“No it can’t.”
Standing up he dusted himself off and took one final look at the sun falling low in the sky and scattered clouds overhead. It had never rained but the air was thick with the smell of moisture.
He tipped his head back and filled his lungs with it and letting it out walked back over to the mounds of remains.
As he approached the top of the ramp the Humvee was coming up with another trailer full of bodies. He stood by and waited for it to stop, one of the replacement volunteers jumped down from the drivers seat.
“That’s the last of them.” he said to Robert.
“Okay good. Chris, can you run back down – we’re gonna need some distilled alcohol from the lab, can you get a couple of gallon bottles please.”
“Sure, you got it.”
Chris ran off down the ramp and Robert started to help the others unload the bodies onto the second stack.
“You are going to burn the remains tonight? You know what that will do, more Carrion will come.” Baudoin questioned as they carried someone’s loved one to the future pyre.
“Let them come, we’ll add them to the fire.”
With the help of the alcohol accelerant the pyres burst into flame with an audible whoomph that pushed out a wall air all around them.
Several of the elders had ventured up to the surface to officiate an impromptu ceremony over the cremation but they didn’t stay long, once the air started to fill with rancid smoke and the smell of burning flesh they quickly retreated back down below with the others who had stayed with children.
Robert, Jackson and Tommy were the only ones who remained to represent the bunker dwellers as they silently watched over the dead. Fallon, Baudoin, Lucas and Ira were all there too standing sentry in a wide outward facing arc around the fires staring off into the distance until long after the sun sank below the horizon and world was nothing but darkness.
After a couple of hours none of the walking dead had come shambling out of the dark to disturb or contribute to the pyres and they had managed to render the remains down shards of bone and ash.
When the fires had died down to embers they gathered together and made their way back down the ramp and closed the doors.
That night everyone closed their eyes but few actually slept. Those that did were chased quickly back to consciousness by the blood soaked phantoms of their dead loved ones.
They left all the lights on and barricaded themselves back inside the library, even though the main doors were sealed and locked and they had performed another full sweep of the complex they didn’t want to take any chances.
Giving up the charade of sleep Robert sat awake watching one of the sets of doors waiting for them to suddenly shake and thunder with the impact of undead fists but nothing happened.
In the morning they would open the doors and once again search every corner of the bunker. They would wash away the blood in the hallways, repair the broken doors.
As much as had happened in the last few days things would return to normal soon enough. Just like the Cataclysm that had driven their ancestors underground - the great plague had caused the survivors now great pain and forced a great change but they were still alive and they would endure.
Many decisions would have to be made in the coming days but they weren’t alone any more and now they knew the truth about the plague they wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.
Somewhere in the early hours of morning Fallon woke up and came to sit with him.
“You have a very nice home here,” she said looking around. “I have never seen so many books even the Monks do not have a collection such as this.”
He nodded silently, glancing around the room that had been such a large piece of his life, before he had always seen it as a place of life – millions of lives captured in the pages of a million books.
Now it just seemed like a tomb, the books little more than grave markers, every one of them - fact or fiction - only a record of the dead and he had had his fill of the dead.
“I have spoken with the others, we will stay as long as we are welcome and needed.”
He said nothing.
She sat there in the silence and tried to think of what else to say. “I was wrong about you. Wrong to call you stupid and a child, not knowing something does not make you stupid… you learned quickly and you lead your men well –”
“Do you know something? You talk too much” he said, leaning forward he kissed her on the lips - half expecting to be punched again. She let his lips push against hers and moved with them in a slow gentle caress.
They parted slowly, neither saying a word. He stared into her eyes and she flushed, looking away but didn’t leave. Together they just sat there in the silence, the library as quiet as a tomb.
EPILOG
Robert stood on top of a peak near the village in the mountains and tried to take in every detail of the exquisite vista spread out before him.
There was an intermittent wind gusting from north to south that had cleared away most of the clouds but it wasn’t strong enough to threaten his balance on the rocks.
Looking down at the brushed aluminum cylinder in his hands he talked to it as if the ashes inside could somehow channel his voice to whatever place lay beyond death.
“Well this is it Mother Etta, time to let you go. I know that the place is more for me than you but I hope that you like it. You used to try to explain a view like this beyond what we could see in pictures and you were right… it defies description.”
He fought to hold back tears, telling himself that it was the wind rushing over his eyes doing it and then smiled to himself when he imagined what Etta’s response to that would have been.
Even well over a hundred, right up until she died she still had a mischief in her eyes that could strip away all of the lies and half truths. She would have looked him square in the eye and said “There’s no shame in tears boy, tears are pure. They come from the soul – them that don’t cry don’t have a soul.”
He took a calming breath and opened the canister.
“I know that this isn’t the end and that you’re watching over us all still. I hope that you… ” He paused searching for the right words. “I hope that you approve of the choices that we are making. You were my greatest teacher and while I am grateful that you didn’t have to live to see what happened, I wish that you could be here now.”
He could feel the wind building again and took the chance to release the ashes. “I love you,” he managed as the wind took the dust and carried it away like a shadow on the breeze. It seemed to dance in the air, whirl and spin and play in the joy of freedom before slipping away and fading into nothing.
Robert waited a while longer, enjoying the feeling of the wind whipping around him. He didn’t know exactly what the future would hold, they had taken Lucas back to the Sanctuary and he had left vowing to see them again soon.
They had taken the others back to their home too now and the Father had welcomed them to stay as long as they needed or wished, but they could not stay, not now at least. In the future some from the bunker would come here to visit and vice versa but for now they still had a lot of rebuilding to do.
The world had moved on in ways that they had not anticipated and that meant they had to adapt their plans, but they would it would just take time.
As he turned to walk back down from the peak Fallon was standing there silently watching him, he hadn’t heard her approach. She smiled and he returned the gesture.
“Time to go?” He asked.
“Yes, soon.”
He stepped closer to her and slipping a hand around the small of her back drew her to him and they shared a long passionate kiss.
There had been many changes in the world since the time when Graham Greene had collected together more than a dozen hand picked employees and their families - but some things never change. No matter how malevolent the dark forces of the world become, how evil or insidious, there still remains only one true way to figh
t it and that is love.
They could travel the world hunting down Ghouls and those like the Valagoth, putting a stop to their evil or freeing their souls but in a world ruled by the dead the only thing that truly fought death was life. So that is what they had to do, to combat death, to fight it on its basest level they had to make love, make life.
Table of Contents
PROLOG
I
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
EPILOG
Long Live The Dead Page 19