Mort: Deluxe Illustrated Edition (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  He shuffled to the toilet to empty his bladder. Evidence of last night’s indulgence gurgled out of him for what felt like five minutes. No matter how much it made the big head hurt, though, it was always a pleasure to drain it back out the little head. He sighed as his needle dropped from full to empty. He didn’t flush, afraid it would wake his buddy, and got dressed for his second day of work.

  Pete lay on his back, blankets kicked to the foot of his bed. Mort’s friend looked childlike with his tousled blond hair and lax expression. Except for the ginormous morning wood, Mort thought with a snicker. Pete continued to snore noisily as Mort grabbed his cane and hobbled to the door. Mort glanced back at his buddy with an affectionate smile, then stepped out into the commons, closing the door behind himself as quietly as possible.

  Bob Hawthorne, Tina’s boyfriend, was waiting for him. He was manning the reception desk this morning, clipboard in hand. Bob waved Mort over as soon as he stepped out of his room. “Hey, Mort! Can I ast you to do me a favor?”

  Mort limped over to the desk. “Sure. What is it?”

  Bob looked tired. His eyes were bloodshot, his face drawn and ashy. “Tina’s supposed to report for her blood test today, but she’s caught the flu or something. You’re N.I. like her. Will you tell the nurse she’ll be in as soon as she’s feeling better?”

  Mort was planning on getting his test done after his shift today. All non-immune residents were required to submit for testing at least once a week. He nodded. “I don’t mind. Are you sure she’s okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah, she’ll be fine. Diarrhea and vomiting. No brain munchies.” He wiped his mouth. “She’s probably just getting ready to have the baby. She rearranged our room last night. Nesting, I guess.”

  Mort nodded. He didn’t tell Bob that Tina had decorated his room as well. He hoped she hadn’t overtaxed herself. “I’ll let them know. I hope she gets to feeling better.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Bob said. He stood up from the desk and headed toward his room. A couple steps away, he hesitated, turned back to Mort. “Thanks, bud. I... I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem.”

  Mort thought about his new friends, Tina and Bob, as he walked to the blue yard cafeteria. Their relationship seemed very romantic to him this morning, a real life beauty and the beast story. Bob hadn’t just been beaten with the ugly stick. Someone had attached the ugly stick to a paddle machine and cranked the dial to turbo. Yet, Tina saw past his physical appearance. She never seemed embarrassed when she was with him, and Mort had never seen her so much as glance at any other man. And Bob... well, Bob was totally devoted to her.

  Then he thought about Dao-ming, shivering in the cold with her new fellow while he smoked, the way she had gazed up at the guy, laughed, stroked his arm. Mort didn’t know which hurt more: his leg, his head or his heart.

  Sunlight glared on the snow, making his eyes water.

  It had probably been a bad idea to drink so much last night, what with all the pain meds in his system, not to mention being shot in the head with a cattle gun less than two months ago, but seeing Dao-ming with some other guy, realizing she had moved on so quickly-- without even a goodbye, so long, or a nice to know ya!-- had cut him much deeper than he ever would have expected. He thought years of disappointment had immunized him against such heartache. Guess not. Even Pete had told him to slow it down last night when he cracked open his third beer.

  “Take it easy, dude,” he’d said, eyeing Mort with a combination of sympathy and dismay. “You’re just going to barf again.”

  “We need another six pack, Pete,” Mort had replied with a belch. “How can a guy drown his sorrows with just three beers?”

  He’d known. Somehow. Somewhere deep down in his guts. That’s why he’d hesitated to look her up when he got released from the infirmary. He could have found out where she was living, what job duties she had been assigned to, just as easily as Pete had tracked him down, but he had procrastinated. It was one thing to suspect, another to have it rubbed in your nose. The former hurt a lot less.

  “Look, Mort, we all have to deal with stuff like this sooner or later,” Pete told him last night. “You guys only fucked once, right?”

  Yeah, just say “fucked”. It’s easier if it was just a fuck.

  “Dao-ming ain’t the first chick to use a guy’s dick for a comfort blanket,” Pete went on, trying to cheer him up. “It’s kind of lousy to dump someone out of your life like that, but there’s worse things than finding out your girl’s a skank.”

  Yeah, Mort had thought. Like finding out your girlfriend doesn’t want to be Frankenstein’s Bride.

  “It’s just bitches being bitches,” Pete said dismissively. “Congrats. You nailed an Asian chick. There’ll be plenty more where she came from, especially the way you look now. Girls love a guy with scars, man. It gets ‘em wet.”

  Pete’s words had comforted him last night, and they comforted Mort again this morning as he trekked to blue yard, his shoes crunching in the crusty snow.

  The blue yard cafeteria served hotcakes every Tuesday morning, and the place was a madhouse when he arrived, but Mort was grateful for the chaos. It kept his mind off his aching heart. Every time he had a moment to think, his brain trotted out little mental movies of Dao-ming under some other guy, gasping and moaning and scratching his back as he drove her from one gut-wrenching orgasm to the next. It made him nauseous, made him tremble with helpless rage, but he couldn’t make it stop. He didn’t know how to. He had never been so obsessed with a woman.

  “You okay, Mort?” Burt asked. “You look kind of green around the gills.”

  “I’m fine. Little under the weather today.”

  “Well, don’t overdo it. You’re supposed to be on light duty. There ain’t no need for it. I appreciate you staying over yesterday to help out, but you go home on time today and get some rest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr. Maguire slapped him on the back and sauntered off. A moment later, he started cursing one of the cooks. The guy had dropped a bowl of pancake batter.

  Mort finished his shift and limped to the infirmary. He was afraid he’d have to wait a long time, but there were not many people sitting in the waiting room. Most of the residents of New Jerusalem were immune to the zombie virus. As he waited to have his blood drawn, several of the nurses who had cared for him during his stay came down to say hello. Even Nurse Ratchet waddled down to give him a hug. “We miss you, baldy,” she said gruffly. “I don’t have anybody to tease now.” It helped distract him from his self-pity. At least somebody still cared whether he lived or died!

  After Nurse Ratchet departed, the clinic’s receptionist called his name. He was escorted into one of the examination rooms where a nurse drew what seemed to him to be an enormous amount of blood from the big vein in his arm.

  “Leave some for me,” Mort only half-joked as the nurse plugged another vacuum tube to the needle in his arm.

  “Sorry, I know,” the nurse said as Mort’s blood squirted into the tube. “We need a lot of blood to get a clear result. We’re working with very basic equipment here.” She put that tube into a carryall and plugged another one on. “Last one. I promise. So, how are you doing?”

  “I’m doing pretty good,” Mort answered. “Doing great, really. Getting along.”

  He told the nurse that Tina Laramie was ill and would come in to have her blood tested when she felt better. The nurse arched an eyebrow, her lips a thin line. “All right, I’ll mark her down for tomorrow, but these tests are not voluntary, Mr. Lesser. They’re very important for the safety of our community. If someone should become infected, it could spread to all the non-immune survivors very quickly. You tell her she has to come in tomorrow to be tested. This isn’t something we can afford to be loosy-goosy about. Especially considering how far along she is.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mort replied contritely.

  The nurse withdrew the needle and snapped off the rubber strap that she had cinched around his b
icep. She taped a cotton ball to the crook of his arm and said, “Thank you, Mr. Lesser. It takes twenty-four hours to get the results back. We’ll get in contact with you tomorrow if your test should come back positive.”

  That was a cheerful thought.

  “How many people are still getting infected?” Mort asked, flexing his arm.

  “Not many,” the nurse said vaguely, examining the last tube of his blood.

  “One or two a week?”

  She put the tube with the others and peeled off her gloves. “Well… not quite that many. You really have to be bitten for the virus to get a toehold. It seems to be concentrated in the salivary glands… and it’s present at dangerous levels in other bodily fluids, too. Blood, feces, urine. Um, semen and vaginal secretions. We’ve been trying to study it, but the facilities here are very limited. The Archons have been helping out with that, too. They’re completely immune to it, like most non-human species, but I think they’re worried it may mutate. Can you imagine if the Archons suddenly become vulnerable to the zombie virus? That would be a big ‘game over’ for all of us, I think.”

  Mort chuckled. “Thanks! I’ll rest a lot easier now.”

  The nurse laughed, too. “You asked…!”

  Pete was still snoring when Mort returned. He jerked upright as Mort shut the door behind him. “Whussat!” he snorted, blinking around in confusion.

  “It’s okay. Just me,” Mort said, peeling his coat off and throwing it across the back of his chair.

  Pete shuddered, rubbing his bare arms. “I was dreaming about wolves.”

  “What wolves?”

  Pete jumped down from the top bunk and went to the toilet to piss. As he voided his bladder, he told Mort about the zombie wolves that had ambushed his scouting team near the town of Cooper’s Hollow.

  “It was the scariest fuckin’ thing I think I ever seen,” he confessed. “And I’ve seen some shit, let me tell ya! We both have. Zombie people are bad enough, but these things…” His bare skin prickled into goose bumps.

  “I think all human beings have an instinctive fear of wolves,” Mort said.

  Pete nodded. “Right? So… what are you planning to do today?”

  Mort sat on his bunk. “I don’t know. I thought I might go to orientation tonight. I never got a chance to attend one.”

  “That’s cool. I went to orientation a couple days after the Archons brought us here. It was interesting. I’ll go with you if you want.”

  “That sounds good.”

  “So it’s a date.”

  “Yeah.”

  Pete chuckled. “Ugh… we’re gonna have to find us some women before we turn queer for each other. Now that you’re all skinny and hot-lookin’, I’m startin’ to fantasize about raping you in your bunk.”

  Mort laughed. “Sorry. All my holes are exit only.”

  Pete leered. “Your mouth says no but your butthole says yes!”

  Mort retorted: “My butthole says…” Frrrtt! and he ripped a juicy one.

  “Dude, that’s sick!” Pete laughed, waving his hand in front of his nose. “Crack the fuckin’ door, man! I can’t breathe!”

  Mort chortled.

  Pete gathered up his clothes and started to dress. “Listen, bro, I need to check in with my squad, let them know I haven’t gone AWOL.” He stuffed his legs into his jeans, sat down to pull on his boots.

  “Can you get in trouble for that?” Mort frowned.

  “Naw! Just a figure of speech. The Scouts is strictly volunteer. I just don’t want anyone to wonder where I’m at. I’ll be back later and we’ll go to orientation.”

  “Okay.”

  Pete departed with a salute. Tired and hung over, Mort stretched out on his bunk. Despite the headache, Pete had cheered him up, but his thoughts soon returned to Dao-ming and his mood quickly soured.

  He rolled onto his side facing the wall. He didn’t want to think about Dao-ming, the night they had slept in one another’s arms, her cheek to his chest, their lovemaking, their comfortable and satisfied pillow talk afterwards, but his mind, it seemed, had ideas of its own. It replayed their intimate moments over and over, a film loop of bittersweet pleasure that made him breathless with loss. He dozed off thinking about her, but sleep was no respite. He even dreamed of her, and it was so real his heart ached when he awoke. His fingers snapped closed on the ghostly flesh that had, only moments before, lay within their grasp.

  Pete snapped on the lights as he clomped into the room. “Wake up, scarface! I got held up,” he shouted. “We don’t have much time to get to the auditorium!”

  Mort was so startled he almost lurched off his bunk. “Where’s my shoes?” he asked, blinking blearily around the floor.

  “On your feet, dummy,” Pete answered.

  Mort looked down. “Oh. That’s good.”

  “Here, gimme your hand,” Pete said, and he hefted Mort out of bed. “Here’s your cane.”

  Mort squinted into the blustery December wind as they crossed the dark complex to the auditorium. It was spitting snow again, the sky low and starless. There were several people loitering outside the auditorium, smokers mostly, hardy souls willing to suffer the cold for their nicotine addiction, but no line. They got right in.

  Mort was shocked how many people were inside. There had to be a hundred, at least. They milled up and down the aisles, gossiping, laughing, sitting down, getting up. Most of the people seemed cheerful and excited. Their voices merged into a low roar, making the auditorium hum like a beehive.

  Mort scanned the faces around him, hoping-- and fearing-- he might see Dao-ming amid the crowd. He was fairly confident he would recognize her if he saw her. Her face was there, behind his eyelids, every time he closed his eyes. Da Vinci hadn’t stolen that from him, at least-- although he wasn’t completely sure that was a blessing. He also couldn’t say whether he was relieved or disappointed when he didn’t spot her.

  “Come on, man. Let’s sit down before all the good seats are taken,” Pete said, nudging him forward.

  The auditorium was surprisingly large. It was warm, too, further away from the doors. A lone podium stood on the stage in front of a row of metal folding chairs. Pete spied some empty seats near the middle of the floor and started pushing through the crowd, yelling, “Coming through! Disabled guy here! Let us through!” A couple guys pushed him back and one lady called Pete a jerk, but most of the people caught a glimpse of Mort and parted for him amicably enough. Mort and Pete took off their coats and sat.

  The noise of the crowd grew, became a physical thing that seemed to thrum, like a swarm of insects, just below the arching roof. Mort craned his head back and saw a balcony jutting above the main floor. There were people sitting up there, too, though not many. Teenagers mostly.

  “Wow, there’s a lot of people here,” Mort said.

  “What?” Pete yelled.

  “I said wow--!”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  They had to rise a couple times so people could penguin by. After a few minutes, several men and women in business suits climbed onto the stage and milled aimlessly around the metal folding chairs, chatting, shaking hands, laughing. They looked like they were playing a really laid back version of musical chairs, only without the music. One of the women on the stage was the heavyset blond from administration, but the rest were strangers to Mort. An older gentlemen in a blue three-piece suit finally peeled himself away from the group and stepped up to the podium. The others sat and looked at him expectantly.

  “May I have your attention please,” he said, thumping the mic with a finger. “Excuse me. Can I ask everyone to please take your seats. We’d like to begin orientation.”

  Pete reared up from his chair and hollered, “Everybody sit down and shut up!”

  There was some laughter, and a few cries of, “You sit down and shut up!” but everyone meandered to their seats. The roar of conversation dropped by several orders of magnitude.

  Pete sat and grinned at Mort.


  Mort grinned back, shaking his head.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” the guy in the three piece suit said. There was a whine of feedback and everyone winced. The buzz of the crowd diminished to a murmur-- although there was, of course, that one guy who couldn’t stop coughing.

  The gentleman at the podium smiled benevolently. Mort thought he looked like that guy off the old Hawaii Five-O show, but with the wavy silver hair of a TV evangelist. “Good evening, everyone. For those of you who have just arrived, my name is Charles Eckenberg. Before the epidemic I was the duly elected Representative of the great state of South Carolina, serving in the United States Senate. Republican.”

  There was some applause, a few boos, a little bit of laughter at the boos.

  “I’ve been serving as chief administrator of this community since its founding and will continue to do so until the crisis has passed and we can rebuild our society. I know a few of you have called for elections. I would be quite relieved-- and you can take my word for it-- to pass my responsibilities on to someone else, but for the time being we simply do not have the resources to hold an election. Survivors are arriving at this complex as quickly as we can process and house them, survivors like yourselves, many of whom are in dire need of medical and psychological treatment. We have all, myself included, been through a harrowing ordeal. We have survived, but our struggles are far from over.”

  Administrator Eckenberg cleared his throat, continued:

  “First, let me welcome you to New Jerusalem. I know this complex looks oppressive, but we hope you will come to think of it as your home. The fences, the guard towers, the armed guards: they are here for your protection. Please do not feel you are being held against your will. You are free to leave at any time, if any of you wish to do such a foolish thing, but we hope that you will stay. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how important each and every one of you are to the continuance of our species.

  “So... what exactly is this place, this New Jerusalem? This complex was constructed by the US government, as far as we can tell, in the event of some kind of national emergency. Its was originally purposed to house domestic combatants. I think some people, conspiracy theorists mainly, called it a FEMA camp before the epidemic. Its new name, however, was chosen by the Archons. Not us. Now, I’m sure you’re all very curious about these strange and wonderful beings, but please bear with me for a little while longer...”