Two Alive, стр. 24

“Please,” Carver growled, but Ben shushed him.

“So what, what do we do? How do we get rid of them?” Julia asked next.

“You gotta make ‘em leave. They gotta hear something louder than the noise they already making and they’ll go chasing that. They ain’t gon leave otherwise.” Antonio snorted and reached up with his tied hands to pick his nose.

Julia sat back and turned to Ben behind her. “He’s telling the truth.”

“Or he has no idea what those things will do and is just making up bullshit!” Carver went into a fit of coughing.

“Yo is he good? He ain’t infected or some shit? Do y’all be checking people for bites?” Antonio rattled off questions about the major’s health and Carver nearly barreled through Ben to get to the boy.

“Calm down Eric,” Ben said, holding Carver back.

“As far as I can tell he’s telling the truth.” Julia addressed the other committee members. “This kid seems to know a lot about the infected. He’s classified them, named them based on personality traits and doesn’t even seemed bothered by the large number outside, while we’re all scared half to death.”

Martyn shivered and looked back at the monitors. “You got that right.”

“It’s really quite fascinating.” Manson was fixated on the teen.

“So Antonio and, his brother…” She gestured again to the closet but Miles only looked up for a second then looked away. “They’re the ones who know how to best handle these infected.”

“So what do we do? How do we get them to go away?” Lesly looked among the other committee members, searching for answers.

“Well… what do we do?” Julia turned the question to Antonio.

The boy licked his lips and smiled a wicked smile. “They like a hive and like you said the hive need a queen to follow. The siren calls to them but with no siren they need something hella loud. Y’all got somethin’ like that?”

“We might.” Ben thought for a moment.

Carver shook his head and stepped away from the table and back out of the light. But as he withdrew, a small figure stepped forward.

“And you can get rid of them? You can get rid of the strikers?” Alana made her way over and leaned on the table, staring Antonio down.

Miles, inside the closet, looked up to see Alana when he heard her voice. Her hazel eyes found him in his corner but went back to Antonio.

“Why would I do that?” Antonio blinked slowly.

“We’ll do it.” Miles came out of the closet and the room all turned to him. “We can… we can do it. We can get rid of the hive outside if you give us food. We can get… we can get rid of the hive and you give us food.”

He snuck a glance at Alana but when their eyes met, he turned away.

***

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Antonio asked his brother as he paced back and forth with Anderson and another soldier standing only a few feet away. They were back in the docking area now while the other adults were talking in the monitor room. “Really, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“We had to nego-SHE-ate. We had to nego-SHE-ate.” Miles was sitting on the floor, rocking back and forth. The steel door was only a few feet behind him, but every time the banging started up, no matter how violent, he didn’t flinch. “They was gonna kill us cuz you keep attacking them.”

Antonio scoffed at him and continued pacing. “Now you got us takin’ care of a hive for them. What the fuck!”

Another loud bang startled the soldiers and the brothers looked at them. “You-- you two guys quit all that talking!” The nameless soldier lifted his assault rifle and pointed it at the boys.

The boys didn’t seem bothered by the action, but Antonio sat down with a sigh.

In the other room, Carver leaned against the table in the center of the room with his arms crossed over his chest.

“Really… what the fuck is wrong with all of you? How is this even a discussion?” Carver looked from Julia, to Martyn, to Lesly. “The fact that we’re still taking so long to figure out what to do next is just giving any bastards outside time to prepare and attack this place.”

“Eric, please.” Julia peered at the major on her left and leaned back in her chair. She brought her attention back to Lesly and Martyn. “Look, I barely know any more than you two. But this is the situation we’re facing. We got two boys who have lived out on the road for who knows how long. They may or may not have allies who are waiting to hear back from them or waiting for an opportunity to get in here. And we also got a shitload of infected gathered outside because they chased those boys here. One of them, Antonio, put a knife to my neck before you guys even came back here…”

“That’s his name? Antonio?” Alana was standing next to her father on the other side of the table, her arms folded. “That fucking prick!”

Ben shushed her and again tried to get her to leave the room. She refused.

Julia continued. “So I don’t exactly have a hundred percent trust in them. But if they know how to handle these strikers… why not have them clean up the mess they caused us.”

Carver coughed. “Then what? Then we give them some of our food as payment and they go out and show their people what we have?”

“Why are you so hell bent on distrusting them?” Ben asked.

“Why are you so quick to trust them?” was Carver’s come back.

Martyn and Lesly were sitting opposite Julia. Martyn had his head down, deep in thought, and Lesly was rapidly tapping her foot on the floor. “What are we going