The Company of Death

by Elisa Hansen

  “You!” Karem started. “Ooooh, Demos is gonna piss himself.”

  Leif blinked. “That would be a sight to see.”

  Nadia turned her back to Leif, and he felt rather sandwiched between her and Hector. “Did the drone find anything else?” she asked Karem.

  “Yeah, man. There’s a factory or machine plant or something outside a town a couple miles that way.” He waved an arm the direction Leif had been driving.

  Another factory. How fitting.

  “Of course, I’ll follow you there.” Leif slid from between them, but Hector’s hand slammed onto his shoulder before he could reach the hay truck.

  “You ride with us.”

  “Should we bring this truck?” Karem gave it an appraising eye.

  “It’s garbage,” Nadia said as she strode to the passenger door of the brown pickup. “Leave it.”

  Hector’s grip tightened. “You ride with me and Muk.” He strong-armed Leif rather marvelously into the middle seat of the semitruck’s cab. Entirely unnecessary, but Leif thought better of telling him so. The human Muk’s aureole of warmth rendered him speechless anyway. Muk smelled downright acidic with weeks’ layers of sweat and grime. Too delectable.

  What could Hector really do to Leif if he ripped out Muk’s throat right there? It would be worth it, wouldn’t it? Though whatever Hector did would presumably leave Leif with little time to enjoy it. He sighed and shivered as the engine vibrated the seat beneath him in response to Muk’s wide U-turn.

  Leif focused his nostrils instead upon the stench of the flesh-eaters in the trailer, revolting enough to keep him in control and make him dearly miss the hay.

  Last night, Demos’s commune possessed two of these cattle trucks. Did they lose half the horde in the battle? Perhaps his little mind-control trick wasn’t as effective as he boasted. If one could even call what lurked between flesh-eater ears a “mind.”

  “Is this all that survived?” Leif asked.

  “Shit, you kidding me?” Muk laughed. “We got more than we can handle. These are going to Lorenzo. We cleaned up good and new recruits need their training.”

  To Lorenzo! Their little carpool suddenly became a lot more interesting. “Where’s he set up these days?” Leif asked without sounding too interested.

  “Shut up,” said Hector.

  “I guess I’ll find out when we get there.”

  “Not so sure I wanna take you with us. How ‘bout I take him the android and your head and get double points?”

  Leif frowned and let his much-desired head fall back on the seat top. “That would be something you could do, yes.”

  Think, you old fool! A reason, any reason they should need him whole. Something only he could know about this Carol. An access code, perhaps? Yes, he would tell them he knew how to bypass some security. Surely plausible enough. Surely androids had such systems? If he didn’t know, Nadia and Hector certainly wouldn’t.

  Leif shivered again. The heat on either side of him was almost too much to bear. Hector’s warmth undoubtedly was also Muk’s. Leif’s head rolled against the seat to eye Muk’s throat. The freshest bite marks in his lovely flesh were only hours old.

  Hector clamped Leif’s arm in a meaty grip. “None for you.”

  Was Leif being that obvious? He batted his thirsty eyelashes at Hector. “Perhaps when he’s done driving?”

  “No.”

  “Have a heart.”

  “Demos gave him to me. He lasts me until Lorenzo’s camp. You don’t get any.”

  Muk’s knuckles paled around the steering wheel. “Shit, guys, I’m right here.”

  Leif ran a hand down his hot human thigh. “Oh, I know.” He could feel each of Muk’s muscles clench through the rough denim.

  “Hector, make him stop!”

  Too late, Leif felt Hector clamp a fistful of his hair and then a brain-rattling crack as his head hit the back windshield.

  “Stop distracting the driver.”

  Leif sighed. He would have to avoid inhaling for the rest of the ride.

  Thankfully it was short. They followed the ugly pickup around a bend where dark structures loomed into view. A building compound squatted between the hills beyond a fork in the highway. Smokestack shadows spilled through chain-link fences and stretched like hungry fingers across an empty parking lot.

  As they parked the trucks out of sight behind the main building, the factory showed all signs of abandonment. A side door hung off its hinges. Hector’s touch toppled it to the ground with a crash.

  “Just tell the world we’re here,” Nadia muttered.

  “There’s no one here,” Leif said. “Except perhaps some rats.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” He might be starving, but his senses remained keen enough to tell that much. If any human skulked here, he would be draining it already. Leif reminded himself that she was young; sometimes he forgot how weak his nose was at that age.

  “Pardon me if I don’t trust you,” she said.

  Leif shrugged and stepped over the threshold. He lifted his face to the cavernous warehouse. “Halloa,” he called. “I come in peace.”

  He waited. Not a sound.

  “Halloa! I come to eat you.”

  Nothing stirred.

  He glanced back to them in the doorway. “You see? Not even a mouse.”

  “You said there were rats.” Hector glowered at him.

  “It’s a figure of speech. It… You know what, never mind.” Leif hopped over debris and followed his nose farther into the building. If Muk and Karem must be off-limits, rats would be better than nothing. He’d been teased too much tonight to go to sleep on empty.

  The scent of carbon fuel led Leif across a machine-filled room into a labyrinth of pipes and ducts. As if it were waiting for him, the generator proved too easy to find. He smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Bravo.” He checked the tank and found it far from empty.

  He spoke over his shoulder at the others. “I hope you don’t mind if we get things a little turned on?”

  He reached for a lever, but Nadia shook her head. “Don’t waste the fuel.”

  “Sure.” Karem shot an anxious glance to Muk. “It’s not like we’d want it while we’re hanging around here all day or anything.”

  “Quiet,” said Nadia. “Get our coffins. Put them in a windowless room.” She turned back to Leif. “And you. Stay where I can see you.”

  “I don’t have a coffin.” He gestured to the shadowy passage behind him. “I need to find a place to sleep.”

  She stared at him as if considering whether that was a reasonable request, and then a small smile parted her lips. “Actually, boys, take a break. Blondie’s going to do the heavy lifting for you.”

  Leif blinked. Was this an attempt at degradation? He could offer her some tips. But he only returned the smile and made her a little bow. “My pleasure, my dear.”

  Outside, he hopped into the back of the pickup truck and told himself to focus on the task to keep his poor senses from tracking the humans’ every move as they sought rest in the building. Nadia and Hector’s caskets nestled against the flatbed’s side, braced by tool boxes, a suitcase, and…oh. Oh dear. Could it be? Had all of Leif’s stars aligned? He fought not to laugh.

  Those were the igniters in that weapons bin.

  He crouched and flipped open the case. The very same igniters Demos snatched from him. The little mechanical buttons radiated warmth from the night’s heat. Leif’s fingers curled around them. Could it possibly be so easy? He could secure one igniter under each of the caskets right now. They were still calibrated to his detonator, the caskets still laced with the explosive spray. He could take the cargo of flesh-eaters for himself. He could use them to capture the Carol android. He could deliver her to Lorenzo, and he could begin his plans anew. He could—

  Arms locked around him, and Nadia’s weight barreled him to the ground. Her hands tore at his like talons, then she leapt from him just as quickly
. Leif sighed and rolled onto his back to look up at her.

  Or he could get caught thinking instead of acting, like the damned fool he was. “Excuse me?” he said as incredulously as any innocent vampire could manage.

  Nadia stood over him, the igniters in her hand. “What do you want with these?”

  Leif got to his feet and brushed himself off. If his coat were stained, he was going to be very angry. “Protection,” he snapped, as if offended. “Hector’s going to take off my head the second I show you the android.”

  Nadia tilted her head thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea.” She rattled the little button chips in her palm. “You know, they don’t do anything if they’re not in spark range of an explosive, right?”

  Leif blinked and let his mouth fall open. Not too much; he didn’t want to give the game away. “They don’t?”

  Nadia laughed, tossing her hair over her shoulders. “Go back to the thirteenth century, sweetie.”

  This time Leif’s expression of disdain took no talent. He wasn’t that old.

  “What’s funny?” Hector came to Nadia’s side. “What’s that?” He reached for her handful of buttons.

  She let him take some, then slid the rest into her pocket. “Snowflake here thought he was going to make a bomb without any explosive.”

  Hector glowered at the igniters as if blaming them for looking so tiny in his immense palm, and then he pocketed them.

  “You keep threatening my neck and I’ll do worse than that,” Leif said. “But let us work together as comrades, and I promise you shan’t regret it.”

  Nadia let out another snort of laughter, and Hector shook his slow head. After all, how threatening could Leif be if he didn’t even know how igniters worked?

  The sky above them eked toward gray. “Get the coffins inside,” Nadia ordered.

  Leif stacked them and carried them over his head into the factory. He made his way through the main machine room and out into a loading yard. One end opened to a driveway that led back to the parking lots, and an elevated loading dock filled the other end. A forklift lay on its side a few yards from the dock.

  “Naptime already?” he asked it as he passed by toward a promising door on the opposite wall. Leif broke the lock with his free hand and found himself in a garage the size of a jet hanger. Whatever vehicles it once held were long gone, but it was windowless, and it would do. He set the caskets in the center of the room, side by side.

  “You sleep in here,” Nadia said behind him. She opened a broom closet in the back wall. Fresh life scent tumbled out of it, assaulting Leif’s senses. He was hanging half into the door in less than a second.

  “You have a roommate.” Nadia snickered.

  A scraggly raccoon reared in the corner, eyes wide and needle teeth bared as it hissed and hissed at them.

  “Awww,” Leif crooned. “Isn’t she pretty? I shall call her Dinner.”

  He couldn’t see them, but four tiny heartbeats gave away the pups she hoped to protect. How adorable. He would call them Dessert.

  Once he put an end to all the screeching, he left his coat on a hook behind the door to keep it free of cobwebs and then huddled into a duct vent in the back of the closet. He didn’t think Karem and Muk would be suicidal enough to open the main door and disturb his slumber, but Leif was never one to regret taking extra precautions.

  The scarce animal blood slugged through his veins, but it was warm and better than nothing. He felt rather raccoon-like altogether curled in the confined space.

  As he listened to Nadia and Hector secure themselves in their caskets, he slipped the iPod from his pocket and opened the remote detonator application.

  Now, how many igniters did they each pocket? They were tiny things, but they were fierce. Could they spark the spray explosive lining the caskets even through their blue jeans?

  Let’s find out.

  The stiffness of imminent sunrise crept upon Leif, muffling the world, reducing all his senses to the true undead state that daily rejuvenated his eternal night. In the garage, Nadia and Hector were falling into similar mindlessness.

  All in all, the night could have gone worse.

  Leif’s lips pulled into a rigid smile as the blood slowed in his veins and the last of his self-awareness seeped from his fibers. And then, just as it left him completely, his thumb brushed over the boom button.

  21

  Reunion

  “That’s the third roadcycle.” Scott rubbed at the headache gnawing the brainspace behind his temples. “None of these are going to have any fuel left.”

  Carol’s eyes flashed at him through the murky dawn light as she straightened beside the bike. “There are eight here.” She gestured to the scattered mechanical bodies. Covered with an inch of dust and floating on a sea of brown, they looked more like prehistoric fossils than abandoned vehicles on the highway. “Do you mean to suggest I not check the other five?”

  “I’m just saying. If three are out of fuel, they all are.”

  “We are going to test them all,” she said in that voice she always used when he challenged her logic.

  Their car managed less than ten miles on fumes before it died. They had abandoned it and hid for hours. When nothing emerged from the darkness to suck Scott’s blood or steal his soul, they set out on foot. After a while, he legitimately started to doubt what he’d seen. He didn’t bring it up, and Carol focused on their search for fuel. If they never mentioned it again, who was to say it happened at all? He definitely didn’t intend to ask Carol for confirmation.

  The farther they walked, the more his own focus dwelled on his diminishing enthusiasm for filling their fuel can and hiking all the way back to where they left the car in the center of the highway on the other side of the pile of hills.

  Scott sighed and followed Carol to the fourth roadcycle. She slipped the plastic hose through the serpentine tubes into the tank and pushed its other end at him. “Suck.”

  He licked his teeth and put his mouth around the tube. A quick slurp, then he turned away with a grimace. A childhood memory of his mom forcing him to clean the family fish tank while his brother and sister got to watch TV mocked him out of nowhere. The permanently soaked-in fuel tang of this hose tasted somehow even worse than the fish-crap flavor of the one from his past.

  If any of the bikes did have juice, Scott would much rather get on one and ride until they found another car. As long as it provided enough legroom for naps, he couldn’t care less what they drove. He smacked down the inner voice jumping to remind him he’d never driven a roadcycle in his life and would probably fall and get his foot chopped off. Instead, he stewed over the opinion that all of Carol’s going backward to go forward was the worst of ideas. Especially in the middle of the desert.

  “There, you see?” he said after the tiniest of dribbles tinkled into their can. “Nothing.”

  Carol tapped around the tank valve with the hose then pulled it out to examine the moistened end, her headlight brightening to compensate for the gray morning.

  “Don’t tell me I’m not sucking it right,” Scott said. “It’s totally dry.”

  “Not totally.”

  “Give up. They’re empty.”

  She turned to him, her LEDs hitting him smack in the eyes. “Give up?”

  Scott’s hand shot up to block the light. “Ugh, I can taste the fumes.” He scraped his tongue with his teeth.

  “And then what, Scott? What do you propose?” Her headlamp clicked off. “Probability dictates at least a seventy-six percent chance one of these four remaining bikes holds some fuel.”

  He rubbed at his mouth. What he would give to be twelve again, hating his mother for making him clean that fish tank. “No. Carol. It doesn’t. Where do you even get these statistics? Practicality dictates that someone else—probably someone just like us—came along and saw all these roadcycles lying here and drained off every last one into a glorious spacious can that somehow held all those gallons. Or maybe they had more than one can. Or maybe these tanks were
already mostly empty considering they had to get out here in the middle of nowhere in the first place. Did you factor that into your probabilities?” He wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. The sun hadn’t even emerged yet, and he was already sweating.

  “Scott.”

  “Huh? Did you?” His mom had served a fish dinner that night too. To rub in his suffering. It was his most disgustingly vivid memory of his last year with her. He strove to ignore the hollowness pummeling the bottom of his stomach. “Huh?”

  “Shut up, Scott.”

  “You shut up!”

  “Is that an order?”

  “Ugh!” He wiped his mouth again and turned from her to his things on the highway’s shoulder. He kicked the duffel bag off his backpack and pulled out a water bottle. He swigged, gargled, and spat into the dust.

  “I cannot make the vacuum for the hose myself,” Carol said. “I am not designed with a respiratory system. You know that.”

  Scott shoved the bottle back into the pack and yanked the zipper closed. “Blah blah blah. I’m so miserable because I’m not a real boy. If only I could breathe and have babies.”

  Carol whirred and her voice dropped. “You are making irrational presumptions.”

  In one of the backpack’s side flaps, Scott found a square of mouth cleaning gum. He slipped it into his jeans pocket. “Yeah, I’m just a stupid human without trilobites of memory. And I couldn’t pick up one of these bikes over my head and throw it across the street.”

  “Trilobites?” She paused. “Why would I throw a bike?”

  He turned back to her. “I don’t know. Stress? Frustration? You do have emotions. You’re frustrated right now, aren’t you? I know you are because I’m making you. You have feelings. Don’t try to act like you don’t and like it doesn’t matter to you that you can’t suck on a stupid hose and you need me to do it for you.”

  “Why do you even bring this up? I wouldn’t need to get fuel at all if not for you.”

  “Oh, it’s my fault we ran out of gas? It’s my fault you raced out of that flat dog town because you thought that vampire was following us?”