Then they spotted some deadheads shuffling along the side of the road, and she reconsidered. They were stooped, colorless, their clothes hanging in tatters. Perry slowed and steered to the opposite side of the road in case they lunged at the vehicle, but none of them seemed very interested in them.
Soma observed the zombies intently as they drove past. There were three: two males and a female. They didn’t so much as glance up at the Ford as it rumbled past. They were too far gone. Their limbs were like dried sticks. Their flesh was dark and withered, like the flesh of vegetables that had shriveled in the sun. Perhaps they couldn’t raise their heads.
“There’ll be a lot more of them soon,” Perry said.
And he was right. As they neared the town of Harrisburg, the number of deadheads they saw in the fields and alongside the road increased exponentially. Many of them quickened at the sound of the truck’s engine and gave chase, though most were too far away, or too slow, to pose any danger to them. Perry was only forced to evade the undead twice: a small herd trudging around in the center of the highway, and a solitary figure that sprang headlong at the Ford from the side of the road, heedless of life and limb.
“Crazy bugger,” Perry said through tight lips as he whipped the truck around the reckless revenant.
The howling deadhead pin-wheeled its arms, swiping at the truck as the backwash of the vehicle’s passage blew through its ragged clothing.
“Horrible,” Soma muttered, watching the crazed dead man recede behind them.
The population of the restless dead reached its apex as the small city of Harrisburg passed by on their right – from a distance, they looked like a herd of buffalo -- and then it began to dwindle rapidly. As Perry had said, the unthinking dead congregated in the cities just as they had when they were alive. They were few and far between out in the country. Fifteen minutes after the decaying homes and deserted shopping centers of Harrisburg vanished into the distance, it was as if Perry and Soma were the only two people left in the world.
They turned left onto a two-lane blacktop, headed east. The road was ruler straight, a gray ribbon of pavement transecting the broad, flat flood plain. “This all used to be farmland,” Perry said, gesturing toward the featureless fields to either side of the road. The land was overgrown with wild grass now -- bluestem and side oats, bottlebrush and goldenrod. “Corn mostly. Some soybeans. Wheat. You’d think it would come back with no one here to harvest it, but it was all GMOs before the Phage. Couldn’t survive without manmade chemicals and fertilizer, I guess. We’ll be at the river in a few more minutes.”
There were a few abandoned vehicles alongside of the road, but nothing to hinder their progress. They passed a small brick church, a farmhouse with a big whitewashed barn behind it. Then, without fanfare, they entered the village of Shawneetown. There was a water tower and grocery store and a handful of small, whitewashed houses, but little else of interest aside from a monolithic brick structure that was either a high school or a factory before the Phage. It was hard to tell which it had been.
They saw only one zombie in Shawneetown, a skinny dead woman with fine blond hair slouching around the parking lot of a Family Dollar. She shuffled her bare feet across the littered tarmac, heedless of the broken glass, dragging what appeared to be a large stuffed animal behind her. The toy, a big pink Valentine’s bear, was discolored and leaking stuffing from its widening seams, but Soma was sadly moved by the sight, and couldn’t help but wonder who had given the bear to the woman. He must have been very special for her corpse to drag it through eternity with her.
Ten minutes after the town sank into the distance behind them, wilderness closed around the road. They drove through sun-dappled shadow until they spotted the gray arches of the bridge. The woods thinned out as they neared the crossing so that they could see a glittering blue section of the meandering river and the wooded land on the far side of the waterway. The bridge was a dark gray tied arch structure that would have looked right at home in sooty Edwardian England. Off to the south, on the western bank of the Ohio River, was an abandoned marina where sand and gravel was once transferred onto barges for transport up and down the river. Floods had demolished the buildings and loading equipment, depositing tangled mounds of driftwood upon the sloping grounds.
“There it is,” Perry said as the road angled up to the bridge.
He slowed to a stop and put the truck in park.
“Something wrong?” Soma asked nervously.
“Just being careful,” Perry said.
28
Perry reached beneath the seat and pulled out a leather binocular case. He slipped the binoculars out of the case, then opened the driver’s side door and stood up through the gap. A moment later, he returned to his seat and shut the door. “Can’t see. Angle’s wrong,” he said. “Hold these a sec?” He passed the binoculars to her, then started the engine and eased up the gradient until they could see the full length of the crossing.
It was a narrow two-lane bridge. Soma was surprised to see that the entire length of the bridge was clear of vehicles. She had expected the passage to be blocked by crashed and abandoned cars, but aside from a handful of swaying revenants, shuffling in their direction from the state of Indiana, the crossing was clear.
Perry took the binoculars and opened the door again. He stood up through the gap and surveyed their path for several minutes before returning to his seat and putting the binoculars away.
“What are you looking for?” Soma asked. “The bridge looks good to me. I’m surprised it isn’t blocked by cars or something.”
“I was checking for structural damage,” he said. “Cracks in the pavement. Any uneven sections. Bridges need a lot of maintenance and there hasn’t been any since the Phage. Some of the guardrail is missing about halfway across, and there are black marks on the pavement there. Looks like someone pushed a bunch of cars through the guardrail and into the river. But the bridge itself looks pretty intact. I don’t think it’s going to collapse underneath us if we try to cross.”
“Okay,” Soma said.
Perry took a deep breath, started the engine. Grinning at her nervously, he said, “Cross your fingers.”
Soma crossed her fingers. Both hands.
They eased forward, proceeding out and over the water until the Ohio was a glimmering blue plain fifty feet below them. Perry kept their speed to about thirty miles per hour, straddling the centerline. He noticed Soma staring down at the river nervously and said, “We won’t drown.”
She looked at him sharply.
“If the bridge collapses,” he explained. “We don’t have to breathe anymore. If we fall, just let yourself sink to the bottom and walk back out.
Soma tried to imagine that. Plummeting into the turbid river, sinking down, down, first through the clear warm currents of the upper strata, little bubbles tickling along her body, and still descending, arms outspread, down and even further down, into the chilly embrace of the river floor, blind, the water dark and dirty and cold. Then crawling along the mucky bottom until she came ashore, fishing flitting around her, little blossoms of mud expanding around her hands and knees as she shuffled along.
She couldn’t help but shudder. The image was too bizarre.
“Guess I’m not helping much,” Perry said apologetically.
“No,” she said.
About a quarter of the way across the bridge, they passed a pair of shambling zombies. It was a male and female, walking shoulder to shoulder, like lovers strolling on a moonlit beach. As they got closer, Soma realized they were cuffed at the wrists. They looked up as the Ford rumbled by, and the male took a halfhearted swipe at the driver’s side door, but he was too slow to make contact, and the truck eased by them a moment later. Both of them looked as if they had been chewed on a bit. Maybe they had chewed on each other.
Soma watched them recede, curious how they had come to be handcuffed together. Neither wore any sort of uniform.
Didn’t matter.
Further al
ong, they passed the area of the bridge where the guardrail had been smashed. The metal was mangled and scorched, with deep scrawling gouges, like claw marks, running down their length. The pavement around the gap was littered with glittering pieces of metal, plastic and glass with a crosshatching of black marks where tires had scraped across the pebbled surface of the road. Soma tried to peer over the side to see if there were any vehicles submerged in the water but Perry steered well away from the drop off.
“That makes me nervous,” he said.
Soma glanced at him. “Why?”
“Someone put a lot of effort into clearing this bridge. It makes me wonder why. What were they hoping to gain?”
“Maybe they were survivors,” Soma suggested. “A caravan of survivors, trying to make their way Home.”
Perry nodded. “That’s plausible, I suppose.” He continued to frown.
They passed a few straggling zombies, then a large group of them. Perry slowed to a crawl, as there was no way to steer around the cluster of zombies. The herd numbered at least two dozen. It spanned the bridge from rail to rail. They became agitated as the Ford eased through, howling and clawing at the body of the vehicle. “Hungry,” Soma murmured. Her door lock engaged with a clunk and she jumped. Perry cocked an eyebrow at her. “They can grab a door handle by accident,” he said. Soma stared out the window as the deadheads screamed and thumped at the glass. She felt as if she were on safari in hell. “Aw, damn!” Perry exclaimed, and then the vehicle lurched twice as the driver’s side wheels passed over the body of a zombie that had fallen beneath the front bumper.
She pretended not to hear the zombie crunching beneath the wheels.
A male zombie was trying to climb into the bed of the truck. The energetic revenant clung onto the tailgate, then determinedly drew itself up so that it was standing on the back bumper. It threw back its head and snarled in triumph. Glancing in the rear view mirror, Perry goosed the engine, dislodging their stowaway with a thud.
“I shouldn’t laugh,” Perry chuckled.
“I know,” Soma said, looking back.
“I feel bad for them,” Perry said.
“I do, too,” Soma replied.
Perry tagged another with the front bumper and the zombie went stumbling away. It bumped into a second deadhead that was trudging along near the guardrail and the second deader pitched over the side. It went twirling down to the river below, vanishing in a white spume.
They cleared the herd and Perry gave the truck a little gas. The crowd pursued them, howling and swinging their arms, but fell steadily behind them. The shadows of the bridge’s steel arches flickered through the cab as the road sloped down to solid ground, and then they were clear of the bridge, driving through another tunnel of verdant greenery. “Welcome to Indiana,” Perry said.
“My home state,” Soma said with a happy sigh.
A few minutes later, they saw the crucifixes.
29
The landscape on the far side of the bridge was hilly and thickly wooded. On the occasions that the forest withdrew, leasing them a panoramic view of their bucolic surroundings, the scenery was reminiscent of the Irish countryside, with gently sloping green knolls and rocky promontories. Though Soma had spent most of her life in Indiana and Ohio, she was unfamiliar with the region of Southwestern Indiana and watched the hills scroll past with keen interest. There were birds, vast flocks of birds wheeling in the sky. She saw deer, and even a herd of cows blithely cropping grass on the side of the road. Perry stopped and let a raccoon waddle across the highway. The native fauna was making the most of man’s fall from grace.
“It’s so pretty,” Soma commented. “Without mankind. Without us here to spoil everything.”
Then they rounded a bend and saw a woman lashed to a utility pole.
It was such a shocking sight that Perry stomped on the brake pedal. They had been travelling at fifty miles per hour, and the sudden deceleration thrust Soma against her seat belt.
“Oh my god!” Soma exclaimed.
Cursing grimly, Perry threw the truck into park.
They sat for a moment, staring in mute horror at the condemned woman.
She looked like a scarecrow, limbs withered to sticks, clothes hanging in tatters from her emaciated body. A length of wood had been nailed crossways to the utility pole about twelve feet above the ground. The woman’s arms were lashed to it with rope. She was bound around the waist and ankles as well. Her lower jaw had been removed, and her torso was pierced through with arrows, like the martyr Saint Sebastian. Affixed to the utility pole beneath her scaly feet was a wooden shingle with the following written on it in black paint:
DEVOUR NOT
THE FLESH OF THE DEAD
“What does that mean?” Soma gasped. “Was she a zombie or a living woman when they did that to her?”
“I don’t know,” Perry said.
“And… and who did that to her? Why? What did she do?”
“I don’t know. I guess she devoured the flesh of the dead.”
The woman was hanging with her head on her right shoulder. As they sat gaping at her, the condemned woman’s head twitched upright and then slowly craned in their direction. Birds had pecked out her eyes but she could hear the rumbling of the Ford’s engine. The hard plains of her face crinkled and flexed as if she were trying to communicate.
Soma let out a little squeak of surprise when the woman’s head moved. She couldn’t help it. It jumped out of her mouth before she could stifle it. She looked at Perry, and he looked at her, and she said, “Oh, Perry!”
The woman was dead but still moving.
“She’s trying to talk,” Soma said.
“I know.”
“She can think like us and she’s suffering. You can see it on her face. What’s -- what’s left of her face, I mean.”
“I know.”
Reaching across her lap, Perry took the nine-millimeter out of the glove box and unlocked the driver’s side door.
“Be careful!”
“I will.”
He rose up through the gap in the door, as he had when he surveyed the bridge. Soma heard a sharp report, and the condemned woman’s head snapped back, black ichor fanning up the utility pole. The woman shuddered and her head sank forward and Perry returned to his seat.
“I don’t care what she did,” he said. “Nobody deserves to be tortured like that.”
Clicking the safety back on, he passed her the pistol to put away. It was still faintly smoking and smelled of burnt gunpowder. Crinkling her nose, Soma put the pistol gingerly in the glove box and snapped the door shut.
“It’s so horrible,” she said. She couldn’t tear her gaze from the crucified woman. The viscous black gunk that was the woman’s blood dripped down onto the sign: grotesque punctuation.
DEVOUR NOT THE FLESH OF THE DEAD.
“Please, let’s just go.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” Perry said, shifting into drive.
They moved on. Less than a mile past the woman, they came upon another crucified figure. This time it was a male. “Oh, hell no!” Perry exclaimed. He looked furious rather than shocked.
The man was in a similar state -- jaw removed, torso pierced through with arrows -- but this victim was naked. He was a heavyset man with a jowly face and dark receding hair. At some point, either before or after his crucifixion, his persecutors had disemboweled him. His guts hung down in leathery tatters, like the ribbons of a maypole. He had worked his left arm free of the crosspiece and reached out to the Ford the moment they rolled to a stop. The miserable supplicant was blind, eyes pecked out as the woman’s had been, but he could hear the Ford’s rumbling engine, and he appealed to them for release, arm rising, hand trembling pathetically. His tattered upper lip wriggled as he tried to speak. The signboard beneath the condemned man bore a familiar sentiment: EATER OF THE DEAD. It was worded a little different, but Soma assumed the crime was the same. The condemned had eaten zombie flesh and had been crucified for it
.
“Gun,” Perry snapped, holding out his hand.
He put the crucified man out of his misery and they hurried on.
Soma was afraid they would come upon another condemned soul lashed to a utility pole, but the disemboweled man was the last they saw for a while. They drove for nearly half an hour before they saw anything unusual, and that was a message scrawled onto the retaining wall of a concrete overpass.
Perry read it aloud when they came upon it: “Baphomet is the lord of light.”
There was more graffiti on the overpass, but it was standard stuff: declarations of love, stylized gang tags, BAMF.
“Baphomet,” Soma said thoughtfully. “I think that’s the name of an angel in Christian mythology. I mean… I think that’s what it is. I don’t have a religious background. My parents were agnostics. I’ve heard it before, though. It might be from a movie or book or something. You think it had anything to do with those crucified people?”
They passed beneath the train trestle -- shadow and light.
Perry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. But his great bushy mustache was curved downwards, like a wilting fern. He looked frightened, which didn’t help her nerves much. He goosed the Ford up to fifty-five.
He didn’t speak for several minutes and then he said, “I just think… we need to get out of this area as quick as we can.” He glanced at her to gauge her mood. “That graffiti sounded religious. And those signboards. The way they were worded…”
“It sounded like some kind of religious commandment,” Soma said.
Perry nodded. “Crazy people are dangerous, and religious nuts are the most dangerous crazy people of all. My uncle was crazy like that. He…”
Perry faltered.
“What?” Soma prompted him.
He shook his head, reluctant to elucidate.
“It’s okay, Perry,” she said. “You’re not going to scare me anymore than I’m already scared.”
Soma (The Fearlanders) Page 17
