THE INFECTED: PART 10

*Hello! Again, I must address that this does not fit the prompt in any way, I'm just uploading these chapters to my profile as I'm writing them. Thank you for reading!*

“How about you follow me and join your people, Sarah?” Victor says as he grabs Sarah’s shoulder and leads her out to the street where she sees her people all lined up shoulder to shoulder on their knees.

Victor shoves Sarah onto the ground, Brent shoves Abigail down next to Sarah.

“I’m gonna need you all to be in a neat straight line, all eyes on me because I have some shit I want to say before we get started. Trust me, I saw this in a comic book once, everyone lined up right before a tragedy hits. Of course, those guys were the heroes in this story, which you ARE NOT heroes. Not in my eyes, you see, you’re all just the bad guys pretending to be the good guys. You think you’re all in the right but trust me, you are not. I’m trying to do the right thing here, I’m trying to save the world, trying to rebuild it. What I’ve come to learn while you were out there killing my man and taking my shit, is that people are absolutely a resource, if that makes me a bad guy, then hell, I’m the villain. I don’t want to kill you but I will absolutely do just that if you make me. We need each other to make things right, to fix all this that we’re all going through collectively. Eventually the dead ones will disappear, and the living will inherit the Earth once more. There is no sense in killing each other for the hell of it. You see, my people and I share a set of rules, we have a system in place for dealing with the ones that can’t get behind that system. If you can’t seem to accept the rules or the system, we have in place then you are absolutely of no use to us or anyone and therefore deemed unworthy to live in the new world with us. You’re a liability at that point.” Victor kneels next to Sarah and looks her in her eyes.

“You want us to work for you? You want us to be your army while you sit in a tower up high away from the world you’re supposedly rebuilding?” Sarah says with a shaky voice.

“Not at all, Sarah. What I want from you is to work WITH me, not FOR me. We’re all in this together and you obviously have some balls to make it this far, I mean hell, you took one of my bunkers with said set of balls. Those things must be weighing you down if that’s how big they are. Of course, you didn’t know who you were fucking with, I get it, I do. I will admit that I may have been a bit too hasty in my revenge against you because you simply didn’t know the man you were messing with, so I forgive you for your transgressions against me and my people. Plus, Tommy, the man you killed, we sent him there as a punishment for going against our set of rules at the time, when he didn’t show up, it wasn’t a huge loss to us, but when we were missing our stuff, that’s the problem I had with it. I was angry, I can admit that I’m man enough. Tell me Sarah, if you truly think you’re the hero, then do the right thing here, work with me and let’s rebuild the world, together.” Victor stands up and walks over to Brent. “Drag the doctor’s body out here. Let’s show them what’s happening in our neck of the woods.” Victor chuckles and turns around to look at the community of people on their knees.

Brent disappears into Harvey’s home only to shortly reappear while dragging Harvey’s lifeless body out and with a thump he drops it next to Victor.

“If you’re showing us that people turn when they’ve been bit, we already know that.” Sasha shouts.

Victor turns to her.

“How right you are…?”

“Sasha.” She says calmly.

“Sasha! How right you are. You do know that people turn when bit, but that’s not what I’m showing you. Your doctor here is going to turn, which means that he’s fresh. He will be of this new variant that is around. Which you all probably don’t know about because it’s been how long since someone turned?” Victor points his gun towards Sarah.

“It’s…. It’s been a while. Well aside from Antonio just now.” The crowd gasps and Sarah holds back her tears. “Which he wasn’t bit, so I’m not even sure how- “

“That’s just the other thing I wanted to talk about! Which while we wait for Doc here to raise from the dead, I can show the rest of you just that!” Victor grabs Vincent from the line of people. Everyone screams and shouts, Victor places a gun to Vincents head.

“Wait! Whoa, hold on. I don’t think we need a demonstration, Victor, I think telling us would be just fine!” Vincent pleads.

“Victor! Stop this! You said you didn’t want to kill us, so don’t! We’re listening.” Sarah shouts.

Victor chuckles, still holding the gun to Vincents head. “If I told you that no matter what, we all come back, and it doesn’t matter if we destroy the brain anymore, would you believe me?”

“That’s impossible.” Says Sasha.

“Right.” Victor pulls the trigger, Vincent drops to the ground next to Sasha, who is now covered in blood. The group screams and then back to silence aside from a few whimpers.

“I just shot that man in the head. He shouldn’t get back up and walk around like a dead one, right? That would be completely impossible according to Sasha. Well, now we’re playing the waiting game. Then you’ll see that the world just got a whole lot more complicated.” Victor leans up against Harvey’s building, pulls out a cigarette, lights it and takes some puffs while remaining silent.

“Victor, why are you doing all of this?” Sarah speaks, still shaky, tears escaping her eyes.

“I’m doing this, to show you. I’m not a bad guy, showing you that you can trust me.” He blows smoke from the cigarette.

“Yeah, but you’re killing people to prove your point, that’s sort of the definition of a bad guy in this world.”

“Nope, that’s where you’re wrong, Sarah, a bad person and a good person are defined by the standard of the world they live in, the old world, yeah, killing people was wrong and if you did that, you were considered a bad guy, unless of course you were collecting a paycheck from the government, then it was seen as perfectly okay. In this new world, we all must kill, we all must do what we need to do or die. It’s that simple. You’ve killed people before Sarah, I’m sure you’ve all done the worst kinds of things just to end up right here right now listening to me give you this speech. We’ve all killed, one way or another, it's just how the world works. Survival of the fittest, but we are the fittest, we are the ones who live, and you could join that. We don’t hold any judgements towards our own kind, we understand the lengths people must go to, just to stay alive. So, no, Sarah. Killing in this world does not make you a bad guy. This is just the world we live in now. I thought you would be more understanding to that.” Victor tosses the cigarette butt on the ground with one last exhale.

Just in time for Harvey or an undead version of Harvey to stand up with cracks of bones and groans.

“Perfect timing!” Victor whistles at Brent who grabs Harvey behind by the shoulders.

“This is a dead one, usually, you could shoot these things in the head and if you hit it just right, they’d drop and die for the second and last time. However-“Victor aims his pistol at Harvey’s head and fires. The bullet goes through Harvey’s head, but he is still upright, gnawing and growling. “That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. They can take a bullet to the head no problem now. Why? I haven’t the slightest idea. The only way I have found that will stop them for the most part is completely removing their head from their bodies.” Victor whistles at another one of his henchmen, who unsheathes a machete and goes at Harvey’s neck repeatedly until it breaks free from the body. The body drops, lifeless. The head is still reanimated and gnawing. Victor picks Harvey’s head up and holds it up for everyone to see. “As traumatic as that probably was for you all to see your Doctor come back to life only to be beheaded and still hungry for some reason, that’s what we are now dealing with. Hold this.” Victor places Harvey’s head next to Sasha, just in time for Vincent to begin reanimating. “Holy shit! The timing of all of this is INCREDIBLE!” Victor grabs Vincent and pulls him to his feet or what once was his feet. “You see, no matter what, you come back, it’s going to happen to all of us at some point, whether our brain is destroyed, or we die of old age, or hell, all the above. No matter how we die, we come back, and we’ll keep going until our heads are removed, and then even further beyond that.” Victor’s henchmen remove Vincent’s head as well which continues gnawing and groaning.

Sasha is sobbing quietly, staring at Vincent’s body, slightly resting a hand on his back.

“You took him from me….” Sasha whimpers.

Victor looks over at Sasha, he walks to her and kneels.

“I see…I’m very sorry for what you just lost but he didn’t die for nothing, he proved a point to you people.” Victor stands back up. “We all lose people, we all have to keep going, you all look at me like I’m the bad guy but again, I must assure you that I am NOT! I’m just trying to rebuild the world- “

“In your image?” Sarah shouts.

Victor looks over to Sarah.

“Careful. I don’t like that tone you’re taking up with me. I don’t mind proving my point again if need be.” Victor sighs. “Now there is one final piece to my little speech here and then we can wrap it up and call it a night.” Victor signals one of his guys over by a van that no one noticed until right this second.

The door opens and out steps a man with a bag on his head, he’s holding what looks to be a decaying Lurker’s head, he’s dirty and covered in blood and dirt. He is pulled over next to Victor, who smiles a sinister grin.

“Does anybody have any idea who this is? Oh boy, it’s like unwrapping a Christmas gift! I can’t wait. Before I unwrap this gift to you all, I want you to know a thing or two about our mystery guest here. This person is the only reason we were able to find you and have our little meeting tonight! He spilled the beans on everything you all got going on down here! Pointed us in the exact direction to go! He was a big help to us in finding you, so let’s give him a big ol’ pat on the back for being such a big help.” Victor rips the bag off of the man’s head.

“Michael!?” Sarah shouts.

Michael who is missing an eye, a few teeth and two fingers, he is covered in bruises and blood, looks to Sarah.

“S…Sarah? I’m so sorry. I did it for Rebecca…” He raises the Lurker’s head.

“Michael….that’s not…that’s not Rebecca.” Sasha says.

Michael looks down at the Lurkers head he’s holding, it’s the head of what once was a man who has been long dead before this mutation of the lurkers. It’s not even animated anymore.

“I…I swear…where’s Rebecca?” Michael asks Victor.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about old man.” Victor says with a smile and a pat on Michaels back.

Victor walks away with his men, all hopping into the van that Michael came from.

“Consider this a peace offering, our gifts to you tonight. Tomorrow is a big day! You are working with us now to rebuild the world!” Victor says as he slams the van door and they drive off through the gates.

Sarah stands up goes over to Michael.

“Michael…what did they do to you?”

“I don’t….I don’t understand…Rebecca was here…in my hands…she was here..where am I? Sarah? Why are you here? Victor will be back soon.” Michael says as a tear runs down his single eye.

Sarah hugs Michael. Sasha let’s out a crying scream over Vincent’s body. The rest of the community slowly stands and starts heading back home, some sobbing, some shaking their heads. Sarah looks up to the night sky, she breathes in and lets out a deep sigh.

"He's not going to get away with this, not this time."

Sasha looks over to Sarah, tears in her eyes and she nods.

"He's already dead, he just doesn't know it yet." Sarah says.