“He looks angry,” BT said.
“Angrier than normal?” I asked BT as I came closer.
He shrugged his shoulders in answer. We were both up by the fence. Ree was trying unsuccessfully to get his hands through the chain link.
“He really does have a funk about him, doesn’t he?” BT asked. “Do you want to try and kill him?”
“I’m having some issues here, BT.”
“I’d like to say ‘So what else is new’ but that almost seems cliché now. That’s no human,” BT said pointing to Ree. “And it’s debatable if that thing is even technically alive, but for the sake of argument, let’s say it is. It is still trying to kill us.”
“I know all this. I really do, I just feel like a cat playing with a mouse. It seems much more humane to put a bullet in its head than mess with it for our amusement.”
“I don’t see anything funny here, Talbot, do you?” BT asked hotly.
Step back and then get on your knees, I commanded my puppet. He complied immediately.
BT turned to watch and see what Ree would end up doing.
Smash your head against the ground! I yelled in my head, showing the motion I wanted him to take.
Ree was mannequin-still; he did not move.
“What’s going on?” BT asked, switching his view back between Ree and me. I was almost swaying as much as Ree had been earlier.
“He won’t do it,” I said, blowing out a large exhalation of air.
“Are you trying hard enough?”
“BT, I just about gave myself an aneurysm. I don’t think I could concentrate any harder.”
“I bet you got a D in that algebra class,” BT said, placing a bullet in Re-Pete’s head as he struggled to get up, his damaged knee finally locking the joint in place. Ree fell over with a solid thud.
“I failed it.”
BT snorted. “How far you think you were, fifty, sixty feet?”
“Not much more than that.”
“Could you do that with multiple zombies?”
I could hear Gary yelling if everything was alright in the distance.
“We’re fine!” BT yelled, moving away from the spreading pool of blood by his feet.
“How far are we away from our locker?” I asked BT.
“A ways,” he answered.
“How did you find me?” I asked him suspiciously. “And better yet, why?”
“Mike,” BT started. “You’ve gone through a lot in the last few days.”
“Keeping tabs on me, man?” I asked, more than a little hurt.
BT didn’t dance around the bush. “Yeah, actually I am. Do you blame me?”
I was a second or two away from flashing into anger and then it dissipated like fog in a hot summer sun. “You know, fundamentally, I’m still the exact same person I was. You know that, right?” I asked him, seemingly for his approval.
“I hope so, Mike. Because I can’t imagine doing this shit with anyone but that crazy bastard.”
“What’s going on?” Gary asked, somewhat out of breath. He took in the whole scene quickly. One dead zombie, me with a slightly wilted look and BT very standoffish. “Everything cool?”
“I hope so, I really do,” BT said, walking back towards the locker.
“Mike?” Gary asked.
“BT isn’t all that enamored with my upgrades,” I said, walking over to the fence to see if I could figure out if Re-Pete had a thicker skull.
“Anything I should be concerned about?” Gary asked, coming up to my side.
“Not yet, brother.”
“How much time we got until Eliza comes?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Do you think we’ll need more weapons?”