He worked his way down to the stream and set the saddle bags by the water and gently lay his precious bundle upon them. He set the mace head-up in the mud next to him and placed one of the two Glocks within easy reach of the saddle bags, next to the swaddled form.
Pulling the coif from his heads and neck revealed his bare scalp. He removed the ear buds. After unlacing his gauntlets, he removed the protective wear and lay them next to him with the coif. The chain mail was taken off next, exposing a dark t-shirt soaked through black with sweat, clinging to the muscles of his chest and shoulders. He took off the t-shirt and soaked it in the stream, wringing the sweat and stink from it several times. He immersed the t-shirt again and wringed it out over his head, rivulets of fresh water running down his bald dome and hirsute, tattooed back. He pressed the t-shirt to his forehead and breathed deeply, sighing, closing his eyes.
His reverie was broken by a low groan nearby. A horrendous apparition staggered his way from downriver, flesh rotted from its torso, the bone of one leg showing through. It moved slowly with steady determination, reaching out to him with one grime encrusted hand. The other arm bent backwards, broken at the elbow.
Bear retrieved the Glock and stood, walking towards the fiend, extending the 9mm and targeting the zombie with the green laser sight, firing once. The beast keeled over onto its side, motionless, half in and half out of the stream. He approached it and prodded it with his boot. A good chunk of its head had come off and floated away. Looking across the water, he spotted a handful of undead gathering there, none daring to cross the watercourse, motioning and groaning. No threat to him or Nadjia or anyone on this side of the river at this point. He reached down and gripped the zombie by its ankle, dragging its carcass from the water, letting it lie unceremoniously a few feet from the stream.
Bear returned to the saddle bags and his equipment and checked the bundle. Satisfied, he returned to his ablutions.
Fifteen or twenty people had emerged from the town and formed a circle around Nadjia. They were disheveled and emaciated—faces marked by sunken eyes and pronounced cheekbones. Their clothes hung off them and their skin was sallow. Some were yellow-eyed. The men all wore beards of varying lengths.
“…and he wrestled a lion, tearing it limb from limb,” the wild-man spoke as if not to himself but to an audience, though these men and women largely ignored him. “This son of Manoah on the road to Timnah...”
She sat on a crate among them, her weapons holstered but within easy reach. From her seat she could see Bear squatting beside the stream that passed under the bridge. She looked upon a consumptive woman with ratty hair, two grubby children clinging to either side of her.
“How many of you are there?”
At first no one spoke, as if they had forgotten how. Then a wasted man with brown hair and eyes deep in dark sockets spoke up.
“All of these people here are more than I knew about. We were separated…holed up in different places.”
“There were sixteen with me,” a jaundiced man said. “Plague killed all of them. Except me. That was early on.”
“…and in the valley of flame the mighty red warrior came upon Moon Boy, he of the Small-Folk,” said the wild-man, “and together they withstood the onslaughts of the invaders from the sky and their damned zoological ministrations…”
“Who is he?” a woman with several teeth missing asked Nadjia, pointing to Bear.
“I don’t really know.” Bear knelt down by the stream, with the enormous expanse of his back to them. He was a preternatural monstrosity in his own right. “He found me a few months ago. I’ve fought with him since.”
They stared at her, these haggard and pallid faces.
“He’s called Bear.”
“This is what you do?” another in the crowd asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
“…and with nothing more than the jaw bone of an ass this son of Manoah did slay an army of Philistines from Askhelon, and they fell before him in trepidation and disquiet, for his was the wrath of the Lord visited upon them…”
“Incredible.”
“Just the two of you?”
Nadjia looked at the man who had asked. “There were more of us…once.”
“My wife is back in one of the buildings,” a high-voiced man spoke up. “She’s too weak to move. Do you have food?”
“How about cigarettes?”
“Toilet paper? God please let them have some toilet paper…”
“How long have you been here?” Nadjia asked.
“Since the beginning,” the dark eyed man who had spoken first answered.
The wild-man spoke. “He is in the world and he is of the world, yes, but he is with the world, as are we all. He is a creator and maker of a world, and a destroyer, as are we…”
“Who are you?” Nadjia said.
The rag-clad man looked at her askance and replied, “And he who dared to trick Zeus at Sicyon was chained to a rook in the Caucasus, his liver eaten daily by an eagle, ever awaiting Heracles to free him from his beshaklement…”
Nadjia looked away. “Okay.”
“He’s touched,” a woman offered, not unkind, pointing at her own head with a forefinger.
“He’s insane,” the dark-eyed man answered matter-of-factly, judgment absent from his voice. “A little worse than some of us, a lot worse than most of us.”
“In other words, he’s fucking nuts,” the yellow-skinned man’s voice was bitter as he spoke, his contempt obvious. “We should have done him and ourselves a favor and put him out of his misery a long time ago.”
“How long have you been holed up in this town?” Nadjia inquired of the man.
“How long?” He thought it over. “What does time mean anymore?” He threw his hands up. “Here we are.”
“It’s hard…hard to remember,” offered the dark-eyed man. “It can’t be forever, but it feels like it.”
“There were millions of them in the streets,” a woman said.
“Last winter was so cold.”
Nadjia couldn’t tell if the cadaverous person who spoke was man or woman.
“…seemed like millions.”
“What’s your name?” She asked the dark-eyed man.
“Kevin.”
“Kevin, listen to me. You and your people—”
The jaundiced man interrupted her. “He doesn’t speak for all of us lady.”
“We didn’t come here to argue. All of you need to listen to me. You’ve got to destroy these bodies. All of them. Figure out a way to burn them and start to do it now.”
“Hey lady. Thanks for saving us and all. Don’t take this the fucking wrong way, but who are you to start telling us what to do?”
She ignored the yellow man but shifted her position on the crate so the 9mm on her hip was within easier reach.
“There will be more of these things. You’re all going to have to be ready for them when they show up.”
“Do you have any food?” the woman with the two children asked.
“…only three men could wear the armor intended for this son of Thetis, his beloved Patroclus, his nemesis, Hektor—betrayed by the god in the guise of his fallen brother—and the great runner himself…”
“We have some we’ll share with you, back on our truck.” Nadjia motioned with her head over her shoulder towards the bridge. Their view was blocked by the bodies stacked higher than a tall man. “You have to organize yourselves. Some of you help unload the supplies and carry them back into town. Others need to dispose of…” She nodded towards the crumpled figures of the putrid dead.
The wild man ran off down the street, hopping from piles of bodies to piles of bodies, screaming, “Secure the gate! He has come. He is upon us! He has outrun the torrents of Scamander…”
“So this is what you two do?” an older man inquired.
“Yes.”
“You travel from town to town and city to city killing zombies?”
“Yes.”
“And ho
w many cities have you cleared so far?”
Nadjia thought about it. “A few. Our work is just beginning.”
“You gotta be shitting me,” said the bitter yellowed man. “You don’t really think you’re gonna kill off all these fuckers, do you?”
She looked down at her feet. When she looked up she asked, “What’s the alternative?”
“You’re crazy. Just as fucking nuts as the windbag over there.”
Nadjia gestured towards the river. “I follow him.”
“Well, then, he’s fucking crazy too.”
The wild man had rejoined the group and he was mumbling “the jester leaps across the tightrope walker and alighting on the wire beyond he goes unrecognized for what he is amongst the citizenry of Mad Cow…”
“You, him,” Kevin spoke. “You can’t destroy them all.”
“He doesn’t fight because he thinks we can win,” Nadjia said.
“Then why?” demanded the bitter man.
“He fights because they’re zombies.”
“One must imagine Sissyphus happy,” offered the wild man.
Kevin thought about what Nadjia had said.
“…and so White-Hairs and Stone-Hand joined the Devil Beast in defense of the Kirby universe…”
“Enough of this bullshit.” The yellow skinned man glared at the wild man. “The world ends and this fucker lives through it? If we’re going to rebuild, we aren’t doing it with his kind.”
“What are you talking about?” someone asked.
“You know what I’m talking about.” The man started scanning the ground for a suitable weapon. “He doesn’t have to be here for the second act. He’ll just slow us down.”
“No one touches that man.”
All eyes were drawn to the outside of the circle. Bear loomed there, his abs thick slabs, the muscles of his pecs and shoulders like lumps of clay slapped together by a drunken artist. The saddle bags rested on the road next to his feet. In the crook of one massive arm rested the swaddled bundle. His other arm hung at his side, mace in his hand. The circle opened. People stepped gingerly from him, but he did not move.
“…and from his mountain the god looked and saw two stand against many, the Cimmerian and the archer against the riders of Doom, and indeed he was pleased…”
“Listen to him,” the jaundiced man said to Bear, indicating the wild one. “I’ve had to for the past god knows how many fucking months. Is that a baby you’ve got with you? For Christ’s sake…”
He walked over to Bear to get a better look at the bundle. When he had done so he looked into Bear’s face, the dead eye and the live one. He was too foolish to heed what the good one revealed.
“You are fucking crazy,” he said and turned his back on him, his yellowed-eyes squinting at the wild man. “And you…” He spied a large flat rock several yards away and went to retrieve it. “Gonna take care of this shit right fucking now.”
He bent to take it up and stood, turning. Bear was upon him, his speed belying his massive size. The mace came down once, the blow breaking the arm the man raised to shield himself, then continuing unabated on its deadly trajectory to impact his skull. The yellowed body collapsed lifeless to the mud and muck.
Bear stood with the bundle in his arm and the mace at his side. Nadjia had risen and one hand hovered over the 9mm, but none of the townsfolk appeared a threat. Their hollowed eyes reflected apathy and, in some, hope.
“We’ll rest two or three days here,” said Nadjia, “then we will leave. Any of you who wish are free to join us, but you need to know the only thing on the road ahead of us is more of…this.” She gestured with an open palm to the carpet of corpses littered in varying displays of grotesquery.
“…and Emmanuel Santana left the monster in the sky, sitting on top of the world, the general alone…”
The evening crept into the sky and the night was lit by tremendous pyres. Dozens of fires ate the dead. Thick black smoking coils of cremated meat merged with the dark above and around. Everywhere the stink of singed dead flesh loomed. The men and women strong enough worked through the afternoon and night, their faces covered with rags against the noxious fumes as they disposed of the pestilential corpses.
Kevin crossed the street, stepping clear of the puddles of gore and rain that had pooled, his path lit by the flames. He pulled the jacket he wore closer about him, shivering in the cool autumn night. He entered a darkened building and walked up two flights of stairs to the door of an apartment of rooms Bear and Nadjia had selected. He stood in front of the door and paused, considering, then knocked, not too loud. Perhaps they were asleep. He did not want to waken them, nor was he completely sure he wanted to discuss what he had come to talk about.
Nadjia opened the door, backlit from a glow somewhere within the suite of rooms. She had the riot suit off and her hair down and she was the most beautiful woman Kevin had ever seen. The curves of her physique through the jeans and sweater she wore stirred something within him that he had not felt in a long time, something he’d given up on ever feeling again. Then he noticed the pistol in her left hand down at her side.
“Kevin.”
“Nadjia.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Y-Yes…”
Her eyes scanned the murk of the hallway and stairwell behind him.
“Come on in.”
She stepped aside and let him into the apartment. A kerosene lamp burned in one corner where her sleeping bag was laid out. He noted what looked like a prayer mat rolled up next to the sleeping bag.
“Sit down.” She nodded to the floor. The apartment was bare. It had been stripped of furniture and anything that might burn long ago by people desperate for fuel in the winter. Most of the windows lacked glass and the cool night air whispered in. The sounds of men and women laboring outside on the street were faint.
They sat across from one another—the darkness of a room behind Nadjia, a cold wall against Kevin’s back.
“Is it me,” Kevin hunkered down further into his jacket, “or is it really cold in here?”
“It’s a beautiful fall night. But you’ve got no fat on you. So you’re going to feel the cold more than me.”
“Yeah, no fat on me,” Kevin agreed. “My damn feet hurt when I walk. The fat on the pads is all worn away.
“You are Moslem?” He pointed towards the prayer mat.
“Lapsed, but trying.”
Kevin nodded.
“And him?” He indicated the darkness behind Nadjia, aware of Bear’s presence somewhere in the rooms.
“I think he prays,” she said, “or at least he tries. But I don’t think his god is mine.”
He nodded.
They were quiet for awhile. In the silence his eyes adjusted to the dark enough to discern the immense form of Bear in the room beyond, seated as he was against a wall. It looked like he was cradling something in his arms. Kevin thought he knew what it was. He became aware of the presence of another in the apartment with them and guessed it would be the wild-man, somewhere near Bear, oddly quiet in the presence of the giant.
“What brought you here to us?”
He scoffed in a not-unfriendly way. “I could ask the same of you.”
She did not reply.
“Nadjia” He liked the sound of her name as it left her mouth. “Well, first, thank you. Thank you both. I don’t know how much longer we could have held out.”
“We were too late for too many. I looked around this town earlier. There are several too weak to move. They probably will not survive, even now.”
Crusade (Eden Book 2) Page 4
