She refused to explore that thought any further.
Marisol helped her find what she needed in the main stores. An economy-sized bag of pork rinds, guaranteed not to spoil for decades to come. They brought it north, into the half of the island where a bonfire was already being built, where lights were coming on in the houses and the sound of playful violins and acoustic guitars hung in the air like the music had gotten caught in the tree branches. They found Dekalb slumped forward across his own knees, still sitting in his lawn chair, while all around him living people set about making a communal dinner. The lich took the pork rinds from his daughter and tried to tear open the bag but he just didn’t have the strength. Sarah did it for him. As she handed the bag to her father she looked at Marisol, and Marisol looked back. It was a lot more comfortable, the silence that passed between them, than it had been before.
“We need to find you a house,” Dekalb said around a mouth of what looked to Sarah like dirty pink styrofoam. “If you’re going to stay here with me you’ll need a proper house. You can’t live in the ventilation shaft with us, it’s not healthy.”
Sarah’s brow furrowed. “Daddy, I didn’t plan on staying,” she said. “I’ve got work to do. Important stuff.” She felt like an infant as the words came out of her mouth.
Dekalb shook his head. “It’ll wait,” he told her. “We have way too much catching up to do. And there’s the question of your education. Marisol, what about the officer’s quarters over by the schoolhouse, what’s available over there?”
“Dad!” Sarah interjected, “I—”
He pushed his hand into the bag and rustled it in his annoyance. “I will not let you be put in danger again,” he told her. He drew out a handful of rinds and shoved them into his permanently stretched-out rictus. “Who’s the grown-up here, after all?”
Chapter Four
The giant truck rocked up on one set of giant tires as it crushed an abandoned car on the interstate, a thousand tiny glass cubes exploding from the crushed windshield, rotten struts and shocks popping and collapsing and squealing and then it was over. In the bed of the truck Ayaan held onto a roll bar until the truck stopped bouncing and then clicked on her walkie-talkie. “Bring up a wrecking crew,” she said. “The flatbed won’t make it past this one.”
A few dozen living men in blue paper scrubs came rushing up with prybars and sledgehammers. They made short work of the rusted-out car, taking it to pieces and hurling the wreckage into the undergrowth on either side of the road. They had to move quickly. Behind them the Tsarevich’s flatbed trailer was surging forward, its ranks of wheels turning in fits and starts as the giant vehicle moved forward one staggering step at a time. A hundred corpses heaved at it with their shoulders, their bent backs, their straining fingers. On top six more ghouls turned the cranks of giant flywheels, feeding storage batteries so they would have electricity for the night to come. Living gunners crewed heavy machine guns mounted in pintles at two positions on the flatbed. The green phantom sat strapped into a chair on a high superstructure from which he commanded a good view of their surroundings and everything that happened in the column of vehicles. At the back of the flatbed the Tsarevich himself reclined in his yurt, quite hidden from view. There were plenty of rumors that claimed he was actually not in there at all, that the flatbed was a complete ruse and that he was hidden elsewhere. Ayaan wouldn’t have blamed him for being a little cagy.
The attack on his person had shaken him badly and the death of Cicatrix had left him without a familiar supply of food. Once the Tsarevich had learned that Amanita was also dead, well, something had changed. He had gone from being hurt and confused to being galvanized. He had moved quickly to get his people on the road. He’d had plenty of enthusiastic help, too. The living and the dead had worked side by side to get vehicles ready, to pack up their supplies and belongings, and do whatever it took to stay near the prince of the dead. Where they were going and what they would do when they arrived was still a complete mystery to them. Ayaan, who only knew a little more, found she had too much work to get done to be asking a lot of questions anyway.
Behind the flatbed a fleet of hundreds of barely-functional cars and buses followed, their engines blowing blue smoke across a landscape that had reverted to the primeval. Ayaan remembered a time when cars were commonplace, even in her native Somalia, but she had forgotten just how noisy they were and how much of a mess they made. Most of the vehicles hadn’t seen use in over a decade and many were so badly rusted they fell to pieces after only a day or two. It didn’t matter. The Tsarevich had all the gasoline he could ever use from his refinery on Cyprus, and there was no shortage of abandoned cars.
Ayaan had been on one of the missions to collect vehicles. Regardless of what she’d lived through and regardless of what she had become it had still spooked her. The cars had been waiting for them, parked in orderly rows outside of shopping malls and airports and stadiums. They had been left there intentionally and their owners had fully expected to come back and reclaim them at short notice. Every vehicle had been personalized in some way—a faded bumper sticker, a graduation tassel hanging from a rear-view mirror, a paint job with simulated flames. Personal effects littered the passenger seats, fast food wrappers were stuffed into the leg wells. The doors were all locked, the windows rolled up tightly. The batteries were long since drained and the gas had evaporated out of their fuel tanks, but those two problems were readily solved. The cars still worked, at a fundamental level. But no one had ever come back. The cars were forgotten. Left for dead.
It had spooked her not for the presence of any real horror but for the absence of any normality. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that ninety-nine per cent of the world’s population had died in the first months of the Epidemic. Surrounded by ghouls and cultists and liches it was easy to pretend that the world hadn’t been emptied out. Standing in a parking lot bigger than the village where she’d been born, however, watching the sun gleam from every piece of glass and mirror, Ayaan had been forced to accept it, to accept everything that had been lost.
The cars had been given a kind of afterlife now, she supposed. Each car held a single living person—the driver—and as many handless ghouls as could be stuffed into the rest of the interior, the back seat, the trunk. The green phantom and the Tsarevich kept them docile, but Ayaan kept wondering what the drivers must be thinking. Were they pleased with themselves, were they secure in the knowledge they were doing a holy duty? Or did they worry every single second that one of their passengers would break the spell, wake up and look around and realize just how hungry they were?
Ayaan looked forward and saw the road obscured ahead by the branches of a weeping willow. The tree’s roots had torn up the asphalt and sent cracks running through the blacktop in every direction. “I need a lumber crew,” she said, and living women with chainsaws came running forward. Ayaan tried not to think about the last time she’d seen a chainsaw.
Behind the ghoul-filled cars came tow trucks and fuel tankers and 18-wheelers containing mobile mechanics’ shops and crates full of spare parts for the cars as well as kitchens for both the living and the undead. Behind the support vehicles came the stragglers—those living who didn’t know how to drive, mostly, a tailback of them that receded into the distance. They kept up as best they could. The column of vehicles moved forward only a few miles an hour but it never stopped. The wrecking crews and chainsaw teams cleared debris while a pair of steam rollers and road graders were available if the way became truly impassible. Whatever the Tsarevich hoped to find out west he intended to get there in a hurry.
There would be serious obstacles to come, Ayaan knew. Rivers to ford. Mountains to climb. There would be weeks of slow going ahead of them. So far not a single person had complained.
Well. There was Semyon Iurevich. Though he didn’t complain so much as beg for forgiveness and for an end to his unlife. Even over the noise of the cars and the chainsaws Ayaan could hear his screams.
There had been qui
te a bit of debate over what should be done with the apostate lich. It had been suggested he should be fed to ghouls—the ultimate insult paid to the most vile of traitors. Yet ghouls did not eat their own kind. The dark energy repulsed them far more than the decomposing, suppurating flesh enticed them. It had been noticed that ghouls would quite happily eat dead human meat as long as it wasn’t currently being animated. It would have been simple enough to smash in Semyon Iurevich’s brains and then feed him to the dead, but that lacked an element of dark justice, as far as the Tsarevich was concerned. It lacked torture.
Behind her on the flatbed Ayaan could have watched, if she so chose, what the Tsarevich had finally deemed fit. Semyon Iurevich was hanging from a gibbet by his neck, his eyes turned upward to the sky. Stripped of his bathrobe it had turned out he was quite fat. Now a living man with a machete was slicing off thin strips of the lich’s body, starting with the soles of his feet and working his way up. As each slice came off he would drop it in a blender and puree it until its dark energy had completely dissipated. The resulting slurry was dribbled into the mouths of the ghouls who worked so hard hauling the flatbed across New Jersey.
The best estimate held that Semyon Iurevich would be nothing more than a screaming skull long before they reached Indiana.
The bastard lich had diddled with her head, he’d gotten his rotten little fingers in her brain. Ayaan, who had never believed in revenge, did not enjoy listening to his screams. At least not too much.
Chapter Five
In the dark Sarah lay in bed and tried not to look across the room. Not more than four feet away, sitting in a chair because he did not sleep, was a corpse. A walking corpse, a hungry, dead, ex-human being with broken nails and ruptured skin and a face stretched as tight as a mask across his skull. The feeling had started to slide over her like a cold wet blanket at dinner the night before. He had sat apart. He had put people off their food. She had realized, while she gnawed on a stalk of celery, that he disgusted her, too. That this particular corpse was her father made less difference than she might have hoped. He was dreadful in appearance. Lesions filed every crease of his skin. Fluid had pooled in one half of his body and left dark patterns of bruising down one arm, one cheek. His eyes had sunk into his skull, his nose had shrunk down to little more than a scrap of leather. Even just by moonlight it was hard to look at him and not feel her skin crawl.
Dekalb stood up against the light coming in the window. He tapped at Gary’s skull with a finger no thicker than a pencil. In silhouette he looked terribly thin. More like a stick figure than a man. The terror drained out of her, little by little. It was her father, she told herself, it was the man who used to hug her and feed her pieces of carrot out of a plastic bag and who would carry her canteen for her when it got too heavy.
It was also a dead thing, a withered, sad thing. Just like Jackie had been, the little boy she had helped bury.
Too many thoughts. She rolled over and pretended to be sleeping.
Sarah wondered if everyone went through this. At a certain age did everyone look at their father, that being who had once been so tall and strong, and see just a frail old man? Of course very few people would ever see their fathers like this.
Too many thoughts. She couldn’t sleep. She took Gary’s tooth from her back pocket and looked across the room at the crab-legged thing on top of the dresser. The skull had a full set of teeth, both top and bottom. The tooth in her hand was an incisor but he wasn’t missing any. He must have regrown the tooth the mummy had pulled out of his head. Instead of shuddering at the thought she curled her hand around the tooth and made contact.
Why, look who’s dropped by for another chat. The skullbug didn’t move or react in any way. It looked preternaturally like a sleeping cat basking in a ray of moonlight. In her head Gary sounded a lot more excited.
“Let’s get one thing clear,” Sarah told him, the words staying in her throat so her father wouldn't hear. “If you try any of that paralysis bullshit again I will personally take you out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and drop you in. Dad might subconsciously heal you but I don’t think he can teach you how to swim.”
I can’t tell you how scared I am.
Sarah glared at the skull. “I already have the boat.”
And I have something you need, or we wouldn’t be talking. You can threaten me all you like, Sarah, but you can’t do anything about it.
He was baiting her. He wanted her to get angry. He wanted her to kick him or throw him against the wall or say something cruel. Why? Maybe even that level of human contact would be something he wanted. Or maybe he just enjoyed winding her up.
She didn't have the energy to try to figure it out.
“It’s about Mael Mag Och. The guy I thought was called Jack.”
Ah. The old bastard. Yes, I knew him well. Did you want just general information or did you have a specific question?
“Why did he lie to me?” she demanded. She had tried to find out for herself, earlier, by going to the horse's mouth. Time and again she had grasped the hilt of the green sword. Mael Mag Och never answered. When she’d asked her father about that he’d said the old Celt must be screening his calls. Then Dekalb had been forced to explain to her what that meant. “He won’t talk to me now. For years though he came to me. He taught me things, gave me advice. Why? Why was it so important that I think he was Jack?”
He probably chose Jack’s name as someone you would have heard of, somebody you could be expected to trust, Gary told her. His voice was surprisingly soft and kindly. He was never the kind of person who could tell you simple facts. He came on like a nice guy and frankly, I still believe he has a good heart. But he has some pretty crazy ideas about who we are and why the world had to end. If he doesn’t want to talk to you then count yourself lucky.
“I guess he fooled you, too, huh?” Sarah asked.
For a while. Then I ate his brain. Of course, that says more about me than him.
Sarah shook with horror.
He’s insane. I can tell you that much for free, short cake. He told me once his god sent him back from death so that he could oversee the extinction of the human race. He didn't strike me as the kind who would give up on a commandment from a god.
Chills ran down Sarah's back. Extinction...? Was that what he wanted? Why had he helped her, then? What kind of game was he playing behind her back? It had to be something else.
Whatever he asks you, whatever he asks from you. Don’t give it to him.
“Thanks for the advice.” Sarah put the tooth back in her pocket and rolled over again. She could hear her father moving around on the hardwood floor. He didn’t sound like a human being. His footsteps weren’t loud or strong enough.
Too many thoughts.
In the morning white sunlight marched up the sheets and eventually hit her in the face. Sarah wrinkled her nose but eventually she had to give in. She sat up in bed and saw her father sitting in the chair across the room. He had a book in his hands.
“There was a time when I was too weak even to read,” he told her, his mouth curved into something wistful, something approaching a smile but never quite reaching it. He was so much less horrible, less, well, disgusting when he talked. He had her father’s voice and that made all the difference. Grateful, she sat up and listened attentively. “That was before I figured out I could take energy from the ghouls like a sort of vampire. I’ve had a hard time of it, kiddo.”
“I’m... sorry, Dad,” she said, and put her feet down on the floor. Her shoes were lined up next to the bed, in case she had to get up for an emergency in the middle of the night. Ayaan had taught her that, not her father. She slipped into them effortlessly.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am of what you’ve accomplished. It’s not easy moving around the world these days, I should know. I came to New York back when all the ghouls were still here. I’m a little peeved with Ayaan. She said she would take care of you.”
Sarah looked down at the floor. Her head was
too fuzzy to process much. “Actually, that’s kind of something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” She stood up and shivered. Her sweatshirt was in the laundry, leaving her with just a tank top. It was cold in the bed room—no central heating anymore. Wrapping her arms around her she tried to look him in the eye, like an adult. “She’s... dead. She got captured by the Tsarevich and... I’ve been following her, trying to save her but I waited too long, I could have, I could have stopped it, somehow, if I had taken the fight to them, if I hadn’t been so cautious but now she’s undead and. And. And. I have to sanitize her now. I have to save her from being one of those... things.” She stopped herself. She had been about to say that she needed to save Ayaan from being a lich. He might take that the wrong way.
He stared at her unblinking. She couldn’t remember if he still had eyelids or not.
“Okay, that came out all wrong. Can I start again?” she asked.
“No need,” he told her. His head tilted backward and his eyes clouded over and she wondered if he was having the ghoulish equivalent of a stroke. Then he went to the dresser and touched the green sword. “So you were trying to rescue Ayaan. I see. It didn’t work out. You can’t blame yourself for that. It wasn’t your fault.”
“It’s... not?” Sarah asked. She wondered what that he could know that she didn’t.
“Ayaan was a devout Moslem. She hated the idea of ever becoming ritually unclean,” Dekalb said, fiddling with the sword. He was too weak to actually pick it up and brandish it. “But she was also fiercely practical. I don’t think she would like the idea of anyone going out of their way to mop up after her. Especially not if it meant putting you in danger.”
That didn’t matter, Sarah thought. It wasn’t a question of what anybody wanted. It was a question of duty. She went to say it out loud... and couldn’t.
She left him, claiming she was going to eat breakfast with the survivors. The little house that Marisol had sorted out for the three of them (herself, Dekalb and Gary) was on the north side of Nolan Park, well away from the Victorian houses where the survivors lived. It was easy to slip away with no one seeing her. She remembered the time she’d slipped away from the camp in Egypt, scurrying over the wire. Funny that after so much time she was running away for exactly the same reason.
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