Desert Angels

by George P. Saunders

  He stood up, wincing, holding his stomach. Weaponless, he figured with some amusement that if push came to shove he would simply throw up on any adversary that cared to tangle with him.

  The sand quieted.

  And Mathias could see the giant figure before him.

  His eyes closed in resigned misery.

  It was the Growler.

  Time to kick the good doctor yet again; Mathias felt somehow positive that this was why the Maddog leader was here. Certainly not to pay him a friendly, bedside visit. Or to apologize for roughing him up earlier. He couldn't quite crystallize that kind of image in his head.

  Sorry I had to pound you shitless earlier, doc; just one of those things. Don't know what came over me. Can't say I won't do it again, but right now, you're safe. Hope there's no hard feelings. Let's do lunch. Sure. Let's do.

  Mathias watched the Growler grow larger – and blacker.

  For just a moment, the air turned frigid; Mathias shuddered. There was something wrong with the Growler –

  The Growler's eyes, glowing now, red and hot, bore into Mathias with an intelligence and malevolence that had otherwise been almost comfortably lacking in the Growler before. These eyes, on this Growler, were cruel and merciless and knowing. And somehow irresistible. Mathias had a sudden instinct to run and cry and call for momma. But again, good intents and purposes were obstructed by puke and spit and general malaise. Mathias reluctantly held his ground. Only a choked groan escaped his bloodstained lips, as vomit bubbled and dripped out; something about the way the Growler was looking at him now prevented him from blowing chow happily into the air.

  When the Growler spoke, it was with a voice both articulate and attractive – two oxymoronic descriptions that could never apply, in any sense, to the Growler Mathias had known just a few hours earlier.

  "Excellent decision, doctor," the Growler said smoothly, making Mathias feel like he was being massaged. Or stroked. "I congratulate you. The airbase will be useful."

  Mathias just stared, his mind a registered blank.

  "But you're going to need help," the Growler said quietly. Comfortingly.

  Mathias noticed in that instance that all pain had vanished. It was an alien sensation, one that was almost disconcerting at first. A long time ago, when he had been a doctor, he was accustomed to reading medical journals. He distantly recalled cases of limbs being removed surgically and their owners' occasional complaints that, notwithstanding their absence, the leg or arm now detached still itched or ached. When these patients had tried to rub or scratch the afflicted area, they were suddenly reminded of the parting of ways some time earlier. It was not so much that they needed to scratch the arm or leg in question; it was that they expected to find these appendages still attached, still alive and well; in short, still there. It was, Mathias realized, what he was waiting for; the expected return of pain. He waited a few seconds, knowing that the rush of familiar agony would slam into him anytime now. Perhaps that was the way pain liked to work, he thought suspiciously; let you feel good for a minute then sneak up on you and – pow.

  Thought I was gone, eh, big boy? Well, guess again. Dying's a bitch, remember?

  Kick ass.

  But no pain returned.

  Mathias looked at the renovated Growler. With love.

  The Growler had stopped the pain. Mathias knew it, as surely as he knew that innumerable cancers were happily metastasizing throughout his body, killing him slowly. Except now, he didn't care; as successful as that microscopic invasion may inevitably be, at least for now, it was being conducted sans the fusion of agony and fury.

  He almost wet himself in happiness.

  He did not even notice that he had begun masturbating. The Growler did, though, and smiled some more.

  Then, the sand behind Mathias began to move. He turned, unsure of whether it was entirely right to give his back to his new god or not, but intensely curious nevertheless. His hand remained clutched and committed to his hard-on, though to what eventual purpose was beyond Mathias' immediate comprehension.

  The sand began to roll like waves on a sea; gently, as if a twilight breeze was just passing over it. A hand surfaced from the ground, a silhouette of twitching energy that gave Mathias another wave of nausea. Other hands reached upward out of the sand, clawing in desperation for freedom.

  Numerous body functions failed him simultaneously – including his unfamiliar and new-found erection. Shaking, smelling and wet, Mathias suddenly prayed for the return of pain, prayed for the familiar demons of his protracted demise, prayed for the end to come swiftly and mercifully; prayed for this nightmare that somehow felt so good to be over.

  Because, you see, the dead were dead and were supposed to stay dead.

  Knees that were pain-free collapsed beneath him. Yet his eyes remained transfixed, rooted to the churning, restless sands before him. Watching. Without pain. In disbelief.

  Kick ass.

  As the dead began to rise.

  * * *

  The corpses pulled themselves out of the sand, slowly, unsurely, with a kind of stilted, childish awkwardness. The decomposed bodies of the soldiers were silent, except for the tattered, fetid rustle of their torn uniforms, rotting from exposure and age. Long ago, these individuals could have conceivably considered themselves among the lucky few; the nearby blast, while being just distant enough to spare them instant vaporization, had nevertheless roasted their lungs, killing them immediately where they stood. Time and nature had long ago buried the bodies, leaving nothing topside as evidence of their existence save the crumbling, dilapidated ruins of the airbase just a few thousand yards away. Those ruins alone would serve as nameless tombstones to the hundreds of bodies buried around them. On this night, however, the disentombed soldiers were, as they say, plumb out of luck; their purpose for being awakened presumably to pursue some unholy crusade, the outcome of which they would have no control in either preventing or promoting. Mathias could count ten of them within a few yards of where he was kneeling. Paying homage, it seemed.

  And then the eyes of the dead turned toward him, staring and vacant yet horribly alert; tortured, Mathias thought surely, blackmailed into a kind of half-life by the Growler. Mathias felt sure that he could see pain in each face; how could he not? Being torn from the peaceful bliss of an unending sleep, he thought, was probably not the grooviest feeling in the world.

  Mathias almost felt pity for them all. But only almost.

  Until he remembered what they were – and who controlled them.

  "Your army, baby," the Growler spoke silkily, now suddenly behind Mathias with a hand on his shoulder.

  "Mine?" Mathias replied limply, the hand feeling warm and friendly and promising.

  Baby? He suddenly felt small and ant-like.

  "To command," the Growler responded, almost laughing. "With my help, of course."

  Of course, Mathias thought automatically. An army of the living dead. Mathias' terror vanished abruptly as the full impact of the Growler's statement rammed itself into his dying brain. No one could destroy them now. Not even Big Jack, the Edenite Hack!

  Baby? Baby?

  And suddenly, he felt like a baby – like the Growler said. He was crying now. Tears of joy and gratitude. The god of Maddogs, The Father, had come down and appeared to him – and was delivering to him the world. He had called him "baby"; sure, why not, Mathias thought cheerfully. What else could a father call his son? It was the only logical conclusion Mathias could satisfy himself with; in truth, all sense of logic had eluded him permanently as madness, cool and brilliant and simple, turned his mind into foggy marshland.

  Out of that murky world stepped the zombies of victory.

  There were more than ten of them, Mathias could see moments later. From out of the dark, they came, marching silently past him, toward the Maddog encampment. Twenty, thirty, forty; Mathias stopped counting. The Growler walked with Mathias back to the campsite of the Maddogs, as growls and screams of surprise and terror began to fill t
he air. Mathias was sympathetic; after all, it had taken him nearly a minute to accept the everyday premise of dead men coming back to life. Extreme tolerance would have to be observed in dealing with those as yet still unenlightened.

  He acted quickly, his pain-free megalomania giving him the confidence of kings, breaking through the silent ranks of the zombie army and positioning himself on top of a battle worn jeep. The camp fire glow made his face appear ethereal. So captivating was he that many of the Maddogs present shut up fast. Mathias looked to the Growler, who was watching him with pride.

  The pride of a father.

  Mathias had never known such happiness before.

  I'll be a good baby, Mathias said with his eyes to the Growler. Promise, with a cherry on top.

  The Growler sounded pleased. "I know."

  Mathias put up his arms, (arms without pain) and spoke.

  "They're our friends!" he yelled, trying to calm the frightened mutants, who were not so quick as he to grasp the advantages before them all. Nay, the love, he quickly amended.

  "The General has found them to fight with us!"

  The Maddogs quieted, growing slowly accustomed to the corpses, unmoving now, their eyes lava beacons of crimson. With the mention of fighting, interest prevailed over fear and unease.

  "Death to Dr. Calisto!" Mathias howled in rapture, deciding that further explanation was extraneous.

  His instincts proved correct; the death chant was repeated once, then yelled, then roared.

  Gradually, the Maddog encampment became a screaming gibbering, uncontrolled mass of happy, collective mutant enthusiasm. If the Growler was truly inspired, then that inspiration had been infectious, spreading out from him to Mathias and from him to every gleeful Maddog in town. Braver Maddogs approached the silent sentinels of the dead, patting them on the back, holding hands, laughing; trying to make their new allies feel like kin.

  The corpses did not respond further than staring directly ahead, as if oblivious to any attention given them, friendly or otherwise.

  Mathias did not question what he knew to be impossible. Today, in this world, the dead walked. Fine by him. The Old Growler was gone forever; how, Mathias did not care. What took his place, his body – and most importantly – his ability, was enormously more attractive to Mathias than what the original version could ever have offered. The New Growler showed promise – and resourcefulness. The New Growler could take away pain.

  The New Growler could awaken the dead.

  "Long live the General," Mathias yelled over the deafening cacophony of noise.

  Mathias had never believed in heaven – before the War – or after. Now he did. For the first time since the New Growler had spoken to him, Mathias turned his face to God and smiled.

  With the holy conviction of a joyful newly converted apostate, he knew that some serious ass was going to finally get kicked.

  TWELVE – THE UNINVITED

  Walter had never remembered flying so high before.

  Only a few feet below the perpetual sooty envelope of poison that never dissipated, she could see a hundred miles in all directions. To the south, the burned, skeletal remains of Laura's compound lay black and twisted and still, as of a day ago, forever unattractive to the surviving Stiffers that had pursued her destruction so patiently, at last to no avail. To the far west, and only barely visible on the horizon, were the blasted, ruptured remains of Las Vegas. Broken spires of glass and marble clawed their melted ruins skyward – unnoticed shrines and monuments to Mankind's final gamble – now forever lost and forgotten. To the east spanned an immense vastness of desolation that promised to continue eternally, boasting only sand and dust and radioactive ash. Perhaps, Walter imagined from the geography she had learned through Jack's maps, after two or three hundred miles of the same scenery, a city would crop up; St. George, probably, in Utah – smaller than Vegas, but just as extinct. Metropolitan graveyards, like thousands of others littering the globe, their mourners would be few in number. Windblown relics belonging to a civilization that flared brightly for a few eons then flickered out completely, these mighty ruins would now serve an elite type of parasite; the common cockroach.

  The gutted ruin of every city on earth now teemed with millions of this enduring life form. Had it the understanding or the pride, or the opportunity to both, any cockroach would gloat over its hundred million year supremacy over humanity. Even in this brutalized environment of burned-out fission, the cockroach

  would toast in the next twenty millennium with the same resilience that its prehistoric ancestor had done while watching the giant reptiles of the Jurassic and Triassic age mire themselves in tar 65 million years earlier; thus emerging victorious yet again over the reigning civilization of the day. In this much later age, the roach had seen Man come and go; perhaps, at a later date, Man would come and go again, then pass forever into oblivion.

  It was all the same to Mr. Roach, Walter thought.

  The roach alone would survive; and it alone, without rancor or despair over the current state of affairs in the world, could continue the busy process of living, appreciating Man's great, swollen, charcoaled cities for what they really were; tremendous real estate acquisitions. Home to millions of roachies, all swarming happily ever after.

  Walter found this idea rather hilarious, though she doubted whether Jack or Laura would share her humor on this issue. She did not have time to consider the matter further. As she turned her attention northward, toward Eden, her bemused daydreaming abruptly gave way to grave concern.

  They were a considerable distance from Eden - perhaps a two day trek at least - but Walter was not happy in identifying Maddogs milling around a few half-buried structures surrounded by fencing. Her altitude was too great to determine more detail than this, but that they were Maddogs was unmistakable. She could smell them from here, their sickness, their hate, their desperation. She wondered what they were up to this time, convinced that whatever it was had some dismal bearing on Eden's well-being.

  Had she the time, Walter would have nosed down for a bit of spying on the Maddogs. But her search was for other things at the moment. She would not be distracted.

  There were no Light Clouds to be seen below. And so she wondered, not for the first time, if the Light Clouds were phenomena that were strictly earthbound. In all the times she had ever witnessed a Light Cloud appearance, the strange vapor never strayed far from the sands. Yet to assume that their stomping grounds were restricted to land only put an unbelievable limitation on the Light Clouds power, of which, Walter now believed, must be considerable. Still, she could not rule out the possibility that this was indeed the case; as matters stood now, she knew less than nothing about the glowing lights that Jack claimed he now understood.

  Walter regarded the sky above her. She had never entered the brown swirling overcast before; and it was not because she was fearful of excessive exposure to radiation. Jack had long ago discovered that Walter was somehow impervious to radioactivity; an impossibility, of course, but like so many other things in this world reborn, irrefutable. Jack preferred to think about Walter's immunity as little as possible. Walter never thought about it at all, in fact, did not even consider it terribly important.

  She ascended into the noxious cloud cover determined to get above it if she could. A thousand feet later and she entered a brilliant zone of gold and turquoise; for the first time ever, Walter was seeing a blue sky and a sun. She had witnessed such things on television, in Jack's video movies and in the many books she read while Jack was asleep. She could imagine what they looked like, how a warm sun against her body felt, the joy of flying against the backdrop of rich blue sky. But nothing could have prepared her for the actual experience of discovery; of seeing what there was above the churning furnace of filth and squalor that covered a world equally violent below.

  Walter soared - on this rare occasion - actually grateful for the avian body she possessed that allowed her to embrace so much splendor. If only Jack and Laura could see this,
she thought drunkenly; but, of course, they had, she remembered a split second later. This was the way the world used to be. Full of blue skies and suns; full of warmth and freedom. Full of life and beauty.

  And, of course, she was sad again. Sad for Jack and Laura and Gleeson and Brandon and Jim and Gus and the other Edenites. Sad for the Maddogs, too. This, Walter realized, surveying the slow curve of blue drifting over the cloud bank horizon then the sun above, had been taken away from them. Perhaps, never to be returned. A cruel, irreversible form of capital punishment levied against Man by a vengeful god – or an uncaring universe.

  So captivated was she by these dismal thoughts that Walter didn't notice the Light Cloud maneuvering itself silently behind her, 30,000 feet above sea level.

  * * *

  The blue sky abruptly vanished.

  Taking its place was a black void, cluttered with brilliant points of light. The lights were moving in a roughly circular motion, keeping pace with one another, never colliding, reminding Walter of ants that trafficked themselves so efficiently to and from an anthill. Like those ants, these lights never interfered with or impeded the motion of their respective trajectories. The collision of rare and remote quasars seemed more probable than these motivated light entities crashing into one another. Walter thought that the lights seemed almost alive.

  The void stretched into infinity, as did the lights themselves. Walter noted that the temperature in this blackness was rather comfortable; not warm, not hot, just neutral. She did not feel fear because she knew where she was.

  Somehow, she knew.

  And in that moment, she came to understand something more about the Light Clouds.

  They were good.

  It was all the communication she needed from them. Here, in this void, inside one of the clouds, she could discern an array of emotions ranging from love, to kindness, to compassion. The cloud was filled with benevolence.