Still of Night

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Maybe if we take him to his home, his people might let us stay for a while,” Peter said hopefully. He settled down on a large rock, crossing his arms and stretching out long, boot-clad legs. “If they have supplies, they might have space, maybe even looking for more people.”

  “That’s best-case scenario,” Rachael said, rejoining them as Alice continued to talk quietly to the child. “In answer to your question—” She nodded at Jason. “—I want to take him back home, see if we can find his parents for him. It’s got to be nearby, otherwise he’d be dirty and hungry.” The others nodded in agreement. “But it might also be a trap. We just don’t know what we’re going to find there. Jason, you and Alice come with me. Peter, I want you to wait here for a few hours. If we don’t come back, go back to Brett, tell him what happened.”

  No one argued.

  ***

  “The Apple Man used to work for my daddy,” Tommy said, hand tucked into Alice’s. He’d grown more animated as the four made their way along the forest path. “And he was always nice to me. He always gave me apples right from the tree, even though he wasn’t supposed to.”

  They rounded a large tree in the middle of the path and Rachael stopped in her tracks. A large, broad figure dressed in jeans and a dirty T-shirt faced away from them, short cropped hair dark against his neck, skin bronzed from the sun.

  “Apple Man?” Tommy pulled his hand out of Rachael’s and took a step forward. The figure turned slowly, one shoulder sloped lower than the other, head tilted to one side, mouth hanging open.

  “Apple Man!”

  “Tommy, no!” Rachael reached for the boy, fingers grazing his shirt and missing as he darted forward.

  Cursing in Elvish, she bolted after him, pulling her dagger from her hip sheath. The orc was newly turned—Rachael couldn’t see any decomposing flesh, but the closer she got, the worse it looked. Its jaw hung all crooked, like it had been smashed with something hard, its eyes clouded and yellow. Blood and sticky black gore stained the side of its face and shirt collar, a chunk of flesh missing from its neck.

  Tommy didn’t notice anything wrong. He ran toward the orc, who took slow, shambling steps forward, reaching for the boy.

  “Tommy, stop,” Rachael shouted as she dashed after him, pulling her sword from the scabbard attached to her backpack. “He’s a . . . he’s a Bad Thing!”

  Tommy faltered as he heard his own words echoed back, but he was already too close to the orc that was once his friend. It lunged at him, strong hands clenching around his arm. The sound of Tommy’s horrified screams turned Rachael’s stomach to lead and spurred her forward even faster.

  Rachael raised her sword. It was an exact and functional replica of the Elven sword used by Arwen in the Lord of the Rings movies. The blade was made from exceptional steel and as Rachael aimed for the temple she prayed her aim was true. The blade glinted in the sunlight, sparks of light playing along the razor-sharp edge as Rachael brought it down, embedding it in the orc’s forehead. The thing stumbled backward, pulling both Rachael and Tommy with it, its hungry moan filling the air as it opened its mouth and leaned down toward the boy. Tommy screamed again, struggling frantically to escape the orc’s grasp. With the strength born of terror, he managed to pull free, running back to Alice.

  With Tommy safely out of the way, Rachael stabbed up with her dagger into the back of the orc’s skull. It resisted, hard bone fighting the sharp blade, but Rachael let go of the sword to grasp the dagger’s hilt in both hands, pushing up with all her strength.

  The orc crumpled to the ground.

  Rachael closed her eyes, crouching down and taking deep breaths to steady her heartbeat and her adrenaline. She still wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to this life. She had only ever lived her life being a hero in make-believe.

  Being one in real life was much more stressful.

  A crack of a branch to her left, the rustle of leaves to her right, and Rachael grabbed her dagger, pulling it from the back of the Apple Man’s head with a hard tug. She retrieved her sword as a figure darted through the trees, faster than any orc she’d seen. Another shape followed, and she dropped into a fighting stance, ready to leap forward and strike.

  “Don’t move,” a voice behind her threatened, and she froze, feeling the barrel of a gun press against her upper back.

  — 7 —

  THE SOLDIER AND THE DOG

  Baskerville plowed the road, slamming into zombies with his massive armored body and then twisting to force the short, razor-sharp blades on his shoulders to slice through leg tendons. I drew my katana and followed, slashing at the falling bodies, taking off arms and heads.

  Two of the three defenders were down, sprawled, screaming as the dead fell on them. I hacked the killers away and then hurried over to where the Arab was fighting. He wore the remnants of old National Guard battle dress trousers and jacket, but instead of military-issue boots he had a fairly new pair of Doc Martens. Hockey and kickboxing pads covered most of his body—as it did with the others—but he had a bad bite on the side of his elbow, where the pad was the thinnest. It doesn’t take much of a bite. The Lucifer 113 pathogen was designed to be an ultra-aggressive serum transfer bioweapon. It only takes a drop of blood or spit in an open wound.

  I performed a vicious lateral cut with the katana and took off the arm and shoulder of the hand that had the guy by the throat. The zombie staggered, lost balance, and before it could recover, the soldier hit him with what I discovered was the lower third of a long-handled spade. The blade was bent from repeated impacts, but the soldier put some heart into it, catching the zombie just above and behind the ear. The dead body suddenly dropped, proof that the blow had damaged the brain stem.

  I pivoted to put my back to his, and we met the rush of more of the dead. I’d counted nine, but now some of the soldier’s friends were getting up and attacking. Baskerville snarled and growled like a timber wolf as he ran interference for us. I used my shoulder and hip to turn the soldier so that I took the brunt of the attack, and after a while we had a rhythm. Baskerville crippled them, they fell toward me and I cut heads. When I couldn’t do better than taking off an arm, the soldier crouched and used his shovel—crushing skulls with the metal end or stabbing through the temple or eye-socket with the jagged end of the broken handle. It was brutal work. The screams of the other two soldiers faded and were gone, and then they got up and came at us, too. I heard the soldier sobbing as we killed his friends.

  Maybe I did, too.

  The fight seemed to go on and on, devouring the whole day, but when the last body fell I doubt more than two minutes had passed. I sent Baskerville out to run the perimeter and when he barked I ran and killed whatever he found. Five more zombies, three of them in uniform.

  When it was over there was another of those haunted silences.

  I relaxed, one rigid muscle at a time, and turned to the soldier. He had his last name embroidered on his jacket. Al-Harti. He was about twenty, with corporal stripes on his sleeves. A good-looking young guy who had laugh lines around his eyes.

  I stuck out my hand. “Joe Ledger.”

  He stared at me, at my hand, and then licked his lips. Then he shook. “Abdul.”

  Then his knees buckled, and he fell.

  I caught him under the arm and lowered him down, then helped him scoot back until he had his back to a sycamore. I snapped the blood from my sword with a sharp downward shake, then removed any lingering traces with a thick handful of green grass before resheathing it. Baskerville came and sat down, panting from his exertions. His body language told me that there were no more threats. I squatted down, removed my Wilson folding knife, snapped the blade into place and cut away the elbow pad and sleeve to expose Abdul’s bite.

  We looked at it, and he nodded. “I’m done.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry, brother.”

  He smiled. “Me, too.”

  It was six months since the world ended. Everyone alive knew the math. If he’d been resting, the patho
gen would take all day to spread. But with elevated heart rate and respiration, and all the adrenaline in his bloodstream, it was already everywhere. Another design feature of the bioweapon—kill the soldiers who are pumped and engaged in resistance.

  There is, I hope, a special place in hell for the kind of people who designed weapons like this. The reality was that he had hours before sickness took him and darkness blanked out his mind. After that it would simply be a matter of him dying and coming back. He wouldn’t be himself anymore by midnight—maybe not even by full dark.

  “You . . . ” he began, and then lost the rest in a sob. I waited while he pulled himself together, my hand on his shoulder. Baskerville lay down with his head on his paws and whined softly. Abdul tried it again, “You should probably go, y’know, before . . . ”

  “Not a chance,” I said. “I’m not double-parked.”

  “Why stay?”

  I shrugged. “Why not? Wouldn’t you stay with your buddies?”

  He nodded. “But you don’t know me.”

  “What do I have to know? Corporal Adbul Al-Harti, Maryland National Guard.”

  “Pennsylvania,” he said. “My guys and I moved on with some refugees.”

  I tapped my chest. “Captain Joe Ledger, Rangers.”

  “Army?”

  “Sure,” I said. The truth was too complicated to waste time on; and once upon a time I had been a Ranger. “Retired, though. I was off the clock when this shit came down.”

  “Guess everyone who mattered was,” said Abdul, hurting me without intending it. The two groups I’d run with, the Department of Military Sciences and then Rogue Team International were the cats who were supposed to always be on deck. We were the ones who were supposed to stop this from happening. The fact that we didn’t was never going to stop twisting a knife in me.

  I put a light dressing on his elbow, more to discourage flies than anything else. He sat with the arm held slightly out to the side as if trying to distance himself from the bite. Or disown the arm. I pretended not to notice and instead glanced around at the bodies.

  “You guys kicked some ass,” I observed. “Looks like it was a running fight.”

  “Long range patrol,” he explained. “When the command structure fell apart a bunch of us kind of went out on our own, you know? Looking for survivors, helping them get out of tight spots. We’ve been sending them south.”

  “To Asheville?”

  He brightened. “Yeah, you heard about that?”

  “I’ve been doing pretty much the same thing.” I explained about Dez Fox and Billy Trout, and Abdul began nodding.

  “Sure, they were all over the news. Trout was doing those ‘Live From the Apocalypse’ news reports from inside a school in Stebbins. And Officer Fox was kicking ass and taking names trying to protect a bunch of kids. So, they got out?”

  “Most of them,” I said. He didn’t ask what happened to the others or how many didn’t make it. These days any bloody fool could write the script for those kinds of conversations.

  Abdul nodded. “Glad the rest got out. Did they make it to Asheville?”

  I shrugged. “God only knows. I haven’t been there myself. Keep meaning to, but . . . ”

  He cut me a look. “But why not?”

  We sat for a moment. The birds were singing in the trees now and sunlight slanted gently through the branches. It was as lovely as this kind of thing could be. It wasn’t that tragic, shocked stillness but rather a quieter blanket of subtle noises. Bees and flies, birds, the rustle of squirrels chasing each other through the leaves.

  “My family was waiting for me in Robinwood,” I said. “I found ashes and bones, but . . . ”

  “Ah,” he said, nodding.

  We watched the bees. A doe stepped out of the woods forty yards away, moving with such delicacy that it made me want to cry. She looked around, saw us, watched for a long time, then moved farther into the sunlight. A pair of fawns followed on spindly legs. They couldn’t have been more than a month old. Alive, despite all the hungry people and hungry things in the woods. I caught Abdul nodding at that, too. It was an affirmation of a kind. We were both going to die; him today, me sometime after . . . but the world was going to go on. It would be quiet and lush and beautiful when we were gone. Eventually even the hungry dead would starve and waste and turn to mulch. Life would continue, and after a few hundred years the forests would have reclaimed every inch of paved ground, turning cities into gardens. I knew that Abdul was thinking something along those lines, too. There was a strange peacefulness in his eyes. Acceptance, perhaps.

  Abdul was already looking bad. His color had shifted from a healthy olive to a gray-green and greasy sweat ran down his cheeks. He shivered and sitting that close I could feel the heat of the fever that was igniting beneath his skin.

  Damn.

  After a while he began speaking quietly, telling me his story. And I think he did that because it matters that someone knows your story once you’re gone. We all want to be remembered, as if being forgotten meant that our wandering souls might not be as immortal as we hope. Dez Fox told me that she spoke aloud the name of every zombie she killed, even if she had to pick their pockets afterward. A ritual of our shared humanity, as important—or perhaps more important—than anything I’ve ever heard said in church.

  As I thought that, I heard the word “church” spoken aloud, and it snapped me out of my reverie.

  I said, “Wait . . . what? What was it you just said?”

  He paused, half-smiling. “I must be a riveting storyteller, Joe. You were miles away.”

  “I’m here now. What did you say about a church?”

  “Huh? Oh . . . no, I was talking about the old guy. The one who was gathering up the survivors.”

  “Go back and tell me that part again,” I insisted. “What old guy?”

  “Just an old guy. Maybe ex-military or something, because people I know who met him said he was tough as nails. Like a general. Giving smart orders, seeing to details.” Abdul wiped sweat from his eyes, looked at it and wiped it on his shirt. “I never met him, but I heard he was working through this whole area, looking for anyone left alive, giving them food and shelter, and teaching them how to be out here, you know?”

  I nodded. “And . . . ?”

  “And for a while I thought it was one of those stories,” said Abdul. “People grab at stuff like that because they want to know someone is out here who has his act together. Someone with a plan. Well, this guy, if he’s real, is like that. That’s one of the reasons my team came out here. We were hoping to hook up with him, see who he was, combine forces and like that.”

  “But you said his name . . . ”

  “Yeah, sure. They call him Old Man Church.”

  I felt my whole body tense and my heart wanted to jump out of my mouth. “What does he look like?”

  “What’s he look like?” Abdul thought that was a funny question. “I don’t know. Old, I guess. I never saw him. All I know is that a couple of travelers who said they met him talked about his gloves. He wears black gloves. Not work gloves or bike gloves, but silk. At least that’s what I was told.”

  I closed my eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ,” I breathed.

  “Why? What’s wrong? Do you know this guy?”

  I took a long time answering because I wanted everything he said to be real, and I was afraid of breaking the spell.

  “I think maybe I used to work for him,” I said.

  “Old Man Church?”

  “We called him Mister Church. Or sometimes the Deacon,” I said. “If it’s him . . . if it’s really him . . . then I have to find him.”

  “Why—” began Abdul, but a sudden fit of coughing punched its way out of his chest. Blood and something that looked like black oil spattered his hands and I instinctively moved away. Tiny threadlike white worms wriggled in the black stuff. The larvae of the parasite that was the base of Lucifer 113.

  Abdul stared in horror at it, and any trace of peace that had been
in his eyes vanished. He raised those eyes to me and they were filled with the total helpless pleading of the lost. Big tears rolled down his cheeks. Baskerville got up and backed away, growling low and deep.

  “Down,” I snapped, and the dog moved ten feet away and sat, eyes hooded and menacing.

  “I . . . I . . . ” Abdul began, then buried his face in his hands.

  I got to my feet. “Tell me what you want me to do,” I said as kindly as I could. When he looked up he saw that I had my pistol in my hand.

  “Now or later?” I asked.

  It took him a long time and cost him so much of what he had left to spend, but he got to his feet. Not his knees. His feet. That mattered. He lifted a trembling hand and pointed to the sword I wore.

  “That’s a samurai sword?”

  “Yes. A katana.”

  “I . . . I saw you with it. You didn’t just learn it . . . you know . . . since?” It came out as a question.

  I holstered my pistol. “No. I’ve been studying and practicing my whole life. I stole this from a dojo in Hagerstown. It’s a good sword. New, but top quality.”

  He licked his lips, winced at the taste, turned and spat. There were ghosts in his eyes. “Would it be fast?”

  It was such a hard question to ask. And to answer. He was a soldier, though. A warrior. It was one warrior asking that question of another warrior.

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re good?”

  “I’m better than that.”

  He didn’t ask if it would hurt. He was already hurt. This was going to end hurt, and he knew it.

  “Let me pray first, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  He studied me. “Do you believe in God?”

  I shook my head. “I really don’t know.”

  Abdul nodded. He looked around to decide which direction was east, knelt, prayed. I moved away and cleaned my sword with water from my canteen. I did not pray, but I nodded to the sword as if it could understand.