by Oliver Atlas
I nod. “That’s the idea. A city full of mindless dead-heads will be easier to outmaneuver than a living city on high-alert. No doubt Yaverts and your father have been causing them fits already.”
Skiss doesn’t seem convinced of my brilliance. “A city full of mindless dead-heads and vengeful Mymar. And if we fly away, how will you escape? You’ll be trapped.”
“If you don’t fly away,” I say, “Milly and Zoe will die. As soon as they revert, they’ll either turn into whatever monsters infected them, or they’ll bleed out. We don’t need another Duchess on our hands. Or another South. And we don’t need them dying. Get them to Schlozfield.”
“But Blake—”
“Skiss,” I say, squeezing her hands. “You pretty much already said it yourself: if there isn’t some magic at work in this mess, we’re dead anyway. I don’t need to worry about how I’ll get out. My job is to take the one step that gets me in.”
The next thing I know, our gas masks are off and her lips are on mine. They’re as soft as her voice, as alert as her eyes. I hold her tight—I hold Abigail tight—and wish I could stay. But then I catch the zombified faces growling in the dark behind us. A shiver that is anything but romantic shoots up my legs. All too quickly—so I won’t hesitate—I turn from Skiss, replace my headgear, and pull the lever that opens the jump doors. Icy gales rush in moaning, pulling at my legs. I step with them to the door’s edge.
My spirit groans in wordless prayer. I hear the moment calling. The lights and shadows and shufflings of Bentlam await me thousands of feet below.
As I float toward the center of the city, a patter of rain hits my chute. Only it’s not rain. It’s MinF-q36. By the time my feet hit ground, most of the city should already be transforming into zombies and the liquid’s infectious properties should be spent. At least they’d better be spent, because my gas mask is already fogged up. I can barely see anything. The husky pink of sunrise on the marble buildings. The rising gold of the eastern horizon. For a few moments, through the steam on my mask, the world is simply silence and color, a titanic symphony of swiftly tilting orbs. And I float between this drama of spheres: tiny, falling, watching.
I’m not one for building up moments with pomp and circumstance, but if ever my life warranted a recital of epic poetry, I guess my mouth decides it’s now:
* * *
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
* * *
In my hands, I clutch an AbraCannon. Finding it in one of the zeppelin’s lockers was key to agreeing to Milly’s plan. With the ridiculous puff-gun, I can theoretically handle raging hordes without killing anyone. Sure, hurtling through the air will leave them with bruises. Maybe it will even break some bones. But today is a day when everyone will have skin in the game whether they like it or not. Today is a day when the glamorous folk of Bentlam will walk in their ostracized brothers’ and sisters’ cursed shoes whether they want to or not. I may be a would-be pacifist, but that hardly means I’m a passive wuss.
I try to keep that tough attitude in mind as the ground flies up at me. The infecting rain has passed, already rising in an ominous fog that shrouds the lower terrain of the city. It hangs over everything in a clinging green malaise. All I can do is steer clumsily away from the taller buildings while guesstimating where I’ll find an open street or parkway. My first impulse is to head for as high of ground as possible, but the buildings seem taller there, and more tightly crammed. I’d probably end up pancaked against a fourth floor window. So instead I aim my flightpath for an open space just south of the river.
I’m hoping it’s a park.
For all I know, it could be a crocodile farm.
As I glide in over the fog, my feet plunging into the gassy soup, I spot a row of tall trees to my right, then a playground, then a line of outdoor sculptures, then dozens of passersby staggering through the mist. My feet hit the pavement at a run but can’t keep pace with my parachute’s momentum and I’m thrown to the ground in a heap, rolling and tumbling, until I crash into a trash bin, practically mummified in red nylon.
Wheezing, the wind knocked out of me, my heart racing for fear my gas mask’s seal might have cracked, I claw at the parachute. It’s like I’m drowning. It’s like I’m buried alive and bound with mindless knots. All I can picture are those morning walkers coming toward me through the fog in a devilish hopefulness. I can imagine dozens of scrabbling hands ripping at the knots, even more eager than I am to get me free and out into the chewable open.
I flail all the more, but it does no good. The harder I struggle, the tighter I’m bound, the less clearly I can think.
I inhale once, long and slow. The breath sounds so loud and takes so long that I suddenly become self-aware enough to wonder why I’m still alive. I can hear shuffling feet. They’re near. Very near. They should have heard me by now, smelled me by now, bitten into me by now. But they trudge right by. More feet follow. They’re all passing me by.
A miracle? A moment’s oversight? Do I have bad blood? Are temporary zombies dumber or pickier than the lifers? I don’t know. And at the moment I don’t care.
Able to concentrate again, I quickly unravel myself and stand.
Sure enough, the newly minted dead trudge down the long rectangular parkway. They all head from east to west without giving me a single sniff.
It’s Jenny, I know it. They’re after Jenny.
I start running westward, cannon in hand, following the converging mobs. Their unified intensity can only mean one thing: the Faction has already performed its odious transformation on Jenny. No doubt they’ve already chained her up in some perverse display, just like they did with Zoe. No doubt they’re already pumping her blood to render their zombie food source palatable. The thought makes me shiver. I’ll be able to find her easily enough, but what will I find when I do? And what if our plan to ransack the city from within proves too effective? What if the vampires all flee, leaving Jenny as an unguarded homing beacon to a city full of newbie dead-heads who want to fight over every particle of her body?
I can’t even think about that. I can only run.
The parkway leads west through the city, toward the river. An occasional block of buildings breaks up its swath of trees and grass and sculptures, but it always picks back up a block later. Zombies crowd the roads, growing thicker and thicker as I go. At the bridge, the way ahead is so cramped I’m tempted to use the AbraCannon and blast a way through. I resist, though, as I’m sure some would be knocked off into the water and drown. So—holding my breath against the surprising reek of undead morning flesh—I dodge and weave and shove my way through the crowd. The occasional zombie takes interest and swipes out with a moan, but only half-heartedly. It’s clear enough that they’re all entranced by the scent of the Nameless One.
Once past the bridge, the residential areas end and the buildings loom taller and grander. At my back, the sun burns bright and clear, burnishing the misty-slick streets into a nearly blinding white. The dead flow up the hills, not bothering to squint against the light. Their faces are contorted. Their eyes washed out. But their clothes and bodies are whole. It’s as if the entire city woke up in fiendish need of coffee and knew only one place to get it.
When the mist has burned away at last, I throw my gas mask into a gutter. Out from behind its cloudy lens, the world strikes me as hyper crisp. Every grand vertical line of the radiant buildings, every short dark line in the mortared walls and streets—they convey the obvious intensity and surrealism of sight, of light, of awareness, and I marvel for a moment that just as every inch of my body could scream with tremendous pain if bitten or torn, so can every inch sing together in the eternally raw glory of their miraculous coordination and communion.
Through that lens, I behold the dead anew. The thousands of zombies filing up the b
right street are what they are because they aren’t what they should be. They are a horror because they were not meant to be this way. They are a tragedy because they don’t have to be this way. And they are a truth because, just like the people they’ll be again in another two days, they hunger blindly for someone to restore them to their full and true humanity. Something in their singular hunger for Jenny—something in their single-minded malady—contains the secret of their salvation. They want to find her in order to consume her, but perhaps some mysterious part of them wants to find her in the hope that she can consume them. As zombies, they’re blindly longing for Jenny in the same way, as people, we’ve longed for heaven, for hope, for the West.
My thoughts scatter with a handful of blackbirds atop a nearby building.
I crane my head to find a dark-cloaked figure peering down at me. More figures arise along the rooftops on either side of the street. They all stare at me in silence, radiating black against the hazy glow of morning.
I cup my hands around my mouth: “I’ve come for Jenny!”
No one answers. They stand silent. Waiting, watching.
Is this the end? Is this my grand showdown? Me and a giant blow drier against two dozen cowled Mymar?
Alrighty. So be it.
“If you give me the girl,” I say, “I promise to spare you.”
The figure nearest to me raises an absolving hand. “We will spare you, Blake Prose,” it announces in a voice the slides quietly through the air. “Go now. Find the whore. Or the deceiver. Or both. Live out your life in comfort and peace.”
“‘Peace’ is a tricky word,” I say. “And if by it you mean my own safety and satiation, I’m afraid I can’t accept. You see, I don’t belong to myself. I’m not my own. Jenny is part of me. And as long as she is ill-used, so am I.”
The figures don’t respond. They stand unmoved, as though robed gargoyles accustomed to speaking in silent centuries. After a few minutes waiting on them, I shrug and start back up the hill.
“We will not merely kill you, Blake Prose. If you persist in defying us, we will put you and those you love to everlasting torment.”
“That’s quite a threat,” I muse over my shoulder, nervously gripping my cannon. “You really think you have that kind of power?”
Again, they do not respond.
I’m about to take the risk of ignoring them in turn when a lackadaisical clop of hooves tolls from behind me. At the sound, the Mymar leap into the air. They hover in place for a second, the gazes of their lidless cowls boring into me, before flying west, hugging the tops of the cityscape.
When I turn, I’m not surprised to find a tall pale horse emerging from the slick glare on the stone street. The dark-skinned man atop the stallion tips his black hat at me. “Good to see you, Blake. You’ve come a long way.”
Lancaster Moon is right. I have come a long way.
What started as a reckless crush on a fetching redhead, shifted to a conflicted desire to help a little girl, and arrived at a conviction to play my part in helping right the world, has now arrived at an hour when—against all hope—my every step leads into fear and nothing holds me to the path but the boldness of love.
It’s funny how the last few steps in facing our fears are often the hardest. Even with the dhampir riding alongside as I stride the final few blocks to the top of the hill, I’m afraid. I don’t believe the Mymars’ threat that they can torture me forever. A day’s worth of torture would be enough to frighten me. No, what makes my joints stiff is the fear that lies behind fear—the dread that the glory of life isn’t written anywhere, that the splendor we perceive in it is blind and deaf, that my love will count for nothing. I know I don’t believe that to be the case. Something in me insists that love can’t lose, that love can’t die. Something in me believes that love wins.
But my bones are apparently still struggling with the notion. My bones believe what my eyes see. And in the path ahead, I struggle to see anything but a veneer of sentimental idealism iced over a quickly heating pit of chaos and peril.
“Don’t be afraid,” says Lancaster Moon, as though reading my mind—and maybe really reading my mind. “Everything will be all right.”
I laugh. “You sound so sure.”
He glances down at me and winks. “I am sure.”
Two blocks farther and we’re left facing a bizarre sight that, paradoxically, I know very well. Aside from the swelling crowd of zombies beating on its outer walls, I recognize the place as a full-sized replica of something I have only seen in the faded indexes of old Bibles: the Temple of Solomon.
I can’t contain an incredulous laugh. “What in the world!”
Lancaster slides from his horse, landing without a sound. “Never underestimate our ability to mistake form for function.”
I have no real idea what he means. And I’m not about to ask. If there’s ever been a time in my life for resisting an interesting abstract conversation, it’s now. All I want to know—given the swarm of zombies around the front gate—is how we’ll get inside and find Jenny.
“How else?” asks Moon, reading my thoughts with disquieting precision. “We go through the sewers.”
Of course. Silly me. I always want to forget about that pesky cosmic law that insists good must stoop to conquer. Still, as much as I want to forget that law, my instincts say I wouldn’t change it if I could. There is an indispensable truth in passion’s willingness to suffer. I suppose sacrificial pain can be to the lover what the most precious paint is to an artist: it is worth whatever vision it promises to realize; it vows through soul and blood, ‘I will not give in my making something that cost me nothing.’
Thankfully, Bentlam’s sewers are no worse than they were the last time I snuck through them, and, once Moon has assured me Abe will be just fine on his own, we’re down a manhole, through the murk, and climbing up a service ladder before I can think to plug my nose. Moon throws off a heavy grated steel covering and, a moment later, we’re standing in the temple’s inner courtyard.
To the west looms the tall building that houses the inner sanctuaries. To the north, a pyramid of stairs rises fifty feet to an open furnace. Behind us, to the south, a giant basin of water rests on the backs of twelve gold-molded oxen. And to the east, in front of a giant bronze gate, a dozen dark-robed vampires stand shoulder to shoulder.
The morning sun has a strange warmth as it shoots over the walls and into the courtyard. Dust floats lazily through the air. A glint of steel catches my eye—quickly followed by a whole chorus of blades rasping out from the folds of the black robes.
“Go ahead, Blake,” says Moon softly, nodding toward the Temple. “I’ll guard your back.”
“But there are too many.” I step up beside Lancaster Moon, barely able to feel my legs. “I’ll stay and help.”
“You’ll stay and get killed. Rickard would never forgive me for that.”
“Yaverts?”
Moon chuckles. “We were fighting our way into the city when we felt the rain. He had about three seconds to say your name and swear before he started changing.”
In about any other situation, I would chuckle too. Horrific as it must be to morph into a mindless brain eater, the thought of catching Yaverts by surprise is kind of funny. That he should be just fine in two days helps. But the row of blade-wielding vampires dampens my sense of humor. “I’d better go,” I say.
Moon nods again and unholsters his pistols.
I run—across the courtyard, up the great stairs, through the massive columned doorway. From my first step and all the way to the door, I can hear a flurry of grunts, snarls, steel on steel, and gunfire. The temptation to look back is tremendous. Somehow I resist, pressing from the frantic sunshine into the contemplative, dusty darkness. Inside the outer sanctuary, beams of colored light cut into the great room from high circular windows, joining the faint light of candles spouting spicy tendrils of smoke.
A woman in white stands in the center of the room. She is tall, regal, and proportioned t
o entice. Her dress is cut low at the chest and up alongside one of her legs to the upper thigh. Fifty feet behind her, to the left of the curtain to the inner sanctuary, a towering black-robed figure stands. It only watches.
“Blake Prose,” purrs the woman in a sumptuously soft accent. “I am impressed you have made it this far. I am glad, too. When I sensed you under our feet a few days ago, I knew I wanted you.” Her eyes pad me down before coming slowly back up. “I knew you would want me too.”
Her hair is a deep, straight bronze that falls to her hips. Her almond eyes are dark as coal and cut with the finest ratio of fiery mystery and open intelligence. Normally, I would be completely captivated by her beauty. But now . . .
“Why this quest to harm us, Blake? Was it not your kind who started genocide on ours? All we want is to live in peace. To find a way to coexist. To harmonize. Perhaps someday to co-mingle.” Her voice is a hum that seems to resonate through her whole body. She takes a step toward me. Then another. “I know my brothers threatened you earlier. They promised searing, ceaseless pain. Forgive them, Blake. Forgive them, and I will promise you pleasure—all the more searing and equally ceaseless. If you know about hunger, if you know about restraint, then you know something of our curse, the need we have—the swelling, driving, ecstatic need that whips us into a rage of want.”
Slowly—ever so slowly—she crosses the sanctuary. She stops when she’s just out of reach. I can smell an odor about her, an aroma of lavender, peaches, and musk. “My brothers have no imagination,” she whispers, making my ears strain to hear. “They take the passion of our nature and treat it as though its only true outlet is in blood, in violence.” She raises a slender arm, extending a marbled hand toward my chest. “But I know a better blood. I know a better violence. Set down your weapon, Blake. Set down your purpose. Give up my brothers’ way of thinking, beautiful man, and I will exult you in mine.”
The woman raises her other hand, as though to caress my cheek.