Bring On The Dead

by Robert Harterman

While there was a break in the rollicking, which was perking up the whole pub now, Chase strode quickly out, right behind her, chuckling with the glossy eyes of a drunk. They ran down to the river, and seeing that their vessel was fine, she took him on a path through the greening willows. They fled along a trail beneath the cliff. The edged along the palisade walls until the shouting of the guards for him to “Watch that one, boy!” could be no longer heard.

  Finally, they stopped in front of a modest old outbuilding. She turned to offer him her arm.

  “Permit me,” she said, offering her damp sleeve to him as formally as if he had been some grand lord of an entire compound.

  “Thank you—but I’m afraid I can’t,” he said.

  “Oh,” she said.

  He showed her the two enormous buckets of ale that he held in each hand. Then he heard a strange noise on the wind, like a low sigh or a silent weeping. He peered up into the dark to find her laughing

  Chase smiled, but did not like that embarrassed feeling that came over him, trying to navigate up the ladder with the buckets. They trudged up through the dark to a quiet place on the roof. The view was nice. He could see down the opposite slope and could see the river plainly.

  “Pretty,” Chase said stupidly, giving her one of the buckets.

  “Do you know, mister, that I am completely unaware of your name?”

  “Yep.”

  “Well then. I suppose it isn’t necessary to name a stray. So long as they come when they’re called.”

  “Feed them well enough, and they may even come back around.”

  Chase was hoping to add some sense of puckish mystery to the night. Instead, there was a sudden, awkward moment.

  He could only shrug.

  “Yep,” she said, with no emphasis on what she meant. And he suddenly realized that he had been silenced by the very game he’d started.

  Chase grunted, then pulled off a plaid blanket from the top of his pack and placed it on the roof.

  “I am not in the least bit inclined to sit,” she answered frigidly, then went cheeks-deep into her bucket.

  “Oh shit. Please. Forgive me Dhal,” Chase begged. He went ahead and sat himself down. “I’m such an animal—I assure you, my intentions were purely sexual.”

  At which she spit beer all over, laughing.

  “A stray dog indeed, sir!”

  “I quite agree with you. Though you should probably at least name me before you offer me any food.”

  She put a finger to her teeth and looked him over. She strode forward and pinched his arm. Ten she bent down and traced his face with her hand, grabbing a handful of check. She pulled back to inspect his teeth.

  “What kind of urine do you brush with?” she asked.

  “Cow.”

  “Hmm. Interesting.” She turned sideways and looked at him, her head tilting.

  “Favorite food?”

  “The brisket.”

  She glanced down at her own chest, then eyed him more sternly than ever. “Odd. I took you for a lover of the hams.”

  Who doesn’t like hams? Chase was about to ask her as much when she made a motion with her finger.

  “Stand up,” she demanded.

  Chase was awkwardly conscious of himself as she walked around him.

  “Sturdy. Well fed. A bit of pooch here in the middle though. You belonged to somebody once.”

  “Really?” Chase said. He was strangely thrilled at the odd witchery she was making him feel.

  “Oh yes. The body, the posture, the gait, the voice… They all tell an interesting story.”

  “Story?”

  “Don’t you know? You’ve been talking in gushes for the past ten minutes?” she asked.

  As she continued her inspection, Chase took a long pull from the bucket. “Well!” he said, the fine ale propelling him into an even better mood. “If you’ll give me a week’s warning, I’ll try to keep up this end of the conversation.”

  “Ah! There! I’ve pulled you enough to break through the ice at last! It’s been such hard work!”

  “And you’ve come up badly wet.”

  “You’re doing well, handsome.”

  “Thanks to my instructor,” Chase said, and he swept her a courtly bow.

  “There! There!” she cried, dropping her blouse to her waist.

  “Madam! You’ve never given me my name—”

  “So long as you come when you’re called, I’ll just call you Handsome.”

  “Come when I’m called? That, my dear Dhal, is not going to be a problem!”

  Chapter 14

  “Handsome!” she whispered, interrupting his sleep at some point in the night. “Let’s do it again.”

  With a strange hope in his heart, Chase crawled cautiously down through the silent shadows of his dreams in the waking world.

  But she had not uttered the words.

  Chase smiled anyway. She was curled up next to him, naked on the cold roof, also smiling. Chase pulled her closer. He just stared into the vast wastes of stars, completely content with his place in it all. The wind moved through empty solitudes of the forest around them. It brought a warm, aching sigh of unutterable satisfaction. The curves and gentles noises of breath that came from the woman beside him were too flawless for the limitation of speech. Every faint rustling from the gauzy, wavering bodies of heaven brought him peace, a peace as vast and noiseless as the wheeling of planets through the star-speckled black; and any attempts to describe it seemed sacrilege. Perhaps it was.

  And that was purpose enough for his life. For now.

  Reflecting on his experiences in life, on Billy’s maddening heartache, Chase was starting to think of life as a senseless jumble with no purpose but to get through it. Now, something in the calm of the forest around them, or the certainty of their unerring moment together, quieted his unrest; so let anyone who would hear a fool mutter absurdities, hear this—just like a mother quiets a fretful child, that rowdy woman, so free with her love, calmed and lulled his tumultuous thoughts. And Chase loved her for that alone. He did. He loved her.

  She stirred with the creeping morning light.

  “If you’ll wear this bandana, or maybe put away somewhere safe, perhaps you’ll remember the stray that came through your compound on the eve of Martin Luther King Day.”

  She yawned, then smiled sleepily.

  “If you’ll keep one end for yourself, handsome, I’ll take the other.”

  “Brilliant,” he whispered, tightening his clasp around her fingers. He gave her a couple of his old Marlboros. “You are just… brilliant.”

  She laughed a low, mellow laugh that set his heart beating. As she lit her cigarette, he felt another great intoxication of strength, and probably could have conquered a good chunk of known world.

  “Chase!” someone shouted in the distance.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Chase?” she asked.

  “Chase—I mean, yes,” he said, and he gulped down his embarrassment.

  From the river came, “Chase, where the devil are you, boy!”

  “Damn it.”

  “Son of a bitch, that’s it, you scoundrel! They’re leaving without you!”

  Struggling to get dressed, Chase was shocked that she was in no rush to do the same. She lie there, naked as the day she came into the world, smiling at him.

  Chase sat to put on his boots and kissed her.

  As he stood, Chase looked down with a questioning look, and he did ask why she did not cover herself. He did not have to. She was allowing him to digest what he was walking away from. No, she was not full of conceit. She was just comfortable, and confident.

  What other absurd things Chase might have said, he cannot tell. But they were at the end of their time together, and he had to go.

  Stooping, Chase picked a bunch of dandelion greens that had taken root in the roof’s gutter. He felt foolish as he gave them to her.

  “Chase, you young fool” came a call from the distance, but it might as well have been her w
ords. “We’ll see you upon our return!”

  Then she blew him a kiss, and it made a dull thud echo through his stomach—it was the most erotic and heart-melting thing he’d ever known.

  “Go, you handsome scoundrel! Go! You’ve already rescued your woman… now go slay your dragons.”

  ________________________________________

  The purple hills were a frost-etched mirror to the morning’s new sunlight. Between their shadows and the forested banks, Chase found the boys in a circle, their backs to each other. He could hear the shouts now, shouts of defiance and shouts to give a fellow courage, and then the archers on the city walls loosed their bows. He saw the glitter of the feathers as the arrows slashed down toward his fellows.

  A moment later, the throwing spears came, arching over the high wall to fall on the upheld shields.

  Amazingly, at least to him, it seemed that none of their men was struck, though he could see their shields were stuck with arrows and spears like hedgehog spines, and still the boys advanced toward the ship.

  And Chase noticed that it was barmaids that were attacking.

  All of them, barmaids.

  Three parties of barmaids advanced, and now his boys were wielding their bows, shooting at them, careful to land their shots in the woman’s shields.

  A handful of younger barmaids broke from the ranks behind the wedges to hurl their spears at the small shield wall.

  “Damnation, boys, we can’t wait! We’ve gotta hurry along now!” his uncle cried nervously.

  Chase saw the closely touching shields vanish along the docks. Then he saw the shield wedge emerge from a far ditch, and, like a monstrous beast, crawl out closer to the vessel. Chase could see nothing now except the flash of samurai blades rising and falling, and as the maids charged, Chase could hear that sound, the real music of battle, the chop of steel on wood, steel on steel, yet the wedge was still moving. Like a boar’s razor-sharp tusk, the blades began the swing and lunge until the wedge had pierced the women’s’ formidable ranks along the docks, knocking several of them into the water. Soon after, the Feisty-Uncle heaved upstream by dint of a Mighty Robo, rowing with two oars, and though the barmaids plunged into the water and tried to wrap around the vessel, his merry boys pressed forward, more of them rowing now, across a small sandbar and into the deep green waters beyond it.

  The boys they suddenly cheered and surged beyond sight.

  “What the devil have they done?” Chase muttered under his breath, realizing the surreal situation they had left him in—in one moment he was quite asleep, and very much naked with a rare beauty, and now they had vanished into the curves of the river.

  The panic and relief mixing in his sternum, Chase charged into town, careful to remain unseen.

  Almost immediately, he spotted a lone woman, walking her horse, leading it by the bridle. He snuck up behind her. Swiftly. He grabbed the bottom of her dress by the hem, then yanked upward. As she spun around, struggling in vain to cover herself, he tied the hem over her head. He then tied the hem to a tree and leapt atop the horse.

  In the next instant, she was running behind him, nude, crying, “Thief! Devil!”

  Chase was on the large black horse, scrambling through the compound’s streets and alleyways ramparts, then down the bank’s farther side through the ramparts beyond. The way led through a side entrance in the city walls.

  Before he knew it, Chase was cutting through a dense thicket of pines with ferns half the height of a man. Only dim light penetrated the maze of foliage, and the trail led the horse and him at least a mile from the river. Little Fellow, as Chase called the enormous steed, was trotting hard but with controlled glee, and they both glided through the brake without disturbing a fern branch, while Chase—after the manner of all Gundersons—seemed to catch every twig in the forest with his beard.

  But the horse seemed to know what Chase wanted, as only the finest steeds can do. Twice Chase felt Little Fellow pull up abruptly and look warily through the cedars on one side. Once, the beast even stooped down and peered among the fern stems. Then he silently whinnied back toward the river, galloping through the undergrowth again without explanation. At first Chase could see nothing, and regretted being led so far into the woods. He was about to reign him back onto the trail, when Little Fellow, pricked his ears forward and halted, as if he feared to move.

  For the fourth time, the remarkably smart creature came to a dead stand. Now, Chase, too, heard a rustle, and saw a vague sinuous movement distinctly running abreast of them among the ferns. For a moment, when they stopped, it ceased. Then it wiggled forward like a beast, or serpent in the underbrush.

  It was a lone zombie. He could just make out the stone-colored skin of its back before it leapt like a cat at the horse’s neck. And those dagger-pointed teeth, sharper than a pruning hook, flashed as it licked the air.

  Chase leapt, swinging downward with his samurai sword. The beast called out with a howl, but cut short as its head and right arm fell free from its body.

  He winced, looking down at it. Zombies have a sort of… ionized odor about them. It is something like a cross between a corpse and a leaky battery. Dead, their stench amplifies in an instant, like squishing a stink bug.

  He kissed the horse between the eyes.

  “Well, shit, Little Fellow. I wish you were mine, dammit! I’ve never seen a horse a smart as you!”

  Little Fellow eased back, and they stood noiseless until by the utter noiselessness of the green, it was clear that the zombie had been alone.

  Then at last, Chase saw them.

  His merry band of old boys.

  Chapter 15

  Just before the river narrowed to rapids, Chase called out with a series of three bird whistles

  Uncle Jickie, whose cunning eyes seemed to gleam with the malice of a serpent, silently twisted in the vessel and turned to the bank. The swish of waters rushing past, Chase gave the horse a drink and set him on a course back the way they came.

  Then, wrapping his half of his bandana around his head, Chase propped his ass on the gunwale and slid into his place among his fellow commandos. Not a word was uttered.

  When they were in mid-stream again, half dazed by the wonder of his night and half shocked still by the unexpected, unexplained fight his boys had with the barmaids, Chase just breathed the clear air, and began rowing. All he had seen and heard during the day still floated in his mind like a sigh of wind through the forest. He was only half-conscious that cedars, pines and cliffs were engaged in a mad race past the sides of the canoe—which was more less when his uncle cuffed him across the ear, to an uproar of laughs from the old boys.

  “Bloody taint!” Jick screamed.

  “Oh, now! What the fuck is this!”

  “Oh now what’s this indeed!” Billy roared, silencing all onboard. “How dare you, sir!”

  Chase turned to look up at him.

  Billy shook his head.

  “Little brother, how dare you? You make off with that big apple-shaped ass, and you don’t even share the details?”

  At which Robo, Kenzo, Gilli, Dale, and Jickie laughed with such an uproar that his cramped limbs ached to catch himself, lest he fall back-asswards from the rocking vessel.

  ________________________________________

  A dozen times, Chase could have dozed off, but every time his eyelids became heavy, his uncle Jickie turned his grimace into that snake-like gaze and looked at him with a warning in his eyes: fun may indeed be had along the way, sir, but it will certainly not slow the war party.

  Now wide awake, Chase turned wearily toward Dale.

  “What the thundering fuck did you do back there?”

  Not a muscle of the big commando’s face changed, nor did any of the attitudes alter in the least. In fact they all seemed in a sort of stoic oblivion of his existence. Gilli’s head was thrown back a little too far though, and the steely, unflinching eyes were fixed on the morning’s growing storm clouds.

  “Gill?”

&nbs
p; “Oh for fuck’s sake,” the old man said.

  “What did you do, Gilli?”

  “Do! Henceforth, Mister Chase, I’ll thank you to know that a man of my age doesn’t often find himself telling a dozen women ‘no’.”

  “What?”

  “They asked to come,” Dale put in.

  “Come?”

  “With us. And Gilli here tells them, ‘You? Ha! The first of you bitches that can swing from this cock can come.”

  At which the others lost their stoic cool, rollicking again like boys.

  Chase asked no more of it.

  Still, Gilli spent the better part of the morning pouring out such a jumbled mouthful of quick-spoken explanations that Chase was not a bit the wiser. Laughing, Chase told him sharply he needed to be more careful with that thing.

  He gave an evil leer, and muttered, “Pah! Likewise, Mister Chase!”

  “Trust me, Mister Gilli, I was.”

  Which set the vessel rocking once more.

  Chapter 16

  Without any more reminiscing, they pushed forward. And they pushed hard. The river’s pace was merciless. Logic says that going downstream is easier. Logic is a lying sack of shit. At places, it seemed damned near impossible. It flowed through the remnants of some unknown city, the intact foundations channeling the waters to only five feet across at places. They had to pause to rest, mooring themselves on a stout metal sign post of something called a Cracker Barrel, which Chase assumed once sold Saltines. When they finally gathered their strength, it felt that they had struggled for ten hours.

  A mere thirteen miles out from Beergarden, the impossibility of going any further loomed more heavily than ever, as foul weather threatened.

  The old boys were for proceeding at any risk, of course, but as the thunderclouds grew blacker and the wind more violent, Dale, the head steersman, lost his temper and grounded their vessel on a sandbar.

  Springing ashore, he flung down his river pole and refused to go on.

  “By fuck!” Uncle Jickie grumbled, “Now listen, you insolent young shit,” but as lightening flashed, he could not sanely add anything more than that.