God Of The Dead

by M. C. Norris

  “You must think that I’m here to kill you,” said the voice of the Khepra spirit.

  Trembling, Cecile did not reply. She kept her face down, her eyes on the ground, focusing her senses instead on the sounds of the happy village. She wanted those sounds to be her final memory of the living world.

  “If that’s what you think, you would be wrong.” The Green Man strode around in front of her, and then sank to his haunches, drinking deeply of her. “This living body is shutting down. It has served me well, but it has endured too much. Soon, I’ll be needing another, a new voice, through which I will command my chosen people. I want that voice to be yours, Cecile. I want your body.”

  At the edge of her field of vision, she could see the Green Man, cocking his head. It felt as though the Khepra spirit was examining her through his eyes, appraising her, as a trader in human flesh might inspect a new slave. The Green Man reached out for her, and he placed his abhorrent hand beneath her chin, tilting her face upward. She averted her eyes from that double gaze that poured through the gleaming portals that were his eyes.

  “Even the God of the Dead lacks foresight, Cecile. Twenty years, I planned to kill you, as you alone presented a threat to me, but in every attempt to deprive you of your life, I failed, again and again. Then, it suddenly struck me, as my colony lifted off into the stars to seek out a new world in which to breed, that my chosen people were left behind without purpose. I was without purpose. My job, as their protector, was done,” the Green Man said, his voice rattling, as he tilted her head from side to side. He seemed to be enamored by the sight of her, and he loved—It loved—to appreciate her from every angle. “That’s when I realized your true potential, Cecile. You alone in this world possess the dark gift of deep dreaming. You are the last of your kind, but your greatest asset of all is your capacity to breed this dark gift into what will be your many offspring, and they, into offspring of their own. You will be the fountainhead of my legacy, Cecile, and my voice in the living world. This is an honor that no living human but you can receive. You, your children, and your children’s children will forever be my voice, as we repopulate this world with our hybrid species. Every drone across this planet will kneel before you, Cecile, their queen.”

  This was it. All along, she’d suspected that somehow she was at the center of it all, as though the future of two worlds was held precariously in balance by some critical choice that she would one day have to make, and this was it.

  “Run!” she screamed, leaping to her feet. “Run, all of you! We’re under attack!”

  His promise to spare their lives had always been a lie. The extermination of humanity was the entity’s singular goal, just as it had been for five-thousand years. Whether or not she willingly accepted her role as the slave queen of a new human-Khepra world, there would be no place in it for pure, human blood. It intended to wipe them out, all of them, one screaming life at a time, and it hoped to facilitate humanity’s extinction through her. Cecile’s choice was to be whether or not humanity deserved a second chance.

  The Green Man tackled her from behind, and dragged her to the ground. His hundred warriors charged howling through the forest toward the lush valley of Fort Sinai, but her people were ready for an attack. They were always ready, from the moment those balloons had lifted off into the sky. Already, she could hear the thumping guns of their defenses. Bullets screamed through the pristine woodlands, shredding the trunks of ancient trees.

  “They will lose this fight,” the voice rattled in her ear, as the Green Man clambered upon her back, “and so will you, Cecile.” His breath reeked of the grave. She felt his malformed hand travelling up her thigh, pushing the fabric of her sun dress up into a wad, at the small of her back. “It’s fitting that this dying body should be the first to plant a seed deep into you. You know it’s true. Osiris has earned the right to sire the first princess of our colony.”

  There was no way out of this, for her. Her people, on the other hand, would fight the good fight. They were the best. She had faith in the goodness within them, as well as in their savagery, which was never far behind. That was beauty of humanity’s extreme condition. While extraordinary acts of altruism, genius, and discovery were always within reach, humanity was always armed to protect its potential with an inner barbarian. They would win this this fight, but hers was over. Cecile closed her eyes, dropped her forehead to the forest litter, and she left her doomed body behind.

  ###

  She bucked harder than ever before, thrashing with all of her might against that tether between her body and soul until it snapped in a cloud of sparkling motes. She was free, forever free of the trials of a living world to which she could never hope to return. There was some despondence over this choice, but in her heart she knew that she’d made the right one. Already, she could hear the Khepra spirit’s bellow of rage resounding through the stream of collective consciousness. Its legacy had been terminated, and its dream was burning to the ground. There was no future in the living world for its chosen people, whose minds would perhaps be relinquished once the dying body of Owen Cyrus could no longer be animated. The question was, how much time was left in that battered form? Enough to facilitate the extermination of humankind? Because that was almost certainly the agenda.

  Cecile stepped forth from the River Styx, and onto the misty shores of the Land of Nod. She was astounded to see that her spiritual form was no longer an amorphous entity that she couldn’t fathom. Wholly and permanently disconnected from her physical body, she was now something completely different, something recognizable.

  She gazed down at the luminous form of a little girl, perched precariously atop her human legs. Raising her hands, she studied her fingers, and explored the familiar contours of her face. Here, she was whole again, recreated as a more perfect rendition of herself than biology was equipped to produce in the living world. She was flawless.

  “Cecile.”

  She dropped her hands, and searched for the source of the voice in the mist. Again, it was a voice that she knew as well as any other. She began to tremble, but this time she trembled in a good way, overwhelmed with loving anticipation. “Malcolm?” She ran through the skeins of mist until she found him, smiling and perfect in his military dress uniform. He stood hand in hand with a little boy she already knew.

  Cecile flung herself into his arms, and squeezed him against her in a lasting embrace. But when she pulled back to admire his unmasked beauty, she found herself to be the focus of ten-thousand other men, all standing in a silent formation behind him. Germans in spiked helmets poised stiffly beside garish Conquistadors. Towering Visigoths loomed bearded and nude over swaggering American G.I.s, armored samurais and lithe fighting monks with shaved heads. Every warrior from every era, from every battlefield soaked with human blood since time’s beginning had evidently been mustered. They were armed and ready for what looked to be the greatest battle ever fought, in this world or any other.

  “I brought some friends,” Malcolm said, gesturing to the ghostly army with a casual hitch of his chin. “All we need you to do is show us the way.”

  “My daddy’s a hero,” squeaked little Jacob, at his side.

  “The way to where?” Cecile asked.

  “To a doorway that’s swinging open in the back of Owen Cyrus’ mind.”

  “Are all of them coming?” Cecile asked, breathlessly, as the sheer brilliance of Malcolm’s plan was suddenly realized.

  “To fight for the future of all humanity?” Malcolm grinned. “Trust me that’s the one thing that we can all agree on. Not a single one of us would miss this for the world.”

  In concert, the entire army of ghostly warriors raised diverse weapons of every kind, from sharpened stones to automatic weapons, and they released a roaring battle cry that must’ve been heard as rolling thunder over the whole of the living world. They were ready for one last charge, right into the mind of the Green Man.

  When the deafening cacophony of saber rattling subsided, Cecile cocked he
r head and smiled, giving Malcolm a wink. “Alright, Honey. I can sure enough take you there, but tell your boys that right now they all got to shush for minute, because I’ve got to try to call a cat.”

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Hell Walks

  ONE

  “I’ve never seen a dead one,” Caitlin whispered.

  “Me neither,” Frank replied. His voice was barely even a whisper, but it carried clear as a trumpet across the vacuum which seemed to have enveloped the group. Was anyone even breathing? Frank sure as hell wasn’t, not that he always had a choice. His lungs felt particularly weak in this, April’s damp precursor to dawn. There had been little rain lately but the grass was slick with dew and the air moved like oil over bare flesh. It made Frank feel sick. Sicker.

  Caitlin was knelt behind a slab of concrete, which had probably once been part of a blast wall. It lay embedded in the earth at a diagonal angle, as if it had been thrown into the air and then dropped, which was very possible, but that had been long ago. Moss stained its surface and gathered inside gaping lightning-bolt cracks.

  Frank was about to speak to that, but Caitlin’s sister beat him to it. “That wall’s not safe. Come over here,” Autumn said, beckoning. Her voice was a protective hiss and a bit louder than any of them would have preferred. Frank heard someone that was crouched behind him sigh – probably Dodger, who, if he didn’t have a sarcastic comment for everything, made sure at least he was heard. For her part, Caitlin didn’t so much as make a face at her older sister. Instead, she moved away from the concrete slab and joined Autumn in the relative shadow of a skeletonized car. Looked like it had been a compact, the kind Frank had once driven to an advertising agency where he wrote dubious copy about fat-free snacks. His mouth watered a bit at the thought of chocolate. God, how long had it been since chocolate was a thing?

  “You ever see a dead one?” Caitlin asked Chia.

  The old man’s face creased in a sort of wincing smile and he shook damp wisps of gray from his forehead. “Never have, sweetheart. Heard of them. Seen pictures, but we always steered clear of the real McCoy.” Chia sounded regretful that they’d taken a different course of action this time, but their hand had been forced by...

  Well, no sense breaking it down now, Frank thought. There were eight men and women huddled behind a line of blistered dead cars, waiting for dawn to break so that they could welcome the nightmare sight of a dead giant. “Them’s the facts, deputy. Now y’all just settle down. Pretend you’re in a pew on a Sunday. Hell, maybe today is Sunday.”

  After hearing Chia’s words, Caitlin seemed a little less eager to see the real McCoy. There was once a time when the nineteen-year-old would likely have had her face in a smartphone and dissociated herself from the terrible tension and wonder that gripped them all. Hell, Frank would have too. As much as he’d always criticized the way that phones seemed to isolate everyone from one another, he’d more often than not preferred that little bubble of seclusion, especially in a waiting room, an elevator, bus, or Thanksgiving. That infrastructure, as far as he knew, was gone now. The only news and information came either from direct experience, or from the reports of other nomads they passed in the dark. Those reports were about as trustworthy as Frank’s ad copy. If a microwave cheeseburger that will help whip you into bikini shape sounds too good to be true, just stop thinking!

  He supposed he’d been a professional liar back then. The stakes were different now. There wasn’t such a thing as a little fib anymore. There weren’t even fairy tales. There were only awful realities. The dragons were here now.

  The edge of the sky on the eastern horizon bled a dark blue ichor. Dawn would be here before they knew it. From that point, the plan was to identify the location of the rumored fallen monster and give a generous berth as they continued east. From then on? South, maybe. South was usually good. Especially considering they were currently in the Midwest, where nearly any direction was good so long as it led away. This was Missouri, to be specific – Frank was pretty sure the pile of rubble they sat in at present had once been the city of Independence. To think they’d ventured this far into the hottest of hot zones, and all based on what someone had dared call a simple fib. However, this was no time for ruminating. The blue was spreading across the sky and soon they would see.

  Frank sat on his butt in the road and glanced past Chia, their de facto leader, to the group’s two newest additions. It was too soon yet to tell whether these would become permanent members or just drift away. Frank suspected the former. The kid, a seventeen-year-old called Duckie, was clearly disabled. There was nothing about his appearance that suggested it – he was only as disheveled and frail as the rest of them – but it had been his blaring exuberance when he’d run at them yelling, “We seen a Little One that’s dead! It’s right up there and it’s dead!”

  This had been the previous evening. The kid had emerged from a crumbling auto dealership just as the group was walking past it, and God how he’d been hollering. It was as if it were the greatest thing in the world that a Little One lay just a few miles ahead.

  Quebra was the only armed member of the group and he’d drawn a bead on the kid immediately. The kid was frozen, face slackening, bewildered, and perhaps dismayed at the reaction. The rest of the group, Frank included, had just stared.

  “You’re a little too excited, son,” Quebra had said in his flat tone of authority. His stance rigid, he’d followed Duckie in his sights as the kid wavered from side to side, face ashen.

  “You sick?” Quebra called. It seemed the only reasonable explanation for running blind at the group of strangers, for yelling at the top of one’s lungs. Kid had to be infected.

  Duckie had said, “Yes,” almost shamefully, hands falling at his sides.

  At that moment, Quebra was training an AR-15 on the kid. Frank remembered watching Quebra’s tensed forearms, the only part of him not swathed in camouflage. He remembered wondering if the soldier was just going to shoot the kid right then and there, all business, no mercy, and if that wouldn’t have been the right thing.

  Then a woman’s voice had called from the auto dealership. She’d stepped through a shattered display window and shouted shrilly, “He’s not sick, not like that!” She was middle-aged and frizzy gray hair (they all had at least a little) fanned out around her head. She held her arms out pleadingly and walked toward the street.

  “We’re not sick,” she’d said, more softly. She pulled up the sleeves of her ratty cardigan sweater and pushed the hair back from her neck. “Duckie,” she called, “pull up your shirt and show them. Very slowly.” To Quebra she added, “He’s unarmed. He’s a child.”

  Quebra had not moved in all that time and did not reply then. His silence said it all. Doesn’t matter if he’s a kid. If he’s armed or infected, that’s what matters. Not that Frank believed Quebra to be a cold man. He was just a man who did the things no one else could bring themselves to do, things that had to be done.

  Duckie, with an almost comical slowness, as if he were mocking the woman’s command, had peeled his navy blue sweatshirt up from his waist. He’d pulled it up past his pecs and then, at the woman’s direction, had turned in a slow circle to show his bare torso, front and back. He was clear of sores. Quebra had lowered the rifle a millimeter.

  “He’s mentally disabled,” the woman had said. There hadn’t been any exasperation in her voice – no tone of How could you not know? How dare you? – but Frank had heard a certain weariness, the weariness of someone who has made a firm and loving commitment and who is being exhausted by it. He remembered thinking she must be his mother.

  O’Brien, as it had turned out, was Duckie’s Special Education teacher, or had once been. She had explained that Duckie’s family was dead, as was hers, and she’d been shepherding him across the Midwest ever since. She’d gone from an educator to a full-time caretaker, and Frank supposed it was because neither she nor Duckie had anyone else left. He hoped there wasn’t anything weird going on
between the two, though that thought seemed ridiculous now in the early hours of dawn, as he watched O’Brien sponge dirt from Duckie’s face with a spit-moistened sleeve.

  After accepting O’Brien and Duckie, the group had rested up inside the auto dealership until dark and then had resumed their trek on a path which allegedly contained a dead giant. They had moved with painstaking slowness, stopping often, and so it was only now that they sat in this car-choked stretch of road next to ruined blast walls, and waited to see the creature – the Little One, as Duckie and so many others called them. Duckie, however, did it with no trace of irony. He did it because, in spite of the fact that the Little Ones were some three hundred feet tall, there was simply a much bigger one standing to the north. Them’s the facts.

  There they sat as the sun played chicken with the night sky. Frank, an ad man with bad lungs and joints that screamed whenever he shifted. Chiapperino, an old fart originally from Queens who exhibited an almost superhuman patience and incredible empathy with people – and who had said nothing during Quebra’s confrontation with Duckie. Duckie himself, who was a nice kid even if a little loud sometimes. He had to be reminded frequently that there were human monsters of which one must be wary. O’Brien was every bit the part of a surrogate mother. She looked to be about Frank’s age, forty-ish, though weathered as they all were.

  Caitlin and her sister Autumn were also recent additions to the group. Caitlin’s long hair was startlingly dark, maybe because it was unwashed, although it seemed healthy. That was why it caught Frank’s eye so often. The girl was attractive to be sure, but Frank’s mind, even in its most idiotic recesses, no longer processed the sight of a girl in that way. Those idle, often ugly thoughts which seemed to crop up regularly in a man’s brain regardless of circumstance, had been retired when the shit hit the fan and deeper instincts took charge. Autumn was pretty too, and her hair seemed smooth and clean, even if it had to have been at least a month since they’d had enough clean water to wash anything. Autumn’s hair was red. Somewhere along the way, while traveling alone with her orphan sister, Autumn had taken the time to break into some Walgreen’s and apply scarlet hair dye. She looked maybe thirty, “Cate” being her kid sister. Frank only really thought of her in reference to Caitlin, because Autumn had been careful so far not to exude a lick of personality. She was fiercely guarded. Though Caitlin was more outgoing, Autumn kept her on a short leash and the tension in it was apparent on rare occasion.