Page 5 of The Pale Rider
“You are from California. Should I call you Ariel or Speedy?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know either name until you told me. How do you know all this stuff about me if you were looking for something else at that research facility?”
“Here’s the thing, Speedy. I can’t give you all your memories back at once without hurting you. I can tell you all about the end of the world, but as for your past, we will have to do that in bits and pieces. I’m doing this because it can seriously hurt you if we do it the other way.”
“Fair enough. How did allthishappen?”
“Pure evil.”
If those were the kinds of answers he would give me, then what was I staying here for? He saw the look I was giving him. He knew I was about to grab that blue baseball bat and hightail it out of this cabin.
“Wait. I wasn’t finished. This started on purpose. They created those Rage Heads. A company named Armilusstarted creating nutritional supplements. They got a patent for a supplement kind of like fluoride to add to water that was supposed to help strengthen bones. It was tasteless, and the clinical trials showed an eighty percent reversal of osteoporosis and helped with arthritis pain.”
Armilus. That named sounded like I should know it, but I wasn’t getting any flashes. Did I know it before I lost my memories?
“Why does the name Armilus seem so familiar?”
Aeron narrowed his eyes at me like he desperately wanted me to remember something.
“Armilus is a figure from Jewish lore. He’s the son of Satan.”
“Am I Jewish? Why would I know that? And if there was a company peddling supplements named after the son of Satan, why didn’t anyone shut that shit down?”
“There were many people that knew what the company was named after and didn’t trust the company. They were legitimate at first. The product was helping people, and they were getting contracts all over the world. It was getting added to bottled water all over the place and seemed harmless for years.”
“So, how did it go from harmless to the apocalypse?”
“They started seeking contracts with local municipalities to have it added to the water supply. By then, even the people who spoke against them couldn’t find a reason to distrust them. They started thinking they picked a name for the company, not researching and genuinely knowing what it meant. That happens sometimes, but not in this case.
“The product started cropping up in minor cities first, then larger. Still, it was harmless, and there wasn’t much reason to distrust the water. It was a bait and switch. Sometime around 2034, Armilus started shipping the altered product out to be put into the water supply.”
I looked down at the cold bottle of water I had been chugging since my throat was so parched. My hand started shaking. Did he just dose me with Satan tainted water?
“What did you just give me to drink?”
“Water,” Aeron said, grinning at me like he didn’t just tell me water turned people into cannibal corpses. “Not all bottled water companies used the supplement. The ones that didn’t advertised pretty heavily, and they had a following. Well water is still safe. The cities that use well water didn’t use the supplement. Since you don’t know, today is June 19, 2044. The places that have generators and running water have safe water.
“Armilus was a billion-dollar corporation with a huge marketing department, but it was like they just disappeared off the planet when people started getting sick. To this day, most people don’t know it was them that started all of this.”
“And how do you know? I agree, naming your company after the son of Satan puts a huge target on your back, but if no one else knows, how does a guy living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere know?”
Aeron’s silver eyes caught the light, and I swear, it was like the horse. They looked like they were glowing white for a moment. Who the fuck was this guy, anyway?
“Trust me, I know, Speedy. I know who started this, and I know how to end it. I know you don’t remember shit, but know this. Me and the people we will meet along the way are the only people you can trust in all of this.”
Easy for him to say. I still didn’t know his last name, and he could be some post-apocalyptic conspiracy theory nut that sat around with a tinfoil hat on his head when he wasn’t handing out blue baseball bats to people without their memories.
“Whoareyou?” I asked. “What were you really doing at that hospital?”
“You’re not ready for any of that, Speedy. In time. I still haven’t filled you in on everything that has happened.”
There was more? I mean, there were walking corpses with red eyes that moved like lightning and ate people. I got the memo. Things went to shit.
“So, tell me.”
“Some people were immune to the mutation that the supplement caused. We’ve narrowed it down to blood type. The only people who drank the water and didn’t turn are AB negative. You would be AB negative if you wanted to know. The supplement caused a mutation in the brain and blood. It always started with broken blood vessels in the eyes and ended with extreme rage.
“At first, they tried to sedate them. Jails and institutions started filling up with violent people. No one knew what was wrong. The government was telling everyone it was this new street drug called Halo, but people knew that was wrong. It was affecting people with no history of drug use. People in nursing homes were becoming violent, and so were small children.”
