The Postmortal

by Drew Magary

  Dmitrov: We decided, as a group, that it was worth the risk to defect and go into business for ourselves, so to speak. To be our own bosses.

  Mascis: Do you think they’ll come after you?

  Dmitrov: Well, they have the men to do it, don’t they? But no, I think they have a desertion rate that they deem acceptable.

  Mascis (narrating): But that desertion rate is growing. The occurrence of RMUs, or rogue military units, is rising in Russia. Long a problem for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Russian military is now feeling the sting of entire battalions going AWOL and becoming armed, unaffiliated gangs.

  David Miles: I don’t think Solovyev will tolerate the problem for very long.

  Mascis (narrating): David Miles, professor of Russian history at Georgetown University Online, estimates that over fifteen hundred Russian RMUs are at large in eastern Europe, China, and the Middle East.

  Miles: You have to understand that, while Solovyev is cruel and a dictator, he is also a visionary of sorts. He knew he had to win the so-called bodies race, so he immediately hatched this plan to increase and revamp his country’s population. And he knew that in order to control such a massive population, dictatorship was not an option but a necessity. And while he has killed millions of people in the process, his nation is growing at a manageable rate. Its military hasn’t suffered greatly under the weight of overextension and desertion, as ours has. Violent gangs are a foreign concept within Russia’s borders, unlike here and in Mexico. The population is under control. Oppressed, for certain. But under control. Whereas we just throw more and more people on death row, yet crime is worse than ever. Solovyev knew that the cure would lead to mass tragedy, so he had the foresight to engineer that tragedy in his nation’s favor. And he’s succeeded, which is a terrifying thought.

  RMUs are a natural by-product of an army as large as Russia’s. But when someone suggests to me that Solovyev will tolerate any RMUs in his midst, particularly ones that reveal themselves publicly, I say no. No, he won’t abide that. He will seek out threats to unity, and he will crush them.

  Dmitrov: If they do decide to come for me, fine. We’ll have it out. And if I die, I’ll at least know that I died a free man, and not as one of Solovyev’s farm crops.

  Mascis: Have you killed anyone since deserting?

  Dmitrov: It hasn’t come to that yet. Many people assume we still have the backing of the Russian army, and so they lay down their guns when they see us.

  Mascis: But you’re still marauding. You’re still taking what isn’t yours, by threat of force.

  Dmitrov: But that’s the world now! You take or you get taken from. That’s what we have to do, until the day someone decides to stop us. We’re going to take what we need to survive—and then maybe we’ll take a little more.

  Mascis: How is that a better life than when you were in the army? How is that any more ethical?

  Dmitrov: It isn’t. But at least what we take will be ours. Mine. I deserve that after all these years. I deserve what I take to be mine and no one else’s. That’s the very least this world owes me.

  DATE MODIFIED:

  6/19/2059, 1:34 P.M.

  My Cure Day Surprise

  I woke up yesterday with my WEPS going nuts. I brought up the screen. Matt appeared before me, his hair shooting out from under his hat like little orange wings. Before he said anything, he belched. “You like that?”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Hey, I heard it’s your cure day today,” he said. “Bruce told me. What’s your cure age again?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Yeah, well, you don’t look a day over sixty, fella. Anyway, you have to go to Annandale today. It’s your cure day surprise. You get to kill a glampire.”

  “Christ. One of those vampire poseurs?”

  “Oh yes. With the white face paint and dopey satanic rituals and everything. It’ll be fun. You guys should pack a lunch.”

  “Where’s the file?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me that. Ernie has all that crap. I have to go to the river and try and sell this Chris-Craft. Do you like Chris-Crafts? This one is gorgeous. I redid the hull myself. Also installed a new electric engine, which sucks. But it’s in there.”

  “I live in a room in a town house nowhere near water.”

  “But it will be near water someday. I keep telling you: water is the new land.”

  “What am I gonna do with a boat?”

  “Oh, mope, mope, mope. I could have given you a solid deal. You would have been the boat king of Falls Church. But now you’ve screwed it up. Go kill the glampire, and then have fun not owning a boat.”

  Traffic was especially miserable yesterday. At least three clusters of parked plug-ins had spilled off the shoulder and into the right lane. By the time Ernie and I got to the house, it was two o’clock. That part of Annandale is relatively tranquil, but I didn’t want the Southeast incident repeating itself. I chewed my nails during the whole ride out. I ripped off the white parts with my teeth, and my nail beds started bleeding; then I started chewing on the newly uncovered skin, biting and nibbling on small flecks here and there. Ernie looked at me. I tucked my fingertips into the center of my palm, like a poorly made fist.

  He tried to calm me down. “It’s okay, John. We’ll leave while there’s still plenty of daylight.”

  “I had a friend who was attacked by glampires a long time ago,” I told him. “He was trying to hook up with some suicide girl, and she dragged him out to this dipshit vampire chanting circle in the middle of a forest. He went with the whole thing, because . . . Whatever. He was looking to get together. Then they passed him a cup with blood in it, and he drank it, and then he turned and saw a dead dog lying a few feet away, out in the woods. He flipped out and tried to run, but then the head vampire grabbed him and took a chunk out of his shoulder.”

  “They hurt him badly?”

  “He ended up getting fifty stitches. I know they’re kinda goofy. But still, I don’t like being attacked.”

  “Don’t worry. One flash of the shotgun and they’ll stop baring those stupid fang implants in a snap. Come on.”

  We got out of the car and walked up to the house, which was painted black from top to bottom. Ernie knocked on the door. No answer. He twisted the knob, pushed, and the door swung open. We strolled in, leaving the door open to let in air and light. Every room on the main floor of the house was empty and, with the exception of the hardwood floors, painted black. We went into the kitchen—also black. We opened the fridge, which was black. The light inside the fridge was purple, like a hippie’s black light. Random two-liter bottles of fluid were scattered in the fridge. Thick, rusty, sludgy liquid filled each about a third to halfway full. Each was marked DOG, CAT, RAT, etc.

  I looked at Ernie. “Well, that’s disgusting.”

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said. “If you were a pretend vampire, where would you pretend you had to spend most of your day?”

  I glanced past Ernie and saw a closed door in the foyer, next to a rickety, incomplete staircase that led to an upstairs that was probably never used. I looked at the door, looked back at Ernie, and nodded. He did likewise. He took the shotgun out of the duffel. I took the Texan’s gun from my waistband. We approached the door and slowly opened it. The stairs descended into blackness. I saw a light switch on the wall near the doorframe and flicked it. Nothing. “Shouldn’t there be torches on the wall for me to grab?” I asked. “I feel like I’m in a video game.”

  Ernie took out a flashlight, and we walked down into the basement. It was essentially a massive utility room with an exposed ceiling and wire-strewn rafters looming overhead. In the center of the room, on the speckled black linoleum floor, were two dozen large Styrofoam containers painted to look like stone. They were arranged in rows of six, with just enough room between them to walk single file on any given side, and had small holes poked in the top. We could hear people breathing inside. There were no name tags on the makeshift coffins, whic
h aggravated me.

  “How do we know which one is our guy?” I asked Ernie.

  “No problem. TYLER MCKINNON!”

  Nothing happened. The rhythmic breathing from inside the coffins continued unabated. “They certainly commit to the role, don’t they?”

  Ernie wasn’t as impressed. “Yeah, well, they can wake their asses up.” He kicked the lid of one coffin, but with the force needed to dislodge the top of an actual sarcophagus, not the picnic coolers that these things really were. As a result, he accidentally knocked the whole thing on its side. He pried open the top, creating that unmistakable Styrofoam-on-Styrofoam sound that has ripped eardrums asunder for decades. Nothing inside, save for a small ratty blanket.

  He pried off a second lid, revealing yet another vacancy at the glampire motel. I knelt beside the adjacent coffin and pressed my ear to it, to see if I could hear any breathing. Nothing. Ernie took to shaking coffins, since they were so light. I did likewise. None of mine, nor his, had any weight. On my third shake, I heard a small rattle come from inside. I lifted the lid.

  Inside was a small WEPS speaker, wireless and about the size of a thumbnail. Loud breathing sounds were coming from it.

  “This is weird.” Just as I said it, Ernie shook a fourth coffin. The second he did, the top flew off like a jack-in-the-box, and out popped a deranged Greenie with a knife. He shrieked, “Hello!” and plunged the knife deep into Ernie’s thigh, then let out a laugh that reverberated through the three decades’ worth of nightmares piled up in my psyche. A nearby door burst open, and dozens of them filled the crypt like a replicating virus. My brain fired off orders to my body to raise the Texan’s gun and point it somewhere, anywhere, and pull the trigger. None of the signals reached my shoulder, arm, or hand. Giant clusters of fear and rage and despair all rushed to the front of my mind and wound up jamming the exit. The Greenies were on me within seconds, and that’s when I was finally, stupidly able to physically resist.

  “Get off me!” I screamed.

  Ernie lay writhing over in the corner. A particularly fat Greenie took out a long blade and pressed the side of it against my left eyelid. “Good eye,” he said. “Good eye. Could fetch a decent price. Don’t squirm too much. I don’t want you breaking a blood vessel in there. And what’s this?” One of the others lifted my shirtsleeve and ran his grubby green fingertips over my scar. He jabbed into it roughly with a long pinky nail. A cocaine nail. A small amount of blood began trickling out. “I see we’ve seen you before.”

  “Go ahead and carve it again,” I told him. “I don’t care.”

  “Please. Carve it again? That’s so not as funny as it used to be.” I saw another troll whitewash Ernie’s face with a soaked rag. “No, we’re gonna saw off your hands and feet. That’s much more creative. That way you get to spend the rest of your life like Mr. Kitty here.” He held up a knit doll of a cat. It had long, simple protrusions for arms and legs, nothing more. “Hello there, Mr. Kitty! You’re such a nice little kitty, yes you are!”

  “FUCK YOU!”

  I felt a hand come from behind my head and mash a white cloth into my face. A harsh vapor hollowed out my sinuses, and I found myself instantly transitioning into a state of astonishingly vivid unconsciousness, unlike any dream I had ever had. I was sliding down a playground slide and landing in a huge pit of recycled-tire mulch. I lay in the mulch while it bounced me up and down, as if I were in the center of a crowded Moon Bounce. Nearby, someone was swinging gaily on a swing. I looked up from my feather bed of old Bridgestones and saw an unmistakable blonde with an impossible body. She said hi in the same husky voice she always had. I said hi back. She smiled. And everything felt okay.

  Then the scene shifted, and I was sitting in the window seat of an airplane in the middle of a blizzard. The blonde was next to me, sitting perfectly still as the plane began to land. I looked out my window to see snow pounding the wing and the plane quickly drawing even in altitude with the Manhattan skyline. The plane landed gently on the frigid Hudson River. Hundreds of ferryboats were lined up beside us, their lights illuminating an impromptu runway. I saw the water, blue as the liquid inside an old jar of Barbicide, filling my window like an aquarium. I remained unfazed by this, glued to my seat. I didn’t resist. I didn’t try to get up. I simply watched the chaos unfold around me.

  Then, like someone had blasted my chest with defibrillator paddles, I shot back to life, back into the here and now, on the main floor of the glampire house, black walls all around me, night falling outside. I let out a guttural wail, like I had just come up from being trapped under ice. I brought my wrists up to my eyes.

  And there they were. My hands. Both of them, still delightfully attached to the rest of my body. I looked at my legs and saw that my ankles and feet were still married to one another. I counted my fingers, one through ten, as I did with David when he was born. Yep, all there. I looked for Ernie, who was propped up against one of the black walls, two men tending to the hole in his leg. I made out his hands and feet. I felt along my body for wounds or bandages. Nothing. Every muscle in my body slackened in relief.

  Three men in jean shirts and pleated khakis stood before me. A trail of scraped blood passed by them and out the door, where similarly dressed men were milling about. The three men looked at me sternly. My mind told me I should be wary, yet I was so relieved that they weren’t painted green or carrying knives (as far as I knew) that it didn’t matter to me. Also, I still had my hands and feet. All three men had blood spritzed on their clothing, yet they betrayed no trace of having physically exerted themselves. The man in the center held Ernie’s duffel in his hands. He appeared to be in his forties, with a flat receding hairline. He had curled the front of his hair back behind his head, creating a bizarre, poofy ridge that accentuated both the hair and the missing patch in front. I couldn’t stop staring at it.

  He spoke slow and low. “Well, this is a curious intersection indeed.”

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m the Reverend Steve Swanson. These are my fellow congregants, Jack and Brandon Fordyce.” He had one of the twins hand me a bottle of water. “No charge for that.”

  “Thank you. And thank you for . . . for whatever you did. What did you do? Where are the trolls?”

  “The Greenies? Yeah, you won’t be hearing from them for a while. That was a nasty little bunch you came across. Very nasty.”

  “I want to know where they are.”

  “Shh. Shh. Quiet now.” He took out a piece of gum and chewed on it. Slowly. Very slowly. He’d chomp down once, then spend a few seconds letting the piece languish in his mouth before chomping again. I’ve never seen that before. “Your friend over there is gonna be just fine. But I have a few questions for you, Mr. Farrell. I take it you’re not a COM member.”

  “No. No, sir.”

  “Uh-huh. And obviously you were lured to this house by the Greenies. But I’m curious as to what the purpose of your visit was. As you understood it to be, of course.” He held up Ernie’s duffel. “Your friend has quite a few interesting toys in here. Shotguns? Explosives? And what about this?” He took out the dose. “Shot of SoFlo! Not exactly something random people carry around with them, even in this day and age.”

  A bell rang in my head. “Swanson . . . I know your name.”

  “Indeed you do. Your son is an extremely hardworking and dedicated young man. You should be very proud of him.”

  “I wish I could take more credit.”

  “He told the church what it is you do. Don’t be angry with him. Oversight of your . . . industry . . . is an important part of our mission. We aim to reform it, though I’m sure you’ve gathered that. Just our luck, the worst Greenies in Fairfax County were also eyeing you. Isn’t that a happy little coincidence? Your son saved your life here today. The divine goodness inside him compelled him to do so. That shouldn’t be lost on you at a time such as this.” He stared at me. I envisioned myself being hauled off along the trail of Greenie fluid to a similar unknown d
oom. “So, an end specialist. How is that working out for you? Is it exciting? Do you get to travel and meet new people, and then kill them?”

  “I don’t kill anyone,” I said. “I’m just a consultant.”

  “And your friend over there? What’s his role? Am I going to find a black hood in this bag if I search a bit more thoroughly ? Hmm?”

  “What do you want from us, Reverend?”

  He knelt down beside me, his face set in sharp relief against the black wall behind him. “Would you agree that my fellow congregants and I have given you a gift today?”

  “Yes.”

  “The men who attacked you are the scum of the earth. They’re just as bad as the gangs—in fact even worse, because they work with the organ dealers, who are themselves even worse. They are repeated violators of the holy human vessel. Would you agree with me about that?”

  “Did you kill them?”

  “We don’t kill anyone, Mr. Farrell. We don’t kill anyone, and we don’t harm anyone. That is a damnable, unholy act. The Greenies caused themselves to bleed, I assure you. Those gentlemen will be dealt with in our own unique way. They’ll be reintroduced to the idea of treating their fellow man with dignity and reverence.”

  I grew angry with him. “They’re not yours to keep,” I said. “They were going to saw off my hands and feet, and I would like a chance to retort.”

  “Well, aren’t you the brave one, now that we’ve come to your rescue?”