by McBain, Tim
His fantasies were taking over his life. Compulsions he didn’t understand drove him to action after action. Like a drooling animal that acted without thinking.
What kind of a life was this?
The fever had subsided a touch, he thought, when he watched the body skipping down the hillside, the severed arms and legs diverging from the torso, veering off on their own paths. He’d felt a little more like himself after that. Not all the way, but a little.
He felt deflated on the walk home, the red wagon squeaking along behind him. Some madness left him, and in a way that was a welcome event, but he felt no relief. No sense of accomplishment. No stilling of the restlessness that kept him stalking from place to place in life. He was merely drained. Exhausted. All of the bad things would come back, he knew.
There was no relief in this life. No satisfaction. Not really. Life just kept going. All of the impulses and aggression deep inside kept right on going until it was all over. Those parts of the brain didn’t know the difference, maybe. They just kept toiling away no matter what happened.
He pressed his fingers into the flesh of his cheeks and found that clammy feeling still clinging to the flesh of his face, even if the associated feelings had begun to wane. It was almost like touching some fleshy worm, he thought. Warm and wet and slicked with grease.
The fever he felt during the cleanup process wasn’t unlike the one that possessed him when he did the bad thing in the first place. It was like each stage of the kill became its own ritual to be completed in a trance-like state of total focus. Electricity in his head took over and away he went.
But what was the use in it? In anything at all?
He could make puppets, yes, but could he only be a puppet as well? Were we all just animals functioning on pheromones and instincts? Puppets made out of meat?
Erin
Rural West Virginia
265 days after
Erin didn’t think. She just ran, her brain on autopilot. It didn’t judge the obstructions in her way and try to decide the best course of action. It let her legs do what they already knew they could without muddying it up with doubt and fear.
On the way through, she’d carefully stepped over that trailer hitch. Now she vaulted over it in one step. She came to a pair of cars, bumpers almost touching. There’d been barely enough room to get through before. She’d shuffled past, sliding her feet more than walking. But there was no time for that now. The smooth metal of the hood buckled and clunked under her feet as she hopped onto it and scrambled across.
Erin ducked under a ladder attached to the side of a utility van and came upon the trailer, gun drawn, trigger-finger at the ready. They were still inside, she could hear Izzy’s screams over the sounds of things being knocked and thrown around.
She skipped over the three stairs up to the door of the trailer. But the door stuck when she turned the handle. She bumped it once, twice, feeling that there was some give at the bottom. The third time, she really threw her weight at it. It sprung open, and she spilled into the interior, losing her balance and rolling with the momentum.
Marcus and the zombie were a tangle of flailing limbs, too close to one another for Erin to shoot without probably hitting them both. Marcus’ arms looked limp, like a doll, and Erin realized she was too late. For a terrified moment, she also noted that she didn’t see Izzy. Had she gotten away? Already been killed? Her eyes scanned the area, not finding a trace.
No, she’d heard her inside. And then a whimper came from somewhere high up, and she saw the kid huddled in the corner, on top of a metal shelf.
She had enough time to think, thank fucking God, before she continued on her mission.
Her pistol led the way as she advanced, the smooth metal body glinting in the light from the open door. She got close enough to press the barrel to the thing’s head. Its skin was the pale gray color of dead fish eyes and wrinkled from being wet. Clumps of flesh and hair were missing from the skull, revealing bare bone beneath. It didn’t even turn to look at her.
She pressed her lips together and turned her head slightly as she pulled the trigger, knowing from experience that you didn’t want a mouth full of what was in that pinata.
It was the same as the first time she’d killed one, too many things happening at once to put them in their proper order, or to know if they all happened at the same second.
The spatter of bone and rotting tissue and brain matter and black blood.
The ringing in her ears from the close range explosion of the gunshot.
The smell of death and smoke with a little fish mixed in from the river.
And then the thing flopped and crumpled to the ground.
Teddy
Moundsville, West Virginia
263 days after
He tossed and turned all through the night. That clammy feeling settled over his chest again, and his ribcage shuddered with each breath like it had before.
He could smell her still. Both versions of her. The good smell of who she was, a baby powder deodorant mixed with suede, and the bad smell of who she became, like unidentifiable leftovers from the back of the fridge.
If relief truly was impossible, why should he even go on? Why shouldn’t he spare himself the ongoing misery?
He ripped the blanket away from himself and lay in the open air. The cool surrounded him, and he felt small. Vulnerable. A quivering thing in the dark.
The cool of the night settled over his skin, but it couldn’t touch what was inside of him. The heat still spiraled in his head, wet and electric.
His feet swung off of the mattress, and he found himself standing. He felt around for his lantern and lit it.
Was he actually doing this? He guessed so. He dressed and headed out the door.
The air was wet and heavy outside. Not unpleasant since it was so cool. Still, it did nothing to break his fever.
The lantern cut a circle out of the darkness, and he watched the border between light and dark on the sidewalk in front of him. It bobbed along with his footsteps.
He walked for what felt like a long time, every feature along the way looking strange and foreign this late at night. The panicked feelings didn’t subside as he grew closer to his destination. The fever only intensified.
By the time he stood at the edge of the ditch, he couldn’t think straight at all. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
He slid down into the darkness, the dew from the grass immediately soaking all the way through his clothes. His body swished over the plant life, and he watched the lantern tumble away from him, its glow dimming to nothing right away.
He didn’t move for a time once he’d hit the bottom. He was too scared that they might be gone. All of them dragged away by animals or something.
Finally, he climbed onto his hands and knees and began feeling around. He found a leg first, his fingers finding the knobby knee and what felt like chicken skin stretched over it.
As soon as he touched it, the smell hit, like he was mentally blocking it out until his fingers could be sure. He didn’t care about that, though. Smell or no smell, he just needed to be near her again. Near all of them.
More limbs and a couple of torsos lay a few feet on, and he hugged them against himself in the black. This was the closest he’d felt to relief in a while. It wasn’t quite right, but it was something. He lay on his back then, feeling them nearby.
He sprawled there a long time, drifting in and out of sleep as the night stretched out for hour after hour. Crazy how much better he felt to have them near.
Looking up, he could only see the tiniest sliver of the moon through the trees above. No stars.
Ray
Outskirts of Washington D.C.
342 days after
“Some say these are the end days,” he said, raising his voice so all 400-plus could hear him. “They say that God has taken his flock and left the rest of us for dead. They say this is the age of pestilence, war, famine and death. The age of waste, of the wastelands occupied by the wast
ed. All of the horrors of the Book of Revelation made real.”
Ray looked over the crowd as he talked, letting his gaze flit around the sunlit place where the tent ended. He liked to save eye contact for closer to the tail end of his speeches, a way of making the whole thing seem more and more intense, to build to a peak.
“They say our lives are forfeit, that we’re already suffering a fate worse than death – damnation. The Bible says, ‘And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.’”
He paused, his head swiveling from one side of the tent to the other, a dramatic sweep that seemed to heighten the silence all around them.
“They say the final judgment has come to pass, that God has turned and left us here.”
He let his eyes fall over the crowd now, but he didn’t let them linger on any one person.
The shade inside the tent softened every line, smudged every face. It reminded him of that point on a summer evening as a kid when all things became vague, their colors muted to grayscale; when the streetlights would finally come on, and it was time to go home.
“And it’s true that he took many of his children home over these past months. He took our mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters. But he didn’t leave us. He didn’t abandon us. I promise you that. Tonight we will see that God still holds sway over this Earth. He will reach down and touch this place, and with thine own eyes, you will see. The sick will be made well, the wounded shall be healed, and the crippled shall stand and walk again.”
Now he locked eyes with individuals, holding for a beat on each and moving on. He moved from face to face, not really noticing any of them until he came to Jones. The boy had that blank look about him again, the same one he had back when he was about to charge out with the bottles of gasoline. Not entirely the same, Ray thought, but similar enough to evoke the memory. A little smile seemed to curl the corners of his mouth this time, but his eyes were dead.
The music kicked in behind him, two acoustic guitars and a banjo running through instrumental versions of hymns. The songs arrived just on cue, and he shook himself out of whatever trance had grabbed hold. Peeling his eyes away from Jones seemed to involve some stickiness, some stiffness, like the buttons on a jacket hesitating to come unfastened. Resisting.
The old timey music changed the atmosphere in the room, the upbeat playing seeming to lift it from awed into energized. The crowd clapped along with the beat, some stomping as well.
And the sick lined up to come on stage, almost all of them plants that Lorraine had coached up, some playing along with faked limps, others just going through the motions.
Ray saw a fleshy-torsoed figure out of the corner of his eye, and all he could think was that Lumpy was getting in line. Lumpy. Jesus. He sure didn’t heal Lumpy, did he? Sure didn’t piece together the bloody pulp that was left of Higgins after that grenade got it.
He pushed the images out of his head, focused on the music, on the clapping.
He put his hands on the people as they passed, just a moment for each of them. He mixed it up some, but generally he put his left hand on their shoulder and brought his right down in slow motion as though lowering a suction cup onto the line where the forehead curved back into the scalp. He gave it a forceful grip and pushed their head back with the heel of his hand upon releasing. From afar, this little tick of each head read as some mysterious recoil as though some surge of something passed from his palm into their skulls with enough kick to jerk them a little. He knew this because he’d practiced until it was so.
Some of them played this up, jolting their spines upright a beat after he touched them. Those were the most likely to kick up into a jig, dancing their way back into the crowd. Others just absorbed the contact and shuffled away, sheepish grins curling the corners of their mouths.
Soon people cheered with each rapid-fire healing. A raucous mood was growing out of that earlier reverence.
There was joy to be had in this moment. Real joy, even if the underlying event was a fraud. He hadn’t seen smiles and dancing and laughter like this since before it all went to hell. Shoot, this level of happiness was rare even back then, the way he figured it.
Music did more of the work in that regard than most would give credit. Music stirred things up in people, got their feet moving. He always told his band that: their music kept people coming back to church more than his sermons did. His words might get through to their brains part of the time, but their music got through to people’s souls every time.
He let his eyes drift past those he placed his hands upon to watch the crowd swirl into motion. Clapping turned into swaying and bouncing. The red-haired woman, Fiona, danced in the aisle with a little girl whose skin was the color of coffee with just a touch of cream in it.
Most of the strangers in the crowd — perhaps 65% or more — were black, Ray noticed. That didn’t surprise him being that Washington D.C. had been a largely African-American city before all of this. It had, however, crossed his mind as to whether or not any of their current congregation, which was over 80% white, would be resistant to black newcomers. He hoped not. If ever there were a time to forget old bigotries and unite, it was the damned post-apocalypse. Still, tribalism had always reared its head in every church community he’d ever dealt with, be it on lines of race, class, age, or long-standing familial rivalries. He already had a few sermons locked and loaded about tolerance for the next few Sundays.
The line of people waiting to be healed grew short, and he knew the lightning round was almost over. The big spectacle would be up next.
He swallowed, feeling the lump bob in his throat. This was the hard part.
Though he’d witnessed it plenty, he’d never done anything like this himself. No faith healings. No psychic shows. No chicken gut “tumors” pried out of anyone’s stomach. He’d partaken in none of the evangelical sweat acts, though he shared the bill with plenty who did.
While the other evangelists focused on live shows that worked the crowd into a frenzy, Ray set about harnessing the power of television. It started as a crummy local access thing. His first airing was filmed on a camcorder he’d borrowed from the film department at a community college. He stood in front of a wall draped with a navy blue curtain in one of their pathetic studio rooms, not even bothering to edit out the couple times he tripped over his words or kicked the mic stand. Even that garnered a decent response – 32 phone calls and $377 in vows.
So he hired some students to improve production a bit, and it grew slicker in time, copying more and more elements from local and national talk shows.
He turned the master bedroom of his house into a film set. A big ornate desk filled most of the frame with shelves of leather-bound encyclopedias and legal dictionaries behind it, prop books that he’d bought at an estate sale because they looked the part. A few of the volumes were even glued together, as they kept leaning to the right otherwise. On TV, it looked like a large office in the back of some grand cathedral, but in reality the front half of the room was filled with sets of lights on boom stands, enough so they could get the effect they wanted day or night.
He started buying infomercial time slots, often airing in obscure markets in the middle of the night. The money rolled in. He’d grossed over a million within 16 months, and it grew from there as he scaled it to more and more markets.
But television was gone now, and forehead sweat greased his palm from where he’d touched it. He embraced the freak show. But even as he found himself swept up by the joy in the room, it felt wrong somewhere deep in his gut. He hoped to God that it did more good than harm.
The girl in the wheelchair was the last one left. She wheeled up the ramp toward the plywood rectangle that served as their stage — only about 18 inches tall, but enough for the people in the back of the tent to be able to see everything. She was a young woman, maybe 18 or 20, he thought, but her fa
ce was childish enough that he could only think of her as a girl.
It occurred to him that he still had a choice.
He knew he could stop the charade now, awkward as it might be with the girl just offstage. He could launch into a sermon and wave her away discretely.
With a flick of Ray’s hand, the music cut out.
Her wheels got stuck a second on the little lip where the ramp ended and the stage began, but she gave a stern shove on the wheel, both hands gripping, both arms popping, and she hopped it. Her legs shifted with the jerking motion. A layer of black denim obscured the limp cylinders of meat growing out of her waist. Even if he knew it wasn’t so, her lower limbs looked convincingly withered. Lifeless.
The room grew quiet as she pumped her arms to move toward the preacher at center stage. She let up and coasted to a stop just short of him. He folded his arms over his chest, smiled, and shook his head as he looked upon her.
“What’s your name, little girl?” he said.
Now more than ever, Ray wished that they’d been able to find a working power amplifier and a microphone. Nothing fancy. Some thrift store Peavey PA and a Shure SM58 would be good enough.
Lifting his voice to a volume everyone could hear was killing his performance in this moment, he thought. Now would be the time to eat the mic a little, press his lips close so he could give these words that hushed gravity they deserved. Instead he bellowed them like a football coach at a pep rally, or so it felt to him in the moment.
“Alice.”
Her squeaky voice matched the girlish face. Her cheeks swelled up like apples when she smiled at him.
“Lovely name. And how old are you?”
“I’m 18.”
“Uh-huh. Now how long you been in that chair, Alice? How many years have you been stuck in that chair?”