“You give that to Nursie when she’s does her rounds. She’ll know what to do.” The Doctor’s eyes then started to slide over Dawn’s body, lingering on her little brown ankles. A look appeared on his face that made her want to run, but he broke the spell by snatching his glasses off his face and returning to his chair.
He said over his shoulder, “Go back to your Dormitory. Your worker will take you.” He turned to look at her long and hard and a strangely sympathetic expression filled his features.
“Look it’s not so bad. I have heard that it has been foretold—predicted—that the Prime by his Powers and Divine guidance will come into the possession of the First-mother. He intends to survive the end of the Change and at such a point the legend has it that life will start anew. He will then need many concubines to repopulate the earth with his seed. If you do not turn out to be the First-mother, you might at least find yourself lucky enough to be one of those and bear him many children.” The Doctor shrugged. “So, cheer up, there’s hope!”
Dawn hurried out of the room and closed the door behind her. Outside, the dead worker motioned for her to follow and she did. A shiver went through her when she peeked at the slip of paper the Doctor had given her.
It was blank.
55 – Bloody
Bloody stood beside Driver. He had been brought from his walking coma by the danger and speed. He was trying to sink into darkness again, but he was aware of things and there was a ringing in his ears that he hated. He just wanted quiet.
They got lost for the better part of a day searching Zero—eventually taking turns napping and covering the Angel. Even Felon slept eventually, shivering and crying out in a sick slumber. The Marquis only knew that Lucifer could be found under Zero. But that was all. They’d spent hours driving alternately searching and hiding from Authority. And Zero was huge. The Angel said it was Lucifer’s defenses at work. He didn’t want company, and he wouldn’t be found by accident.
Everyone in the car was ready to kill the Marquis when the Angel suddenly called out a series of directions that took them close to the waterfront. A short time later, Driver drove through the boarded up entrance of an underground parking garage. After six dizzying revolutions on a spiral ramp, Driver drove the Nova up to a wide broken grate set in the foundation. The Marquis said it was an air intake for the garage’s ventilation system. It opened on an old sewer and the Maze.
Felon had one hand twisted in the Marquis’ lacy collar. The other kept the .9 mm pointed at his face. The assassin had immediately barked orders.
“You,” he had gestured at Bloody, “and you,” he nodded at Driver. “Stay with the nun. Tiny you come with me to cover him.” He shook the Marquis’ collar.
Tiny had winked at Driver but didn’t even glance at Bloody. This was something that the dead gunman had brought on himself, he understood. But since Felon killed him he’d been unable to control the feelings that once made him a merchant of death. Whiskey somehow quieted the feelings of helplessness, and firing his gun had kept him grounded.
The nun was sitting in the Nova blinking. They were watching as the silhouettes of Felon, Tiny and the Marquis shrank into the distance. Their footsteps echoed back. The vaulted brickwork distorted their shadows, thrown by a single flashlight.
Bloody followed a roaring vacuum inside his head that was heavy with space and silence. A long echo filled him, like a gong the size of the earth had been struck at the beginning of time, and it still rang in his ears. It was distracting and it got worse every time he came close to his old self. The vibration would grow in volume.
But drifting wasn’t much better. Faces would appear on waves of shadow—familiar and strange. When he tried to identify them, they shattered with a sound similar to that gong, so he stopped trying. Shocked, empty and alone, the gunman became a void with eyes.
Then his friends’ muffled voices would bang and thump into his peace. And all those syllables would rattle images and memories from the dark places—draw his awareness to the forefront and the gong would ring again. In time he realized the gong was what he was, or what he used to be. And the sound of it was the shape of him. But he was all through with that.
Here was a face in front of him. It spoke a name, a word, and a sound over and over again. It was an oval face with receding hair and a bushy black Devil’s goatee. Motion. His mind drifted toward it. Impact. His dead body responded slowly, cautiously identifying the detonation of misfiring neurons. The face had pushed him. The touch of the living drew him back. Ringing, his soul identified the words.
“Bloody!” Driver glared at him. “Goddamn! Pay attention. We got to talk.”
Talk. Walk. Wander. The dead muscles in his face contracted in a horrible smile.
“There y’are!” The Texan, his friend, lit a cigarette. “Christ! I don’t expect underground is a happy place to bring a dead man!” Driver’s eyes searched his face with something like worry.
Worry?
“We got to talk.” Driver grabbed his arm, led him toward the front of the Nova. Clang!
Pressure. Touch. Pressure. His dead mind cascaded with electric strands of feeling. His eyes filled with tears. Driver looked up at him.
“Damn it! Don’t!” His friend leaned him against the hood, handed him his cigarette and lit another.
Smoke. Burn. Ring!
“I don’t like all this shit. I don’t like it at all.” The Texan blew a thin stream of smoke out. It caught Bloody’s attention. He watched it drift upward like smoke from a chimney. From a cottage, a house, a burning building. A building full of orphans without futures. Lives filled with hate.
He lifted an arm. It pulled away from his side like a twist of hardened leather. The cigarette was wet with Driver’s saliva. Bloody drank it in. Clang!
“What the fuck are we doing here?” Driver started pacing. “This Angel and Demon stuff, Bloody. They’re fucking with our minds.” Driver nervously checked his armpits for his guns, dropped his hands again, and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. “Like them Eyesores wasn’t real…illusions. I read about that shit.”
“Real.” The word dropped out of Bloody’s mouth like a broken tooth.
Driver scrutinized him momentarily, and then continued, “That Felon’s goin’ to get us all killed. Fuck!” Driver took a deep breath of the damp air. “We already got a mark on us, you bet. I gotta keep my cool. This ain’t the end of the world. Jesus! Did you see him? Fucking Felon walks off with old Tiny and the Angel to have a chitchat with the Devil, Lucifer or whatever the Hell he’s talking about!”
“Hell.” Bloody’s mouth controlled the shape of the word. It was softer than the first.
“That’s right: Help.” Driver misheard him and laughed. “Goddamn it, Bloody. We gonna need it.” The Texan shook his head then smiled up at him. “But you ain’t never been a worrier.”
Worried. Worried only once when he walked up the stairs to the bathroom. Mom had told him to stay downstairs in his room when men visited, but he walked up fearing each creaky step. And he got to the top and saw the bathroom door open. And mom was there on the floor with her throat cut. Gong!
“So, off goes Tiny.” Driver’s hands shook on his cigarette. “Smilin’ like a bobcat with a mouth full of mouse. Did he tell you what he was goin’ to ask Lucifer?”
More tears leaked past his rotting memories. “Blood.” His voice was a croak to his dead ears.
“For Christ’s sake, blood? What in Hell would he be askin’ about that for?” Driver’s blue eyes turned to slits. “I guess maybe you ain’t all there yet.” He scratched the stubble atop his head.
Bloody’s mind had opened up like a subterranean stream. Thoughts and memories sluiced into the blackness.
“And her,” Driver whispered, peering in at the nun. She was watching them. “What we brung her along for? I ain’t a religious man, but that got to be bad luck!”
Gong! Bang! Gong! Bang! Guns blazed in Bloody’s mind. Flesh burst with the impact of lead. Blood filled
him as a boy died with a bullet in his heart, as a woman screamed pierced between her ribs and legs, as a carload of seniors burned by the side of the road. Tiny’s face was flushed with rape and murder. Driver’s eyes were full of blood. His own face tingled where the teen scratched while he raped her.
“Bloody!” Driver’s face was near to his. The Texan’s breath was rank with fear.
“Crime.” Bloody’s dead mouth spat the word.
“Yeah, we’re in deep this time.” Driver squinted into the tunnel.
Ring. Tunnel. Clang. Mind the gap. A woman was near the edge of the platform, her back arched over tight buttocks in denim. A horn blew. She fell into the path of the subway without a sound. Gong. A touch of the hand. Bitch!
Driver’s face softened looking up at him. “Do you know, I expect this Goddamned place has made me antsy. I don’t like ridin’ unknown range, I’ll tell you. I got to remember there’s a shit load of money waitin’ for us at the end of the trail.” Driver dropped his head, shook it. “Tiny needs us.”
Us. Gong. Driver and Tiny and Bloody. Ring! They’re drinking. A woman is dead in the alley with a knife in her. They’re carrying on. A guy tries to pistol whip Driver. Bloody’s cannon takes his head off.
“Shit,” Driver hissed, looking at his boots. “Now I’m gettin’ gloomy.”
“Gloomy.” Bloody’s voice was a papery rustle.
“You too huh?” Driver looked him over. “Why not with all this Devil-Angel shit…”
Clang. Bloody snapped his head forward, looking around the parking lot. Driver was busy with a new cigarette, couldn’t see him. Ghost. The gunman rode the gong waves back into himself—away from himself. If they brought him back again it might be too much. He could not resist so many ghosts.
56 – The March
Updike pressed the broad heel of his left hand to his left eye. Immediately following his speech, a hot stiletto of pain had begun slowly inserting itself through the pupil, driving toward his brain. For the better part of an hour it probed and pried—digging for the center of his being. Before it found its mark, he was able to pass it off as the result of too many days of travel and stress. Since the Angelic argument had ended so long ago, he seldom got headaches, and was unconcerned about this one, until an hour had passed and the burning needle sunk home. The pain came on him like a possession—memories disappeared, sensation blurred, numbed and winked out. He started a desperate search for painkillers.
Luckily, the army counted a division of the living among their number, so the dead medics had added various analgesics to their kits.
The bulk of the meds resembled hardware supplies. Treating injuries of the dead was relatively simple. A broken bone was glued and screw-nailed back together, a chest wound required some fiberglass and resin. But the alienation felt by the dead was not exclusively theirs. For years, disaffected living converts had joined the cause. Good intentions, sympathy for the dead and their care may have provoked many of the living to join. But word of the Apocalypse held incendiary meaning to some. Many wanted to join the ranks of the dead for the final battle—literally.
Sparks flared across his vision in the offending eye when he pushed against it. The technique caused a minor cessation of the pain, and created a synaptic disorientation that took his mind off of the worst of it. The painkillers he’d taken had done little for his discomfort.
Stoneworthy could tell that something was wrong, but he respectfully accepted Updike’s assurances that the minor annoyance would soon pass. So the dead minister spent his time moving among the troops, spreading the word, keeping the faith firm. The difficulty of their goal could not diminish its glory. Updike had walked with him for the first four hours of the march, but the pain had forced him to climb into one of the dozens of jeeps that his forces had acquired.
The army consisted of infantry, for the most part and was spread out over several miles. They had managed to find, and scrounge a large number of trucks and other off road vehicles to carry supplies and armament. Many of the antiques predated the Change, but were constructed before the computer age and so could be fixed with wrenches and solder. He had discussed the difficulties of moving such a large force on foot, but his military commanders were not concerned. Their pragmatism said that the availability of fuel would have been a problem—so eliminate the dependence before it begins. As it was, with the four hundred or so trucks and vehicles, they would have enough difficulty.
Moving an army of some 150,000 on transports would consume the available supply of fuel in a day. Fuel became scarcer with every mile you traveled from the City of Light. Besides, they joked, his army was dead on their feet already, and wouldn’t be tired out by the march. Updike had been around the military mind enough to know its inner workings. Such black humor was a way of making sane men accept insane things.
He had climbed into the jeep that carried General Bolton. The soldier claimed he had been killed during the dead uprising of ‘11. His battalion then was sent in by the failing U.S. government to quiet a loosely organized rebellion of the dead. Some four thousand of them had run amok in Old Chicago after the local city council had erected its umpteenth “dead only” sign. Like many among the living in those days, Bolton had underestimated the strength and determination of the walking corpses.
Bolton had laughed. “Jesus did we get it bad. Turns out that dead men do dry out, yes. Given time. But not all dead men come apart easy. See, it was still the early days and lots we didn’t know. If a dead man soaks himself in oil or some other preservative, well, his skin and muscle turns as tough as rawhide. And are they strong! My group ran into about fifty of these chaps in a blind alley. They butchered us. I must have been in Blacktime when the truck ran over me.”
Despite his constant exposure to the dead, Updike’s first meeting with the dead general was distracting. Most of the man’s hair was gone and the skull was crisscrossed with rawhide stitches, reminding the preacher of a baseball. His entire skeleton was severely damaged because his face turned on a left incline of some forty-five degrees and his right shoulder and arm was eight inches lower than the left.
“I don’t hold a grudge though,” General Bolton had said swelling with pride. “It was the same guys who cut me up that put me back together.”
The General rode in the back of the jeep beside Updike, studying a laminated topographical map. Occasionally he would grumble to himself and jot a note in a pad. Bolton smelled of shoe polish. Many of the dead soldiers drank it, claiming it had revivifying properties. Updike suspected it just kept the body tissues from drying out. Bolton’s lips and teeth were black because of the habit.
The preacher pressed on his throbbing eye—sparks flew across his memory. With his free hand he dropped two tablets in his mouth and swallowed them with a drink from his canteen. He retreated from his headache into the past twenty-four hours. It was a whirlwind of activity: packing up, preparing the long march, planning the route, and assigning officers. With food and water required for only a small percentage of the force, the army was able to get underway without delay. Always Updike was impressed by Stoneworthy. The dead minister was charged with the light of Heaven, never pausing, moving tirelessly among the dead army encouraging and helping.
He was a great support after Updike’s call to Mayor Barnstable. The preacher had pressed the mayor for compliance. He was committed to razing the City, but he was still a man of God and feared the death his army would cause if the City ignored the Divine edict.
Barnstable had said, “Captain Updike. A warrant has been issued for your arrest. The City of Light does not negotiate with terrorists. I am authorized to tell you that any action by your followers, overt or otherwise would be considered an act of war. The Westprime Defense Forces are on high alert and await orders. You have twenty-four hours to turn yourself in to Central Authority.”
Updike had reached out to his first recovery for support. Updike loved Oliver Purdue deeply, and had come to respect him like no other. Like many of the de
ad, Oliver had looked into his former life and found the doors closed. But instead of sinking into despair, Purdue had determined to make his death a new beginning. He didn’t speak about his past and Updike didn’t press him. The result was that Oliver was a mystery. Updike had often mused that were he not crazy, he would find the dead man’s dark eyes a terrifying thing to look upon. Instead, Oliver’s charity and compassion buoyed him up.
Updike remembered passing through a small town late that morning. It was deserted as most were. The preacher gave the order to call a halt a mile past the town in a small forest of dead maples. Stoneworthy had approached him with obvious reluctance in his thin-legged stride, and asked why they wouldn’t stop in the town. It had started raining, and many buildings there were sound enough to provide protection from the elements.
“My friend,” Updike had said. “Did you see the arena as we passed? It is a structure of steel and aluminum. The type of building designed by the soulless architects at the end of the Millennium before the Change.”
“Yes,” Stoneworthy had said. “Between that, and others I saw, we could easily take shelter as we rest. There are the living troops to think about, and some of our people need to apply oils and treatments to their bodies.”
“I know,” Updike had sighed. “But there is a greater erosion that I fear those buildings will bring, far worse than any rain. It is an erosion that our cause cannot afford.
“Passing through the town was bad enough. Just passing through I’m sure has taken a toll. I would have avoided it all together, except that the farmland around it has turned to swamp in the decades of rain. What do you think we will find if we make our camp in the arena, or in the city hall?” Stoneworthy had shrugged, his face a mask of perplexity. “We will find remains. Not of the town’s inhabitants, not bodies no. Those would have risen and walked away or been dragged off by animals. No. We would have found the remains of a world that is gone.
The Forsaken - The Apocalypse Trilogy: Book Two Page 30