"Moonless nights," he said, hoping to strike up a conversation to ease some of the uncomfortable tension he felt. "They say a moonless night sank the Titanic."
Roy glanced back over his shoulder, his beard fluttering in the cold wind as he shoved dead branches out of his way.
"I'd blame the iceberg and recklessness," he said humorlessly. "There's never a moon here. It's like it's not even there, even on a clear night with no weather. You can see a few stars sometimes, but not always. It's like they move around. Actually, when you can see the stars, it’s quite a sight."
There was a sharp snap as he broke a branch the thickness of Emmit's arms in half and tucked it under his arm. Emmit jumped.
God damn it Emmit, man up a little bit.
"Where exactly are we?" He asked, pulling the blanket tighter around him. The trees above them moaned like melancholy ghosts, their dead branches clattering together and raining fine mists of snow and ice down upon their heads.
"Later," Roy said gruffly, "after the test."
They walked on in silence, Roy seemingly calm and content while Emmit fidgeted and adjusted his glasses. Every time he saw movement in the dark, he was certain it would be a grinning, freeze dried corpse, stumbling out of the underbrush to clutch at him and perhaps put another mark or two on his flesh. But on that night, they never saw any; none that were roaming nearby, anyway. The pure, unfiltered dark of space seemed like it could hold an eternity of secrets.
It felt like time had stopped moving when Roy finally spoke again, his deep voice reverberating off the trees.
"We're coming up to a small shed out here. I fashioned a little lock for it, but it's not a bank vault. I've never been able to find any metal here to work with, so everything has to be wood, rock, and clothing salvaged from the dead ones. This is our food storage, and no one is allowed inside it but me and the Provider. Anyone else so much as looks at the door, and they get put down. Understand?"
Emmit swallowed hard.
"Loud and clear," he said, trying not to show Roy how terrified he really was.
"Good. The test is tied to a tree behind the shed."
Emmit suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to run. Run away, into the trees as fast as his legs could carry him. He had a blanket now, that was better than nothing. Maybe if he ran far enough and fast enough, he would find a park ranger or a highway or something.
Or you'll find another swarm of those smiling ghouls. And this time you won't have Grizzly Adams here to save you.
His muscles were flooding with adrenaline as his brain ordered him to run, but he kept on walking, keeping his eyes on the stitches that crisscrossed Roy's back. He held his breath as the big man stepped around the corner and disappeared, and then jogged to catch up with him.
As Roy had promised, his test was there, lashed to a thick tree trunk. As the men approached, the creature lifted its head from its chest, beaming at them regardless of the wooden spikes that had been driven through its midsection and plunged into the frozen ground.
"Stand in front of it," Roy said severely, pointing at the zombie with the thick branch he had broken off. As Emmit stepped slowly forward, he couldn't help but notice that Roy now held the branch like a club.
God, if you're real and you're there and you can hear me... please help me.
The thing had once been an old scrawny man with a patchy horseshoe of curly hair clinging to the back of its dappled scalp. It was dressed in nothing more than a thin green hospital gown, and as the wind fluttered and flapped it away from its gaunt body Emmit spied the shriveled stump of its penis, tenuously clinging to a tuft of pubic hair like it was about two wind gusts from falling off. Two giant wooden pikes had been driven through the struggling corpse in an overlapping X shape, penetrating it just under the rib cage and exiting the other side where they held it firmly to the ground like a giant staple. Its arms and legs were lashed to the tree with more lengths of the multicolored rope Emmit had seen holding the SURVIVOR CAMP sign. The corpse struggled to move, its desiccated lips parting in a sleepy smile that revealed black and toothless gums. The rope carved deep gashes into the leathery flesh of its wrists, sawing all the way down to the bone.
"I know you're a criminal," Roy said, and held his hands up to shush Emmit as he opened his mouth to defend himself. "I know, I know, you don't remember. But I know you did something."
"How do you know?"
Roy shrugged casually.
"Because we're all criminals here. Everyone who comes to this place, man, woman, or child, has done something wrong. The Links, they all just... know. I don't have an explanation for that, so don't ask. But they know, and they're never wrong."
Emmit thought back to his first encounter with the Link creatures, when they had called him a "thief" and a "robber". If what Roy was saying was true, then maybe he didn't want his memory back. In his present state of mind, he didn't feel like he would have the balls to steal a pack of gum from a gas station, let alone commit robbery. If Roy was right, then it also
