55

Remy

"Why would you let her just take a zombie?" Vaughn asked in disbelief after Stella and Chosen had gone. "Why wouldn't you just kill him?"

"I'm sick of fucking killing kids, even infected ones in the shape of kids," Boden reiterated. "Why is that so hard for you to understand?"

"Because people like him are the real monsters!" Mercy sneered at him as she wiped the tears from her eyes. "Not the zombies."

"Oh, there's plenty of room for everybody to be a monster," I said dryly. "There's no act too cruel or depraved for a human to commit."

"Then why didn't you kill mommy's little monster?" Vaughn was looking up at me. "You aren't blind to how dangerous a zombie hybrid could be."

"I'm not," I agreed. "But I trust Stella to make sure he never hurts anyone again. Mostly, though, I don't think he's the one to blame for all the carnage today." I wagged my finger between him and Mercy. "No. I think that dubious honor belongs squarely with the two of you."

"I know that you're upset with some of my choices," Vaughn said. "I am questioning them myself, but the answers are always so much clearer in the rearview mirror. But I swear to you, I brought that zombie boy here to protect us. To keep Emberwood safe. "

"Then you should've killed him!" I yelled. "My brother would still be alive if you had! But instead you summoned every damn zombie in the land. And nothing you've done since then has made sense. How could someone so stubborn and stupid manage to go so long without destroying everything around him, I will never know."

"I already told you," Mercy interjected, sounding annoyed. "He's sick, and he's lost his mind. Can't you see it just by looking at him?"

At first, I'd discounted her opinions as the ramblings of a lunatic, but now I narrowed my eyes and looked at the mayor with a new scrutiny. The puffiness in his face, his skin covered in sweat despite the chill in the basement, the bulging of his manic eyes.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"She keeps saying I got worms because my head hurts and my eyes are a little buggy. My temper's been short, but I haven't been sleeping so well, on account of the headaches. It has been a stressful time of year is all." Vaughn tried to wave her off, but I heard the unease in his voice.

"I saw it all the time." Mercy leaned on the bars of her cell, looking down at Vaughn. "Back when I worked at the general store on my family ranch. Men would hunt down a bear, and they'd be so excited to eat it, they don't even bother cooking it enough, and they end up with a belly full of worms.

"It's called trichinellosis," she went on. "These tiny little roundworms burrow into your muscle, and they eat and shit and breed. They can even thrive in the brain, munching on and infecting all that gray matter that keeps you alive, and by the time they're done, it looks like Swiss cheese."

"You're lying," Vaughn said without much conviction .

"Someday very soon, the worms will eat you or the zombies will," Mercy replied.

"So, is that you're problem, too?" I asked her. "You got worms on your brain?"

"No." She shook her head. "I was just raised in a family that left me primed for greatness."

" Greatness ?" I asked with a dark laugh. "That's what you think you did? If I understand correctly – and I am afraid that I do – is that you somehow managed to rape a zombie in order to conceive some kind of nightmare creature. That is almost literally the opposite of greatness. It's disgusting and devious."

"Mediocrity is incapable of truly understanding greatness," she replied coldly.

"Sure." I stepped closer to her cage, the hammer heavy in my hand. "But the thing that really pisses me off is that none of this wouldn't have happened if you hadn't been incapable of any kind of decent thought or common sense."

"I raised an army for the Chosen One," she said proudly. "I captured and grew them on our ranch after most of my family was killed. Chosen will lead them for retribution for all who crossed us. We had almost finished with Harlow when she managed to evade us.

"I knew she would end up in Emberwood, where all the cowards and degenerates go to hide," Mercy went on. "On our way here, Chosen was drawn to a pit full of thousands of zombies, more than we had ever even owned on the ranch."

"Are you talking about the Tarik Copper Mine?" I asked, remembering all the zombies we had seen cramped together in the pits. "You saw that, and you thought it would be a good idea to let them out and bring them to the innocent people that live here?"

Mercy scowled. "Don't be so naive. None of you are innocent. There is always such a ludicrous emphasis on the wonderous nature of humanity, as if humans are known only for their kindness and empathy. No, if humanity includes the good, then it includes all the atrocities and banality of people, too."

"Some people are innocent, and some are good," I assured her, and I stepped through the open doors of her cell. "I'm not. I am not the best of us, and I'm certainly not the kindest or the smartest, or even the strongest. But I am not one to suffer fools, and I know precisely how to prevent you from committing anymore atrocities in the name of greatness."

I brought the sledgehammer down on her head, and Mercy collapsed on the ground. She never raised her arms or tried to stop me in anyway. Maybe she knew that this was the ending she deserved.

Behind me, I heard a scuffle, and Boden cursed. I whirled around to see Boden knocked to the floor, and Vaughn was standing with the gun in his hand.

"Hey, don't do anything stupid," I said, since he was pointing the gun at Boden, and I was too far away with the sledgehammer.

"Death has a thousand hands and walks by a thousand ways," Vaughn quoted T. S. Eliot again. His manic eyes were on mine, and then he lifted the handgun and pressed the barrel to his own temple. "If you are not careful, you will destroy everything you love."

Then he pulled the trigger.