The Living Dead

by Kraus, Daniel

  “Gallery deck. 02 deck. 01 deck, main hangar deck, Second deck, third deck, fourth deck! How many underdecks is that, I ask you? And how many levels of inferno are storied to exist in Dante’s infamous underworld? Joy, joy, and revelation! Captain Page has emerged from all seven! He has completed a Long Walk of his own! For days have I spoken of the merging of humans and demons into a being greater than either of us! Now look what has come to pass—the leader of demons rising to meet the leader of men! Thank you, O Lord! The hour of unification is close at hand.”

  “What should we do, Father?” someone asked.

  Father Bill looked about in a daze that implied he was overwhelmed by spiritual input, He staggered to the railing overlooking the Pacific. Nishimura followed the priest’s gaze down the boat’s starboard side. Silver waves smashed into the fantail, while the sun made the hull look molten. Crashing, melting: it was how Nishimura imagined the chaplain’s mind.

  “Bottle,” Father Bill murmured.

  “Father?” Henstrom asked. “A bottle of what?”

  “A bottle, a bottle!”

  Henstrom passed the order to a guard, who scrambled away, leaving Father Bill with a single armed escort—so vulnerable, if only anyone besides Nishimura had the will to fight. Four tense minutes later, the guard returned with a long-necked bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water. Father Bill grasped it with his free hand, like a second crucifix. When he leaned over the railing, Nishimura saw plenty of shocked faces in the audience. Water was precious.

  Salt spray whipped Father Bill’s grinning face.

  “It was in the country of Gerasenes that Jesus climbed from his boat and came upon a man of unclean spirit, a man who could not be captured, who screamed among the tombs night and day! Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ and this man responded, ‘My name is Legion, for we are many!’” Father Bill pointed his crucifix at Captain Page. “Look! There’s Legion now! And the boat on which we sail is the boat Jesus took to Gerasenes! No longer, then, should this holy vessel be called a false name! Today, to honor the demon Legion, I rechristen this boat, Captain Page!”

  The chaplain’s arm shot downward. The bottle shattered, sparkling water within sparkling salt, brightened by blood from a palm sliced on sparkling glass. Father Bill staggered away, bleeding hand hoisted, and was helped back to Pri-Fly.

  With no additional guidance, the rest of the men did nothing. During the subsequent hours, Page’s bone-on-steel scrutch, scrutch against the flight-deck wall became the noise of anticipation. Everyone stared at everyone, none more than the Missionaries at Nishimura. He got it. Today’s mission would have to go straight through these agitated ghouls—straight through Captain Page. A bad idea in every respect, and it was up to Nishimura to make that case to the leader.

  At the designated time, he climbed to Pri-Fly for his daily mission briefing. Instead of the usual disgust, the top-level guard gave Nishimura a repeat of the Missionaries’ imploring look. Father Bill was slumped in the air boss seat, stunned eyes locked to his bleeding hand. In the mini boss seat, Henstrom’s knees bounced. A roll of gauze, apparently repudiated by the priest, had dropped to Henstrom’s feet and unspooled along the walkway like toilet paper. Nishimura traced its path.

  “You did what you had to,” Henstrom insisted. “What you had to do to lead us.”

  “Jesus did not lead by killing. He led by dying.”

  The gauze path petered out at a surprise point: the brass crucifix, propped on its broken shaft just outside the Pri-Fly chamber. Nishimura tried to make sense of it, He’d never seen it treated as less than the world’s holiest object, much less left unattended. It stood nearer to Karl Nishimura than Father Bill. Why, he could reach out, pick it up.

  “You can’t just…” Henstrom trailed off before amplifying his whine. “Father, everyone is depending on you!”

  “This isn’t something I can fix,” the chaplain muttered, “by renaming a boat.”

  Nishimura’s neck creaked as he swiveled from the crucifix to Henstrom. He’d seen this face on the O-3 before, the fat-lipped frown of anxiety that what he’d hoarded for himself might be taken away.

  “You feel like, what?” Henstrom implored, “You owe something? To the demons?”

  “Two,” Father Bill moaned. “In the chapel closet. Two demons who wished to make me a part of Them. I destroyed Them. Without thought, without heart.”

  “Then we’ll give Them…” Henstrom perked up. “We’ll give Them two back. How many men do we have now? Thirty-three? Thirty-four? Two is nothing.”

  Rising through Nishimura’s black thoughts, like mummified bodies through rotten bogs, was the image of his family, still alive, still waiting. Don’t fall apart, Saint Karl. Hold it together.

  “I couldn’t do such a thing without a—” Father Bill gasped. “A baptism. Yes, that’s it. Baptisms welcome children into a new faith. This is a new faith, isn’t it? I believe it is.” His voice sped up. “A ceremony like that would require new sacraments, of course. It would require new rites. Those would take time to prepare. Do I dare be so brazen? Is it insolence? But who else? Yes, who else? I must get to work, then, We have so little time left. Captain Page is waiting, and he’s always been an impatient man.”

  “Wonderful. Praise God.” Henstrom sounded relieved. “How can I help?”

  Father Bill rotated his hand, scrutinizing each bony, bloody finger.

  “An offering,” he said. “I think our men would gladly offer up a few pieces, don’t you?”

  Nishimura’s vision of his family shifted. Now they recoiled from him, a husband and father missing fingers, entire limbs, an eye, a nose, his ears, his lips, his tongue.

  No, he would not do that to them, He moved. A single lunge, his hand cinching around the crucifix’s staff. The holy thing was much lighter than he’d expected, and he turned and crossed the catwalk, boots clanging. He raced right past the guard, taking the ladder in two hops, and reached the nav-bridge level before he heard Henstrom’s cry.

  “Nishimura? Nishimura, get back here!”

  With limited room on the island and stealth required belowdecks, there were few opportunities to run on Big Mama—or Olympia, or Captain Page, or whatever one called this floating tomb. Nishimura stretched his limbs, racing down catwalks and taking ladders by handrails only. It felt like muscle fibers untwined and tendons tore, but it also felt free, gloriously free.

  He crashed into a web of waiting Missionaries at the meteorological level. Four grabbed hold of his clothes to stop themselves from being toppled into the ghouls below, and it was at that second, with men all over him, that Henstrom’s voice shrilled through the 1MC.

  “Missionaries! Bring Karl Nishimura to Father Bill!”

  Their handholds actually slackened from the shock of receiving so simple an order. Nishimura waited the one second it should have taken for their eyes to darken with the animal brutality he’d seen so often belowdecks. But an extra second passed, and in that beat, he saw in their eyes affirmation of shared horror, how they’d saved one another’s lives down there, even if they hadn’t liked it. Here, on the eve of something even the devout could tell was going to be bad, they were aware they’d killed dozens of the demons Father Bill venerated. To bring Nishimura before the priest might be to have all that revealed.

  Could it really be that all eight hands let go at once?

  Other sailors reached for him, but Nishimura swung the crucifix and the object’s symbolism was enough to send them reeling. He sprinted to the platform’s edge, twelve feet off the deck, and leaped, timing it just right, pushing himself from the platform with his right foot. Directly below, Captain Page reached up with green, grasping hands, following Nishimura’s arc with white saucer eyes.

  When the Missionaries went below, they first took pains to draw the ghouls elsewhere, Today, there were ten waiting for him, not counting Captain Page, When Nishimura landed on one, the ghoul’s legs snapped the wrong way at the knees, folding in half and breaking Nishimu
ra’s fall. He found himself on his back atop the ghoul’s back, the ghoul’s arms popping from their sockets to reach backward, the neck bones crackling as they wrenched too far. Abruptly, the sky went dark: nine other ghouls coalescing, faces connected to the deck by ropes of drool.

  Nishimura scrabbled to his feet, swung the crucifix, struck soft matter. A standing ghoul was knocked over by a crawling ghoul, and her legs kicked out, both feet socking Nishimura in the face. He shoved blindly and ended up in possession of the ghoul’s left boot. The crucifix, the boot; one heavenly weapon, one earthly one. Nishimura pummeled with both, driving back the horde, then took off across the flight deck, avoiding two dozen other ghouls, and reached the deck-handler chamber door, which the Missionaries had modified with a lock mechanism too complicated for ghouls to figure out.

  Inside, daylight narrowed, same as other times a mission had taken him under, though this darkness had a coffin-lid finality. Without waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim red emergency lighting, he raced on, leading with crucifix and boot. Where he was going, he did not know, only down, down, down into what Father Bill called the seven levels of hell, though Nishimura had a hunch the world had capsized, and hell was above.

  ATC, CIC, Flag Cabin, refueling station, avionics shop, air filter cleaning shop, winch room, and fan room, and in every one, Henstrom’s Bring me Karl Nishimura! screeched from a 1MC. Sometimes ghouls poured from a black pocket in packs. Carrier halls were narrow, so Nishimura never had to deal with more than two ghouls at once, and the crucifix and boot sufficed to knock Them off Their feet. He might feel satisfaction if They were the demons Father Bill said. He knew They were not. They were the starving masses—literally starving, literally amassed—who only wanted the pittance the church had too long kept from Them.

  If Father Bill rallied any Missionaries to give chase, they’d have their hands full with ghouls aggravated by Henstrom’s ongoing squawks. Nishimura neither heard nor saw trace of living sailors, who had to still exist belowdecks by the hundreds, some of them armed. Over the past days, the Missionaries had cruised through the boat like cops through low-income neighborhoods. Though they regularly found leavings—food detritus, slain ghouls, areas barricaded and then abandoned—the living always scattered rather than risk being mistaken for a ghoul.

  Crew galley, marine quarters, central control, defrost room: down, down, down he went, clandestine travel so much easier when you were a single person. Soon, he was deeper inside a carrier than he’d been since he was a curious nonrate. It was freezing cold, black as premature burial; the air tasted like metal, reverberant with the low hum of nuclear reactors. Even new planets had bathrooms, and despite the peril inherent to a single exit, Nishimura found one, crept inside a toilet stall, locked it, set down the crucifix and boot, and in the frigid dark, tucked himself into a ball.

  The misery was familiar. He recalled hiding in boys’ rooms as a hectored kid. He’d felt so alone then; he felt equally alone now. Little Karl’s sole course of action had been to cry himself to sleep, and Master Chief Nishimura saw no better option, The purported coldest officer in the navy leaned his head against the basin and cried, the big, rattling, but scrupulously silent sobs he’d perfected as a child. His lungs went boggy, capable of drowning. Acid tears burned through his cheeks. His sinuses pressurized—go ahead, explode, please.

  Finally, like little Karl, he cried himself to sleep.

  And woke to a blade on his throat.

  He jerked. The blade pressed. He felt skin pop, blood trickle. He flailed in defense, but before he could find the crucifix or boot, he was forced to the floor, someone’s knees on his shoulders, a knife edge at his jugular. He looked up at a black outline, a head haloed with wild hair, backlit in dim red light, and for a second he wanted the person to go ahead and slash. But he was not little Karl anymore, was he? He had his own little ones suffering their own torments.

  “You alive?” The person’s voice was a husky rattle.

  “Who are you?” Nishimura asked.

  The reply was the dig of the knife. “Who are you?”

  “Karl Nishimura. I was up top. I ran.” He tasted blood, “Please. Who are you?”

  The blade was withdrawn. The knobby knees left his shoulders and a hand extended to help him up. It was a sign of friendship, and this time, after so many years of ignoring such overtures, he would accept. He grasped the hand, live flesh to live flesh, and was boosted. The ascent dizzied him. He had to blink and squint to confirm the person who’d helped him up was shorter than him by a head.

  “My name is Jennifer Angelys Pagán,” she said.

  You’re the Sheriff

  J. J. Jalopy was a half keg of beer who thought he was a car. He came to life one night when, at a frat party, Foxy Fiona Fry sucked on his tap. “Holy Studebaker!” she exclaimed after she’d gotten a mouthful. From that moment on, J.J. believed himself to be a shark-finned, two-toned 1957 Studebaker Silver Hawk. He suggested to the young lady that they motor off to a parking garage he knew, where they could get to know each other free from the eyes of envious frat brothers. Foxy Fiona, taken with the little guy, agreed to go along.

  She got J.J. rolling with a push, but since he was a half keg and not a Silver Hawk, the only way he could keep going was via gravity. Foxy Fiona managed to stay on her feet down the first slope, fast-trotting on the silver cylinder as if in a log-rolling contest. Alas, being tipsy, she toppled off. J.J. had no idea Fiona was rolling helplessly behind him for most of the way to Jalopy Hollow, where a dozen old auto wrecks had been dumped.

  Fiona came to an abrupt stop, cracking her skull on a junked Cadillac’s bumper bullet. When she came to, she found herself brain damaged. Though, of course, being brain damaged, she didn’t know she was brain damaged, She just knew she was in love with a half keg who thought he was a car.

  That was episode 1.

  By the time J. J.’s Jamboree had aired its third episode, it was an unqualified smash hit. The homemade animated show aired on New York City public access at one in the morning, but the segments went viral as millions of gleefully gobsmacked viewers forwarded the jolly, frenetic, tender, and offensive videos to family, friends, and enemies alike. Before the first season was over, toys were on shelves, not only of J.J. and Foxy Fiona but also the rest of Jalopy Hollow’s crew: Num-Num the Nova, who thinks she’s an alien sun; Eddie the Edsel, who thinks he’s a lobster dinner; and Vickie the Crown Vickie, who thinks she’s a sixteenth-century nunnery.

  The toys might have started the trouble, Though they, like the series itself, were marketed to adults, kids loved them. The same kids sought out the show, which they also loved, Plenty of adults did not approve. Turns out, a good excuse for saying “shit” wasn’t “But J.J. says it all the time!” J. J.’s Jamboree became a lightning rod, drawing attacks from conservative media and even being singled out on the Senate floor for its “reckless promotion of filthy words, illegal drug use, and consequence-free sex.” The show’s popularity mushroomed, thrusting creator Scotty Rolph into the spotlight.

  Rolph, by all rational measures, was not ready for prime time. You didn’t have to be a pot smoker to know this was one very high dude. Forty years old and built like a couch potato, he dressed like a college kid, forever clad in ringer tees and basketball shorts that hung past his knees. He played into every liberal stereotype, yet seemed to exit every right-wing interview the victor. Interviewers couldn’t lay a hand on him. He giggled; he rolled his eyes; he monologued incoherently about “art”; he got serious about how Num-Num represented Korean War POWs before shouting, “I’m kidding, you moron!”

  Ramsey Dylan, senior VP of content at CableCorp, purchased J. J.’s Jamboree for a reported seven figures, and the second season premiered on Hoopla, CableCorp’s top network after WWN. Dylan himself was a television iconoclast. According to numerous profiles, he’d hoped to change the world since being abused by his father’s AA counselor, and had found his medium at CableCorp, where he’d launched a suite of pro
grams that fought back against what he saw as TV’s shortcomings.

  Using the tagline “All We Ask Is That You Ask,” Dylan’s mission was to make people question the truth of what they were told, In the throwback soap opera Doctors and Deceivers, docs misdiagnosed one illness per episode. Viewers were riveted, eager to find out which one. Once a week, national weather reporter Flip Voss included one epically incorrect forecast to get viewers in the habit of seeking out a second source.

  Many who depended on misleading messages for their livelihood despised Dylan. One of them shot him outside a theater at the Sundance Film Festival, obliterating the tissue between vertebrae C-4 and C-5, putting Dylan into a power chair operated by a sip-and-puff switch. By a year later, Dylan was back at work, piloting the chair with nimble efficiency, more dedicated than ever.

  Ramsey Dylan and Scotty Rolph made funny bedfellows, but it seemed clear the courageous exec believed something deep was going on beneath the surface of J. J.’s Jamboree. With his stamp of approval on it, everyone else at CableCorp fell into line. Younger staff already had J.J. toys lining their office shelves, and older staff, at risk of being exposed as out of touch, nodded along with enthusiasm.

  Nathan Baseman fell squarely into the latter category. He’d seen exactly forty-five seconds of the show and judged it to be the stupidest thing he’d ever put in front of his eyes. If CableCorp wanted to throw money at sex-obsessed talking cars, go crazy, as long as it didn’t eat into the news budget. Dylan he respected, but he hoped never to meet Rolph, Nowadays, the odds were against it, until the moment, while sharing stale Chips Ahoy! with Zoë Shillace, he heard a strange thing from the on-air Face.

  “There’s a situation at the elevators,” he said.

  Baseman and Zoë checked it out. There was a situation, all right. The usual slow thuds of ghouls overhead had accelerated to gymnasium clatter, shoes running and skidding, bodies falling, objects clattering. Someone was up there, fighting for the elevator Baseman had disabled. The key was in his pocket, sharp against his thigh. They heard the paddling noise of something heavy on wheels followed by a plastic clicking. Could someone be trying to get the elevator doors open?