Jesus. Did he really not understand? Two soldiers had died on Bradshaw’s last field assignment. It only made sense that he’d be confined to the base for a while. Only made sense he wouldn’t want to talk about it. Furrowing his brow, he said, “I’m burned the fuck out. I was burned out before what happened in Congo... I wonder if that’s why we lost them.”
Stoddard shook his bug head emphatically. “If you hadn’t been there, no one would have come back. Remember that.” It was quite the opposite, actually, but Bradshaw just offered a thin smile. “Thanks, Joe.”
“I’m serious!” The truck turned off of the tree-lined access road onto a residential street: all duplexes in bland pastels, typical of a military base. Scooping some viscera into his shovel, Stoddard lobbed it over the side where it splattered in the well-manicured grass. “So much for making it into Better Homes and Gardens.” He cracked. The houses looked like shit close-up anyway: walls spattered with rust-colored stains, windows smeared with filthy fingerprints. It was no problem to treat the grass, but no one was going to stand out here cleaning windows. Especially when the afterdead just messed them all up again. Like little kids trashing their rooms, only instead of dirty underwear and spilled Kool-Aid, it was dried-out organs and lost limbs. And here they came; hearing the truck’s rumble, the afterdead staggered out of open front doors, past the skeletons of cars and plastic flowerbeds.
It was important to put on the appearance of a real base, just in case some foreign satellite was able to punch through the scrambled signals shielding the area. Offices, hangars, a commissary, a school, a clinic. Traffic lights and trash dumpsters and playgrounds with little shoeprints stamped into the sand. All a brilliant facade—but now was feeding time, and all semblance of normalcy vanished as dozens upon dozens of dead converged on the street.
Bradshaw joined Stoddard in hurling shovelfuls of gore out the back. Those afterdead who were quickest fell upon the first offerings in a defensive posture. The others continued to follow the truck. “It’s funny.” Stoddard observed. “The runners are always going to get the most meat, and the more they eat, the stronger they get.”
“It’s not funny, it’s Darwin.” Bradshaw ignored the putrid rot in his nostrils, ignored the stumbling parade reaching toward him. “Before long those runners are going to be too healthy. We’ll have to take them out.”
“I look forward to it.” Stoddard replied. He reached behind his back to pat the sheath where his widowmaker was stowed. “Have you seen Postman lately?” He tossed another wave of slop. It hit a woman head-on. She collapsed, and Stoddard’s hand flew to his mask in shock; after a second, he started to laugh. Several other afterdead knelt to pick the gore off of her thrashing body. “Kinky!”
“Anyway,” Bradshaw muttered, “no, I haven’t seen Postman. Why?” Postman was one of the oldest specimens on the base. In the beginning, the scientists had suited corpses up in uniforms, to better identify them regardless of physical condition. So you had Postman, Electrician, Nurse (Stoddard’s favorite) and the like. After a while it was determined that specimens weren’t around long enough to require such measures. But a few of these veteran afterdead still existed on the base, and Postman was one. He—it, rather—endured because it didn’t feed often, which made it one of the weaker and less desirable subjects. The scientists said that Postman had learned to pace himself in order to avoid being targeted. But how the hell would he—no, IT, dammit—know to do such a thing?
“Postman took a headshot last week,” Stoddard said. “He tried climbing into Grimm’s slop truck, bought himself a lobotomy. Anyway, after Grimm came back and filled out the report, we had to go find Postman and verify it. So we go to the school, and he’s in there, but not wandering the halls like usual. He’s sitting on the floor with a stick.”
“This is one hell of a story.” Bradshaw flicked a string of meat off his waders. “Let me finish,” Stoddard scowled. “Anyway, Postman’s got this stick and he’s fishing around in the bullethole. He’s trying to get the bullet out.”
“How do you know he was after the bullet? Maybe he was just poking around.”
“Yeah, sure. They don’t get bored, Ken. Anything they do, it’s for a reason.”
Not true, Bradshaw thought. All they really needed to do was eat. Didn’t breathe, didn’t fuck. They barely qualified as animals, yet some rotter sticking a twig in his brain justified a twelve-page report in triplicate. More paperwork than he’d had to fill out after two field operatives died. Behind the truck, two males bent and bloated by decay played tug-of-war over a rope of tissue. Bradshaw heaved more chum at them, and the conflict ended abruptly. As more and more feed littered the street in the truck’s wake, the afterdead were falling to their knees like supplicants. There was something familiar and troubling about it... Reminded him of Sunday worship as a kid. He’d grown up in a Texas border town, his mother a black homemaker, Dad a Venezuelan preacher. Their very own little white church seemed to absorb the dry heat, and every week Bradshaw would stand in silent awe as Dad cried from the pulpit, sweat running in rivers from his face and fists. Looking back, it wasn’t any spiritual rapture that overcame so many in the congregation—it was heat exhaustion. But to the young boy it was a power radiating from his father. Even the walls ran with moisture. It was a local phenomenon, those glistening tearstains that seemed to appear out of nowhere on the walls. Especially on Sunday: as the worshippers swayed in praise, the entire room had seemed to vibrate. Bradshaw would grip his mother’s hand, head hot and swimming, the buzzing in his ears swelling to a crescendo, and the walls wept. They wept.
In lieu of a life-size crucifix there was a stained-glass image of the Savior behind the altar, and Dad meticulously polished it every other day. Bradshaw would sit in the pews sometimes and watch. Whenever his father’s back was to him, the boy reached out and touched the tearstains. He pressed his fingertips to his nostrils; the smell was sweet, like something from his mother’s kitchen. It made perfect sense to a child that Christ’s teardrops were of sugar and syrup. His wouldn’t be bitter or salty. Lot’s wife turned to salt because she disobeyed the Lord, Dad said.
One day, when it reached 110 degrees and dusty winds battered the church, and Dad was cleaning the stained-glass window, Bradshaw had felt the room vibrate again. The walls murmured to him. He pressed his hand to them, felt it. Then he looked up and saw his father’s fear-filled eyes fixated on him.
At the joint of the west wall and the ceiling there was a hole and it was from there that the bees poured. Bradshaw made it out, Dad didn’t. They said he was allergic. They said that thousands of bees had been nesting in the walls, so many that their honey seeped through when it got hot enough. That day, Nature had delivered a judgment against God, and that was the day Bradshaw realized He was just a snake-oil salesman, manipulating forces that were already there.
* * *
The lingering odors of slop duty hadn’t yet begun to fade when Bradshaw and Stoddard were sent into the bayou to harvest. The corpses seeded the previous day were reviving. There were a finite number of these Sources in the world—places where this strange energy, like honey, seeped through the soil and reanimated the dead—one was here in Louisiana, and so the base had been established. And despite the fact that fresh specimens were returning to life at that very moment, Stoddard was going on in a loud voice about the tattoo he always talked about and never got: “Death From Above” between his shoulder blades with an image of Christ behind the lettering. It was nothing but ironic to Bradshaw considering their occupation. Slogging through a stretch of mud filled with gnarled roots (nothing ever died out here, just kept growing), he ran that by Stoddard. His companion shrugged. “We didn’t make the URC, brother, we just plug them into it.” URC—Undefined Reanimation Catalyst. Scientific term for “we have no fucking idea.”
The first afterdead of the night was chained to a gnarled monster of a tree at the edge of the mud. It stared at them, perplexed. It was male, early thirties, saliva running fr
om its lips and a rank odor coming off its soiled jeans. “He shit himself,” Stoddard spat. “Way to go, partner!” He clapped the undead on the shoulder and detached a thick chain leash from the tree. Bradshaw trudged on to the next rotter. “I’m thinking of getting a dog.” He told Stoddard as they hauled the lot out of the bayou, through a manned gate and onto a fenced pathway. “Retriever or something.”
“You’d keep it on-base?” Stoddard raised an eyebrow. “Why not?” Bradshaw replied. “You know they don’t mess with animals. Watchdog’s not a bad idea, anyhow.” He yanked one of his chains to get a straggler moving. It lurched at him; Bradshaw was ready with the stun gun and knocked it on its ass. He jerked impatiently until the wide-eyed corpse staggered to its feet. “Maybe I’m a little lonely. That’s not a crime, right?” Stoddard nodded in understanding. They were forced to make their home next door to these things—and the kicker was, the afterdead had better digs. It was almost maddening to plod through their rosy faux-neighborhoods, to look at that all day and then go back to an 8x8 room in a bunker. Grimm, one of the base’s certified lunatics, had decided to “move out to the suburbs” and seize a home from the afterdead. He’d done it, too. Cleaned out a house near the bayou, changed the locks and brought in what little furniture he could scrounge up. He actually slept every night with afterdead pawing at his bedroom windows—but still he slept in an honest-to-God bed, in a real house. Base Commander St. John normally wouldn’t have allowed such a stunt but Ryland wanted to see the outcome.
Ryland... shit. Bradshaw realized he was late for a meeting. “Let’s pick it up Joe.”
After depositing the afterdead in a holding pen and bidding Stoddard good night, Bradshaw walked to the truck yard. His path was protected by a low-voltage electric fence from which most afterdead had learned to stay away. Halogen street lamps cast the deserted streets beyond the fence in a garish light; that light ended at the yard’s gate, where he eased himself inside. “I’m late, I know.”
“Are you?” Seated on the front bumper of a slop truck, Ryland shrugged. “I lost my watch. How’re you holding up? You look exhausted.” It was a funny remark coming from him. Bradshaw sometimes thought that maybe, when God was putting Adam together, He wasn’t happy with some of the bones He’d rendered from the earth. Some were too angular, too odd, too cruel in appearance alone. So He threw them out, and someone else double-bagged ‘em in flesh and here you had Nathan Ryland. Cancerous jowls hung from sharply jutting cheekbones, above which sunken eyes were pitted into an oblong skull. And his face bore a greenish pallor, maybe that was just the lighting. Fish, the guys called him, though not to his face because he was frequently off-base as government liaison, and also because he’d have them castrated. Kneading his gloved hands, Ryland shivered. “So? How are you?” Bradshaw said he was fine and gave his report. The debriefing upon returning from Congo had been short and sweet; he’d been taken off field duty for a month; then ordered into counseling. “Hugs and hand puppets,” cracked Ryland with a lipless smile. “I’ve already spoken with Whittaker. So it was you who shot Clarke?”
Bradshaw raised an eyebrow, but nodded. “I’m sure you had no choice,” Ryland told the eyebrow. “Collateral damage. It’s a popular phrase with my friends in Washington. It means no more questions. You’ve got nothing to worry about, Ken.”
Bradshaw grimaced in the shadows. “I know that. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about Clarke.”
“No one said you had to be happy.” Ryland replied. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get together with you. It’s a bad month. I’m flying to D.C. every other day and St. John’s on my ass to put in for a budget increase. He thinks I’m a lobbyist just because I don’t wear the uniform. But enough about my problems.” Standing up, he patted Bradshaw’s shoulder. “We’re good, okay?”
Bradshaw knew asking would be fruitless, but he did it anyway. “Clarke was a good... a good leader... why him? He didn’t need to be out there.”
“There’s always collateral damage. Remember that.” Ryland answered. His presence left the yard, and Bradshaw stood silent in his wake, a puppet without his puppeteer. After a few moments, he gathered up his strings and trudged toward the bunkers. On the other side of the electric fence, a silhouette peeled away from the night: a female, with papery gray flesh and hollowed-out knees giving her a strange falling-forward gait. She stopped a few feet from the fence, the muscles in her face working at something resembling a frown. Bradshaw ignored the thing and kept walking.
* * *
7,270 miles away, the relief organization Our World, based out of Brisbane, had set up a triage in Congo. They were dangerously close to the most recent clashes in the republic’s civil war, but Matt Hinzman knew that the needy tribal peoples would stay in their rainforest home—even if it meant running afoul of guerillas. As chief supervisor of the Congo effort, his decision went unchallenged, and even now, lying under a crumpled tent with his right arm gone, he didn’t regret making the call.
Sara Lister, a colleague of fourteen years, lay a few yards off. Her eye was pulled from its socket and rested in the hollow of a flayed cheek. Matthew heard feet shuffling at his back, but couldn’t turn over. He stayed motionless and hoped they couldn’t sniff him out.
The canvas tent pulled away from his body. He was turned to face a man wearing some sort of paramilitary uniform. Thank God! “The tribesmen,” Matt gasped hoarsely. “They tore us apart.”
The soldier traced Matthew’s jaw line with his fingertips. There was a nasty gash just below his chin. The soldier dug his fingernails in and pulled, paying no mind to the terrible screaming, which eventually stopped.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the camp, Clarke ate quietly. He eyed his surroundings in search of more meat. There was a half-devoured woman nearby clutching something in her hand. He recognized it: a pistol. He had one too, he thought, and fumbled around his waistline until he found it. The familiarity of it in his hand released a flood of memories, all clouded fragments. But recalling that he himself had been shot made him aware of the dull pain in his chest. Looking down, Clarke prodded the bullet hole. It hurt but wouldn’t keep him from moving. The hole between his legs was another story. He picked idly at the gashed tissue hanging out of his pants; more fragments came to him, the lingering memories of sensations for which he no longer had any use. Clarke tugged Hinzman’s upper lip off and chewed it for a while.
His brain shuffled his memories into some sort of order. Someone he trusted had shot him. Rules had been broken. He couldn’t recall every point of protocol, but he knew it was a mistake to leave him for dead instead of finishing the job. He never would have done that himself. Bradshaw—that was his name, Bradshaw—wouldn’t normally have done that, either. Confusing. His mind kept working while he ate. Good soldiers wouldn’t leave something like this to chance. They’d come back for him. Staying here to feed would be a risk, but then feeding anywhere would soon become a risk. He’d have to kill them all.
It was a simple decision made in the basest region of his mind. Self-preservation was his sole purpose. Clarke pulled Hinzman’s esophagus out with slick fingers. He knew he had to keep feeding in order to stay alert and heal these wounds. He knew a lot of things other afterdead didn’t.
3 / Drinks at Dusk
“I never win,” Whittaker grumbled into his Captain & Coke. The Captain was being an unsympathetic prick this fine evening; Whittaker could barely feel the warmth of the liquor in his belly, not with the knot of anxiety that grew tighter with every spin of the roulette wheel.
Spending a furlough in Vegas was always an exercise in pain. Every dollar that came out of his pocket went straight into the casino’s, or into his liver—he knew it and everyone around him knew it. They encouraged it. Whittaker was used to rolling with the punches, though. He’d return to the base next week with a few bruises, take some ribbing from his comrades, then it was back to work. In the end, he figured, this yearly gouging in Vegas was better than sitting at home alone
getting wasted (although the booze there was a hell of a lot cheaper).
Whittaker watched the last of his chips jump from his hands like he was a leper, then he left the casino-hotel, crossing the street to a strip joint. Ah, warm ten-dollar beer and the plastic smiles of girls whose age was anyone’s best guess in the garish crimson lighting. He took a table near the back of the room. Immediately there was a girl striding toward him. “Hi,” she said in a half-pert tone. It was early evening; Whittaker wasn’t big money. She hadn’t even brought along a bottle of champagne to hock. “What’re you in the mood for?”
“I...” He scratched his beard, leaned back, looked at the shadowy girl in the red lights. “I don’t know. I’m all right. Thanks.” She was gone before he knew it. He wiped a layer of sweat from his brow, opened his jacket, and wondered what the fuck was keeping him from putting a gun in his mouth. Christ, his sidearm was in the rental. Right across the street. He could do himself there in the car, no point in going up to his room. There’s a story for the fellas back at work. Whittaker finally cashed out. What took him so long? He winced at imagined eulogies punctuated by hollow laughter. Fuck that. He knew why he always came out here.
Leaving the bar without a drink or a dance, Whittaker got into the rental car. Like the casino and the strip joint, it smelled of stale cigarettes, and the A/C blew a hot wind across his eyes. He pulled out of the lot and headed north. A/C never got any better; he shut it off and rolled down the windows, cradling his pistol in his lap.
Away from everything, he got off the highway and felt out a spot that seemed right; he stopped and inhaled the air. It was just beginning to grow dark. He reached under the passenger seat for the bottle of Myers Dark he’d kept there. He didn’t need it in order to go through with this. It would just be nice. Getting out of the car, he sat himself on the hood. The door popped behind him—he turned, certain he’d shut it, and a dark blur snatched the gun from his hand. He felt it against his temple and that feeling was suddenly the last thing in the world he wanted.
Empire's End Page 23
