God Country

by S T Branton

  Luis chuckled. “You think I don’t see the way you look at each other? Seems pretty obvious to me.” He hesitated. “Listen, I know you see me as like, a teenager or whatever—”

  “You are a teenager.”

  “—but if you’re waiting around to do something about it, don’t. I learned that shit from experience. You’re gonna regret it later, a hundred percent.”

  Ah. The wisdom of the young prevails.

  I bit my tongue to keep from responding automatically to Marcus. Instead, I pushed my cart faster as I dumped toothpaste and mouthwash onto the heap already in the basket. “Noted. Let’s keep moving, shall we?”

  “Right. Don’t want to keep him waiting.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t make me leave you here.”

  The rest of the shopping trip went surprisingly well. We didn’t run into any satyrs or bandits out of a Mad Max movie. The shelves were full of suitable food, and we loaded our carts until they were hard to maneuver.

  We left the market as Deacon and Jules started to load up the bed of their truck. I saw guns, boxes of ammo, coats, boots, and sleeping bags. Nowhere near enough for a hundred people, but every little bit would help. The piles of provisions in our shopping carts felt like a mountain, but realistically, it would only last a week or so. I’d grabbed all the over-the-counter meds I could find, hoping it would be enough to last us until we found our next ghost town to scavenge.

  Deacon tossed me a bundle of bungee cords as soon as I got close enough. “Keep these handy,” he said. “In case we happen to accumulate anything while we’ve still got the trucks. I don’t want to limit space with a cover for the beds, but it’d be nice to be able to secure things somehow.”

  “Good thinking.” We spent the next twenty minutes or so packing the food away, shoving in coolers full of ice and the few perishable items, and filling every available space with cans and bags of trail mix and jerky. When we were done, I stood back to admire the stuffed truck, its doors and tailgate still open.

  “It’s not enough,” I said out loud.

  “It’ll have to do.” Jules squeezed my shoulder. “Don’t be hard on yourself, Vic. We’re doing the best we can.”

  “There could be more if we keep looking,” Luis suggested. “This town doesn’t look that small.”

  Deacon nodded. “I was going to say the same thing. Couldn’t hurt to investigate. We’ll take point this time if you want.”

  “Be my guest,” I said.

  The four of us got back in our respective trucks. I waited for them to pull around us, and our miniature caravan got underway. More dust rose from beneath the treads of our heavy tires amid the crunch and crackle of the junk in the street.

  Luis shook his head. “Man, this really isn’t right.”

  “Hm?” I glanced at him, half thinking he was still hung up on Deacon and me.

  He gestured to the empty town in front of us. “All this nothing. It doesn’t make sense. I guarantee you there were people holed up in practically every building we passed in New York. No one I know would’ve been down to simply leave unless someone forced them to. We’re used to defending our shit, even if it kills us. We don’t up and split like this.”

  “Could be a lot of dead,” I said. The statement was too casual, and it didn’t even really faze either of us. Our reality operated on a whole new set of parameters.

  “Nah. We would’ve seen ʼem by now. Or at least there would’ve been blood.” He rolled the window down and leaned out into the wind. “No rotting corpse smell, either.” Luis sat back in the seat, troubled. “And if people left, that store should have been looted to hell. All those stores. That’s the first thing that happens in a situation like this. Hell, any time a hurricane rolls through, people clean that shit out.”

  The young soldier’s insight is powerful. It might behoove you to heed his words.

  I agreed, and I felt strangely impressed that he had the presence of mind to give voice to the unease we’d all experienced upon arrival. There wasn’t enough evidence that chaos had ensued before we got there, unlike the hamlet that was destroyed in Washington. It was more like this whole community had simply evaporated.

  Again, Rocca crossed my mind and how she’d recruited humans, and not without success. I sat up a little straighter behind the wheel and kept my eyes peeled. “Don’t let your guard down,” I told my companion.

  “I never do,” he said.

  A strip mall came into view up ahead, featuring the broad sign of a drug store in the middle. Deacon’s brake lights went on, and he turned into the long, narrow lot. I noticed he put the hazards on by force of habit before jumping out. That little detail made me smile. “Looks like you were right,” I told Luis as we followed suit.

  He was a lot more cautious there as if he worried that voicing his concerns aloud had jinxed us. Standing in that open lot did make me feel a little too vulnerable. Jules and Deacon clearly felt it too, judging by the way their heads never stopped turning.

  “Where is everyone?” she asked. “I know everything is terrible, but I can’t shake the feeling that we ought to have seen at least one person by now.”

  “We were just talking about that,” I said. “Something’s fishy.”

  “Wait!” Her head snapped to a flash of movement along the side of the building. “I think I saw someone moving.” Her eyes were laser-focused on the spot.

  “There was a dog earlier,” I said, but she had already moved away from us, commanded by her desire to help. I trailed behind her, my hand on the sword. The shadow of movement passed again, then emerged from around the corner.

  As it turned out, I saw it was a person. The man stared at us for a moment, his eyes glazed and unseeing. Something about his demeanor put me off, and Jules, too. She stopped in her tracks and glanced back at me. Then she said, “Sir, do you need help?”

  He didn’t answer. A deathly pallor colored his skin, different from the grimy gray of the vamps. It struck a chord of familiarity in me that didn’t truly hit home until he started moving forward. The shuffling, hitching gait was unmistakable. His lower jaw wobbled, uncannily slack.

  “Oh, shit! That’s a fucking zombie!”

  Chapter Ten

  This is inaccurate nomenclature, Victoria. He is almost certainly in the thrall of an as yet unseen master, but this unfortunate man is not a zombie, as you say.

  “How the hell not?” I demanded, forgetting at the moment that Marcus’s voice was only in my head. “Look at him. That’s seventy-five percent of modern horror movies right there.”

  Jules and I both backpedaled, and Deacon and Luis caught up.

  He looks the part, but he is not strictly dead. Lawless or not, Forgotten terminology does have rules.

  “I used to have friends who said they were prepping for this day,” Luis remarked with grim amusement. “And I used to laugh at them. Guess I should’ve taken notes instead.” Without further ado, he raised his hunting rifle, steadied the iron sights, and fired a single shot. The bullet pierced the zombie through the top of his head, which flopped back on a nonresistant neck. The zombie staggered, almost fell, and righted himself at the last instant. A thin stream of blood trickled from the hole in his cranium. “Damn. I thought that was supposed to drop ʼem.”

  Far from immobilized, the zombie remained on track, its footfalls slow but unwavering. That was when I noticed others stirring inside the windows of the mall suites, shuffling up to the glass. “I think I know where everybody went,” I said.

  “Oh, my God.” Jules gripped her handgun so tightly, her knuckles were white. “They’re all converted. All of them.”

  “Must be a god,” Deacon added. “Now, we have to find that son of a bitch.”

  The doors to the drugstore slid open as soon as he finished speaking, revealing yet another shadowy form. Taller than the others, long-limbed and impossibly thin, this one cut a distinctly inhuman silhouette against the harsh lighting inside the building. I picked out gaunt, sunken features, eyes
that were sparks in pools of darkness, and a lipless mouth. Its motions were almost too fluid as if the laws of physics didn’t apply.

  “Yep,” I muttered. “It’s a god, all right. A goddamn zombie god. Marcus, anything I need to know?”

  This one has a frightening visage, but his power falls far below that of even Rocca and Beleza. He draws his strength from spawning hordes such as the one you are about to encounter.

  “Name?” I asked. A sharp crack pierced the air, followed by the noise of glass shards raining into the lot. “No, scratch that. I don’t give a shit.” I brought the blade out. “Whatever his name is, he’ll be as dead as the Roman empire soon. Shit. Sorry, Marcus. Too soon?”

  I have had two millennia to come to terms with my former homeland’s fall. Just focus on not meeting the same fate in this parking lot.

  “Good call.” I instructed my team, “Focus on the horde. I’ll go after the boss man here.”

  Luis’s rifle popped off. “On it, chief.”

  I nodded and set my sights on the walking skeleton approaching. He didn’t seem to be in too much of a hurry, but as the gap between us closed, his mouth widened into a hideous, leering grin. The contours of his skull stood out starkly beneath his skin. He spoke with the rotted stump of a tongue.

  “It appears the god-killer rumors are true. For that, I must salute you.” The smile widened even more, splitting the corners of his mouth. His voice was at once dry and moldy, a repulsive, hoarse warble. “You are the reason a path has been cleared for riffraff such as I, long scorned by the more powerful among my brethren, to claim a slice of this cursed world as it plummets into oblivion. I thank you sincerely. It is almost a shame that you should meet your death, but”—he chuckled, and a chill raced down my spine—“you are a human, after all.”

  “So were they,” I retorted, indicating the minions who pressed on stubbornly under triple gunfire. A small contingent of them had peeled off toward me, their arms hanging as they dragged their feet. “There’s no forgiving what you’ve done here.”

  “Well,” the god replied. “Thank goodness I never asked.” The white gleam in his eyes intensified until it swallowed the darkness inside the sockets, and a beam arced toward me. The energy itself seemed to be infected with sickness. It was flecked with gangrenous black spots. The path it traveled carved a channel in the pavement, which gave rise to a powerful smell of decay.

  I leapt to the side and dashed forward into range. The god, still nameless, stretched away to the very end of my reach, that grinning face still taunting me. With the very tip of the Gladius Solis, I fished for a shred of the clothes hanging off the emaciated frame, but they dangled beyond reach. One thin hand snaked up and latched around my wrist, encircling my skin with bone-chilling cold.

  “You could join them,” said the zombie god. “It would be simple. A trivial thing. All you have to do is succumb.”

  “Why don’t you suck cum, you undead pervert?” I jerked my arm free so forcefully that the top knuckle of one of his fingers snapped. It knit itself together almost immediately. “Kiss my ass, Jolly Roger.” The sword flashed forward, and this time, it perforated his chest area, tearing a hole in the ruined garments. I caught a brief glimpse of something black and pulsing like a tumor in his paper-white chest.

  That is his heart. Piercing it should destroy him.

  Simple enough. I repositioned for another attack, only for the god to fade back toward the drugstore as his self-made horde flooded between us. The zombies were still brutally slow, but they were strong, too, and the first one I met swept me into an unrelenting bear hug. Although I managed to keep my hold on the Gladius Solis, it was pinned by my side. The blade burned disturbingly close to my flesh, which I quickly realized was still as fragile as anyone else’s.

  “Hey!” I kicked viciously, forcing my knee up into my assailant’s generous gut. He buckled only slightly. His arms were viselike around my torso, and they felt like tree trunks. More hands began to pull at me, seeking hungrily to drag me into their mass. Desperate to avoid falling into their clutches even more than I already had, I wrenched my arm up as far as it would go. The sword hopped clumsily into the air. I snatched it on the descent and stuck it straight in the big guy’s back until its warmth radiated through him into my ribs. His dead eyes widened, and he dropped me as the sword burst clean through him.

  I grabbed it, swung it in the ever-reliable circle to clear some personal space, and plowed through the mindless throng in search of its master. I thought I could see him ahead, a gangly specter gliding on the wind, but there were too many bodies in the way. The gunshots behind me were steady but too slow and too few to abate the wave still flowing out of the mall.

  “Dammit!” A large part of me really, really wanted to hunt the god down and put an end to him. I could have, but the ordeal was turning into more effort than it was worth. It wouldn’t bring back those my companions had already killed if it brought the others back at all. I released a frustrated growl and turned to cut my way toward the trucks. The tide of zombies gradually appeared to recede a bit. They were probably following the master. “Retreat!” I yelled. “It’s not worth it!”

  “Where’d he go?” Deacon asked. He had also backed up to the trucks, and he and Jules covered Luis.

  “I lost him,” I said. “We have a whole camp to think about. There are too many of the others. We’ve got to get out while we can.”

  “All right.” Deacon lowered his gun. “Luis! Let’s bail! Andale!”

  “That’s racist, pig,” the youngster said with a grin. He bolted to the truck in a flash. I was peeling out of the lot by the time he slammed the door. The horde crushed around us, pounding on the windows, but the engine’s horsepower outstripped them quickly. All I saw in the rearview mirror was a mosaic of blank faces. Without a target, it didn’t take them long to slow to a stop.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked my passenger. “Things got pretty hairy there.”

  “Eh.” He cracked a boyish grin. “This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with shit like that.”

  I tried to process his statement, and it finally clicked. “Oh, because you grew up on the mean streets of Harlem?”

  He snorted a laugh. “No, dick. Because I played a shitload of video games. You know how many zombies I’ve killed in games before? Way more than this. It was like some level one shit. No problem.”

  Heat warmed my cheeks. “Oh, right. Sorry. It’s just that you said earlier—”

  “Yeah, dude, it was a fucking dog eat dog world in Harlem. I’m not gonna lie. And it’s the same out here now. And the same rules apply. Do what you can to survive or die.”

  “That sounds rough,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, well, you gotta roll with the punches. Like we’re all doing now. I’ve had a little more practice, that’s all.”

  “I had some practice with that too,” I said. “Before all this shit started.”

  Luis nodded. “It’s crazy, right? Who would have thought that all the hard times we went through actually made us stronger? I mean, I’m almost grateful for all that trouble now. It’s probably the only reason I’m still alive. Still sane.”

  “I never thought of it that way. Maybe you’re right.”

  I grinned and sat in silence for a while as we left the zombie town behind us. The kid’s perspective changed the way I thought about the hardships I’d faced over the last several years. If I could go back and change it, I absolutely would, but it had prepared me for this. I wasn’t afraid to face trouble down whenever it found me. That was some kind of blessing in disguise, I supposed.

  “You got family back with the group?” Luis asked.

  I shook my head. “My parents aren’t around anymore. It was tough for a while, but I’ve made my peace. What about you? You mentioned your grandmother before.”

  “Yeah.” He looked straight ahead at the featureless road. “She didn’t make it.”

  Immediately sorry for asking, I tried to make amend
s. “I’m sorry, Luis.”

  “I thought I was too, and I still am because I loved her. And I miss her. She was like a mom to me, you know? I would’ve given her the whole damn world if I could. But then I try to imagine her going through this with me, freezing and starving in the woods. I don’t think I could have taken it.” He rubbed his jaw. “She sacrificed herself for me. Said she’d only slow me down because she was too old to move fast enough.” He patted his chest. “The last thing she gave me was her rosary. That was right before I left. She put it in my hand and told me she’d lived a good life and not to waste mine.” He laughed a little. “‘Remember to love God, Luis, and love your neighbor almost as much.’ Only she could’ve talked about loving God when the whole fucking world was ending.”

  “I’ve never met a god I could love,” I said. “And I’ve met a lot of them.”

  “She could have,” the kid said, smiling gently. “She would’ve found a way. Unless they tried to tell her that hers didn’t exist. Then there’d be trouble.” He laughed again. “Man, I loved that lady. I hope she’s safe and happy, wherever she is.”

  “Of course, she is,” I said. “Because she can see you, and I know she’s damn proud of you.”

  Luis smiled and nodded. “I sure hope so.”

  Our caravan crawled through the woods after turning off the highway, following a roughly beaten track forged mostly by the might of the trucks. The camp materialized in a gap between the trees leading into the clearing, but before we even got there, a bulky shape plunged toward the trucks, waving short, stocky arms.

  “Is that Frank?” I narrowed my eyes. “Dammit. That’s Frank.”

  “He doesn’t look too happy to see us,” Luis observed. The mobster’s eyes bulged almost out of his head, and he was paler than usual. I lowered my window, and he barreled up to it, wheezing.