“Gus. I’m sorry you weren’t my son. I tried to love you like you were. Lead these people.”
He sighs and looks out at the men awaiting orders. “You could do worse than have him as a king.” He looks at the gateman. “Open the doors.”
The winch sounds, the doors roll back, and Knock-Out, dressed in white and wearing a crown, walks away from Bridge City, from the Wall, and into the Dead Mile.
All eyes follow him trudging up the slope, through the denuded land, small puffs of dust exploding from his footfalls and floating away.
He walks around the Humvee and is hidden from view.
Firearms sound again, this time for minutes at a time.
Howe looks over his glasses at Wallis. “They’re going through shitloads of ammunition for their rearguard, sir.”
Rector spits. “Good, the bastards.”
“Idiots. Should’ve known they’d have a horde on their ass.”
Gus frowns. “I don’t think so. When Keb, Jazz, and I took it to them, we had to roll slow, so slow it was almost painful, in order to deliver the . . . payload. They didn’t march up here. They’ve got fuel. All the military vehicles they could want. They could move fast. Fast enough to leave behind shamblers . . .”
“Maybe they’re drawing them locally,” Howe offers.
“Right,” Rector says, his voice sarcastic. “And all the time I’ve spent on the Wall these last few years has been for nothing.”
They fall silent, each in his own thoughts.
The skies darken with low, oppressive clouds tinged yellow. It is early October, a prelude to nuclear winter. The temperature drops, and men shift in their boots and rub their arms.
Hours pass, and the gunfire beyond the ridge grows almost constant.
It is afternoon when Knock-Out emerges from behind the Humvee, no longer wearing the crown.
The megaphone squelches again, and Konstantin says, “Sorry for the delay. We may now resume your surrender.”
Crouching at a sandbag on top of the Wall, Lucy gasps, a little exclamation of joy, as Knock-Out begins to walk back to Bridge City.
Konstantin lowers the megaphone, extends his arm, and shoots Knock-Out in the back. He takes a long time to fall forward into the dust. They leave him where he lies.
The pistol’s report reaches the Wall long after Knock-Out goes down.
“No!” Lucy screams and runs to the gates.
Wallis wheels. “Take him!”
Smetana gives the signal, and his men fire.
It’s too late.
When the voice returns, it has an excited timbre. From the Wall, snipers search the Humvee for Konstantin’s crowned head, looking for a shot. But he remains hidden.
“Once again, sorry for the delay.” A chuckle. “Now, if you will all just look to the west, you’ll see two very strong reasons for you to drop your weapons, put your hands on your heads, and exit your city.”
All eyes turn west, to the river. Two barges, sitting low in the water from their cargo—one holds gravel, one shipping containers—float sideways down the river, toward Bridge City.
“The bridge might stand, but not for long.” He laughs, a dry, humorless sound. “This is what we’ve been waiting on. Courtesy of your little prince and his big ideas for how to destroy things.”
Gunfire sounds on the horizon, over the ridge. An armored Jeep races down the hill, brakes dramatically, and slews to a stop near the Humvee. A man seems to shout frantically as he points back over the ridge.
“If you get a clear shot of that motherfucker, take it,” Wallis says in a harsh voice to Smetana. His shoulders are tight and there’s a fury upon him that none in Bridge City had ever seen.
Gus leans in close to Smetana. “Keep Knock-Out down. Don’t let him rise. Don’t let him come back to the Wall as one of those.”
His mother, listening, gasps and says, “No!” but then stands stock still, eyes streaming as Smetana sights, holds his breath, and then squeezes his trigger. The sound of the shot echoes across the Dead Mile. Knock-Out’s body twitches once with the impact and goes still once again.
“It’s done.” His voice hitches, and he bows his head before resighting his rifle.
Lucy wails, a high-pitched keening. Gus grabs binoculars from Howe and looks at the Humvee.
Konstantin’s head bobs into view and then out again. He’s wearing the iron crown.
Smetana and his men are too slow. The rifle fire riddles the vehicle but nothing more.
Gus turns to Wallis. “Something is wrong. Listen.”
The gunfire beyond the ridge has grown wild, accompanied by the booms of grenades.
Wallis looks from the barges, caroming downriver, to the Dead Mile.
“This isn’t good, Gus.”
Then, over the far ridge, down the slope, come running men.
Konstantin yells into the megaphone. “Hold your positions! No! Hold your positions!”
The men ignore him. A Bradley trundles into view with men riding on its back, firing to the south, away from the Wall. Humvees and Jeeps roll over the hill. A running battle.
“Hold your positions!” Konstantin, his voice once calm and emotionless, sounds desperate now.
Hundreds of men run down the slope, some firing behind them, some firing at the Wall. Behind them, the ridgeline ripples and darkens, as if discolored by a spreading oil spill.
The dead. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.
Bullets rip into sandbags and brick and the steel plates of the Wall gates.
Wallis falls, grasping his leg. Rector’s head blossoms with gore, and he topples. One of Smetana’s snipers groans, then screams.
“Open fire!” Gus bellows, taking cover behind a parapet.
From the Dead Mile, Konstantin screams in rage into the megaphone. “Hold your positions!”
Then there’s a final squelch. Konstantin steps from behind the Humvee, hoisting a long black tube.
“RPG!” Howe’s voice pitches toward the inaudible.
“Cover!”
Gus throws himself into the murderhole as the Wall explodes.
There’s smoke pouring from the gates and fire and screaming, and as Gus levers himself up, he sees his mother, ever the doctor, bending over a man of the Wall, touching his head and coming away with blood. He has time to yell, “Mom! Behind you!” as a zed rises from rubble, blood caking its face. It’s indistinct from all the other shamblers, the thousands coming down the hill, the ones among them. Slavers pour through the breach in the Wall, driving shackled men before them—the expendables, the slave shields—who are yelling “Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” but the desperate men and women of Bridge City are beyond caring and they fire wildly, indiscriminately at slave and slaver alike, only to meet the remaining defending force. And on their heels, more ravenous dead.
The zombie lurches at Lucy, and she twists, digging at her waist for the headknocker that isn’t there.
Gus is up and running, his hatchet out in his one good hand, swinging at the zed coming for Lucy, when the bridge shudders once, shifts, and then stays still. The air fills with the sound of grinding metal, with gunfire and screams and the moans of revenants.
Bullets whistle by, and in the space where the Wall gate used to be, living, wild-eyed men pour in.
Gus, leaping, swipes the shambler across the temple, embedding the hatchet deep in its skull. He lets the headknocker fall with the body.
Keb appears from the motor pool holding an M-16 and opens fire on the men rushing into the gap. They twist and die undramatically.
Gus lifts his mother. “The zip-line. Now. We’ve got to join Joblo. Ellie. Before these go revenant.”
At the sound of her daughter’s name, Lucy blinks as if coming awake.
Keb motions them to run.
But Gus stops and yells, “Go. I’ll catch up. I have to find Wallis.”
Lucy pauses halfway to Keb.
“Come on, Doc. Ain’t no time to waste.”
“I’ll be
right there.” Gus’s voice is tight.
Gunfire sounds from outside what’s left of the Wall. Through the opening, the Dead Mile turns black. With the army no longer focused on holding them back, the revenants have arrived.
Lucy chokes out a garbled sound, one of agony, and then Keb has her arm, dragging her away.
A shambler rises, lopsided and missing an arm, and Gus kicks out, knocking it backward. He picks up a cinder block and smashes it on the zombie’s skull.
He moves. The gate fills with dead.
He finds Wallis half buried in rubble. Clearing the debris, he checks Wallis’s pulse. Thready. Blood pumps sluggishly from the wound in Wallis’s thigh.
Gus lifts Wallis onto his back and staggers away, hoping the old soldier doesn’t die and turn revenant while he’s carrying him.
Gus reaches the elevator when the second barge hits the bridge. The impact feels and sounds like the tolling of a gigantic bell.
The elevator batteries are dead.
The gunfire dies. Looking over the bridge wall, he sees his mother and Keb on the dock, looking up. When they see him, they wave frantically.
Wallis groans.
“You’re not gonna make it with me. The bridge is crumbling.”
“I can get you to the zip-line. We’ll get you down from there.”
The bridge shifts underneath them, and Gus puts his hand out to steady himself.
“No. You only have one hand.” Wallis grins, and blood flecks his lips. “And look.” He points down the length of the bridge. Beyond, in the garden, are the living dead shambling toward them. Hundreds. Moaning.
“Jump, boy. I can take care of myself.” He pulls his pistol, puts it under his chin.
The bridge shifts.
“Go.”
Gus touches the older man’s cheek once in farewell and goes to the elevator platform. He stands, looking out over the river, gray in the half-light of dusk, snaking away from the devastation here, the remains of Bridge City.
Joblo, the women, and the engineers gesture wildly at Gus from the boats.
He thinks of Frazier.
The bridge tilts and shifts under him, and he leaps.
He doesn’t hear the shot before the river rushes up to meet him.
Keb, rocking unsteadily in a johnboat, fishes Gus from the water a half mile before the dam.
Near them, other boats, carrying twenty-odd survivors, push against the current. Lucy weeps from the bow, and Joblo steers from the rear, one white-knuckled hand on the outboard’s handle.
“Thought you were fish food there for a second, Lil P.”
Gus coughs and lies on the boat’s hull and stares at the sky, the indifferent heavens just beginning to prick with stars. Barb holds Ellie and looks at him, wild-eyed. The baby gurgles.
“That’s a good baby,” he says.
Barb inhales, sobbing.
“We’ll make for the north cache. There’s flares there, and maybe Dap’s still in the area.” Joblo, always practical.
They gain the north shore two miles south of the ruins of Tulaville and Bridge City and hike north, into the night.
Twin halogen lights from Bridge City pierce the dark, reflecting off the shimmering waters and the rows of chain-link. The workshop and distillery burn, casting yellow light against the trestles of the bridge.
“I thought I asked you to make sure the lights were out, Keb.”
“Yeah. You did, P. But thangs got hairy. Hairy.”
From the overpass, they look out over the dark remaining roofs of Tulaville and the two bright sparks of halogen lights still standing, miraculously, on the south shore.
A moan sounds not far from them. A onesy.
Then there’s rumbling, and the screams of twisting metal carry across the distance.
“This mean you our king now, Lil P?”
Gus doesn’t answer. Barb puts her arm around his waist.
“That’s nonsense.” Her voice is terse, protective.
Hearing this, Lucy says from the front of the procession of hikers, “William Augustus Ingersol, do you swear to protect us, to never rest until mankind can hold its head high once more, to hold back the dark and the dead? To serve all of us here faithfully, until death?”
“Mom . . . I don’t think that this is—”
She comes toward him, her face furious. She points to the bridge. “All those people—they died for this!”
She’s holding Ellie tight to her chest. Her intensity is frightful.
“Do you swear?”
He stays silent for a long while, until the moan comes again, closer. Barb stays frozen, watching Lucy.
“Yes.”
“Swear.”
“I swear.”
She wheels.
“Joblo, Keb. All of you. Do you swear to obey and protect Gus until he proves unable or unwilling to fulfill his duties?”
There’s a general murmur of assent.
She screams the words. “Do you swear?”
Ellie wakes, squalling.
Joblo says, “I swear.” Then Keb follows. Barb says nothing.
The rumbling and screaming of metal become deafening, rolling across the open space of Tulaville like thunder.
“Then, Gus, it’s time for you to lead.”
She turns and walks toward the rear, where Sunseri gathers men to brain the moaner.
“So, this mean you king now?” Keb pulls an old cigar from a wrapper, pops it into his mouth.
Gus shakes his head. “No. I’m just me, Keb. I’d swear those things anyway.”
Keb pats him on the shoulder. Opens his mouth as if to say something and then goes quiet. In the dark, a zed moans again, a soft, urgent sound.
Then the thunder rolls across the ruins of Tulaville, across the river valley, cacophonous and raw. The bridge, at last, collapses into the black waters below, taking thousands of undead with it.
The lights on the bridge tilt, and then fall, and the earth goes dark.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to my wife and children for understanding how important this whole writing thing is to me, for not questioning too closely my fascination with dead things, and for allowing me to take some nights and weekends to commit these strange little stories to paper.
As always, thanks to my father for (1) terrifying me with stories of nuclear annihilation when I was just a boy, and (2) allowing me to watch whatever I wanted to on television, including a midnight viewing of Night of the Living Dead back in 1980, and (3) buying me as many books as I wanted. In many ways, this book is the culmination of his parenting style.
Eternal thanks to my mother for living up to her name, Mary Sue.
I’d like to acknowledge my sister, Lisa Jacobs Moriconi, for her support and venison chili on those cold writing days out at Rob-Bell. She’s very excited that I’m a published novelist now (though I think she’s having a tough time coming to grips with the idea that my novels don’t feature her as the star).
When I began writing This Dark Earth, the glut of zombie books currently on the market wasn’t so prevalent. I’m grateful to my agent, Stacia Decker, for recognizing the merits of This Dark Earth beyond simply being another zombie novel. The same goes for Jen Heddle, who initially acquired This Dark Earth.
I am especially grateful to fate for replacing Jen with an editor nonpareil. Enter Adam Wilson. Even though I’ve been published before, the path to publication sure as hell wasn’t like this. Adam has given this book a second life (or third, depending on how you look at it). His fine eye and sure editorial hand have made the process of bringing This Dark Earth to print gratifying and fun and the end product something of which I’m very proud.
Many thanks go to Dr. Elizabeth Nestrud for her guidance and knowledge relating to the life of a pathologist and the medical details of cancer diagnosis. Any and all mistakes, boneheaded errors, are mine and mine alone.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my good friend Chris Cranford for continued and unwavering support, inc
luding donating a whole day to help me with a greenscreen shoot for the This Dark Earth book trailer. Also, muchas gracias to Duke Boyne and Allen Williams for donning their motorcycle gear in high summer temperatures and smacking around pillows—in lieu of zombie heads—with baseball bats.
Thanks to Knock-Out (real name unknown), the thick-forearmed handyman who used to repair our lakehouse when I was a boy. Rest in peace, KO.
A big ol’ danke schoen goes to John Rector for actually reading this one and, on its strength, introducing me to my agent.
Huge ups to Lincoln Crisler for peeking at the sections regarding the G Unit and ensuring army verisimilitude.
I’m lucky to count Steve Weddle, Mark Devery, Erik Smetana, Kevin Wallis, John Miller, Joe Howe, Kate Horsely, and Mark Hickerson among my prereaders.
Gratitude to Tom Waits for continued inspiration, including the title of this book.
Additional thanks go to Dan O’Shea, Weston Ochse, Lewis Dowell, Brian and Amanda Bailey, Joelle Charbonneau, Kent Gowran, Andrew Leonard, Stephen Blackmoore, Brian Keene, Elizabeth A. White, Ed Kurtz, S. G. Browne, Sabrina Ogden, Frank Bill, Owen Laukkenen, Matthew Funk, Tom Picirilli, Peter Farris, Bryan Smith, Dr. Terrell Tebbetts, and all my friends, both in real life and from the electric haze of the Internets.
And for my fans and readers, a big thank you. As long as you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.
About the Author
John Hornor Jacobs is the author of Southern Gods, short-listed for the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, and the forthcoming Incarcerado young adult trilogy. He lives with his family in Arkansas, where he is also a musician and graphic artist. Visit him at www.johnhornorjacobs.com.
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