by Ike Hamill
“It would be crazy for us to not assume that they’re all after us,” said Lynne. “Let’s just continue with that supposition until its proven untrue. I’d much rather err on the side of caution after everything that’s happened in the last few days.”
“Seems like you’re overreacting a little bit,” said Carol.
“Me? I think you’re under-reacting. You were the one that was being dragged through a cemetery by a bunch of undead zombie pall bearers. Why would you not assume that we’re the center of this whole mess? Didn’t Donna predict this entire thing?” asked Lynne.
“What do you mean?” asked Carol. She turned sideways in her seat to face Lynne.
“Donna said that her army was going to rise up. You know, like rise from the grave? Sound familiar?” asked Lynne.
“I could mean that, I guess,” admitted Carol, “but she also said that we didn’t have any power unless the three of us were together. Jenko’s dead, so what chance do we have?”
“I never thought that the third was Jenko,” said Lynne. “I didn’t get that at all. Didn’t she say something about the feminine trio?”
“Triptych,” said Carol. “It’s like a painting on three panels.”
“Right,” said Lynne. “Why would Jenko be a part of the feminine triptych?”
“Wait, wait a second,” said Carol. “Billy was also talking about two corners of a triangle. That’s got to be the same thing as the triptych.”
“Right,” said Lynne. “That must be who we’re going to find—our third corner. And it’s a she.”
“And if we’re together, we can stop Donna,” said Carol.
“What makes you say that?” asked Lynne.
“You just have to know Donna,” said Carol. “She would always reveal too much when she was close to not getting her way. For instance, she hated water and it was almost impossible to give her a bath. Then she’d say something like—‘I will fight you and never give up, even though I’d love a juice box, even if you gave me one I wouldn’t give up. I’ll continue to fight you with my last breath.’ Then I’d give her a juice box and she’d settle right down and let me give her a bath.”
Lynne’s mouth hung open as she looked at Carol—“My god, how did you ever think it was normal to live with a kid like that? She was only two years old, why didn’t you freak out when she said things like that?”
“I don’t know, I was probably under a spell or something,” said Carol. “I mean, I knew it was weird. I’ve told you that. I figured that she was the one who killed Don, and I always thought she was tremendously dangerous, but somehow I just ignored all that stuff. I thought she was my daughter, you know?”
“When we first showed up at your house and you were pretty casual about a missing two-year-old, I was a little confused. I thought ‘What kind of mother is this?’” said Lynne. “You were talking about your daughter being missing, but it was almost like you were…”
“Relieved?” asked Carol. She turned to face front and put down her window just a crack.
“Exactly,” said Lynne.
“I was,” said Carol. “I was tremendously relieved." Carol took in a deep breath. “I woke up that morning with a clear head and no dirt under my fingernails. It had been a while since that had happened.”
“So you think she was inadvertently telling us what to do?” asked Lynne.
“It would make sense,” said Carol. “She said that we have no power apart and that even if we get together, we won’t be able to stop her, right?”
“Yeah, I think that’s what she said,” Lynne said.
“So then we have to find the third member and get together. That will probably stop her. If you’re right that all the zombies are actually after us, then it might be her way of trying to stop us from succeeding. Seems a little egotistical to think that a whole zombie revolution has been summoned just to prevent us from meeting some woman,” said Carol.
“Yeah, but again, we have to assume the worst and then be pleasantly surprised if we’re wrong, right?” asked Lynne.
“I guess,” said Carol.
“And also,” said Lynne. “These zombies are probably the army she talked about. She didn’t have to summon them just to stop us, but that might be their first task, you know?”
“Could be,” said Carol.
“Okay,” said Lynne. “Well we’ve got a little over half-a-tank of gas to figure out our next move. We’d better plan this out.”
Chapter 19
Marta Moving
THE RELIEF COMMANDER WALKED to the tomb, saluted, and then turned to the spectators. He asked them to stand. Marta glanced at the elaborate ceremony from her bench—too far away to be expected to join the other visitors on their feet. She turned back to her book. It had been open to the same page for several hours. Every half hour the guards were changed on the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers, but Marta kept her vigil all alone. She could just see the Washington Monument through the trees. It was the perfect spot to reflect and sit in peace.
Marta didn’t feel peaceful at all. She felt nothing but nervous stress.
She felt she’d been chasing Gregory forever. Her powers had grown exponentially. City after city, as she tried to isolate him and still his heart, he managed to elude her. Somehow Gregory stayed one step ahead. And they’d gotten better at chasing her too. It wasn’t enough for Marta to move silently, without an identity. They stalked her, the fingers of his organization reaching out and brushing her clothing. They were too close for Marta’s comfort. Instead of running to hide, she kept up her relentless pursuit. The only defense she knew was a strong offense.
Marta tried to constantly vary her technique. In one place, she’d walk into a stranger’s house, snuff all the life inside, and try to get a good night’s sleep. Somehow in the middle of the night Gregory’s men would close in and she’d have to fight for her freedom. The next time, she would pull off on a lonely stretch of road and curl up in the back seat. The feeling of heartbeats converging on her location would startle her awake, and she’d have to flee through a forest while picking off the hunters one by one. Her life had become a series of short stories. A three day chase followed a week’s worth of anonymity. Her clothes, cars, money, and identity changed with each rising sun. She left a trail of victims in her wake—she’d steal their assets and take their lives without a second thought. It was all for the greater good; she didn’t even bother to justify individual homicides anymore. They were a cost of doing business.
She set these thoughts aside and turned her focus back to the other side of the river. Nothing. A gathering mass of people milled about the Mall and the monuments, but Gregory was not among them.
Gregory was invisible to her when he was in transit. He’d discovered someway to mask himself from her. She could reach out with her mind, across the miles to the monuments, and feel the people walking around. Never knowing a name or face, Marta could hone into one individual, feel her beating heart, or the heart of her baby beating in her womb, and flick them off like a switch. It was by her grace that any of these people continued to live and walk this earth. But she hadn’t bothered to kill that day, she didn’t want to arouse suspicion.
The only person she really wanted to kill that day was Gregory. She would be able to sense his life—differentiate his beating heart when he arrived. Based on previous encounters, she figured the only time she had a good shot at him was when he was speaking. For some reason when he stepped in front of a crowd and addressed his people, she had a clear grip on his vitality. But, so far, it hadn’t helped. Each time she got close, one of his men would appear to stop her.
She thought this trick might work though. Marta had been very careful to not reveal too much of her power. As far as they knew, her range was still rather limited; she hadn’t demonstrated her ability more than a few hundred yards. And the District of Columbia gave her plenty of advantages. The city and surrounding areas had extreme restrictions on air traffic, so Gregory’s ubiquitous helicopters would be ground
ed. Far away from their security checks and roadblocks, Marta sat completely anonymous in Arlington National Cemetery. She was surrounded by a sea of headstones. All she had to do was wait for Gregory’s appearance and she would have her shot.
He was there to lead a protest for family rights. Precedent had been set across the country—people were allowed certain rights when tending to their dead. Since Gregory had demonstrated that death can be fickle, thousands had demanded the right care for their own deceased. They wanted to nurture their own parents, brothers, sisters, and lovers on the chance that they would be the next Passage, the next person to cheat death and rise again.
In a way, Marta felt proud of Gregory. At least she felt proud of the way he had executed her idea. Gregory had turned his own condition into an aspiration rather than a division. His people followed him blindly, and today he had them gathered to petition turning family rights into law. This law would allow families to care for their dead as they saw fit, for enough time to establish a fair chance for resurrection. They’d branded their dead “The Passage,” taking over the word meant to mark a soul’s departure and using it to suggest that the person was voyaging back to the waking world. If they had their way, the dead would have many of the same rights as the living.
Marta sat up straight and closed her book on her finger. The presence of several new people made her take notice. On the temporary stage next to the Washington Monument, the very stage where Gregory would speak, a group of six new people had simply materialized. She studied them, reaching across the miles with her senses. She couldn’t tell a lot—she didn’t have the ability to read their thoughts or know what they were feeling—but had the sense that these new people were calm and curious. They fanned out and formed a semi-circle on the stage.
Seconds later, the crowd began to react. The pulse of the people rose; their attention turned to the stage. She could feel their anticipation. She’d felt all these things dozens of times, it was always the same with Gregory’s audience. They were riveted by his presence. He both excited and calmed them. They dropped into a trance at each of his appearances. But they hadn’t slipped off yet. They were still nervous and anxious, perhaps just excited by the people on the stage.
The crowd exploded in happiness from south to north. Marta tucked away this little observation and pulled back on her senses. The crowd’s mighty orgasm was nearly too much for her brain. Gregory was there. He stood in the center of the ring of his guards. She felt the crowd begin to settle down and she reached out to touch his heart.
Sometimes she went days and weeks between attempts on Gregory’s life. He moved so quickly, crossing the country almost instantly in his private planes, popping up in one city and then making an unscheduled appearance on a remote TV station up north. She couldn’t keep up with his travels. Marta hoped this added a bit of randomness to her pursuit, but based on their ease of tracking her down, she figured that they had a good sense of her limitations. It felt unfair. She had to work so hard to get within striking distance, and Gregory had an endless team of assistants and strategists to help him duck and weave.
Marta was afraid to get on an airplane. She couldn’t even use the fastest mode of travel available. It wasn’t a phobia of flying, it was her pragmatism that kept her grounded. Her only defense was her ability. When in trouble, she’d simply drop everyone within her radius. That didn’t do her any good up in the air. All Gregory would need to do was get one of his many staff on that plane and she would be nearly defenseless. Even the smallest demonstration of her power would draw all kinds of unwanted attention.
But here he was, finally, unprotected and within her grasp. Marta reached her mental fingers around his heart and began to squeeze his supple vitality.
A scream rang out from Marta’s right. She kept her grip on Gregory’s heart—not too tight that he would notice—and she opened her eyes.
The young woman who had screamed, who was still screaming, was on the footpath to Marta’s right. The woman, dressed in black—perhaps the young widow on the anniversary of her husband’s death—screamed at a row of headstones. She looked like she was squatting to pee, her knees were so bent that her thighs were almost level with the ground. Marta couldn’t see the woman’s face, but noticed that her hands were clutched to her head. The woman had frozen with fear.
Then Marta saw it—the source of the woman’s outburst. Marta’s mental grip slipped from Gregory’s distant heart as she took in the scene. In front of the young widow, down the diagonal row of identical white headstones, a hand stuck out from the perfect green lawn.
Until it moved Marta thought it was a rude joke. But the fingers flexed and clawed at the ground. The arm made headway, getting longer as it worked itself from the dirt.
The young woman found her legs and began to back away. Her line wasn’t right though. She was moving away from the hand, but moving more sideways than back. Marta stood halfway up and realized why. The young woman wasn’t watching the hand, she was watching the torso of a neighbor. This other corpse made much faster progress than the hand. It had pulled itself out to the waist.
Marta’s eyes flew around the graveyard as she stood up. Her book fell to the ground at her feet. They were everywhere. One in ten headstones featured a struggling digger, trying to free itself from the ground. The young window stumbled and fell back on her ass. She crab-walked away, too stunned to regain her feet. A spectator from the changing of the guard ran up behind the young widow and tried to help her up.
The young widow freaked out and failed her arms to get away from the man’s touch. She must have thought that another corpse had somehow snuck up behind her. Getting a good look at him didn’t seem to convince her otherwise. She fought and scrambled away. She finally got to her feet and sprinted away down the footpath. She dropped her purse and pumped her arms until she was up to her full speed. Marta looked back to the undead.
The original corpse, the prodigy, was almost all the way out of the ground. He had one bare leg still stuck underground, and the way he pulled at it, Marta thought it was just as likely to pop off as pull free. The man who had been trying to help the young widow now backed away himself. He joined the group of spectators, which had moved to within a few dozen yards of the headstones.
Marta braced herself against the edge of the bench and watched the atrocity.
These corpses were not in good shape. Marta had seen plenty of dead in the past months, but they all looked fresh and clean compared to these monsters. Some still had gray, leathery flesh, but others were mostly brown-stained bone. Their arms and legs, at least for those who still had their limbs, moved muscles. Marta watched one corpse pull itself from the dirt with a hand that was no more than bone and sinew. She couldn’t imagine where its strength was coming from. There was no muscle to do the pulling, and yet it pulled.
Guards appeared at front line. They had their guns lodged against their shoulders and pointed towards the nearest undead. They looked back to the Relief Commander for orders.
“Halt, stay right there!” ordered the Commander. He was speaking to reasonably intact skeleton a few paces away. Ropes of decayed fabric hung from the creature’s body. Its jaw hung down against its neck, in the world’s biggest smile. The thing still had hair on one side of its head, but on the other the scalp was split and hung down over its ear. The extra skin was stiff and flopped as the creature straightened up.
It rose to its full height. The man must have stood a foot taller than the Commander because even its tattered corpse towered over him.
“Halt,” the Commander ordered again.
The creature stopped and raised an arm straight out. Marta waited for it to strike. Instead of making a move, the creature bent its creaky arm until the hand extended back to its head. The Commander’s jaw dropped as the corpse’s hand snapped to an uncomfortable salute.
“My god,” Marta whispered. She felt like she embodied death, but seeing these people, she felt like a novice.
The corpse’s hand d
idn’t waver from its position, but its head turned. The dark recesses of its eye sockets looked up at Marta. Across the graveyard the heads all turned. They looked to Marta. Some heads turned to the side, like a dog that hears a high-pitched sound. Their scrabbling stopped for a second and then their efforts redoubled. Even the humans turned to look at Marta. Everyone sensed the same thing—the undead seemed to all have a common purpose.
Marta bent her knees, and dropped slowly down to pick up her book. She didn’t take her eyes off the endless field of headstones and its ripe crop of fresh abominations. She stuffed the book into her bag as she rose up. Being chased, being prey, was second nature. She glanced over each shoulder and plotted her route back to the parking lot. She tried to remember how many different crops of graves she’d passed to get to the bench. She tried to remember the visitor’s map and wondered if there was a path safe from the undead.
With each second a new corpse was emancipated from the earth.
Marta set her teeth and reached out. The vital signs of the corpses was weak, but she could feel each one. She let her eyes shut halfway and sent out her empathy to collect all the hearts. She gathered everything, every soul either alive or undead, and joined them all to heart. Her eyes slipped shut as she cast them all away. A satisfying thump of bodies slumping to the ground greeted her ears.
Marta opened her eyes.
The undead were still moving. They still moved towards her. Off to the right, a rough pile of spectators lay dead. She’d only managed to kill the humans—the undead were unfazed by her efforts.
Marta didn’t waste any more time. She turned and ran.
The path wound around a big earthy mound and then down long promenade surrounding fountains. She ran straight down the long aisle, ignoring the turnoff for her parking lot. Undead had already started up that path, headed towards her. She didn’t know how they communicated with each other, but she didn’t care. Even if she couldn’t snuff their recycled lives, she could feel their intent. They were coming for her.