Order of the Dead

by James, Guy

  And he’d helped in that build-up. He’d believed in it, drunk all the fucking survival Kool-Aid, and he’d fucked and survived, and survived and fucked, for a while, anyway.

  Now the punchbowl was empty, and maybe there’d been something more than Kool-Aid in the neon drink, the seeds of their own undoing, the flavor of complacency. The walls could’ve been built up more so that the Tackers wouldn’t have been able to escape so easily, the children could’ve been prohibited from going to market, markets could’ve been called off altogether like Larry Knapp had kept prescribing in his drunken rants, something.

  When had they all stopped adapting? When had they stopped expecting their other nightmares to come true?

  What, just because they’d already lived through a nightmare—and, depending on who you asked, continued to live in one—meant that a worse one couldn’t come along?

  When had they become so fucking blind?

  He’d done it, too, of course, but even if he didn’t feel like he’d been complicit in it, he’d have gone after the kidnappers. And in that he was set apart from the other townspeople. He knew exactly what he was heading toward, and he went anyway.

  When he reached the fence, no one stopped him or offered to help. They saw him pass through the temporary barrier they were building, and they let him go without a word.

  With New Crozet at his back, Alan crossed the tree line and over a cluster of mushrooms that he saw and quickly dismissed as uninteresting. He was a man on a mission, probably, from what he could surmise, the last one he would undertake, and he wasn’t to be distracted from that.

  The mushrooms had wiry stems, some of their caps were squashed, and the flattened tops had oozed something coral-colored from their edges. He took some of that with him on his boots, and it was the same glop the zombie that Rosemary had shot dead had taken on its hooves and carried toward the town, the same ooze that another of New Crozet’s townspeople would pass through and carry in pursuit of Alan after he went missing.

  12

  Jack was sitting in a chair that was nailed to the floor, screaming. Spittle was flying from his mouth, and his shorts—the ones he’d been wearing at the market—had prominent spots of saliva on them.

  Large clumps of red hair were caked to the sides of his head by panic sweat, and one smaller clump had formed above his forehead. It was poking upward now, giving him a unicorn look that he and Sasha would’ve laughed at under different circumstances. No one was laughing now.

  He was tied to the chair at the wrists, ankles, and around his midsection with rope. He was struggling against the binds, but his strength was waning. It was no use, he couldn’t get free without help.

  There was one final cry, a desperate, unintelligible plea, but it fell on the deaf ears of the Order, which was impatient…and hungry. With the last scream came a good amount more spit that fell and formed wet spots on Jack’s pocket where the croc snout was currently living, and probably making a dinner out of some lint. It was about that time of day, when the animals fed.

  Jack was plenty conscious, because he’d only been given half the Sultan’s helping for a child of his size, so that he would be awake and fully aware, for this. Brother Mardu had wanted him this way, though the virus didn’t care one way or another if the child was fully conscious or not. To Mardu, however, the child—and Mardu’s ruthless treatment of him—was a stepping stone on his way back to his throne, and he would regain his seat, mercy be damned he would.

  The last to bear the Hodgins name that he took from his mother, the boy called Jack stopped struggling. He’d spent the little energy the Sultan had left him.

  The room—it was a modified inside of a truck—began to do a loop around him like it was a hula-hoop, and he didn’t like that at all. He’d never even liked real hula-hoops, although he’d only met one and it had been broken when he found it on the second floor of what passed for the New Crozet library, and this was much worse.

  And he was so, so thirsty. He’d eaten too much tack and too many Poppers, and now he wanted to be thrown into a river, or better yet, a lake, or, better still, an ocean. Not that he’d seen any of those bodies of water in real life, but he’d heard tell of them.

  And, truth be told, in his current state, he’d happily settle for one of the two New Crozet wells. As sleepy as he was, he’d probably drown as soon as he’d drunk his fill, but he didn’t think he’d mind that either, as long as he could get the cool water in his belly first.

  Someone said, “This sacrifice brings us closer to the Equilibrium, to Equilibrium Day.” It was a commanding statement, like a proclamation by a great leader, but the voice wasn’t quite right. There was a note of confidence that had been missed, and that had ruined the melody.

  There were more words about Equilibrium Day, shouts about it even, but the atmosphere was tense rather than excited. The edge would come out of the air, and only briefly even then, when the meat was dealt out later.

  Jack drew in a shallow breath of clarity and he saw Senna. Rosemary and Jenny and Sasha and Molly and Rad were there too, but they were being held in place by men and women in dark robes.

  Senna, on the other hand, had just gotten free of the unbelievably large man who’d been holding her, and she was surging forward, the look on her face making Jack think she’d only just realized she was there, like she’d popped her head through some clouds and saw that on top of them was something so horrible it couldn’t be real, except, of course, it was.

  Jack saw the links of the chain expand and then draw taut when Senna reached the limit of her leash. The giant’s grip was unyielding, and Senna was jerked backward. She fell, and then Jack couldn’t see her anymore. He’d begun to climb up the rope of dope again, up high where the air was thin and made you grin. And it was a fine rope to climb indeed, the best in the world at that moment, Jack was sure.

  Brother Saul pulled on the leash and Senna’s throat closed up and then he was hitting her on the side of the face, once, twice, then maybe three times, and then she was falling into a limp darkness that was silhouetted with darkly-robed figurines carved from matchsticks, the wood split just so to form limbs and the heads with their phosphorus hair draped in black hoods.

  Mardu shot Saul a dark look like a poison-tipped arrow from his eyes, and the giant felt the sting. He hadn’t used even half his strength, but apparently Mardu had thought it too much. Saul bowed his head in apologetic deference.

  The townspeople were there, allowed to watch this until it was done and then the bags would be put over their heads and they’d be taken back to the holding cell…well, not all of them would be taken back to the same place, because Jack’s sacrifice, that wonderful gift of his life that he was so generously putting in the hands of the virus, deserved to be marked by a feast.

  None of them saw much, however, distracted as they were by the Sultan’s various charms. The most lucid of the New Crozet prisoners was Molly, and she had just time enough to scream before being clobbered by Remigius, who elbowed her repeatedly in the face until her strength gave out.

  The eye of Jack’s mind was winking off again.

  There were more proclamations, and Jack couldn’t tell in his ephemeral moments of lucidity who was their source, whether it was the same man who’d spoken of equalizers or equaling or equal-i-something earlier, or someone else.

  “To the virus he goes, our sacrifice, our rite!”

  A cheer limped to its feet, seeming to want to exit the room.

  More calls to action, to arms, to witness.

  Another cheer, sturdier.

  When Brother Mardu made the cut, Jack felt almost nothing. He understood, through the use of some previously untapped part of his mind, exactly what was happening to him. The master had been a long time coming, and now he was here to take what belonged to him. What had always been his.

  Said master was scaly, and had a great mouth filled with row upon row of sharp, yellowing teeth that thirsted for warm blood like you’d thirst for a cool drink o
f spring water if you were caught in a boundless expanse of desert. Then the teeth were moving inside of Jack, tearing at what made him human, and he was being taken.

  The life ran out of the boy not by blood but by breath, like a final sigh. His last wish, if he’d had the presence of mind to make it, would’ve been that the air he was exhaling would be used as fuel for the fire that would burn Mardu’s face off, assuming the world could ever be so lucky, or so just.

  13

  The orgy of cannibalism was about to get into gear. Brother Mardu’s fingers were already dripping blood and there were thick, red smears up to his elbow, but his lips, for the moment, remained smudge-free. He raised a hand high in the air, and a greedy murmur went up at the sight of what he was holding.

  All of the Order was before him, reaching, licking their lips, the anticipatory saliva building in their mouths and needing to explode into the still-warm flesh. They’d all get a small dose of the Sultan’s fix in the meat, but that was okay. Maybe, Mardu thought, the serving of dope would help them all see clearly again.

  Mardu made more words, reciting more of the Order’s tenets and their battle plan for making it through the year, most of which revolved around stealing people and food from the settlements, and then the cheer that followed was the first true one of the night, because food was coming.

  The virus took hold of his mouth and spoke for him, and then the Order was becoming his once more. They were shouting with him, listening rapt and punctuating his sentences, the virus’s sentences. He was the amplifier, he was their god.

  While Mardu was having his moment of communion with his own god—he the demi-god to the god, of course—even Sister Beth added her cheer to those of the brothers and sisters. It sounded forced, and it was, but its insincerity was chewed up and swallowed by the din. Even so, it wasn’t entirely faked, because she was hungry, too.

  Her extreme disappointment in herself for not having killed Saul in the forest was for the moment tempered by her need to eat. Looking back, she would see that she’d had a chance or two, though she’d been hard-pressed to spot them in the moment.

  In that way she was like Senna. They both looked back, and often, at the choices they’d made in their lives, and, in stark relief, saw all the things they should’ve done differently, like the right things were carved into a shadow marble that subtitled the real events that had taken place. It was a running critique of each of their shows, kept by the most critical observer of each, themselves.

  Mardu thrust his raised hand upward and waved the narrow section of human liver in the air, flapping it as if it were a misshapen, maroon pancake. Droplets of blood scattered from it, some landing on the brothers and sisters who were in the first row.

  It wasn’t so much an audience now as a riled-up mob, ready to lynch and be lynched if only the virus so requested. That was how Mardu felt, at least, but at the moment, the truth of it was that the rest of them weren’t so much serving the virus, but their appetite. Right now, that was a distinction without a difference, because the task at hand was meal-taking, and the viral pixie was down with that.

  Oh yeah, he thought, whisper away, tell me your sweet-nothings. And he looked over at his shoulder and could actually see her, the too-skinny, winged woman, her skin green and scaly, her bony legs crossed twice over just so. He’d never been much into skinny bitches, but she was to die for. There was just something about her, and her voice…the slight rasp in it was enough to light him up for days.

  Looking back to his flock and grinning broadly, he gestured with the sliver of organ again and they roared up once more, but in a more controlled way. It was as if their collective hunger had grown wings and flapped over their heads, where it was now circling, not yet daring to approach the morsels of fresh kill that Brother Mardu was preparing. Not yet. Not for you just yet. This is where he always made them wait to remind them that he was at the top of the food chain, and the rest of them, they ate at his pleasure, because that was how the virus wanted it.

  The turkey of this Order’s Thanksgiving was still alive, and in the room with them.

  Drugged up to the gills, his skin peeled back so that his insides could take in the not-so-fresh air of the worship truck, Rad was strapped to a table beside Mardu. Weak but rhythmic, the young man’s pulse was beating on, and it would keep on drumming, and he’d keep on feeling, for much longer than was fair, except that fairness was a concept that had died on the day after the outbreak, if not earlier.

  The flesh was stripped from him in portions that were sized to keep him alive and green for as long as possible. It was the post-apocalyptic death of a thousand cuts, copied quite closely aside from the fact that the pieces sliced from him were for the eating, for their eating. The men and women of the Order crowded closer, sensing that the signal would be given at any moment.

  The vulture that was their want was rising higher and higher in a frenzied beating of wings until its head touched the ceiling and it had to crook its neck while it waited for its master’s permission.

  Almost…

  There…

  Now!

  The virus shot off a pistol in Mardu’s head and he tossed the meat down to the gathered cannibals and the vulture folded its wings and torpedoed down and forward, its jaws agape and straining against their limits to open as wide as vulturely possible.

  That’s right, Brother Mardu thought, I’m the lion and you’re the pathetic fucking scavengers who eat after me. You need me. You all need me. I’m the king of this motherfucking pride, because the virus willed it so.

  14

  Brother Acrisius was brimming with delight, bathing in the pool of his patriarch’s success. The festivities of the Order were now in full swing, and the mutinous looks were gone from the faces of the brothers and sisters, if only for the moment, replaced by expressions of greedy mirth.

  They were happy, so long as they got something to eat, and probably for only so long as they were gobbling it down. Still, there was plenty to go around. The take had been good.

  Tearing into some calf meat, the semi-paralytic was positively swelling with glee. He was looking up now and again at the others, but mostly at Saul and Mardu. Saul looked happy as ever, and that was no surprise, but Mardu seemed uneasy, in spite of this decisive victory. He’d drugged and dragged in a fresh kill, put on a show of his power by giving the boy to the virus, and yet he still looked unsure of himself, like a shadow of himself in years past.

  Perhaps he was losing his faith.

  During his stint with the Order, Brother Acrisius had himself moved back and forth as far as his own beliefs were concerned, though Mardu’s sermon had never wavered. He’d taught them all that the virus was the ultimate, most perfect program, and that it was the Order’s role to spread it to new hosts, to new biological machines, and iron out any hindrances to this progress. He’d promised that the virus would provide for those who sought to know it and love it and help it spread. And it really had taken care of them, for a time.

  Mardu had explained that the virus was the world’s reality, the virus knew better, was superior to mortal men, and had proved that by the changes it made to the world, and they had to go with it to survive. He’d told them that the virus spoke to him, in private of course, because Mardu had the same affliction of secrecy shared by all great prophets.

  And in a lot of ways, that made sense, it was the post-apocalypse, after all, and sense wasn’t highest on the totem pole of survival desirables, but sometimes, Acrisius thought there was more to it, that, perhaps, the zombie plague was a punishment meted down by God Himself.

  He wasn’t alone in that, either. It was pretty common for the survivors to look at it that way. Maybe it really was a holy extermination, the world’s retribution for all of mankind’s sins or some hippie shit like that.

  The virus—according to Mardu—wasn’t a lightning bolt flung down by God, neither penance nor extermination. It just was—an ‘it is what it is’ item for the ages.

  What di
d matter, whether the plague had been wrought by the God of the Christians or the Jews or the Muslims or the green god of Wall Street or the great hippie spirit of the universe, was that it was holy, and, by extension, so was the Order’s mission.

  The Order’s great and occasionally fearless leader acknowledged, in his moments of self-reflection, that the Order was in some ways a religion, and it was really all a matter of perspective, wasn’t it? A lot of things could be like religions. Gangs, for example, were just like them. And in the end, of course, it was all about power.

  Back when Mardu had been padding his soapbox with the cash proceeds from his Krok-peddling, it had never really been the money angle that had driven him, because he’d understood, from the very get-go, what cash really stood for. It was always power, had always been and always would be.

  Power.

  That was the only thing that mattered. Money wasn’t worth a squirt of piss after the outbreak, but when it had been worth one or two said squirts, when it had meant anything at all, it had meant power.

  For this, for this practical approach to it all, Acrisius loved him. And that way of looking at the world and moving through it had turned Acrisius on something fierce, but Brother Mardu wasn’t for him, never had been, and still wasn’t. Acrisius found the leadership itself erotic, but it was the act more than the one doing it.

  In a sexual sense, Acrisius thought Mardu was disgusting, and why, he wasn’t sure, because Mardu was as good looking as they came. It certainly wasn’t a race thing for Acrisius, there was just something very off-putting about their leader, in spite of the charisma he sometimes exhibited. It seemed like if he was to touch you, you’d turn to stone.

  Shrugging the half-shrug that his broken body would allow, Acrisius lapped up the blood from his fingers and went in for seconds. More of the settlement man’s organs and muscle meat was being brought out and set in front of him. He made delicious eye contact—one which spoke of other things—with Saul, and then he and his slave dug into the glistening flesh and partook.