Mort

by Rod Redux

  “Yeah.”

  Pete sat on the chair beside the hospital bed. “How you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “Man, you scared the shit out of me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “The doctor said you had a Pall Mall seizure. Said it was probably due to the hole in your brain.”

  “Grand mal,” Mort corrected. Mort’s smile felt plastered on his face. He tried to think of a way to broach his suspicions without making himself sound paranoid or delusional.

  “Pall Mall… grand mal. I thought you were dying.”

  Before Mort could think of some way to draw his friend into his paranoid-sounding suspicions, someone rapped softly at the door. Mort and Pete looked as one toward the man standing just outside the infirmary room. It was Mr. Eckenberg, the administrator of New Jerusalem.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” he said politely. “I was wondering if I might intrude.”

  He was still dressed in the blue three-piece suit he’d worn during the orientation program. Up close, he seemed a little smaller than he had when he was standing at the podium. He was also a strikingly handsome man, though he was tired-looking, with dark circles under his eyes and wrinkles bracketing the corners of his mouth. He seemed a anxious, too. His brow was creased, his shoulders hunched.

  Pete rose and extended a hand. “How ya doin’?”

  Mr. Eckenberg shook his hand. “Hi.”

  “Pete Bolin. Screw— er, Scouting Crew Unit Two,” Pete introduced himself.

  Mr. Eckenberg grinned. “Were you about to say Screw You Two?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I served on Screw You Two, when I first got here.”

  “No shit.”

  “Nope.”

  Mr. Eckenberg’s smile faded as he remembered why he’d come. He leveled a sober gaze toward Mort and said, “Morton Lesser, the leader of the Archons would like to speak with you. Yaldabaoth sent me here to invite you to his office personally.”

  “That right?” Pete asked, looking impressed.

  But Mort wasn’t impressed. He was terrified. His heart monitor jumped from 68 BPM to 120. An oily sweat suddenly gleamed on his brow. “Why does he want to see me?” Mort squeaked.

  Pete picked up on Mort’s fear and scowled.

  Eckenberg smiled, shrugged. “I’ve been dealing with those thi—the Archons—for a month, and I still don’t understand how their minds work. They don’t think the same way we do. I think Yaldabaoth feels responsible somehow for your seizure during orientation. I think maybe he feels like he needs to apologize to you.”

  Mort nodded. He felt numb. Maybe that was how fear felt when you knew there wasn’t any way out of the trap. “Okay,” he said breathlessly. “Am I going there now?”

  Eckenberg nodded. “I think he’d like to see you tonight. Doctor Whalen has already approved your discharge.”

  Mort’s stomach churned. This was happening too fast. He hadn’t even had a chance to tell Pete the things he suspected.

  As Mort’s thoughts raced, trying to anticipate the outcome of this much-too-rapidly approaching confrontation, Nurse Martin strode in with a sour look on her face and removed all the monitoring equipment. Her silence was her objection. She unbandaged Mort’s arm and removed the IV, taping a cotton ball over the tiny wound.

  “It’s very cold out,” Mr. Eckenberg said. “Do you mind getting Mort some warm blankets for them… um… ride over?”

  Nurse Martin flashed Eckenberg a fiery look and went to the room’s linen closet. As she took down a couple thin hospital blankets, an orderly entered the room and lowered the rail of Mort’s hospital bed. Pete and the orderly helped Mort into a wheelchair, though Mort felt perfectly capable of walking across the compound himself. The orderly flipped the footrests down and then departed.

  Eckenberg started to say something to Peggy, but the RN turned sharply and stamped from the room.

  Eckenberg whistled, eyebrows arched.

  “I’m going along, too,” Pete said firmly then, taking the handles of the wheelchair.

  “That isn’t necessary,” Eckenberg replied smoothly. He looked from Mort to Pete and sighed. “Very well.”

  Mort allowed Pete to roll him from the room. He was scared, but it was a resigned kind of fear. If the Archons meant to harm him, there was nothing he could do to prevent it. They could fly. They could read minds. Hell, they could probably murder him telepathically if they wanted. Make his head blow up like that old movie Scanners. That could only mean they didn’t plan on killing him, but he was frightened nonetheless. He didn’t know what they wanted with him, but he suspected it would be unpleasant. “Unpleasant” happened to Mort so often, it should have been his middle name.

  Eckenberg whistled as they crossed the hallway. He whistled in the elevator as they made the short descent to the lobby. The camp’s administrator nodded and said hello to the three or four people sitting in the lobby as they passed— the politician in him—then they were outside in the piercing cold. As the three of them crossed the complex, Eckenberg picked his tune up where he’d left off.

  The sky was cloudless. The stars seemed very bright and close. The moon was three quarters full and blazed like a silver lamp in the heavens. It was so bright, in fact, Mort could make out the jagged peaks of the Unicoi Mountains in the west. They were usually obscured by the dark.

  “Man, the air’s got a nip in it tonight!” Pete complained, clouds of steam blowing out in front of his lips.

  His voice seemed much too loud in the still November cold.

  Eckenberg directed Pete and Mort to a side entrance and fumbled out his keys. He let them into the administration building and the three of them took a private elevator to the fourth floor.

  Mort spotted an Archon as soon as the elevator doors parted. It was standing at the end of the hallway, arms behind its back. Mort recognized the creature. It was the being who had rescued him from DaVinci. The one that called itself Metatron.

  He wanted to grab the frame of the elevator door. He wanted to get up and run.

  But he did neither of the two.

  Instead, Mort let Pete roll him from the elevator and onto the plush burgundy carpeting of the fourth floor hallway.

  “Good evening, Metatron,” Eckenberg said to the creature as they approached.

  The shark-toothed being nodded formally. Its great, glittering black eyes rolled toward Mort and its red lips curled toward its cheekbones: a hideous grin. “I remember you,” it said. Its voice was perfectly modulated. Beautiful almost. Was that honey-sweet voice also an illusion? “How are you feeling, Morton Lesser?” it asked.

  Mort’s mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton, but he managed to croak, “I’ve been better.”

  Metatron laughed softly. “Indeed.”

  Mort expected to feel the creature probe inside his mind, but that strange tickle did not come. There was no pain.

  “Yaldabaoth would like to speak with Mort alone. Would you mind waiting out here with me, Mr. Eckenberg? Mr. Bolin?” Metatron said. He glanced pleasantly from Pete to the administrator.

  “Naw, that’s fine,” Pete murmured, eyes looking kind of dull.

  “Yes, fine, fine,” Eckenberg echoed.

  Metatron took the handles of Mort’s wheelchair, turned him toward the double doors of Yaldabaoth’s office. Heavy cherry wood, deeply varnished. Mort watched as the doorknobs turned of their own accord and the doors swung silently open.

  Metatron pushed him inside.

  Mort didn’t know what to expect. Bare stone walls, dripping and slimy. Chains with hooks dangling from the ceiling. Instead, Yaldabaoth’s chamber was richly decorated and charming. There was lots of light, an abundance of lamps and wall sconces blazing cheerily. The walls were lined with books. Real books, too, not the fake ones rich people put on their library shelves so they looked worldly and well-read. A copper statue of Atlas, holding up the globe, stood on one corner of the heavy mahogany desk. A map of the United States, with ci
rcles and indecipherable symbols marked on it in red ink, lay spread out on its gleaming surface.

  “Leave us, please,” Yaldabaoth said. He was sitting in a high-back leather chair, facing away from Mort.

  Metatron bowed slightly and slipped silently from the room, shutting the doors with a barely perceptible click.

  “How are you feeling, Mort?” Yaldabaoth asked. He didn’t turn.

  “Fine. Everyone keeps asking me that. I’m fine.”

  Mort felt the lightest brush inside his mind.

  “Please don’t do that!” Mort said quickly, his heart skipping a beat.

  “I apologize. It’s a hard habit to break, once you become accustomed to peeking inside the thoughts of other people. It’s a very tempting thing.”

  Mort felt the ghostly probe withdraw from his skull and relaxed a little.

  “Would you care for a refreshment? I have water, coffee.”

  “No, thank you.”

  Mort wished that Yaldabaoth would turn. He didn’t like speaking to the back of the man’s chair. It left his imagination to run wild. His fear needed no further encouragement.

  His host was quiet for almost a full minute. Finally, gently, Yaldabaoth whispered, “You see us as we truly are. Naked, stripped of our glamours.”

  It was not quite a question-- but not quite a statement, either. A little of both, with an undertone of disquiet.

  “I suppose so,” Mort said, just as softly.

  The leather chair swiveled then, and the immense Archon turned slowly with it, coming into Mort’s sight by degrees. Mort swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, but he did not drop his gaze. He stared fully upon the features of the wizened creature.

  The white, withered skin. The reflective black eyes and moist red lips, a bloody wound wrapped around shark-like teeth. Its ears were tiny and pointed, Mort observed. He hadn’t really looked at their ears before.

  “Do you know what we are?” Yaldabaoth inquired. There was no threat in the question, only curiosity.

  “Vampires?” Mort murmured.

  Yaldabaoth smiled. His chin dipped down, then came back up. “That is the modern name for my people. Your… human word for our kind. We don’t particularly care for it. Too many negative connotations.”

  Yaldabaoth did something very surprising then. He took a pack of cigarettes from his desk drawer and put one in his mouth. He didn’t light it with some tacky display of magical power. He lit it like everyone else did: with a cheap plastic lighter. Puffing out a cloud of smoke, he shrugged. “A bad habit I acquired from a human acquaintance,” he confessed. “That was… back in the 1920’s I think. You start to lose track of the decades when you hit four or five hundred years old.” He drew another lungful and blew it out. “You don’t mind, do you?”

  Mort shook his head. “N—no.”

  “Good. I have to admit, I’m a little disconcerted by you, Mort.”

  “By me?” Mort scoffed.

  “Yes. My people have an instinctive fear of being seen by your kind. By that I mean, seen for what we truly are. In our natural form. Historically, you humans have demonstrated an uncontrollable compulsion to drive sharpened wooden stakes through our hearts. It’s rather rude of you.”

  Mort laughed. He couldn’t help himself.

  Yaldabaoth smiled, his eyes twinkling. “Yes, we have a sense of humor. Some of us more than others.”

  “So what are you going to do to me now that I know your secret?” Mort asked, feeling bolder. “Are you going to kill me? Change me into one of you?”

  Yaldabaoth’s eyes widened. His grin widened too. “You’re very perceptive, Mort Lesser. Yes, that is precisely why I’ve brought you here. I need to know what you intend to do with your knowledge. I cannot glamour your mind. The injury you sustained has rendered you immune to our telepathic abilities. Since I cannot make you forget what you have deduced, I need to ask you what you plan to do about us. Our motivations must be transparent to you now.”

  “Yes. You have to save our race because you feed on us. If we die, you die.”

  “Precisely. Not exactly as… selfless as I’ve led your people to believe, I’m afraid.”

  Mort shrugged. “It’s better than mutual extinction.”

  Again, Yaldabaoth’s eyes widened. “Precisely again. I’m a little shocked. You’re such a reasonable being.”

  Mort smiled. “What do you expect me to do? Lead a revolt against you? Hunt you down to your sleeping places during the day and drive stakes through all your hearts?”

  Yaldabaoth looked grim. “It’s happened in the past.”

  Mort leaned forward. It was his turn to ask a question. “Let me just ask you one question. And be honest. You can do anything you want with me. It’s not like I can do anything to stop you. I just want to know, honestly, how your people regard us. Are we just cattle to you? Is this place, this New Jerusalem, just a big farm to you?”

  Yaldabaoth jerked back, offended. “Of course not! Mr. Lesser—Mort—we love you! Without your people, our race would wither and die. I would go so far as to say, your race, your people, each and every one of you, are holy to us. We try very hard not to harm you. We can drink from you without killing, and when we are done, we charm your minds so that you do not even suspect it happened. Please, you have to believe me. The only reason we use our mental abilities to hide our true nature is because your kind find us so repulsive. In the past, your people have led crusades against us. You drove us nearly to extinction less than a millennia ago.”

  Mort sat back. “I believe you. I promise, I won’t tell anyone. I’ll keep your secret safe. I swear.”

  Yaldabaoth looked remorseful. He sighed and stabbed out his cigarette. “I wish it were that easy,” he said.

  19

  The Death of Morton Lesser

  As Dao-ming sobbed inconsolably into his shoulder and Pete stood off a pace, trying very hard to hold back his own tears, Mort looked at them both with glimmering eyes and thought: As I die, I will hold them close in my thoughts. Until the very last moment. ‘Til death enfolds me in its ebon wings.

  Melodramatic, maybe, but Mort thought he deserved to be a little theatrical. He was, after all, dying today.

  Doctor Whalen had left the room so Mort could spend some time alone with his friends. The doctor had been in and out all morning. He’d even placed the IV needle himself. In just a few minutes, they would wheel Mort into the surgery room and administer a lethal dose of pentobarbital.

  It was funny how things worked out. Not ha-ha funny. No, not today. But funny in that mean-spirited, prankish way the fates always seemed to reserve for him personally, like dumb high school bullies pouring Nair down his gym shorts, or his room mate stretching Saran Wrap across the toilet seat so his piss splashed back all over his legs and feet. Funny like that.

  The pain was bad. His arm had swollen so much from the zombie bite it didn’t even look like a real arm anymore. It looked like a giant sausage with Mort’s stubby fingers poking out the end. If it swelled much more, Mort was afraid it would simply pop, and foul-smelling Mort Juice would go oozing out all over his clean hospital sheets. The hospital staff had given him a lot of morphine to help with the pain, but even the morphine couldn’t quite trump the agony that bolted through him whenever his arm moved just the slightest bit.

  He was not that scared actually. He thought he would be more frightened. He thought he’d be pissing his pants about now, but aside from a cold cramp of anxiety in his guts, he was keeping it together pretty good.

  It would all be over soon. His life. The universe according to Mort. Gone off the air like a bad television sitcom: quick and without much fanfare. But the pain would be over too, and he wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of turning into a fucking zombie.

  “It’s not fair,” Dao-ming sniffed into his chest.

  His hospital gown was soaked with her tears. It was kind of gratifying. Maybe it was pathetic for him to think that way, but it was almost worth dying to find out she really
did care for him.

  She’d only stayed away because of his lack of immunity. While he was in the CCU, the hospital staff had warned her she could infect him with the Armageddon Phage, especially if they were ever intimate again. She thought it would be easier on Mort if she just stayed away. Make a clean break. After Mort got bit by the zombie, Pete had marched over to the orphanage and cussed her up one side and down the other for abandoning his friend, but as soon as she found out that Mort had become infected, she had rushed to his side.

  “I’m so sorry, Mort,” she’d cried. “Please forgive me. If I knew this was going to happen anyway, I would have spent all the time with you I could. I was just afraid I’d infect you. They said you weren’t immune and that I could easily transmit the virus to you if I was ever exposed to it again.”

  “It’s okay,” he’d assured her, cradling the back of her head in his hand. He’d even laughed a little, surprised by her outpouring of grief. “I understand. It doesn’t matter. You’re here now and that’s all that counts.”

  They’d only made love once. Mort didn’t know if that qualified as the love of his life, but it would have to do. Holding her in his good arm and thinking of that one sweet night they’d spent together, he thought, yes, it would do just fine.

  And Pete… Pete was beside himself with anger and grief. Pete blamed himself and nothing Mort said to him could convince him otherwise.

  None of this even seemed real. Everything had happened so quick. Maybe it was a cliché, but he felt like all of this was a dream, one that he would wake up from any moment.

  After Mort’s interview with the Archon Yaldabaoth, Pete had escorted Mort from the administration building.

  “You want to go back to the infirmary?” Pete had asked.

  “No. I’m fine. Let’s just head to the dorm and go to bed,” Mort had replied, exhausted and shaken by the confrontation he’d just had with the leader of the Archons.