Scavengers

by Christopher Fulbright

  Not knowing where her daughter was or whether or not she was well or safe was bad enough. But having to sit here, locked away in this room, unable to do one damn thing about it, was downright maddening. It raised her pulse, stoked her anger, and it hurt.

  It hurt like fucking hell.

  She swallowed a sob. She wouldn’t let it out. She couldn’t let these other bitches see her in a state of weakness. Daughters of Heaven, my ass. For all she knew, they were spies for Keller. He struck her as a man who would use every shred of psychological leverage he could gain, and he was a master manipulator.

  It was evident that he’d been leading these people astray for years before the infection even hit the area. The plague just provided the backdrop necessary to implement whatever fucked up plan for world domination that he thought he had. This man had been lying in wait for something like this to happen so he could spring into action and become the savior and king to this flock of sheep. Classic cult leader.

  Dejah took a deep, shuddering breath. Instinct began to kick in and Dejah knew that she had to formulate some sort of plan. Just sitting here waiting for a window of opportunity was folly. She hardened her gaze and looked around the room.

  The Daughters of Heaven had taken their customary places around the posh chamber. Judith lay across the divan, gazing up at the ceiling as if she could somehow mentally check out of this place and spend the evening in some spiritual otherworld away from the rest of them. Her hair was beautiful reddish brown, her complexion fair, the color of solemn innocence. Her pink almost sheer gown draped to the floor, her legs propped together at the end of the divan.

  Karen, dressed in a blue gown similar to Judith’s was already curled atop her bed, dozing. Dejah thought it was a crime how lovely she seemed. So young. She couldn’t help but suspect the reverend of some kind of perverse intent for all of them…although he hadn’t yet proven that theory. It was obvious that Karen had been here for a while, long before the infection spread through the area.

  This chamber wasn’t new either. Whatever sham Keller was running in this church, he’d been at it for some time. Dejah wondered how many other Daughters of Heaven he had tucked away throughout the massive church complex or ensconced in some other buildings or mansions across the country. Keller was clever; she’d give him that. To elude cameras and questioning eyes, he must have been pretty shrewd with his comings and goings. He also must have paid off more than a few congregation members. You couldn’t have a church this huge without a few blackmailers in the bunch. Adders in the grass. Dejah considered what Keller’s eventual plan might be for them. If he was sleeping with Karen, the woman hadn’t said. She hadn’t said very much at all.

  Keller stayed out of the room last night, only coming to fetch her in the morning, when he’d announced to her in the hallway – in a crazed sort of euphoria – that God told him that she was sent to be his bride.

  Dejah shook her head at the incredible memory. Worst of all, he really seemed to believe it.

  I sure ended up in a house of creeps.

  On top of Keller’s delusions, she had to deal with the power-hungry, cult-enslaved guards that served Keller and fulfilled his every request. She could see how Keller so easily manipulated them. None of them were too smart, and all of them desired to be something more than what they were: important, necessary, bad-asses to be feared. Hell, Thomas was a teddy bear compared to some of these guys.

  She looked across the room at the final Daughter of Heaven. Zanine sat sideways on an overstuffed recliner. One leg dangled over the side, shapely and bare. The woman stared at Dejah with malice in her eyes. Zanine seemed the only one to take the reverend’s announcement of the impending marriage badly. Dejah recalled television documentaries about polygamist cults and the women caught in the turmoil of these twisted relationships. Some of them embraced the situation. Others were victims, some were child brides — forced into sexual and domestic slavery. She could see that Zanine reflected the attitude of a woman who was jealously guarding her position as one of Keller’s wives.

  Or concubines.

  Something inside of Dejah stirred her to speak to the woman, but she forced herself to remain silent. Zanine glared at Dejah like a dog guarding the last bone in the house. There wasn’t anything Dejah really had to say to the bitch anyway. It wasn’t like she was here in this situation by choice. And, she didn’t want anything she might say to be taken back to Keller and used against her in whatever torture rites the King of Creeps engaged in.

  She looked from Karen to Zanine. Zanine continued staring at her, her face screwed tight in anger, looking like she wanted to say something. Maybe she’d been told not to talk to Dejah. Dejah sighed.

  Screw it, she thought. I don’t have the energy for this chick’s drama.

  Dejah propped herself up on her bed. Her feet ached. Her heart ached. She was exhausted with worry.

  “Better get your beauty sleep,” Zanine finally said with a frigidness in her voice.

  Dejah propped herself up on one elbow. She gazed across the room at Zanine. “Excuse me?”

  “You’ll be serving the reverend in his chambers soon. You won’t want to look so tired and haggard like you do,” she said.

  Dejah blinked. She resisted the urge to smile. She resisted the urge to shudder with revulsion. Instead she maintained an expressionless composure.

  What should I say? Shove it up your ass, darling? Fuck you very much, my dear?

  “Thanks,” she managed with restraint.

  Zanine gave a coy smile, like she knew secrets that Dejah didn’t and never would. Almost like this was some sort of high school clique. Like Zanine was top dog and Dejah some lowly class nerd to be ridiculed.

  Dejah felt heat in her cheeks. She clinched her teeth, flexing her jaw muscles. She stared hard at Zanine, who didn’t flinch.

  Dejah stood.

  Instead of walking the few strides to where Zanine sat and slapping the bitch, Dejah went to the door. She gave the knob a gentle turn, trying to open the door. She pushed against the solid wood with her hip and a little force. It didn’t budge; it didn’t even move. The backside of a deadbolt told her there was more than one lock securing the door.

  Dejah ignored Zanine, who closely watched her every move as she walked across the room and lay beneath the canopied bed in her corner of the room. She kept her eyes averted from Zanine. The locked door didn’t entirely surprise her, but it did add to her anxiety. It cemented the fact that she was a prisoner here. And there was no question in her mind the reverend was far more than an egomaniacal evangelist.

  People in this congregation admired him. Now those people who are here are trusting Keller to spiritually guide them in a time when everything they knew and loved — the entire world — is coming to an end. These people blindly put their lives in the hands of a madman.

  Why did Keller have his goons save us? she wondered.

  Maybe the militants had good intentions, saving them for humanity’s sake. Or maybe, under orders of the reverend, they were corralling people here in the church complex, in this miniature city, to make their own form of demented spiritual civilization, their own new world. The chosen ones. This church compound was obviously constructed with some sort of communal living in mind. But where the hell did all of the weapons come from?

  Flashes of news broadcasts about the Branch Davidians went through her mind, not helping her disposition. Nor did random images and thoughts of Jonestown, or the Heaven’s Gate cult. But no doubt was left in her mind that — after what she’d seen and heard from the reverend, plus the blind group-think among his followers, plus his constantly humorless state and how Shaun was treated — this was a cult. And every passing day seemed a precarious step closer to a precipice.

  Dejah stared up at the bed’s canopy and the image of Shaun struggling to get to her cycled through her mind. She was haunted by his desperate look. She’d been helpless. To have reacted violently to the reverend wouldn’t have helped anyone.

&nbs
p; But you sure can’t help him now, can you? Not Selah, not Shaun, not anyone who’s counting on you to be there for them.

  It wasn’t her fault. She was doing what she could. She wouldn’t let those voices of defeat pull her down.

  She rolled on her side so her back was to Zanine. Her eyes filled with tears but she wouldn’t indulge her urge to cry. Dejah clutched her hands to her chest as if clinging to her last threads of hope. Though she didn’t know where salvation would come from, she trusted that it would come. She would be free. She refused to believe that the sole reason her gift, or power, or whatever the hell it was, was given to her just so she could live to be this crazy reverend’s bride.

  She said a prayer to God for revelation, for comfort, for help. She tried to have faith that he heard her and was with her, but it wasn’t easy.

  Finally, she drifted asleep.

  * * *

  Roughly dragged along by two guards, Shaun was led to an abandoned section of the adjoining school to the end of a hallway with double doors leading outside.

  The two men who manhandled him wore rifles. They shoved him to his knees. Moonlight shone through the windows onto the cold tile floor. The guard to Shaun’s right was a fat, gray-bearded white man wearing John Lennon glasses who looked stupid and dead inside except for the distant spark of a craving that bordered on the perverse. The other guard Shaun knew by name: Reeves. He was dressed in sharp fatigues, perfect picture of a military man gone wrong, ready to bring all the fires of hell down upon a kid who dared bring the reverend disgrace amongst his people.

  “You got it comin’ kid.” Reeves sneered. He stepped forward and launched a boot into Shaun’s side. Shaun yelped and tried to scramble backward out of the path of Reeves’s foot. He banged against the double doors. “You fucked up pretty good, you know. Y’all had it just fine here – no reason to cause a stir. No reason to go launching yourself at the holy Reverend Keller because he stole your girl.”

  “She’s not my girl. She’s my friend, and we thought we were brought here under a gesture of goodwill, not as prisoners of some nutjob!”

  “Yeah, well, things change, kid. You heard the reverend. God brought that woman here to be his bride. To serve the church. Which pretty much leaves you the odd-man out. Especially if you’re not on board with the plan. We have a pretty good thing goin’ here. Don’t need some little shit like you fuckin’ things up.”

  The fat pasty dude gave a belly laugh and shifted the rifle in his hands.

  “Open the doors,” Reeves ordered.

  The fat man went past Shaun and unchained the doors. The metal links clanked in the hallway, echoing as the chain clattered free.

  “For some reason, the reverend ordered you punished, not killed. So, maybe he doesn’t want you dead, but I suppose he might not be too damned upset if there was an accident. After all, your blood wouldn’t be on his hands that way.”

  Night wind rushed into the hallway. The scents of cold trees, prairie grasses, and autumn’s damp leaves swirled around them. There was just the stray hint of something else, too. Death. Decay.

  Moonlight poured through the open doorway onto Shaun in solid beams as he stood, defiant before the two men. He was just as tall as they were. Shaun sized them up, entertaining the thoughts of escape.

  “Go on,” the fat white man said, ramming his rifle butt into Shaun’s chest. It knocked the air from him. Shaun reeled backward, tripping over the threshold onto the wood-chipped ground outside. He stumbled to get his balance against a yellow ducky for children to ride. He looked around – a swing set, teeter totter, merry-go-round. This was a play area for the younger kids at the school. A chain link fence surrounded the small area, and beyond the fence, in the distance, over the tops of a tree-clad hill, figures shambled toward him.

  Shaun’s heart tripled its pace as he ran for the doors to get back inside. The fat man laughed, aiming the rifle at him.

  “No,” Shaun pleaded. He looked over his shoulder toward the infected picking up his scent. They shambled closer to the playground. “You can’t leave me out here.”

  “Get back, kid. You’re making me uncomfortable.” Reeves pulled a pistol from his hip and fired into the ground near Shaun’s feet. The sound of the shot slammed into his ears. The sudden ringing in his ears muffled the men’s laughter. The fat white one took a shot with the rifle. The bullet sparked against the steel ducky and sent it swaying like crazy. A ricochet whined in the darkness.

  Shaun screamed and scrambled backward across the wood-chipped ground. Before he knew it, his back was pressed against the fence. For just a moment, the immediate danger of the men shooting at him replaced his fear of the Sickies on the other side of the fence. He remembered damn quick as one of the infected zombies slipped an ashen, patchy-skinned hand through the links and dug into his shirt with a rotted, claw-like hand.

  He spun. The face of the infected was mummified, skin taut across skullish features. It was like a living skeleton with skin and gore-caked teeth, a bag of bones in leathery film. He could feel the fetid breath of the thing panting against his skin.

  Shaun yelled and rolled away, swatting the grasping hand from his shirt. He came to a stop near the base of the spinning merry-go-round. Blindly, he reached for the metal bars to pull himself up, but it carried him under, continuing to turn. His leg was caught until he pulled away and stood, panting, staring at the five Sickies pressed against the fence. Savagely they fought each other for the chance to score the waiting prey. Snapping and snarling, the Sickies battled for the best position, all the while yanking and throwing themselves maniacally against the fence. The thin metal links bowed beneath their weight. One of the fiends yanked on the fence, rattling and clinking it against the support poles. Shaun regarded its construction worriedly.

  Beyond the current cluster of zombies, others caught the scent of flesh and were straggling this way. They came over the hill, through the clearing, black lumbering shapes. Hungry. Shaun took a deep shuddering breath. He couldn’t swallow; the reflex was frozen with fear. Tears welled in his eyes but he didn’t sob. He thought of rushing the two men with the guns, but knew they were more dangerous to him for the time being. At least until more zombies put their weight against the fence.

  “Hope we don’t have ourselves any accidents here, eh kid?” yelled Reeves. The fat man chuckled right on cue. A flash of fire signified Reeves lighting a cigar. “Well, now. Let’s just hope it all holds together for ya.”

  “Whuddya know,” boomed the fat white man’s voice. “Instead of getting in trouble and havin’ to stay in from recess, the kid’s gotta go out to the playground for bein’ a troublemaker.”

  “Why, Darryl,” said Reeves. “What an astute observation you’ve made. Downright ironic, I’d say.” Reeves puffed his cigar with a grin and aimed his pistol at Shaun’s feet. He fired. Wood chips exploded. Shaun’s eardrums rang like the aftermath of a hammer on steel as he jumped back but struggled not to fall against the fence. The thin metal fence was now heavy with the leaning weight of dozens of zombies, their arms grasping for him.

  “Might be a long night.” The two men laughed.

  Shaun stood, bathed in silver moonlight, waiting to die.

  * * *

  The room housing the Daughters of Heaven was quiet now. The plush accoutrements were hunched shapes in the near-darkness. The only light glowed amber from a decorative lamp in the far corner next to Karen’s sleeping form, sprawled without covers atop her bed. Not far from where she slept, Judith stirred atop the divan. Dejah was still asleep so deeply that she didn’t move from the position she’d been in when she rolled over and closed her eyes.

  Zanine was still awake. She stared at the long mirror on the back wall of the room and felt someone staring back.

  It was him.

  She knew Keller watched them in the night. Watched them change, watched them sleep. The pervert even watched them piss. There were mirrors everywhere. So tonight, she’d given him a show. Tonight she needed a man,
and he wouldn’t come to her. All he ever did was sit back there and watch like some chickenshit peeping Tom.

  She yearned for him, for his power. So she spread her legs over the arms of the recliner, caressing her inner thighs, hiking up her dress until her loins were exposed to the cool air of the room. She wore no panties because she always hoped he’d come to the room and have his way with her. Out of all of the Daughters of Heaven, she wanted that the most. The others were simply prisoners. She was a prisoner of love, of her lusts for him … as she touched herself tonight, she thought of Keller touching her instead. And she spread her legs to the mirror as she satisfied her craving for release, moaning and writhing, gasping as she came.

  Now she let the dress fall around her legs. She focused on the slumbering shapes in the room. On one shape in particular. The one she hated. The woman who’d come to them as good as dead, and now lay sleeping peacefully on the canopied bed across from her.

  Dejah.

  She gave it no thought as she withdrew the shining blade from the drawer. A knife she’d secreted from the café, just a steak knife, but sharp and deadly enough to do what needed to be done. She was tired of competition. Too many women were gathered in these chambers, and with each new wife accepted into the fold, her chances of being the recipient of Keller’s love and seed were diminishing. It was time to remove Dejah from the equation. This time she’d make sure the woman died. She would stab her to death, and then hack off her head inch by bloody inch.

  Zanine stood and gripped the knife, blade down, for repeated stabbing. Stealthily, she crept bare-footed across the room. Now that she’d had an orgasm, she breathed easy. The exhilaration released her pressures and gave her the presence of mind to do what had to be done. This would surely show the reverend how much she loved him. How far she was willing to go for his love.

  She hovered above Dejah just watching the rise and fall of the woman’s chest. Zanine raised the weapon, angling down. The silver blade gleamed in the scant light. She smiled ever so slightly.