“Again, I’m not a virologist,” Rosa continued, “but the theory isn’t science fiction. We see all the time where a deadly element sits waiting in a person, harmless until a specific series of events takes place. It could be environmental, pollution, or pesticides.” She shrugged. “Theories.”
“Where is it hiding?” asked Evan, unaware that he was hugging himself and rubbing his upper arms.
“I would think the brain,” Rosa said. “The brain must feed it, keep it alive.”
“That’s why a head shot puts them down and keeps them down,” said Xavier, nodding, “or stops a living person from coming back. We’ve all seen the suicides.”
They looked at him.
Carney was shaking his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. They’re dead, rotting, which means the brain is dead and rotting too. How can it support anything?”
“Plenty of organisms live off dead tissue,” Rosa said. “That’s not what you’re asking, though, is it? You want to know how it’s possible for a corpse to still be mobile. For the dead to be not only walking around, but in possession of senses like sight and hearing and smell, maintaining motor function and rudimentary problem-solving skills like how to turn doorknobs or climb steps? To have hunting instincts?” She gave them a weak smile. “I don’t know, and I’m sorry. Maybe you can tell me why they’re driven to eat, even though they clearly get no nutritional benefit from it, even after they no longer have any sort of gastrointestinal system left. Can you answer that question?”
“Not my field, Doc,” said Carney.
“Well it’s not mine either,” Rosa said, louder and sharper than she had intended. “I’m sorry,” she quickly said.
Carney gave her a nod to let her know it was okay.
“How long do you think they’ll last?” asked Xavier. “They’re rotting. In fact most of them should have fallen apart by now.”
“You would think so,” said Rosa. “And they are decaying, which could lead you to believe you could just outlast them. Find a hole and wait it out, right? It makes perfect sense, but beside the fact that none of this makes sense, there’s a problem with that thinking.”
Xavier listened. That was exactly what he had been thinking, and still was.
Rosa explained the process of decay, beginning with autolysis. She told them how the enzymes contained within the cells went into a postdeath meltdown, a process that was sped up by heat and slowed by cold. This caused putrefaction, and thirty-six hours after death the corpse’s neck, head, abdomen, and shoulders turned a discolored green. Bloating followed, the accumulation of gas caused by bacteria, and it was most visible around the face. The eyes and tongue began to protrude as the gas pushed them forward. Fluid-filled blisters appeared on the skin, and hair began to fall out.
They watched her, listening. All of them had seen what she was describing.
A process called marbling followed, a description of the skin tone when blood vessels in the face, chest, abdomen, and extremities became visible as the red blood cells broke down and produced hemoglobin. The entire body would then turn a blackish green, and fluids would seep from a corpse’s mouth, nose, and other orifices. Body tissue would begin to split, releasing gases and more fluids, and by seventy-two hours rigor mortis would be gone.
“Bodies in water decay at twice the speed of a corpse aboveground,” she finished.
“I’ve seen all that,” Xavier said, “but not in all of them. Some show those early signs, others are further along, some are withering like mummies. It’s not consistent.”
“Right.” Rosa drank from her water bottle. “That’s the problem. It’s been more than a month since the outbreak. Most of them should be piles of muck and bone by now, but they’re not. Some even look fairly fresh.” She looked at the priest. “You said it. They’re not consistent.”
Carney was nodding slowly. “If they followed the biology you described, Doc, then in a month or so you wouldn’t have to worry about fluid exposure. They’d be dry as a bone. But most of them are . . .”
“Still juicy,” said Evan. “You’re both right, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Neither does the fact that they’re dead and still hunting us,” said Xavier.
“Are you suggesting,” Carney asked, “that they’re somehow stabilizing wherever they happen to be in the decaying process?” The inmate looked at Rosa with a raised eyebrow.
She huffed her frustration, not at his question, but at her lack of information. “I don’t know. I can’t explain what they are or why they do what they do, or even if what we’ve seen is normal for all of them. There could be other . . . varieties, I guess, with different levels of senses and motor skills. We don’t know if they adapt, or if they can learn.” She let out a shaky laugh. “Jesus, I hope not. I certainly don’t know where OV came from, if it’s man-made, a freak of nature, who knows. It has to be something recent, though, or we would have seen it a lot sooner than August.”
“And that makes it man-made,” said Evan.
Carney nodded. “Some asshole cooked it up, and some other asshole let it out, on purpose or by accident.”
Rosa shrugged. It was as good a theory as any, and this imposing man who admitted to committing two murders had just phrased it more succinctly than any of the doctors she had been around. “I wish I could tell you more. I wish I knew if any of what I just said is true, but I can tell you we’d be foolish to think we understand anything about it.”
Xavier squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “You did just fine, thank you.”
Carney gave her a nudge. “Yeah, thanks, Doc.”
She nodded and left to find a place to sleep. They heard a bottle break, followed by a string of muffled obscenities, and Carney went to handle his cellmate. Xavier and Evan sat quietly for a while, then wandered over to the row of windows in the hangar’s wall. Everyone was sleeping and there were no sounds other than Carney’s low voice and TC’s drunken one, as the older man forced his companion into a vacant booth and ordered him to sleep it off.
The clouds were scattered now and a partial moon reflected off windshields, turning the hangar across from them white and casting pools of absolute shadow in places the light didn’t touch. A corpse lurched through the parking lot on its way to the airfield, a man in some sort of uniform, missing an arm. Xavier and Evan froze. It didn’t look toward the windows, and if it had it would probably only have seen its own reflection in the glass, but still they held their breath until it passed.
When it was gone, Evan looked at the older man. “So we just heard a medical explanation. I don’t know about you, but it doesn’t sound like science is going to give us all the answers.”
“It never does,” said Xavier, looking out at the night.
“Where’s the military in all this?” Evan leaned his palms against the window frame and stared up at the moon. “Where’s all the Special Forces guys? The pilot . . . Vlad? He said his base fell apart, but there must be others. How is it that we’re alive, and those guys aren’t?”
Xavier looked out the window with him. “I don’t think we’re special, if that’s what you mean. We’ve just been lucky with the math. Statistically, some of us would live, at least for a while. There’re others out there, you can count on it.” He looked down. “How long we all last, that’s a different question, and the numbers probably don’t work out too well.”
“And the military?” Evan pressed.
“They’re sure to be out there too,” Xavier said, “at least in places, but they’re probably in no hurry to leave whatever fortified position they’ve managed to hold. The rest were overwhelmed. You’ve got to realize that the average person had the luxury of running away. The military, the cops and firemen, they had to go into it head-on.”
Evan looked at him. “But their firepower, the technology, tanks, and aircraft . . .”
“I’m sure they didn’t see it
coming any more than we did,” the priest said, “and it’s not like there’s a contingency plan for something like this, unless you’re a conspiracy guy.” Evan shook his head, and Xavier smiled. “As for firepower, what good is a tank against something that has to be shot in the head? And when that something turns into hundreds of thousands, millions of somethings? How do you deal with that, when most of the people you rely upon are stumbling around dead with all the rest?” Then in an even softer voice he said, “I think pinning your hopes to the government sending in some kind of military rescue is foolish, though.”
Evan shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Besides,” Xavier said, going back to looking out the window, “it’s more about how our society has always been vulnerable to plagues, with no good way to combat a fast-moving outbreak on such a large scale. No one could respond in time, even if there were a way to respond at all. Now it’s just about survival.”
“I have to tell you, I’m a little surprised to hear you talking this way,” Evan said.
Xavier turned. “You don’t even know me. Why would you say that?”
Evan smiled to show he meant no offense and said, “Out on the airfield earlier, after Dane was on the ground waving his gun, Rosa called you Father. You’re a priest, aren’t you?”
He sighed. “I wish there were a simple answer for that.”
“There is,” Evan said. “You are or you aren’t and I take it from that answer that you are. That being the case, you must have a theological perspective on this. I’d like to hear it.”
Xavier said nothing for a long time. Finally he looked at the writer. “I’d like to give you some comfort, some sort of understanding. I should be doing that, and I know exactly what words to say to make you feel better. But they’re hollow to me, Evan, and I don’t want to tell you something I don’t fully believe myself. Not the answer you were looking for, I know.”
Evan was looking out the window again. “My mom died a few years back. It caused a rift between my dad and me, not that we had been buddies before that, but Mom always kept everyone together. When she was gone, we sort of fell apart.”
“I’m sorry.”
Evan didn’t seem to hear the words of sympathy. “More than that, her passing made me look at what matters. All the shit I thought was so important just evaporated like smoke. It put things in perspective for me.”
Xavier nodded. He had heard this during grief counseling many times.
“This,” Evan said, gesturing at the window, “is like that, but on the biggest scale you can imagine. All those things we argued about and hated one another for, all the relationships we sacrificed pursuing stuff—the way we lived our lives so wrapped up in ourselves—what did it matter?” He yawned and rubbed at his eyes. “I’m beat and I’m babbling. I doubt any of this is making sense.”
The corpse of a woman in a torn dress walked stiffly through the parking lot, moving toward the airfield like the others, one arm reaching. She looked like a mother in pursuit of a runaway child, and this illusion was reinforced by the fact that a dead two-year-old stumbled across the pavement ahead of her. It wore little overalls and sneakers that flashed red when they struck the ground, and on its back was a harness that looked like a stuffed monkey with a tail that doubled as a leash dragging across the ground behind the child.
“What does any of it mean when you see something like that?” Evan said softly. Then he turned to Xavier. “Perspective, Father. I asked you if you were a priest, and you dodged me. Whatever you are, you have what people need. Call it leadership, hope, even faith, whether you want to believe it or not, whether it sounds hollow to you or even like complete bullshit. More than any of us, you could help these people. They need a lot of things, but what they need the most is for someone to be stronger than they think they can be by themselves.”
The young man smiled and gripped the priest’s shoulder. “I’m going to sleep.” He walked away, leaving Xavier alone in the moonlight.
SEVEN
Angie’s van and the black Excursion sat side by side in the parking lot of a small upholstery factory, not far from the road that led to the main gates of the naval air station. She slept locked in her van, and Brother Peter lay curled up on the backseat of the Ford. He should have been sleeping, but he couldn’t.
God wouldn’t shut up.
Angie had come out of the tavern covered in fresh blood, a flat, emotionless look in her eyes. She took several shotguns and Peter’s automatic from the back of the Excursion, placed them in the rear of her van, and returned to the front seat of the Ford, where Peter was still zip-tied to the steering wheel. He had considered using the box cutter to free himself, and would have if things had gone wrong, but he resisted the urge. He wanted to play out the game.
“I’m still pissed about the gun,” Angie said.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She stared at him. “I’m going to link up with my group. You can come if you want to, follow me in this.” She tapped the steering wheel.
“No problem,” Peter said. “Look, Angie, I’m really sorry about before. I guess I haven’t been around people for a long time. I forgot how to act.”
She considered this. “Stay close and drive where I drive. If you decide to take off instead”—she shrugged—“then you’ll be on your own. No one will try to find you or help you.”
“I’ll follow you. I want to be around people again.” He meant it, but not for the reasons she might think.
Angie had cut him loose with his own hunting knife, then taken the radio off the dashboard and spoken briefly with Margaret again, telling her she was coming in. Margaret sounded sleepy. Minutes later they were rolling, and Brother Peter struggled to control the Excursion at first. He realized it had been years since he had gone anywhere without a chauffeur. It came back quickly enough, though at one point he got too close to the back of Angie’s van and rubbed the bumper. She stomped the brakes, and for one fearful moment he wondered if the bitch would march back to the Ford and shoot him.
The dead were out in strength, hundreds in the street, pawing and banging on the two vehicles when they got close enough. Brother Peter watched his rearview, seeing them turn and shuffle slowly after the Excursion as it went by. It gave him a chill. Angie did some circles and backtracking, which he assumed was intended to throw them off and not lead them directly to her group. After they parked and she walked to the Excursion, explaining the strategy, he had nodded, told her she was smart, and pictured raping her while he shoved a gun into the back of her head.
“I talked to Margaret, told her we were going to wait off base and get some sleep. I want to go in during daylight so we can see what we’re up against.”
“Do you have any food or water?” Peter asked.
“Right, sorry about that.” Angie retrieved several bottles of water and some packaged food from the van. “Get some sleep. I’ll wake you when we’re ready to move.”
The streets were bathed in moonlight, allowing them to see quite well. None of the walking dead were in view at the moment, so apparently her methods had worked, at least for now. Peter watched her return to the van, rifle slung over her shoulder. “Sweet dreams,” he muttered, fingering his box cutter.
Now, when he should have been sleeping after the effects of the amphetamines had worn off, making him want to crash hard, he could only curl up miserably on the rear seat of the Excursion and cover his ears with his hands. “Please let me sleep,” he said. It wasn’t fair. After all that he had said to the unwashed masses, the claims in his books and televised sermons, the speaking engagements and seminars at his Bible college, Peter Dunleavy had never actually heard the voice of God. And now, when He finally spoke, Peter was too exhausted for the conversation.
But then, had he ever really believed it all? Really believed? Perhaps once, when he had been young and naïve, easily swayed by powerful words. But now? Pe
ter Dunleavy was the one who spoke powerful words now. This was a hallucination brought on by stress and fatigue, nothing more.
Besides, God’s voice would be booming and majestic, filling him with glory and awe. Not . . . not this.
“I’m a hallucination, am I? You sound like a little bitch, Pete,” said God.
“I’m not a little bitch. I’m tired. Let’s talk in the morning.” No, it was not what he had expected.
“I don’t care if you’re tired. Look at me when I speak to you.”
Peter sat up. God was in the front passenger seat, turned to look at him. The minister blinked. God looked just like the shrink who had kicked him out of the Air Force, uniform and all.
“You have lost your way, Peter. I’m very disappointed.”
“What do you mean? I love you above all others.”
“Oh, save your bullshit for the sheep. You’ve fallen, grown confused, become an unbeliever.”
“This conversation isn’t real,” Peter said.
God reached back between the seats and slapped Peter hard across the face, His ring from the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs bloodying the minister’s lip. “How was that? Real enough?”
Peter let out a little cry. “Wait, don’t—”
Another hard slap, stinging his other cheek. “Unbeliever.”
The minister held up his hands. “I’m sorry!”
A third smack, this one on the top of his head with the Air Force ring.
Peter began to cry. “Please, stop!”
“I despise whining,” God said. “Pull yourself together.”
Peter wiped furiously at the tears.
“You tried to tell the Air Force the truth about their nuclear warheads, but you used the wrong words and they were taken away from you,” God said. “You founded a global ministry in my name, but you screwed that up too, and it was taken away.” God looked over the top of His wire-rimmed glasses. “Then you gathered a new flock, led them underground with some half-assed idea of forming a new ministry. That turned into a clusterfuck of cannibalism and forced sex. Very, very disappointing, Peter.”
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