Eat the Ones You Love by J.L. Murray

Author:J.L. Murray [J.L. Murray]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hellzapoppin Press
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The door of the building burst open and a single figure emerged. Jenny felt the rotters behind her shift as they smelled the blood of him, the Living-ness of him. They must have suffered so long. To be so hungry for so long and not to die? It seemed like torture to her.

The figure was wearing a HazMat suit, giving him the appearance of a space alien. He had, ludicrously, pulled a bulletproof Kevlar vest, which said “NYPD”, over the suit. He was carrying a tank with a tube and nozzle in the other hand. Some kind of torch, Jenny saw.

“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” she heard Trix say from the RV.

“Please turn around and go back the way you came,” the figure said, his voice muffled. “This is a restricted area.”

Jenny laughed. “Are you serious? What are you going to do with that? Roast marshmallows?”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” he said.

“I’m here for my mother,” she said. “Get out of my way, or my friends are going to have a nice lunch.”

The man hesitated. “Jenny?”

“So you do know me,” she said. “That’s not exactly a checkmark in your favor.”

“I-I can’t let you in,” he said. He sounded terrified. He clicked something on the nozzle several times before it took, and a blue flame shot about two inches out of the end.

“Is that a fucking Bunsen burner?” Jenny said.

“This is a restricted area,” the man said again. “Please turn around and…and go…go back…”

“Step aside,” said Jenny. “Now.”

The man held up the tiny blue flame like a sword.

“Asshole,” Jenny said.

She walked up and shook at the rusty lock on the gate. It crumbled away, and she opened the gate just a few inches. The RV backed up and the back door of the vehicle swung open. Benji squeezed through the gate, then Robin, sending another shudder through the rotters, then Trix propping up Declan. Jenny motioned for them to go inside the building. The man in the HazMat suit just stood and watched them, holding his paltry flame. When they were all inside, Jenny confronted him.

“Do you work for my mother?” she said.

“Y-yes. Since just before the Collapse,” he said. “I’ve stayed with her. Even when the Group had her.”

“What’s the Group?”

“I’ll die before I tell you anything else,” he said. “You’re just one of them. You’re a dead freak. I’ve seen your file.”

“Did you know what they were doing?” said Jenny. “To the kids?”

“We were saving them,” he said.

“You were killing them.”

“You sound just like all those thumper freaks. They would have died anyway,” he said. “We were in the middle of a plague. But when they were dying, they wished we would have tried harder. If only we’d had a bigger sample.”

“If only you’d killed more kids?”

He flared his nostrils. “If need be.”

“Do you have kids?” she said.

“No.”

“Me either, you know why?”

“No.”

“Because my family fucking ruined the entire fucking world. And you helped them.”

Jenny pulled the white fabric helmet from his head, then grabbed him by his scraggly ponytail.

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