Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  Fluid dynamics, she thought, though she did not know the exact meaning of the phrase, only that it seemed appropriate, and then she recalled a passage from some historical novel she’d once read -- she could no longer remember the title -- and how it had described the once plentiful buffalo of the American Great Plains: vast herds of the shaggy beasts stretching from horizon to horizon, so densely crowded that all the protagonist could see was their great black backs. Just the heavens and the buffalo.

  She had expected a lot of deadheads but this was a Biblical flood.

  “Why haven’t they flattened this place?” Soma asked, lowering the binoculars. “A ditch and a couple of chain-link fences shouldn’t stop that!”

  Perry held out his hand. She passed the binoculars back to him and he jerked them up to his face. He zoomed around for a moment and then exclaimed, “Oh, you won’t believe this!”

  He lowered the binoculars and pointed.

  The streets below were all but deserted. Everyone, it seemed, had wisely retreated indoors. Only two men dared to face the monstrous herd. They were down near the main gates, tiny with distance: one dressed in red, the other in black.

  “Who is it?” Soma asked.

  “Who do you think it is?”

  Perry passed her the binoculars and she brought them to her eyes. She found herself looking at one of the guard towers, blurry with magnification. She scowled, scanned around until she brought the figures into view, then adjusted the focus.

  The man in black was turned so that his face was in profile. It was Sarge, attired in priestly garb. He was standing beside the man in red, who could be but one man, though his back was to her and she could not see his face to confirm it. Baphomet, the spiritual leader of the community, was kneeling in the center of the pavement, head down, arms held out and up in an attitude of fervent prayer. Fifty yards away, the sea of the dead was parting and flowing around the compound as if an invisible wedge had been set down in its path, diverting it harmlessly to either side of the facility.

  Soma lowered the binoculars. She observed the scene with her own eyes for a moment, then cocked her head to one side, listening. “It’s so quiet,” she said.

  “I know.”

  Zombies were not stealthy creatures. They were blunderers, crude pack hunters. They moaned and snarled, yelped and howled. The combined cries of the fantastic horde should be shaking the complex to its very foundations, yet the air was improbably still. The only sound was the low rumble of the herd’s passage, more of a sensation than a sound, like the vibration of a passing train felt at a distance late at night.

  Soma switched the binoculars to one hand and placed her palm against the wall of the building. Yes, she could feel the cool stone very subtle vibrating beneath her hand.

  Perry was leaning over the bannister, staring down into the street below. “Do you think he’s doing it?” he said. “You know… with his mind? The same way he projected those images into our brains when we were in his office? He must be. That’s the only explanation for why that herd isn’t tearing this place apart.”

  Soma shook her head. It seemed impossible, and yet it was happening right there in front of her. She was seeing it with her own two eyes. She felt lightheaded and a little crazed.

  “It’s unbelievable,” she said.

  “It’s terrifying,” Perry said. He turned suddenly away, as if he couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. His eyes were bulging, his face gaunt. The Israelites must have looked like that when Moses parted the Red Sea, she thought.

  How could such power be anything but divine in nature, she wondered, and then she looked up at the sky and there was a very tiny part of her brain that expected to see the face of God, or at the very least a brilliant shaft of light angling down upon the man in the red robe.

  But the sky was empty save a few clouds, tinted candy pink by the rising sun. There was not even a star winking fitfully overhead.

  They watched for a long time, passing the binoculars back and forth when one or the other desired a closer look at something. Soma noted that the guard towers were unmanned, and no one dared venture onto the streets. The only people down on the ground were Sarge and Baphomet. Sarge shifted around from time to time, looking out at the herd or up at the sky, and once back over his shoulder, as if he thought he’d heard something sneaking up behind him (she’d be paranoid, too, she thought, if she was standing that close to the herd), but Baphomet did not move an inch the entire time. He did not even lower his arms, a feat they both agreed was all but impossible, even for a zombie. They watched until amazement dimmed to curiosity and curiosity to tedium and then they returned inside.

  “You want to go down and have a closer look?” Perry asked.

  “Do you think that’s safe?” Soma asked, looking through her bags for a clean outfit. “What if we disturb Baphomet and he loses control of the herd? Or we provoke one of the deadheads and it causes a frenzy?”

  “No one said we had to stay inside,” Perry replied, but he didn’t press the issue

  In truth, it probably was safe to go outside. If it were dangerous, someone would have warned them to stay in their suite. But she didn’t want to take that chance. A herd that size could level the place. Besides, she had seen all she cared to see from the balcony. Awe was a short-lived emotion.

  “You still want to leave when the herd has passed?” Perry asked. He looked pleased when she nodded yes.

  They freshened up as best they could without running water, changed into clean clothes and had an early lunch. There was still plenty of rabbit left in the cooler, and though it was beginning to smell a little ripe, Soma was too hungry to care. They hadn’t eaten in two days and the hunger was becoming too painful to ignore any longer.

  The red fog engulfed her the moment the raw flesh parted between her teeth.

  It claimed her with terrifying swiftness, tearing her away from reality even as she braced her mind against it. She had time to marvel at the power of the fugue, and to wonder if it was due to the proximity of the herd, and then she was gone.

  It was as if she had been swept away by the churning waters of a storm whipped sea, a lost sailor tossed by the violent currents of a brutal maelstrom.

  Lost, but not alone.

  There were others in that murky abyss. She felt herself surrounded by a thousand other damned souls. A million. Millions upon millions. They buffeted against her violently, revolved around her like rapidly orbiting satellites. From time to time one of the nearer passing souls would sense her and reach out to her, or she to them, but the churning tides tore them apart again before any meaningful contact could be made.

  There was no light save a dim vermillion glow, no sense of up or down, no time, only the sea and those lost in it.

  Nandi, she thought. And then she thought, Aishani!

  She opened her eyes and found herself looking at the ceiling of their suite. There were bits of chewed flesh in her mouth, and her belly was achingly full. The hunger, mercifully, had receded to a dim and sullen throb.

  The ottoman was turned on its side beside her. She must have tripped over it while she was feeding. Pain in her back and shoulder confirmed the theory when she tried to sit up. Groaning, she pushed herself away from the floor.

  “Perry?” she croaked. She nearly choked on a piece of masticated flesh and spat it from her mouth impatiently. “Perry?”

  For a moment, she feared he had wandered out onto the balcony and tumbled over the bannister. Had they closed the door before eating? She wasn’t sure. But then she saw him squatting over in the corner of the room, still feeding, and sighed in relief.

  She rose haltingly, wincing at the pain in her back.

  “Perry,” she said, limping toward him.

  Cheeks smeared with blood, his gray eyes twitched toward her. His mustache curled in a snarl. There was no intelligence in his gaze, just animal instinct.

  Best leave him alone until he comes back, she thought, and she busied herself cleaning up the mess they
had made. She stood the ottoman on its legs, scooped up the bones and hunks of rabbit meat they’d strewn across the floor, taking them into the kitchen and dropping them into the garbage can. When she returned, Perry was still lost in the fugue state that accompanied the feeding. She sat on the couch and watched him anxiously.

  His jaws worked slowly, mechanically. His eyes twitched in their sockets, reminding her of the way cats will scan their surroundings as they eat, ready to spring into a ball of flying claws if anything threatens to make off with their repast. He shifted once and made a plaintive mewling sound, and then he brought the rabbit carcass to his mouth and tore off another big bite.

  After a few minutes, he dropped the mangled rabbit to the floor, jaws going slack. His eyelids fluttered. He looked at her and slowly rose. “Soma?” he said hoarsely.

  Soma smiled. “Welcome back.”

  “How long?”

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “Is the herd still out there?”

  She looked toward the balcony. “I’m sure it is. I haven’t checked.”

  “I could feel them in the haze,” he said. He hooked some chewed meat from his mouth with his finger. “I think Jake was right about that collective consciousness thing, or whatever it was he called it. I could feel them when I was feeding, all those people.”

  “It’s more like a hive mind, I think,” Soma said. “Like in the science fiction novels. I think Jung was trying to describe how different species share common experiences, a collective memory bank. This is like some kind of telepathic link.”

  “So you saw the same thing?” Perry asked.

  “I saw them, too,” she said. “It felt like I was drowning in a sea of souls. There were millions of people floating all around me, but I couldn’t communicate with any of them. I couldn’t remember how to speak, or that there was such a thing as speaking. I had lost all higher reasoning, all sense of myself as a person. I was just this… helpless, voiceless witness.”

  Perry nodded. “It’s horrible. It’s like that every time and I hate it.”

  “It seemed stronger this time, though,” Soma said. “There were more people there, in the dream sea, the collective, whatever you want to call it.”

  “The herd,” Perry said. “I wonder if it’s still out there. You want to go outside and look?”

  She didn’t but she shrugged and nodded anyway. Perry grabbed the binoculars from his backpack and they stepped out onto the balcony.

  A warm breeze enfolded them, ripe with the stench of the undead, a sweetly corrupt, earthy odor. The sun was dangling low from the rafters of the heavens, a bright golden disc, not yet ruddied by its descent to the horizon.

  “Looks like it’s about five PM,” Perry said. “It was noon or a little after when we started eating. We were out of it for at least four or five hours.”

  That, in and of itself, was frightening enough.

  But for Sarge and the red robed figure, the avenue below was still deserted. Sarge was standing with his back to them. Baphomet, at last, had shifted position. The red robed man was crouched on all fours now, dog-like, head hanging down, as if he had tapped his last reserves of strength and was near to collapse. Beyond the two men, the herd continued to flow slowly past the compound, though it was not nearly as dense as it had been that morning. Patches of green could be seen between the mindless wayfarers. The herd was even thinner in the distance, the landscape green-dotted-black rather than black with speckles of green.

  Binoculars to his eyes, Perry said, “I’d say that’s the tail end of the herd. They’re spread really thin compared to this morning. They’ll probably be gone by midnight.”

  “And then we can leave,” Soma said, gazing down at the figure in red.

  “If they let us,” Perry said, lowering the binoculars.

  “Oh, I think they’ll let us leave,” Soma said.

  And she did. The real question was, could the preacher really see the future? And if he could, which of them would not be coming back?

  Perry would never return here -- didn’t matter what her fate was. If something were to happen to her, Siloam was the last place he’d return.

  She went to Perry, put her arms around his waist and laid her forehead against his back.

  “Let’s go in,” she said.

  44

  “Run!” Perry gasped, as Soma tried to arrest the bobbing and spinning of his upside-down body. Cans rattled and bottles clanked as the trap Perry had sprung set off the crude alarm system strung throughout the forest. “Go on!” Perry said, talking rapidly, almost babbling, in his panic. “If your family comes, I’ll tell them you’re with me. They won’t hurt me if they know we’re together. If it’s not your family, they won’t care what I have to say. They’ll just start shooting. Now go! Hurry! There’s no need for both of us to get caught!” All this he said as he hung upside down from the tree spring trap.

  Soma gazed up at the rope that encircled his ankle. It was stretched taut between a medium-sized tree limb and Perry’s leg. It wasn’t a particularly thick limb, but it looked sturdy. She didn’t think it would break anytime soon, even if she climbed onto Perry and added her weight to his. She had already tried tugging on him and barely disturbed the leaves in the bough above. And the rope was one of those nylon cords, about as thick as her thumb. Too high to reach with the knife. She would have to shoot the rope. Shoot it or climb the tree and cut him loose.

  Fumbling with the pistol at her hip, Soma said, “Just relax. I’m going to shoot the rope.”

  Perry gawped at her, then curled his torso so he could see the rope he was dangling from. He fell back. “All right,” he panted. “Go ahead and give it a try. But you hear anyone coming, anyone at all, you run back to the truck and haul ass out of here, got it? Wait for me behind that big red barn we passed. If I’m not there by daybreak, drive back to Siloam.”

  Soma nodded, flicking off the safety of the Smith & Wesson. She had no intention of deserting Perry. She was only humoring him. Whatever happened happened; they would share the same fate.

  She lifted the pistol over her head and sighted down the barrel, one eye squeezed shut, tongue sticking out the side of her mouth. She wished she’d practiced a little more with the pistol. The rope looked terribly thin now and it was shifting back and forth as Perry’s body swung from it, creaking quietly. Please, God, she prayed, moving her index finger to the trigger, let me make this shot!

  She was not ordinarily a praying woman, but as the saying went: there were no atheists in foxholes. And the maxim held true for wilderness booby-trap situations, too.

  God, if You’re there, a little help would be very much appreciated!

  “Try not to shoot my foot,” Perry said anxiously.

  “Hush,” she said, hand twitching. “You’re making me nervous.”

  They hadn’t even seen the trap. A layer of fallen leaves had concealed it. Perry had caught his foot in the noose, and before either of them knew what was happening, the snare had sprung and whipped him violently off his feet. She wouldn’t have believed such traps existed outside of cheesy summer camp movies, but they did, and looking at him now, it was obvious they worked rather well. Perry rotated slowly at the end of the rope, face turning black as the sludgy ichor that ran through his veins -- zombie blood -- pooled in his head, which was now the lowest part of his body. His eyes bulged from the pressure of the fluids. His cheeks had puffed out. His cowboy hat lay on the ground beneath his head.

  “Take your time,” Perry said, just as she was about to pull the trigger.

  “Be quiet!” she exclaimed, lowering the pistol in exasperation.

  “Okay! Okay! Sorry!”

  Less than eight hours ago, they had forsaken the security of Siloam and driven north, here, to her father’s farm at Brookville Lake, to find her family or learn what end they’d come to. Despite their paranoia, the people of Siloam had allowed Soma and Perry to leave without objection. True to Baphomet’s promise, Sarge had returned Perry’s weapo
ns and the F-150 as soon as the herd had safely passed the compound. He had even wished them luck, and reiterated his assurances that both of them would be welcome should they ever decide to return. It made Soma doubly hesitant to leave, and she second-guessed herself all the way to her father’s home.

  Perry had no such ambivalence and did not waste any time loading the Ford and getting them away from the fortified community. She pretended she did not notice his anxious glances toward the guard towers, which were manned again, as he drove tensely toward the gates. He glanced furtively toward the roofs of the buildings, too, as though he expected to see snipers stationed there, ready to blow their brains out at any moment. The muscles in his neck and shoulders did not unknot until they had crossed the wooden drawbridge and the gate of the Resurrect community was gliding slowly shut behind them. The men who operated the drawbridge waved to them as they departed, but only Soma waved back. Perry muttered something under his breath, eyes flicking back and forth between the road and the rear view mirror. She didn’t catch the words, but the sentiment was all too clear: good riddance.

  The field to either side of them was trampled flat by the passage of the herd, the grass already yellowing in the heat of the late summer sun. There were a few laggards trailing after the herd, zombies whose physical handicaps prevented them from keeping up with their brethren, but that was probably to their benefit. The meadow was littered with the grisly remains of deadheads who had been attacked and devoured by the other members of the herd. In the face of starvation, zombies often fell upon and consumed their weak or injured. Soma had seen it happen countless times before, had participated in such attacks herself before she awakened. The memories were hazy but utterly horrific. (The way they screamed as their pack mates ripped them apart!) Their suffering did not end until their attackers consumed the brains, which was often the last thing the predators devoured. There were little piles of bones all throughout the yellowing grass. The air shimmered with clouds of dining insects. It was a great relief when Perry finally turned onto the highway and accelerated away.