Monster Nation

by David Wellington

  He didn’t speak to her again. Maybe he knew better, or maybe she’d switched off whatever part of her brain listened to him. Beyond the doorway stood a stairwell that lead upward. At its top a door opened onto black air. When Nilla’s eyes finally adjusted she saw stars. Clouds. The night sky. To her left a pulsing heartbeat, a throbbing pulse of noise. She looked over and saw the spinning blades of a helicopter.

  Chapter Thirteen

  You can’t see it but you know it’s there, you feel its presence. Through the wall I can feel it… life, in the glorious abstract. In the middle of this morning’s test run she started vomiting blood and by the time I had her cleaned up and sedated the extrusion should have collapsed but… it didn’t. Right through the wall and I knew it somehow, I whispered it to her. It’s self-reinforcing now, I think. I smashed all the fetishes and the instruments but… it’s still there, the sensors show nothing of course but… I can feel it. [Lab Notes, 11/6/04]

  “He’s going to come out of there any second now,” Clark promised, but he knew he was wrong. Together with Vikram he stared at the stairwell hatch leading down into the prison. Sergeant Horrocks was supposed to be emerging from that door at any moment, leading what was left of the troops.

  It had been seven long minutes since his last call. There had been a lot of noise back then, a lot of shooting and screaming coming up from below. All of that had since stopped.

  “Any second,” Clark repeated, and Vikram muttered in acquiescence. Behind them the Pave Low helicopter spun its rotor uselessly. There was only so long that they could wait—fuel for the aircraft was at a premium.

  “Ah, Bannerman—here he is,” Vikram announced, as a human shape appeared in the stairwell door. “Nothing to worry about, I—” Vikram fell silent for a moment, then let out a terrified shriek. He raised his sidearm and fired three rapid shots into the doorway. The bullets collided with dead flesh and sent the figure there spinning.

  “That was so totally unnecessary,” the shadowy figure said.

  It was the girl. She stood up and stepped onto the starlit helipad. A bullet hole in her neck oozed crusty powdered blood, dried up so long ago it wasn’t even shiny. She prodded the wound with one undead finger.

  It was so easy to forget that she wasn’t one of the living. That she wasn’t exactly what she appeared to be, a helpless, innocent survivor of this horror. Clark had to remind himself from time to time that she was part of the Epidemic, not a victim of it.

  “What did you do with Sergeant Horrocks?” Clark demanded.

  The girl frowned. “Older guy, white hair, three stripes on his arm? He didn’t make it. None of them did. I watched them go under, Captain. I would have tried to help but, well, your men were trying to shoot me at the time. If they could have focused on their enemy, well—”

  “That’s exactly what they were doing.” Clark stood up straighter than before and stared at her with his best command face. “So. Are you going to eat us now, or did you have something else in mind?”

  The girl’s face soured and she threw him a mock salute. “I thought we would get in that helicopter and fly out to that mountain you were so excited about. You know, what we were supposed to do in the first place.”

  “You don’t honestly expect me to take you with us,” Clark sputtered.

  “I think you need all the help you can get. Listen, Captain—I don’t know anything about military tactics or politics or epidemiology or anything. I lost whatever expertise I may have had when I died. But I do know my destiny is up there. I’ll walk if I have to, but I’d prefer to catch a lift with you two.”

  Clark felt a sinus headache coming on. He had no answers. He had no information. His chain of command was broken and his direct superior had turned against humanity. According to every order of warfare that he knew that meant it was time to fall back and call for evac. Yet fate had put him in the position of being the one who had to decide the entire future of the human race.

  “Oh, hell,” he said, sounding prissy even to himself. “Mount up already. We’ve got no time to lose.”

  It was all too true. Their destination, Bolton’s Valley, was nearly a hundred miles away even as the crow flew. The pilots assured him they could reach the Epicenter with the fuel onboard but it would be a close thing. Once they had completed their mission they would have to find alternate transport out of the area of operations.

  Assuming they survived. Clark kind of doubted they would. As long as they got close enough to the switch, as long as they managed to turn this thing off, that would be enough.

  He imagined it—the Epicenter—as some kind of science fiction death ray contraption. A big telescoping raygun with fins and flanges and control panels sticking out of a hatch carved into the mountain. He imagined it had two buttons that controlled it, conveniently labeled ON and OFF. He imagined pushing the latter and then going back to Denver, to the Brown Palace, and finally having that juicy, rare steak that fate had stolen away from him. He imagined taking a room upstairs, a room with tasteful wallpaper and gauzy curtains on the windows and a big, soft bed with a white coverlet. He imagined going to sleep for a very long time and then waking up to find that humanity had rebuilt after the dead stopped rising, that while he slept everything had been cleared away, tidied up, made whole again. He imagined that the population of the United States would have replenished itself and that there was no one left who even remembered the Epidemic, that there were no wounds anymore, no physical scars, no emotional traumas. No nightmares.

  Except, he knew, that he would still remember. He would remember the face, and the name, of everyone who had died. He would remember them for the rest of his life.

  Perhaps it was better if he didn’t come back.

  “It is still a lovely world, is it not?” Vikram asked, jolting Clark out of his reverie. He hadn’t even noticed the helicopter lifting away from the prison. He hadn’t realized that they’d already swung way out across the mountains, that they were running fast, about a hundred feet up, following a ridgeline that probably marked the Continental Divide. Maybe an hour had passed and he’d been lost in his own thoughts. So close to the end and he’d wasted all that time.

  He looked down, though, and saw trees clothing the rugged sides of the mountains, aspens and firs and loblolly pines. He saw water snaking between the peaks, the stars wavering in the depths of creeks and rivers. Oh, Vikram was so very, very right.

  Then he looked over at the girl. She sat very still in her crewseat, buckled in and motionless. Her chest didn’t move with breath, her eyes didn’t blink. You could tell she was dead, if you paid attention. If you actually looked. She had the waxy skin of a corpse. She had the eyes that didn’t really focus anymore, not on anything in particular.

  She turned her eyes to look back at him. “You think you’re going to find a way to end the Epidemic. You know that’s probably bullshit though, right?”

  Clark nodded. He couldn’t stop looking at the girl. “Yes. I also know that it’s my job to find out. Because maybe, just maybe I can stop it. At the very least I can perform the final duty of any soldier who watches his country die.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I can take our communal revenge on whoever did it.” Enough. Clark wanted to change the subject. “So who told you about the mountain?” Clark demanded of her. “Who said you were the only one who could go there?”

  She shrugged and looked out the window. “A man named Jason Singletary. He had a gift, a… kind of a power. He was psychic, if you have to hear me say it.”

  “Psychic,” Clark said. The word came out of his mouth and hovered in the air like a grim little cloud. It sounded a lot like other words he knew now. Like “undead”, or “magic.” It sounded like one of the things that had gone wrong with the world.

  The pilot broke the silence that followed. “We’re approaching the site,” he said. “Should be visible in a few minutes.”

  Before he’d even finished his sentence fragment the hatch to the carg
o compartment started rattling.

  "What was that?" Vikram asked, sounding only a little panicked.

  The pilot and the copilot exchanged long, meaningful looks. "Maybe you should check it out," the pilot said. The door kept rattling.

  The copilot unstrapped himself and came aft, walking with the motion of the helicopter, one hand on the ceiling to brace himself. “What have we got back here, just rations and some light munitions, right?” he called back to the pilot. “Anything that might come loose?”

  It was like a dream, a particularly horrible dream, where you know what is about to happen but you are so plagued by self-doubt and general anxiety that you don’t dare open your mouth to say it, because that would make it real.

  The co-pilot reached for the handle on the side of the hatch and even before he had turned it all the way the hatch exploded inward, spilling two hundred pounds of meat into the crew compartment. There was blood, and torn flesh, and screaming, but in that first awful second Clark couldn’t connect the dots, couldn’t make sense of what was happening. Only when he heard Vikram calling his name did he really know.

  A man. A dead man. A dead man with no arms.

  A dead man with no arms, his torso riddled with bullet holes, his face distorted by damage and hunger, his body as dry and tough as beef jerky, had stowed away aboard the helicopter when it left the prison. The dead man had killed the copilot in one incredibly swift, incredibly brutal motion and now he had his teeth deep in Vikram’s calf. Some of the blood slicking down the floor belonged to his best friend.

  The dead girl was up, standing on her chair. She looked horrified and Clark felt a quick irrational burst of desire—he wanted to tell her everything was alright,

  A better plan came to mind a moment later. He was standing next to an exterior hatch with an emergency release. He pulled up on the red handle and the door fell away into blackness, cold air bellying in so fast and hard it knocked everyone down. The dead man slipped away from Vikram. The girl fell off her crewseat. Clark grabbed her arm and hauled her up to stand next to him.

  The dead man didn’t bother getting up. He just got his teeth into Vikram again and kept chewing. Vikram drew his weapon and started firing at the dead man’s head but the helicopter was rolling, pitching, yawing—nobody could fire accurately under those conditions, and Vikram was no marksman.

  The pilot kept looking over his shoulder, shouting something back at them. Questions. He wasn’t paying enough attention to flying the aircraft. “Soldier!” Clark yelled at him, “see to your duties!” Then he turned to the girl.

  “This psychic,” he said to her. “He told you—you were the only one. The only one who could go to the Epicenter. He told you that, he was sure of that?”

  The girl’s eyes were very wide. He shook her and she nodded. It was what he needed to hear.

  Grabbing her by the arms he yanked her forward and shoved her out of the helicopter, out through the external hatch, out into the roaring sky.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Poor mood, no appetite, continued angiogenesis inside the deforming body. But she’s alive. Fuck you, God, fuck you, Death, fuck you, fucking Cancer. She’s still alive! [Lab Notes, 1/16/05]

  Something was burning—Bannerman Clark felt the heat on his leg. He felt the hairs there crisp and curl and melt. There was only a little pain, in his chest. He looked down and wished he hadn’t. A jagged piece of steel transfixed him to the side of the broken helicopter. He was like a butterfly mounted in a case. Best to not try to move, he decided. Best to just wait it out. The heat on his leg kept getting more intense and he could smell his flesh burning, but still, there was no pain.

  There had been a moment after he pushed the girl out of the hatch, a single moment when it looked as if the pilot might actually get them down safely. That Vikram might actually kill the armless dead man. That they could continue the mission.

  Something slithered nearby.

  There had been a moment and the moment had passed. The pilot had started screaming and then he had unbuckled himself from his seat, trying to get away, trying to get away from the murderous corpse. It had only taken a few seconds after that for the helicopter to smack into the side of the mountain.

  The slithering thing drew closer. Clark opened his eyes, though he didn’t want to. He had some idea of what he was going to see. A dead person, a hungry dead person coming to eat him. He just wasn’t sure who it would be.

  It was Vikram. The Sikh Major’s face was crumpled in on one side, he was missing an eye. One whole side of his body didn’t seem to work. He didn’t say a word as he hauled himself closer. His mouth was open, his teeth very white.

  Vikram had a knife on his belt. A kirpan, more of a short sword. It was one of the religious objects he was supposed to keep on his person at all times. Clark could take that knife and destroy his friend’s brain with it. That was the very least he could do.

  Assuming he could lift his arm. Assuming that Clark wasn’t completely paralyzed.

  Vikram dragged himself an inch closer. Almost in range. Time to find out.

  Something’s out there… I saw it today, again, working its way through the trees. I called out but it didn’t answer. Something is climbing up the mountain but I don’t think it’s human what is it? What is it? [Lab Notes, 3/21/05]

  Nilla stopped screaming. She opened up her eyes. She was lying in something wet, something cold and white.

  Snow.

  Her neck could be broken. She’d hit the side of the mountain pretty hard. Sitting up could be the worst thing she could do for herself—she might tear her spinal cord.

  Of course, it wasn’t like anyone was coming to rescue her. Clark hadn’t been trying to kill her. He’d been trying to save her. He knew the helicopter was going down. Nilla had heard it crash and clatter and fall and slide for what seemed like hours while she lay inert on the hard, cold ground, looking straight up.

  She sat up.

  Her bones still worked. Her ribs hurt like a motherfucker, but her legs, and her arms, and yes, her neck were all still intact. She had fallen a hundred feet out of thin air to collide with the stony limb of a mountainside and it looked like she had made it okay.

  There were some benefits, she guessed, to already being dead.

  She tried to get her bearings. Trees surrounded her on every side, conifers with a dusting of snow on their needles. Straight up, between the treetops, she could see stars and the faintest sliver of a crescent moon. If there was a way to know which way was north based on the position of the moon, Nilla couldn’t remember it. She was lost. Lost and alone in the middle of the wilderness in the middle of a continent full of dead things. If her neck had been broken she couldn’t have been in worse shape. She sat down and tried to think about what to do next.

  That was when she noticed the light. It wasn’t normal light, of course, or she would have noticed it right away. It was more watery, more indistinct. She could see it better with her eyes closed. Well. There you go. It was the same kind of light she saw when she looked at living people. Golden. Perfect. Pretty much every fiber of her being was agreed. Getting closer to that light was a good plan.

  Her mind, strangely enough, agreed. She had come to find the source of the Epidemic. The energy that kept her from dying like she ought to. She was one hundred per cent sure that this ethereal light that radiated right through the trees was the Source.

  She got back to her feet and started walking. Climbing, in places, her hands clumsy but strong enough to grab at rocks and exposed tree roots. Her feet dug into the slippery ground, kicking through a rime of years-old snow, through the accumulation of fallen pine needles beneath, into frozen dirt under that. She hauled herself bodily up slopes, then ran, headlong, recklessly, down the other sides. She clambered over ridges of bare rock carved knife-thin by eons of wind. She crouched under endless tree branches and smacked her forehead on those she didn’t see and had bushel after bushel of freezing snow dumped down the back of her thin cotton shir
t.

  She should have been exhausted after the first quarter mile. Every step should have been harder, a brand new agony. But it wasn’t. If anything the mountaineering got easier. Her body felt better, stronger, healthier with every step she took. At one point she felt her neck spasm and shake and she thought maybe physical collapse had finally caught up with her but no. It was the bullet, the bullet the Indian soldier had fired at her on the prison’s rooftop. Underneath it the muscle fibers and nerves and blood vessels wriggled as they wove themselves back together. The inert leaden mass of the bullet popped out of her neck with an agonizing little sputter and fell to smack her hard on the bones of her wrist. She yanked her arm back in pain but even the pain disappeared after a moment.

  The light that came through the trees—it was better than heroin. It was better than sex with a loving partner. It was better than a drink of water after three days of wandering in the desert.

  It was nearly morning when she came out over a final lip of rock and saw the valley below her and the Source beneath it. Cold blue light the color of hallucinations lit up the sky over Bolton’s Valley, the place Captain Clark had shown her in a photograph. The place Jason Singletary had shown her with his mind.

  She wasn’t the only dead person to have found the place. A crowd of them—maybe two hundred in all—stood below the ridge. Their battered and torn bodies looked relaxed there. Their ragged faces were turned upward to catch the light. It was tempting to join them. It was even more tempting to move closer, to go into that flaring beacon.

  Nilla found herself elbowing through the crowd without really thinking about it. When one of the corpses coughed and cleared its dry throat she wasn’t even surprised.

  “Lass. Please don’t go any farther.”

  Nilla turned to face what had been a middle-aged woman. She had been plump, with chin-length hair pulled back in a simple black band. She had very little skin left on her face, and no eyes. Nilla understood, looking at her, that she could still see the light of the Source.