Order of the Dead

by James, Guy

  As drunk as he was, he was expecting bubbles to pour out of his mouth like a stream from a fountain of suds, but they didn’t. For the first time in quite a while, he felt at ease, and happy.

  Unknown to Knapp, and unsurprisingly so, but also to the other townspeople, there was now one missing from their number. It had been known to that certain someone just short of his acquiring said missing status, but he was no longer in any condition to appreciate that he’d become a victim, of whom, or why. He was the first, but he was by no means going to be the last.

  In less than the time that it would take Knapp to finish the feast he’d brewed and haggled for himself, two more of New Crozet’s number would be taken, and after them, others would follow.

  18

  Brother Mardu didn’t much like this work, but he didn’t hate it either, and he certainly wasn’t going to trust anyone else to do it, and that’s why he’d come himself. If serving up hardtack was what it took to get some fresh meat out of a settlement and take back the reins of the Order, he’d do it, and gladly. And once he had those leather leads in his hand, maybe he’d be able to ride his way back up to the way top of the mountain, the sharp snow-capped part, where he belonged.

  Usually—or rather, before—they could tempt someone to come out of a settlement, similar to what the Fleshers did, or to leave a gang and join the Order, and then Brother Mardu and the others would make a feast out of the gullible man or woman who had come, but now he was inside a town, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, trying to take from within. This was a dire sign.

  There was no one left to seduce who was already on the outside, or who regularly made trips out of towns. Soon there might be no one left. And word of what they did here would spread—not fast, and that’s why they had chosen this particular town, so far from the next and so rarely visited that it was nearly off the grid. Still, they were there on a market day, and the other traders would witness what was done.

  The entire Order would have to make a dash to the next settlement, and the next, working to stay ahead of the traders who were returning home. If Brother Mardu’s leapfrogging plan was successful, they could carve up a good number of people from the towns using the same Tacker Truck ruse.

  Reuse, reduce, recycle. Reuse the truck, reduce the town dwellers, recycle their sweet and tangy flesh by giving the choicest bits to his master and eating the rest.

  The gnawing ache in his belly pricked him a quick one.

  Fuck, he thought, it’s back. Hello again, old hobo. Caribou Lou’s back sloshed as ever and picking a new fight. The brass balls on that one.

  The constant ache he was used to, but the pincer-like jabs and clawing pain was something he couldn’t relegate to the background. It came too unpredictably for that, surprising him with its stabs, like a vulture in his stomach pecking away at the moist, fleshy, purple walls.

  It was probably an ulcer on top of an ulcer on top of yet another ulcer, but he didn’t know for sure. Something about being here was making him uncomfortable, and, for the first time in years, he wanted to get royally tweaked, like completely out of his gourd obliterated.

  It wasn’t the stomach pain. It was this fucking town, the wholesomeness of it, maybe, or the way the people smiled and walked around like everything was just hunky-dory. Some of them, one in particular, was actually fat. They were living well, like pigs, oblivious to their true reason for being in the world.

  Well, now they were going to be taken to the slaughter, and then they’d understand…if only there were a way to take more of them…to have the entire town. Maybe the next settlement would be the one, if it was a little bit smaller and he took more brothers and sisters with him. The Order needed more meat.

  He continued to marvel at the fact that they had absolutely no idea what was going on outside their town. Forget peak oil, it was peak human flesh, and this town was overgrown with it, lousy with people who were better off as food than alive.

  It felt like being in a butcher shop filled with exotic meats, some dangling from the ceiling and caressing Mardu with their eat-me-please-eat-me flesh as he passed by to examine them, and others peeking up at him from display cases with their squeeze-me-and-pop-me-and-suck-out-my-juices eyes.

  There had been many quarantined settlements at first, but the mutations of the virus cut the number down like a scythe switching back and forth through a tall reed, which now grew too slowly to deal with the sickle’s assault. They only had four more to go to on the east coast, and then what? Then they would have to begin devouring themselves if they wanted to keep having meat.

  After the other traders set off the alarm and the four settlements on the coast had been visited, the jig would be up, and Mardu didn’t have much of a strategy at all for what the Order would do after that. These things had always used to come to him before, but not these days. Maybe after some meat it would all start to make sense. The cobwebs in his head had better clear by the time they were done traveling up the coast. If not, then…then maybe it really was time to step down.

  If they’d done this some years earlier, the Order could’ve taken the whole town, but now the brothers and sisters were fewer, culled by hunger and nutrient deficiencies, and mental illness, syphilitic and otherwise. Now they had to play the coward’s game of sneaking in, stealing, and running away.

  And that was a dangerous game. They were running the risk of far worse than the thieves’ classic punishment of having their hands lopped off. They’d be killed if they were caught doing what they were trying to do, there was no doubt of that.

  As the day wore on, the man calling himself Ronnie couldn’t help thinking about how easy this was. The expression ‘taking candy from a baby’ came to mind, but that wasn’t what they were doing. They were taking the babies from the town, and, apparently these people were damned idiots when it came to watching over their own.

  Allowing the Tack Truck into the town was one thing, but letting their kids run amok in the town center with all these strangers was foolish and irresponsible. They deserved what they were getting, if you asked him.

  19

  Sister Beth caught sight of the town perimeter and cursed, albeit under her breath. Brother Saul and she had arrived without incident after all, though not for her lack of trying to create one.

  He’s surprisingly careful for such an oaf, she thought. He must not trust me. Does Brother Mardu suspect? Did he send Brother Saul here with me to dispose of me?

  She turned to Brother Saul and stared at him, trying to decipher some meaning from his eyes.

  He looked back at her, impassive, and shrugged. “Are you alright? Is nature calling or something?”

  Sister Beth rolled her eyes. “I’m fine.”

  “We made good time,” he said. He pointed to a large tree fifty feet from where the trees stopped and the bare ground outside the town perimeter began. “We can set the charges and then wait there…where the air is rare.”

  “That will be fine,” Sister Beth said through clenched teeth. So now he was a comedian, too. If she didn’t kill him soon, she’d have to plug her ears, but that was dangerous, because then you couldn’t hear them coming, so it was really for the best that Saul be hoisted out of the picture tout de suite. There hadn’t been many of them on the way over, but they were coming now attracted by the growing caravan of trading vehicles that was still some distance away.

  Brother Saul offered his would-be and hopeful killer a boost into the tree. She gave him a dirty look, then stepped onto his cupped, overlapping hands, and accepted the generous upward push that he gave her. He watched her climb up the tree’s limbs and followed behind her. If he’d been attracted to women, or to anyone for their physical appearance, for that matter, he might’ve found her climbing behind attractive.

  But he wasn’t, so he didn’t. Looks just weren’t his thing.

  He was attracted to her though, but not because of her appearance. He liked her because she was mean, and he thought she might be able to mistreat him almost a
s badly as Brother Acrisius did. He didn’t know how to get her into their game, or even how to broach the subject, so he didn’t. He could bide his time, and if it happened at some point, great, and if it didn’t, he was plenty happy already.

  “You like it up here?” he asked after she’d settled in a branch and he’d perched with each foot on a thick limb. He never felt nervous about going up into trees, despite his size, and he’d always picked out ones capable of supporting his weight.

  “Much.” Then, staring at Saul like a cat might watch a water bug before swatting it, Sister Beth said, “Why don’t you go ahead and set the charges? I’ll stay here and keep watch.”

  “Sounds good,” Brother Saul said, and nimbly off the tree he went.

  Before he went to the fence, he paused underneath the tree, and looking up, said, “You still doing alright up there? Everything A-OK?”

  Plant the charges, eat your tack, and shut the fuck up, she wanted to scream. But she didn’t. She said, “I’m doing just fine up here, thank you Brother Saul.” And then, through teeth that were on the verge of being gritted, she added, “Blessed be the virus.”

  “And those who herald its coming,” Brother Saul agreed and smiled broadly.

  What a fucking sycophant, she thought. You and your disgusting master and his master. You’re all history. Dust to be sprinkled like seasoning on the fresh meat, on my next meal.

  He went off to set the charges, did, and by the time he got back, the first of the traders to set up were putting the finishing touches on their stands in New Crozet.

  Brother Saul hoisted himself up into the tree and perched on a large limb across from Sister Beth. He flashed his best smile at her, and she replied with her standard eye roll and fuck-off glare.

  He didn’t trust her. He wanted to and tried to, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d noticed her looking at him in a funny way while they journeyed from the Order of the Dead camp. She seemed frustrated by something, uncomfortable, and she refused to make conversation, ignoring his attempts to be friendly with her.

  Her remote wasn’t going to work, and that was a large part of her plan. The explosives wouldn’t be detonated, and Mardu and Acrisius would be stuck inside the town when their plot was uncovered. Then they’d be lynched, and gloriously. She wished that she could be there to see it, but one can’t have everything, now can she?

  Or, perhaps in this case, one can’t have anything at all, because little did she know that Saul had brought a spare remote, in fact he’d brought two, focused on preparedness as he was, and he would set the explosives off and Mardu and Acrisius would get their chance to escape just as they’d all planned on the surface of their plotting.

  And, as if to pour salt on her wounds, he’d be watching his back on their return trip, so there wouldn’t be any stabbing him in the back or shooting him in the face and laying him up in a ditch. He would stay close to her—practically on top of her like he was trying to jump her bones—until they got to their rallying point, where they were supposed to meet more of their kind.

  20

  “The leaves are so pretty,” Brother Saul said, his distrust of Beth doing nothing to dislodge his cheery disposition.

  If you asked him, the day was one for the annals of history, what with the way the air was moving, stirring up the clouds to froth at their edges as the greater brew, the dark brew of an autumn windstorm hurtled closer to them. It was like the lighter clouds were sweeping up the sky for a great feast of light and thunder and rain. The leaves seemed to appreciate this, and he could almost hear them jingle in anticipation, like glass ornaments handled by a light breeze.

  Sister Beth snarled down at him making no effort to veil her hatred.

  Fucking simpleton, she thought.

  How do I make you happy? he wondered. He wanted to please Sister Beth too. He craved subservience, wanting to serve everyone around him, to be told what to do and when and how. But she was intractable, and, if his suspicions were right, up to something, too. She seemed to always be angry with him, and when he offered his help to her in some way to please her, it only made her more cross.

  Maybe the way to serve her was not to serve her, but to treat her the way that he himself liked to be treated. This idea puzzled him, and its foreignness also made him feel uneasy. He put it out of his mind for now.

  He was amazingly good at that: putting things into boxes in his mind and shutting the boxes and moving them around, reopening them only if and when he felt like it. He put the contradictory pleasing-Sister-Beth-by-not-pleasing-Sister-Beth strategy in a new box that was yellow—a shade of yellow bright enough to draw his attention but not so bright as to demand all of it—shut the box, then picked it up and placed it in a corner of his mind, on top of some other boxes of various sizes and colors. He would revisit it some other time. With the closing of the box, Sister Beth’s glare seemed to lose its power, and her physical presence became muted.

  He flexed the muscles of his back and ran his left hand up the side of his right lat, then up over his shoulder and down his right arm, pausing at the bulges of muscle that his fingers met along the way. He was marveling at his own physique. He didn’t know why he was so strong, or what it was about him that made him a walking slab of muscle, but everyone always told him that it was genetics. He felt the power within him and smiled.

  It was a source of constant comfort, there through all the changes in his circumstances. During all of what had been done to him by his previous masters, and then as now, he felt invincible.

  He decided that he would continue to try to share his contentedness with others, and whether or not they chose to accept it would be up to them. They could use him as they saw fit, abuse him even, and if that was the only way that he could share himself with the world, then that would do.

  The feel of the rough bark of the tree limbs against the palms of his hands was wonderful, as was the great mass of trunk touching his torso as he climbed. The sensation of the tree bark reminded him of Brother Acrisius’s skin, coarse from affliction and age and the afflictions of aging. He missed his new master dearly, and he hoped that Brother Acrisius’s mission today would proceed smoothly. He was looking forward to returning to the campsite later that day, and to Brother Acrisius’s tender caresses.

  That was assuming that Brother Acrisius would be in a good mood. If he wasn’t, then Brother Saul would accept what he was given. He knew that there was an underlying affection in all that Brother Acrisius did to him, even if it was doling out pain. And, of course, to serve was Brother Saul’s nature. It was what he lived for.

  He scanned the strip of forest in front of him. It was narrow, cut apart as it was by the splotchy clearing of bare ground in front of the town’s outer gate. He could see the clearing, and beyond it the outer gate of the perimeter fence.

  To either side of the gate, the places where he’d put the charges were obscured from his view by beautiful and multicolored waves of foliage. It was a sight to behold. He often felt that way.

  There was so much wonder in the world, so much splendor. In setting the charges, he’d seen some cars scattered around the New Crozet perimeter, their gas tanks probably drained. He could make out some spots of the rusted hood of a Volkswagen Passat that peeked out at him through the leaves and branches.

  Drive me, it seemed to call to him. He wished that he could. But now was not the time to go investigating these things. Maybe, if he was good, Brother Acrisius would let him drive one of the Order’s trucks later, after the business with the townspeople was done.

  What was the name of the town? He tried to remember. He thought it sounded like José, but he couldn’t recall the exact name. There was a syllable before the word that sounded like José. Something José. He still couldn’t remember. That was alright. The name would come back to him with time, or it wouldn’t. Either way, it would be okay.

  An autumn breeze washed over him, deepening his sense of peace. The air’s freshness seemed a thing irreproducible
in its perfection, and he hoped that Brother Acrisius could smell this same air. The world was so perfect, and he knew that he had the most amazing life possible.

  He missed his old master, an outlaw called Riggs, but Riggs had been a slaver by trade, and hadn’t paid Brother Saul the attention that Brother Acrisius did. Brother Acrisius was often cruel, but that was his way, and it wasn’t for Brother Saul to judge another’s way. Brother Acrisius had endured much, and Brother Saul felt blessed to be able to ease the man’s suffering.

  If someone was captured who Brother Acrisius liked better, and Brother Saul found himself replaced, so be it. It was a thing beyond his control, and he would accept it if it came to pass.

  He smiled broadly, and his chest relaxed with happiness. He breathed deeply into his belly and felt all of his muscles loosen. The tension of the journey from the camp left him. The world was not his to control, but only to dwell in and be at peace.

  There was no sense worrying about these things, Saul knew. The charges were set, and all was as it should be. He took a deep breath, expanding his powerful chest and twisted his back to each side, eliciting one crack from his spine on the first turn, and two on the second. Now was the waiting time, and as he sat on that broad tree limb that he’d picked out to support him, he felt like the world was filling him with strength.

  21

  Senna woke sucking in air, or rather, struggling to. Her mouth was stuffed with gauze and taped shut, the tape wound around her head.

  It was like trying to breathe through layers of cheesecloth jammed in your mouth. Rolling over onto her side, she screamed into the mouthful of stuffing. When she next tried to draw a breath, loose tatters of gauze began to creep down her throat.

  A brief moment of panic followed, until she rediscovered her nostrils, which weren’t obstructed, and she took in a few breaths, pulling in the smell of the dank place in which she was now trapped deep into her lungs. Blood was pattering onto her forehead from her scalp and running lethargic trails over her eyelids, pausing at her eyelashes as if to think, and then, if the drops in question were adventurous, exploring her eyeballs, and if they were more the shy sort, waiting for her to blink and taking up their trail run again at her bottom eyelid and moving on to her cheeks.