“Well,” mused Arlene, “they can eat us; and we are what we eat.” She was being her usual, grisly self; but I was the only one who smiled.
“Whatever,” I said. “So here’s the plan. Albert, you buzz to one of these stores and collect all the rotting lemons you can.”
“I get it,” he said. “That’ll smell like those zombies we gunned down . . .”
“Like all zombies,” said Arlene.
“ . . . and confuse their sniffers,” he finished his thought. “Arlene—would you come with me?” He paused, as if surprised at what he’d said. He looked at me, remembering our informal chain of command.
“Is it all right if she comes with me?” he asked. “I mean, if it’s okay with her.” He stared at her a little sheepishly.
“I was going to assign you one of us,” I said. “So long as there are four of us, it’s crazy for one to go off alone. We’ll always pair off when we have to separate.”
“I’d like to go with Albert, then,” said Arlene in an even tone of voice, betraying nothing.
“Fine,” I said. “Jill and I will wait here until you return. We’ll assume you’ve run into trouble if you’re not back by, hm, 2200.” Among items I was grateful for, we still had functional watches. Who gave a damn what day of the week or month it was any longer? The importance of a wristwatch was to coordinate activity.
Jill and I watched as A&A checked their weapons and moved out. They ran across the open space, Arlene first, Albert bringing up the rear, and then I could breathe again.
“When do we move out?” asked Jill.
“In a moment. We’re still safe here.”
The word “safe” triggered something in her. “I hadn’t thought about it until what you said, but I don’t like being more . . .”
“Critical to the mission.”
“Uh-huh. Critical. It feels weird.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “After you’ve done your hacker bit, you have permission to die with the rest of us.” I tried for a light tone of voice but the words sounded wrong.
“I’m not afraid to die,” she said.
“I know you’re not. You did great in the truck, the way you kept driving. I’m proud of you.” Her whole body relaxed when I told her that.
I figured she could handle some more of my deep thoughts. Arlene and I had been through so much together that there were things I could say easier to the new recruit: “Cowardice is usually not the problem in war, Jill. Most people have more guts than they realize. Most can be trained to do all right.”
“What’s the problem, then?” she asked through slitted eyes.
I looked up and down the alley. We were still alone, and it was a pleasure to hear the sounds of demonic industry muffled and distant. The danger was at arm’s length, a good place to keep it as long as possible.
“In a way, we’re lucky to be fighting monsters.”
“Lucky?” she half shouted.
“Keep your voice down!”
“Sorry.”
“Fighting monsters makes it easy. Up to now, all the wars on Earth have been between human beings. That’s much harder.”
Her face scrunched up as she pondered what I said. It was like watching thoughts march across her face. “I could never hate human beings the way I hate the demons,” she said.
“You’re lucky to feel that way,” I said.
“How does fighting monsters make it easier?” she threw at me. “They’re harder to kill than people.”
“We don’t take any prisoners,” I said. “We don’t have to worry about any of that. And if we did take one, we don’t have to decide whether we should torture him. Hell, we don’t even know if they have a nervous system like ours.”
“Torture?” she asked, wide-eyed again. Then she thought about it. “I could torture them.”
“To get information?” I asked.
“To pay them back for what they’ve done.”
“Could you torture humans if they’d done the same things?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What kind of torture?”
Looking at her, I remembered an officer who briefly passed through Parris Island as my class officer before moving on to Intelligence, maybe even the CIA (who knows?).
He took a whole slate of medical courses, though he had no interest in being a doctor. He had a weak, limp handshake. He probably couldn’t fight his way out of a revolving door. He scared the living crap out of me. I figured I’d given a fourteen-year-old enough to chew on for one day.
“Any kind.” I didn’t elaborate.
“I think I could torture any humans who join the aliens,” she said.
“Then you’re home free,” I said. “I don’t think the enemy is doing any recruiting except for zombies.”
She brightened. “And we know what to do with them, don’t we, Fly?”
“We sure do.” I tried out one of my playful punches on the kid’s arm, like I did with Arlene. She pulled away at first, then sort of apologetically punched back. She gave off all the signs of having been abused once. By human beings, probably. Human beings always confuse the issue.
Now it was time for us to hurry up and wait.
18
I kind of felt bad leaving Fly and the kid to go traipsing off with this geek.
The first time I saw Albert, I thought he was a trog. Maybe it was the way he held his weapon against the head of the only other man in my life besides Wilhelm Dodd who’s ever been really worth a damn: Flynn Taggart, corporal, United States Monkey Corps. As I joined this Mormon beefcake on the grocery store expedition, I found myself sneaking glances at his’ profile, and finding strength where I’d first suspected weakness.
I’ve always loved strong men. That’s how I remember my father. He died when I was only ten, so I may not remember him with complete objectivity. But that’s the way I want to think of him. I grew up defending his memory against my brother, who acted like a snot and said Dad deserted us.
I hadn’t thought about my family since the invasion began, except when Fly got me going on my brother and the Mormon Church. I’d be happy to keep it out of my mind and off my tongue, except that Albert asked me: “You don’t like Mormons much, do you?”
We were in an alley outside a likely grocery store, taking a breather. Zombies were unloading bread from a bread truck, an eighteen wheeler. Bet the boxes didn’t contain bread; and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was really in them.
“I have a problem with all institutional churches,” I said. “It’s nothing personal.” Of course, it was personal and I’m not a very good liar.
“If you don’t want to talk about it, I’ll understand,” said Albert diplomatically. The big dork had some smarts.
Maybe I should talk to him. Fly and I were so close that we couldn’t verbalize everything there was between us. He had a little-boy quality that was attractive in a friend but definitely not what I wanted in a lover. Maybe it was part of the Mormon conditioning, but Albert projected father qualities.
The one time I let myself be talked into therapy, back in college when my family was exploding, I dropped hundreds of dollars to be told what I already knew. My ideal male friend would be the brother I never had. Fly was just what the doctor ordered. My ideal lover was Daddy. The therapist was a Freudian so he didn’t have much imagination.
The women’s group I hung out with for one summer had a lot more imagination. It wasn’t my fault that the experiences of my youth fit the Freudian pattern better than they did the theories of the sisterhood. It just came down that way.
So I saw the concern in Albert’s face, a guy who wanted to be a pillar of strength to some All-American Gal, and it was hard not to cut him some slack. Here we were, huddled down together in a dark, smelly alley, ready to save the human race from all the denizens of hell, and poor old Albert was concerned about how i felt about his religion.
A more elemental kind of man would just be trying to put the make on me, arguing that the human race is ne
ar extinction and let’s make love while we can and think about the future instead of the self, babe.
Not Albert. Not Fly. In completely different ways, both these men were gentlemen. And Jill was a fine young lady. I could have done a lot worse in choosing companions for Armageddon.
“Albert, I won’t lie to you again. I do have a hangup about the Mormon Church; but it won’t affect us. I respect you, um, in spite of it.”
His voice was polite, if a little frosty: “Thank you. I won’t pressure you about it.”
Well, if I could tell Fly some of it, I did’t see why I couldn’t talk to the big Mormon. Again the thought came to me that I could get more off my chest with this relative stranger. As close as I was to Fly, my platoon pal, there was a reticence with him I could never shake.
If I said to Fly that “there are some things you wouldn’t understand,” he’d stare at me with his what the hell are you talking about expression and make me feel like a silly, emotional girl; he wouldn’t do it deliberately, but the result would be the same.
The truth was there were certain things I didn’t want to share with Fly. The reasons were emotional; and those were never good enough reasons for him.
“Albert,” I said, feeling the shape of his name as I spoke it for the first time from a quiet place inside, “I want to tell you about my brother.”
“I’ll listen; but you don’t have to if you don’t—”
“He was never really what you’d call a real man; I mean, I don’t think he would have made a good Marine. Had the bad luck to be really pretty . . . not like a guy; I mean a girly-man kind of pretty. You know, delicate features, pale skin, long, beautiful lashes like a girl.”
“Big guy?”
“Yeah, right. When I was twenty, I outweighed him by ten pounds—I mean, five kilograms . . . gotta be military here.”
“Ow. That can be rough.”
“It got worse. A lot of the older guys in the theater—he did stage-crew stuff for the Spacelings—they kind of came on to him. Real aggressive, gay stuff; sometimes the theater can get like that, and anybody who says it can’t never did theater in L.A. or New York. I don’t even know if they were serious, or of they just wanted to freak him; but Buddy—”
“Buddy?”
“Heh, blame him for that. He was named Ambrose, so he called himself Buddy. Buddy got real scared that he was, you know, gay. It wouldn’t have mattered if he were; he would’ve said, ‘Hey, like, that’s it,’ you know? But he wasn’t. He wasn’t really anything; so he totally bugged.”
“I don’t know what to say. I’ve never had that problem. I’ve always known I was a flaming heterosexual.”
“So he kept always trying to prove his manhood . . . you know, shoving little girls around, sticking his zinger in any doughnut hole he could find. He even once . . .” I hesitated.
“With you?” asked Albert, suddenly too perspicacious for words. Damn it.
“It was pathetic; really negative zone. I took him down so fast he cracked the sound barrier between vertical and horizontal. And it wasn’t too long after that he fell in with a bad crowd and suddenly decided he would convert to Mormonism.”
“What were you before that?”
“What do you expect? ‘Sanders,’ Episcopalian, as close to the Church of England as you can get in the U.S.”
“How long did he stay with us?”
“Eight months; he moved to SLC, moved back to Hollywood half a year later. I think he showed up at the Overland church a couple times, then found a new savior: a drug called tank. Ever hear about it?”
“Nope. ‘Fraid I’m not up on the drug culture . . . not from the using perspective. Your brother’s problems are his own making,” said Albert. “Would you feel the same way about the Catholics or Lutherans or Baptists, if he used them as a rest stop on the road to hell?”
That made me smile. “Albert, I had no idea you were so eloquent! I admit I’m prejudiced; when I’m thinking about it, I’m pissed at all organized religion; but only the Mormons cut into my guts like that. I think church enables aberrant behavior.”
Albert laughed, and I had to admit I sounded pompous. “Temples too?” he asked.
“Oh, right,” I said. This man had debated at some point in his life. “All religion, especially the ones that pretend not to be. They all say theirs is a way of life or an ethical system or a personal relationship with God—it’s only the other guy who has a religion.”
“Arlene, I’d like to ask a favor of you. Please don’t tell Fly about our talk. I like things the way they are right now between all of us. I don’t want to do anything to distract Taggart from doing the fine job he’s doing.”
“I keep confidences. You listened to my story, that’s all.”
He shifted his bulk against the wall so he could sit more comfortably. “You mentioned your brother getting involved with drugs. So did I, from the other side. I don’t like to talk about being a Marine sniper; it’s a private thing between me and the Lord. But one week, I was assigned to kill a woman who was suspected of being the primary money launderer for the Abiera drug cartel in Colombia.”
“No great loss,” I said, far too quickly.
He moved closer, as if he thought the monsters might overhear and report his confessions to Satan Central. “Arlene, I said she was suspected, not proven.”
“Oh,” was all I could think to say. I said it with sincerity.
“I’d never killed a woman before. They call it termination, but it’s killing. I don’t make it easier by playing with words.”
“There goes your career in the military,” I said, liking him better all the time. “So you were to terminate this woman with extreme prejudice because she was a suspect.”
He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. “Strong suspect. But I had a lot of problems with it. It went against my moral learning.”
I was having an attack of sarcasm and couldn’t keep it bottled up. I hit him with: “Killing all the suspects in the hope you get the target? The Church of Central Intelligence makes that a sacrament.”
“No, I mean killing a woman. In the end I decided if I couldn’t justify killing her, then how could I justify killing a guy who was supposed to be a renegade colonel from Stasi? I did him the month before.”
“Now who’s playing with words?”
“Killed him the month before. He was training Shining Path terrorists to be sent over to Kefiristan to help the Scythe. It came down to one thing: either I trusted my superiors knew what they were doing, or I didn’t.”
He wanted to be frank with me, but the words choked in his throat. I helped him along. “You killed her,” I said.
“I killed her, yes. I still think she was guilty.”
Suddenly, I chuckled. He looked at me as if I’d completely lost my mind. “No, no, Albert, it’s not what you think. I’m laughing about all the trouble America went to trying to protect fuck-ups like my brother.”
My use of the past tense brought both of us back to the immediate nightmare. “I think we’re all sinners,” he concluded. “We all deserve to die and be damned; we earned that fate when we disobeyed the Lord. Which is why we need the Savior. I take responsibility for the blood on my hands, even if I let Him wash it clean. I don’t blame the Church, the Marines, my parents, society, or anyone or anything else.”
“We have a difference there, my friend,” I told him. “I blame God.”
“Then you blame the nature of things.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. ‘The nature of things’ is waiting for us beyond this alley with claws and horns, lightning and brimstone. My only regret is that I won’t meet God when I have a rocket launcher.” I knew I was getting worked up and discussing religion; but I’ was talking to a human being, not the President of the Twelve.
And really, Arlene Sanders, are you sure you’re not trying to wash away the blood on your hands, the blood of a whole compound of innocents who might die because of your stupid mistake, sending a radio message to co-op
ted Colonel Karapetian? I shuddered and shut off the thought.
“You can’t blow up God, Arlene,” he said in an annoyingly tolerant tone of voice. I expected my blasphemy would get more fire out of him.
I tried one last time, while I still had my mad on: “He made Himself flesh once, didn’t He? If He’d do it again . . .”
“I think you’d find the cross a heavier weapon to carry than a bazooka, Arlene. Somehow I don’t see you nailing anyone to a cross.”
I almost told him about the row of crucified hell-princes the pumpkins had used to adorn Deimos and how I’d happily do the same; then I made myself shut up instead. I’d said enough. More than enough. The quiet, easy way he was dealing with my outburst told me that Albert was a man of faith so strong I couldn’t crack it with a BFG. Besides, I had the feeling he would start praying for me if I didn’t cool it.
“Thank you for telling me about Colombia,” I said.
“There’s no one I’d rather talk to than you, Arlene. Now let’s get back to work.”
Damn if I wasn’t becoming attracted to honest Albert. For the first time in weeks, I thought about Dodd, my—my guy, who was zombified; my lover whose body I put out of its misery.
A small glimmer of guilt tried to build up into a fire, but I doused it with anger. We all had our problems. We were all human. I was sick and tired of thinking about all the things I did wrong or could have done better. Humanity was not a weakness; it was a strength, and our job was to win back our world, and damn it, why did I hesitate to think “lover” when I thought about Willie? Was it because it had the word “love” in it?
Darling Dan’s Supermarket was the next battlefield. The zombies finished unloading the crates of whatever and drove off in the bread truck. Now the coast was clear.
“Come on,” I said.
“Right behind you,” he said.
19
We slipped into the supermarket through the back delivery door and worked our way toward the front. Lights were flickering on and off with the same irritating strobe effect that Fly and I had to deal with on Deimos so friggin’ often. Maybe these guys weren’t sloppy, slovenly, indifferent creeps; maybe it was some kind of aesthetic statement. All I knew was flickering light gave me a headache and made me want to unload a clip at the first refugee from Halloween who happened across my path.
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