Order of the Dead

by James, Guy

  Somewhere, someone howled in pain, but Alan was beyond understanding who it was, or who he himself was, or where, or much of anything now. The wail belonged to Brother Mardu, or Mardu, or Yooooo Maurice, but probably just Maris at this point, sad, lonely, pathetic, and most significantly in his view of the world, powerless, weak, and now utterly helpless, and his cry voiced this feeling quite well.

  Alan staggered backward, and then he felt as if all of his body were opening up at once, as if all of his flesh and bone were a singular orifice. He felt a split second of excruciating pain, and then it was gone and he was somewhere else. He looked around, and it wasn’t with his eyes that he saw, but with some other, greater awareness.

  19

  What he saw was the soul of the world, encircled by a spiraling abyss that was trying to close, to seal itself, and, Alan understood, all of life within it.

  The abyss was made of links, a coiled chain of voids stained with contagion, spinning with the speed of tireless, insatiable evil, with the unflagging determination of the zombies.

  Alan was moving into the chain.

  He was to be the final link that closed the loop. This would be the last of the mutating progression, the addition of his missing puzzle piece the finishing stroke of some cold, viral wisdom. He was fitted in place, and the abyss was at last made whole.

  And the blight, by now mad with hunger, fed.

  Within moments, cracks formed at either side of Alan’s body and were filled with blue fire and grew into creeping fissures that tore through the links, breaking them and disconnecting them from one another. The fraying links encountered friction, and the revolutions of the coil lost speed. The entire abyss, formed piece by piece over millennia, was unraveling.

  The spinning of the coil slowed further, and its structure began to change. Many of the broken links fell away and disappeared, and the ones that were left mended and rearranged themselves into a helix. It was Alan’s helix, his DNA, that unique something that Senna found so irresistible, a three dimensional arrangement that represented the essence of his being.

  The helix softened, and Senna’s face appeared, the constellations of freckles on her cheeks radiating what he could interpret only as freedom. Alan looked at her, and there, in the whites of her eyes flecked with grey, he saw the future, each spot representing a perfect imperfection that would come to pass after his time, and some after hers as well.

  20

  And suddenly she was everywhere.

  Every moment they’d spent together was playing out at the same time, backward and forward all superimposed on one another.

  Blooming on her face was the first full smile he’d teased out in the middle of some woods in winter.

  Backward she was walking and untying the apron cords around her back, retreating from the dinner of pumpkin and corn stew she would soon be making if time would only move forward again.

  Forward she was walking out of the kitchen and toward the bug bite couch where Alan was sitting with a chewed-up Grisham framed in firelight, and then he was putting it down and taking her in his arms.

  And they were in their farm with a four-year-old Rosemary squinting under the summer sun and watching the butterflies flit about the apple tree.

  And Alan was alone staring at the spot where the apple tree had once been, and he was seeing the world for what it really was, understanding his place in it, zooming out to see far more of the big picture than any man should have been able to, and then he was moving backward, back to the porch where he’d left Jack and Sasha with Senna. And the feeling was leaving him as he moved back in time, just as it had left him after he’d experienced it the other day.

  And he was thirteen, thinking that twenty was light-years away, and he couldn’t imagine growing up, or falling in love, or wanting a family. And yet there was a lighted corner even then that had represented all those things, and it was Senna’s glow that gave those concepts life.

  And then he was giving her the cinnamon, only that event felt different, because it hadn’t happened yet.

  Somehow, it was in the future, or had been, no, still was, but he was going through it and seeing it happen all the same.

  And she was there through it all, made for him as perfectly as he’d been for her.

  Then she was gone, and only the helix was left, solid once more. It pulsed once, and Alan knew that the thump was the heartbeat of hope, and that the beats were slow and far apart in time, and the next one was not for him to feel.

  Then he was both within the helix and without it, and stillness was his world.

  21

  The worship truck was alive with the workings of a struggle, its chassis rocking appreciably. Distressed shouts, muted by the truck’s walls and then the rain, reached Senna.

  The timing couldn’t have been better. Senna reacted, grabbed Sasha and Jenny by the arms, and began to lead them to the edge of the campsite.

  The children’s faces were wild with terror and confusion. They looked thunderstruck by fear, but also lost. Senna’s face was bruised and battered, and her lips were turned downward slightly, making her look like an old tree’s hollow whose folds had begun to resemble a woman’s face over time.

  The hollow would withstand the storm, if it pleased the lightning marksman, of course. Her lips were pressed tightly together, and her hair, made wet and heavy by the rain, was clinging to the sides of her face. She was plenty scared, but not in the way the children were.

  She felt what she needed to feel at that moment, the feeling that had meant the difference between life and death numerous times when she’d been a spotter. It was a determination that went beyond the far reaches of stubbornness.

  It was a will to push onward through anything, to get to the other side, and if there was no other side that could be reached, to go on forever. She would do that now, and the children were coming with her.

  She had to pull them more roughly than she wanted at times so that they would follow, frozen as their bodies were by panic. They likely would have remained there in the Order’s encampment, unmoving, if she didn’t force them out of it.

  Mutiny, she thought, as she looked for a weakness in the fine netting that made up the camp’s perimeter, even the cannibals aren’t immune to it, especially the cannibals. The heavy downpour made it difficult to see much, so she worked by feel.

  Then, after what seemed like too long a time, she found it, a flaw in the material, one of many that every enclosure had, no matter how well-made. She kept her thumb pressed against it and ran the point of Acrisius’s knife through at the juncture. She cut a small piece of flesh from the pad of her thumb, but swallowed the pain as she pulled upward with the knife and cut a swath in the netting that was big enough to crawl through.

  Then she turned to the children and spoke firmly.

  “I’m going to go through first, and then I’m going to reach through for each of you and you’re going to come out to me. Do you understand?”

  Sasha and Jenny nodded.

  Senna pushed the wet coils of hair back from her face. “Are you ready?”

  The children nodded again, appearing more apprehensive than they had been a moment earlier.

  Senna allowed herself one last glance at the worship truck, the site of an apparent uprising, before forcing her way through the slit in the netting. She hadn’t cut the hole wide enough, and had to struggle to force the middle of her body through. The netting ripped further as it expelled her from the campsite.

  When she was fully outside the Order of the Dead’s perimeter, an odd feeling passed through her, as if she were leaving something behind besides the obvious, a piece of her that was never supposed to be in the camp in the first place, a part of herself that belonged elsewhere, in safety. An image of her farm flitted into her mind and she felt swept up in a fog of confusion, except the fog was more sandstorm than fog, its gritty particles stabbing at her like tiny daggers, turning her around and decoupling the tracks on which her thoughts ran.

&nbs
p; Two sets of small hands were reaching toward her through a matrix of rainwater, and she remembered where and who she was, and that there was only one thing that mattered right now. She pulled Sasha out of the camp first, and then Jenny.

  After they’d wriggled through, Senna stood up and pulled them to their feet. It took her a moment to get her bearings, and then she was moving stealthily under the rain-assaulted and meager leaf canopies the trees offered, leading the children back to New Crozet.

  Before they’d gone more than a quarter mile, someone called out from the darkness.

  “Who are you? Where’s Acrisius? Why’d you bring two? I don’t have room for two, and that one isn’t the age we agreed on. I don’t—”

  Senna darted into the night and plunged the knife, to which small sticky pieces of Brother Acrisius’s genitals were still clinging in spite of the knife’s work on the netting, into the caller’s throat. He had strength left for one gurgle and a widening of the eyes, then fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes, and went about the business of bleeding to death while Senna returned the knife to her belt, the bits of Acrisius privates happily freed from it, having found their resting place of choice in the Flesher’s neck.

  She watched the life spurt out of him. It went quickly, looking more like a fit of vomiting than an outpouring of blood, and it left behind the pale form of a man. She’d sensed him there, watching, before he spoke, and she’d known that a confrontation was inevitable.

  There hadn’t been time to warn the children, as that could have made the man nervous, and a nervous, likely hostile human in zombie territory was the last thing she needed.

  Senna motioned for Sasha and Jenny to come closer—if the man had accomplices the children would be safer near her—and searched the body. Judging by the contents of his backpack, he was a very rich man, or the agent of very rich men, who dealt in human flesh.

  When she was sure what the little baggies were filled with, she let the currency fall from her hands. She looked at Sasha, whose eyes appeared to be searching, inquisitive, then looked at Jenny, who was peering into the darkness and shaking with fear and the cold that came from being out in the damp too long.

  There was a knotted rope above the cannibal, dangling from a tree, his escape route if zombies arrived. He may have eaten human children before, but he wouldn’t get his chance today, or ever again.

  You’re safe now, Senna thought, from the zombies, and from me.

  Behind his post, she could just make out a reinforced four-wheeler, its lights off.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, expanding her awareness.

  Emptiness.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  Death.

  That was good.

  The man had come alone.

  Suddenly Senna found herself hoping that she was right, which was odd, because there wasn’t right and wrong in spotting, there was just the act of it. But something about her senses seemed to be off.

  All the more reason to get out of here quickly, she thought. She took the children by the hands again and off they all went. There was too much risk in trying to take the Flesher’s vehicle, because for all she knew, there were more cannibals nearby. She and the children could move more quietly on foot.

  In some moments they would pass the spot where Alan had stopped at the pignut hickory, where, under the gaze of the dogwoods, he’d pushed the circling demons that were trying to consume him back under the murk and willed himself forward. All for Senna.

  The Order’s camp and the forest around it were covered by a garment sewn of water and night, an undulating arras whose moving points touched the escapees as they moved, as if the fabric were trying to wring itself dry, but couldn’t summon the momentum it needed to turn all the way over. As Senna guided the children through the territory of the zombies, the Order’s encampment and its wan lights began to blur in the distance, washed out by the swelling rain.

  22

  Dawn broke. Outside New Crozet, the sun’s rays were filtering in through the forest canopy of yellows and reds and browns, refracted where the light met with the rainwater that generously covered the turning foliage. At the end of its journey, the early morning sunshine was finding a home in the damp, blood-soaked ground, imparting the brown-red hue with a bright, fresh overtone.

  Senna stepped out of the forest, guiding the children behind her. The men working on the perimeter noticed them, stopped working and stared. Senna searched among their faces for Alan’s, but his wasn’t there. Next she searched for Tom’s face, but didn’t find his either.

  You’ll see them in a moment, she thought. Get inside first.

  She gestured for Jenny and Sasha to approach the layers of protective netting shielding the men working on the fence. The girls went obediently, seeming to run from Senna as if relieved to get away from her, and Corks began the process of lifting the protective barrier to allow the children through.

  Senna looked around her and back at the tree line, assuring herself that no zombies were near.

  All was quiet.

  Then she looked back toward the town and realized that something wasn’t right. Alan should have been here, with the others. No matter how tired he may have been from working to secure the fence all night, he would have been there now.

  Senna knew his character, and she knew that it wouldn’t have let him deviate in this way. At the very least, Tom should have been there in Alan’s absence. One of them should have been there.

  She knew what it meant, as much as her mind tried to rebel against the thought. Half-staggering under the weight of the mental upheaval, she approached the town.

  They’re injured, she reassured herself, injured, but alive. I’ll take care of him, I’ll make him better.

  Making no effort to hide the plaintive expression on her face, Senna searched Corks’s eyes for any hint of confirmation, but he didn’t meet her gaze. He was working to let the children inside now, but he hadn’t looked at her when he first saw her enter the clearing, either.

  Corks and two other men lifted the netting just high enough for the children to crawl under. Senna pushed Sasha and Jenny onward, and the men pulled them inside.

  She was close to Corks now, but he still didn’t look at her, and the other men at the perimeter didn’t either.

  Were they ashamed that they hadn’t tried to rescue them? That they hadn’t tried to save the town’s children? Where was Alan?

  The children were safely inside now, and the townspeople at the outer gate who weren’t working began to attend to them.

  “Corks,” Senna whispered, as she crossed under the netting. “Where’s Alan? Where’s Tom?”

  For a long moment, Corks didn’t say anything. He turned to look at her, and, struggling to hold her gaze, said, “He… Tom’s dead.”

  “How?” Senna asked.

  “A zombie got through the net. It was dark and we were hurrying and it wasn’t set up right. It was before the thunder started calling them away. They were all over us.”

  Senna looked beyond Corks toward the town center and saw a large, human-shaped pile of jackets.

  “Is that him?” she said. “Is that Tom?”

  Stone-faced, Corks nodded.

  She walked quickly to the corpse and lifted the jacket covering Tom’s head. Seeing his bone structure unchanged offered her a measure of relief. At least he’d ended it on his own terms, before he’d turned into one of those things. She replaced the jacket and looked around, searching for another human-shaped pile. She saw none, and her heart skipped a beat at the hope that Alan was alright.

  But the men and women at the fence still weren’t looking at her. Their body language was all wrong with respect to her, she could see that plain as she could sense when the zombies were about to break.

  It was like the sound the TV made on mute that people could hear when they were young but when they grew older no longer could. She’d never lost that ability, not to hear the high-pitched whine of the muted TV,
but to sense the changes in the air, the precise assemblages of sound that signaled movements and moods, the shifting melodies that foretold the break and more to those who could hear them.

  Still, she had to ask.

  “And Alan,” Senna said, her voice unsteady, “what about Alan?”

  Corks looked at her and drew a sharp breath. “Senna... He…”

  “Where is he?” she asked. There was a tremor in her voice, and it caught in her throat and began to spread downward. “Tell me where he is.”

  “He… He went after you.”

  Shaking now, she looked at Corks, uncomprehending. “Alone?”

  Corks nodded.

  They were both soaked to the bone. Corks was shivering, his eyes half-shut by fatigue and his face pale. His mosquito bites looked less inflamed, covered as they were with a sheen of cold water. His movements were slow and clumsy, and he looked to be seconds away from keeling over.

  “Went after me? What do you mean?” She’d expected to hear that Alan was dead, had been preparing herself for that blow from the moment she got back and saw that no one would look at her.

  “Tom tried to stop him,” Corks said, “but he wouldn’t listen. He’d been wounded—” Corks cringed, at once regretting what he’d just said, “—but he went into the forest to find you.”

  Her knees buckled. She caught herself and moved away from Corks, toward the town center.

  “Senna,” he called after her, but she didn’t hear him. He made a move to follow her, then stopped.

  Best to leave her alone, he thought, and it’s not like I’d know what to say. What is there to say?

  Still, was it right to leave her alone? Was she going to be alright? He wasn’t sure.

  He watched her limp away, wanting to help her, but knowing that she wouldn’t let him. He considered finding a woman to send after her, to offer her some sort of comfort, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized it was all for shit. He turned back to the perimeter, disgusted with everything that had happened here, disgusted with the world, and with himself.