“We’ll see,” said Ledger. “First you’re going to tell me something that lets everyone here understand the value of what you have to trade. Tell us about the Raggedy Man.”
She took a long time coming to a decision, and they all waited her out.
“Do you know the story of how the plague got started? Do you know about the pathogen?”
“Lucifer 113,” said Gutsy. “We know.”
“You know about Dr. Volker and what he did with that pathogen?”
“Yes,” said Gutsy. “He gave it to a death-row inmate to make him suffer. But he wasn’t buried and he woke up and started attacking people. That’s how the plague started.”
“Then here’s something you may not know,” said Collins, and there was no sneer in her voice now. She looked terrified. Maybe of Ledger, maybe about what she was saying. “The first infected, the patient zero of that plague, Homer Gibbon, wasn’t a shambler. He wasn’t like the fast-infected or even like the ravagers. He was unique. Supremely dangerous. And he could control the other infected.”
“I never heard that part,” said Sam, “and I was on the ground in Stebbins County.”
“It’s true.”
“How do you know this stuff?” asked Spider.
“Because the Raggedy Man told me.”
There was silence in the room.
“He was in our facility for years,” said Collins. “We studied him, hoping to use his unique biology as patient zero. He was the purest strain. We hoped to learn so many things. To awaken the minds of the shamblers so they wouldn’t hunt us. And other things. We wanted our own shock troops for use against the shamblers if that failed. But it didn’t work.”
“The ravagers?” asked Gutsy.
“The ravagers,” agreed Collins. “You see, we were never able to control them, right from the start, because someone else already was controlling them.” She looked around. “The Raggedy Man was like a god to them.” She paused and corrected what she’d said. “He is their god.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Gutsy. “We destroyed his army.”
“No,” said Collins, and for a moment Gutsy saw the captain’s professional calm slip, revealing the real person behind the soldier’s face. Collins was terrified. Genuinely and deeply terrified. “What you fought was nothing. An expeditionary force. How can you not grasp that fact? He has billions of the dead. He has an army bigger than this world has ever seen, and he is their god, their king, and their general. He’s going to come here and wipe New Alamo off the map.” She looked at Benny and his friends. “He’s going to find wherever you came from and devour them all.” She leaned back and looked up at Ledger, trying to reclaim her facade of calm, but it didn’t work. Not anymore. “He’s already sent an army to Asheville. Maybe the city is still standing, or maybe everyone there is dead. Either way, time is running out. The research we were conducting here was getting us close to a real cure, close to a way to stop the Raggedy Man forever. Now . . .” She shook her head. “God, you idiots may have killed us all.”
“Who is the Raggedy Man?” asked Chong.
Collins stared at him. “Haven’t you been listening? The Raggedy Man is Homer Gibbon, and he is coming for us.”
“How do we know you’re not lying to us?” asked Gutsy.
Suddenly the air was torn by sirens from the guard towers. SOS.
Save Our Souls.
Gutsy ran to the window and opened it.
They could hear the screaming start.