Mort: Deluxe Illustrated Edition (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  Administration’s interior was clean and modern: glossy tile flooring, neutral-colored gypsum walls and fluorescent lights. There was a water fountain, a Coke machine and a few benches in the hallway for people to sit on while they waited. The place smelled like all government facilities smell: old gym shoes and Pinesol.

  Mort limped down the hallway to room 1E and peeked inside. A couple spinsterish old women and one plump chick in pastel polyester pants craned their heads toward him. A teenage boy with acne and a shag haircut sat with his hands between his knees, frowning anxiously.

  “Can I help you?” the blue-haired spinster closest to the door asked. Reading glasses dangled from her wattled neck by a silver chain. Her voice was appropriately nasal.

  Mort stepped inside. “Yeah. I, uh… I guess I need to register... and get my work and room assignments?”

  The lavender-headed spinster sitting beside the blue-headed spinster asked, “Are you a new arrival?” She looked well past retirement age, with a humped back and a profusion of coffee-colored liver spots.

  “Well, not exactly... I’ve been here a little over a month now.”

  Blue-hair: “A month? Why haven’t you registered yet?”

  Lavender-hair: “You’re supposed to register as soon as you arrive. Didn’t anyone tell you that?”

  Blushing, Mort hooked his thumb vaguely behind him. “Um, I’ve been in the infirmary,” he stammered. “They just let me out.”

  “O-ooohhh!” Blue and Lavender said as one.

  Lavender-hair took some papers from her desk drawer and handed them to Blue-hair.

  “I’ll register you right here,” Blue-hair said. She clicked her pen, bent to her papers and said, “Name?”

  “Mort Lesser.”

  That caused a little stir in the room. All four stared at him with new interest. Even Shaggy Pimpleface.

  “Mort Lesser?” Blue-hair asked, arching her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” Mort said, looking around suspiciously. “Why is everyone staring at me?”

  “You’re the guy the Archons saved from a serial killer,” the teenaged boy spoke up. He picked at a big zit on his cheek, his eyes wide. “I heard the guy shot you in the head with a cattle gun, like in that movie… Uh, what was it called again?”

  “I don’t know,” Mort said, blushing fiercely.

  “There Will Be Blood?” Pastel Polyester asked.

  “No. No...” the teenager said, shaking his head. “Something about old country... or old men... Anyway, I heard your brains were hanging out when the angels got you here.” The teenager eyed Mort’s toboggan intently.

  Mort laughed and tapped his head. “Well, they’re back inside now.”

  “You must be doing pretty good if they released you from the infirmary,” Blue-hair observed.

  “Yeah, better.”

  Mort shifted his weight from leg to leg as they gawked at him. His left leg was beginning to throb again. “I don’t mean to be rude, but is there a chair I can sit on? I’m not used to walking around this much. My leg is starting to hurt.”

  “Of course!” Blue-hair said with a start. “Jeremy, give this man your chair! He’s handicapped!”

  The teenaged boy leapt up, looking ashamed. “Sorry,” he mumbled, and swung his chair forward so Mort could sit down. Blue-hair clicked her pen, then frowned and clicked it again, and fired up the paperwork machine.

  “Mort... Lesser...” she said as she wrote. “How do you spell Lesser?”

  He spelled it for her.

  “Do you have any identification from your previous life? Drivers License? Social Security? We try to verify everyone’s identity.”

  “Uh, no...”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Blue-hair said. “Only half of our new arrivals do. Most folks were lucky to have survived...”

  By the time they were finished with him, Mort was registered as an official citizen of New Jerusalem, assigned to Room 4-D in Dorm Eight and was signed up for light duty in one of the compound’s mess halls. The ladies in registration took care of all his assignments, as there had only been a few rescues lately and the offices on the second floor were closed. He was given chits for personal items he might need like clothes and grooming supplies, and a laminated ID badge with codes on it to indicate his immunity status (no immunity, which meant he had to report once a week to the infirmary for a blood test to make sure he hadn’t become infected) his special needs and medical conditions, and also his privileges and security clearance. Apparently, like the book by George Orwell, some animals were more equal than others here at New Jerusalem.

  But that was okay with Mort. He was just happy to be alive, to be a productive member of a sane and ordered society again. Anarchy, he could leave to the anarchists. They were welcome to it.

  He was tempted to inquire about his friends. He missed Pete and Dao-ming, but he wasn’t sure if these women would tell him what dorms his companions had been assigned to, or even if his old cohorts would welcome him back into their lives now that they were safe. Had there really been a connection there? If so, why hadn’t Pete or Dao-ming sought him out?

  Before he left for Dorm Eight, Blue-hair suggested he attend the next orientation. “It’s in three more days. Starts at 7:30 PM at the auditorium. You can find the auditorium on the map we gave you with your new arrival package. Be sure you read the citizen’s handbook, too. New Jerusalem has a lot of rules and regulations, but they’re for the safety and security of everyone here.”

  Mort nodded, flipping through the handbook as the woman talked. There were a lot of rules, but none he considered unusually oppressive in light of their situation. Still, there were always rule breakers. Mort wondered what the governors of New Jerusalem did to the men and women who had trouble following rules. There were always a few bad apples in every crate.

  He was curious but refrained. He had a pretty good idea what they did with troublemakers here. What they had to do.

  Stuffing his papers and pamphlets into his bag, he thanked the women (and young man) for their help. He used his cane to push himself up from his seat and then hobbled to the exit.

  The wind whipped around him as he pushed through the door, chilling him instantly. Heavy gray clouds gripped the sky like great fists. It was still early, but the day was twilight dark, and it was snowing again. The snow drifted straight down for a few moments before swirling in an eddy of wind. The air was nippier than it had been when he originally crossed the grounds to the administration building. He huddled deeper in his coat, puffing white clouds of steam. His leg and head throbbed.

  Dorm Eight… Dorm Eight…

  Mort looked around the complex, suddenly lost. He clamped his cane beneath his arm so he could slip his map from the package the registration ladies had given him. He unfolded it. It was a hand-drawn diagram. Mort turned the map one way and then another, trying to figure out which way was supposed to be up. The amateur who had drawn the map hadn’t thought to indicate compass directions. He tried to orient himself using the administration building and the infirmary, but he couldn’t make sense of the markings on the photocopy. He scowled in frustration, his hands shaking.

  It’s not the map, dummy, it’s your brain, he thought.

  The neurological damage he’d suffered had turned a simple hand-drawn map into a jumble of unfathomable glyphs. It was just like the pictures in the magazines the nurses had given him. He knew he should know what he was looking at, but his brain only saw blobs of color.

  His cheeks flushed with fear and embarrassment. How was he going to function in society when he couldn’t do something as simple as read a map?

  Remember what Ms. Beecher taught you, he said to himself, trying to calm his racing heart. Most of the information is still there, but you have to think sideways to get to it now. It’s like when you have a word stuck on the tip of your tongue. You can’t tackle it straight on. You have to sneak up behind it.

  Mort closed his eyes for a moment.

  Think of some
thing else.

  He thought about his old life, his comic book shop, all the joy he’d derived from reading comics over the years. He thought about his favorite comic book heroes: Green Lantern, the X-Men, Doctor Strange, the Fantastic Four. Some people might dismiss such fictions as childish and two-dimensional, but those stories encompassed fundamental themes: good versus evil, justice, civic responsibility, and the moral application of force. These were the themes that had informed his ethical development as a youngster. Moral philosophy writ large in six panel pages.

  There it is! he thought, stabbing the map with his right index finger. Thinking about comic book panels had made the boxes and rectangles on the map come clear to him.

  He put the map away and hurried forward before he could get confused again.

  By the time he found Dorm Eight, he was limping like a peg-legged pirate.

  He paused for a moment to take in the cinderblock and steel confabulation. It was bleak, tall, with rows of tiny windows and an arched roof. Painted on the face of the building next to the entrance was a big blue 8. The blue denoted Blue Yard, the section of the complex where most of the unmarried men were housed. Yellow, Blue-hair had said, was where the women, couples and children stayed. Men weren’t forbidden from visiting Yellow Yard, she’d said. The laws of New Jerusalem weren’t quite that draconian, but he might be stopped and questioned if he did. Nobody wanted to segregate the sexes at New Jerusalem, but there had been a couple “unfortunate incidences” early on.

  Bad apples...

  There were several men loitering in the common area when Mort pressed through the door. They all turned to look at him when he hobbled in from the cold. An older gentleman with a big beer gut was sprawled on a ratty sofa, watching Tim Allen in the Santa Clause on a flatscreen TV. Two younger fellows were playing ping pong at the back of the hall. Near the entrance, a guy in a cowboy hat was sitting behind a large polished wood booth, reading a novel. Mort stumped up to the reception desk, forcing himself to smile despite the throbbing in his leg.

  The skinny cowboy manning the desk set aside his paperback. He was dressed in red flannel and blue jeans. “Howdy!” he grinned. “What can I do for ya?” The book he was reading, Mort saw, was The Stand by Stephen King.

  “Um, hi,” Mort replied, swinging his bag onto the counter. He began to dig out his papers, explaining, “I’m Mort Lesser. I just got released from the infirmary. I’ve been assigned to this dormitory.”

  “All right. Which room ya in?”

  “Uh, 4-D, I think.”

  “Ouch! That’s on the fourth floor,” Cowboy winced, eyeing Mort’s cane. “No elevator,” he explained when Mort looked at him questioningly.

  “Oh. Well... that’s okay, I guess,” Mort mumbled.

  Mort signed in and stuffed another sheaf of papers into his little bag, which was getting full pretty fast, then followed the skinny guy up the four flights of stairs to his room.

  “I’m Kelly Woolridge, by the way,” the skinny guy said as they ascended. “I live down in 2-Double G. Used to live in Nashville, before all the... you know.” He held his arms up and rocked back and forth, mime for zombie.

  Mort absorbed his new home as he lurched up the zigzagging stairs. Dorm Eight was essentially a prison cellblock. There were no bars or any other feature that would indicate that the building had been designed to house people against their will, but it was stark, utilitarian, everything painted in drab grays and beige. There were four stories with walkways overlooking the commons, and the door of every room had a reinforced glass window and a metal flap that a food tray could be slid through, yet the boarders had managed to make their new residence almost... homey. The babble and crash of small televisions came from numerous doorways: DVDs, most likely, as there were no longer any broadcasting television stations. Wreaths and pictures of snowmen and Santas hung on the doors and walls, and the rails of all four landings had been wrapped in sparkling red and green garland. Though it was discouraged in his orientation papers, people were cooking on hotplates in their rooms, and a mishmash of scents floated in the air: stew, vegetables and… was that fried bologna? Mort’s belly gurgled.

  “Here ya go!” Kelly said, pushing the door of 4-D inwards. “At least it’s near the stairs.”

  His room was small but not claustrophobically so. About ten by twelve, with a generously sized set of bunk beds, a toilet, a sink and a couple shelves and a closet.

  “It ain’t much, I know,” the cowboy apologized as Mort peered inside.

  “It’ll be fine,” Mort said.

  “I’ll leave you to it then,” Kelly said. “Just give me a yell if you need anything. I work the desk ‘til three. I’ll let the boss-lady know you’re here, too. She’ll probably want to meet ya.”

  “Thanks,” Mort called after him.

  Mort forgot to flip the light switch when he entered the room. He walked back and turned the lights on, then poked around the cabinets and drawers for a minute, looking for linens. All the cupboards were bare. It looked like he was the first and only tenant of 4-D.

  At least he had a window: a narrow rectangle of wire reinforced glass overlooking the yard. Mort leaned toward the window and peered out, watching the snow swirl around the gloomy compound. The sky was so overcast the floods had come on, and the snow created swarming gray halos around each blazing globe. His breath steamed the glass and he turned his attention to his own reflection.

  This is how Dorian Gray must have felt, Mort thought, squinting at his reflection. His face was gaunt, eyes set in deep pools of shadow, skin stretched too tight across the protuberances of his skull. He didn’t remember ever being so thin, not even in college, when he’d gone on a starvation diet hoping to get himself a girlfriend.

  I look so… insubstantial.

  Mort pulled off his toboggan and touched the bald patch on his head. His scar was smooth and strangely sensitive. His hair was growing back, but it was salt-and-pepper now.

  I’ve turned into an old man, Mort thought.

  “Knock knock,” someone called out cheerily behind him.

  Mort jumped and turned from the window. “Yes?”

  A man and a woman stood grinning in his doorway. The man was wiry, short, with lips like a catfish and bulging eyes. The woman was tan and blonde and very pregnant.

  “We’re the welcome wagon!” the pregnant woman trilled.

  Her companion held out his hands and waved them back and forth. “Welcome-welcome!”

  They laughed in unison, leaning toward one another affectionately.

  The ugly little guy stepped into the room, pumping Mort’s hand. “Howyadoin? I’m Bob Hawthorne. This is my fiancé Tina Laramie. We’re in charge of Dorm Eight.” Mort introduced himself, squeezed the pregnant woman’s hand. She was a stunning woman, statuesque, blond, with patrician features and a Barbie doll smile. “Kelly said we had a new resident, so we thought we’d come up and introduce ourselves, give you a quick tour of the facility.”

  Mindful of his disability, the tour mainly involved the three of them standing at the rail of the fourth floor landing while Bob and Tina pointed out different areas of interest: the drink machines, the galley, the chapel and laundry facilities.

  “The showers are over there,” Bob said, pointing toward the back of the commons. “Tina uses the facilities over in Yellow Yard so don’t worry about walking in on any women. It’s basically a 24-hour a day sausage fest in there.”

  Tina laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Ew!”

  “Our office is there if you need us. Feel free anytime. There are mop closets and cleaning supplies there and there. Everyone’s expected to keep their rooms clean. There’s no maid service.” Bob looked at his fiancé. “What else?”

  “The cameras,” Tina said.

  “Oh, yeah. The cameras.”

  They told him not to worry about the closed circuit camera in his room; the CCTV system had been disabled. No one would be monitoring him. “So feel free to fap to your heart’s conten
t,” Bob leered, earning himself another giggle and slap on the arm.

  The guy reminded Mort of someone, but he couldn’t put his finger on who it was. Finally it came to him. Bob was a spitting ringer for the actor Steve Buscemi. He looked from Bob to Tina and had to remind himself that beauty was only skin deep.

  Mort could get supplies from an attendant there if he needed toilet paper, shaving cream or razors, anything like that, Bob went on, pointing. “You’ll have to use your credits, but we always have a good stock of toiletries, thanks to the scouts.”

  “What about blankets? Clothes?” Mort asked. “I only have one other outfit.”

  “I’ll bring you sheets and some nice warm blankets,” Tina volunteered. “Those are provided free to every resident of New Jerusalem. You won’t have to use any credits. Would you like anything to eat or drink while I’m down there? Snacks?”

  “Could you bring me something to eat? I’m supposed to take my pain medication with food.”

  “I’ll grab you something to eat and a few sodas,” Bob said, eyeing Mort sort of pityingly. “You like chips and bologna sandwiches?”

  “Yeah, anything’s fine.”

  “Good. Good.”

  They waved their hands when he offered them his credit chits, telling him not to worry about it tonight. Mort wasn’t sure how New Jerusalem’s economy worked, what the value of a single credit was, but it didn’t seem all that important to the couple-- for the time being, anyway.

  “Oh!” Tina said, pausing a couple steps down the landing. “I almost forgot to answer your question. You can get clothes at the commissary in Orange Yard. I’ll show you were that is in the morning if you want. You’ll have to spend your credits there, though. They’re real sticklers about it.”

  “Thanks,” Mort said. “Thanks so much.”

  “Hey, man, we’re glad to have you,” Bob said, slapping Mort on the back, and then he followed his fiancé to the stairwell.

  After making his bed, eating a cold bologna sandwich and swallowing a pain pill, Mort stretched out on his bunk and stared at the ceiling. It was still early in the evening. Before the zombie apocalypse, he normally piddled around his apartment ‘til the wee hours of the morning, sometimes retiring at two or three am, but he was exhausted and in pain. Ten minutes after swallowing the Lortab, sleep rushed in and put out the lights.