From Oblivion's Ashes

by Nyman, Michael E. A.

  “Like I root through trash cans for my meals,” Jackie answered, “but I guess it’ll do, until we think of something better.”

  “Can I work with her?” Mike asked. “You said she needs a partner.”

  Marshal looked over at Jackie, who mouthed a terrified ‘No’ back at him.

  “I’m afraid not, Mike,” he said. “I already have someone else in mind for the position. But don’t worry. With only about twenty people and an entire civilization to rebuild, there will always be something. Cooking, cleaning, monitoring the security net, drone patrol… We’ll find something for you to do.”

  Mike said nothing, but the look on his round face spoke volumes. Work was an insult to Mike’s sense of dignity. Good luck forcing him into it. Better men than Marshal had tried.

  “We’re here,” Jackie murmured, gazing at the apartment with worry.

  “You live at the Dollar Den?” Mike asked. “Man. That’s cool.”

  The two men were handed over to Valerie for processing, and Crapmobile went back out on the road.

  “Thank god they’re gone,” Jackie said, sagging with relief. “Living proof that not all refugees are created equal.”

  “Tom was okay,” Marshal said, then shook his head. “God knows what we’re going to do about Mike. At best, he’s a walking catastrophe waiting to happen. At worst, he’s a Pandora’s Box of bad habits, behaviors, and self-centered opinions.”

  “Thanks for not offering him the chair next to me,” Jackie said. “I have the feeling that he wouldn’t handle my whole lesbianism thing all that well.”

  “That would be his problem,” Marshal stated. “If he tried to make it yours, a little visit from Luca might smarten him up. But I catch your drift. No, I was thinking of assigning Albert to be your partner. He’s a master at flying the drones, and he’s far, far less obnoxious than Mike. I recently assigned him to use drones to clear the path for Luca, when they did their big move into the Gymnasium. Now, I’d like to offer him to you as your co-pilot.”

  “He is a sweet kid,” Jackie said. “And he’s never tried to hit on me. Sure. I’d be happy to have Albert as my partner.”

  “Excellent. Now, we’re close to where we’ll be hooking up with Angie. We should see if we can tell where she is from her helmet-cam.”

  “What neighborhood are we in?” Jackie asked, studying the screens with interest.

  “King West Village,” Marshal answered. “There was a lot of money here before the outbreak. It was chic. Close to the Theatre and Entertainment districts. It’s a promising area, but we’re just getting around to searching it now. And that’s part of the problem. There’s too much ground to cover, and not enough vehicles to do it.”

  “Is that why the sudden interest in training me for the road?”

  “Partly. Luca started on Shitbox right away, and he hopes to have it ready soon. We could use it for this sort of work, but its main function is as a moving truck for big or heavy loads. The hospital, the gymnasium, and every place we renovate are going to need water tanks, hot water heaters, stoves, fridges, and so on.”

  “Cool,” Jackie said. “Basically, it’ll be a moving van.”

  “That’s right. And that’s something that we could give to Tom and Mike. I think it might be more their speed. Tom seems pretty levelheaded, and seems to have made a lifetime out of keeping his brother in check. If he can continue keeping his brother in line, then I think they could be a good team. But whether or not they make sense, I’d still want you to take over Crapmobile. We need it out on the road.”

  “What about you?” she asked, looking over at him with apprehension.

  “I’m swamped,” he answered. “First Canadian is going to be a logistical nightmare, and I’ll be needed there more or less full time. There are solar panels to install, elevators to inspect, cable to be laid, power and electricity to bring on line, connectors to rig. Torstein’s work crews go nowhere if they can’t get any power. Add in the fact that I’m one of the few people with at least some background in construction, then it becomes obvious that’s where I’m needed the most.”

  “I see.”

  “You’ll be straight up running supplies for the first few days,” Marshal continued, “increasing our supply of drywall, lumber, building supplies, not to mention food and water. The rest of the time, you’ll be hunting with Angie for lost souls and dragon hoards, if you catch my metaphor.”

  “Very colorful, preacher-man,” Jackie replied.

  “Thank you. Once the work on First Canadian reaches a certain stage, Luca and I are planning to take Shitbox on a road trip up all the way up to Warden and Lawrence. There’s a Tesla dealership up there, loaded with engines for us to scavenge. By that time, I should have all the elevators at First Canadian running off of the local power supply, which will give us our third Tesla engine back. With it, Luca thinks he can make a new Shitbox to help around here while we’re off seeking treasure. Team B will probably be Krissy teamed up with Kumar.”

  “Kumar?” Jackie frowned. “Doesn’t he have work to do in the apartment?”

  “Yeah. But he’s been bugging me to let him out to test his new app. He’s been rigging the camera network to feed information into this program he’s built. It let’s you hold up a tablet, wherever you are in our grid, and it reveals every zombie in the area as if the buildings were transparent. Trust me, it’s brilliant, but mainly, I think it would be good for him to get some practical experience out in the field. And there are other reasons.”

  Jackie nodded. “I heard they had a pretty big fight last night. Kumar called her a traitor, and said some pretty bad things. After it was over, she rushed past me and I thought she was going to cry.”

  Marshal nodded. “Brian is likely to be upset too, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Luca got pretty dark about it also, but I’d be amazed if he held a grudge. He’d never admit it, but he’s a bit of a pushover. Angie figured that out right away, and now he’s wrapped around her little finger.”

  Jackie smiled at him.

  “Just Luca?” she asked.

  Paul sat inside his secret room wondering what to do.

  The zombies, the monsters, the walking ghosts -whatever they were - were unkillable. He’d been careful in the beginning, watching the reports as they streamed in during those first few days. Of course, the Internet had cut him off after that, but the cautious conclusion had become clear. Earth had a new apex predator, and it wasn’t human. It wasn’t even alive.

  It was strange. Where had these things come from? What was their purpose in living if they couldn’t die? Everything died, and everything living was motivated by that lifelong losing battle to resist the inevitable. It was the underlying reason for everything that happened, that continuous, relentless struggle not to die, and here these things were, flaunting that immutable law like dogs pissing on a Bible.

  How do you respond to something like that?

  Paul’s wife and child were dead. It was something that had happened, though Paul could not bring himself to feel one way or the other about it. Before it was over, Danielle had become one of them. He’d seen her succumb to the bite on the live relay feed from the cameras he’d installed all throughout the house. It had been a horrible sight, particularly when she started hunting for the boy.

  He’d disappeared down her gullet, swallowed whole and eaten alive.

  There was a part of him that knew, objectively, that a more normal person would have reacted to that slaughter. A normal person would have charged out of his secret room like an angry bull and… and tried to do something to stop it. Danielle had been in tears, begging for Paul to come and save her. It was something that the pretend part of him – the one that he’d lived superficially for eight years and was now as comfortable as an old shoe – would have done.

  Six foot four with thick shoulder muscles and a barrel chest, Paul was a bear of a man capable of crushing chestnuts in his bare hands. He’d never raised a hand to Danielle, of course, but he
knew in his heart that he could have hit her skull, like a cinder block on a puppy, killed her, and not felt a thing. He slouched, most of the time, which camouflaged his imposing height. Combined with a chubby, clean-shaven face, round spectacles, and soft features, made him look far less threatening than he truly was. His was the image that little old ladies would trust, teenagers would disparage, and most of the rest of the world wouldn’t even see at all. It was a look that he cultivated.

  And yet, the world had reinvented itself out from under him, and Paul could only watch at his camera screen, stare in fascination as the entire world turned upside down.

  He’d sat there, unmoving, as untouched by the deluge of his son’s screaming as a man covered in oil seated in the rain. That other part of him, the part that no one could see, kept him rooted to his chair, watching with all the wonder of a man witnessing an angel’s kiss. Or was it something else? Never in his whole life had Paul found himself questioning his existence as he had during those savage moments.

  The days that followed passed like leaves tumbling from trees in Autumn. What now? Many times, Paul considered simply stepping out from his hidden room, the special place that had given him so much satisfaction over the years, and letting the creatures have him. Like a Messiah reaching up to the loving arms of his own crucifixion, he dreamed of ending it all, and of giving his blood to the beasts that had stolen everything from him. And in those dreams, his princesses would wave to him from a balcony or a sepulcher of some kind, and… and…

  And he would awaken alone.

  Well. Almost alone. He had his secrets to keep him company.

  And yet, in the new dawn that engulfed a world without boundaries, the secret room wasn’t the shrine it once had been. It couldn’t speak to him the way it once did. With the true children of the apocalypse haunting the streets right outside his door, what was the point to any of it anymore?

  Weeks into his sequestered existence, he found himself sitting at his worktable, pondering his own end. Like an enraged tiger, trapped in a cage, the question had clawed at his insides, a truth he could not face. He could live without joy, without love, without happiness. Hadn’t he always? Beth and the boy had always been the faintest of veneers, the thinnest of masks, hiding that truth from the world. And while there were cheap thrills offered up by thoughts of anger and revenge, they were hardly a substitute for the hunger that was his true sustenance.

  He could not live without purpose.

  Then came a whisper, a voice out of the shroud.

  Can they die?

  Like a flash, Paul turned his head to see who had spoken.

  There. The severed head of… Aimee? Ah yes. Aimee Sanders.

  The head, floating in its formaldehyde jar, smiled at him like Beelzebub.

  Aren’t you a hunter? What if they could be hunted?

  Paul frowned. “But… they can’t be killed,” he told her. “I should think that’s pretty obvious by now. What’s the point in trying to kill something that can’t be killed?”

  That’s an excuse. Everything dies. Everything can be killed.

  He turned to look, and saw that it was Helen. Helen Eisenberg, who had been here for so long, since almost the beginning. She hadn’t questioned him in years.

  “But, you haven’t seen. These things… take their heads, and they just keep moving, don’t you see? They’re already dead. They don’t inflame my passion, not like all of you did. And even if they did, how could I hurt them?”

  Helen’s severed head glowered at him from her formaldehyde jar, and Paul was briefly reminded of how beautiful she was. For a moment, he was transported. Down by the water, by Fort York, that was where he’d found her. She’d been with her then-boyfriend, and Paul had been forced to dispose of him before they’d been able to have their ‘alone time’. How she’d opened up to him after she was dead. With her blood still warming his hands, with her head dangling by the hair from his fingers, they’d found bliss, or something like it, under the stars that night. Now, forever, she lived in his formaldehyde jar, loyal to the last.

  Everything dies, Helen insisted.

  You are the hunter, aren’t you? Aimee asked, a worried sound in her voice. I didn’t pledge myself to the wrong man, did I?

  “Of course not,” Paul assured her.

  Maybe I did, Aimee said.

  For a moment, Paul was too startled to answer.

  You’re acting like a little girl, Helen sneered, hiding in your happy place, waiting for those pretenders to come and fuck you!

  Ooh! Can I watch? squealed another head. Carol? Yes, Carol Hutchinson.

  “Look, I’m not a-” Paul started to explain, but more heads awoke to scold him.

  Paulette, snickered the head of Lucy McLean. Will he wear a pretty dress? Like the one I wore? Scented with jasmine and of soft velour?

  Will there be flowers in his hair? asked the voice of Inarjit Jindardine.

  Will he cry out when his maidenhood is broken? came another voice, and Paul thought he recognized Bethany Bonham, and he remembered taking her on the twilight shores of Georgian Bay two summers ago.

  “ENOUGH!!” he bellowed, standing up from the table.

  Thirty-two heads, each immortalized in their own jars, quietly subsided.

  “That’s better,” he said.

  Were they right? Could these things be killed? He’d watched his neighbors fall one by one to the creatures, and nothing he’d seen suggested such a thing was even possible. Mr. Fielding, two houses down, actually managed to get one of the things with a lawnmower, of all things. Two seconds of chopping had finished with the lawnmower blade snapping off and the creature not looking any worse for it. It ate Mr. Fielding, and regenerated the damage, simple as that.

  But… if they could be killed…

  He pictured Danielle’s undead head in a formaldehyde jar, and shivered with a familiar sense of longing.

  What?

  The Red Light was flashing!

  For a moment, he stared at it, dumbfounded.

  Someone was at the door? Impossible.

  He punched a few buttons on the bloodstained keyboard that rested on the knife cut, marked worktable, and stared at the screen in disbelief.

  And there, on the screen, was… oh, dear God…

  It was the most beautiful little girl he’d ever seen, looking up into the camera with a face like the finest porcelain and eyes like the moon over the ocean. She was… dressed in a coat of… garbage? Really? How could she…?

  “…name is Angie.,” the vision was saying. “I… I can see your camera has power, and your doorbell is lit. If you can see me, we’re coming. My friends Marshal and Luca are building a new town that will be safe from the zombies. Wait here, and we’ll come for you before the end of the day. I promise. Just be patient. You are not alone. We have food, water, and shelter. Don’t leave your hiding spot in the meantime. The zombies are everywhere.”

  The beautiful girl with the soft, flawless neck seemed to hesitate.

  “Bye.” She said, and stepped out of Paul’s field of view.

  “No!” Paul said, craning his head, as if somehow he could follow her.

  She was pretty, said a voice that Paul recognized as Shannon. Shannon Donaldson had been from England, looking for work at one of the art stores that Paul had overseen as regional manager. She’d interviewed with him, and from that moment, Paul had known she’d be his.

  Young, though, said the voice of Gloria Suarez with a sniff.

  “Too young,” Paul said with a sigh. “In a few years, possibly, she’ll be perfect. On the other hand, if it’s possible…”

  He bit his lip.

  “… I mean… to kill one of them.”

  Ooh! said Aimee. Are you going to hurt the creatures?

  Yes! Please, please, please Paul, said Helen, her earlier rancor forgotten. Give us one of them. I ache to see you, your powerful hands, give us one of them! It will mark you as the Lord of Time, my King.

  A chorus of other voi
ces joined in, begging him, crooning their desire.

  With a regal wave, Paul commanded them to silence.

  “I will kill them,” he said, to general approval. He hesitated. “The zombie girls, anyway. Of course, I need to discover how they die first. Whoever this girl is, she must have powerful friends, and if they’re building a zombie-safe habitat, then they must have at least part of the knowledge I need-”

  What about the girl? Shannon asked. Will you take her?

  “Didn’t I just say she’s too young?” Paul whirled on the head, glaring at it.

  The head shut its eyes, penitent with fear, and Paul softened.

  “One day,” he said. “I promise to keep an eye on her.”

  “You do that, boy!”

  The grisly voice, emerging from somewhere in the dark recesses of the back of the secret room, amidst the jars and canisters that held other parts of his thirty-two princesses, struck a chord of terror in Paul’s soul. He ignored it. He was long past the point that he could do him any more harm.

  “This doesn’t involve you,” he said, with a confidence he couldn’t feel.

  Some of the heads, however, were turning in their jars in response to the voice.

  “Eyes up front,” he snapped. “She’s still just a girl. How can she give herself to me if she hasn’t even had her first kiss? Pluck the juiciest fruit too soon, and it gets you nothing but bad taste and spoiled opportunity. Have I made myself clear?”

  Thirty-two heads all voiced their agreement, though their eyes still flickered fearfully towards the shadows at the back of the room.

  “Good,” he said with a sigh. “That’s settled. I need to get ready.”

  As dusk began to fall, Marshal welcomed the newcomer.

  “Quick,” he said, “get in. It’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Marshal. And this person sitting beside me is Jackie.”

  “Paul,” the big man said, flashing a grin as he ducked his head to slip under the canopy. “Paul Smith. Boy, am I glad to see the two of you. Is Jackie your full name?”