Monster Nation

by David Wellington

  The fog started coming back.

  “No,” Clark said. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

  Chapter Eleven

  What will it be? Waddington’s chreode, enforcing some kind of Platonic human form on everything it touches? Or just a ministering angel with eyes like flashing gold? I need to know before I bring it to the surface—the potential negative consequences are truly chilling. [Lab Notes, 6/2/04]

  “There are some victories that cost more than defeat,” the Civilian lectured. Wearing only a hospital gown and a thick bandage around either wrist he should have looked absurd, or at least pathetic. His newfound power to strangle Clark’s life force probably helped there. “Then there are just plain old defeats. I never got that shit about captains going down with the ship. Even the rats aren’t that stupid, right? So back in the first days of the Epidemic, when this Druid guy came to me and said, look, humanity’s a done deal, it’s gone, finito, a real non-starter, but that maybe, just maybe there was a way for me to save my own neck, well. You know you have to listen to that. Look, give me your gun. I’m going to have power over the dead. He promised. You know, fuck dental, ruling the undead with an iron fist is the ultimate fringe benefit.”

  Clark handed over his firearm. He had little choice. The Civilian could kill him before he could get off a single shot.

  “I was a little leery when, you know, he said I had to die and then crawl my way back from the grave. That’s going to have a chilling effect on most negotiations. Turns out it was the easy part. I was going to come back anyway. Staying sharp, though, holding onto my faculties the way your blonde girl did, that took some work. It’s all about maintaining oxygen flow to the brain.”

  “The girl,” Clark said, still kneeling on the infirmary floor. He could feel his calves ping as they complained about their cut-off circulation. “What does she have to do with all this?”

  “Surprisingly little. God am I sick of hearing about Nilla! My new boss is obsessed with her, too. What is it, the blonde hair? The tits? No, Bannerman, she’s just a pawn in this game. A pawn that everyone thinks is a queen. Fuck her, alright? Let’s stay on-message here.” The Civilian smiled warmly at him. “I like you, Bannerman. I like you a lot.”

  “I… like you, too,” Clark tried, warily.

  The Civilian pulled away the chair that had been barring the door to the ICU. The door slid open silently and snicked against the magnet on the far wall, sealing itself open. The smell of blood and death billowed out of the enclosed room. “No you don’t. Nobody likes me, and with good reason. I’m an asshole. Because I had to be, to help preserve, you know, freedom. My country needed me to be an asshole. You, on the other hand, are likeable. You’re honest, and dependable, and smart, and you try to do your best, always. That’s so commendable. No way am I going to just throw away a resource like that. So I’m going to take you with me, as my servant or something. I’m even going to hook you up to a respirator when I kill you to make sure you don’t lose that beautiful brain of yours. Not all of it, anyway. I can’t really let you be smarter than me, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense. You’ll probably experience some slurred speech and—wow—no more operating heavy machinery for you, but you won’t be one of these drooling slobs you see all over, either, and that’s something. So come on. I have the bed all ready for you—the respirator’s hooked into the emergency power. We’re going to live forever, Bannerman. You and me, side by side, wonk and wonklord.” The Civilian stepped out of the ICU and held out a hand for Clark to take.

  “No, no, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Clark said, slowly rising to his feet, shaking out his numb legs.

  The Civilian rolled his eyes and lifted one hand as if he planned on choking Clark from afar. Before he could use his power Vikram Singh Nanda shot him twice in the back of the head. The Civilian collapsed in a tangle of limbs, completely dead.

  There was a good reason why the flanking maneuver was considered a classic.

  “Are you alright?” Vikram asked, picking up Clark’s pistol from where it had fallen when the Civilian dropped it.

  “I’m fine.” He looked down at the corpse between them. “Thanks.” It was all he needed to say, for the time being. He stepped over the body and into the ICU. The equipment there looked ready to use, just as the Civilian had promised. Clark ignored the waiting hospital bed and found a security terminal. He paged through the menus and re-activated the emergency lockdown. An error message appeared when the screen refreshed.

  ***INVALID OR OUTDATED PASSWORD ENTERED***

  He tried again but he hadn’t made a mistake, he knew it. The Civilian had changed the password and it had died with him. There was no way to shut the ten thousand doors.

  Clark flipped open his cell phone and called Horrocks. The phone rang twelve times before it was answered.

  “Sir,” Horrocks reported, “I’m pinned down in a sally port and we’re seeing heavy action right now, we have—have—please hold on a second, sir.” Clark heard gunshots on the other end. “I have taken significant casualties. I cannot hold this section of the D Wing for very much longer, sir.”

  “I want you to break contact as possible,” Clark ordered. “We’ve lost too much time. I want you to retreat to the roof, to the helipad. We’re going to abandon the facility. I will see you there and provide further orders when we arrive.” He ended the call once Horrocks had confirmed the order and turned to face Vikram.

  “I suppose we should get out of here before the walking dead show up.”

  Vikram agreed.

  The malignancy—oh, for the days when I could call it a “neoplasm” with a straight face!—is like a football now, or some horrible fetus growing inside her. Some nights while she’s sedated I place a hand on its smooth edge and imagine I can feel it kicking. I’ve been working for so long with no result… I should take a break. [Lab Notes, 8/17/04]

  A dead girl, maybe fifteen years old, pushed down the hall, one side pressed up tight against the cream-painted cinder blocks. She left a trail of blood from behind her, blood which had soaked through her hair, ruined her clothes. She didn’t seem to care.

  Nilla balled her hands into fists and then let go of them again. The pain in her left hand—she wondered if she’d broken it while getting out of her manacles—brought her into perfect focus. Time to take stock.

  There was shooting everywhere—it came to her from every darkened corridor, every pool of emergency lighting. Smoke filled one hallway. She was pretty sure the prison was on fire.

  The dead moved through the prison like they owned the place. And she was one of the dead. She walked as calmly as she could past the dead teenager—the girl didn’t even reach for her, didn’t waste a moment’s energy on Nilla—and stepped through a doorway.

  The armless freak blocked her path.

  He didn’t look all that great. Skin had peeled away from most of his naked chest, long strips of it dangling around his waist. His face had puffed up and turned black with rot and his eyes looked like frosted glass. The smell of him would make animals run away.

  He wasn’t quite used up, though. He grinned down at her in the darkness, really grinned—how was that possible? There wasn’t enough left of his brain to feel any satisfaction in intimidating her.

  The grin slid into leering territory as she studied it.

  “Fuck off,” she told him. Something cold and sharp throbbed in her chest—maybe her dead heart going into cardiac arrest. “Just… leave me alone. Get out of the way.”

  The grin opened and he made an obscene sucking noise. “Nnnnnuggghhh,” he told her, and she took a step back in extreme shock. He coughed and tried again. “No,” he said, finally.

  The explanation leapt to her mind and she felt foolish. “Mael, stop playing games.”

  “Fancy you saying as much,” Mael said through Dick’s mouth. The words were slurred, turned sideways by the corpse’s swollen tongue and pulverized in his broken teeth but she understood him just fine. �
��You, who’s been playing me for a fool this whole time. I have plans for you still, I think we have a real future together, but for just now I think it’s best if you sit tight.”

  “Bullshit. This place is going to hell—I want out!” Nilla exclaimed.

  “If you were to be hurt, I would feel just—” he said, but he didn’t finish. She had started to duck under and around Dick’s left side and Mael had to lean over to try to stop her. Which was exactly what she’d wanted him to do. She brought her feet up and slid across the monster’s craning back and was behind him before he could even straighten up again.

  She didn’t waste any time after that. A corridor opened up before her, long and straight and pierced with pencil-thin windows. She dashed down it, or rather lumbered with as much alacrity as she could muster. She could feel the weight and mass of Dick behind her as Mael propelled his stolen corpse in pursuit, she could sense him back there with the hairs on the back of her neck but she refused to turn. She reached a doorway at the far end of the corridor and skidded through. She tried slamming the door shut behind her only to find that it was held open by some kind of magnetic stopper. While she tried to figure out how to release the mechanism she heard Dick smash into a wall not ten feet away.

  She turned to head deeper into the maze-like prison but had to stop in her tracks. A soldier was standing in the doorway just ahead, staring at her, breathing hard. His eyes were very wide.

  “Ma’am, it’s alright, I can protect you,” he said. “I promise we’ll get out of here together.”

  Dick stumbled out into the hallway and wobbled on his feet for a second, trying to get his bearings perhaps. The soldier raised his rifle to his eye and fired three rounds in one quick burst. The noise was huge in the narrow corridor, the muzzle flash blinding. Holes popped open in Dick’s chest and neck and face and he spun around and fell to the floor.

  The soldier was smart enough not to head over to Dick’s body and check it for signs of unlife. Dick lay crumpled, his head down and away from the soldier, his legs splayed out before him. The soldier took aim again and unloaded half a clip into the dead man’s back. “Shit,” he screamed, and fired again. In the shadowy hallway he couldn’t seem to land a head shot.

  He stepped closer, then closer still. He raced up and kicked Dick’s remaining shoe and then danced back, but nothing happened. Licking his lips he stepped closer until he was looming over Dick’s collapsed form. He raised his weapon to his face, ready to blow Dick’s head off once and for all. “Ma’am, stay back,” he shouted at her.

  Dick sat up with enough force to knock the rifle butt right into the soldier’s eye, making him scream loud enough to hurt Nilla’s ears. Not half as loudly, of course, as when Dick sank his incisors into the soldier’s thigh and tore off a thick gobbet of flesh.

  Nilla didn’t stick around to watch.

  Chapter Twelve

  If I only had more time to be sure. What am I screwing with here? Pinched the field for almost three seconds this morning. I could feel it bunching up, the heat of it on my hands. Warm, pleasant. Invigorating. This is crazy—I’m crazy! I’m not a scientist anymore, I’m a witch doctor, painted red and shaking rattles at the back of a cave. Except… it works. [Lab Notes, 9/4/04]

  In a disused kitchen full of dust and spiders Nilla tripped over a fat woman whose legs had been gnawed down to splayed fragments of bone. The corpse kept trying to get up, to pull herself up to a standing position by grabbing at a table above her. She would get a few inches off the ground and then fall back again with a sputtering creak, only to try again, and again.

  Nilla picked up an institutional-sized can of beets and bashed the dead woman’s head in. Then she sat down on the floor next to the twice-dead corpse and tried to think of what to do next.

  She felt tired, so tired. At least part of that had to do with the light. The emergency lights in the prison were everywhere and they were bright enough to let you see where the doors and exits were. The light came at weird angles, though, and it was dim enough that as you approached someone in the halls they looked like nothing more than a dull shadow. It was impossible to know if they were alive or dead.

  Nilla. Nilla, speak with me. I can get you out of here if you’ll speak with me.

  Mael’s voice had softened. Once his intrusions into her head had been buzzing, clattering torrents of noise. Now they almost sounded like her own thoughts. It was hard to resist him, harder than it had ever been before. He was figuring her out, learning her buttons, her triggers. He was going deep, inside of her mind, and she wasn’t sure she could extract him anymore without hurting herself in the process.

  And was that such a bad thing? She had to wonder. She was pretty sure he was crazy, but at least in the middle of his insanity there was a place for her.

  Why do you hide from me, lass? I thought we were finally getting on alright. Just say something, will you? Say something so I can figure out where you are. Then I can get you to safety.

  She kept her mouth shut. She just wasn’t sure, yet. There was so much of her, so much she couldn’t see. There had been a complete human being, somebody with a personality all her own, with likes and dislikes and beliefs and attitudes and, and, and… memories. There had been memories and now they were hidden from her. That person had just stopped. When she died, that person had stopped functioning. Those memories had been barred from her, hidden behind a wall she couldn’t seem to break down.

  Were those things lost forever? Would she ever get her memories back? Mael promised her a name. He had implied there was more. She knew better than to trust him completely, though. For all she knew he had nothing and whatever name he gave her would just be made up. Imaginary.

  Lass. Don’t you know I’m your friend? Don’t you know it by now? I’ve done so much for you. Is this how you repay me?

  Jason Singletary could have told her the truth, but he was dead now. Twice dead. She and Dick had devoured his body between them. It was the closest thing to mercy that she had possessed to give him.

  She thought maybe that she had started over. That dying had relieved her of the burden of having a past. Or maybe it gave her a duty—a duty to rebuild her humanity.

  Maybe she had been brought back for a reason, but not for Mael’s reason. Jason Singletary had certainly thought so. She was the only one, he’d said, who could go to that place. That place in the mountains, that place at the end of the world.

  The place Captain Clark had shown her, in a photograph.

  She stood up slowly and dusted off her pants. She left the kitchen. She took the next left turn just because she recalled that when you were lost in a maze you were supposed to take every left turn. That much she could remember.

  The corridor beyond was long and dark and cold. At its far end she saw a rectangle of pale light. She moved toward it. She was drawn toward it. “I’m here, Mael,” she said out loud. Because she owed him that much. “I’m going to find my own way for now, though, if you don’t mind.”

  Nilla—finally! I’d thought you must be dead. Well, I blasted well do mind, actually. We have things to do. Turn right at the next junction. That’s an order, lass.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Nilla said. “I’ve seen what your dead people do to the living people. It looks pretty cruel to me. It looks pretty… unnecessary. If he just wanted to kill them all off, why didn’t your pal Teuagh just melt the ice caps or set off all the nukes or whatever? Why raise the dead? It’s so messy, so… inefficient. Are you telling me he couldn’t think of anything better?”

  I don’t question his ways.

  “Which just means you don’t know.”

  Mael’s voice returned a little louder, a little harsher. She had gotten to him, she decided. If only just a little. That was a kind of victory in itself. If you’re going to tell me now that you don’t believe in the father of clans, I wish you would just save your breath.

  “It’s not like I’m going to need it for anything else. Mael, I need some time to think. Some spac
e. I want you to know, it’s not you. It’s me.”

  His reply smacked into her ribs hard enough to make her squeak in surprise and pain. Something—something dead had come at her hard and fast. It wasn’t Dick: it had arms, arms that wrapped around her waist hard, unfeeling arms that would crush her if she didn’t do something.

  Nilla did something.

  Twisting to her side she dropped to the floor like a bag of flour, slipping down through the ring of those crushing arms. At the same time she kicked out with one leg, crushing a kneecap with the heel of her shoe. Unfeeling, the dead thing came at her again, surging through the darkness, enormous and stinking and ragged, torn and ravaged muscles convulsing, striking, descending to smash her to pieces.

  Nilla reached up, felt hair, and grabbed. The dead thing swiveled and scratched and struck at the air but Nilla held it away from herself and avoided the worst of its attack. Heaving and grunting she hauled the dead creature toward the doorway, toward the light. She had to be fast and she pushed her muscles to obey her, to give her some kind of coordination as she pulled on the dead thing’s blood-matted hair. As she got its head under her armpit. As she heaved one more time and shattered its skull against the doorframe.

  The dead thing collapsed like a bag full of meat. Nilla dropped it and stepped into the light, her body screaming at her, every muscle in her arms and back wrenched by the exertion. Then she looked down at the thing she’d killed.

  Shar looked back up at her.

  It was her, it was definitely her. How she had died, Nilla had no clue. It really didn’t matter. She had died and come back and Mael had been clever enough to make her one of his puppets. Nilla pressed one knuckle against her upper lip, trying not to vomit. When she stopped shaking she looked at the ceiling. As if he were there, somewhere, in the sky. The way someone else might have looked up to talk to God.

  “This is it, then. It’s all you have to offer. Dead things struggling in the dark. Hurting each other. Fuck it, I’m done.”