Gary glanced at the four infected people. They were sitting on a pew that had been shifted across to the south transept.

Priorities, he thought. We’re here to help.

“No, there might be another solution,” he said. “The woman there in the gold and white robes, she might be able to do something. Give me a second and I’ll talk to them. You should get everyone ready to drive out of here.”

“I’ll check there are enough drivers left,” Jonathan nodded, “And what cars we have available.”

Gary gave Jonathan a thumbs up and the two parted, Jonathan walking back towards the huddled group and Gary to the mercenaries.

Forge, Annabel and Morgan were whispering as he approached them, but he didn’t catch their words.

“Okay, so there are some infected,” Gary said. “Four of them. Annabel, can you do that healing thing you did earlier, on Morgan? To stop them dying?”

Forge, Annabel and Morgan looked at each other with conspiratorial glances. Gary paused, unsure how to read the unspoken communication between the three of them. Then Annabel and Morgan nodded at each other.

“Where are they?” Annabel said, “I’ll see what I can do.”

Morgan and Annabel accompanied Gary along the length of the church, leaving Forge to guard the main entrance.

Not that it needs guarding, Gary thought. There’s nothing left out there to guard against.

He didn’t overthink it. He led the other two to the pew where the four infected were sitting. All four were pale and sweating. They had bandaged their wounds with the supplies from a first aid kit from the vestry, but none of them looked like they’d last very long. Adam’s parents were holding each other’s hands, trying to hold back their tears.

“We’re here to help,” Gary said. “This is Annabel. She’s a, uh, a doctor, okay? She knows how to deal with this kind of thing.”

“What kind of doctor?” the woman on the far end of the pew asked. “I’m a doctor as well, and I’ve seen nothing like this.”

She offered her forearm to show bite marks. All around them, a spiderweb of black veins was tracing outwards beneath the skin.

“Joan, is it?” Gary asked. Joan nodded. “She’s a specialist in this kind of thing, okay? You just have to trust me.”

Trusting Gary looked like the last thing that Joan wanted to do. Her eyes flickered across the outlandish robes that Annabel was wearing and across to Morgan’s garb.

“Let me look,” Annabel said. She took Joan’s arm and made a show of examining it.

What’s she doing? Gary wondered. Just give her the glowing hand zap thing and cure her!

Once Annabel had finished with her examination of the other woman’s wounds, she asked to see those of the priest and the parents. She clicked her tongue as they showed her more bite wounds and scratches.

Then she motioned for Gary to step to one side. Morgan padded across as well, and the three huddled together, out of earshot of the infected.

“There’s nothing I can do,” she said.

“What? But I saw you heal Morgan. Your hands were glowing, and the infection cleared out.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Sorry, it’s too late. The infection has been in them for too long.”

Gary frowned, perplexed. He barely knew these people, but a gut instinct told him she was lying. Her tone was too casual, too dismissive. As if the lives of the four people meant nothing to her.

If she doesn’t care, then why did they bother going through all that fighting earlier?

“Well, I mean, isn’t it worth trying? Just in case?”

“The god of light will not save these people,” Annabel stated in a flat tone. “There’s nothing I can do. They’ll die soon, and then they’ll come back.”

Gary shook his head. Her matter-of-fact tone further convinced him she was lying. It sounded hollow. As if she’d decided what she was going to say when she’d heard there were infected people.

“They’d be better off put out of their misery,” Morgan said. “I’ve seen how this infection works. It’s nasty towards the end, trust me. It’s agony for the last half an hour.”

Gary almost raised his voice in anger at the suggestion.

“Put them out of their misery? These aren’t injured pets! These are real human beings!”

“It’s the humane thing to do,” Morgan said. “It’s also the only way we can be sure when they will turn and kill them a second time on the spot.”

“It’s true,” Annabel said. “They could die and turn at any second.”

“Well, how long have they got?” Gary asked.

Something was suddenly not right here again. Both Annabel and Morgan were in agreement, but Gary was sure they had made up their minds before even looking at the infected. It was as if they were running a calculation that he wasn’t privy to. A ruthless and cold one.

“They can see their hit points going down,” Annabel said. “Could be any second now. You should just kill them and be done with it.”

Gary stared at Annabel and Morgan in disbelief. How could they be so callous?

Was this the result of moving from world to world, seeing thousands of people die? Did life just become meaningless after a while? Gary couldn’t accept what they were saying was the only option.

Another side of him wondered if they were right. They had been living with all of this for a long time. They had probably seen it all by now. Perhaps he was being too hard on them, when they were just stating simple, if horrible, truths.

Except that I’m sure Annabel is lying, he reminded himself.

Gary didn’t know how Annabel’s powers worked, but he was sure that she could heal them if she wanted to.

Something was wrong here. Their actions weren’t making sense. First, they’d stepped in to help save all these people, and now they were content to condemn some of them to death.

“Look,” Gary appealed to Annabel, “Could you just try with the healing thing? Just in case? You might be wrong here. If there’s even a tiny chance that it could work, then we have to try.”

Annabel’s eyes narrowed.

“No.”

Her tone was flat, direct, no room for discussion. Not even attempting to justify it. She looked away from Gary and folded her arms. The matter was closed. Gary thought about pressing on, but knew it was hopeless. Annabel had decided. For whatever reason, she wouldn’t help the infected people.

“So they’re going to die,” Gary said. He turned to Morgan. Perhaps if he could get the rogue onto his side, then Morgan might persuade Annabel. It was a long shot, but it was all Gary could think of.

“Or someone will have to kill them,” Morgan added, “And killing them is by far the better option. A quick knife to the back of the neck. A sharp twist and they’ll be gone. We can deal with them when they come back from the dead.”

Gary was appalled. Morgan was as bad, if not worse, than Annabel.

“We can’t just go around killing people,” he said, “That’s just wrong no matter what the circumstances are.”

Morgan shrugged, as if they were discussing the weather.

“Would you rather risk them turning and attacking everyone else?” Morgan asked. “You can’t save them. All you’re doing is putting the rest of them at risk. Unless you want to let them loose?”

“Let them loose?”

“Push them outside. Let them turn in their own time. Either way, they’ll end up coming back and start killing people, so your inaction will cause more deaths.”

Gary’s thoughts were a churn of horror at Morgan’s matter-of-fact attitude. Earlier, Gary had noted that one problem he’d encountered was that people were acting irrationally in the face of all this madness. Here he seemed to be confronted with the reverse. These people were thinking and behaving too rationally.

Everything Morgan was saying made horrible sense if you accepted the situation. But did he have to be so offhand about it? Just because there might be a brutal truth didn’t mean it was necessary to be callous about it as well.

“Wait, what do you mean, my inaction?”

It took him a second to notice that Morgan had produced a knife. He was holding it by the blade with the pommel towards Gary. It took him another second to realise what Morgan meant by this.

“You think I should do it?” he half shouted.

His exclamation reverberated around the church. His face flushed as he noticed the group of survivors went quiet, intent on hearing what else Gary might say.

Morgan lowered his voice even further.

“Look, they’re dead anyway, right? If you kill them, you’ll get experience points for it. There are four people there. You’ll hit level two. Think about it.”