by James, Guy
With this image in his mind, and thirsty though he was, he swore he’d never drink again.
Outside New Crozet, the storm flirted with the tree line, feeling it out with its rainy fingers, its plundering will set squarely on the ruined town.
6
New Crozet was burnt and bleeding. Where meticulously groomed holly bushes had stood as stout but proud ushers there were now charred and broken skeletons, which, in the places where they were still intact, were held together by smoldering joints.
Small fires were still burning at the fence, and tiny ones in the bushes. The shrubs’ newfound, orange eyes were glinting sadly, at the coming dark, at the forest—which they now saw too directly through the gashes in the fence—at the town they’d watched over, and at the world.
One team at a time, the ashes of the bushes’ prickly leaves would play a bitter game of tag with the nearing shadows. This would go on for a brief stretch until the bits of charred matter were swept up by a blast of wind and carried from the clearing, just like their predecessors had been, and just like their successors soon would be, until the water got them and pinned them to the earth with its weight.
There the water would keep the burned leafy remains, and the ground would eat them up and be made whole again.
7
Alan took the cinnamon from its hiding place in his pocket and stared at the dingy, scratched tin in his hands. It looked back, and didn’t know what to say.
Would you, if you were a tin that had been the first home to some breath mints thirteen years ago? Would you, if, say, you were just you?
Senna.
How could this be happening? This can’t be happening.
Senna.
He’d meant to give it to her at the market. It was supposed to have made her happy. He’d wanted to… His thoughts stopped connecting with each other, and incoherence entered his mind, pushing everything else out.
Senna.
Blood was dripping from his wound and pattering to the floor. The townspeople were shouting outside as they worked on protecting and repairing the perimeter.
Senna.
In a moment of clarity, Alan went to the kitchen and hastily dressed the hole in his shoulder. The dressing was ragged and clumsy, far below his skill at such things, and too much blood was continuing to seep through the bandage. He didn’t care. It was only his arm, and they’d taken his heart.
Senna.
The clarity left him again.
Senna.
He couldn’t think. All he could do was feel anger, hatred, grief, and loss.
Senna.
Holding hands with his feelings was a bitterness, jagged and cold, colder than all the suffering and death that he’d seen.
Senna.
They’d stolen from him.
Senna.
They’d taken Senna.
Senna.
He’d lived for her.
Senna.
She was all there was in the world that mattered.
Senna.
They’d taken his chance to give her the cinnamon. That was supposed to be a private moment, a perfect snapshot in time when her face registered what it was and took on an expression of surprise and delight and...
Senna.
Now that would never happen.
Senna.
She was everything, and without her, there was nothing, no point in denying the virus further, no sense in excluding it from the vestiges of an extinct civilization. Life without her would be utterly without purpose, incomprehensible and meaningless.
Senna.
He fell to his knees, feeling as if some malignant spirit had ripped out his spine and was holding the chain of vertebrae links over his head, mocking and triumphant, intending to use his backbone as an accessory, a belt, perhaps, or a bony tie.
Senna.
She’d been his heartbeat and the rhythm his soul had moved to, and now what? What could he ever do again?
Senna.
A frail cloud of dust rose up from the floorboards where his knees had hit, the gathering of motes disorderly and purposeless. The dust seemed uncertain of its own role in the world, and was hesitating, because it suspected that no matter which way it chose to travel, its path would end in the same way: a return to the old place from which it had come. And wasn’t that the path of the doomed?
Senna.
There, kneeling on the well-trodden, oak floorboards of their home, feeling like his soul was collapsing in on itself, Alan cried for the first time since the outbreak.
8
The dam—the one that had held its own for so many years—burst. All the pain that Alan had kept inside since the zombies had come broke out of him, all of the anguish intent on rushing out at the same time, its millipede feet tripping over one another.
After so many years, he’d thought himself no longer capable of tears, that perhaps the virus had dried up their waterways with its callousness, that he would never cry again.
Now it was as if the floodgates had been torn to bits by a gathering of wrecking balls, and the emotions came all at once in a violent rush of loss, and fear, and shame, and regret.
The uninhibited agony seemed intent on undoing him, on crushing him to the tapestry of this diseased world until all that was left of him was a smear, a squashed, bitter collage that could never convey the depth of what it felt like to lose the woman he’d lived for.
No matter where he looked, and even if his eyes were closed, all he could see was her. She was everywhere still.
Through the running blur of his vision he saw the occasional long, golden hairs on the floor, and one in particular was in a small loop shaped like a noose. They’d loop like that sometimes if they weren’t swept up soon enough, like miniature hangman’s friends.
Now she’d never leave her hair behind again. What was there now was all there would ever be.
He picked up a strand, and, clutching it helplessly, shut his eyes. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed long enough, the single strand would become many, and some locks of Senna’s full and lustrous hair would be in his hand, and connected to it would be Senna in the flesh.
The lunacy of the thought struck him and he opened his eyes, disgusted with himself. But when he tried to brush the strand from his fingers, he found that he couldn’t bear to let it go.
It was like trying to tear away a piece of his own skin. He put the artifact in his pocket, and thinking of it as such, as a relic, something of the past that couldn’t be had again, made him yearn for his own life to become faded by history, forgotten, and the pain he felt gone.
She’s dead, Alan thought. Dead.
Maybe not yet, but soon.
And there would always be the uncertainty, not knowing what had happened to her, just like with his own family. Not knowing if she was alive or dead, if she could still be helped or not, if there was still a way to save her. That was a burden he couldn’t carry.
Finding her—going after her and finding her and taking her back—was the only path forward.
9
He was trembling, and tears were running down his cheeks and dripping from the sharp lines of his jaw. Most of the tears were landing on the floor, but some were finding the lid of the cinnamon tin, and some of those were negotiating a crevice in the wax paper through which to reach the spice.
Humans who were captured in this world were always met with grim fates. Senna might be sold into slavery, raped and tortured for years, then cannibalized. She would fight as hard as she could, but eventually, she’d be overpowered and forced to submit.
There was still a chance she might escape, assuming she was still alive.
There’s always that chance, Alan told himself.
Still, he felt sure he’d never see her or her playful smile again, or feel her warm touch, or tell her how much he loved her, or hold her and let her curl up and feel safe in his arms.
And where had he been to protect her today? How could he have let this happen?
Shaking
, he set the tin of cinnamon on the floor, close to the spot where the strand of her hair had been before he picked it up.
The townspeople wouldn’t help him until tomorrow, if at all, and by then it would be too late...too late for Senna. His mind grappled with the selfishness of what he was about to do, with the pure self-interest that motivated him. He should have felt more concern for the kidnapped children, or for the children who were still in town, or even the grown women and men who were still here. Senna was only one woman.
Yes, she was an amazing woman, but what of the greater good?
Then again, he reminded himself, going after her meant a chance to save the children as well, and risking his life for her and the children was worth it.
But he knew he wasn’t going for them. He was going for her, and for her alone.
The singular purpose that was motivating him to go after the Tackers seemed wrong, shameful, and it was putting a sour taste in his mouth.
Did it matter why he was going, though? And if it did, did he care?
Why should he? Why should he care about anything or anyone if Senna wasn’t there beside him, if she wasn’t his and he wasn’t hers?
In all likelihood, they were all dead by now anyway, so there was no one to save.
If he found them dead, if he found them at all, he’d do the only thing that was left. He’d kill every single one of the Tackers and their accomplices, all those who’d infiltrated the market. He’d kill with the last of his strength, with his dying breath growing stale in his lungs if that was what it took.
Nothing else mattered anymore.
Without her, everything was meaningless.
Humanity, Alan thought bitterly, and not the virus, is the worst plague of all.
10
The choking filter of gauze was gone when Senna next woke. She took a deep breath, and it was like inhaling a mouthful of sewer water.
It wasn’t just the air, though. The Sultan’s empire she was in was dirty, poverty-stricken, and in serious disrepair, and not only that, but it was filled with people who were sweaty and breathing ragged, frightened breaths. And, she realized, she was in it too, and her own breathing didn’t sound much different.
Who were they—these people?
She was trying to remember.
Who was she, at this rate?
The Sultan—she needed to speak with him about the state of things. But where the hell was he?
She tried to roll over and get to her feet, but couldn’t. Though she wasn’t bound any longer, her limbs seemed to have been replaced with look-alikes made of JELL-O.
J-E-L-L-O, the San Francisco treat!
Except, no, that wasn’t right at all. She tried again to get up, didn’t make it, but did manage to sit up, resting her back against a wall.
“Well done,” roared the Sultan, the great ruler of all things Sufentanil, five hundred times more powerful than morphine. “A for effort.”
So he was there! But where?
She tried to turn and it was like trying to move through toffee. Or was it taffy? No, that’s something else.
Senna ran her tongue over her lips, which, forget ChapStick, dipstick, were cracked and emitting a slow ooze of clotting red stuff. It was leaking out very slowly, and if she’d seen it she’d wonder if her heart was still beating or if any blood was still moving in her body at all.
The Sultan and his buddies had dried her out, hanging her upside down by the ankles in an endless expanse of desert.
And not just her, others.
The others, they were there too, in the rotating kaleidoscope where she occupied a distorted scene behind one—and only one—gem. If the gem fell out, or if people stopped looking at it just so…she’d be gone. And everything was rotating, going round and around and round and around…
They blinked their spinning eyes at her.
Blink.
Rotate.
Blink.
Rotate.
Blink-blink and dry heave and repeat.
If only she could move, then…then… Then what?
What was happening?
“Mum’s the word,” said the Sultan. “And the bird is the word, too.”
Where was he? Fucking invisible prick.
He came into focus and she saw him. A Tacker. The Tacker with the boils, except, he wasn’t a Tacker at all, was he?
No. No, he wasn’t.
There were bars between him and them. Us and them.
That game again. Hunter and prey.
No, cannibal and captured prey.
Caught and to be fileted and made into Senna Phillips filets. Phillips filets? Phillips fill-its? Either one.
Groaning, seemingly in pain, their jailer left. After he was gone, Senna took in more of her surroundings.
Sasha and Jenny were in a corner, holding each other, whimpering. Someone was screaming—Molly. Rosemary’s lungs were wheezing in the background. Rad was trying to crawl over to Rosemary, and making slow progress of it.
Jack was there too, and, of all of them, he was the stillest, staring at two buckets that were in a corner of the cell, his gaze unwavering.
The floor was a sandy clay vinyl tile, like something that belonged in a bathroom. And perhaps that was appropriate. It was easy to clean, but even so it came decorated with dark stains, that, by the looks of them, liked very much to linger in places.
The prisoners were pricked and re-pricked with drugs—the Order was almost out of dope but soon their stock would be replenished—and the world for the captive townspeople became more haze than world, floating in and out of itself, over, and over, and over again.
People would bob past the bars, like seagulls in water, then they’d disappear, and then they’d come back, and then…
There was someone standing outside the cell now, no longer bobbing back and forth, but planted in place. Someone…deformed.
“Looks like we’re fresh out of water, hasn’t rained in ages,” Brother Acrisius said, the words spilling out clumsily from his yawning maw. The mockery was lost on them, however, as they were too far gone to understand the beating on the roof was a downpour.
Then, he added, staring at Rad and articulating more carefully, “Stringy and salty is better.” The words didn’t quite fall out of his face in ragged bits that time, but they didn’t flow smoothly either. This put some frustration in him, which he took out by unsheathing his knife and tapping it against the bars of the cell.
He grinned, seeing the desired effect bloom like a fungus on the prisoners, his prisoners. That was what they were now, especially when Brother Mardu wasn’t around. They were his. They were all his to torment.
A pain around his bladder made him groan, and he stepped backward, almost losing his grip on the knife. He quickly put the blade away, forgetting about how he’d wanted to bother his new meat. It felt like something was pulling at his insides, and not at all in a good way.
Groaning, he went about the task of moving the cattle. He was usually meaner, but right now he just wanted to be done with the chores and get back to his room. He needed to lie down, and probably vomit, as well. It was the worst time to be sick, in the middle of all that needed to be done, but sickness was a malignant thing that would rear its head on its own schedule, and not piss on you if you were on fire.
Molly and Rad were taken out of the cell while Senna swam in and out of consciousness, feeling like she was wading into and out of sand and coming out more dried up and gritty each time.
Like jerky. Maybe she was to be jerky.
That would be alright, she guessed. At this rate…it all floated away again, or she away from it, no matter.
The children were being moved as well, and when she next woke, it would be in a different place. The children would be there too, and all of the Order.
The festivities were scheduled to commence soon, and no one dared miss that. Not on Mardu’s watch.
11
The bullet wound was pulsing with the heartbeat of a madman, who in this
case happened to be Alan. It was a flesh wound, unimportant, and he would not allow it to distract him from what now needed to be done.
Glimmers of red sky were filtering through the growing storm and into the bedroom behind him while he rummaged, setting glowing fingers to work on the sheets of the bed, like a spell being cast. From the closet he took a pistol, three clips, night vision specs—he couldn’t use his glasses and the night specs at the same time, but in the dark of the storm, he’d be better off with the night goggles than his regular lenses—a canteen of water, and a spare roll of bandages. That was all. His knife was already on him, tucked into his belt, its usual living space.
This is the last time, he thought, the last time you’ll use these things.
He went to the door, hesitated, then backtracked and picked up the tin of cinnamon from the floor. It sat in his hand for a long moment, then was moved into his pocket.
He wanted his Voltaire II…Allie. She always had a way of calming him. He went to the bedroom again and this time the absence of Senna that he felt there was like a leaden grip squeezing his neck.
Feeling like he was being strangled, he dragged the Voltaire II’s box from the closet and lifted its lid. He knelt down and threw the blankets aside, and seeing her gave him a weak push toward some semblance of composure. He wanted her, but he couldn’t take her with him now.
This had to be a stealth job, a covert rescue and not a rampage, and not just that, he had to be fast, without anything to weigh him down. He stared for a while longer, then, without closing the box that was Allie the Voltaire II’s home, got up and left.
On the way to the outer gate, the bit of calm he’d found looking at the Voltaire II deserted him, but at least he was thinking a little more clearly, though not by much.
The town seemed to be a destroyed thing, but more than that, it felt tainted now, like something that had been stupid of them all to build in the first place.
