The Unfeeling

I capped two of the fuckers on the third floor. Easy meat. Their heightened adrenaline levels make them dumb; careless. They’re overaggressive. I snort to myself as I look at the fresh blood spatters beading on my flak jacket. Overaggressive. Yeah, Amy. Ya think?

I’m suddenly aware of the broken glass crackling under my ass. I know it won’t cut me through these thick fatigues, but it could just give away my position. There’s one left, I think. I saw three barreling out of the van down on the street. Didn’t stick around long enough to see if there were any more. Had to get moving, up the stairs, to a higher vantage point. But they were quick, the first two at least. Quick, but dumb. Dumb, now dead. Overaggressive.

It’s a by-product of the vaccines. They were supposed to save us all, but they fucked us. Turned most of us into them. Raging, hating bulls charging around, determined to wipe the rest of us out. Driven by extreme prejudice. Devoid of empathy. The Unfeeling.

They never really seemed to be able to explain why it happened. Maybe because most of the scientists were lost to their creation. Maybe because all communications fell quickly into blackout – the Unfeeling too distracted by their bloodlust, the Remaining driven out of their homes and to the fringes of what was left of society. Some said it was a side-effect of the genetic medication, subtly altering people on a cellular level – to be fiercer, angrier, more aggressive. Others speculated it was nothing to do with the vaccines at all; that it was just a placebo effect – the ultimate excuse for humankind to turn upon itself, as it had long waited to do. The division of vaccinated and unvaccinated was just a means to tell who to shoot and who to stand with. It was the same hate that had always been there. It was just simpler now.

I don’t know.

All the mixed messages soon became no messages. Only hearsay and rumour remained. Truth was perhaps the pandemic’s greatest victim.

I listen.

There’s one left. I’m pretty sure. Expected him to be up here by now. Would have heard him coming, up the echo chamber of the concrete staircase, through the doorway long relieved of its door. Would have heard him coming because he’s dumb. But so far he isn’t.

My butt is starting to numb, pressed as it is against the sandpaper carpet of this long forgotten, what? Office building? A chair lies on its side, spider-like legs wheel-less, foamy guts spilling from the wounds of firefights gone by. My hands clutch my gun. Five bullets left – four in the magazine and one in the chamber. My gnarled boots are pushing against a metal desk drawer and I’m afraid to move them in case it creaks.

My hands are steady. Ice flows through my veins. It wasn’t always this way. I remember the first time I killed someone like it was yesterday. I see the horror in her eyes every time I close mine. She was young. Not more than a kid. And I mourned her like a loved one.

I breathe deep, shake away the thought. She wasn’t human any more – not really. She was one of them, right? Unfeeling.

I don’t know.

Since her, there have been many. I used to keep count. We all wore it as a badge and some still do. Some are still counting their kills. Some into the thousands, if you believe the tall tales. No reason not to, I suppose. I know I’m in the hundreds.

My hands weren’t always steady. After the first, they shook for a week. My whole body did. I didn’t eat for two. Then they kept coming and we did what we had to, to survive.

I look at my cold, still hands wrapped around the gun and I remember my mother’s hand in mine. The day I walked her to the clinic to get her jab. The day I took her back to receive a second. I was just doing what I thought was right, wasn’t I? We never could have predicted all this, could we?

I don’t know.

I wipe away tears with the cleanest part of my hand and gather myself.

The doctors and healthcare workers were among the first to get vaccinated, so it made sense that they would be among the first to be affected – those whose job it was to care for us becoming the first to turn murderous. What made less sense was how long the government allowed the killing to go on. Then again, the politicians were among the first to get the killer cure as well.

Fuck was that?

A noise from way across the room. I tense, try to hold myself still, try not to breathe. It sounded like a pan hitting an uncarpeted floor. The kitchen. I thought I saw one on the far end of the floor when I came up over the stairs. Course, I was post-kill, gunshots still ringing in my ears, running for cover. But I think I saw it. Yeah, it was a kitchen, way over the other side of the fucking building. And if the Unfeeling was in there, knocking over pans, he must have found another way up. Shit.

It’s one of the smart ones.

See, some of them weren’t full moron. Some still had a smattering of wits about them. Unfeeling, but not unthinking.

They weren’t going to win a Nobel, but nor were they running head-first into a firefight. They would check themselves, pause for a moment, calculate. They were capable – but clumsy. That was the thing about the Unfeeling, aside from the unwavering desire to slay anyone not like them. They were clumsy. Just a little uncoordinated. The smart ones included. That’s why we had the high kill-counts and they had the lion’s share of rotting corpses strewn about the city. But they had the numbers. And they had the smart ones…

At least that’s what I’d heard. I’ve never actually encountered one personally.

I guess your luck finally ran out.

I don’t know.

It made sense, though. No way the automatons most of them had become were going to be able to coordinate themselves in any sensible way. There had to be smart ones calling the shots.

I tense and listen with all my focus, ready to kill or be killed.

I’d stopped counting, but I could remember all of them. In a weird way, they were always with me. Not so much haunting me as within me. Their blood my blood. They moved through my veins.

Another sound, closer now. Like an old office chair being moved, wheels squeaking in protest at being forced back to life when they thought it was all over.

I’d thought it was over, so many times. It got to the point you started to question why your own survival even mattered. There were moments when I considered just standing still and letting it happen – letting them take me, letting them tear me apart. But something primal always kept me moving, kept me fighting.

Smash.

The sudden sound to my right sparks me into action. I roll left, my brain processing the thrown bottle, its trajectory, all in an instant. I crouch at the side of the big metal desk, take a breath to gather myself, and instinctively lean out, two hands on my pistol, pointed in the direction of the throw.

I get off two rounds and one catches the bastard. I hear him yelp as I duck behind the desk. I listen as he growls in pain and anger, his footsteps falling heavy as he barrels towards me.

As he swan-dives over the desk, I spring back and let off my last three rounds. All connect and he lands beside me like a sack of potatoes. I remember to breathe again as I look into his empty eyes.

Then I notice it.

I holster my gun and climb to my haunches. Is that a…? There’s a thin gold chain around the monster’s neck. I reach out and take it in my hand, teasing an oval locket out from beneath his bloodstained shirt. With a sharp tug, I break the chain and examine the locket in my palm.

They don’t tend to wear jewelry. I mean, I’ve killed a lot and looted all of them. These days you have to. Any weapons or food or whatever they might have on them can be useful when a visit to the local grocery store isn’t really an option anymore. But they don’t usually wear jewelry. Such sentimental adornments have no place in their one-track, hate-fuelled world. The dumb ones at least.

“But you’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

I say it out loud as I stand. I look around the eerily quiet – oh, it’s a call centre. That makes sense now. Then I pinch the locket and watch it spring open. There are two pictures inside. On the left, a wrinkled photo of a pretty woman. On the right, a photo of a newborn baby. But it isn’t wrinkled. It looks new. I run my thumb across the angelic face. I haven’t seen a baby in a while.

The sound of a van door pulls my attention away from the locket, which I snap shut and place in my breast pocket. I’m suddenly aware that one of the floor-to-ceiling windows is completely missing – shattered, no doubt, in a previous firefight. Maybe the same one that gutted that office chair. A draft moves my hair – my cue to move my ass, quickly but cautiously back down the concrete steps, spiralling to the ground floor and out into the crisp, fall air of the street.

I reload and make my way toward the van, eyes wide, weapon trained. There’s no one in the front seats, so I make my way toward the back doors. And I listen. Is that…? It’s a baby, agitated. And a mother, whispering panicked reassurances, probably as much to herself as her child.

I reach out and open the door, fast, keeping my gun pointed straight ahead. There, in the flickering yellow light, is the same mother and baby from the locket. She holds the child close, her eyes reddened with terror.

I take one hand off the gun and hold it out in reassurance.

“It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She pulls the child closer, unbelieving.

“I’m coming in.” And I do, as cautiously as I can, never letting the gun drop till I can be sure she isn’t concealing a weapon or intent of her own.

I get close and kneel beside them. The smell of baby evokes some maternal instinct in me, and I want to grab the child, take it from her, protect it.

I see the woman eyeing the still-fresh blood splattered across my chest and the thin gold chain dangling from my pocket.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she stammers.

I nod.

She smiles thinly, relief poking through the sadness.

“He – my husband – he protected us. He wasn’t like those other two. Not like the rest of them. I mean, he had the rage, but he was…”

“Smart,” I say.

She nods.

“I didn’t get it. The jab. Because I was pregnant.”

“I didn’t get it either,” I say. “Asthma.”

She strokes the baby’s cheek with a finger.

“Do you think she’ll have it? Do you think she’ll be… like them?”

I look into the child’s big, blue, innocent eyes.

“I don’t know.”