Desert Angels

by George P. Saunders

  She assumed the creature was a mutation, though the normally accepted rate of any kind of mutation subject to radioactive exposure, needed time to manifest. But in this strange new universe where she understood that normal laws of nature were suddenly warped (her own presence was proof positive of that distortion), the rate of mutation acceleration was geometrical in nature. The creature had obviously been human at one point, but was now only vaguely human in appearance; the head was horribly distended and part of its brain was exposed. All appendages were grossly malformed and huge and completely disproportionate to a small waist and concaved chest.

  It touched the electrified gating and held on for a moment. A normal human being would have been instantly electrocuted, but the creature Angela was observing, seemed merely annoyed by the shock it received.

  Angela looked down at Jack briefly, then back out the window.

  The creature was gone.

  Angela moved Jack’s chair, which was on wheels, while Jack snored, unaware of being shifted to one side. She then began to type in a new document on his computer, detailing the creature she had just seen, and ending with a warning that when Jack exited the Dome, and should he venture beyond its boundary of safety, he should always be armed.

  Afterwards, Angela went to Jack’s bed and sat, staring at Jack.

  She remained there until Jack awakened nearly six hours later.

  * * *

  Still drunk, Jack stood and gazed out the window. Night had fallen and the outside world seemed darker than he had ever seen it. He reminded himself that today had not been a dream, that today marked the official end of the world – at least as far as Jack Calisto once knew the world.

  Walter flapped to his shoulder and rested there unobtrusively.

  “I wonder what folks are doing in Ashwood,” he said and then took another shot of scotch from the bottle on his desk. “Hell, I wonder what old Mathias and his gang are doing. Probably sitting around singing hymns as radiation poison eats away at them.”

  He felt an instant sensation of guilt at this less than charitable thought. Death by radiation was a slow, painful thing and he felt now only sorrow for all the people out there who were no doubt suffering from it – those, that is, that survived the direct blast and resultant fiery conflagration from the bomb attacks.

  Jack made his way to the main control room which housed the terminals leading into the huge computer that essentially maintained all living conditions in the Dome and provided power to the external gate surrounding the Dome’s mountain foundation.

  He checked the outside temperature as well as radiation levels. It was a balmy ninety degrees just outside the walls of the Dome, a jump of thirty degrees from yesterday, and completely uncustomary for this time of year in southern Nevada. The Rad levels were at 500 roentgens. The roentgen measured the amount of ionization in the air caused by radioactive decay of nuclei. Over 300 roentgens generally proved fatal. Those inhabitants of Ashwood, and Dr. Mathias’ commune, would not survive for long if they ventured outdoors. Radiation sickness would be guaranteed, with ninety percent assurance of proving fatal after around two weeks. Those who did survive would not escape developing any number of cancers down the line. He had sufficient quantities of every known blood-type available in storage, and more than adequate supplies of antibiotics (transfusions and antibiotic spectrums being the most efficacious treatment for severe radiation poisoning), but in severe cases where bone marrow transplants would be needed, survival for those requiring such things, would be a dim likelihood.

  Jack realized the half-life factor would greatly reduce the roentgen levels in his own vicinity within ten days; he only prayed that most of the residents of Ashwood and Mathias’ community had the good sense to remain indoors for at least that duration of time.

  Jack returned to his quarters, scotch in tow, with Walter flapping behind him. Jack had become so accustomed to the bird’s presence – and so distracted by little things like Doomsday – it seemed to him now that Walter had always been a permanent fixture.

  He plopped down in his chair, deciding at another try on the internet.

  Angela’s note was the first thing he saw on the screen.

  “So now you’re using my computer, Angel,” he muttered, again feeling the sting of violation. But he read on with increasing interest and disbelief.

  This is your angel again.

  You will no doubt see these things for yourself in the near future, but you have a mutational life-form wandering around your property. It demonstrated no hostility, but it was impervious to the shock it absorbed from the outside gate.

  “No, no, you got it wrong. Mutations don’t happen this quickly. You must have seen some kind of animal,” Jack reasoned aloud. Walter hopped on his shoulder and pecked his ear.

  “Stop that!” Jack snipped, reading on.

  I know what you’re thinking: mutations take time to develop, but I believe the exposure from the fallout caused an amplification effect (or gene duplications), which affected all chromosomal regions, increasing the dosage of the genes located within them. This might explain the horrendous appearance of the creature, malformed head, gigantic arms and legs and various other anomalies you’ll discover for yourself. But the purpose of this note is to treat all these mutations as hostile and dangerous. Your GA.

  Well, Jack thought, whoever this Guardian Angel is, he or she has a fairly advanced scientific knowledge about radiation exposure and ramifications thereafter.

  His mind had ceased for the moment trying to figure out how the Guardian Angel again found access to his fortress; rather, Jack was now contemplating in earnest what needed to be done in the immediate aftermath of Armageddon.

  * * *

  In fact, there was little to be done.

  He had long ago planned for this day, if only to keep his word to Angela, who foreswore him to build this place and supply it as needed for survivors to Blast Day. What he had to do in the short term, was to wait until radiation levels outside dropped to a survivable level.

  It was the slowest ten days of his life. The rad levels eventually did decrease, leveling out at around 50 roentgens of iodized radiation just outside his door. On January 3 of the near year, Jack ventured outside of the Dome.

  Warm, humid air hit him in the face, and he frowned in mild disgust. The air smelled funny, and aside from a small breeze from the west that whispered around him, there was complete silence. No bird sang, no cicadas chirped.

  Utter silence.

  Welcome to the graveyard called Earth, Jack mused without humor.

  He carried a small radiation detector with him, reminiscent of a Geiger counter, and checked it periodically as he made a slow round of the rocky hill that the Dome was embedded in. He saw no evidence of a creature of the like Angela described to him. Only soot covered bushes and tumbleweeds prevailed over the land.

  However, as he took his final turn on the north end of his mountain base, he saw something that chilled his blood to the corpuscle.

  A hundred yards beyond the Dome’s perimeter, lay the ruins of a jumbo 757 jet. The debris field went out for as far as the eye could see; the main fuselage was still smoldering. Of course, Jack realized, he never would have heard the crash, his Dome being completely soundproof. In a microsecond, Jack could adduce that no one had survived the catastrophe, and he imagined that the crash itself was due to an EMP pulse that fried the plane’s electrical system and hydraulics. The airplane literally fell out of the sky, robbed of its ability to steer or navigate.

  He suddenly saw some kind of movement near the plane’s First Class section and when he got a closer look with his binoculars, he shuddered and mumbled to himself.

  “One of the angel’s bad guys I guess.”

  It was smaller than the one that Angela had seen last night, but it was a mutant nevertheless. Walter flapped off of Jack’s right shoulder, and bee-lined for the wreckage.

  The bird then made a hazy circle around the fragmented remains of the airliner.
Jack deactivated the power to the heavy gate from a small control console attached to his belt and then headed around the Dome, and approached the wreckage.

  Armed with an AK-47 and .9 millimeter Beretta, he approached the mutant slowly. It appeared to be eating something, and as he came within a few yards, Jack could see that the thing was devouring the scorched remains of a human corpse.

  Jack tried to smother the gag reflex as best he could.

  “Oh, great. A goddamned zombie,” he muttered.

  “Hey!” he yelled out to the mutant whatever the hell it was.

  The creature looked up, startled. It hesitated only momentarily and then uttered the most terrifying nose Jack had ever heard, a kind of growl commingled with a high-pitched scream. It then proceeded to run towards Jack.

  Jack noted with some alarm that although terribly deformed, the mutant-thing was remarkably fast on its feet. He called out to it in warning.

  “Stop right there, or I’ll shoot!” Jack yelled raising his AK-47.

  The creature had no intent of stopping, nor did it. Saliva oozed from its cracked lips, streaming a contrail of blood and some white, milky substance that was not immediately identifiable.

  Jack could tell the creature meant to kill him. He took aim at the lumbering thing’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  A blast of three rounds emanated from the AK and the creature fell backwards, dead as yesterday. Jack glanced around himself on all points on the compass, assuring himself that where there was one God-ugly mutant cannibal around, there might be another, and was relieved to find himself alone, aside from Walter who flapped back to his shoulder.

  Jack walked over to the dead creature and stared at it. He poked at it with his foot.

  “Rigor already? Not possible,” he said to himself.

  The corpse of the mutant was already impossibly stiff, and Jack made the decision to transport the thing back to the Dome and perform an autopsy.

  Returning with his van and wearing protective gloves, Jack loaded the mutant into an aluminum body bag and headed back to the Dome.

  Four hours later, after a complete dissection of the mutant, and various tests and temperature readings on internal organs, and a potassium thermal test to the thing’s brain, Jack backed up and literally collapsed into a chair, shaking his head in disbelief.

  He looked to Walter, perched on a nearby beaker supply box outside of the antiseptic exam room. The exam room was replete with sprinklers, which Jack had used to wash the mutant’s body completely with to rid it of topical radioactive dust. The mutant itself was horribly contaminated, with a reading of over 100 Gy. Jack had deliberately expedited his examination so that his direct exposure to the corpse was as brief as possible.

  “But it’s not possible. No, not possible,” he said, his mind stunned by what he just discovered.

  Walter clucked.

  “I didn’t kill him, Walter,” Jack stammered. “He’s been dead for days. Over a week, to be somewhat exact.”

  Jack fought for reason, his scientific mind sucker-punched by the broken rules of life as he knew it and the pathophysiology of the human condition.

  “No heart beat, no brain activity for days. How could it move? How could it do anything?” Jack asked Walter, his voice rising in frustration. “It’s not possible!”

  Jack stood and looked at the empty ruin of the creature, its chest cavity wide open and stomach area strewn with the remains of large intestine.

  Jack continued to shake his head for the next ten minutes. At length, he stood and walked out of the exam room. He stripped naked and walked into one of the six shower stalls this laboratory boasted.

  Walter flapped to the floor near the shower and watched Jack silently.

  Jack racked his mind for any kind of precedent that could explain what he’d just discerned following the mutant’s autopsy. He came up empty; perhaps if he had access to the internet, he could have found some historical comparison.

  But he realized that what he was contemplating was ridiculous.

  There was no precedence for the dead walking.

  None. Except by now immolated Hollywood’s films on vampires and zombies.

  What was lying in his lab was an abomination to the natural laws of life as he understood it.

  Maybe this is an anomaly. I need more test subjects.

  Like any good scientist, Jack realized he needed further evidence for what he had interpolated through examination of the mutant. Forget that it had been dead for many days and had the audacity to walk, eat and attempt to kill him – but if there were others like it out there in the wasteland, then there was a case portfolio he could address when the time came for …

  … for what?

  “Screw it, I need more zombies,” he muttered to himself as he finished his shower and toweled himself dry. He’d deal with the walking-dead hypothesis conundrum later … after more dissections.

  Right now, he needed cadavers.

  Fuck the impossible physics of the universe right now.

  He’d get to the bottom of this sooner or later.

  THREE – RECONNAISSANCE, THE NEIGHBORS AND LIGHT CLOUDS

  He had the good sense to wait until morning before implementing his new mission objective of killing Stiffers (as he’d decided to call the mutants), and assure himself of top-notch focus and physical acuity. He did not drink the night before though highly tempted. Rather, he downed a few melatonin and dreamed of monster butchery.

  He suspected that he would have to go beyond the immediate vicinity of the Dome and so packed a radiation suit, should rad or roentgen levels begin to change for the worst.

  His plan was simple: Find at least one of the undead monsters and capture it alive. If he could examine one of these things while still animated, more answers might be gleaned as to how the radioactive fuckers lived and moved (an anachronism already since all his tests on the Stiffer corpse in his lab showed no respiration nor cardiac sinus rhythm, hence dead, yet walking).

  He had a bit of a real human altercation with Walter in his quarters on the eve of his morning departure, which surprised and worried him; after the dispute, he wondered if he was slowly going insane.

  “No, I do not want you to come with me,” he pointed at Walter, who was cooing madly on his desk.

  He noticed there was no note from the Guardian Angel this morning, but his mind was focused on other things aside from that inexplicable piece of crazy magic. He wanted zombies, alive and under his dissection knife. The Guardian Angel was inexplicable, yet ubiquitous at this stage of the game. It came and went of its own volition and its means of entry and exit remained a mystery. For the moment, Jack could accept that. Moreover, the Guardian Angel had thus far given sound counsel and put forth accurate facts. So its presence in the back of Jack’s already challenged rationale was not altogether unwelcome.

  He turned to leave the room, and Walter immediately flew over to his shoulder and pecked at his ear.

  Jack was in no mood. “Get off,” he hissed.

  Walter remained perched where she was.

  “I’m not kidding,” Jack said. “This is going to be dangerous. And if we hit high levels of radiation out there, I have no way to protect your feathery ass. Capiche?”

  He tried to gently flick the bird’s chest with his index finger, but the pigeon remained intractable.

  “Fine, suit yourself, dummy,” Jack said.

  He headed toward one of the labs, and pulled out a radiation suit, and packed it and himself into his most prized vehicle, an M1151 fully equipped and armed High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle or Humvee for short, already loaded with enough ammunition and gunnery implements to level a small town. But he figured he was not being extreme in terms of arming up; God knows what else was out there aside from the Stiffers.

  He exited Eden’s front gate, checking radiation levels immediately, and finding that little had changed; surprisingly, the rad readings appeared to be diminishing. According to all rules of meteorological
law and physics, fallout from winds heading west to east, should bump up the contamination factor across the landscape. Such was not the case.

  Fine, he thought. For the moment, again, one less thing to worry about. But Jack knew that levels of fallout could jump within minutes, so he left his radiation detection device on automatic throughout his trek.

  He did notice something that was downright weird, however, and with good reason. Only minutes out of Eden’s perimeter, Jack noticed what appeared to be a collection of sparkling lights coalescing at near ground level, and hovering about twenty yards from his Humvee at any given time.

  Jack first assumed it was a weird optical illusion, or some kind of eerie ionization effect in the making – a combination of recombinant radiation mixed with high and low pressure elements from the charged atmosphere – but as his Humvee moved, the lights seemed to be following him.

  There was no explanation for it.

  At one point, he stopped his vehicle and stepped outside and tried to approach the light particles. Attendant with their presence was a low hum and it made Jack shiver. He found as he drew closer to the lights, they slowly began to diminish, until when he was within a few feet of them, they evaporated into a swirling ground mist.

  He looked to Walter on his shoulder. “Weird, right?”

  Walter clucked and Jack looked out at the horizon to his home, which was now a golf ball size image nearly five miles away.

  Twenty minutes later, and Jack pulled his Humvee to a screeching halt.

  Directly ahead, surrounding what appeared to be an abandoned motor home, was a swarm of half a dozen Stiffers, all clawing stupidly, like apes, at the vehicle, trying obviously to obtain entrance.