Bury Me in Black

by Royce Caradoc

  He lifted his eyes as Mother emerged from the double doors. She stood atop the Armory steps, hair askew. They locked eyes, but this time Marco didn’t tense up. There were no skittering roaches. No lost souls whispering in his ears.

  He felt nothing.

  ~

  Knox’s return was greeted with celebration. A hero’s welcome. Not that he was there to see it. As soon as they carried him through the doors, several scavengers whisked him off to the basement to try to nurse him back to health. It was up to Marco to explain what had occurred. Behind closed doors, he spoke to Mother and two of her lieutenants. They were gangly, foul-mouthed creatures, newly promoted after Leon and Knox went missing. Mother remained mostly silent, but it was obvious who controlled the room. When she spoke up with that faint voice and those eloquent, carefully curated words, everyone shut up and listened. She had much fewer questions than the other two.

  Marco was surprised how easily the words came to him, given that it was all a lie.

  In this version of the story, Marco had never been a quarantine soldier. He’d been a Stray, since the beginning. He’d come to the Armory and been given a second chance: an M9 Beretta and a purpose. He’d headed off with Knox and Leon to find the Maiden. Only, they encountered trouble on the road; an ambush by Deadeye scavengers that cost Leon his life. Marco and Knox had barely escaped. They hid out at Ashe Memorial, nursing their wounds, and it was there that they found an old letter Nathan Conrad had written. They followed it on a hunch, and came to the manor, where the Maiden was being held. While Knox called for backup, Marco infiltrated the mansion and located the Maiden. There’d been a gun fight. Two Bloodline were lost and Knox was near mortally wounded. But, despite his injuries, Knox had gotten off the shot that killed the Maiden. He’d been the trigger man. As it should have been, Marco told them. He himself had been unworthy of that honor.

  ~

  Marco was given a cot and a pillow. There was talk of initiation, after how he’d helped out with the Maiden, but ultimately nothing came of it. They gave him a new clip for his Beretta—this one full of real bullets—and a new holster, since the pale blue nylon one he’d been brandishing was on its last legs. He acted very grateful and accepted both with a stately bow. The first chance he got, he buried the gun out back when no one was looking.

  In the weeks that followed, he kept mostly to himself. He scavenged alone some days, returning with whatever spoils he could find with the hopes of trading for extra food or, more times than not, cigarettes. He received daily rations. He read books and magazines and occasionally played cards. If some overeager punk asked him to regale them with his tale, he did so with hard, curt words. Sticking only to the point, never embellishing. Not that it mattered what he said or didn’t say. The others filled in the blanks for him. He wore a solemn look at all times: cold, and unafraid to hold stare, so people just assumed he was dangerous.

  Knox saw no one. He was alive, somehow, down in that basement, being tended to by an older woman and a young man with nursing experience. If he had wanted to, Marco assumed he’d have been granted entry down to that underground chamber, which probably stank of rotten flesh. But, he had no interest in seeing Knox. If there was a just God, he’d have made the bastard suffer for a calendar month and then killed him, but no such luck. Thirty days, and still he persisted.

  Marco eavesdropped, same as always. Recently, he’d heard tell of a new story, about the Bloodline’s newest member. How the guy was half-crazy and answered to no one, except for Knox. How he never carried a gun, which meant that he was probably skilled with small knives or hand-to-hand combat. He could kill you with a choke hold, or snap your neck from behind. Some said that Knox had been the one to carve that letter B into the guy’s face, after a fist fight gone wrong. Others said the new guy had carved the letter himself, as a show of loyalty to Mother. He’d passed out several times during the ordeal, but each time he woke back up, shrugged and got right back to work. If he was ever asked, Marco neither admitted nor denied a thing.

  It was like the less he spoke, the more his story grew.

  ~

  She found him on a Tuesday. Of late, it was much easier to track the days. In the Armory, some people posted calendars on the walls, even. Back when he’d been on his own, Marco had made sure to track the date early on, but it slowly became less important. He was aware of the season, and had a vague idea of the month, but no more than that. Being unstuck from the calendar, the weekdays and the ticking clocks had been liberating in some ways. The sun rose and the sun set. The seasons changed. But, everything else, he realized, was man-made. It was optional.

  “Marco.”

  Midday, out back, Mother stepped up beside him. She usually had an entourage with her: a few gaunt, bearded faces with dead eyes and twitchy trigger fingers to size up whoever she was talking to. It was an intimidation tactic, and an obvious one. No matter how nicely Mother spoke to you, you had at least two more sets of eyes glaring, full of menace. Implications. Undertone.

  But, not today.

  “Hello,” he said. He was caught off guard, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice at the sight of her. He’d been about to have a smoke.

  “Hello, dear. Walk with me, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  They walked. Much like Knox, Mother seemed to glide through the world, fluid and graceful. Twice he looked down to make sure her feet actually left the ground. She wore a kimono and slippers, like always, which were both getting dirty as they moved through the dirt and into the high grass that led back to the shooting range. Now that Knox was out of commission, the range was basically never used. It had an abandoned look now.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, pointing towards the cigarette behind his ear.

  “No, of course not.”

  He couldn’t light up fast enough.

  “So,” he said, taking a drag. “What can I do for you?”

  “Just help me stretch these old legs,” she said. “You should really go to see Knox, Marco.”

  “How do you know I haven’t?”

  She gave him a sideways glance.

  “Right,” Marco said. “Nothing gets past you in there, huh?”

  “Promise me you’ll see him.”

  Can I promise to put a pillow over his face when I do?

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t seem very eager to support your friend.”

  Friend.

  “I figured I’d give him some space,” Marco said, taking a drag. “Have you been?”

  “Of course. A sick boy certainly needs his mother. He’s getting stronger every day.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “You’ve been doing quite well yourself. There’s a lot of chatter around the Armory about you.”

  “Yeah, well…scavengers like to talk.”

  “Do you feel at home here, Marco?”

  “I like it, yeah.”

  “That’s not what I asked. I asked if you feel at home.”

  “Sure,” he said, avoiding her eyes. He took another drag.

  “You know, I always found you intriguing.”

  Intriguing? You sentenced me to die ten minutes after we fucking met.

  This time, he almost opened his mouth. He shoved the cigarette between his teeth instead.

  “Yeah?” came his muffled reply.

  “You have a good head on your shoulders. And you know how to show restraint. Unlike most of these hot-blooded idiots we have around here. I need good minds around me, especially now. We’re on top now, but the remnants of the other factions are still alive. I can feel them circling. And with Leon dead, poor Leon, and Knox injured like this…”

  She halted. Marco, too, stopped. The wind was blowing. She pushed a vagabond stand of hair from her eyes.

  “I’d like you to be more involved, Marco. I want to know what’s going on up there,” she said, pointing towards his temple.

  Marco swallowed. He felt it in his gut again, that sting that reminded him o
f that beach a month back. The void that would never leave him. Not truly.

  “Sure. I’d like that.”

  She gazed at him a long moment, as if trying to figure him out. The 10,000-piece puzzle that was Marco Shaw. Funny, when they’d met, he felt as though this mysterious woman could damn-near read his mind. Now, he could see that the shell he’d wrapped around himself was impenetrable. Even by her.

  “Why did you lie about killing the Maiden?”

  Hold that thought.

  “Excuse me?”

  “A man in Knox’s condition wouldn’t have had a chance against her. The Maiden was a pupil of Zeke the Dollface. She wouldn’t go that easy.”

  “I told you-”

  “You told me what you needed to tell me. And that’s fine. What was her name?”

  “I-”

  “The Maiden. She had a name, didn’t she?”

  He ashed his cigarette in the grass.

  “I never learned it.”

  “And the body? Where is it?”

  He recalled leaning on his shovel, shirt stained with dirt. All over his hands, up under his fingernails. Drenched in sweat, beneath the risen sun. Face pink with tears.

  “She’s in the ground.”

  “Where?”

  “Ridgewood.”

  “You’ll show me the plot. I want to see her body. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”

  Eyes low, he nodded.

  Mother took a step closer. She placed a hand on his cheek.

  “I’m excited to finally see you open up, Marco. The real you is in there somewhere. I look forward to finally meeting him.”

  She patted him on the cheek and turned away.

  “You should really go see Knox,” she said. She began to walk towards the Armory. Marco took one last drag, watching her go, and then stomped out the butt.

  ~

  That night, he sat alone at the end of a lunch table and read a book. Lately, he’d taken to pilfering the old volumes from the library in Ridgewood. It had a better selection than the Covington branch. Marco liked finding annotated copies. He liked seeing which passages people had marked and underlined. What lines they found important. It was like he could get into their head, just for a moment. Like he could connect with some random stranger, off somewhere. When a book had no lines or no notes, he made his own. He returned each book to the library, same as he’d found it.

  But, tonight, he couldn’t read. He scanned the same passage over and over, lost in his own thoughts. He hadn’t eaten since that afternoon, but had no interest. And his sleep habits remained the same. A few hours a night of tossing and turning, then a walk out back for a smoke beside that pile of scrapped armor. He was waiting for someone, night after night. But, no sign yet.

  Marco put down the book.

  He closed the volume and stood. He walked towards the rows of cots, careful not to bump into any of the slumbering dregs. Just past midnight, and the denizens of the Armory were almost all asleep. A few people lingered at the lunch tables, whispering to one another or playing a quiet game of cards. Marco set the book down on his cot, and then headed for the basement door. A man stood guard, arms crossed. Marco cleared his throat.

  “I want to see him,” he said.

  The guard nodded.

  ~

  Marco had been right about the smell.

  The basement was somehow less well-lit than usual. Leon’s makeshift bedroom, if you could call it a room, was completely dark. Knox’s area was lit by a single lamp. Beside him was a table and a tray. He sat slightly inclined, pillows packed behind him. Marco walked past the red and blue couches, hands in his pockets. One of the nurses was seated on an ottoman at Knox’s side, but stood up when she saw Marco.

  “It’s very late,” she whispered.

  Marco shrugged. She glanced back at Knox, then to him.

  “Fine,” she said, and quickly walked away.

  Marco took a seat.

  Knox hardly looked himself. He was wrapped in blankets, but it was still obvious that he’d lost quite a bit of weight. His skin had taken on a yellow hue in some places and his hair was more gray than black. On the table beside him, his white sunglasses sat forgotten beside a half-full glass of water. He opened his red eyes and stared forward, foggy and out of focus. After a moment he noticed Marco beside him. A glimmer of hope shone for a millisecond, excitement at the prospect of a visitor. However, his expression quickly cooled. Back to the Knox he remembered.

  “Took you long enough,” Knox said. His voice was hoarse, but it wasn’t a struggle to speak like it had been at the beach house.

  “Mother told me to come.”

  “She’s been talking you up for weeks. I can’t get her to shut up about you.” He reached over towards the desk beside him. “Water,” he barked.

  Marco bit his lip. He paused, then conceded and stood up to grab the glass. He handed it to Knox and the scavenger grabbed it, hands shaking damn near out of control. He cupped it in both hands and held it to his mouth. The scavenger drank deeply and handed it back. Marco returned to his seat.

  “You covered it up,” Knox said, pressing a finger to his own cheek. “I put a lotta work into that. You should show it off” That smug smile appeared. “Still pissed, eh? Yeah, I would be too. Look, uhh, water under the bridge. Call it even for lying to us.”

  Marco made no response.

  “You came through,” Knox continued. “I didn’t think you had it in you. It was an unarmed woman, but still. A kill is a kill.” He lowered his eyes. “And now you’re one of us. Just like you wanted all along. How does it feel, Marco?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Mother’s been fucking talking my ear off. She’s got this theory, and I think it’s cause she’s been reading some old, like, Dracula novels. She was telling me how these old stories always come with a shard of truth. Vampires, werewolves, they all come from some shit somebody in a village saw and then passed on, story after story, you know, always gaining embellishments, until the source was hardly recognizable. She thinks that maybe this thing we’ve got, maybe it’s old. Like, really old. And it’s not from here.”

  “That’s an interesting theory.”

  “She’s a crazy old hippie. But, sometimes I think she’s got a point.”

  “You feel any more changes?”

  “The things I feel…you wouldn’t believe. It’s like the Pulse has wormed its way into my dreams. Weird shit. Like the other night-”

  “What’s with your hand?”

  Knox stopped, mouth ajar, mid-sentence. He looked disappointed, suddenly, to be taken from his tale and back to reality. Slowly, his red eyes wandered down to the hand in his lap. The fingers were all curled in, and it shook intermittently.

  “They uhh…they think it’s nerve damage. That bitch got me good.”

  It stung, hearing him call her that. Knox seemed to notice.

  “Fuck her,” Knox said. “She’s worm food now. Thanks to you.”

  Marco took a deep breath. Knox missed nothing. All of a sudden, his eyes lit up with glee. The schoolyard bully, back from the dead.

  “Did you like her?” Knox asked. “Like, near the end there. You wanted to fuck her, didn’t you? I thought about it myself. If I’d been in better shape-”

  “Knox.” He spoke the name sternly. Marco took a deep breath, eyes low. Then he raised his eyes to meet Knox’s. “Knox, with your hand like that, do you think you’ll be able to hold a gun?”

  He could see the man’s mood sour, immediately.

  “In time. I’m getting better every day and-”

  “Yeah, I can see that. You look great.”

  “Watch your mouth, Stray. I’ll be out of out of this bed in a week.”

  “I’m sure you will. And I’m sure you’ll be the gunslinger you always were. Nerve damage, that’s usually something that heals pretty fast. Right?”

  He stood up.

  “Fuck you,” Knox said. “Matter of fact, get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck
out!”

  He reached for the glass, quickly, to toss it at Marco, but clumsily knocked it from the desk. It shattered on the floor.

  From above, Marco looked down at this gnarled, broken thing.

  “Hey, man,” he said. “Get well soon.”

  ~

  You’re not anyone until you kill someone famous. These were Nathan Conrad’s words. Or maybe it was Nathan regurgitating Knox’s words. Or maybe Knox was speaking as a mouthpiece for Mother. All these people, so worried about their own reputations. Fame. Legacy. Not that any of it mattered. For there to be a history of this place, there’d need to be historians. Two years had passed, and as far as Marco saw, it didn’t seem like anyone was taking any notes.

  The Pulse was near silent that night. Marco went out back, same as always. The moonlight painted his skin a pale blue. He was alone with the wind and the stars and that tattered, swaying flag. He looked up, half expecting to see the eye in the sky. He wondered if someone was back in that room in Outpost Four, maybe in that same seat he used to occupy. Bumming cigarettes on their lunch break. Clocking in and clocking out.

  Marco thought often of his drone. He thought about the way the city had looked on that computer screen, quaint and intriguing from on high. The mystery had seemed so important then. The questions. The how and why of it all.

  Every night, out by the pile of scratched-up armor, he smoked cigarettes and waited for Justine, but the girl never showed.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  In another life, Royce Caradoc was a crime reporter in New Haven, Connecticut. This is his literary debut. It comes 17 years after he began writing fiction, mostly in secret.

  Royce resides in Los Angeles, where you can find him at some seedy dive, sitting quietly, waiting to play pool.