Eventually the boy returned, along with two other members of the gang. The boy was carrying an aluminum pole with rubber handgrips and some kind of noose hanging from the end of it. The two men with him looked like brothers, could almost have passed for twins were one of them not obviously much older than the other. The boy was out of breath but excited. The two brothers, both thin and ugly men, seemed jealous of Jim Bob and Ray’s catch. They were indecently pleased when they found out that Jim Bob had killed one of the talkers before discovering just what it was they’d caught.
“Oh, quit your gloating and get the leash on the bitch,” Jim Bob glowered. “I been standing here holding her down for half an hour. My leg’s starting to Charlie horse.”
The two brothers – Soma would later discover they had the unlikely names Ronald and Donald Duck – took the aluminum pole and a leather muzzle from the boy and kneeled down beside her.
“Watch her teeth. She might bite,” Jim Bob said, pressing down hard on her neck as the two men slipped the noose of the lead pole over her head and cinched it tight.
She did not intend to bite. She didn’t want to harm anyone, but as Ronald Duck leaned in to put the muzzle over her face, she got a whiff of his body odor – smell of sour, unwashed flesh – and some switch flipped inside her skull. For the briefest instant, her conscious mind plunged into the dream sea of the dead, all sense of self drowned in the red haze of the hunger.
When she came to, Ronald was stomping in a circle around her like an Indian performing a war dance -- and clutching a bloodied hand that was missing two fingers. His brother chased after him, yelling, “Hold still! Lemme see how bad it is!” She tasted blood and flesh in her mouth and realized the ugly man’s missing fingers were clenched between her molars, already half-chewed. Soma gagged and spit them out. A moment later, Ray kicked her in the side of the head, very hard, and everything went dim and quiet for a couple of minutes – except for the ringing in her ears.
“She bit me!” Ronald howled, tears running down his ferret-like face. Soma’s attack had delivered him a death sentence, and his features contorted with the certainty of his fate. You did not have to be bitten to contract the Phage – that was common knowledge – but any exposure to the bodily fluids of the dead or dying was a guarantee of infection. Not unless one was immune. And very, very few were actually immune to the Phage.
Soma wavered in and out of consciousness, ears ringing, and watched dispassionately as the men amputated Ronald’s hand with a big knife. The smell of all the blood, and Ronald’s agonized wails, stirred her to hunger again, but when she tried to rise, to attack the struggling men, the leash bit into her neck.
Jim Bob held her immobile, shouting at the other men to put a tourniquet on Ronald’s arm so he didn’t bleed out before they could get him back to the house. The boy, Chigger, offered his belt to use as a tourniquet, and stood holding his pants up, looking like he might faint or throw up (or both) as they looped it around Ronald’s spouting wrist and cinched it.
“No,” Jim Bob bawled, overseeing the operation as he wrangled with Soma. “Up higher! Around the bicep! And pull it tight!”
Swinging his stump around, spraying his cohorts with arterial blood, Ronald cried, “Is it enough? Did you chop enough of it off? Take it off at the elbow, Ray! I’m too young to die!”
His brother Donald tried to console him. “It’s good. We got it, bro. You’re going to be okay.” He was almost as bloody as his brother.
Soma almost felt sorry for him, but then she saw Perry, hanging there with a hole in his forehead, his cowboy hat full of blood and cranial fluid, and her pity died stillborn in her cold, dead heart.
Oh, Perry, I’m sorry, she thought. I brought you here to die.
As they led Ronald, babbling incoherently, away, Jim Bob levered her up by the lead pole. She clutched at the braided metal noose around her throat, and Jim Bob jerked it tighter.
“You’re dead, bitch, you ain’t got to breathe,” he said. “Now get up. Say good-bye to your boyfriend there. It’s time to go meet the boss.”
46
Her heart had not beat in many years, yet the sight of her father’s farm caused her chest to tremor convulsively, as if someone had zapped her with an electric current, when she saw what had become of it. She clutched her breast at the spasms. She knew it was psychosomatic, but it hurt all the same, a physical manifestation of the psychic pain the revelation had dealt her.
It was nearly unrecognizable.
The house, a Georgian Colonial, had aged significantly. It was as if fifty years had passed, not the five or so that had gone by since she died. The big square house was badly in need of a paint job. So much paint had peeled from the exterior walls that the clapboard siding was an almost uniform gray. Its windows had been boarded over, all of them, with slits left between the planks to fire weapons. The peaked roof was sagging as if the passage of time had softened it, like a spoiled fruit, and there was junk everywhere. On the porch, in the yard. Most of it was empty food containers. The majority of that was beer cans. The house where she had spent the greatest part of her life looked like ground zero at the world’s biggest, wildest fraternity party.
Her father had been a bit eccentric, but he was never lazy. He had always maintained the buildings, kept the lawn mown, the gardens weeded, all his equipment in good repair. Her mother, too, had been a fastidious housekeeper. It hurt just to look at the mess. Without speaking a word, the pitiable state of her parents’ property informed her of their absence.
They were gone.
Fled or dead, they were gone.
And what of her husband? Her daughter? What had become of Nandi and Aishani?
Soma faltered when she caught sight of her parents’ home and Jim Bob pushed her forward rudely. “Keep moving, bitch,” he snarled at her. She stumbled, almost went to her knees but managed to stay on her feet. She clutched the metal cable cinched tightly around her throat and her captor jerked back on the lead pole. “Leave it alone!” Jim Bob commanded. “Go on! Walk!”
What would he do if she simply refused to obey? Kill her? She was already dead. Death held no fear for her. Especially now that Perry was gone, and all evidence suggested that her family was as well. The only thing that kept her going was the slim hope, dimming now like day falls into night, that these barbarians were holding her daughter captive. She needed to know what had become of her family. Were they here when these brutal men took the farm? Were they still here now, operating in some servile capacity? She could not imagine her loved ones would willingly align themselves with such crude and vicious men. She could only hope that her family had abandoned the farm before these brutal squatters appropriated it.
They marched across her father’s vegetable garden, which had once hosted prize-winning tomatoes and pumpkins and squash. There were no vegetables growing here now. There was just knee high grass and garbage and a few empty vegetable cages tangled up in vines. A vast assortment of vehicles was parked haphazardly in the yard, mostly trucks. It made the property look like a second rate used car lot. The barn had partially collapsed. The plastic sheeting that covered her father’s greenhouses hung in tatters from the rib-like supports of the greenhouse roofs. Could Dorothy Gale have been any more disheartened if she’d found Emerald City in smoking ruins at the end of her journey? Perhaps… if along the way, the Scarecrow were used to kindle a hearth, the Cowardly Lion had been devoured by flying monkeys and the Tin Man had been scrapped for parts. Maybe, then, Ms. Gale might have felt the way she did.
The front door banged open and disgorged a motley crew of survivors. Alerted by Ronald’s wailing, they spilled out to see what all the caterwauling was about. There were several cries of dismay, both male and female, and the injured man was hustled inside. Those who remained on the porch watched Soma approach with a mixture of fear and curiosity. They were thin, dirty, their clothes worn. They reminded Soma of photos she’d seen of the Great Depression. Gimlet eyes glittered at her from gaunt, strangely v
ulnerable faces, prematurely aged by deprivation and violence.
A volley of questions pelted them as they neared the front steps:
“What happened to Ronald?”
“Is that really a talker?”
“Are you bringing it inside?”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Yeah, she’s dangerous,” Jim Bob cried. “She snapped Ronnie’s fingers clean off. Didn’t say boo or how-are-ya!”
Two of the women waiting on the porch retreated inside, frightened by Jim Bob’s response. The door clapped shut and they watched anxiously through the screen, clutching one another.
“Up,” Jim Bob said, shoving her with the lead pole.
Soma climbed the steps – steps she must have climbed a hundred thousand times in her life, but never like this, never in bondage. The crowd on the porch spread out, making room for her and her captor. Several firearms were aimed at her head and her body began to tremble involuntarily. She wasn’t frightened, although that was what it looked like to the reception party. She was fighting the impulse to attack them. The smell of their flesh, so vital and living, had stoked her hunger to a sudden, roaring fire. She wanted to kill them and eat their brains. She could practically taste their flesh in her mouth. Feel it part between her teeth, go sliding down her throat into her belly. The desire was almost sexual. The need, and the pleasure it promised, if only she surrendered to it.
Rip their faces off, tear out their throats--!
She held her body as rigid as possible, gritting her teeth as the hunger sizzled in her veins, tied her belly in knots, throbbed in her skull.
It suddenly struck her how futile her quest had been. Even if she had found her family unharmed, all she would have wanted to do was rip them apart and feast on their flesh. It was all she could do to restrain herself now. Didn’t matter how many firearms were pointed at her head. She wanted to throw herself on these strangers, kill them and eat until her belly split open. She had seen more than one zombie do just such a thing. Eat until they burst, then scoop up the half-digested flesh that had just tipped from their ruptured bellies and shovel it back into their mouths.
Jim Bob was pushing her toward the door. “Now just you keep back, and don’t none of you sons-a-bitches shoot her by accident,” he said to his compatriots. “Big Boss has been wanting a talker for a while now. We need to figure these things out. The dumb ones is bad enough. Get the door for me, Harwood. Kim, Molly, get out the way.”
The house was filthy and cluttered with the belongings of the men and women who had taken possession of it, but the furnishings were her parents’ furnishings, and she felt a terrible pang of loss when she saw them. Her father’s blue La-Z-Boy recliner was still sitting by the east-facing window where he used to read the paper every morning, glasses perched on the tip of his nose. There was a horse’s saddle sitting on her mother’s chair, but it was the same chair, and it was sitting in the exact same spot it had always sat, close to her mother’s sewing nook by the fireplace. The only thing missing from the living room were her parents’ family photos. Those photos had once covered the wall around the hearth from floor to ceiling – wedding pictures and baby pictures, holiday portraits and school photos. All those pictures were gone now, though the wallpaper was noticeably lighter where they had hung, like strange rectangular ghosts. These foreigners had taken all the pictures down, probably out of guilt, like a serial killer covering the faces of his victims.
Ronald was babbling plaintively in the kitchen. His cries sounded child-like and exhausted now, but she felt little sympathy for him. She could hear him wailing, “No no no! It’s gonna hurt!” and thought, Good, I hope it does! At minimum, he was a party to Perry’s murder. No telling what atrocities he had committed over the years. Suddenly, he shrieked. A moment later, Soma smelled burned flesh. They were cauterizing his stump. Her mouth flooded with virulent black ichor – zombie drool – the predigestive enzymes produced by the Phage.
“Where’s Big Boss?” Jim Bob asked one of the spectators in the living room.
“Office,” a bearded man said, and he thumbed the hallway.
A short corridor serviced the back half of the downstairs floor, which included her father’s den, the utility room and bathroom, and a couple of bedrooms. Being an only child, she had used both downstairs bedrooms growing up, one to sleep in and the other as a playroom. Her parents had slept upstairs. After she married Nandi, her mother had converted her playroom into an arts and crafts studio but her mother had put all that into storage after the Phage and the playroom had become Aishani’s bedroom instead.
Soma wondered if her daughter’s things were still there. She had hoped to see the girl among the squatters, alive if nothing else, even if it wasn’t the best of situations, but she had yet to see a single child, boy or girl, among her captors. If she could just see a picture of her daughter, or one of her old toys lying about, she could die – well, if not happily, then at least with a modicum of satisfaction. A shoe, a single strand of her hair… it didn’t matter. Just something!
Big Boss was standing behind her father’s desk when Jim Bob marched her through the doorway. She assumed it was the man they called Big Boss anyway. He certainly wasn’t big. In fact, he was somewhat slim. Average height. Average looks. He was dressed in a maroon shirt and denim jeans, with a big silver belt buckle and dark hair streaked with grey. He looked a little like Burt Reynolds, the Bandit from Smoky and the Bandit, one of her father’s favorite movies.
Jim Bob confirmed the man’s identity: “Here it is, Boss! We finally got a talker for ya!”
He must have been in the act of rising to meet them, for he immediately sat back down. He placed his hands on the top of the desk and narrowed his eyes.
“Can you really talk?” he asked, addressing her directly.
“Oh, yeah, she talks,” Jim Bob said. “She talks real good. I figured she’d be kind of slow, being dead and all, but she’s sharp as a tack. Ray and Chigger heard her—“
Big Boss raised a hand, looking slightly annoyed. “I wanted her to answer,” he said.
Soma opened her mouth to speak – she didn’t see any reason not to – but the metal cord was cinched too tightly around her neck to get any wind through her pipes. She couldn’t utter a sound.
She wriggled her head and pointed at the cord.
“Loosen the noose on that thing,” Big Boss said, gesturing at the lead pole.
“She’s kind of feisty, Boss,” Jim Bob said nervously. “She already bit Ronald’s fingers off.”
“Just loosen it enough so she can speak,” Big Boss said. “I’m not telling you to take it off. She can’t bite now anyway. She has a muzzle on.”
“Okay,” Jim Bob said uncertainly, and the crowd in the doorway backed up a step. They did it all at once, eyes wide. It was almost comical.
The lead pole creaked as Jim Bob adjusted the lever that controlled the noose, and Soma found she could draw breath again. Not that she needed it to live. She hadn’t breathed since Jim Bob cinched the leash around her neck, with no ill effects. But you can’t talk without some wind to work the pipes. She moved her mouth experimentally and then said, “Yes, I can really talk.”
The crowd in the doorway gasped as if she had pulled a rabbit out of a hat. They whispered excitedly among themselves until Big Boss waved his hand, gesturing for silence, and then they dutifully fell quiet. But they watched her, eyes glimmering with curiosity and fear, jaws agape.
“Do you remember your name?” Big Boss asked. He had a mellifluous voice, not exactly cultured, but intelligent and commanding.
“Yes,” Soma said. “My name is Soma Lashari.” She tried to speak as normally as possible, but her voice came out frog-like and inhuman, like a horror movie monster. She wasn’t self-conscious of it around Perry or the other Resurrects, but these were living human beings, and she was suddenly aware of just how scary she must sound to them. She was an alien, a bogeyman, a member of a mutant species that had been trying to kill and e
at these people for the last half-decade. She could smell their fear and revulsion, and it pleased her a little.
Big Boss eyed her thoughtfully for a moment, head tilted to one side, then said, “You look familiar to me for some reason. I feel like I’ve seen you before. Did we ever meet when you were alive?”
“You’ve probably seen pictures of me.”
“Yes? And why is that?”
“This house belonged to my parents,” Soma said. “I lived here my whole life -- well, I lived here until I got married. We came back after the Phage. Hid out with my mother and father during the epidemic. Then I got bit…”
Big Boss’s face finally betrayed some surprise. His eyebrows arched and he tapped his finger to his desk. “You lived here? In this house?”
“You’re sitting at my father’s desk,” Soma said.
Big Boss looked down at the desk, then back at her, eyes narrowed.
“What happened to them?” Soma asked. “Were they here when you--?”
“Your father is dead,” Big Boss said. “As is his woman, and the young man who was staying here with them.”
He said something else, but suddenly his voice was very far away from her. The words echoed in her skull as if they were bouncing down a very long and very dark tunnel. Distantly, almost dreamily, she noted that her knees had buckled, that she was sinking to the floor in a kind of floaty slow motion, but she could not seem to reassert control over her body. She was going down down down, and that was all there was to it.
Dead. Her father, her mother… and Nandi! Her husband! He was the only young man this Big Boss could be speaking of. Who else could it be? And little Aishani, her daughter, her baby--!
Wait, she thought, as her knees hit the floor.
He didn’t say anything about Aishani--!
Her daughter might still be alive!
“Get up!” Jim Bob grunted, tugging her up by the lead pole. He hauled back on the aluminum pipe like a fisherman trying to reel in a marlin.
Soma (The Fearlanders) Page 28