence gathering is the most important component of any mission. Remember that.”
“Who told you?” demanded Nathan.
The old man shook his head. “No one told me. I observed. I know that you sleep in the seventh tent from the edge of the woods.” He pointed at Serena. “You have the blue bedroll. Should I go on? No. The point is made. As a group of survivors you are all managing things just above the subsistence level. Not bad, considering how many other groups, including better-armed groups, have fallen. You get points for that. However, you are acting like a gang, and you are not very good at it.”
“We do all right,” sneered Trash.
“You just got your clocks cleaned by a very old man who took you all on without weapons. You, on the other hand, had youth, numbers and were all heavily armed. Explain to me how that supports your claim that you’re doing ‘all right.’”
Trash’s face colored and he looked away.
“You’re spying on us?” asked Dahlia.
“Yes.”
“Why? If you know all this about us, why not just leave before we came out here?”
“That,” said the old man, “is a very intelligent question, and it deserves a straight answer. Pay attention.” He leaned his forearms on his thighs. “Before the outbreak I spent quite a long time running teams of special operators. Sadly, the nature of the outbreak disrupted my lines of communication with any who may have survived.”
“The EMPs,” said Dahlia.
“Yes. An ill-advised voice of action, and one which most likely crippled any chance of an effective response.” He laced his fingers together, and Dahlia saw that the dark gloves he wore were very thin. More like silk than canvas. “Since the collapse of the infrastructure I have been endeavoring to do what I could to help people get to places of shelter, and to organize so that they can survive in community form. We need to build our numbers because survival of the species requires a deep gene pool. Do you understand that?”
Dahlia nodded. A few others did, too.
“Being out here in the same woods as your group is not an accident. I became aware of you a few weeks ago and positioned myself where I was likely to be found. Your scouts work in a grid pattern, so I made sure that they would find me on a day when it was convenient for me. I made the same offer to the scouts that I have made to you. They chose to run. Fair enough. They aren’t on the policy level. They reported back and you came to find me. It was unfortunate and disappointing, though not particularly surprising, that you came to attack me. That could have worked out very badly for you. None of the injuries I inflicted are serious. All of you will be able to defend yourself if attacked by the living dead. That fact should be suggestive.”
Dahlia nodded again.
But Slow Dog asked, “Why? Why not just fuck us up and let us rot?”
“Or turn into walkers?” asked Serena.
“I’m not a fan of killing unless there is a tactical or strategic win involved. You are not formidable enough for that level of response from me.”
“Ouch,” said Nathan.
“And,” continued the old man, “you are potentially more useful to me, and by extension the world, if you’re alive.”
“What do you mean?” asked Dahlia.
“You are not good at what you do, but you could be. You’re all very young, very strong, and you have some experience with combat. I could bring you to a higher level of efficiency. I could train you to become a much more powerful and useful team.”
“Why the hell would you want to do that?” asked Jumper, finally able to join the conversation.
“Because the war that we’re fighting should only have two sides,” said the old man. “Us—the living—versus them—the dead. The nature and severity of this crisis should have been an eloquent statement about the folly of warfare as we’ve always known it. Lucifer 113, after all, was created as a bioweapon. With the death of billions of people, do we really need more of a lesson?”
No one spoke.
