Union

by Brian Spangler

  As she stared at him, fancying the curve of his shoulders, and peering in through the front of his open coveralls, another spray of ocean touched her, dressing her front in blotches of dark gray. A chill ran through her, raising bumps up and down her arms. Shaking it off, she felt her nipples rise, along with a flush of embarrassment, and she was quick to bring her arms up to cover herself. Janice turned away and mouthed a thank you to a pocket of heavy fog rolling in. A few hands more, and there would be enough gray between them to conceal her embarrassment.

  “Now that wasn’t fair!” she exclaimed. “Not fair at all. I wasn’t paying attention.” Richard laughed again, kicking more of the water in her direction.

  “What do you mean not fair,” he joked. “You can’t call not fair when you started it!” He was right. She raised her brow, realizing that this was her doing. The cold held the lift at the front of her breasts, but she didn’t care; she lowered her arms, running toward his voice, and kicked up the water. Laughing, Janice almost stumbled, catching herself before a breaking wave swept her legs. She was still laughing when she was up again and kicking more, drenching Richard, until every part of his front had been soaked.

  Janice slowed then, as Richard tried to hide from her playful advance, retreating into the fog. At once, she stopped. Her smile quickly faded. She had a revelation. She was starting to have feelings for Declan’s father.

  But that can’t be, she told herself. Would twenty years hide what it was supposed to feel like? Guilt rushed into her heart, like the ocean cresting over her feet. Should she have feelings for him? Could she have feelings for him? Confusion teased her thoughts and played with her emotions, kicking them back and forth, just like she, and Richard had done moments before.

  Is it okay to have feelings for this man? She wondered, and then fixed her eyes on him as he suddenly rushed out of the gray. Trails of fog followed him, losing their grip on his body as he quickened his step. Then she saw that he wasn’t laughing anymore: his face was stricken with terror—his color pale and gray—masking the wispy fog chasing after him. The sight of him turned her newfound emotions into fear, and she instinctively stepped backward, away from the premise of danger, and away from him as he rushed toward her.

  “There is someone out there,” he said hurriedly in a gruff whisper. He took her arm and tried to lead her away from the ocean. “I think there are Outsiders coming this way. I heard five voices, maybe more. I can’t be sure though.” She held her place in the shallow water, afraid to move. His touch turned soft then and encouraged her to follow. When she finally did move, he led her away from the ocean and to a steeper dune of black sand.

  Janice nudged her face, nodding in Richard’s direction while he talked to her. An urge to pee was sudden, and her insides felt heavy, like her feet, which had rooted into the beach’s thicker black sands. It had been a while since she’d heard any voices. But when the unfamiliar sounds came out of the fog, a jumble of nerves gripped her insides.

  The salty taste of congestion filled her mouth, and she could hear her lungs wheezing while she tried to keep pace with Richard. As they ran in the sands, her feet were clumsy, and she tripped once, falling to her knees. When she tried to use Richard’s arm to get back to her feet, she almost pulled him down with her. He groaned against the strain and lurched forward until her legs were underneath her again.

  The voices became louder as they chatted back and forth. She listened to them jokingly berate one another, like her younger school kids liked to do; it was a rite of passage for all students. They jabbed witty comments at one another—back and forth—with no cares of being heard. She thought that they sounded too confident, and maybe even arrogant, and then she realized that, with their numbers, they deserved the boldness that she had heard.

  The Outsiders closed the distance. Richard’s grip became stronger, until he dug his fingers into her arm, where she was sure that she’d later find a blossom of welts.

  He’s strong, she thought, but not against a group. She was afraid—afraid for the both of them. What would the Outsiders do to them if they were found? Would they kill Richard without hesitation, but not her?

  No, they’d wait, taking turns until they’re done with me. And there was no knowing how long that might be. When they’d finished, would they kill her? Terror and revulsion welled inside her, and suddenly she wasn’t sure if she was going to vomit or if her bladder would let go.

  Outsiders had the advantage. They knew the fog; they worked the fog. Like the blind burrowing rodents from the deeper levels of the Commune, they survived on other instincts. They’d grown them, and perfected them, and they could survive without sight. Richard was digging before Janice understood what he wanted to do. Without a word, he showed her his plan: to dig, and then lie in the groove of the black sands. With a thick enough pocket of fog, the Outsiders might pass right by them; they would maybe even walk over them, without knowing that they were there.

  Dropping to her knees, Janice drove her fingers into the moist sand and scooped handful after handful. Pebbly grains stung the soft skin beneath her fingernails, like resentful salt-gnats biting for the sheer pleasure of it. Working together, they hurried and had emptied an area big enough for the two of them to lie in and hide. With the sound of the breaking ocean, she wondered if they should have hidden there instead. But she couldn’t see the surf. The fog was thicker there, and if they hid in the ocean, then they would lose sight of the beach.

  She felt herself being pulled. Richard wrapped his arm around her waist, dragging her closer to him. His height gave him a great advantage, and she admired the stretch of his arms as he covered both of their bodies with loose sand. She offered to help, shoveling in what she could, and peppering it over their gray coveralls, hoping that it would be enough to blend into the vast blackness of the beach.

  Some of the fog is loose, she thought. A little heavier and we’d nearly be hidden.

  Huddled in the sand crevasse, they listened to the approaching voices over the breaking surf. Richard’s smell and his warm breath touching her neck caused an unexpected sensation: something physical, something carnal. She was quick to dismiss the abrupt feelings, but the effects lingered, and she found herself shifting her middle, embarrassed and unable to remain still. When she began to apologize, Richard placed a finger across her lips and lifted his chin slowly, motioning to the patch of fog behind them.

  There was silence. Janice didn’t know exactly when the chattering voices had stopped. With only beach sand under their feet, counting footsteps wasn’t possible. There was no listening for the occasional scuff of a toe against the heavy resin paint of a Commune’s morse-line; there was only silence, and it told her that their safety in hiding was a lie. The approaching Outsiders had heard something other than themselves, and now they were hunting.

  The first hit came out of the fog in a blink, startling Janice, but not Richard. He’d never even seen the attack. The back of his head opened up against the fat end of a club, spraying blood onto the side of her face. The impact of the hit drove Richard’s face forward into hers, knocking her back, and crippling her vision with a flash of dizzying light. Reaching to hold onto Richard, she gripped his open collar, while gnarled and dirty hands saddled the back of him, pulling on him. When he shook his head, blood spilled down his face; relief came to Janice when she saw that the blow hadn’t killed him. He was still awake—dazed, but conscious. Richard turned to fend off their attackers, and then tried to get to his knees. His scalp bled profusely, washing into his eyes, and turning his coveralls dark red from his shoulders down to his chest. He screamed at their attackers, punching the air with the same profanity she’d heard him use in the Commune’s courtyard.

  When Janice pushed up to her knees, all of the air in her lungs disappeared as the world suddenly seemed to land on her back. Her body was thrown into the black sands, and her insides were pressed until she thought she’d explode. As the pressure on top of her increased, she understood what a salt-gnat must
feel like when being pinched to death between two fingers.

  “Get off of her!” Richard screamed, and Janice saw a club swing from in front of him, and then connect with his middle. Richard fell over and was shoved onto the sands as more hands wrestled him down. When the air came back to her, and she coughed a haggard breath to replace the explosion in her lungs, she heard a deep, throaty voice. The owner of the voice lay on top of her, pressing his knee into the small of her back, causing her to cry out in pain. The voice had a hand, and the hand wriggled beneath her, approaching what had stayed untouched for two decades.

  “Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do this?” she heard in her ear. The voice sounded menacing and raspy, but it was vaguely familiar. “Maybe today, I’ll teach you something!”

  Janice gasped when she recognized whose voice it was. Harold Belker had survived his exile from their Commune, a punishment for having killed Sammi Tate. It pained Janice to realize the level of evil in a boy whom she’d known for most of his life. He’d had no repentance for having killed Sammi, though, no remorse. Instead, he’d found the Outsiders, and had become one of them. Maybe he’d always been one of them; maybe he’d been an Outsider the entire time.

  Janice tried to pull in more air, breathing in the salt and the sands, until she coughed out the pain of the attack. Janice’s fear quickly turned to anger as her strength returned, but Harold was strong, and he had her pinned with his knee to her back. When Harold removed his knee, she felt him press something else against her, and dread and vileness filled her, sickening her. She cried out, cursing him, and swinging her arms, clutching at handfuls of sand and air. When she tried to get up, she heard his heinous laugh, and he gripped her hair, driving her face into the damp, pebbly sands. The immense pressure forced sand into her eyes, nose and mouth while she struggled. But the struggling only made the attack worse, as the coarse sand peeled away the skin on her face. When the hand against her head relaxed, she lifted her head, gasping for air.

  “What… what happened to you?” she asked, unable to think of something else to say. Harold only laughed as he groped her some more.

  “I found my home,” he answered, and then pushed her face back into the sand. Her eyes remained above the edge of the crevasse that she and Richard had built, allowing her to see the beach ahead as more Outsiders approached. Her nose and mouth were covered, and her senses were limited to the sound of shuffling bodies and the salty taste of blood on her tongue. She reeled up one more time, forcing every muscle, fighting until she felt her arms and legs give out. Harold pushed harder, shoving her down again—which was where she stayed, unable to breathe. Soon, her pulse slowed, and she welcomed the increasing distance between her and what was going on around her. The scene quieted; the approaching feet had all passed. She stared absently ahead, until their gray world invaded her eyes, stealing what little remained of her sight. When her senses were gone, and everything around her went black, Janice was grateful.

  3

  The hub of the machine stirred with the busy feet of a thousand zombie bodies. Phil Stark sneered, humored by the title he had given them: Zombie Bodies. The zombies traveled mindlessly from one corridor to the next, endlessly following the directions spilling out of the lights high up on the wall.

  “Here we go,” he said, stepping into the hub of activity. “Just like a bee hive… a lot of bzzz-bzzz-busy, but no sting.”

  Phil jumped forward five steps, nearly missing a broad woman, young, pretty, but a little flat-chested for his taste. He curved his direction left and then jumped ahead four more.

  “Not quite checkmate yet,” he joked.

  A man not much older than he was, bumped his shoulder, spinning him around, but he went on without interruption, using the momentum to leap forward two more jumps.

  “That’s one point to you,” he mumbled, “You can do better than that.”

  A quick run of five more steps and he was half way across the hub, standing at the exact center of the great room. He slumped his shoulders, relaxing and let the rush of the game fall out of him. After all, he was standing in the exact center, and that was just one of the machine’s little secrets—no zombie bodies ever cross the middle of the great room.

  “That’s how the traffic keeps moving. That’s the secret. Keep the center clear at all times, no crossing over, no intersection.” All around him, bodies moved at a brisk pace—from out of one corridor, across the hub, and back into another corridor. “I could stand here all day.”

  And sometimes that is exactly what Phil did to pass the time. Stand, and stare upward at the clear sky. The other little secret about the great hall was the window at the very top. And it was an actual window—not just a translucent panel that could be toggled on and off. While the position of the machine made it impossible to see the sun, Phil watched a few stars when the night was dark enough. Today there was nothing to see. He slouched, disappointed. The mining activities were at peak capacity, and the machine belched white plumes that covered the window. A memory came to him, the mall and tall windows and the fog rolling against the glass.

  “Dad, what’s happening to him?”

  “Who’s that?” Phil shouted, spinning around to find the source. And for a brief moment, he thought he saw his daughter Emily standing amidst the passing zombies. “Emily?”

  The lights on the wall caught his eyes. A warning. Subtle. Nearly unnoticeable. He shook off the memory and the voices in his head. It was time to move on.

  He deciphered the message. Air flow compromised in one of the blood vaults.

  “That’s not possible,” he mumbled. The message had to be an error. Nothing failed in the machine—not in centuries. Phil raised a brow, and a feeling of genuine interest stirred. It was a rare event to investigate anything in a machine where every second of every minute was perfectly choreographed.

  As he approached the lab room where the machine indicated a problem, Phil paused and realized that he had finished his game. Looking down the corridor, and into the great hub of zombie bodies, his standing at the center was just a blink away from where he was now. That sometimes happened. Stretches of blackness in his mind, lapses in his memory. His funny game of zombie body Frogger would have taken nearly a hundred more steps to get to the lab. Phil shrugged, uncertain of what to make of the slip.

  “Could be that the reanimations are dropping some of the ingredients,” he said aloud and laughed. Bodies walked by, paying him no attention. A young woman, beautiful with large breasts, caught his eye. Phil stared as she passed and let a devious thought wander in and out of his mind as he watched her bosom shimmer with each step. “Don’t worry, I’ll enjoy the moment for the both of us.” He laughed some more, but the familiar sadness of loneliness bit his tongue as the woman walked away.

  “Let’s see what is going on in here,” Phil continued and entered the lab. He stood a moment, measuring up the room, looking for anything out of the norm. His eyes went to the blood vault first and then to the lab tables. “False alarm.” Turning to leave, he heard a thump echo from behind the wall. He knew the sound at once. Duct work. Something was in the ventilation.

  “Air flow compromised…oh this is interesting,” he mumbled and felt the itch of curiosity flare. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”

  On the far wall, perpendicular to the blood vault’s door, Phil followed the sound until finding it. Beneath a lab table, he picked up a vent cover that had been removed. His first thoughts were of an animal, but at once quickly dismissed: not that he had seen an animal in centuries. Not since the clouds fell, anyway. His second thoughts went to what was missing in the lab room.

  “No zombie body working.”

  His heart skipped, and an anxious feeling set in him. On occasion, he would find someone like him, someone who was aware and who did things sometimes without following the lights. Phil glanced at the lights, expecting to see an alarm, but they were quiet. He knelt down, moving the vent cover out of his way and peered inside.

 
He struggled in the darkness, seeing nothing but the ghostly remains of the lights on the wall. Blinking them away, he narrowed his focus on the dim light seeping into the ductwork from the blood vault. A silhouette. He saw the shape of a small woman, frozen in place, nearly completely hidden in the blackness.

  “Hey you,” he called out. His voice rushed out in a rasp—scratchy and unused. “What… what are you doing in there?”

  The woman remained still, making no movements and saying nothing. His thoughts went to injury, or possibly death. Phil sized up the opening and cradled the lip of the ductwork, readying himself.

  “Can you hear me,” he called out louder and crawled inside, stopping at his waist. The fit was tight, and he barely squeezed his shoulders through. “I don’t want to have to come over there… too far.” The silhouetted figure finally moved, threading a breath of relief from Phil’s lips.

  “I’m coming out,” a thin voice replied reluctantly. “Just give me a minute.”

  This time the voice was soft, but stern and attractive. Her words echoed like a song and reminded him of long car rides, listening to the Top-100 on the radio.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I work here. This is my lab,” the voice continued. Phil closed his eyes, listening to her. When was the last time he had heard someone speak? That is, actually speaking. And not just a repeat of instructions from the machine, but talking to him. The beach? Gray rainbows? Maybe with his daughter. Was Emily the last person to say anything to him?

  The woman neared the opening, and Phil backed his way out of the duct work. When he was completely through, he knelt back, sitting on his heels and waited. From the black opening, the woman appeared.

  Her hair and eyes were the same familiar brown that all the zombie bodies had—he remembered blue and green eyes and red and auburn hair from a long time ago. Over the centuries, the colors went to brown and stayed that way. Phil looked over at the blood vault and tried to remember when the samples began to arrive. Surely by now they were all the same, but maybe in the furthest recesses of the vault, some of the older samples existed.