Bound To Evil

***

[New-York]

[Third person's POV]

***

Declan, Suzaku, Judith, Josh, Ewan and Gabriella, all 6 of them were still on the same bridge, and in the span of several hours a couple of things had changed.

The rotten smell that was polluting the air had become even more pronounced in contrast to the din of grunts coming from the zombies, which had drastically subsided...

As for the show that was taking place, it was much less impressive than the one Declan and Suzaku had offered; a conclusion far from farfetched given that the only two fighters who were opposing each other right now were a frightened Josh on one side and a frail zombie whose left arm was missing on the other.

The zombie in question severely lacked the same vigor that its comrades had previously shown and even without that and the fact that it was missing an arm Josh would still have been way more physically superior to it...

Logically the fight should have ended in a few seconds with a crushing victory for Josh, and yet, two minutes had already passed since Declan had ordered the latter to kill the zombie.

It wasn't the first time Josh was fighting a monster and knowing what their brother was capable of from these experiences Ewan and Judith were confident enough to say that he could end this farce whenever he wanted to...

They were both disappointed to see that Josh wasn't attacking and that he was contenting himself with dodging and parrying with the flat of the blade of his rapier the slow and clumsy attempts of the zombie to bite and scratch him...

Nevertheless, Judith and Ewan weren't surprised by the behavior of their brother.

For them this pitiful performance of Josh was explainable and the reason that immediately came to their minds was his cruel lack of self-confidence...

Ewan stopped at this conclusion, but Judith didn't; she could very well imagine to what extent her little brother must be finding this challenge much more frightening than it really was, however, this didn't really explain his actions because from the way he was behaving he didn't seem afraid for him but afraid to hurt his opponent.

Now that she was thinking about it more deeply, the reason for Josh's behavior became clear; the appearance of the thing he was battling...

The flesh of this zombie was in an advanced state of decay and the many scratches and bites lacerating its slightly greenish skin had even further denatured the integrity of its body, but it was still apparent that before its transformation it was a girl of just over 16 years old.

He couldn't bring himself to hurt this monster because he felt bad for it...

It was stupid, dangerous, childish, but although it was surprising it wasn't inconceivable that such thinking was coming from Josh. He was a very empathetic boy, far too empathetic if Judith were to give an honest opinion.

She thought that this trait of Josh had weakened with the experiences they had undergone since the beginning of the Apocalypse, but she was forced to admit that she had been wrong...

He still couldn't hurt somebody or something in whom he was seeing humanity, and the more she was thinking of the circumstances of this damn challenge, the more she was telling herself that the only goal of the man with the cigar since the beginning was to expose this kind of weaknesses.  .

When the man with the cigar started to explain the terms of the challenge in which she, her brothers and Gabriella were going to participate, Judith thought he was just going to throw zombies at them and make them fight them to see what they were made of, but when he added some rules, she eventually realized that there was more to this exercise...

When it was her turn, Ewan's and Gabriella's she couldn't understand all the subtlety of the whole thing since each of their fights was concluded quickly and without problem, but now that it was Josh's turn, everything was clear.

The first rule was that each of them would fight one on one; when she heard that Judith didn't overthink, for her it just meant that the man with the cigar wanted to measure their ability individually...

The second rule was that the one fighting as well as the spectators were forbidden to communicate in any way; this should have tipped her off, but instead she just ȧssumed that the man with the cigar wanted the person fighting to have no chance of being distracted.

The third rule was that no one should approach the fight within 20 meters and on this point Judith didn't asked herself any questions because the man with the cigar gave a plausible justification for this precaution; preventing a zombie from being tempted to attack one of the spectators.

The conclusion that Judith made before Josh fought about the purpose of this challenge was purely and simply that the man with the cigar wanted to have an idea of the individual strength of each of them without any external help and disturbances so that his evaluation was as accurate as possible, but now she understood that he wasn't at all testing their strength but only their guts. 

This new conclusion was based on one thing in particular; the choice of opponents made by the man with the cigar...

He had come to explain the rules to them while holding a zombie by the neck, so Judith and the others thought it would be their first opponent, but after looking at the zombie's face, which was so badly lacerated that it was no longer human in appearance, he claimed that it was too ugly and threw the said zombie over the bridge into the East River...

After that, he asked them to wait and went to his partner, who was still fighting with zombies, he told him which ones to kill and which ones to keep for 'the challenge' and the ones he asked to keep were the ones that had retained the most human physical characteristics.

His fuċkėd up logic of keeping the best looking zombies seemed to be the reason for his move here, but now that she was thinking about it, Judith understood that the real reason for this move was to see how they would react when fighting against vaguely human looking monsters...

Fighting a monster with an appearance that was matching the word that was designating it could be somehow reassuring, a monster was rarely something that you could empathize with and therefore there was little to no guilt in killing it...

Killing a zombie in comparison was an entirely different experience.