by North, Geoff
Lothair rasped, “I’m not entirely convinced there’s any ammunition in that gun.”
“How badly you wanna find out?” Cobe pointed it at the white spot between Lothair’s pink eyes.
“Not terribly.”
“Where’s the other one?” Willem asked. “Where’s the guy with the orange eyes?”
“I sent him off to bring more of our kind back,” Lothair said. “We’ve been sleeping for a thousand years…well most of us have been sleeping. It’s time for us to come back. We want the four of you to be a part of it. We need you to tell us what it’s like out there. We need to know where we can find more…people.”
“More food, you mean,” Willem said.
Trot squatted down next to Lawson. “Where are his guns and hat? I ain’t never seen the lawman without his guns and hat.”
“Here,” Edna answered. She pointed down to the lawman’s possessions next to her foot.
Trot’s eyes lit up. “He had two green balls?”
“What’re you talking about?” Cobe asked.
The green balls! The lawman dropped one on the floor when he freed me from that bed with the door on top. I didn’t know he had another one.”
“The grenades,” Willem laughed. “He’s talking about them grenades the lawman took from the armory level.”
“Yeah, green balls,” Trot said, digging into the back of his pants. “I got the other one he dropped right here!”
Lawson leapt up, snatched the grenade out of his hand and pulled the pin. “Get outta the room—now!” He threw it towards Edna. She moved and the grenade landed inside the open cylinder. Lawson pushed Trot out through the door after Cobe and Willem. Edna tried bringing the cylinder lid down but the explosive went off first, blowing her body into two halves at the midsection.
The blast knocked Lawson into the hallway. Trot dragged him to his feet and pulled him along after the boys. “I knew you’d find a way to save us all, I just knew it!”
They hurried back up the stairs to Level A without stopping. They didn’t encounter any more flesh-eating people awakening from the past. There were no more howlers wandering in the stairwell or hallways. Lawson went first into the concrete tunnel and the four crawled out after him. They picked their way slowly up through the blasted remains of twisted girders and concrete columns.
“The books,” Trot blurted out when they were halfway up the crater wall of dirt. “We forgot the books for Victory Island.”
“Fuck the books,” Willem said.
Lawson stopped climbing and looked back the way they’d come. No one and nothing was following. He breathed easier knowing the grenade had likely done its job. “Yeah…fuck the books.”
Cobe was the first one to climb completely out of Big Hole. A shadow fell over his eyes and a hand clamped over his mouth before he could shout. Willem and Trot were silenced next as they climbed up and over the edge.
Lawson came out last. A huge boot kicked him in the face, knocking him onto his side.
“Did the howlers we sent down keep you boys busy?”
The lawman looked up and saw a mountain of muscle and red tattoos. “Lode.” He was surrounded by a gang of murderous henchman.
The giant kicked him in the ribs. “You didn’t think I’d let you leave Burn that easily, did you?” He pulled his sword out and pressed the end of it against Lawson’s throat. “I’m taking you back, lawman. I’m going to see you swing for your crimes. I’m going to see all of you hang.”
Part Three:
Dream
Chapter 27
Cobe watched the sun wink out of existence over the distant crater rim. An hour earlier—as they had fought their way out of Big Hole—he thought he might never see it set again. Now he was almost certain it would be the last time. A calloused hand smacked his face forward, forcing his head back the other way, towards the east. Towards Burn. Towards punishment.
“Quit gawkin’ back the way we come. Ain’t nothin’ there for you now.” The hit had come from the monstrously ugly Devon, one of Lode’s followers. He hit Cobe again. “Don’t stare at me with them freak eyes of yours either, you pale shit. I’ll poke the fuckers out and make you a howler if you keep it up.”
Cobe faced ahead again. He shook his head at Willem, a few steps in front of him, to keep his mouth shut. The one-armed boy turned away as well, and the four captives continued stumbling along through the dirt.
“What did you do with my horse?” Lawson asked further up in the line. The lawman was a big man, bigger than all of Lode’s men, but next to Lode himself he appeared small and inconsequential.
The tattooed brute kicked Lawson savagely in the side of the shin and the lawman fell to his knees. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your mouth shut?” He kicked him again, harder, in the ribs. Lawson made a pained sound and fell forward onto his elbows. Lode kicked him in the stomach with enough force to lift him momentarily into the air. The lawman landed on his side in a puff of dust, coughing and fighting for breath. “I ate your fucking horse.” The six men traveling with Lode burst into laughter. “I ate the thing, and when the time comes I’ll shit his remains onto your wrinkly old face.” More laughter.
Trot hobbled up from the back—which was a difficult thing to do considering the eighteen-inch piece of rope tied at his ankles. He fell on top of Lawson with his last stumbling lurches and yelled up at Lode, “Quit kicking him! He’s already hurt bad enough from the howler attack and them things waking up back inside Big Hole.”
Lode reached down and pulled Trot away by a strand of greasy hair. “He’ll be hurting a whole lot worse when I’m done with him.” Trot whimpered a little more but fell away when Lode tapped the rusty blade hanging at his side. He knelt down in front of him. “Who are these people you keep crying about back there?”
Trot stared into the dirt, afraid to look Lode in the face. “The old man…and the others. They’re waking up, they’re rising out of their metal beds… Hundreds of them. Thousands.”
Lode stood and looked back to the crater rim in the west, three miles away. “I always knew you were braindumb—never took you for one to be all that imaginative. There’s nothing back there. There’s no city in the ground.”
Willem spoke. “Maybe you should go see for yourself.”
“Maybe I should.” Lode watched as Lawson struggled back to his knees. He kicked him back down. “Maybe I will when this business is finished.” He pointed at Devon. “It’ll be dark soon. No sense travelling any further in the cold. Build a fire here and we’ll set out first thing in the morning.”
Devon didn’t much care for the sound of that. “Fuck that. We’re out in the open. We start a fire here, the rollers will be on us for sure before the sun comes up.”
“Good. We’ll need something to eat.”
Another man, as ugly as Devon, spoke up. “It was tough enough herding them howlers into the crater back there… How the hell we expected to survive the night with fucking rollers running back and forth?” Cobe recognized the man. His name was Ard. When he wasn’t following Lode and the others around, he was usually piss-drunk and picking fights in the back streets of Burn.
Lode stepped over Lawson’s body and strode towards the man in two easy steps. “Make it a big fire, big enough to keep them away all night long.” He indicated a small forest of dead wood half a mile to the south. “Take three with you and gather as much as you can.”
“They’ll probably cut us down before we make it back. I say we sh—”
Lode punched him in the face and Cobe heard the cartilage of his nose and the bones in his cheeks crunch. He fell back into the dirt, quiet and unmoving. Devon leaned over Ard and winced. “You killed him. Broke his neck with one hit.”
“I’ll break yours next if you don’t get started on the fire. And you’d better work fast—now that Ard’s dead, you’ll have one less pair of hands helping.”
Devon wiped some snot clean from his big, pimply nose and nodded. “Sounds good.”
Lode stood in front of him, a mountain of legs and muscled abdomen blocking his view. “Your brother and Trot believe there are people back there…living under the ground. What do you say?”
Cobe shrugged but remained quiet.
Lode sat down in a cross-legged position, inches from him. Even sitting, he still came face to face with the teenager. Cobe could feel the heat from his body, and smell the stink of his breath. “You hate me for what I did to your father.”
“And our mother.”
“I’ll let you and your brother live if you tell me the truth.”
“What truth?”
“About what you found back there… What the lawman showed you.”
“He didn’t show us shit.”
“The guns,” Lode whispered. “This is where he gets them, isn’t it? Take me back there, take me below and show me where they’re kept and I’ll let you all go.”
“No you won’t.” Cobe could feel the manic energy of the man brewing like a storm set to unleash. Lode wasn’t used to not getting his way. But he desperately wanted to know more. Cobe had the information he needed, and for the immediate time being, he held an advantage over the giant. He would have to use that wisely. “You’ll kill us all whether I show you or not.”
Lode nodded slowly. “You’re much smarter than your father…far less pliable. I could’ve had what I wanted from him without lifting a finger. A bottle would’ve done it.” He rose back to his feet and patted Cobe on the shoulder with a hand capable of ripping his arm out at the socket. “Keep your secrets for now, boy. We’ll be returning to this place soon enough. Once you’ve seen what’s about to take place in the next few days, you’ll be begging to show me everything you’ve seen.”
Lode went to his remaining men and Cobe joined his brother, Lawson, and Trot, still sitting in the dirt.
“Don’t tell him a gawdamn thing,” the lawman said. He spat blood onto the ground. “Give me some time to rest, get my strength back…then I’ll finish up with Lode.”
Cobe didn’t think Lawson could even stand on his own. “You lost your guns back in Big Hole. You ain’t in no condition to take him on.”
“It’s all my fault,” Trot whimpered. “They probably followed my dumb tracks all the way from Burn. They probably watched as I stumbled along, laughing at the way I run. And I was too stupid to know they was there. Now they’re gonna take us back. They’re gonna hang us…cut us.”
“Wasn’t your fault,” Cobe said. “It was my idea to take Willem and run.” He looked at Lawson to see if he would take any of the blame. The lawman spit again but didn’t say another word.
Devon and the others returned a while later, carrying and dragging enough deadfall to see them through the night. Lode sat next to Ard’s dead body and watched his men build the fire. “If the rollers do come during the night, we’ll at least have something for them to feed on.” He smacked the side of the dead man’s face and giggled.
Cobe settled down between Willem and Lawson and tried to sleep. Lode’s men were snoring within minutes. Lode sat through the night and fed the fire next to Ard’s corpse. The rollers never came, and Cobe wasn’t so sure if that was a good thing or not.
Chapter 28
“Our souls. They’re gone.”
“What?” Eunice asked as the old man continued his grisly task.
“Something my granddaughter told me shortly after waking up. She said there was a lack of everything… No feelings at all…that our souls were gone.”
Eunice instinctively placed a fat hand at the center of her chest—that place all humans reached for when thinking about their hearts, their souls. “I thought…I had hoped my Teddy would be here when I awoke.” She scratched between the ample cleavage of her bosom with sharp gray nails that had once been colorful and constantly manicured to perfection. “I’ll admit I was slightly disappointed, maybe even a little sad…but the old Eunice…who I remember being—she would’ve had a screaming fit at waking up without him.”
“I believe Edna only had it half right.” He scooped up a double handful of burned intestines from the floor and placed it inside the open cryo-tube. “I feel something now…after so long, after so many centuries I feel something more than the gnawing hunger.”
Eunice bent over and picked up a charred bit of liver. It may have been a piece of lung, or a chunk of kidney—she couldn’t be sure—and popped it in her mouth. She chewed and spoke at the same time. “All I feel is hungry. Can’t we at least unthaw one of the survivors to eat? I’m starving, goddamn it.”
“Spit it out.”
“Huh?” A line of black juice dribbled out of her open mouth and trailed down the great expanse of her second, bulging chin.
“Spit it out now. That’s part of my granddaughter you’re eating.”
“What difference does it make? She doesn’t need it anymore.”
“We’re not savages. We won’t consume our own kind.”
“You’re kidding, right? Is that what you’re feeling now? Some need to make funny?” Eunice kept chewing.
“Do what he says,” the girl sitting in the corner said. “Spit it out.”
Eunice turned to look at her. The girl’s eyes glowed a hateful green. Eunice spit the piece out.
Lothair had begun to arrange the damaged intestines and other remaining organs into a mass between Edna Eichberg’s upper and lower halves. “Jennifer doesn’t find any of this amusing, and neither do I. We won’t eat our own. We’re not cannibals.”
Eunice wiped the blood and drool from her face and licked it off the back of her hand. “So what is it you’re feeling besides hunger?”
Lothair looked up from his work for the first time, his pink eyes meeting hers. “Hatred. Rage. A longing for revenge. This was…this is my great-granddaughter—Jennifer’s mother. I’ll see that the ones who did this to her pay.”
“So how do we survive until then? How are we going to live without food?”
“I lay awake inside my cryo-tube for a thousand years without eating. Our bodies have changed; they’ve been enhanced to survive. We can go a little while longer without food.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Look at you…skinny old prick. Have you taken a good look at me?” She thumped a bloodstained fist into her belly. “There’s a lot of Eunice to satisfy here. Waiting between meals wasn’t one of my strengths before I was frozen…not sure if any of those enhancements have cured that.”
Lothair gently pulled Edna’s legs up until they touched the intestines and organs. “You were one of the first I had revived due to the substantial financial contributions your family made to ABZE—over a hundred million, according to computer records. I felt somewhat obligated. Don’t make me regret the decision. Keep quiet.” When he was satisfied, Lothair guided his great-granddaughter’s upper body into place. He tucked the shredded intestines and blasted organs into the gaping recess of what was once her stomach, and pulled the legs up further.
Jenny left her corner and approached him. “Is it going to work?”
Lothair stood back and wiped the blood off against the white dress shirt he’d last worn as a human being ten centuries before. “According to the records it should. The advances ABZE made in the seven decades after I was frozen were tremendous. It was always my dream to see clients cured of their ailments and finally unthawed to continue their lives. I never imagined how much further my descendants would take things. The developments with artif
icial blood…the restructuring of DNA…unleashing the full potential of the encephalon—prosencephalon, mesencephalon, rhomencephalon…all of it.”
Eunice scratched at her centuries-old perm. “Rhomen-what?”
“Our brains.” Lothair went to the computer screen built into the wall next to the half-ruined cryo-tube and fed more questions into it. “We’ve all been changed. We’ve been made stronger, hardier…less susceptible to disease. We’re practically immortal.”
Jenny hugged herself. “We’ve been turned into freaks. It’s disgusting.” Lothair didn’t answer his great-great-granddaughter. He was busy absorbing decades of research and development, learning what had been accomplished and acted upon in his long absence. She spoke again. “They experimented on me against my wishes. I never asked to be frozen. It isn’t fair.”
Lothair heard that. “Fair? Your mother preserved you. Her decision is the reason you’re sitting there, and you say it isn’t fair?” He wondered what the girl would think of her great-great-grandfather’s past. Did she know anything about her heritage? Was she aware of ABZE’s beginnings back in 1940s Germany, and Lothair’s experimentation on children? He found it highly unlikely. Lothair considered telling her all about it when he heard movement out in the corridor.
Colonel Strope entered the room with five recently revived ABZE clients. “It took a while, but we found the exit—there’s an emergency-flood-relief tube up on A Level. It’s the only way they could’ve escaped.”
“So it looks like we aren’t destined to spend the remainder of our long lives trapped underground,” Lothair said.
Eunice pushed the old man aside and stood challengingly in front of Strope. “Show us where it is. I don’t plan on spending another hour under the dirt like some goddamn rodent.”
Jenny moved to her mother’s remains and spoke softly into Lothair’s ear. “I thought you said we had no souls…no emotions.”