Mael rose from his seat and hobbled toward the exit from the room. As he drew close to Gary he seemed to sense something. He stopped and raised his hand to pass it slowly over Gary’s face.
It wasn’t compassion, then, oh, no. Gary knew what the Druid felt—the energy that ran through Gary like waves on the ocean, massive and deep and strong. It buzzed and shook within him and he felt as if he might split open at any moment. You ate what, twenty of them? Thirty?
“I needed the strength. Otherwise I would have spared even them.” The men he’d slain had been old or unfit one way or another. They couldn’t help him achieve his desired end. “Mael. I’ve been thinking.”
Have you now? And what grand notion has you in its grasp?
“I need to know… I need to know what your plan is for me. For me and all the undead like me, the hungry ones. When the work is done and all the survivors are dead what will become of us?”
The Druid stroked his chin and paced back to his chair as the taibhsearan followed Gary’s every fidget. You’ll be rewarded, of course. I’ll be giving you peace, peace and the satisfaction a man feels on completing a job of work.
“Peace? The only peace I know any more is a full stomach,” Gary tried.
Oh, lad, don’t be dense. I know what you’re driving at and it’s unnatural. No creature should have to live forever. It’s a curse. Take the peace I’m offering. I wish it could be otherwise but there’s only two sides in this thing: you’re either with me or against me.
Gary circled slowly around the throne, the seers on the walls craning their necks after him as he considered his next move. “You’re talking about the peace of the grave. When there aren’t any people left there’ll be no food for us to eat. You’ll let us starve until we wither away to dust. Or no—no, you would see that as heartless. When the work is done, when the last living man is dead, you’ll just cut us off. You’ll suck out our dark energy and let us just drop where we stand like so much meat.”
Do you see another option, then?
“Yes!” Gary crowed. “It starts with those people, those living people out there. We stop killing them, at least, we stop killing all of them. Some of them we cull out for food but the rest we keep alive and safe from the dead. It’s a renewable resource, Mael—they’ll keep making babies. It doesn’t matter how awful things get. Even in the middle of arma-fucking-geddon they’ll still make babies. I can keep this going for—for as long as I care to.”
And if you do that, boy, my sacrifice will be wasted. My life and my death will have been for naught. No! I won’t let you make me meaningless! Now do as you’ve been told!
“I’m done, Mael. I won’t work for you any more,” Gary said, looking down at his feet.
The two mummies came at Gary with their hands up, clearly under orders to attack. Gary ducked under the arms of one of the mummies and saw an amulet tucked into her wrappings in the middle of her chest—her heart scarab. He tore it free and threw it away from him as hard as he could.
In his head he could hear the mummy wailing for her magic charm. She ran after the amulet, leaving her partner to take care of him. It was easy enough to block the bandaged arms he tried to use like flails. Gary headbutted him hard enough to crack the Egyptian’s ancient skull and the mummy went down in a heap.
Mael waded into the battle then himself. The green sword crashed down against the back of Gary’s head but he was ready for it and rolled with the impact. He dodged sideways and looked for an opening. He only had a few seconds, he knew, before Mael thought to call for reinforcements—thousands of them. Despite the energy blazing away inside Gary’s dead veins he couldn’t hold his own against an army of the undead. He also knew how strong Mael was and that given a chance the Druid could snap his neck with one hand. He needed an advantage and he needed it fast.
Mael swung and the sword came down hard against the floor, shattering bricks to powder, missing Gary by inches as he rolled away. Take what’s coming to you, boy! Gary covered his face with his arms but he knew that if Mael connected with the sword the blow would shatter his bones.
Another swing—Gary dashed out of the way and felt his back collide with a stone wall. There was nowhere left to retreat. Mael came after him, looking down at him through the eyes of the taibhsearan.
The weapon rose again and then stopped in mid-swing. In Balor’s name, the Druid shrieked, it’s gone dark as night! What have you done, lad?
Gary held his hands tight across his face as he manipulated the eididh. His voice was softer than he meant to be when he spoke. “I’ve just told every ghoul in the Park to close their eyes,” he said.
The sword fell from Mael’s hand. The Druid reached up to touch his empty orbits. He started to moan, a low mournful sound that rattled Gary’s teeth so much he nearly lost his grasp on the dead. He could feel Mael trying to undo his command, mental shrieks probing at the taibhsearan up on the walls, desperate cries going out for the workers outside to come in and serve their master with their eyes. Gary had become too strong, though. He had eaten too many of the living.
Gary rose slowly to his feet, careful not to make too much noise, and stepped up directly behind his erstwhile benefactor. It wasn’t easy with his own eyes closed but he had made a point of memorizing where the Druid stood.
“I have a right to exist, Mael,” he whispered.
Oh, lad, and it’s a wondrous clever thing you’ve become. Gary could feel emotion radiating from the Druid’s form like warmth. There was fear in there and some hatred and quite a bit of pride in his apostate pupil. Mostly though it was sorrow, genuine sorrow that his work was over.
With shaking hands Gary reached out and grabbed Mael’s head below the ears. It hung from his broken neck by little more than a flap of leathery skin. With one swift movement Gary tore it free. Mael’s emaciated body slumped to the floor, as dead as when it had drifted in the cold water under a Scottish peat bog. The head buzzed in Gary’s hand like something that might explode. It felt hot and cold and wet and dry all at the same time and he had a real urge to just cast it away but that would be real folly—Mael wasn’t dead quite yet. Unsure if what he planned next would actually work, he raised the head to his lips as if it were a pumpkin and bit down hard. The ancient skull fragmented in his teeth and then a black flood of screaming, sparking fluid tore through the world and carried Gary’s consciousness away in its unrelenting current.
3
We had no trouble getting back to the river. It looked like every dead person in Midtown Manhattan had been drafted into Gary’s army. The girls were thrilled to see Ayaan again. They laughed and wiped tears from their eyes and pressed their cheeks against hers. There were plenty of questions for her, of which I only understood “See tahay?” and “Ma nabad baa?”, the standard greetings. Her answers met with rapt attention and genuine delight.
As for me Osman took one look at my slept-in clothes and my haggard face and shook his head. “At least nobody died this time,” he said. He grabbed an old plastic milk jug full of green hydraulic fluid and went back down into the engines of the ship then to get us ready to sail.
It wasn’t a long voyage to Governors Island, but we took our time. The teardrop-shaped Island lies just south of the Battery at the tip of Manhattan, close to Ellis and Liberty Islands. It was a Coast Guard base for most of my life but in 1997 the government decommissioned it. What Jack wanted with the place I had no idea.
I didn’t mind going there, though. New York. It was so good to be back on the water, back where I wasn’t constantly in danger. You stop noticing how edgy you get in a sustained combat situation. You start thinking it’s normal to get muscle cramps for no reason or to feel like something is creeping up behind you, even when your back is to a wall. It’s only after you return to safety that you realize just how crazy you were becoming.
Which maybe explains why I asked Osman to take the long way round. He put the Arawelo through her paces, sailing at half steam in a full circuit of the tiny island while I
watched its tree-lined shorescape go by. Docks and wharves lined most of the coast while in other areas walkways had been built up overlooking the harbor. The gunports of round-walled Castle Williams were empty and I could look through them into an abandoned courtyard that shimmered in the heat of the day. The girls were fascinated by the biggest structure of the island, a perforated steel tower that sat in the water just off the shore like the skeleton of a high-rise. It provided ventilation for the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel. I ignored it and kept scanning the shoreline. Ayaan eventually came up to the rail beside me and asked what I was looking for.
“The dead,” I told her.
“And have you seen them?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t. It seemed impossible that a place in this world could be so tranquilly unaffected by the Epidemic but Governors Island appeared to be not only deserted but thriving. The greenery that dipped down to brush the water shook with the warmth of the day and the cheerful breezes off the harbor that didn’t smell like death at all. The sun bounced off of unbroken windows and gave everything a wholly unnatural sheen of health.
Jack had sent us to a safe place, it seemed. Somewhere quiet where we could make plans. I signaled for Osman to bring us in to the ferry slip. The docks there were the only ones on the island big enough to accept the Arawelo. We pulled in between a pair of retaining seawalls lined with old tires and felt the ship lurch with a creaking wail as she bumped in to a complete stop. Fathia and I cast lines up onto the dock and two of the other girls made them fast against big concrete planters full of dusty miller and coleus. We had the gangplank ready to deploy when the noise of a gunshot made us all wince.
A man in a navy blue windbreaker and a baseball cap stepped onto the ferry loading ramp and looked down at us. I shouldn’t have been shocked to see a survivor at this point, not after my experiences in Times Square but this guy had my attention. For one thing he had a shiny metal badge on the front of his coat and the letters DHS painted in yellow on his back; for another he had an M4A1 carbine with a night-vision sight like an oversized telephoto lens and an M203 grenade launcher slung under the barrel. He wasn’t a tall man and it looked like that much weaponry might topple him over, but I didn’t laugh. The weapon was trained on my forehead. I could look right up into its flash hider.
“We’re alive,” I said. “There’s no need for that.”
The rifle swung to my left and I ducked down by reflex. “Why don’t you just stay right there, towelhead,” the survivor announced. He was covering Ayaan who had started to reach for her Kalashnikov. Great, I thought, just what we needed. Geopolitics played small at the worst possible moment.
“You’re with the Department of Homeland Security, right?” I called.
The survivor didn’t turn but he scratched at his unruly stubble with his left hand. “I’m Special Agent Kreutzer of the DHS, yeah, and I’m going to commandeer your vehicle under the emergency provisions of the Patriot Act. You can go ahead and start throwing your weapons over the side, now. You’re not going to need them anymore.”
I breathed deeply. “Listen, my name’s Dekalb. I’m with the United Nations Mobile Inspection and Disarmament Unit. I think we all need to just stand down.”
“I don’t take orders from any mushy-headed one-worlder fucks, thank you very much. Now start obeying my fucking instructions! I’ve got an objective to meet!”
“What’s your objective?” I asked, trying to keep the dialogue open. This guy was going to shoot somebody if I didn’t calm him down.
The agent raised his arms to the heavens as if beseeching a beguiling fate. “To get my hairy white ass out of here! Now disarm, motherfuckers!”
It was the opening Mariam needed. Unbeknownst to me (and, thankfully, to Kreutzer too) the girl sniper had climbed on top of the wheelhouse and lined up the perfect shot. When Kreutzer’s arms lifted and he was no longer aiming directly at anyone on the ship she held her breath and squeezed the trigger on her Dragunov. His top-heavy M4 carbine dropped to clatter on the concrete as Kreutzer grabbed at his right index finger. “Jesus!”, he screamed. “She blew my finger off!” He stared down at his bloodied hand with wide eyes and then looked at me again. “Jesus!”
In a second I was over the rail. I scooped up the weapon he’d dropped, intending to cover him with it while the girls secured the perimeter. Ayaan had a similar idea but a simpler one. It mostly involved clubbing the survivor across the face with the buttstock of her AK-47. He fell to the ground and rolled into a fetal ball.
“Goddamnit, Ayaan, that was unnecessary,” I shouted. “And dangerous, too. What if he had a partner—or a whole platoon of them hiding behind those trees?”
Ayaan nodded thoughtfully. Then she jabbed Kreutzer in the gut with the barrel of her rifle. “This towelhead wants information, futo delo. Is there a platoon of fools like you hiding there?”
“Oh, glory, no, oh Lord I’m the only one here, Jesus protect me in my hour of misery I swear it, I swear it!”
She looked up at me with a smile and a shrug.
I called for the girls to come and bandage the poor asshole’s finger (Mariam hadn’t blown it off at all, merely cut it enough to make him drop his weapon) and start looking for a secure place to set up operations. It looked like Governors Island was ours for the taking. I examined the weapon Kreutzer dropped and put it on safety, then handed it to Ayaan.
“You ever think about upgrading?” I asked her.
She gave the weapon about a second’s worth of examination, sighting down the overloaded receiver and hefting its considerable weight. She pulled out its composite buttstock to full length and then slammed it home again. Then she glanced from the black plastic and electronic doodads of the M4A1 to the varnished cherry wood and solid steel of her rifle. Kreutzer’s weapon looked like a futuristic toy. Hers looked like a weapon out of the Dark Ages.
“Everyone knows about this M4 weapon. Urban warfare version of the M16, yes?” she asked. “It is known to jam at a bad time. The barrel overheats when you fire one full clip.” She tossed it back at me and I staggered as it collided with my arms. “No sale, Dekalb.”
4
One of the mummies brought the pregnant woman to Gary. They had tied her into a wheelchair after she attempted to beat in the skull of one of her captors with a brick. A valiant attempt, surely, but Gary wondered how far she expected to get through a city full of the dead when she couldn’t run or do more than waddle quickly. Her swollen belly lay in her lap as if she’d stuffed a bowling ball up her shirt.
The mummy pushed the wheelchair over to where Gary sat on a pile of bricks and waited patiently for his next command. He took his time issuing it. He’d been in a peaceful mood all morning, just contemplating the sky and the unfinished broch behind him and the new structures he had ordered built on the Great Lawn, not really thinking about anything. After the previous night he supposed he deserved a chance to rest.
His body had been rigid with seizures for hours after he snacked on Mael, the dark energy he had liberated from the Druid sloshing back and forth in his belly and his head and his fingers until black lightning shot from his eyes and mouth. At least a hundred dead men outside the broch’s walls had been consumed as he thrashed about trying to hold on to his spark—Mael’s energy threatened to sunder him, to physically tear him to pieces and he reached out for their fleeting life force to sustain his scorched and bruised frame. He managed not to explode, somehow. After a few hours of shivering in a corner, his arms wrapped around his knees as his brain iterated through endless hallucinations and his eyes blind with the phosphor blare of the dark light he’d seen he was finally able to stand upright and walk around a little bit again.
“You’ve gained weight,” the pregnant woman said. Marisol, her name was Marisol. “I guess that’s what happens when you binge and forget to purge.”
“Hmm?” Gary looked up. He rubbed his temples and tried to snap out of it. These frozen times when he became locked in contemplation of his own navel were too mu
ch like death, like real death for comfort. “I beg your pardon. I was miles away,” he told her. He needed to do something, something physically real or he was likely to sink into reverie again. “Let’s take a stroll, shall we?”
The mummy pushed her wheelchair along as Gary ambled alongside the fifteen-foot wall that surrounded his new village. “Did you enjoy your breakfast?” Gary asked. He’d made sure the prisoners were given plenty to eat. Tinned foods were commonplace in the emptied city but they were useless to the undead, who lacked the manual dexterity to use a can opener.
“Oh yeah,” the woman said, stroking her belly as if it pained her. “I just love cold clam chowder first thing in the morning. We need access to cooking equipment if you want us to eat. You ever heard of botulism?”
Gary smiled. “Not only that, I’ve seen it. I used to be a doctor. You can’t have a fire because I can’t risk you hurting yourselves.”
“You can’t watch us all the time. If we want to kill ourselves badly enough we’ll do it. We’ll just stop eating or… or we’ll climb on top of this wall and jump off.” The woman wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“You’re right. I can’t stop you.” Gary lead her out into a furrowed patch of earth. The mud of Central Park would grow just about anything—after decades of fertilization and aeration and intense loving care by professional gardeners the soil was rich and dark. Rows of dusty weeds had already sprouted in the denuded earth now that Gary was present to keep the dead from consuming every living thing they saw. “This area will be your garden. Eventually we hope you’ll be able to produce all your own food. Fresh vegetables, Marisol. You can have fresh vegetables again. Imagine that.”
“Are you deaf? I said we would kill ourselves rather than help you!” The woman thrashed against the cords holding her into the chair. The mummy reached forward to restrain her but Gary shook his head. By rocking back and forth and throwing herself against her straps eventually Marisol managed to overturn her chair, spilling herself sidewise across the moist dirt that smudged her face and flattened her hair.
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