Order of the Dead

by James, Guy

  The world was perfectly at ease with it, and her and the cows in it.

  A precise and swift breeze made its way through the bovine enclosure, perking up the ears of one cow and disturbing the hair of a cow tail that was just recoiling from a well-timed horsefly whip. The horsefly was falling, dazed but still alive, and would resume its flight in just a moment.

  The breath of wind dipped under the lowest rail of fence and rippled through the grass until it found its target: a dandelion whose florets were aching to be set free. The wind inhaled and blew to lend a refresher of strength to its fighter jets, and the feathery dandelion parts were let loose to fly and parachute down somewhere, hopefully far, far away, somewhere that, should they find luck in the wind, would become home.

  A feathery parachute reached Rosemary, landing softly on the back of her hand.

  She was home here, in this dream unreality with the cows. This was a place where animals lived and breathed and had homes to go back to and when they did there was no virus to greet them at their doorsteps.

  If she’d been aware that she was sitting in a dream, she’d have wished not to wake.

  She heard a new sound then: the singing of birds—there was often a smattering of feathered friends in her dreams too, also imagined when it came to their proper sounds and movements—but she hadn’t noticed them until that moment.

  They’d been sitting in the branches of the two tall oaks beside the barn the entire time, and the dream’s magic let her know that. Now they took flight from their posts, and croaked and warbled all the way home.

  13

  “Do you think we should find Tom and talk to him about it now?” Senna asked.

  “No,” Alan said, knowing what she meant, “it can wait. He’ll want to know what there is to do about it, what action he should take, and I’m not sure there’s anything to do about it.”

  “You’re right. Not a whole lot to do when you’re locked inside.”

  “They won’t cancel the market for something like this, an undefined threat, if it even is a threat.”

  “Call off the market?” Senna almost laughed. “No chance.”

  They were walking back to their house, which was the farthest dwelling from the center of town. It was the house past the blown-down barn, the one with a good many traces of it left, like grave markers continuing to hold its place in the world.

  The makeshift street on which they walked crossed over patches of pavement and uncovered ground that were all the shades of mud. The pavement was giving up, letting itself be dotted by clusters of weeds and patches of grass. The world was taking back the street, and the street couldn’t care less at this point. As far as it was concerned, it just wanted to wash its hands of the entire matter.

  They waved to Chad and Laura Stucky, who were sitting on their porch. Chad and Laura were in their late fifties, which in New Crozet was bordering on elderly, though not quite there. They were two of the town’s original founders, having holed up in their house—the one they still lived in now—when the outbreak first…well…broke.

  There were only two people in town older than they were: Amanda Fortelberry, who was seventy-four, and Betty Jane Oswalt, who was eighty-one. Now that Alan thought of it, Chad Stucky was the oldest man in town. Women really did outlive men, apocalypse or not.

  Laura waved back, and Chad nodded. He might have waved were his arms not encircling his wife, holding her, and for that Alan liked him, cold in manner though Chad often was in public, where he liked to sport his well-worn frown of extreme disapproval. His wife was a direct counterpoint, cheery and high-spirited, and she dragged him around town on her various errands, which Alan was sure Chad liked. There was a good man somewhere in there, beneath the surface.

  The Stuckys had helped let Senna and Alan settle in New Crozet, after all, when it had been put to a vote nine years earlier. Alan didn’t know much about the couple, except that they’d met during the outbreak and saved each other somehow, and though he sometimes wondered what had happened to their families, or to their previous spouses, he’d never ask. It was the same thing that had happened to all the previous families, of course, but for some reason he wished to know the details.

  Maybe it would’ve been alright to ask, but Alan didn’t feel comfortable, and he didn’t want to show his hand, even to the town’s elders, who were some of the most likely to understand his obsession. And when he had occasion to wonder about their past, and all those other pasts that had been cut short, and when that thinking got the better of him, he was forced to go out into the fields alone, to be away from everyone, to forget.

  Laura and Chad’s eyes were drawn to the Voltaire II and they followed its metallic bob up and down at Alan’s side until it disappeared into the shadows of New Crozet, past the unseen guideposts that marked the way to Senna and Alan’s house.

  The Voltaire II had let go of her last shrug, her complaints about the meager taking at the fence having gone completely unheeded. Starved as she was these days, she couldn’t be too picky, but damn it was that all? It wasn’t like the old days with Alan and the rec-crews. It was nothing like the old days. This was so pathetic in comparison, that it didn’t even recall any of her memories of real burning, of good burning. It was just a tease, brought to within a glimpse of the edge, and then thrown back into a box to sleep. Teased and denied, again.

  “They took another child to the fence today,” Laura said, as unmindful of the Voltaire II’s frustration as Senna and Chad. Alan suspected it sometimes, that the flamethrower had some kind of gasoline spirit living in it, but there was nothing to do about it because they lived in a settlement now and that meant no more missions and no more bonfires in the name of taking back the world.

  “Rosemary,” Laura added, when Chad made no reply.

  Chad nodded. “Yeah.”

  The dying flames at the perimeter were sending smoke drifting away from them, into the forest.

  Laura looked at her new husband, her final husband, she was sure, and nuzzled closer to him.

  Maybe eleven years isn’t so new, she thought, but it still feels that way.

  Chad took her deeper in his arms.

  “Being with you makes me so happy,” she said.

  He nodded and kissed her gently on the cheek. There was a frown on his face, as always, but that was just how he looked. He knew he looked ugly and mean, and he considered that to be his lot in life, nothing good or bad or special about it, not in the least.

  “I love you,” she said, and to Chad, it was like a dull knife dragging itself across his skin, reminding him of the wife he’d lost, and the family he’d made with her, also lost, and the name rang out in his mind like a chime tolling for pain.

  Though perhaps it shouldn’t have hurt anymore, it did, and her name came to him and began to sing in his head. He pressed it back into the place it wasn’t supposed to leave. Stay there, he commanded it. Stay shut up. Please. Over the years, he’d gotten better at keeping it away, and now he succeeded in silencing it.

  Their three girls: Anna, named after his mother, Sarah, named after her mother, and Jean, and one on the way, a boy, they were another matter. Maybe the boy would have been a John. Their names he couldn’t put away.

  Their names flew tight loops in his mind, night and day, rain or shine or lightning storm. They came to him now, and they became like flying phones, ringing off their hooks, as their knives, sharper, cut into him over and over again. He’d learned by now that their names would haunt him forever, that much had become obvious.

  They were dead, but they were unforgettable. Sometimes he wanted to forget all of them, needing it badly, and other times he was ashamed for wanting that in the first place.

  They were his. Even though they were gone, they were still his, and he was and always would be theirs. That was just how it was. His mind, his soul, would never be spotless again.

  Chad swallowed, looked at Laura and said, “I love you.” It was true.

  They sat for some time long
er, until the chill pawed them back inside, as if each of them was an unraveling ball of yarn that, when clawed at and rolled about, always left some part of itself trailing behind. And, like all people, that was exactly what they were.

  14

  Alan and Senna’s clothes were thick with the smell of burning, and when they got home, they took them off and Senna jumped in the shower first, as she always did, following their routine on nights like this.

  Clad only in his boxers, socks, and glasses, Alan went to the storage closet to put the Voltaire II away. It was a prized possession, the thing to which he was most attached, besides Senna and the children, and the only non-living thing he could even begin to care about.

  He got to his knees, disassembled, cleaned, and wrapped it, then put it in its bed of rags.

  There was a Voltaire III and a Voltaire IV, he was pretty sure, and he’d heard tell of a Voltaire V and even a Voltaire VI, but he doubted the V and disbelieved the VI. Anyway, there were no rec-crews now, not sanctioned ones, at least, and most likely not any left at all, so there was no one to ask, and the traders were worthless when it came to confirming rumors. They just fed and spun the gossip into heavier, stickier yarn.

  That aside, it wasn’t like he wanted another one. She was all he needed now.

  The small Shell sticker on the chassis, which peeked out from the Voltaire II’s shredded nightclothes, caught his eye. The oil company wasn’t around anymore, not really, not unless the commandeering of its fuel reserves by anyone and everyone who could qualified as still being around. The memory of how the sticker had come to be attached to his Voltaire II threw a quick jab at his mind.

  “Allie,” he said under his breath. “I’m sorry.” Allie had put it there, years ago, but he didn’t want to think about her now. Her death hadn’t been remarkable, no one’s death on the rec-crews was anything but expected, but there was one thing about how she’d gone out that he never wanted to think about.

  And, of course, it was all he did think about when he remembered her, because that was how those things went. The more you focused on not thinking about something, the larger it grew in your head, until it pushed out everything else, and it was all that was left.

  His joints creaking a reminder of the whole getting-old thing at him, Alan got to his feet and backed out of the storage closet. He shut the door, and, still backing away, stepped on something soft. He looked down. It was a sock—his sock, and he noticed that one of his feet was now bare.

  I must’ve lost it on my way into the closet, he thought. He shook his head in self-acknowledgment of what a mess he sometimes was. He could burn the zombies, and love and protect Senna, and teach the children of New Crozet what little he knew, and protect them too, but that was all.

  Keeping his socks from ending up strewn about was an impossibility. It must have been a failing in his genes, as was finding clean clothes to wear, even though Senna always left them for him in the most obvious places, like the dresser, and the closet. Without her, he had no doubt that he’d be lost.

  Letting a half-grin slide onto his face, Alan tromped tiredly into the lightly steaming bathroom and pulled the shower curtain to one side. His heart fluttered.

  Senna, wet, half-soaped, and assailed by the spray of water, was standing under the showerhead running soapy fingers through her wet hair. Small white bubbles were gliding down the long strands and down her tanned, elegantly arched back, and lower still.

  Turning to look at him, she smiled.

  “You gonna take that sock off or what?” she said, pointing down. Alan, who’d forgotten that one of his feet was still covered, quickly pulled the sock off, threw it behind him, and stepped sideways in an awkward lurch to regain his footing.

  “I’ll help with these,” Senna said, and reaching out of the shower with her sudsy hands, relieved Alan of his boxers. Then she pulled him into the shower. He joined her, gladly, wordlessly, and drew the curtain shut.

  Afterward, they dressed in fresh clothes. For Alan, the smell of burning seemed to linger in his nostrils. Whether it was from the fire that night, or one of the many zombie fires he’d set in his years, or all of them, he wasn’t sure. He often thought he smelled burning when there was in fact nothing on fire. Maybe his sense of smell was off on account of all the smoke inhalation he’d endured, he didn’t know.

  Senna went to the kitchen and began making something to eat. Alan watched her for a while—he loved to watch her when she was preparing food. There was something primal about it that made him happy, turned him on, and made him love her even more all at the same time.

  At least she doesn’t have her apron on, Alan thought. I wouldn’t be able to handle that.

  He walked over to her, put his arms around her and kissed her neck. She moaned softly, looked up at him, and the smile she gave him was so genuine, so open, that he couldn’t help kissing her, and deeply. When their lips unlocked, he glanced at what she was making, smiled, kissed her on the cheek, and let her get back to what she was doing.

  He began to pace back and forth across the kitchen threshold, and Senna turned, sensing that he was beginning to do this. It was a habit of his, an overused one, and one that Senna still managed, somehow, to find endearing.

  Alan’s hair was wet from the shower, and he was running his fingers through it nervously and pushing his glasses, which kept slipping down slightly from the top of his nose, back up so the lenses were lined up with his eyes. The frames needed tightening, but he kept forgetting to fix the tiny screws. He was bad about pretty much everything that had to do with taking care of himself, and yet he’d managed to get on in life, even after the outbreak.

  15

  As part of his pacing route, Alan was keeping an eye on the fire that was burning in the living room hearth, which he’d put on once they’d gotten a thorough cleaning in the shower. The air was too cold for this time of year, and a chill kept wandering in uninvited. The house was old, and the unwanted nip was a reminder that some winter-proofing still needed to be done.

  It was nice to have a fire, but it would have been nicer not to have one right now. They needed to save their timber for the winter.

  The kitchen was a long, dimly-lit rectangle, and the glint of the living room’s fire lent a wavering glow to its threshold, where the brunt of Alan’s pacing was concentrated. Deeper in the kitchen, the shadows won out for control of the rectangle’s middle portion, until the faint light from a singular and improbably small bulb at the kitchen’s end showed its stubborn force, keeping the shadows back. That was where Senna was, in that lighted alcove, opening and closing cupboards and jars, mixing dried foods together, and pouring water.

  Alan thought of how near the town entrance was. Theirs was the closest house to the gate. It made sense, as they were the most experienced at dealing with zombies, the ones that the others would look to if something went wrong.

  The house had been a fixer-upper, that was for sure. Alan remembered how much fun it had been to get the dilapidated structure out from under its state of disrepair into a condition that was inhabitable. In those days, busy as Senna and he were in reviving the house and cultivating the farmland that belonged to it, he’d been able, at times, to forget that his life was anything other than that of a normal, small-town farmer, perhaps even one who was living before the apocalypse.

  So there was a very tall fence encircling their property, so what?

  The work had helped restore much of his mind, which he hadn’t realized was beginning to lapse during his time with the rec-crews. Even his nightmares had ebbed and settled into a predictable rotation that made the nighttime livable.

  Making the place their own had been therapeutic for Senna as well. She liked that they’d lain claim to the best arable land in the town on account of the fact that the rest of the people in New Crozet wanted nothing to do with living so close to the perimeter. Besides taking pride in the perceived danger of her property, she discovered a deep love for planting crops and growing her own food.
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  It gave her a feeling of being connected to the land that she hadn’t experienced before. She ate what she grew, and she traded what she couldn’t or didn’t want to eat for goods that the other townspeople produced, and the things the traders brought.

  She’d been obstinate about the plot of land, too, having told Alan where they’d be living. Remembering that still made her smile. She wouldn’t have taken no for an answer, but she also knew that he wouldn’t deny her the indulgence of choosing their home.

  Since they’d met, he’d been so kind and sweet that she sometimes thought he’d move the world for her if he could, and, on occasion, she was sure that he did.

  They regularly went out at night for walks around the perimeter, saying hello to Corks as they made their way around the town. On nights like tonight, when they went to the perimeter with one of the children and went through the exercise that they’d gone through with Rosemary, they usually didn’t go out again.

  Senna thought of Corks. She worried about him from time to time because he often appeared distraught and uneasy, and he’d seemed especially troubled tonight, but that was understandable given the practice session with Rosemary. She wondered if she and Alan should break routine and go for their walk so they could see if Corks was alright.

  “Did Corks seem off to you tonight?” Senna asked.

  Alan shrugged. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “I don’t know, he just seemed more nervous than usual.”

  “You think we should go check on him?”

  “No,” Senna said, but thinking maybe they should. “It was probably because of Rosemary, and we wouldn’t want Corks worrying about us being worried about him.”

  “That would just make him more stressed,” Alan agreed.

  Dismissing her worry and filing it away for later, Senna put down the bowl in which she was mixing dried potato flakes and honey. It made that sound that glass likes to make when it settles on a counter. She’d been listening to the footfalls of Alan’s nervous pacing, framed within the crackling of the fire. His presence, as always, was comforting.