Title: The Silence Negotiator
Author: Kassfinol
All rights reserved
Genre: Post-apocalyptic – Moral horror
Marcus’s fingers trembled as he adjusted the last screw on the device. It wasn’t the morning cold making him tremble. It was the certainty that someone, somewhere, was trying to copy his work.
“Checking it again?” —Sara asked from the workshop door. She had her arms crossed and that look that said I know you’re going to lie to me.
“Routine maintenance” —Marcus answered without looking up—. “You know how this is. One loose screw and…”
“And we all die devoured. Yes, you repeat it every damn week.”
Marcus put the screwdriver down on the table and turned toward her. Sara had been his first client three years ago, when the Redhill settlement was barely thirty people hiding in a warehouse. Now they were two hundred. All alive thanks to the small black device that buzzed softly on every corner of their walls.
“What do you want, Sara?”
“Information. There are rumors that North Valley is developing something of their own. They say they won’t need your services anymore.”
The news hit Marcus like a punch in the stomach, but he kept a neutral expression. He’d spent years perfecting that poker face.
“Let them try” —he said, going back to his work—. “It’s not as easy as it looks.”
“And if they succeed?”
“They won’t.”
Sara came closer, her boots echoing on the concrete floor.
“Marcus, this place depends on you. If North Valley finds a way to…”
“I said they won’t.”
Silence settled between them, broken only by the device’s constant buzzing. Sara sighed and left the workshop without saying goodbye. Marcus waited until her steps faded into the distance before allowing himself to close his eyes and clench his fists.
“North Valley. Damn idiots.” —He murmured with a sour face.
He got up and walked toward the closet at the back of the workshop. Behind a box of rusty tools, his fingers found the hidden radio. An old model, one nobody used anymore. He turned it on and waited.
“Delta here” —he said into the microphone—. “I need confirmation. Is North Valley working on replicas?”
The static crackled for ten eternal seconds.
“Confirmed” —a distorted voice answered—. “They have prototypes; apparently there are three functional units.”
Marcus squeezed the radio until his knuckles turned white.
“How long?”
“Two weeks. Maybe three.”
“Understood.”
He turned off the radio and put it away again. His brain was already working, calculating, planning. He’d invested too much in this. Too many months of research, of trial and error, of sleepless nights while the screams of the dead echoed outside. He wasn’t going to let a bunch of fifth-rate engineers take it from him.
The frequency was simple, really. 23.5 kilohertz, modulated at intervals of 2.3 seconds. Ultrasonic. Invisible. Enough to disorganize the residual neurological impulses of the infected. It paralyzed them completely within a fifty-meter radius. But the components… the components were another story. Specific capacitors, a quartz crystal treated with a chemical solution he’d developed himself. Without those elements, the device, he was sure, would be useless.
And he’d secured the monopoly on each one of them.
But if North Valley had managed to create three functional prototypes, it meant they’d found substitutes. Or worse, they’d created something better that hadn’t occurred to him.
Marcus took his backpack out of the closet and began filling it with tools, cables and, hidden in a secret compartment, a small remote control. Black, unmarked, with a single red button.
“When are you coming back?” —Sara asked the next day, while Marcus checked his backpack for the third time.
“Three days. Four at most.”
“Reeves is waiting for you, right?”
Marcus nodded. Commander Reeves had contacted him the previous week, formally inviting him to North Valley for a technical consultation, he’d said. But now that Marcus knew their true intentions, it was time to act in his favor.
“Be careful” —Sara said—. “Something about all this I don’t like.”
“You never like anything.”
“It’s my charm.” —she smiled, winking at him while tilting her head and making the peace sign with her fingers.
Marcus smiled despite everything. Sara was one of the few people in this shitty world he still liked.
The trip to North Valley took two days. Marcus avoided the main routes, moving along secondary roads where the infected were few and scattered. When one got too close, he activated the small portable device he carried on his belt. The zombie stopped dead, its muscles freezing while it tried to process the sound its rotten brain, or what was left of it, couldn’t understand.
North Valley was bigger than Redhill; around five hundred people lived there, protected by solid aluminum walls, plus simple barbed wire. Marcus could see three of his own devices installed on watchtowers. He recognized them by the design of the metal boxes, by the way the cables connected to the generators.
Reeves received him in what had once been a cafeteria. It was the fourth time Marcus had seen him in person. A tall man, with an unkempt beard and calculating eyes. He had that air of authority some adopted after the collapse, half leader, half butcher.
“Marcus” —Reeves said, shaking his hand too hard—. “Thanks for coming. I know the trip isn’t easy.”
“Your devices have worked well, as I see.”
“Yes, yes. Excellent work as always. But we have to talk about… adjustments.”
Marcus let the silence stretch. He counted to five in his head.
“What kind of adjustments?”
Reeves exchanged glances with a thin man standing next to him, wearing round glasses and grease stains on his hands.
“Let me introduce Daniels, our chief engineer. He’s been studying your devices and…”
“Studying?”
“Analyzing” —Reeves corrected quickly—. “To better understand how they work, trying to do more efficient maintenance, you know.”
Marcus knew that look in Daniels’s eyes. The gleam of someone who believes they’ve discovered something important.
“Show me” —Marcus said.
They took him to a makeshift workshop in the basement of a building. Three devices rested on work tables, surrounded by tools and diagrams. Marcus examined them carefully, touching the components, checking the connections.
They were good. Very good.
But not perfect.
“Impressive” —he finally admitted—. “Have you tested them yet?”
“Preliminary tests” —Daniels answered, adjusting his glasses—. “They work, but we want to make more adjustments before…”
“You should test them in the field” —Marcus interrupted—. “A controlled environment tells you nothing. You need to know how they respond under real pressure; you need to know if it has the capacity to stop one zombie or several.”
Reeves rubbed his beard, thoughtfully.
“Are you suggesting we install them already?”
“Why not?” —Marcus pointed at one of the devices—. “This one looks ready. Install it on the eastern perimeter; temporarily replace one of mine. If it works well for a whole night, you’ll know you’re on the right track.”
Reeves’s greedy look gave him the answer he expected.
“It’s a good idea. Daniels, prepare the device for tomorrow night.”
“Commander, I think we should…”
“Tomorrow night” —Reeves repeated, this time leaving no room for debate.
Marcus spent that night in a guest room that smelled of damp and mold. He’d been assigned a room on the second floor of a residential building, near the center of the settlement. From his window, he could see the watchtowers, the walls, the guards’ movements.
He waited until past midnight. The settlement slept, except for the patrols that walked the perimeter. Marcus got up and checked the portable device on his belt. The battery was at maximum. He turned it on at the lowest setting to create a three-meter safety bubble around him and slipped out of his room.
The night air was cold and laden with humidity. Marcus moved among the shadows, keeping away from patrol routes. He reached the eastern perimeter undetected. At the same time, he realized that where he was staying was one of the safest places; the rest of the houses had no fences, and the doors and windows were so deteriorated they were pitiful.
The North Valley device buzzed softly on its tower, identical to the sound of his own. A few meters away, on the adjacent towers, his three original devices kept working.
Marcus took the remote control out of his pocket. Such a simple device. A button that activated an override signal, a backdoor he’d installed in all his devices from the beginning. For safety, he always said, for emergency remote maintenance.
He aimed at the three towers.
He pressed the red button.
The change was almost imperceptible. The indicator lights on the three devices went out all at once. The ultrasonic buzzing ceased, leaving a void in the frequency spectrum.
Only the North Valley prototype kept working.
Marcus put the remote away and returned to his room. He sat on the bed, checked once more that his portable device was on, and waited.
The first screams began half an hour later.
From his window, Marcus could see the chaos. The infected had detected the silence, the void where before there had been an invisible wall of frequencies keeping them away. They came in waves, dozens of them, moving with that terrible determination only hungry dead possess.
The North Valley prototype kept them at bay in the eastern sector. Marcus could see its green light blinking on the tower.
Then, six minutes after the attack started, the light turned red.
The device had failed.
Marcus heard the gunshots, the screams, the sound of flesh being torn apart. The zombies entered through the eastern perimeter like a flood. The settlement wasn’t prepared. They’d trusted technology too much, neglected traditional defenses.
A fatal mistake.
Some infected reached his building. Marcus heard their steps on the stairs, their guttural growls, nails scratching against the walls. But they never reached his door. The portable device on his belt kept them confused, paralyzed, unable to process him as prey.
Marcus sat in the darkness of his room, surrounded by an invisible circle of protection, while outside the small world these people had organized crumbled around him.
He closed his eyes, but he didn’t cover his ears. This was the price. He had to hear it.
He had to remember why it was necessary.
When dawn came, the silence was worse than the screams. Marcus left the room. The hallways were stained with blood, full of new zombies that froze when they saw him. He walked carefully, avoiding: the bodies, being bitten, and the remains.
He looked for the prototype that had failed; he needed to know what the error had been… The circuits were intact, but the quartz crystal was fractured. It hadn’t withstood the continuous load of a real attack. Exactly as he’d anticipated when he first reviewed it.
Reeves was dead, his body split in half in the center of the cafeteria. Daniels too. Most of the settlement, actually.
Marcus recovered his three original devices from the towers. He carefully cleaned the blood off them, checked each component. They worked perfectly. The remote had only turned them off temporarily. So he decided to take them away from there; they no longer had anyone to protect, and later he’d resell them.
***
Back in Redhill, Sara was waiting for him in the workshop.
“Did you hear about North Valley?” —she asked. Her voice trembled.
“I was there” —Marcus answered, leaving his backpack on the floor—. “It was terrible. A failure in their prototype. This saved me” —he touched the small device attached to his belt—. “I warned them their prototype wasn’t ready, but they didn’t listen to me; their engineer, a total idiot.”
“Five hundred people, Marcus. Five hundred!”
“That’s why I insist so much on quality over price.” —He turned toward her, his expression serious—. “We can’t afford mistakes. Not a single one.”
Sara looked at him for a long while. Marcus held her gaze without blinking.
“I’m going to need to raise the rate” —he finally said—. “The components are getting harder and harder to find. And with what happened in North Valley, other settlements are going to want to reinforce their systems. Demand is going to rise.”
“More expensive? Marcus, people can barely…”
“Safety isn’t negotiable, Sara. It’s that or they end up like North Valley.”
She clenched her jaw, but nodded. She had no other choice. None of them did.
When Sara left, Marcus sat in front of his work table. He took out the remote control and examined it under the light. Such a simple device. A single button that could turn off the salvation of hundreds of people.
His satellite phone vibrated. It was a text message from a settlement to the south. They wanted three devices. They’d heard about North Valley and were desperate.
Marcus answered with his quote. Triple his normal price.
They accepted without haggling.
He put the remote control in the secret drawer of his desk, along with the original plans for the frequency. Documents he never shared completely, never handed over in full. Something was always missing. A component. A specification. A small detail that kept them depending on him.
Outside, the sun was beginning to set. The Redhill devices buzzed in harmony, keeping the dead at bay. Marcus closed his eyes and listened to that familiar sound. His symphony. His masterpiece.
His prison.
Because now he couldn’t stop. North Valley had been necessary, a demonstration of what happened when they tried to replace him. But it had also been a line he crossed. And on the other side of that line, there was no turning back.
Other settlements would try to replicate his technology. He knew it. It was inevitable. And every time they did, he’d have to make a decision.
Let them replace him and eventually die, forgotten and useless in a world that no longer needed him.
Or make sure they remembered why he was irreplaceable.
Marcus opened the drawer again and took out the remote control. He held it in his hand, feeling its weight. So light. So powerful.
Outside, in the growing darkness, the dead moaned and clawed at the air, kept at a distance by a frequency only he fully controlled.
Marcus put the remote away and started working on the next device.
He had orders to fulfill.
And a monopoly to protect.
How far would you be willing to go to sustain your own survival?
The End