The Lost Gods

by Brickley, Horace

  “I understand,” said Casey. “How can that weakness be used to our advantage?”

  Talbot's left eye twitched. He ground his teeth.

  “Through the use of barricades and some of the already-destroyed urban landscape,” he said, “we can prevent them using certain routes, at least for a time. Think of it as corralling the enemy.”

  “I see,” said Casey. “Our correspondent Mehmet, in Istanbul, said that a countless number of these enemies had overrun the city. Do you have any satellite images that could give you a relative estimate as to how many of them there are?”

  “Unfortunately, no. Our satellites are designed to give precision information on the positions of soldiers, vehicles, and stationary targets. There are so many of these combatants that we have no means with which to count them. If I had to guess, I would say in the hundreds of millions.”

  “Since Turkey has fallen, and a perimeter doesn't seem like a permanent solution, if you'll pardon my criticism, what other avenues is NATO taking to approach this menace?”

  “I understand the concern; we are all concerned over the fate of billions of vulnerable people. This is truly a worldwide problem, even though there are no reports of this enemy in the western hemisphere, or in Australia, or South East Asia. We all have to work together and forget our past grievances. That being said, yes, there is concern over the perimeter, and we are launching daily bombing runs and drone strikes in cities and areas that have already experienced a 60% or greater loss of control.”

  Her eyebrows rose at his final sentence. She felt like David Frost when he trapped Nixon into admitting his transgressions. The feeling passed a second later when it dawned on her that she and all of her audience would be too dead to care about any awards she might get in the wake of such a telling interview.

  “Am I to understand that NATO is conducting bombing raids on areas that may still have survivors?”

  “It is an unpopular decision,” his tone remained professional, but Talbot's eyes told a different tale, “but due to the gravity of this conflict it is a decision that has been made for the greater good. There will be collateral damage in these bombing runs, but the loss of life would be much higher in an area that falls to the enemy. The survival rate for an overrun region is close to zero, as far as we know.”

  “So,” Casey said and she cocked her head to the right, “everyone that didn't get out of Turkey is dead or dying?”

  “Presumed dead.”

  “What other countries have been overrun?”

  “The current reports have the following countries at an 80-100% loss: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,” Talbot paused to cough, “Syria, Jordan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Saudi Arabia. The other Middle Eastern and North African countries are between 20-80% loss, and until we have some major success, they are predicted to fall into enemy control.”

  “You're saying that the entire Middle East and all of North Africa is overrun? Or will be overrun?”

  “Yes,” he exhaled slowly, looked up, and took in a deep, slow breath. Talbot removed his ear monitor and continued, “I'm not supposed to say anything more, but, frankly, we don't have the resources to fight this battle everywhere. It's a war with no clear fronts.”

  He paused for another moment. Someone off camera said something to him.

  “Don't you fucking tell me not to go off book,” said Talbot to the man off screen.

  “Listen here, you jumped-up little worm, I was sending cruise missiles up Saddam's ass when you were still sucking tits. You don't tell me what to do. These people have a right to know. Everyone is going to be in the shit soon enough, so get your line-toeing bullshit out of my fucking face.”

  He tossed some papers at the man and remained standing. His hands were at his sides, curled into fists. Talbot stayed like that for a long while. Casey remained quiet and waited. Talbot sat down and put in his ear monitor.

  “Listen, ma'am, these things are showing up everywhere. I'm tired of calling them the goddamn enemy, or hominids, or whatever. They are reanimated humans and we are having a hell of a time with them. It's not going our way. It's not like a standard enemy. We can't reason with them, and we can't outflank them or cut off their supply lines. We can't scare or intimidate them. North Africa and Western Asia are gone. The Russian government hasn't been helpful, so we've given up trying to prevent the dead from moving north through the Turkish mountains. We’ve been fighting backwards the whole time. As soon as we get to a new location, we are calling for a tactical retreat that same day. The amount of NATO support that we can use to fight in foreign lands is minimal. Some countries, in their infinite wisdom, are using this war as a chance to settle the score with their neighbors. There are Central African nations invading each other, Central Asia is a Mongolian clusterfuck, and there hasn't been a single report of a reanimate. We are limited in what we can do to help those nations. We can do a few bombing runs and some shock and awe, but these things don't respond to any of that. Their casualties have been minimal compared to their numbers. We will run out of bombs before they run out of bodies, unless we go nuclear, but once we open that door there's no closing it. Then we've got potential nuclear winter along with wholesale destruction and radiation poisoning. We also don't know how effective that kind of bomb would be against what is basically an animated corpse. They don't respond normally to our conventional bombs, so we are unsure if they'll respond to a nuclear one. And a nuke is not something you use unless it is going to fucking work. Ma'am, these things are resilient, and they have an endless supply of bodies to throw at our tired soldiers. If we're going to win, then we are going to win in Europe.”

  Talbot exhaled a sigh of relief. His career was over, but he looked rejuvenated at the end of his rant.

  “I don't really know how to respond to that. Are you telling me that the NATO strategy is to allow Asia and Africa to fall in hopes that they'll be able to make a stronger stand in Europe?”

  “It's not so much a matter of allowing it to fall, as a matter of we couldn't save it even if we tried. This isn't some rebellion. This is total war, and it's against a supernatural enemy. Worse yet, we are losing hopelessly. Our big chance in this theater is to hit them with all we've got in the Balkans and hold them off in Spain once they try to cross from Morocco.”

  “What about Italy?”

  “These things don't swim well. They sink right to the bottom once they walk into the water.”

  “Mehmet, our correspondent in Turkey, said something about Cyprus being attacked. How else could Cyprus be attacked unless these things could swim?”

  “I have no reports of that. There's no threat to people on islands, unless someone decides to put a bunch of these things on a boat.”

  “Sir, you’ve used the terms reanimate, corpse, and supernatural are we dealing with some kind of — well, I guess the word I’m looking for is zombie?”

  “Ma’am, no one knows at this point. I’ve given you the confirmed facts, and the rest is just my take on what’s happening. From what I’ve seen, and the bulletins I’ve read, this whole catastrophe appears to be something out of a horror story. I’m at a loss for words.”

  “One more question, sir.”

  “Shoot.”

  “This may be a stupid question, but I have to ask, does coming into contact, or being bitten, by these things turn the victim into one of them?”

  “No, not so far as we know.”

  “Thank you for your time and your honesty, sir. Is there anything else you'd like to tell our audience?”

  “Buy a gun and some canned food, and donate to the NATO War Fund. You can go to your local post office or VFW hall to contribute. If you’ve got the guts, find a recruiter. Due to the severity of this problem we are reinstating the draft and we will also take any able-bodied person between the ages of eighteen and forty-five.”

  Talbot stood up. The feed switched from split screen back to a close-up on Casey. It
was time for her final speech. She drew in a deep breath and set her hands, palms down, on the massive desk.

  “The world is in peril, and humanity stands on the precipice. Will we fight together and defeat this new enemy, or will past grievances prevent nations from fighting a seemingly unstoppable menace? It seems that these are the walking dead, or reanimates as Secretary of Defense Talbot called them. Our fellow humans are fighting for their lives abroad, and they need our help. We must reduce, reuse, donate, and volunteer wherever and whenever we can. The free world has defeated great adversaries before, so don't lose hope. We will face this great enemy together. Here are list of places you can donate, and if you are ready, willing, and able, come see your local recruiter about how you can serve not just America, but the world. This is Casey Schneider, and you're watching A World in Crisis on CFC World News. Local news is next.”

  The light on the camera dimmed, and the crew descended into panic. They whipped out their phones out and called loved ones. SMS messages and calls flooded the phone networks in the minutes that followed the broadcast. Millions of tweets with the hashtags #weareallgoingtodie, #omfgwerescrewed shot through the Internet like Gatling-gun bursts. People uploaded reaction videos, podcasted, and blogged their opinions and predictions about the cause, solution, and potential outcome of the sudden and savage war. Conspiracy theorists flooded social media with unfounded claims about black flag operations and Zionist power grabs.

  The president declared martial law two months after Casey’s final broadcast. Millions of reanimates emerged out of the sea onto East Coast beaches like a nightmare version of the invasion of Normandy. An ex-colleague of Casey’s sent her a text upon their arrival in Myrtle Beach. It read: they’re here. Casey dropped her phone on her kitchen floor. She opened her cupboard, grabbed a fifth of vodka, and headed for her bathroom. She picked up the small tan bottle of sleeping pills she kept next to her vanity and went into her backyard. With a stomach full of pills and high-end vodka, she floated in her pool until she passed out and drowned.

  One

  The Siege

  Adam and Jesse stood on top of a ramshackle platform constructed with scrap wood. A large crowd of reanimates huddled together below them. They were safe inside a fort made of odds and ends they had salvaged from the now-empty town of Silverdale, Washington. Six months ago, Silverdale was an idyllic suburb: full of evergreen trees, lush flora, natural beauty, and without much crime and the bothers of urban life. Now it was devoid of everything, including its residents. The dead had supplanted the living, except for an amateur wrestler and a former junky.

  It was the end of fall. Clouds hung heavy and dark during the day, and sunlight was an abstract concept. Rain sullied their moods, but harder rains and winter storms were yet to come. The cacophony of gunshots, explosions, fires, and screaming ceased months ago after the town succumbed quickly to the undead. All that remained in the county were thousands of reanimates per square mile and a few humans and animals scattered like dandelion florets in the wind. The dead were at the top of the food chain. Instead of surrendering to the new apex predators and becoming a hot, screaming meal, Jesse and Adam dug in and made themselves a defensible home in the middle of a parking lot at the local mall.

  Jesse looked over the barricade at the undead. He squinted when he met the soupy, empty eyes of a bloated reanimate wearing a tattered and soiled black suit.

  “Why are so many of them in suits?” he asked Adam.

  “Probably what they were buried in,” Adam answered. Adam was holding a pump-action 12 gauge shotgun. His tall lanky frame seemed unable to bear such a large gun, but Adam had surprised Jesse time and again with his strength. Adam had once said while flexing his sinewy biceps, “They don't look like much but these guns still shoot.” Jesse smirked and let Adam have his ego-stroking moment.

  The crowds of reanimates were sporting their funeral garb. Some wore ornate robes, military uniforms, or nothing at all. Despite their varied appearance, they all craved the two last morsels of goodness left in Silverdale.

  “I'll never get used to it,” said Jesse, in his low voice and his slow, precise diction.

  “I know, man, it's like it's never going to go back to normal. These fucking things never go away. They just keep coming and coming, and they’re so quiet. It freaks me out, man. I kinda wish they would make some noise. All is can hear is them shifting around.”

  “I meant the smell,” said Jesse as he locked eyes with that same corpulent reanimate wearing the soiled suit.

  “Oh — yeah, fucking penguins smell the worst,” said Adam.

  “Absolutely, but I kind of like how the old ones smell. It's earthy. Like a wet, rotting tree.”

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That's fucked up,” said Adam. He turned toward Jesse. His face contorted like he had just eaten some bad food. The undead below continued banging against the makeshift fort.

  “Don't judge, gotta break up the horrible stuff with the not-so-bad stuff.”

  Adam looked back down at the crowd and found one of the older creatures. It was small and so thin that it looked like it might crumble into dust before the night came.

  “It's like, I can look the penguins in the eye, and I can hope that they understand me. Like they still have feelings, but the old ones, man, I just see death: no compassion. And those eyes. Man, I've lost more sleep because of those than anything else,” said Adam.

  “A zombie in a suit will still eat you.”

  “Yeah, but he'll do it a lot quicker.”

  “Getting eaten is getting eaten.”

  “I don't think so, man. I mean — I think drawing it out would make it worse. Gives you time to think about it, and the pain probably doesn't go away. You ever had something sprained or dislocated before?”

  “No, I was really lucky that I never got hurt wrestling. I saw a lot of guys get hurt though. Had a few victories that ended poorly for the other guy.”

  “I guess you can imagine that some pains don't ease up. I'd be willing to bet getting eaten is one of those types of pain.”

  Adam winced after he spoke. The lines in his face made him look older than his twenty-two years. The years that he spent on crystal meth spoiled his complexion and ruined his teeth.

  “Here's hoping neither of us finds out what it feels like to be eaten,” said Jesse.

  “I'll drink to that.”

  “Please don't mention alcohol.”

  “Hey! I miss it, too. We'll find some soon, and we'll get good and liquored up.”

  “Bullshit. I don't think getting a brewery, winery, or distillery up and running is going to be on too many people's must do list,” said Jesse. “Not to mention that any one that knows how to do that stuff has probably been eaten and digested by now.”

  “It can't be that hard. Just step on some grapes and you've got wine.”

  “Alcohol is a little more scientific than that.”

  “When I was in county, we used to put those little cups of fruit cocktail in a bag, put in some moldy bread, and store it in the toilet until it fermented. That or we'd use ketchup. Anything with sugar turns into alcohol eventually.”

  Jesse looked at Adam with the same disdain Adam had displayed at the beginning of their conversation.

  “I'd ask how that tasted, but I'd like to keep my lunch down.”

  “It tasted like shit, but it worked.”

  “Maybe we should focus on our new-found friends for a bit.”

  “Ah, our esteemed guests,” said Adam and he gave the crowd a mimed tip of his imaginary hat.

  Jesse laughed for a bit, but his bemusement faltered as he surveyed the situation. There were hundreds of reanimates lit by the soft, orange light of sunset. Their fort bordered the outside of a department store. Surrounding it were gutted cars. Jesse and Adam had used what tools they found in the town's home improvement store to take the cars apart. They constructed the fort’s walls with the frames of cars, chain link fencing, and corr
ugated tin roofing scavenged from around town. Adam had welded them together with an acetylene torch. Despite his checkered past, Adam proved the more useful of the two when it came to handyman duties. Jesse could smash ten reanimates into useless piles of flesh and bone without breaking a sweat, but the intricacies of welding escaped him. Adam had taken to calling Jesse his bodyguard, yet Jesse felt he owed Adam his life. Adam’s skills had kept them safe and in relative comfort for the past few months.

  Jesse looked back at Adam, who was still smiling.

  “Do you think it'll hold?” asked Jesse.

  “Don't worry about that,” said Adam. “It'll take more than this lot to bring down these walls. These bastards don't hit that hard, and this fort was welded by the best. We are safe, especially in the grand suite.”

  Adam pointed to the small tree house that he built with spare lumber from the hardware store. Thick support beams elevated the house and it had a roof and window covers that were removable.

  “I still can't believe you built that,” said Jesse.

  “Hey man,” said Adam and he smacked Jesse's right arm. “Backhanded compliments are not appreciated.”

  “I didn't mean it like that. I just mean that you outdid yourself with the tree house.”

  “Technically,” said Adam, and he put on his best 'harrumph harrumph' tone of voice, “it is a small dwelling on stilts.”