Текст книги "30 Minute Plan"

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30 Minute Plan

By Gerald Rice

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Gerald Rice

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

30 Minute Plan copyright © 2011

Written by Gerald Rice. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, places or events is purely coincidental and unintended. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical or written, without express permission from the author.

For more information about the author, please visit his website: www.feelmyghost.webs.com.

30 Minute Plan

Lemons, strawberries, oranges…

Life was a fucking joke.

Danton was certain of it now. If the dead rising to feast on the living hadn’t been enough, now the brains had found a way to make them smell like fruit.

‘Scent marking’ the head brain had called it. Just trying to recall any of the long explanation as to why the brains had the dogs risk their necks to spray the stuff on packs of ziggies made his head hurt. It was well past us or them time and this was the best they could come up with?

It made Danton want to start his own thirty-minute plan.

General Tarver had noticed the ziggies traveled in packs four years ago. He’d reported it back to the brains and finally, two weeks ago Dr. Boyle had slapped a canister in Cargill’s hands with the word ‘lemon’ written with a sharpie on it. They’d given Danton one with ‘strawberry’ written on it and Tookes one with ‘orange’.

Their orders were simple enough: walk outside and find the biggest pack of ziggies and spray them down with this stuff.

Danton was ready to tell the pretty young brain who’d handed him his to go shove, but he was a soldier. A dog. He obeyed.

Slow or not, going outside was risky when ziggy was about. Danton was fast and he hustled until he came in contact with a pack. He’d almost threw down the canister and drew down on them, but no. There had to have been an explanation for this. He just didn’t like sticking out his neck before he’d heard it.

He waited until the lead one was just within twenty feet then began spraying them. It was a thick red fluid and yep, it did have the strong scent of strawberries. They didn’t seem to mind too much, even when he got it in their mouths. Danton circled the pack of ziggies, spraying them until the canister was empty.

Then the oddest thing: they turned and shambled away.

Danton shook himself out of his stance. He felt dull, like a knife that had been used too many times; he’d killed so many, destroyed so many more…

Had to go help Tookes. The sooner the other dogs were done the sooner they were all done. He jogged over to the intersection Tookes had headed to and spotted him on the ground thirty yards away.

Even without a face, Danton could identify him. His body had that stupid engagement ring on the pinky finger. Danton had told him several times there was no point in him carrying that flame. Either his girl was leftovers or she was boning some other studly who was keeping her safe.

The canister was by his side still, unused. Like he’d just stood there and let them take him. Except, they hadn’t eaten anything BUT his brain. Ziggy was weird like that sometimes. Despite the thickness of the skull they really could get to your brain. Bones in the face were thinner, more fragile. If a particular ziggy had enough think left in him he could stomp your face in just the right way to lift it right off your head. And then it was hors d’oeuvres for everybody.

Danton scooped up the canister and drew his weapon. A pack was just up the street.

“Hey!” he called. They all turned with the exact same stupid look on their faces. Ziggy’s version of surprise. Danton walked up to them and had gotten within ten feet before he started spraying. He noticed one of them had red-tipped fingers and shot it in the head. It fell to its knees like a whore with a new twenty dollar bill and slumped over.

“What was that?” somebody said over the com. “Dammit, I said notto destroy any of them.”

“It’s Tookes,” Danton said. “They got him.” He tossed his glock aside. They were given only one bullet for themselves in case they needed it.

“Well you still shouldn’t be shooting. You could simply spray Lieutenant Tookes as well.”

“No can do, sir.” The dogs had all made a vow amongst each other that if Ziggy took them down someone would take one of them down to even the score. Officially, Danton knew another dog was explaining to the brain on the com that a dog wouldn’t abide his brother being turned.

“Just get back here as soon as you can.”

It sounded like Boyle himself.

This pack did the same thing as the last when he finished the canister. They turned and headed in the direction they’d been going before he came. Was this stuff Ziggy repellent?

He’d met up with Cargill just before they made it back to base. They nodded to each other.

Cargill stunk of lemon.

“I slipped on some stupid kid’s skull,” he’d said, looking at his yellow-tinged hands.

Ziggy was knocking at the door less than five minutes after he and Danton had made it back. Except this time they were more insistent. Much more. Like they knew these people had something that belonged to them. And they wanted it back really bad.

Cargill had taken point when they burst through. He’d taken down four or five when the first set of hands had grabbed him. He could have fallen back, but Danton had seen it in his eyes before they came back in. He was dull too. That was the real reason he’d gotten that lemon shit on himself.

But another odd thing happened: they took him. Not took him and ate him, but took him away. Dragged him outside and went about their business. Cargill had fought all the way, but with only his fists and that big knife of his there was only so much he could do to Ziggy.

First order of business had not been to pursue and recover. First order of business was to secure the perimeter. The risk of leaving those doors open and another pack of ziggies waltzing in was too great. God be with Cargill, but he was on his own. Danton hoped he was big enough to slit his own throat or punch that blade into his own heart.

Danton chuckled when his com squawked and Cargill’s voice whispered, “I’m still alive.”

He couldn’t have been. Ziggy could have eaten him ten times over in the two weeks he was gone. They hadhim. Even if he could have fought his way free he would have been bitten at least a dozen times. There was no way he was upright still.

“Who is this?” Kent barked.

“It’s me, sir. Cargill.”

“Cargill’s dead, son. If this is some kind of joke I don’t find it—”

“No joke.” The man claiming to be Cargill rattled off a series of identification numbers. It really was him. Danton smirked. Maybe Ziggy had learned to speak.

“H-how are you…”

“I don’t know, but Ziggy hasn’t made a move on me. At least the ones in my pack.”

The lemon-scented ones, Danton thought.

“They smashed my com when they took me, but other than a few bumps and scrapes I’m still upright. I found another soldier. Not sure who—there wasn’t that much left of him. But I took his com.”

“What have you been eating?” Dr. Boyle asked into Kent’s com.

“You don’t wanna know, sir.”

“Can you make it back to base?”

“Uh, that’s a negative, sir.”

“You said you are in a pack. Just to be specific—are you in a pack of zombies?”

“That’s affirmative, sir. Ziggy is in the house.”

Danton chuckled. He heard a couple others.

“Cargill—tell me, other than accepting you into the group, have you noticed any other altered behaviors?”

There was patch of static and when it cleared he was saying, “—over on the hill. They’ve been following us.”

“I’m sorry, Cargill, you broke up a moment. Who’s following your group?”

“Another pack. A large one. They smell like—”

“Come again. They smell like what?”

“Wood chips. Dammit,they smell like wood chips.”

Boyle fixed his mouth as if he were about to repeat what Cargill had said. He was confused.

“I don’t understand,” he said to himself.

“What’s not to understand?” Klingerman said. He was a civilian. Could run like hell and cleave the crap out of a ziggy skull. “He said they smelled like wood chips. So what?”

“Well, none of our boys was equipped with a spray with that scent.”

“So somebody else is doing it,” someone Danton couldn’t see chimed in.

“Some other group of scientists,” Mary said. She was seated next to him. Danton used to dig her until he found out she was into chicks. Now he was just about ravenous when he looked at her. He forced himself to keep facing forward.

“No,” Boyle said. “Not possible. We’re the only facility capable of any such things in at least a hundred mile radius. Any scientific group wouldn’t have ventured this far to experiment. The danger from traveling all the way here and traveling all the way back to their lab to monitor their subjects would have been too great.

“So it was something else.” Danton made it sound like a statement, hoping he sounded smart for Mary. The chick she got down with was one of the brains.

“What?” Boyle said, addressing Danton directly. “The rain? It hasn’t done that in well over a month—well beforewe began our own experiment. And if it were any other natural phenomena I imagine it would have manifested well before now. There is no legitimate explanation for this, Danton. There is no ‘something else’ unless you have some factor none of our dwindling scientific community has considered and would like to posit that theory now.”

Danton didn’t. Mary coughed behind him. Like she was covering up a laugh. His cheeks burned.

“I know what it is.” Kenton stood up and stretched his long body. Everyone turned to him. He was a civvie too, but most people thought he was pretty smart. “Cargill’s wrong. Whatever he’s smellin’ is wrong. Hell, how do we know that lemon stuff he got on him didn’t affect his brain? How do we know the zigs didn’t turn him and that stuff somehow preserve his brain and he’s trying to lure us out or something?”

Boyle nodded. Danton looked around, everyone seemed to agree. Shit.

“Cargill,” Boyle said into the com. “Have you noticed any changes with your own body?”

“You mean other than being tired as hell? I haven’t slept in four days. This other

pack—”

“Yes-yes, Cargill, we’ll come to that in a moment, but about you…” Boyle looked around as if trying to pull his question from the air. “Have you had any scratches, bites, cuts, scrapes—anything?”

“No, man, I’m fine except for my aching tootsies.”

More nervous laughter.

“I think Kenton has a point. We can’t trust anything Cargill says. But I don’t think we can disregard it on the off-chance he isn’t infected. For now he’s considered compromised.”

People were nodding. What was worse was other dogs were nodding too. This wasn’t right. ‘Compromised’ meant no rescue. If Cargill was got—and that was a bigif—then they owed it to him to put him down. Maybe he hadn’t been able to go on the thirty minute plan, but that didn’t mean they could just leave him that way. If Boyle thought he was an idiot, fine, but he was an idiot who wasn’t about to let a brother be lumped in with Ziggy.

If Cargill was got he would do him himself. That probably meant sneaking out and never making it back. Danton knew that wasn’t smart, but his mind was set. Besides, he was pissed Boyle had embarrassed him. Danton didn’t know anything about calculated threats and risk assessments, but he wasgoing to go out there and find Cargill. It would be worth it to prove that brain wrong.

Unless Boyle called him ‘compromised’ too.

For half a second Danton thought he was fixing to make a mistake.

Then he imagined he was stomping on that lizard part of his brain, the coward part of him would never win. Never. He was going.

***

When Danton felt stubborn enough he moved fast. At two the next morning he was in the arsenal, zipping up a duffelful of weapons. It was about to be shock and awe time. He had his sidearm on his hip and a half dozen magazines in his belt and twin machetes crisscrossed on his back for when the guns went out. He even had a grenade on his belt loop. If he ever had to go on the thirty minute plan he would take a hell of a lot of ziggies down first.

Now came the hard part: getting out of here with all this shit.

Danton peaked out into the hall. Nelson was on patrol tonight and likely half inside a bottle and/or asleep. But the doors were all alarmed now that Ziggy had successfully broken inside. Danton had to find a way out without setting off the alarm and without leaving an opening for Ziggy to get in. Despite all the lemon and strawberry-scented zombies that weren’t eating people anymore there were singles about and they were more dangerous than a single zig from a pack in close quarters. Singles were smarter and more adept at catching people. Danton would be outside in the dark, meaning he’d have to use a flashlight. Singles would zoom in on the light.

He was past the mess hall when he heard someone’s slippered feet slapping on the linoleum floor. Danton ducked around a corner and held his breath as Hargrove, another brain, yawned and came out with a fruit cup. Hargrove was a sleep-eater. The pudgy man shambled right past him like he was invisible.

Packs were like that sometimes. That’s why they were easy to avoid. It’s the singles you had to worry about. They wouldn’t just shuffle past. If you hid behind a car they tended to look around. A lot of them could even open doors. Danton would rather come up against a pack any day.

There was a row of plexi-glass windows in a room they’d converted to storage not long after they’d moved everyone into this building. In the early days there was a tremendous amount of shelling going on in every major city. Humans had probably killed more of their own than Ziggy did. Danton had noticed one of the panes was a little loose. It’d be a tight fit, but he could manage his way through. Unlike a lot of the other dogs, he’d maintained himself and he should have been able to shimmy his hundred sixty-two pound frame through.

The tricky part would be when he removed the pane. He’d have to do everything in the dark and if Ziggy was right there he and everyone else would be done for. The storage room locked, but from the inside. There’d be no problem with them getting in the main corridor and once that happened everyone would be dead.

Danton made his way down the hall to the storage room. He felt giddy for just a moment—he was actually going to make it. He slid into the dark room and zigzagged around bulky sheet-covered pieces of equipment and furniture, heading for the loose panel. A slice of moon shone through and at first it wouldn’t budge. Panic clenched his gut, but then the window slid an inch, then another. A thin column of cool air lapped his face and he pulled the pane the rest of the way out, resting it in the opening.

It was a tight fit at first, but he finally managed to shove the duffel outside. He was about to climb on top of whatever machine was pushed against the wall when he felt pressure in his bowels.

Uh-oh.

“Of all the times—”

Danton knew he shouldn’t complain. It would be far better for him to go now than after he got outside. Number One and number Two attracted Ziggy. Big time. He didn’t know if it was because on some instinctual level Ziggy knew living things needed to do that or if they were literally attracted to shit and piss. Sure, he’d never seen one eat a deuce before, but…

He drummed his fingers on the wall, wondering if he should go through all the trouble of putting the pane back just to remove it again. Danton doubted he could pull the duffel back inside and it would be risky leaving it out there. Now he’d have to worry about a scavenger too.

He checked his watch. It was a little after three. Grant would be up in a half hour. Had to hurry. Danton made his way back to the door, peaked out and crossed the hall to the restroom. He went into the stall, not bothering to lock it and quickly removed his jacket and several weapons from his belt so he could get his pants down.

Shouldn’t have messed with that chili, he thought.

When he finished he reached back and flushed.

“Dammit!” he whispered. That would have been just enough noise to wake somebody. He stood as quietly as he could and listened. There wasn’t anyone out there so far as he could hear.

He got his clothes back on and was washing his hands before he’d even thought about it. In a few moments he’d be running for cover from Ziggy if not battling him outright. He doubted Ziggy would point him for poor hygiene.

Danton opened the door and was surprised to see the back of Boyle’s bald head. The head brain spun around and stared at him with a dumbfounded look.

“I think someone broke in,” the old man said. Danton wanted to burst his bubble so badly, but he felt an equal amount of panic. He was caught, but he was the only one who knew it. Danton was the only one who knew about that pane, so they were thinking someone had broken in. It hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind somebody was trying to break out.

“What?” Danton fixed a worried expression on his face. He was worried too; afraid he was about to be caught. He wanted to run back to his room and hide. Forget about Cargill, forget about the big bag of guns, he just wanted to be safe. But he knew he was past the point of no return. As soon as Boyle had gotten over his own fear he’d analyze the situation. Like one of his experiments, he would take the known facts and apply them to several theories. Whichever one filtered true would be the one he’d believe.

Those eyes had contained nothing but fear, but they were constantly recording. He’d seen everything Danton had had on and upon future reflection would know it was him and not some straggler who’d found a way inside.

Danton brushed past the brain and went into the room. The light was on and a half dozen dogs were standing around apprizing the situation.

“What are you doing?” Eddies asked as he stood up on the copier and peeked out the window.

“Looking to see if Ziggy’s around.”

“We need to figure out how to patch this window up. Whoever broke in here, if he’s still here, dropped it on the floor. Woke the whole place up. I see you came ready.”

Danton looked down and saw the plexi-glass section split in two jagged halves. That would have made a loud sound. He gave his forehead a mental slap. The restroom was soundproofed—of course he wouldn’t have heard it.

“Hey, why are you wearing all that stuff?” Groome asked. “I only brought my sidearm.”

“I was already awake.” Danton shimmied his way up. He was going to have to play this fast. Any minute it was going to start clicking what he was really up to. “I’m just going to see if anyone is around.”

“Danton, get back here,” Eddies said, but his legs slipped out after him and he planted his feet on the ground and stood.

“I’ll beright back. Don’t worry.”

He was risking his neck to save one of his own. No way had he gone this far just to draw down on another dog. He had to get away quick before someone came after him and started shooting.

Danton could feel their eyes on him. Someone whisper-shouted and he turned and waved them off. A few more feet and he would be clear.

“Danton! It was Danton!”

Boyle. Dammit.

He took off running and a moment later heard a bullet whiz off somewhere in the distance. He rounded the corner and was clear momentarily. His camo was bright enough to make out in the weak moonlight, but he gambled that if he got at least fifty yards away they wouldn’t pursue.

The bag!

Dammit!

There was no turning back now. If they wouldn’t have executed him before, they certainly would now. Danton was AWOL and the first rule after the dogs had organized after the apocalypse was deserters got shot in the face. There was no explaining that he just wanted to see Cargill put down right, that he wasn’t really abandoning the base.

He was as dead as if Ziggy was chomping on his arm right now.

If he’d actually thought about what he was doing he probably wouldn’t have gotten into this mess. His superior officers had often told him he was a good soldier, but he needed to use his head more. Maybe if he’d tried he could have convinced them to sendhim out to find Cargill. Hell, maybe they would have sent him with someone. Who knew what scientific data could have been gathered?

All that made perfect sense. Now.

“Might as well finish this mistake.”

He turned in the direction where Cargill’s lemony ziggies had been circling for the last three weeks. That was the thing about packs. They tended to circle several times before changing direction and circling elsewhere. He hoped they hadn’t changed yet.

Keeping low, Danton started a light jog with a machete in his hand, wondering where the smell of burning wood was coming from.

***

Danton planted his foot on Ziggy’s face and slid his machete out of its skull. Some poor sap who’d been a hobo in the before; life hadn’t dealt him a heavy enough blow—no, he had to come back as a flesh-eater.

It was unusually quiet. Danton hadn’t even so much as run into a straggler. Stragglers were ziggies that had fallen away from their pack. They didn’t last too long. A pack had a collective intelligence. They tended to avoid things like large bodies of water or buildings on the verge of collapse. A straggler would walk right into an open manhole. Or maybe it would run into a single.

Danton was amazed to learn the brutal hierarchy in the Ziggy community. Singles wouldn’t bother packs, wouldn’t bother other singles, but if they found a straggler…Danton’s mind floated back to the ziggy he just slayed. A straggler. Either he’d gotten separated from his pack or maybe something Cargill had said rang true.

The smell of burning wood chips was still in the air, but more faint. If there was this new pack that had been scent-marked by someone could it be attacking other packs? What if someone had figured a way to put these higher-thinking ziggies into packs?

He shuddered at the thought. A pack that had the mental capacity to problem solve might be just this side of unstoppable.

Danton hoped Cargill wasn’t in his right mind. That maybe he could just put the man down and find safety again.

“Cargill, you there?” Danton said into his com. After a moment he heard a few clicks. Morse code.

“T-A-L-K-L-A-T-E-R,” came the reply. He wondered if that pack was close by.

“P-O-S-I-T-I-O-N?” he signaled back to him.

He knew the base could hear, that there were at least a dozen dogs who knew Morse code, but he had to try.

“U-N-V-R-S-T-Y-A-N-D-D-A-L-E.”

“University and Dale,” Danton said. That was less than a half mile from here. In less than two hours he could be there. But how far would they have traveled by then?

And would he run into whatever hobo-man’s pack had run into?

As if on cue, Danton caught movement from the corner of his eye. He got into a crouch and peaked beneath the burned-out car he was next to, sliding his machete back in its holster as his took out his sidearm. A pair of tiny feet in black dress shoes were running his way.

Running. That meant whoever it was was alive. And young from the looks of it. She was probably running from something.

Danton scanned around then peaked up above the door and through the empty windows. The little girl had her head ducked low as she ran and when he looked past her he saw it. A single was about forty yards behind her.

She must have seen him because she was headed right for him. The little girl rounded the car and ran into his arms, burying her face in his jacket. He didn’t want to shoot the single, but he had no choice. It had seen her and she had run to him and the zig would follow them around until it had forced the situation. Hell, if it recognized that he was carrying, things could get real cat-and-mouse.

Danton waited until it was about fifteen yards before he squeezed the trigger. Ziggy’s scalp lifted like a puff of air had been injected beneath it and the flesh-eater fell over on its face mid-stride.

Danton looked around to see if anything else moved before checking on the girl.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a child. Well, a couple of the civvies had had kids, but they were babies, not even a year old. But what must have happened to the children out here in the wild… Danton got choked up just thinking about it.

He holstered his gun and pushed the girl back by the shoulders. She was filthy and stunk. Her hair was a tangled black mess that had grown down to her knees. Danton took an index and tucked the slick ropey mess blocking her face behind an ear.

She was pretty. Maybe not traditionally so, but in that all children were beautiful kind of way. He’d gladly shoot a hundred more ziggies in the face if it meant protecting her. She was looking down when he hooked his finger under her chin and raised her face.

“Honey, you okay?”

Her gold-grey eyes flashed up and he knew something was wrong. There wasn’t any time to stop it as she opened her mouth and sprayed a putrid green fluid into his eyes. Danton fell onto his butt, blind, spitting and gagging as the smell threatened to overcome him. He pulled his sidearm and shot where he thought it was, hoping he could at least wound the thing before it could attack him again.

Neotony. Danton had no clue how he knew such a word, or why it would choose now to pop into his head, but whatever that thing was, it wasn’t a child. He dug out his flask of water from his thigh pocket and did a quick eye rinse and squinted his eye open.

She was gone. Maybe whatever that poison was it was meant to debilitate him. He felt fine now, relatively, but that could change in a few minutes. He had to find a place to hide, but where?

Danton stood and ran, hoping he might be able to spot whatever that thing was and shoot it. He’d stomp on its head too if he got a chance. Maybe that would send a message to any more of them if there were others.

“That’s it, no more kids,” he said.

Where ever she’d run, she was quick. Other than a few burned out cars spread out pretty far from each other there wasn’t anything really to hide behind.

Danton realized he was afraid. He was alone now. Truly alone. He’d already accepted that, but now there was an x-factor. An unknown quantity, as Boyle liked to put it. Except he’d actually come face-to-face with it and it had spat in his eye.

Speaking of which, Danton realized his eyes weren’t burning any more. They still teared up and he could feel the gunk accumulating each time he blinked, but it was better. Much. So far as he knew poison didn’t do that.

But if it wasn’t poison…

Never mind. Best not think about it. If he started trying to be like the brains out here he’d be chow for Ziggy by noon.

The sky had turned a bruised red by the time he saw anything else that moved.

It was a shambler. It was old—grey-skinned with filmed over eyes. Its forearm was broken and half the hand missing. Its blond hair was perfect. Hell, it could have been a single, he couldn’t tell. It had no legs, but it had propped itself up on its… well, he guessed its waist. Entrails spider-webbed from its body into the street and when it saw Danton it began reaching for him with the hand it wasn’t using to balance itself.

He took out his nightstick and hefted it. It wasn’t fair, but that was life, or afterlife. Danton laughed at his half-joke as he circled the ziggy. It feebly turned to and fro as he stayed mere inches out of its impotent reach.

Danton’s mind went back a couple weeks ago when he’d last been outside, spraying that stupid crap of Boyle’s that had gotten this whole mess started to begin with. Well, not the wholemess.

But Cargill would never have gotten that lemon shit all over him had it not been for Boyle and Danton wouldn’t be out here now, an exile, trying to find the man, if not for the good doctor.

His fear was bleeding over into anger. Danton hated being afraid. The last time he’d felt this was he was still in the penitentiary, right as the world had started going to hell. He remembered hearing a guard had attacked an inmate and a few days later things had dissolved into chaos.

General Tarver had marched in and made camp just outside the outer fence. Danton and a few others had tried to tear their way through the fence, one had tried to climb over and gotten tangled up long enough for Ziggy to pick him down piece-by-piece.

“You gotta get me out of here,” Danton had begged, banging on the fence.

“No, son.” General Tarver’s tone was impossibly calm. He didn’t shout, but his voice carried to Danton just the same. “You need to do one of two things: get yourself out or survive the next three days.”

Danton shuddered at what he’d had to do to make it. But at the end of the third day the general and his men marched in and slaughtered every Ziggy in sight. Danton and two others had survived unscathed, but there were dozens of men who been bitten or injured. That was when Danton had learned fealty to his fellow man.

He’d been in the system over five years. He could honestly say he’d spent majority of the time hating everyone in there. The Aryans, the Brothers, the Chicanos, the Asians. Danton didn’t join the Aryans because he’d been a dick on the outside, but not that kind of dick. But that didn’t stop the other gangs andthe Aryans from coming at him. But Danton had always been able to handle himself. He almost always had given more than he got.

But Tarver showed him that all these men—regardless of color—were his brothers. There was a new enemy that was counting on men being divided to win and when he turned his back on his brothers he was offering his throat to Ziggy. General Tarver had seen to it personally that each man who had been bitten or scratched was put down in the most humane way possible. By the last few he’d had Danton take over—a clean shot to the dome. Danton was weeping by the time he’d shot the second man because he truly understood. All this time his love for these people had been disguised as hate, but he was making amends for it by sending them home.