Sitting back on her haunches, Soma heard a low groan and looked to her left. Her daughter was lying face down in the trench about two feet away. The sharp points of five stakes protruded from the girl’s back and right thigh.
She was taller than Soma remembered -- of course, she would be! -- a gangly pre-teen now, but there was no mistaking that great mass of curly black hair. The elements had reduced her clothing to gossamer scraps, thin as spider silk, and she was draped in a shroud of fallen leaves, but it was her daughter, her baby, and Soma’s heart shattered at the sight of her. All the pain and fear and rage that had been held at bay by hope exploded through that dam of optimism like raging floodwaters, and she had no choice but to vent the turbulent emotions in one convulsive howl.
Her entire body trembling, Soma howled. She howled until she thought her throat would burst.
Aishani twitched at her mother’s cry and made a soft sobbing sound, a baby sound, which shot through Soma’s heart like a lance. The girl’s skeletal right arm shifted, and she clawed feebly at the dirt with fingers that were little more than bones wrapped in jerky.
Dead, but not dead.
And not, judging by the noises she was making, aware. She was one of the mindless dead. An Innocent. Her soul adrift in the red sea of the hunger.
A moment was all it took for Soma’s mind to slot the last few pieces of the puzzle together, that puzzle being the story of her family’s fate, and how her child had come to this end.
After Aishani witnessed the murders of her father and grandparents, she had fled into the wilderness, following the same faint trail that Soma had followed. Just like her mother, Aishani had fallen into one of the trenches her father had dug to protect their family. Impaled, the girl had died, and shortly after that, the Phage had brought her back. When the reanimated child was unable to free herself from the stakes she had perished upon, to feed the rapacious virus that had invaded her body, the Phage had devoured her from within, withering her to this desiccated stick figure, left to scratch feebly at the earth, unable to think, unable to die. Just suffering. On and on and on…
The unfairness of the world – no, the utter cruelty of it – threatened to drive Soma mad. She pitched back her head and laughed bitterly at the dark canopy of the forest. That her daughter, who had never hurt a fly, should suffer such a merciless fate, while men like Jim Bob and Big Boss thrived… it was a testament to the ugly truth that hid beneath the petticoats of the universe. Not only did God exist, He was a sadistic psychopath.
Soma struggled to her feet, moaning at the pain in her belly – two puncture wounds, now. A little loop of gray intestine bulged from the tear in her blouse. She poked the moist tube back in as she stumbled over to Aishani, picking her steps through a miniature forest of sharpened stakes. Squatting down, she examined the girl’s wounds, trying to decide the best way to lift the girl up and off the stakes.
Then the question occurred: should she free the child?
Look how shriveled up she is, Soma thought. She’s just bones wrapped in rawhide!
Soma could free the child, feed her. Perhaps some food would rejuvenate the girl a little, but Aishani would still be dead. Wouldn’t it be more merciful to put her out of her misery now? She could put them both out of their misery. It wouldn’t be hard. The bottom of the trench was littered with wooden stakes. She’d just have to find a decent sized rock and pound one of those stakes into her little girl’s brain. Then, once Aishani was at peace, she could hunker down on all fours, position her eye socket over another one of those sharpened branches and let gravity take care of the rest.
But her mind bucked at the thought. She had come so far in search of her family. Perry had sacrificed his life to bring her here. She could not just murder the only member of her family she’d actually managed to find. She had put the little boy down back at the gas station, the one who’d awakened after being shot in the head, but she had always wondered if she’d made a mistake, if she could have done more for him, though she didn’t know what exactly. Just guilt, she supposed. But she would not – could not – dispatch her own child so preemptively. Not without exploring all of the possibilities.
Perhaps Baphomet could call her back…
It was the literal voice-in-the-back-of-the-head that people talk about, and she froze in wonder at its suggestion.
Yes!
She could free Aishani, nurse her back to… well, what passed for health for a Resurrect, and then take her to Siloam so that Baphomet could awaken her. Soma had little doubt the undead guru could perform such a feat, especially after witnessing his power firsthand. He had parted a vast herd of zombies as easily as Moses parted the Red Sea. Didn’t even have to stamp a walking stick to do it. It would be a simple thing to revive her daughter’s mind. Aishani would still be dead, but she would be Aishani again! Soma would have her daughter back!
Soma bent forward and took her daughter by the shoulders. At least she tried to. She remembered she was missing a hand – she kept forgetting it was gone! – and had to rethink the mechanics of the procedure. She finally got a workable grip on the girl and lifted her upper torso up and off the stakes.
The stakes slid from her body with a hideous ripping sound, and Aishani mewled softly.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Soma said. “I know it hurts. Mommy will make it better. I promise.”
She was afraid it would be much more difficult than it actually turned out to be. Aishani was nearly the same height as Soma when she died, but she was used up, a withered husk, and surprisingly light and stiff. Soma got her up and off the stakes without too much effort and sort of flipped her, like a plank of wood, back against the bank of the trench.
Aishani was as stiff as an ironing board, though she did sweep her arms weakly in the air as Soma moved her. The rest of her body was frozen, too rigid and dried up to move more than an inch or two in any direction. Her beautiful hair was matted, the front side of her body filthy and swarming with small insects.
Soma brushed her clean as best she could, trying not to look too closely at the girl, at the way her skull showed through the flesh, the way her lips had drawn back from her teeth in a mummy’s humorless grin, the way her pretty little nose had shriveled like a prune in the center of her face. Her silver coin eyes were completely bereft of intelligence, though they did seem to follow Soma’s face as she brushed away the insects and pushed her matted hair back from her brow.
Memories came rushing into her mind – so many so fast they dizzied her. Nandi laying his head on her pregnant belly, beard tickling her bare skin, and the way he had jumped back in amazement, jaw dropping open, when the baby kicked him. Her pain and exhaustion as she pushed the child from her body the night she delivered. The first time she saw the baby, all moist and shriveled and gray. The first time Aishani suckled. The first time her little eyes peeped open and looked at her. Her first tooth. Her first step. Her first word. The first poo she ever made in her little training potty, and her ecstatic shriek, “Wook, Mommy, wook! My did it!” Her first day of preschool. Her first crush – a little boy named Cougar Sullivan. And Nandi’s response: “What kind of parents would name their son Cougar?” So many memories, each as precious as the most precious jewels in the world. More than precious. Priceless!
Soma smiled at her daughter, leaning in close. “Aishani?” she said. “It’s me. It’s mommy. Do you remember me? Do you remember mommy and daddy?”
The girl’s teeth parted as if she wished to speak, but all that came out was a whispery groan.
“It’s okay,” Soma said. “It’s okay. Mommy will make it better.”
She began to climb clumsily from the trench, slipped back, pulled herself up and over. Shifting around behind her daughter, she hooked her right hand and left forearm under the girl’s shoulders and heaved her up. Perhaps Baphomet was right, and they were stronger than the living, or perhaps the girl weighed much less than Soma estimated, but she lifted Aishani from the trench with very little effort. Scooping the g
irl into her arms, she clambered to her feet and headed toward Perry’s truck. If she hugged the edge of the woods, she was fairly certain she could get there without losing her bearings.
She soothed the child as she marched through the forest. The same two things, almost like a mantra. “It’s okay,” and “Mommy will make it better.” The girl hissed and made other nonsensical sounds, but did not struggle or try to bite.
By the time Soma reached the road, the sun had set the lowering clouds ablaze. The sky was volcanic with dawn. She was certain the Highwaymen were scouring the woods for her. Someone must have risen by now and found the bodies of the two men. She came out of the woods a little further down the road than she expected and trekked toward the old filling station, certain that at any moment she would be run down by the thieves who had murdered her family.
Aishani gazed up at the brightening sky as Soma hurried down the shoulder of the road. Perhaps it was only wishful thinking, but Soma believed she saw a faint expression of pleasure on the child’s face, in her gray filmy eyes. And why shouldn’t the blazing heavens please her? The girl had lain face down in the dirt for months.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Soma whispered as she carried her child down the road. “The sun and the clouds. The sky and the birds. The world is full of awful things, but there are more good things than bad.”
She wasn’t sure she believed that. Not anymore. But she wanted to.
She came to the old gas station without being discovered and angled around behind its ruined walls. The Ford was still there, still camouflaged, though the leaves on the branches had begun to wilt and drop off. She circled around to the back of the truck, kicked some of the branches aside and leaned Aishani against the vehicle. Moving as quickly as possible, she lowered the tailgate, picked the girl back up and slid her into the bed of the truck.
“I have to put you in the back,” she explained as she quickly removed the rest of Perry’s camouflage. “I don’t think you’ll bend enough to sit up front with me, but you’ll be okay. You can watch the clouds while I get us out of here.”
The girl made a gargling sound.
Soma looked at her a moment, then climbed into the truck beside her and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“I love you, baby,” she whispered.
She climbed down and hurried around to the driver’s side. Pushed the branches out of the way. Slid in behind the wheel. The keys were under the visor where Perry had left them, thank God. She started the engine and wheeled out onto the road, spraying gravel.
She did not stop until they arrived at Siloam.
51
In the great church, as a congregation of some four hundred zombies prayed fervently in the tiered seats, Baphomet held his arms out over the young girl’s head. The girl, an Innocent, snarled and snapped at the two men who held her immobilized with lead poles, much like the one that Jim Bob had used on Soma five months before. The combined prayers of the zealous Resurrects seemed to eddy like a shoal of silver fish just below the rafters as Soma stood to one side of the stage and watched, arms crossed nervously. She had looked after the child for months, feeding her raw flesh by hand several times a day, until her daughter’s body had filled out and regained some of its former mobility. Mobility that she used now to swipe her hooked fingers at the men and women trying to call her out of the darkness.
Baphomet prayed with lowered head, hands splayed out like pale starfishes. His fingers trembled just inches from the girl’s snapping teeth. Soma prayed silently with him, though she was not sure she believed anyone was listening. Not anymore. But if it helped to pray, she would pray. She would do anything to have her daughter back from the purgatory the Phage had consigned her to.
At last, Baphomet’s head jerked up. His silvered eyes shot open and he cried out, “Come back, Aishani! I call you out of the darkness!”
The creature that was once Soma’s daughter collapsed to its knees. It dropped immediately upon his shout, like a marionette with its strings cut. For a moment, the creature swayed there on its knees, head down, hair hanging in its face, and then its head slowly rose. It craned around, first to the left, and then to the right, until at last its milky gaze fell upon Soma, and a blinking frown contorted its face.
“Muh… Mother?” the girl stammered. “Mother, where am I?”
“Safe,” Soma said with a smile, and she rushed the girl into her arms.
Epilogue
Big Boss was thinking about two things when he realized it had begun to snow: sex and death.
They were subjects he often noticed puttering around in his head, long-term renters you might say. Or maybe a better analogy would be annoying houseguests -- of the genus Those Who Do Not Know When It Is Time To Go Home -- for he was sure he’d be a lot more productive if he weren’t so obsessed with those particular subjects. Recently he’d been spending far too much of his time trying to get laid, and trying to live forever, and making woefully little progress on either of those fronts. Or so it seemed to him.
Perhaps he was becoming a little OCD as his cart rolled ever more quickly down the far side of Over The Hill. In light of recent events, he shouldn’t be surprised to detect a whiff of mental abnormality in his thought processes, even in a mind as tightly controlled as his own. When you lived in a world populated almost exclusively by virulent, flesh-eating zombies, you had to expect some mental wellness issues to crop up among the survivors from time to time, and he was no exception.
Big Boss often felt like an amateur psychologist trying to keep his ragtag band going. Day after day, week after week, he found himself intervening in one psychological shitstorm after another. Jim Bob had both anger management issues and a tendency to get handsy with the women. Ray had impulse control issues. Chigger suffered from panic attacks. Alexis was a chain-smoker and an alcoholic. And so on and so forth, ad nauseam. The task of keeping their organization functional seemed almost Herculean at times. He felt like Sisyphus, condemned for all time to roll a boulder uphill, only to slip and watch it go rolling back down again.
Despite the role he played in their small society – a combination father confessor and tin-pot dictator -- Big Boss was just a man, flesh and blood. He was not immune to the stresses of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world and sought distraction with one mild obsession after another. His obsessions, he did not believe, were ever detrimental to the survival of his organization, but they were often exhausting, and he constantly berated himself for his lack of self-control. In the end, the compulsive obsessions were just an added mental strain rather than a distraction, and something he would not mind ridding himself of if he could.
A look of surprise flitted across his features when he noticed the snow. He saw it through his reflection, then noted the look of pleasant surprise on his face, a slight relaxation of his facial muscles. He had been brooding in his office all afternoon, chair turned toward the window, thinking about the thing down in the bomb shelter. And Alexis. And the thing down in the bomb shelter. And Alexis… The smile rose up like a corpse in a murky lake, then subsided just as quickly beneath the surface of his anxiety, but for a moment, he looked almost human again. Like the man he once was, so many years ago.
The snow was drifting earthward in big round sudsy flakes. The ground was almost white with it already and he hadn’t even noticed until that very moment.
Good thing there wasn’t a herd of deadheads out there, he thought.
Which brought his mind back around to the thing in the bomb shelter, the creature that had once been a member of his gang: Ronald Duck.
The talker who had snacked on his fingers had infected him with the Phage, of course. Being bitten by the living dead was all but a guarantee of infection. Ronald had suffered the fever and agonies of the Z for nearly two full days before succumbing to the virus. Big Boss was hoping Ronald would come back with his mind intact. It only made sense that a talker’s bite would make another talker. However, Ronald was just a plain old brain-munching deadhead wh
en he came back. And by then the talker they’d captured had escaped, let loose by Ronald’s older sibling, who had gone down into the shelter to avenge his brother’s death. Donald’s thirst for revenge had ruined any chance they might have had to repeat the experiment on someone else.
Goddamn Donald Duck!
Well, the idiot had gotten himself killed instead, and in quite a spectacular fashion, Big Boss had to admit. His blood had been splattered all over the walls and floor, like someone took the lid off a bucket of red paint and had a Grand Mal seizure. And Big Boss’s precious talker had escaped. She had apparently chewed through her own wrist to free herself from the handcuffs they’d restrained her with. Was probably waiting for the first sorry sucker to peek his head through the door when Donald decided to seek his revenge.
Big Boss had confiscated her hand. He kept it in the top drawer of his desk. Sometimes he took it out and sat staring at it thoughtfully. It reminded him of a horror story he’d read when he was a kid. “The Monkey’s Paw” it was called. It was a story about wishes coming true, only not in the way you might want or expect them to. In the story, making a wish was tantamount to sticking your arm in a wood chipper and throwing the power switch.
Sometimes the talker’s hand would twitch, even now, months after the bitch had chewed it off her arm. He would be sitting in his office, chin propped up on a fist, staring at that disembodied hand, lost in his thoughts, and one of the fingers would give a little jerk, like the leg of a grasshopper that had been torn off by a curious child. It only ever twitched just the once, but that little flutter of muscle activity never ceased to amaze him… and kick off another round of obsessive thinking.
Thinking.
That was the crux of his dilemma.
What was life but a chain of thoughts? Human existence was the subjective viewing of sensory information coupled with an awareness of one’s own opinion of those events. In simplest terms, life was thought. All else was scaffolding. And if some of those undead bastards were starting to think, then providence had granted them a backhanded kind of immortality.
Soma (The Fearlanders) Page 32