North

by Frank Owen

  He slid back down flat on the floor. His head didn’t hurt so bad when he lay still. He stared up at the low ceiling, trying to force his eyes to see the shadows – and then trying to force his eyes to stop seeing them.

  39

  Adams was patting the deadbolts on the door of the holding cell, checking them methodically.

  ‘You win this one. Luring Renard out was the one thing we wouldn’t ever have a handle on. So high-fives to you for that. If it works.’

  Dyce smiled, but Adams was shaking his head. ‘I’m still not waiting around for the antivirals, though. Digging up corpses is bullshit. But now that I think about it . . .’ He stopped with his hand on a bolt. ‘You know, I’ve just had an idea.’

  Vida swapped a look with Dyce.

  Adams grinned. ‘Let’s go and talk to the nice folks about sacrifice and commitment and all-for-one, shall we? Come and watch how it’s done.’

  Ruth stopped, then turned to Vida. ‘I’m going to lie down,’ she said, and Dyce was sure she was lying. She climbed a staircase and was gone.

  Dyce tried to help Vida along, but she shook him off and leant on the crutches. ‘I have to practice.’

  Adams was leading them down to the central atrium. ‘This isn’t a speech for the podium. I need to be close. Find me something to stand on.’

  Dyce looked around. ‘Like that?’

  There was a Budweiser crate that the Southerners had been using as a table.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Adams.

  He spun the crate around like a gunslinger and turned it upside down in the very center of the floor. Above him the clouds and sky painted on the inside of the dome had been steadily blackened by the smoke.

  He looks like he has a message from the devil, thought Vida. Damn, he actually likes this stuff! She glanced around. How many of the Northern Resistance were people who’d been on the sidelines in their old lives? Fighting Renard had given them a purpose.

  Adams heaved himself up on the crate like a circus bear and began talking.

  ‘This is not a meeting,’ he called out. He was making sure that his voice rang up and out, into the three empty stories of the vault above, like the word of God. ‘We all know meetings are for official Resistance purposes – but this is not official. I just have a question for you all. Go and get your friends and bring them here.’

  The passers-by hurried to spread the news, and people began to crowd the banisters a floor above and to feed into the foyer to sit cross-legged around him. It was not long before the place was full. People wanted a distraction: they left their daily chores, some still wearing their aprons. Others were covered in dust, wiping their faces. A row of women held babies to their breasts – the next generation, thought Vida, like my baby. If they survive.

  ‘The Sermon on the Mount,’ she said to Dyce. ‘Brace yourself.’

  He nodded. Here it came.

  ‘I’m going to tell you all the truth, because I think you deserve it,’ Adams began. ‘Our first round of mushrooms failed, as I’m sure you have all heard by now.’ There was a hum of acquiescence.

  ‘So we’re moving on to Plan B, and it’s not pretty – but it is necessary. I want you to know that there are people right now digging in the Des Moines Cemetery.’ He held up a hand to forestall any comment, but there was a definite underground hum.

  ‘That’s a lie,’ whispered Vida. ‘He hasn’t sent anyone out to the cemetery.’

  ‘Now, I know how that sounds,’ Adams went on. ‘This isn’t fun for anyone. But we need something closer to the human, uh, form.’ He waited for the persistent murmuring to die back.

  ‘And there is no guarantee that this will work either. In fact, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it probably won’t.’

  Vida caught a ponytailed woman still in her lab coat nudging the man who stood next to her. Bullshit, her face said.

  ‘What I’m asking for is not going to be easy. People: we need a live volunteer,’ Adams said. ‘In the Bible days they had a name for someone who was willing to die for the cause. A martyr.’ He lifted his arms and raised his voice over the horrified commentary that was emerging more loudly from the crowd.

  That hole in his cheek wasn’t bothering him none now, thought Dyce.

  ‘This is not something I ask lightly. Believe me when I say I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. But just hear me out. A single living person will allow us to have enough antiviral mushrooms in about two days from now. Guaranteed. I don’t know about you all, but I’m sick of waiting. I know some of you will be saying, “We can wait and we must wait. We have discovered this holy grail and we must not be ungrateful. We must not be greedy or hasty or impatient.” But haven’t we all been patient long enough? Too long?’

  Vida expected someone to shout: Preach! But now there was only silence.

  ‘We have shown that we can be patient. We will wait while Renard increases his strength. Maybe the next round of mushrooms will work – or the next!

  ‘But maybe’ – Adams lowered his voice, soothing now instead of operatic – ‘that won’t work either. And then I will be up here asking this same question. But the next time it will out of desperation. And whoever volunteers then might feel forced by the weight of the moment instead of the goodness of their heart.’ His voice dipped still lower, intimate and confiding. I feel your pain, said that voice. Why not make it stop?

  The crowd swayed a little. Even Vida felt the tidal pull. What was it all for, anyway, this stubborn clinging to life? She hadn’t ever really considered why she wanted to live in a place that had been gutted like a skeleton of all the things that made existence comfortable, or rich, or various. There was just some fierce urge, like blue-green algae on the floor of the ocean – or like spores on the membranes of a dying man.

  Adams was getting to the good bit. It was weird, but his words were completely clear now that he was worked up. ‘But there might be someone special among you, someone who is ready, someone who hears my words as a calling, as an answer to a life that has trickled away in disappointment and loss. A life without loving family or meaningful work. Maybe you have lost your true love; maybe you have lost your dog.’ The audience tittered, but it had hit home, as it was meant to. Pets belonged in a softer, more indulgent universe, and Adams was doing more than tugging on people’s clammy heartstrings. He was raising their childhood ghosts – calling them up and parading them so that all the things buried in the overgrown recesses of memory were held blinking up to the light.

  Pavlov, thought Dyce, and looked at Vida, knowing she was thinking the same thing. Adams was a resurrection man, though you wouldn’t catch him with his own hands in the graveyard dirt. No ’bout-a-doubt it.

  Adams was shaking his head in sorrow at what he was being forced to do, the parent who must discipline his wayward children for their own good, out of love. This hurts me more than it hurts you, Dyce thought, and snorted.

  ‘People, if I don’t ask now, the opportunity will be gone. And so I lay it here before you. I expect you all to leave this gathering now and go back to your tasks. But do as you think fit, my friends. Think long and hard about it. Remember that each small action is part of a much greater reaction against Renard, and we must all make sacrifices.’

  ‘Except you,’ whispered Dyce. ‘I don’t see you making no sacrifices, asshole.’

  Vida shushed him.

  ‘The day is near. I promise you that. Go, now, and savor the anticipation.’

  The crowd didn’t move. The words had struck deep.

  ‘Go on!’ said Adams, pretending to shoo them like chickens. ‘Go on now!’

  And there it was – a hand had shot up in the crowd. Vida saw the smile flickering across Adams’s face, a benediction. Every head in the room turned to see who it belonged to – someone obscured by the mess of bodies.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ a voice called, and there was a cheer.

  Vida spotted the baseball cap as Buddy was lifted off his feet on a sea of hands. She grippe
d Dyce’s arm.

  Shit. What was really going on here?

  ‘All right!’ called Adams over the applause. ‘Let’s give Buddy another round!’

  It rolled around the room, the relief and the joy.

  Adams calculated how long it ought to last, and then he said, ‘Thank you, everyone. I hope you all feel proud of what we’ve achieved here today. You can go back to your work now. Those who are off duty are to go to the ammunition room. We’ll start cleaning and oiling. It’s the beginning of the end, people. T minus two days, and counting.’

  The crowd dispersed quickly, a new sense of purpose sending them marching to their duties. Buddy’s back was repeatedly clapped, his cap tapped; people wanted to touch him for luck.

  40

  Adams got down at last from the crate and put his arm around Buddy’s shoulders, the man hot and flushed with excitement. Adams leant in and spoke the words against his reddish ear. ‘Meet me here in an hour. Go get a smoke; ask someone for a blow job. Right now the world is your fucking oyster.’

  He turned and left, and Buddy was alone, his mouth turning down like a child’s. He touched his baseball cap for luck, and Dyce saw that his hand was shaking.

  ‘Need some company?’ Dyce asked him. Buddy nodded, and they followed him as he moved up the stairs and along the plush corridor. The crutches were clunky, and Dyce propped Vida up as they went. This time she let him.

  Buddy was outpacing them pretty rapidly, a man with a purpose. It looked as if he was making his way to one of about a hundred broom closets behind the buff-colored doors. Then he seemed to choose one at random and dodged inside.

  When they caught up with him, he was already drinking homebrew straight from a bottle, and the stench of alcohol made the flesh on Vida’s leg shrink in surgical memory. The air vent gaped in the dimness: he’d hidden a stash there.

  ‘You don’t have to do this,’ Vida said. She was breathing hard against the pain in her leg, and she couldn’t see clearly in the gloaming of the closet. She’d have to use Dyce’s eyes again.

  Buddy stopped drinking for a second without lowering the bottle. Then he closed his eyes and swallowed another mouthful. When he spoke, his teeth were stained maroon, like a vampire’s. ‘You come to give me my free blow job? Because if not, you can fuck off,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus, man,’ said Dyce. ‘We’re concerned. What are you doing?’

  ‘Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,’ said Buddy, and leant against the wall. At least he’d stopped chugging that disgusting brew. ‘And guess what, travelers? I don’t fucking want to talk about it. It’s too late for any of that.’ He reached his hand into the vent and produced a carton of cigarettes still wrapped in cellophane. He punctured it like a lung, and wiggled out a cigarette. ‘Now get out of here. You’re killing my buzz.’

  ‘Buddy,’ said Vida. ‘Adams is bluffing. You must know that. He’s not going around digging up bodies, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I said no more blasphemy. Not now. And I know that. He knows that I know that. So just leave it alone.’

  ‘But I don’t think you know what you’re doing,’ Dyce pleaded, and his voice broke a little, the way it used to with Garrett. ‘I saw the way those people died. There were mushrooms growing out of their eyes, Buddy. Exploding from their chests. It was pain like you’ve never seen. Torment. That’s what you’ll go through.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘You’re the one who doesn’t understand. You and your little lady here. You want to understand? You want to know my reasoning? All right.’ Buddy clamped the cigarette between his lips and started unbuttoning his shirt, bottom to top so that they saw his stomach first.

  ‘Ah, Christ.’

  ‘What did I tell you about the Lord’s name?’

  ‘Oh, Buddy.’

  Fuck.

  So many tattoos: a myriad stripes and crosses and asterisks, like the cross-hatched shadows of the comics Vida used to read. And they’d thought that Adams’s tattoos were bad. The idea that they had traveled with this man for days – slept near him in the plane’s fuselage, let him into their personal space – made the spit dry up in her mouth.

  ‘I’m the reason you lock your doors,’ said Buddy. He wasn’t boasting. It was a fact.

  He wasn’t finished, either. At the top button, he pulled his shirt off. Vida was squinting in the closet’s dimness, but Dyce could see plain as day.

  Every inch of Buddy’s skin below his neck was covered with marks, some freshly scabbed, some old and faded.

  Then he reached up and took his cap off.

  Across his bald scalp were more etchings. Hundreds of them, Dyce saw. Maybe thousands.

  41

  Felix groaned as he climbed out of the sewer, feeling the squeeze of Kurt Callahan hot on his heels. In and out, he said to himself. In and out the dusty bluebells – wasn’t that how it went? You will be my darling.

  Yup, he wasn’t the man he used to be, but it was good pain, the kind that came with knowing what you were doing next. And Kurt had a lot to do with that. Felix chuckled to himself. I am about to blow your cotton-picking mind, Sonny Jim.

  They worked their way out of the shattered bathroom and up into the atrium, like they were minor demons ascending the circles of hell. It was too quiet, though. Felix wondered whether the place was deserted – had the revolution happened without him? – but then there was the clang of pans from the kitchen. When he stood still and listened, trying not to show Kurt how much his chest was heaving, there was also the hum of people moving.

  He didn’t have to worry. The boy was transfixed. He’d never seen anything like it before in his short life, had he? Callahans got no time for fancy woodwork and portraits on the walls. They had never been high and mighty, and they sure weren’t about to start. The structures in Glenvale were cottages at best; the whitewashed church was probably the finest piece of architecture Kurt had laid his young eyes on.

  But this monument to prosperity, with its murals and gilt and arching stairways, must be making the boy think he’d died and gone to heaven.

  Felix nudged Kurt’s boot with his foot. ‘Come on. You’re catching flies.’ He led the way up the plush staircase. Kurt bent down and scooped up the cat, who had for once consented to lie still for the ascent, ears laid back, but who now needed to be back on his string.

  The two Callahans joined the back of a snake of people, and as Felix peered further along the corridors, he saw that they were lined with Northerners.

  ‘Whoa, now.’ He dropped back and held a hand across Kurt’s chest to make him stop. ‘Looks like we got ourselves mixed up in some kind of Mardi Gras here, buckaroo.’

  There was a line of scientists making their way to the prison cells, carrying trays of mushrooms under the domes of old Pyrex dishes like bell jars. Some kind of procession: they were walking quietly but looking mighty pleased with themselves, Felix thought.

  He nudged a woman. ‘What’s going on?’

  She ignored him and kept following, her eyes never leaving the groups in their lab coats. It was a little too much like an old-time lynching, Felix thought. He shrugged.

  ‘Looks like we’re going to have to do our own detective work.’

  He scanned the passage. They weren’t hard to see, the Southerners – Vida on crutches, Dyce with his worried puppy eyes. He couldn’t see leathery old Ruth with the mouth that always turned down, but Pete and Sam were there, and other faces Felix recognized.

  Felix made his way over, trying not to limp, aware of how old the boy made him seem in comparison, with his jerky energy and his white bullet head and that frigging zombie cat of plump old donut-serving Norma’s. Jesus. Why hadn’t it died of fright yet?

  Felix led Kurt to where Dyce and Vida rested against a wall, then stood before them and puffed his chest out. ‘Look,’ he announced, ‘this is Kurt Callahan. Found him out in the city. Can you believe it? One of our own. He’s come to join us. Any objections?’

 
; Dyce eyed the boy. He didn’t look right around the eyes. There were plenty of people these days without the human light in them, but Kurt’s gaze was completely flat. Like something from the swamp, thought Dyce. That’s it. A big old daddy gator, snout above the surface, bulletproof, greedy, and cruising for a kill.

  Then Dyce spotted the pendant around Kurt’s skinny neck. It looked real familiar. For a moment he thought it was the swan pendant he’d carved and given to Garrett, who in turn had given it to Bethie as a love token.

  It couldn’t be, though, could it?

  Kurt noticed him looking and tucked the necklace inside his makeshift shirt. He looked steadily at Dyce and then blew him a kiss.

  42

  A crew of men was checking the cell, making sure the walls and windows were airtight. As Dyce watched, they searched and stuffed, wedged torn strips like burial cloths into the gaps in the boarded windows, and rubbed lard over the places they felt the breath of cold air. It made him dizzy with déjà vu: this was exactly what he and his family had done when the bad sicknesses blew in. He shuddered. Poor Gracie, pale and dead on the sidewalk, her knees up and her panties on display for all to see, the bag of ground beef bleeding out beside her.

  Vida leant on him. I’m here, that shoulder said. Ruth was back standing near him too, the three of them on the same side for once. He thought if he ever fell that she would probably catch him. Or at least not let him smash his brains out on the ground. She was his family now, by blood but also by choice.

  Dyce shook his head to clear his memory and put his arm around Vida so she wouldn’t have to lean on the crutches. Those people – Gracie, Garrett, every person he had ever known – were all gone. It had happened, and there was nothing he could do about it now. If you wanted to be free you had to walk past those things you’d hoped never to see again. Dyce waited. It was Buddy he was curious about. How did other people live with themselves?

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ he said softly, and Vida nudged him.