Cheryl moaned and grabbed her brother's arm. He ignored her, studying the animal.
Eviscerato danced around the bear and its handlers, shouting taunts. The bear seemed oblivious to his presence; indeed it didn't appear to have either of its eyes. All of its claws were intact, of course. If she squinted Cheryl thought she could see bolts keeping the grizzly's paws in one piece.
The handlers pulled the bear into a standing position. It made a sound of protest and its belly shifted. The thing's innards were sloshing around in there. Was it able to eat? Did they even feed it, and what? Unnatural as the beast was Cheryl found herself pitying its condition.
Waving his arms like a madman, Eviscerato approached the standing grizzly. "LOOK!" He cried, pointing like a rude child at the distended belly. Then, another handler trudged out, this one holding a chainsaw. Eviscerato accepted it from him with a flourish.
"I want to go." Cheryl stammered. She squeezed her brother's arm until he shoved her hand away. "It's just another rotter, Cheryl. Jesus."
"It's an animal - it doesn't know--"
"None of them know! Shut up!"
The saw came to life, and there were scattered cheers from the audience.
Eviscerato drove the sawteeth into the bear, just above the groin, and spilled its guts over the floor.
A short, squat man tumbled from the yawning wound and splashed down in a soup of gore and sawdust.
He rose to one knee, thrusting his bloody fists into the air. The audience laughed and applauded. Cheryl slumped against her brother.
"They just stuck him in there beforehand and stitched it up," he would explain later. "They probably reuse the same bear until it falls apart - it's not ALIVE, Cheryl, why the hell do you care? It's not like it's a goddamned puppy and even THOSE things don't have feelings." He'd try to rationalize it: "I wanted you to see once and for all that there's nothing there, nothing in those animals. I should've known you'd react this way."
Months later she heard on the radio that Eviscerato had been mauled and infected by a wolf during one of his "performances". He'd spent his last days doing illegal shows where he'd taunt human rotters, letting them bite him, even biting them back.
She hadn't felt sorry for him.
Cheryl was stirred from the memory by a knock on the door. Mike had a key...maybe it wasn't Mike. She reached across the sink for the pistol he'd given her and stood up.
Cheryl hobbled out of the bathroom and across the carpet to the door, quiet as possible, and she looked through the peephole.
There was a dead man there. He was holding a shovel.
26.
Interlude - The King of the Dead
(An oral tradition from the badlands)
The boy had never been to a circus before. The circus was a place where animals and clowns and magicians performed. It was rarely seen, but when the circus did come through a part of the badlands, all the people there were happy for just a little while.
The boy's father often told him about the last circus, many, many years before the boy's birth. A caravan had appeared over the hills with the rising sun, a train of brightly-colored wagons with all sorts of animals - some of them alive - displayed in cages. For the price of a scrap of food, everyone had gone that night and seen dancing clowns, majestic beasts and other sights too fantastic to share.
Almost every night the boy asked to hear about the circus. Almost every night, after his father kissed him and the world grew silent, the boy prayed for the circus to come.
One day it did, and it was just as the boy's father had described it. A line of wagons pulled by dead horses stretched far into the hills, full of colors and animals he'd never seen! Men with painted faces waved and smiled at him as they passed.
At the far edge of town, where there had been nothing but dirt, they put up a giant tent that nearly scraped the sky. The boy sat and watched for hours as men and animals went in and out of the tent. He wanted to follow along, but his father wouldn't let him. "Not yet," he said. "They're putting the magic in."
The boy knew that there were wonderful and secret things going on inside that tent. He desperately wanted to see, but knew to behave lest he never see the circus at all, so he sat and waited until the sun began to descend. At twilight his father came and found him. "Now we can go in."
Each act that the boy saw that night made his heart thunder and caused a grin to spread from ear to ear. He clapped until his hands were raw and red and kept clapping. All the while, his father watched him with a smile as big as his own.
Then they brought out their most special act: THE KING OF THE DEAD. He was a dancing jester painted in a rainbow of colors. His limbs flew and spun and kicked up a storm of dust. His name was Eviscerato.
Other men, dead men, were brought out to stand around the King of the Dead. They were chained to posts in the ground. The boy's father told him not to be afraid, but he wasn't. His eyes followed every movement of Eviscerato's feet as the nimble jester came just within reach of each dead man, then pulled away from their snapping teeth. All the while he smiled and laughed and sang! Everyone in the audience applauded madly.
Eviscerato spun in a tight circle, in the very center of the dead men, then stopped cold. He looked into the audience, right at the boy. He reached out a hand. One of the dead bit into it.
The crowd roared. The boy stood and stared as all the dead men grabbed Eviscerato and chewed and tore at his brightly-colored costume. All the while the King of the Dead smiled! How could a man smile through such terror? The boy was mesmerized. Blood pooled at Eviscerato's feet and he danced in it, he nipped at the necks and fingers of the dead men, he continued to sing and laugh and despite the horror of the scene there was not a face in the audience that did not grin from ear to ear.
When the torches were extinguished and the crowd was ushered out, the boy climbed onto his father's shoulders and searched for his new hero. Eviscerato was nowhere to be seen.
His father tucked him in very late, and they stayed up a while longer talking about all the things they'd seen. The boy kissed his father and settled down to dream about the circus.
When he awoke, it was still dark. A few fires glowed outside the window of the shanty, and the boy got up to see what was happening.
The circus was leaving. The tent was gone and the animals were motionless in their cages. As the caravan passed the window, the boy saw men without makeup or smiles sitting atop the wagons. He watched them until the last light faded over the horizon.
Then another wagon passed by the window, and stopped. The King of the Dead was the driver. He smiled his painted smile and reached out a bloody hand.
"Come with me." Eviscerato said. "Come dance forever."
The boy took his hand and climbed out the window. The King of the Dead whipped the horses and pulled away. The boy's father chased after the wagon, crying out his name, but the boy didn't hear him.
27.
Interview
Four.
Only four had come back. They were all disoriented, stained with soot and blood, and Sawbones was not among them.
Tetch made them wait on the porch while he spread plastic across the foyer, then he brought his siblings in and locked up behind them. Aidan hadn't returned either; without him, there was little hope of getting specifics on what had happened. "Stay on the plastic." Tetch muttered. He nudged Prudence, whose eyes refused to meet his, and leaned in close. "How many of them were there?"
She studied the grime at her feet, the blistering on her burnt flesh. Standing on her toe, Tetch lifted her chin with his hand. "Use your fingers. How many?"
She raised an index finger and averted her gaze.
"No. No." Tetch stepped back and glanced at the others, only to have each one look away. "Not just one. I want to know how many there were to begin with, how many of them did this to you! Bailey! How many?"
The rotter shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he wasn't ashamed, he simply had nothing to offer. Tetch grabbed him by the
hair and shook him around. "Tell me! TELL ME!!"
Bailey raised one finger.
Tetch snapped it in his fist. The afterdead stood motionless.
"I sent all of you and only four came back! Why are you telling me this? Didn't you see any of them? Gerald!" Tetch backhanded the next in line. "Look at me!"
Gerald's glassy stare penetrated his brother. "Now," Tetch breathed, pulling a fountain pen from his jacket, "take this and write on your hand. You know numbers, don't you? Tell me how many people you saw, and if you put a 'one' down so help me..."
The rotter grasped the pen awkwardly and held it over his open palm. He wrote nothing.
"Gerald?"
Tetch's eyes widened as the pen, unused, was handed back to him.
He brought the pen up to stab it into Gerald's unblinking eye.
"Please don't!"
Tetch whirled to see Lily at the top of the stairs. "Go to your room!" He commanded. "What happened?" She shot back. He hurled the pen at her and missed by a mile. "GO TO YOUR ROOM!!"
Something struck him then. He thought back to when he'd caught Lily by the fence, how there had seemed to be a shadow in the swamp that fled from view when he came outside. He remembered that she'd said something the night before about a man with black eyes.
Tetch started up the stairs, and Lily backed away from him. "Don't be afraid of me," he said softly. "I take care of you. I love you. Don't you love me?"
She nodded. It was a quick, insincere gesture. Tetch lowered himself to her height and gave her a pleading look. "Lily, someone hurt your brothers and sisters. I think the others...they're dead. Really dead. Who were you talking to earlier?"
The girl turned on her heel and tried to bolt; he caught her arm and shoved her across the landing into the wall. Tetch pinned her there. She screamed, but he held fast. "Who are you screaming for, Lily? Who's out there that you trust more than me? Who do you love more than me? Don't say nobody, or you're a LIAR, Lily, and lying makes you an ugly little child and no one loves you then!"
"No!" She struggled against him until her face was bright red. "You're the liar!"
"I've never EVER lied to you!" Spittle struck her cheek and Tetch raised his cuff to wipe it away. She flinched, going limp against him. His body's reaction was quite the opposite.
"I've never lied to you." He repeated. She kept her eyes shut tight, face turned away. He pulled her into an embrace. "Lily..."
"You've never lied to me."
"But you don't really believe that."
"Yes I do." Like the others, she wouldn't look at him, but she said in a tiny voice, "I was just scared."
He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a bit of room to breathe. "It was the man with the black eyes, wasn't it? He came back."
She gave a reluctant nod in reply. Tetch whispered "Good," and kissed her mouth, tasting her breath, his hands trembling against the small of her back. "What's his name, Lily?"
"He doesn't have one."
Tetch's grip relaxed completely. Opening her eyes, Lily backed away from his pale face, his slack arms. He didn't even look at her.
She went back to her bedroom.
Outside the burning shelter, under a dark sky, a pile of crumbled and mutilated remains lay in the folds of a black cloak. There was a sound like dead leaves rustling and Death reconstituted himself.
He sat in the street for a long time, his steed pacing around him, and he thought. These undead hadn't been like any others. They'd been taught to behave and interact in some semblance of mortality. They were the ones from the swamp.
The Reaper spent some time looking through the clothes of the corpses around him, then got back on his horse. The living from the shelter were still nearby, and some of them would be dead very soon. Though he couldn't prevent that, couldn't add a single precious second to their flickering candles - he could at least see that none of them were added to the ranks of the afterdead...
Tetch lay on the floor outside Lily's door, ear pressed to the wood, until her breathing became deep and even. Then he returned to the foyer. The others were still standing there.
"Go out to the shed," he told Gerald, "and bring the crate inside. Be careful with it - Simeon, you help him."
He dismissed Prudence and Bailey as well, then went to the window and peered through the curtain into the blackness of the swamp.
"Can you hear me out there?" He whispered. "I know who you are."
There was a little story a bum had told him once when he was a boy, one that he had never forgotten. Pressing his face to the cold glass, Tetch spoke.
"I am the king of the dead."
28.
Dawn
The East Harbor Mall on the next block had been one of the first large buildings to fall when the outbreak began in the early 21st century. Some old movie about zombies had sent dozens of townspeople fleeing to the mall, hoping to barricade themselves inside its stores and wait out the nightmare. Those who didn't kill each other were quickly cornered and ripped apart by the undead.
Clothing outlets, restaurants, a department store and a movie theater were among the empty husks within the mall. Everything from underwear to cash to theater seats had been plundered, and the bloodstained floors were eventually licked clean and the place was abandoned to the elements. Squatters were known to spend a night or two in malls but they were generally regarded as unsafe.
Voorhees led the group, checking each outlet to see if it still had the security gate that would block its entryway. Most had been torn down.
Jenna and Lauren brought up the rear, holding each other to no effect. The terrified couldn't comfort the terrified, Mark Duncan observed. Still he thought he'd give it a shot.
"We'll be okay. We're with these people now." He told the women. Neither responded. "We're better off than we were at Fetish," he continued. "That cop said we're on our way to the police department. He's got it secured."
"The cop who killed that man?" Lauren stammered.
"Here we go!" Mike called. They were ushered into a store with nothing on its walls to indicate what it had once sold. Voorhees pulled down the security gate. "What good will that do?" Said Wendy. "It'll do." Voorhees grumbled.
"I've got to get back to my apartment." Mike told him. "Cheryl, the girl I told you about, she's there. You continue to the PD and we'll catch up."
"Out of the question." Voorhees shot back, then, lowering his voice: "You're the only one I trust. Probably the only one who trusts me, now."
"I'll take Shipley with me."
"Why would you do that?"
"What if Cheryl can ID him as her attacker?"
Cop instincts taking over, Voorhees considered it. He eyed Shipley, who was sitting alone in the back of the room.
"Take my gun, Mike. No one else knows it's empty."
Mike nodded gratefully and motioned to Shipley. "We've gotta go get somebody."
"What? Why me?"
"If you'd rather stay with me, just say so." Voorhees cracked. Shipley narrowed his eyes and got up. "Fuck that."
Mike raised the gate, and Voorhees handed over the pistol. Shipley stopped in front of the senior P.O. before leaving. "You take care of these people."
"That's my job." Voorhees pushed Shipley into the corridor and slammed the gate back down.
Mike led Shipley back the way they'd come, and they searched the mall parking lot for rotters. There were none. The shelter was being rapidly consumed by flames, filling the early morning sky with black smoke.
"Don't try running, or anything else." Mike told Shipley. The other man snorted. "If I wanted to run I'd have already done it. If I wanted to do something else, I'd have already done that too."
Shipley had deserted the military, had run from his prison sentence, but with a purpose. He wasn't a coward. He was running TO something, not FROM it.
He'd deserted with two other soldiers: King, a female, and Bish. The pair were in love, and talked all the time about escaping the badlands and finding some lost beach to
fuck on for the rest of their days. Shipley had thought they were both out of their gourds but kept his mouth shut.
They tromped across the dry, barren earth with a few stolen supplies. There was no safe cover under which to set up camp, so they each slept with one eye open. Tried, anyway. More than once Shipley had been stirred from a foggy dream to spy King thrashing atop Bish like she was a porn star. More than once she was watching Shipley while doing it.
"I'm bit." Bish said one morning while picking the charred skin off of an unlucky lizard. He pulled up his camouflage tee and showed Shipley a bite on his side. It was old. "How long ago?" Shipley demanded. They hadn't seen a rotter since they deserted.
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