Mort

by Rod Redux

  “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. Skinny as you’re getting, I’m startin’ to fantasize about raping you in your bunk.”

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

  “Your mouth says no but your butthole says yes!”

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

  “Dude! Sick!”

  Pete announced then that he needed to check in with his squad leader at the outcamp barracks, but promised he would return in time to accompany Mort to the orientation program later that evening. He left shortly after and Mort stretched out on his bunk to take a nap. Pete left him with a grin on his face, but his thoughts soon turned to Dao-ming, and he felt his mood sour.

  He turned on his side with his face to the wall. He thought he might weep a little, but no tears came. After a few minutes, he dozed. He snapped awake when Pete returned. It was late, and he didn’t have much time to get to the auditorium. It was a good thing he’d slept with his shoes on.

  Pete helped him to his feet and handed him his cane. They exited the dorm together, crossed the dark complex to the auditorium and waited in line to get in.

  There was quite a crowd. Hundreds of people, it looked like. Everyone seemed excited and cheerful. Their voices merged to a low roar in the cold outside the auditorium. Mort scanned the faces around him, hoping—and fearing—he might see Dao-ming. He didn’t know if he was more relieved or disappointed when he didn’t spot her.

  “Come on, man. Let’s get a good seat,” Pete said, nudging him.

  The auditorium was surprisingly large. It was warm, too, away from the doors. A lone podium stood on the stage in front of a row of empty metal folding chairs. Pete found them some good seats, pushing on people and yelling, “Coming through! Disabled guy! Let us in!” A couple guys pushed back and one lady called Pete a jerk, but most people saw Mort and parted for him amicably. Mort and Pete sat next to one another in the middle of the arena. The noise of the crowd was like a physical thing, floating just below the roof. Mort craned his neck and saw that there was a balcony for additional seating above the main floor.

  “Wow,” Mort murmured.

  “What?” Pete yelled.

  “I said wow!”

  “What?”

  “Never mind!”

  They had to rise a couple times so people could scoot by. Men and women in business suits finally climbed onto the stage and took their seats on the metal folding chairs. One of them was the heavy-set woman from the administration building, but the rest were strangers to Mort. An older gentlemen in a blue three-piece suit took the podium.

  “May I have your attention please,” he droned, thumping the mic with a finger. “Excuse me. Can I ask everyone to please lower their voices. We’d like to begin the orientation.” There was a whine of feedback and everyone winced and covered their ears, but the buzz of the crowd diminished to a low hum and, of course, that one guy who wouldn’t stop coughing.

  The gentleman standing at the podium smiled. To Mort, he looked like that guy off the old Hawaii Five-O television show, but with gray hair. “Good evening, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Charles Eckenberg. Before the epidemic, I was a duly elected Representative from the state of South Carolina, serving in the United States House of Representatives. Republican” He smiled.

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

  “I’ll be serving as temporary administrator of this community until the current crisis has passed and we can begin to rebuild our society. I know a few of you have called for elections, and I am quite happy to pass my responsibilities on to someone else, but for the time being, we simply do not have the time or the resources to hold an election. Survivors are arriving at this complex as quickly as we can process and house them, survivors like yourselves, who are in dire need of medical and psychological treatment. We have all, myself included, been through a harrowing ordeal. We have survived. Now we need time to heal.”

  Administrator Eckenberg continued:

  “First, let me welcome you to New Jerusalem. The name of this temporary refuge 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.

  “This complex was constructed by the US government, as far as we can tell, in the event of some kind of national emergency…”

  Mort listened, fascinated, as the administrator spoke at length about the complex, the society that had formed within it and the rules and regulations they must all abide by to ensure the survival of the race. He reminded everyone that human survival was not guaranteed, even with the help of the Archons. In many places, the epidemic still raged. There were wars and rumors of war. There had been nuclear incidents. They had recently lost contact with a Midwest refuge called Eden and believed that there had been some kind of military skirmish. They had not heard anything from the camp in days, and were waiting for news of the camp’s fate from any of the Archons who were recuing people in that region. He revealed that there were currently seven known refuges in North America, not counting Eden, all in radio communication with one another. All told, something like 17,000 people had survived the zombie plague in the United States, so there was hope. With the Archons stepping forward to help, he said, there was even greater hope.

  “Now before I turn the podium over to Mrs. Walters, I think it would be good for our spirits if all of us rise to our feet and say the National Anthem together,” Mr. Eckenberg said gravely. There was a great round of applause to that.

  The teenage boy from the registration office quickstepped from the wings of the stage with the United States flag and the applause grew even louder. The woman sitting next to Mort broke down in tears. Mort felt tears on his own cheeks, and saw that Pete was rubbing his eyes, too.

  Mort rose to his feet as everyone else did. He put his hand to his heart and said the familiar words, his voice lost in the chorus of hundreds of other voices, swearing allegiance to a country that might, for the time being, be dead, but that might also—that must!—rise from the dead like the zombie hordes that had so recently tried to devour it.

  As Mort spoke the words, he felt a needling pain inside his skull. He winced, looking instinctively, as if something was pulling his attention, toward the left wing of the stage. There, standing next to the emergency exit beside the curtains, stood one of the Archons.

  The Archon was staring at him.

  It was hideous. Bleached white skin drawn tight across the sharp angles of its skull. Great gleaming black eyes and red lips that circled rows of shark-like teeth. How could anyone think those things were beautiful? Were his fellow survivors all mad, or was the madness inside Mort’s own mind—a side-effect, perhaps, of the damage the psychotic DaVinci had done to his brain?

  Mort felt his tongue faltering. He clutched his head as the pain intensified.

  Pete nudged him. Mort tore his eyes from the Archon and saw his buddy mouth, “What is it?”

  Mort nodded toward the Archon, feeling his pulse quicken.

  Pete looked, then turned back to Mort and mouthed, “What?”

  Mort looked back to the Archon, which seemed to be frowning toward him faintly. He felt another stab of pain, even stronger, inside his forehead and actually cried out. He sat heavily, but his fall was masked by the movement of the entire assemblage as they took their seats following the Pledge.

  “What is it?” Pete asked in Mort’s ear.

  Mort could only shake his head. A moment later, the pain began to abate. He peeked toward the Archon and saw with relief that it had turned its attention away from him. It was looking up at the podium.

  As others took to the podium and addressed the assembly, Mort examined the crowd more closely. He spotted a second Archon standing in the sha
dows on the other side of the arena. It was a smaller, thinner one: a female, perhaps. It gave the impression of femininity, despite the fact that it had no breasts and was, like the others, completely bald. It was, thankfully, paying no attention to him.

  The presentation was coming to a close. Doctor Whalen stepped up onto the stage from the arena floor when his name was called and announced that he needed volunteers to help distribute iodine pills to all the residents of New Jerusalem. The iodine supplements would help reduce the uptake of irradiated iodine should any fallout reach their community from the regions where there had been nuclear incidents.

  “Please keep in mind, this is simply a precaution, but I think it is a wise one. We do not know how much radioactive fallout we may be looking at receiving,” Dr. Whalen said. “Hopefully, weather patterns will continue to move in our favor, but we have to be ready for the eventuality.”

  A frightened stir in the crowd.

  Before anyone could think about it too much, Eckenberg stepped back to the mic and thanked the doctor. He urged anyone who wished to volunteer to sign up on the volunteer forms that had been placed in the lobby. He smiled then. “Now, I know you’re all very curious about the creatures who have stepped up to assist us in this, our most dire hour of need. Please help me to welcome the spokesman of the Archons, Yaldabaoth!”

  The applause made the walls of the auditorium thrum. Mort had to clamp his hands over his ears.

  A tall and impressive being walked out from behind the curtains of the stage then. It was an awesome, if gruesome, sight to Mort. Standing a good foot and a half over Eckenberg, Yaldabaoth strode in a stately fashion to the podium and crouched down to speak into the microphone. He hesitated as the applause continued, then murmured into the mic: “If I may.”

  His three words silenced the crowd instantly.

  “Thank you,” he said. He had a rich, robust voice. The only word Mort could think of to describe the being was leonine. Even his appearance, though ghastly, was lion-like. His features: broad and squarish, with a chin like a block of marble, and black, cat-like eyes.

  “You’ll forgive me if I struggle to speak your colloquial English. It is not my first language.”

  Though Mort believed it to be a mild joke, no one laughed.

  Yaldabaoth smiled slightly, then continued. “My name is Yaldabaoth. I am an Archon. I have been chosen to act as a liaison between my people and the provisional government you have established at this refuge.

  “My people have shared this world with yours, in secret, for as long as we can remember… and we Archons have a very, very long memory. I myself am over six hundred years old. Among my people, that’s considered only a little past middle age.”

  Mort smiled. It—he!—had a sense of humor!

  “I know you all must be horrified by our appearance and abilities—“

  No! No! the crowd shouted. We love you! You’re beautiful! Angels to us! they cried.

  “--let me just assure you, we have no ulterior motives. We wish only to save your race. We have shared this world in secret with you for millennia and cannot imagine continuing without you. Throughout the eons, we have come to love you. Though we have been called gods by your people in the ancient past, and more recently angels, we no more wish to rule you than we wish to see you perish. When this terrible crisis has passed, we will vanish from the world of man, and become, once again, merely the stuff of myth and legend.

  “Our people are few and we are solitary beings. It was only this disaster which forced us to recant our vows of non-interference. To be truthful, we have watched your race with interest and affection for the last five thousand of your human years, hoping you would continue to evolve so that you could someday take your place at our sides as stewards of this world.

  “I pray that day still comes.”

  Yaldabaoth smiled and peered across the crowd, which continued to gape at him in stunned silence. Mort watched as the creature’s eyes moved toward him. That needling pain returned as the eyes drew nearer, growing in intensity. When the Archon looked at him fully, Mort jerked in his seat, shouting in agony. It felt as if someone had hammered a railroad spike in his forehead.

  The other two Archons looked toward Mort then, frowning.

  !!!PAIN!!!

  Mort came up off his seat, clutching his head. He howled uncontrollable. Pete was reaching toward him in alarm, calling his name, but Mort wasn’t aware of him, wasn’t aware of the crowd turning to stare at him in shock and embarrassment, wasn’t aware of anything but the horrid bright white blades of agony stabbing inside his head, digging into his brain relentlessly. Not even DaVinci’s cattle gun had hurt him so badly.

  “Mort!” Pete yelled, clutching his arm. “What is it?”

  Mort’s body arched, shaking, his spine bending impossibly backwards, and then he fell and began to jerk, eyes rolling back in their sockets, limbs flopping spastically.

  “He’s having a seizure!” the woman seated next to him cried.

  “Somebody grab that doctor!” Pete pleaded. “My buddy needs help!”

  Mort rolled onto the floor between the seats, landing face down with a crunch, and then everything went blessedly dark.

  18

  Interview with the Archon

  Mort came to slowly. In the movies, when someone woke dramatically, all their family and loved ones were gathered around the bed, peering down with worry lined faces, but life was no movie, and Mort woke alone.

  He was in the infirmary again. He blinked around, raised his arm, saw a blood oxygen monitor clamped to one finger, an IV needle running up to a bag of fluid taped to the crook of his elbow. A heart monitor beeped soft and steadily beside the bed. He raised his other arm—this one wasn’t attached to any electronics or tubes—and gingerly probed his face. His fingers encountered gauze and tape layered across his nose. He supposed he’d broken it when he flopped face first onto the auditorium floor.

  Great… as if he wasn’t ugly enough already!

  Mort found the bed controls and raised himself to a sitting position. He looked toward the window, saw it was still night out. He pressed the call button and waited for a nurse to respond.

  Rather than speak to him over the intercom, the night shift nurse strode into the room. It was a nurse Mort recognized from his previous stay in the infirmary, an RN named Peggy Martin. “Back again, huh?” she said cheerfully. “You just can’t seem to stay away. I’m starting to think you might be sweet on me, Mr. Lesser.”

  Mort smiled politely. “Can you let me out of here?”

  His voice sounded funny with his nose broken and bandaged. Nasal and kind of mushy around the edges.

  Nurse Martin frowned. “Oh, no you don’t! You’re staying overnight for observation. You had a grand mal seizure in the middle of orientation.”

  “I feel fine,” Mort objected. “I don’t want to stay. I want to go home.”

  “Doctor Whalen really wants you to stay overnight under observation,” Nurse Martin objected. She tried to distract him: “Do you want something to drink? How about something to help you rest?”

  Mort sighed, frustrated. He felt fine. Moreover, he knew exactly what had happened to him. When the Archons turned their attention toward him in the auditorium, they’d poked inside his brain—probably meaning no harm, just wanting to have a looksee inside his noggin—and they’d inadvertently triggered a seizure with their mind-reading abilities. Now that he was away from them, and none of them were telepathically digging in his brain, he’d recovered. It was simple as that. But try to explain that to Nurse Martin.

  “No, it’s okay. No pills,” Mort said, defeated.

  Since no one else in New Jerusalem was falling over with seizures, he had to conclude that the neurological damage he’d suffered at the hands of the madman DaVinci was interfering somehow with the Archons’ telepathy.

  It was probably why he saw them as they truly were, he realized. Their angelic appearance was a telepathic projection. They were probably onl
y doing it to Mort’s fellow survivors so that humans would accept their aid instead of running away in horror... or shooting them out of the air like quail.

  “Are you sure?” Nurse Martin asked.

  Mort nodded distractedly.

  DaVinci had shot him in the head with a captive bolt gun, damaging the part of his brain that processed visual information. The resulting trauma had rendered him incapable of recognizing his shoes when he got dressed in the morning or being able to tell the difference between an apple and a Frisbee, but it also made him immune to the Archons’ telepathic illusions.

  That’s why everyone saw angels when they looked at the Archons, and Mort saw… things. Ugly, shark-faced things. Whatever they were.

  Excited, Mort questioned Nurse Martin. “Say, Peggy, have you seen Pete Bolin around? Do you know when he left?”

  “Your friend? He was here just a little while ago. I think he went down to the waiting room to get some coffee. He said he’d be right back.” Peggy looked at her wristwatch. “That was about… fifteen minutes ago, I think.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll wait for him. I don’t need anything else.”

  “All right,” the RN said dubiously. She turned to leave the room. “And try to relax, Mr. Lesser. Doctor Whalen will probably discharge you first thing in the morning, if you’re still feeling well.”

  Mort nodded. He was anxious to speak with Pete. Pete would listen to him. Pete wouldn’t think he was crazy if Mort confided his suspicions to him. Pete might not believe him. He might not understand, but he wouldn’t think Mort was insane.

  But there was more to it than that, wasn’t there?

  Yes, Mort had to admit.

  He was scared, too. He needed Pete because he was scared. Pete was the one with the balls. Pete was Mort’s backbone.

  So if they weren’t angels, what were they? Mort asked himself.

  Mort heard his friend coming up the hallway. He recognized Pete by the clop-clop-clop of his cowboy boots, heard Pete say hello to the ladies as he sauntered past the nurse’s station. He stopped. “What’s that?” Low conversation, and then the clop-clop-clop, a little bit faster, and Pete was coming through the door, grinning. “Mort! You woke up!”