The Company of Death

by Elisa Hansen

  She lifted her face, staring hard at Ramon’s squared shoulders, her heart stuttering. What was he thinking now? That she was a coward? He needed to know it wasn’t about fear; it was about strength. Power, control. The thought of letting a blood-drinker so much as touch her filled Emily with frustrated rage, made her want to flip tables, smash windows, punch in faces. The thought of allowing one of them to taint her blood, to take from her body—

  She took a shaky breath. “Ray…”

  “What?” The muscle in his jaw twitched. “Is there more?”

  Emily winced and shook her head, though he couldn’t see it.

  The wind picked up, the way it always did when the desert air cooled before sunset. A clutter of paper blew along the sidewalk. In every town her unit cleaned, so much paper lay strewn everywhere. Newspapers, receipts, homework. Full of words, testaments to lost civilization. They scattered across artificial lawns, swirled in mini tornadoes, clung to telephone poles. Tons of other junk too, of course; trashed furniture and electronics, toppled solar panels, garbage cans rocking in the dead air that was always awake, rolling up against stripped cars like sad dogs hinting for head-rubs. But the paper outnumbered the rest exponentially. Was it because it flew farther in the gritty wind? Emily never realized people still used so much paper. It was a relic of her grandparents’ generation. But it was what remained.

  And now her LPI unit used it for kindling.

  “Thanks,” she whispered to Ramon. Turning from the fire, Emily walked through the paper and found a place to sit alone.

  Rosa’s laugh rang out from the porch two houses over. It sounded off, fake. The heels of Emily’s palms ground into her eye sockets until stars spattered across the darkness behind her lids. She kept grinding until black overtook them again.

  2

  Muerte

  According to the plaque in the entryway, the visitor’s center atop Suncrest Hill was set up as a concession to protesters who once thought the factory site in the valley ought to remain protected land. The little museum compound once made it possible for families to take picturesque hikes and feel at one with nature, so long as they didn’t look down either side of the hill; to the north, smoke continually filled the sky, and to the south, the stucco town hugged the single endless highway.

  Within its chain-link fence, the visitor’s center now made itself useful by providing the perfect vantage point for Emily’s LPI unit to stake out their target’s route. The huge nomadic commune with the Amargosa hostages would pass through the factory valley any day now. When they did, Mission 12 would officially begin.

  Inside the museum, Emily’s teammates went straight for the windowless back gallery they used as a hangout/food room. Antique portable generators powered the hot plates, and their hoard of cans and tins would be popping with botulism long before the team could eat them all.

  For the hike up the hill, Emily took rear, avoiding Rosa, not knowing what to say. Now she hovered in the gallery entryway after everyone filed in. It had been a hot day of heavy work, but she didn’t feel much like eating. Ramon settled onto the floor with the others to dine among the taxidermy dioramas of local fauna. When his gaze fell on Emily, he locked eyes with her for a long moment before looking pointedly away. Any vestiges of her appetite withered and rotted.

  Take a hint.

  She stepped backward but yelped as she collided with someone coming into the room.

  A strong, small hand grasped her waist. “If you wanted to feel me up, all you had to do was ask.”

  Emily cringed. Daisy, the drill sergeant. The title wasn’t official, they weren’t military, but as their physical trainer, she was merciless. The team had Daisy to thank for making them deadly, but that didn’t mean anyone had to like her. Emily twisted out of her grip and shook her head. “Sorry.”

  Daisy smiled and eyed Emily up and down. “Obliques are feeling a little soft there. I think we need to up your reps.”

  Emily fought the urge to roll her eyes and stepped aside. She didn’t have the energy to deal with Daisy and her Daisy smile. With her tight blond ponytail and ice-blue eyes, she looked like she could be perky, and while running their combat training, she never stopped smiling. She even smiled when she screamed. But perky wasn’t the word for it.

  Emily twitched. Today had sucked, but at least it had been Daisy-free. She turned down the hall, hoping to keep it that way.

  “Hey,” Daisy called. “Where are you going?”

  Emily paused. Where was she going? She shook her head. “Not hungry.”

  “Really?” Daisy patted her sculpted midriff. “I’m always starving after a day of killing zombies.”

  Emily made a face. “Don’t call them that.”

  The Daisy smile disappeared. “Why the fuck not?”

  Her mouth opened, but Emily only shook her head again. Where had all her words gone? It was a valid question. Other terms for them existed—the undead, the infected, the violent, the ravenous. But blood-drinkers were all those things too. How to differentiate the two types of undead without saying exactly what they consumed? No one really called them flesh-eaters, though, not without sounding like a tool. Everyone used the Z word, but it just felt too meta for Emily.

  “Zombies are like…” She made an empty gesture. “Like long-dead people that come back to life.” And only existed in myths and movies. The image of a rotting CGI arm bursting up through a soundstage grave brought a nostalgic smile to Emily’s face. The former-people she butchered every day were something else. Something immediate, real. Something never considered cheesy and fun.

  Daisy’s eyes narrowed, and she stepped up to Emily. “Seriously? Semantics? They’re fucking zombies. Deal with it.” The smile was back, so close Emily could feel Daisy’s breath on her lips. Ugh, it smelled like black licorice. “Besides, if they’re not dead, how come they get up and walk a day after you cut off their heads?”

  Despite the black licorice, Emily held her ground. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Oh yeah? And what did you mean, hmm?”

  Behind Daisy, everyone in the gallery stared at them through the doorway. Again? Heat flared across Emily’s face.

  “Well?” The Daisy smile spread, and she brushed a fingertip down Emily’s cheek. “You’re super cute, you know that?”

  Clenching her teeth, Emily pulled back. “Thanks.”

  Daisy batted her yellow eyelashes. “Oh, sweetie. Sarcasm will get you twenty extra in the morning.”

  Emily turned before Daisy could see her wince. She was exempt from drills tomorrow due to scout shift, but Daisy wouldn’t forget for next time. As Emily rounded the hall corner, she was sure the surge of conversation at her back was all about her.

  Goddamn, how deep was she going to dig this hole?

  The worst part is over. She could focus on the positive; now she stood in a place to be the best member of the team she could be. She’d had no choice, really. She needed to set herself up for success, for the good of the team and the cause they fought for. And Rosa seemed fine about stepping in? It was the right thing to do.

  So why did she feel like such an asshole?

  Being hung up on semantics wasn’t like clinging to bodily autonomy. Emily could only control so much. Maybe it was time to let that one go if it would make people like her again.

  “Zombies,” she whispered to herself. “Vampires.” Blood-drinkers had called themselves vampires long before the world learned of their existence two years ago. It made Emily want to reject the term on principle. Like they thought they were so fancy? She didn’t want to give them the credit. But if it would make Emily come off like less of a snob, then time to wave the white flag on her one-woman war on terminology.

  “Zombies. Vampires.” Her mouth felt dirty, but it was a start. “Selkies,” she added, hoping to make herself smile. It didn’t work.

  The central gallery dimmed as the last of the day disappeared beyond the tall grimy windows. Emily leaned in close to the shiny defunct water founta
in by the useless restrooms to squint at her reflection. Yes, she looked even crappier than she felt. It was an effect of the dry climate and hell, the bonfire, but what did everyone else assume about the redness in her eyes?

  She rubbed at the sooty streaks on her cheeks, then wished she hadn’t. Underneath, ten years had been added to her twenty-five. After the last two years, she should look a hundred. Though maybe if she did, Michele never would have chosen her for the assignment in the first place. Emily made the grossest possible face at herself, then pushed away from the fountain.

  Doing something useful would make her feel better. There had to be weapons to clean or stuff to put away. Anything to get Ramon’s words from the bonfire out of her head. They like women who look like you. No way he could know how deep that knife cut.

  Many people assumed Emily was white until they spent more than a minute studying her. The shape of her eyes, with their medium brown color, and her ability to tan deep golden in ten minutes were the most obvious traits she inherited from her half-Filipina mother. She had her white dad’s buxom mostly-German genes to thank for her five-foot-seven frame, but she probably got her straight, heavy hair from her mom’s side. Not that Emily had never known her mom with anything other than a bleached-out perm, like a cartoon flame on a short, stubby candle.

  Pulling her hair out of its knot as she plodded down the hall, Emily ran her fingers through the bottom inches of two-year faded eggplant color. She let it get long because she hated the thought of cutting off that last length of artificial pigment, a lingering reverence to the modern world before it was flung back into the dark ages. The foot or so of growth since remained the ashy brown her mother always dreaded. Pretty girls have blond hair.

  Emily lost count of the pots of dye she bought to cover the bleach once she first escaped her mom. The night she moved into her college dorm, a rainbow saturated her scalp. The next week, she joined the Filipino Students’ Association. And even though she didn’t look like anyone else in the club, by sophomore year, she was its vice president.

  Emily turned into the museum’s little movie theater, but she stopped just inside the door at the sight of Carlos, hunched on the wide, carpeted step seats. Though they used the semicircular room for sleeping now, once upon a time, it showed educational nature videos. A single camping lantern under the front wall’s dead screen cast long arsenic green LED fingers up the shadowy tiers, but Emily could see Carlos clearly enough. He was alone, his shoulders tight, his face in his hands. She backed to the door, but he noticed her before she could disappear.

  “Emily?” His voice was raspy. Tired? Or crying again?

  “Hey. Um.” She glanced to the hall to imply she’d give him his privacy. Lately, giving Carlos privacy served best for everyone involved. “Sorry.”

  “No.” He turned to her, his big dark eyes bloodshot and beseeching. He was Emily’s age, but she felt much older around him. Like he was perpetually the kid brother with a booboo needing a kiss-make-better. Emily supposed she might be sensitive too if she lost the love of her life a month ago. But Carlos was moody even before then. And now his grief took him to extremes, often made him useless in the field. Most of the team wondered why they kept him.

  The answer, of course, was his eyes. He had those implants. He could see miles farther than most humans. Only a couple people on the team had them, and they justified any failings. Emily got regular old laser surgery when she turned nineteen, a gift from her dad to make up for his nearsighted genes. If they had waited a couple more years, and had a few extra grand to spend, she could have had implants too. But she was just grateful caffeine withdrawals comprised her biggest physical handicap when the world ended.

  “Emily.” Carlos took a shaky breath. “Have you ever seen someone die?”

  A sharp laugh of disbelief broke past her lips. “Is that a trick question?”

  He grimaced. “No, I mean really die. The actual moment of death.”

  What? She frowned as a slide show of all the…the zombies she took out flickered across her brain. Bullets, then decap, then fire until they became ash. The moment of death had to fit in there at some point.

  She held in a sigh and crossed the carpet to settle beside Carlos. “Tough day?”

  He eyes fell to the ratty red bandanna wound between his fingers. “Bones in the shadow.” His lips barely moved.

  Emily blinked. “Huh?”

  “That’s what I saw. In the shadows on him. Bones.” The bandanna slipped to the floor as he rubbed his eyes.

  “On who?” She bent to pick it up.

  “Emily.” He grabbed her arm so abruptly the bandanna fell again. “Do you think this is it? Do you think Mission 12… It’s…”

  “Dude, calm down.” She patted his hand, then pried up his fingers. “It’s been planned out for weeks. It isn’t going to be like the Dragon Mart.”

  Carlos slumped, exhaling an exhausted joyless laugh. “That’s where I saw it.”

  “Saw what?”

  “When Alaric, when he…”

  When he fell. Off the Dragon Mart roof. A month ago. Emily didn’t see it; she was behind Carlos, covering his back, but she heard the smack. She heard the cry seize in Carlos’s throat. She could swear she felt him go cold even through their layers of black insulation. Alaric had been hanging by Michele’s hands, but Alaric wasn’t the only one they lost that day.

  “Alaric.” Carlos swallowed thickly. “And then, Michele.” His fist clenched.

  Emily bristled. “Look, it wasn’t her fault. It was them. Fast ones. They got her.”

  Michele had dropped her gun to grab Alaric’s hands. It was either let him fall or let them have a chance at getting her from behind. In the end, both happened anyway. When Emily could finally turn around, she had plenty of time to see them ripping her leader apart.

  Michele didn’t have to grab Alaric. No one made her. She could have saved herself. She should have. For the greater good of the team, Emily told herself repeatedly. But every time she imagined herself in Michele’s place, she felt her heart start to unravel from the edges, and she pummeled the thoughts away before they had the chance to drive her toward the abyss.

  “I screamed,” Carlos murmured. “She wouldn’t have noticed him falling if I didn’t scream.”

  “You reacted. You didn’t know what would happen.” Emily scooped up the bandanna and pressed it into his hands. “What could you do? Alaric was lucky, really, compared to Michele.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. I mean, it’s exactly the difference, you know?”

  “No.” Emily barely restrained a tense laugh of confusion. “Not at all.”

  “When he fell, when he hit, I saw him die. And I saw…it.”

  “The shadow bones?”

  “But not with Michele. Not with any of the others. That’s what I mean, you know?”

  “No!” Emily’s anxious laugh managed to escape her. “Carlos, what the hell?”

  “Not shadow bones. A shadow with bones. White, white bones.”

  Bones decorated Emily’s landscape plenty of times over the past months, but she didn’t remember any at the Dragon Mart.

  “A shadow out of nowhere.” Carlos took a jagged breath. “Right there. It was bright, remember? High sun. No shadows, nothing in shadow. But out of nowhere, it jumped on Alaric. Like, like it would stop his fall. But it blended with him and disappeared. But I saw the bones.”

  Emily stared at him. Is this a prank? No, Carlos was too upset to be messing with her. But how could he be serious? “A shadow jumped on Alaric. Out of nowhere. With bones.”

  “Do you think this is it?” His eyelashes fluttered at her like a five-year-old’s. “Is Mission 12 the one that will kill us all?”

  Okay. He needed to snap out of this. How could she reassure him? She opened her mouth to give him the first canned response that came to mind, but Carlos pushed on.

  “Was it because he fell, Emily? They got Michele: no shadow. They got my little sister: no shadow. They didn
’t get Alaric. Alaric fell, he hit: shadow. Bones.”

  Emily went for the hand-on-hand technique. His was clammy, but she managed to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “But that has nothing to do with Mission 12. We’re sending spies into a commune. Then when we attack, it’ll be just vampires and humans. No zombies.” She gave his fingers a press. “No one is going to be falling off any roofs. Why even bring this up?”

  “I dreamt about him this morning.”

  “Alaric?”

  “No, him. It. La Muerte. The bone shadow.”

  “What?” Did he really just say Muerte?

  “In my dream, it was the same as with Alaric. He was the same. It was only for a second, less than a second, the instant Alaric hit, the shadow was suddenly there. It came out of nowhere and poured over him, so cold. I could feel it from across the lot. And the bones like a hand stroking Alaric’s face. And then Alaric lay there, alone, broken, his spine coming out his neck. But his bones weren’t white, Emily. They were dark…dark red. Michele on the roof…screaming.”

  “Dude! Stop this.”

  “I think, Emily, it’s an omen.”

  “There’s no such thing as a shadow with bones. You—you’d just seen Alaric fall. You were upset. You were, I don’t know, hallucinating, or—”

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  Emily jumped. She twisted to see Sherice in the doorway, giving Emily the same curled-lip glare as down by the bonfire. Emily’s stomach tightened. Sherice was a SoCal recruit, like Emily, like Carlos. Like almost everyone in the unit, actually. Rosa and Ramon were the only ones left from the original team Michele brought out from New York. When Sherice first joined them, Emily was a little star-struck by how pretty she was. She had dark brown skin and full lips and long braids with cherry red weave, but one day she made a very public show of chopping the braids off. She shaved her head and proclaimed, “In memory of my parents!” She was still beautiful bald, but Emily’s admiration wore off for other reasons.