The soldier shoved him and pushed him toward the fences,where the stench of rot was even riper. He didn't want to do it, but he gaggedand then threw up on the ground. He heard the soldiers and some of the refugeeslaughing behind him. In the morning sun, he straightened his back and slowlydrew his eyes up from the puddle of vomit between his shoes to see the dead onthe other side of the fence. He had seen them before, but now he was inchesfrom them, and the decaying process had progressed quickly in the hot sun. Helocked eyes with the dead woman across from him. Her hair was long, black, andcrusted with dry blood. Her eyes were cloudy, and her skin had turned a sicklygray shade. The skin of her fingertips was gone, and all that was left was thebones, sharp and white. Her fingers protruded through the chain link fence, andRudy stepped closer to her.
Behind him, the soldier urged him on like some sort ofderanged cheerleader. "Go on, boy. Kill that Annie."
Annies. The name made his skin crawl. Rudy reached backand plunged the knife at the creatures head, putting all of his weight behindit. The bayonet glanced off of the creature's forehead, skittering sideways,and a flap of filleted forehead flopped over the creature's eyes. It pawed atthe air blindly.
The soldier behind him laughed. "Don't blind them,fat boy. Kill 'em!" More soldiers joined in. They were sitting in the sun,cleaning their weapons and smoking cigarettes, while the refugees of theColiseum sat behind them in rows, waiting for their shift at the fence.
Rudy took a few shallow breaths and pumped himself up totry again. This time he aimed for the creature's eyes. He plunged the bayonetinto the lady's eyes, and a cloudy liquid erupted from it. He drove the knifedeeper until he hit something hard. He put his weight behind it, and the bonebehind the woman's eye broke, the knife plunging into something softer. Thecreature twitched, then dropped, falling off the end of the bayonet. Anothercreature took its place. Behind him, he heard applause.
He knew it was mocking, but inside, Rudy was thinking, Hellyeah. I can kill these things! He killed another, and then another. By thefourth one his exuberance was gone, his arms were tired, and sweat was runningdown his pink face. Killing people was a lot more work than it was in Call ofDuty, that was for sure.
After his fifth kill, Rudy stepped back and looked at hishandiwork. The fence ran for a good two hundred yards. It was level thanks tothe concrete apron that ran around the courtyard of the Coliseum. The deadstill lined the fence, eagerly stepping into the spots that were vacated by thedead that Rudy and the other refugees had killed. Beneath their mechanicalmovements, the truly dead were now being trampled into jelly and bone dust. Onthe ground, blood and pus were beginning to leak under the fence. They had nosuch concept as respect for the dead.
"What's the hold-up, darlin'?" the assholesoldier said behind him.
Rudy killed his sixth creature.
****
Amanda watched Rudy for an hour. When the hour was up,the soldiers called time, and the forty refugees that had been sent to thefence, dropped their arms wearily to their side. They handed over theirbayonets, and then the soldiers picked out forty more lucky volunteers. She hadjust enough time to look at Rudy's blistered hands before the soldier that hadbeen heckling Rudy for the last hour plopped a bayonet in her hands and toldher to get to work. Chloe was up on the line with her, and they set about thework of dispatching the dead.
For Amanda, the experience was terrifying. She couldn'tsee through the mass of dead before her. For every one that dropped, another appeared,and still there was no glimpse of daylight on the other side of the fence.Amanda was too short to reach some of the taller creatures, so she picked andchose which ones she would kill until a tiny creature showed up. It used to bea little girl. Now it was a snarling abomination, shoving its diminutivefingers through the fence to try and reach Amanda.
She hesitated, and then her arm dropped to her side."What the fuck are we doing?"
"You say something, sweetheart?" a soldierasked behind her.
Amanda did not reply. She just stared at the faded eyesof the creature in front of her and kept the bayonet at her side.
She heard the boots of the soldier walking briskly overto her. "Go on, girl. Kill it. If that thing was on this side of thefence, it would sure as hell try to kill you."
She said nothing.
Her silence infuriated the soldier. She could sense that.From her left, Chloe spoke calmly to her, "Just do it, Amanda."
Amanda's voice caught in her throat, and she could barelyget the words out. "It's wrong."
The soldier spun her around roughly and looked her in theeyes. "It's wrong?" he asked in a mocking voice. "Girl, I'lltell you what's wrong. What's wrong is having to guard a bunch of spoiledcivilians who don't give two shits about you while your family is on the otherside of the continent. Shit, I bet on the East Coast, there's an asshole justlike me yelling at an asshole just like you right now. You know what I'd wanthim to say?"
Amanda looked at the ground.
"I'd want him to say 'Kill that son of a bitch,before it kills someone else.' That someone else could be my kids, my wife. Andthis little shit in front of us, well, you kill it and maybe you help out oneof my brothers, keep their kids safe... keep their wives safe."
Amanda said nothing.
"You don't care about my wife? My kids?" thesoldier asked, his hands on his knees, bent over to look her in the face.
"You can do it, Amanda. Just pretend it's him,"Chloe said.
The soldier laughed and looked up at Chloe. "Barbiedoll, you best mind your own damn business."
Amanda spun and drove
