Dead Things (28 page)

This one doesn’t see him yet. Peter wonders what the hell it’s thinking.

Are the creatures conscious? Peter doesn’t know. He’s not sure he can even define the concept. He’s not sure what consciousness even is.

Is Peter conscious? He thinks so. But he wonders how much of his definition of who he is may be just a by-product of his individual experience.

After all, humans are not aware of most brain activity: heart rate, digestion, breathing, even posture. The brain processes an extreme amount of information, but people only remember those things that receive their full attention (and sometimes they don’t even remember that much). Somehow, humans are able to accomplish a number of tasks without ever being aware. Maybe what humans perceive as consciousness is nothing more than a movie review published after the film’s been seen. And if that’s the case, it may not matter whether or not there’s a “ghost in the machine.”

But Peter feels he has free will. He believes he acts through intent.

Prime example: when he sees a puppy at the base of a dumpster along the side of the golden arches, just 30 feet from the monster, he picks up his bike and rides straight toward it. He speeds down the middle of the street, no effort spent to escape the eyes of the ghoul.

Peter’s anterior cingulate cortex activates. This is the part of the brain associated with free will. This is the portion that fires when someone does something selfless, something stupid. The anterior cingulate cortex is a key difference between Peter and the horror that has stopped pacing the sidewalk and now pursues him.

The invader inside the revenant’s brain has cut off the frontal lobe, essentially lobotomizing the brain front to back. The creature moves with purpose, the desire to feed, but not with free will. In essence, it can do nothing but obey the chemical signals of the invader within. It must chase Peter, it must capture him, it must consume him, just as it dined on its friends and neighbors. It has no choice.

Peter is at the dumpster, but he has scared the puppy. Drawn underneath the container by the promise of old burgers and fries, the brindle boxer shudders, hidden in the shadows.

Peter coos, “Hey, buddy. Here, girl.” The puppy inches forward, crawling army style, still unsure.

The ghoul turns the corner. It looses a guttural growl, gases in its bloated belly gurgling forth passing over its vocal chords.

There’s no time. It will be on him in a moment. Peter looks for a weapon, finds a fifth of vodka left by a wino that finally made the decision his life was more important than the bottle. He picks it up and scampers to his feet.

The thing is almost upon him.

He rushes it.

He takes the bottle, spout first, and slams it into the creature’s blue face, breaking its aquiline nose. It rakes at him with rotting hands, and Peter pulls it by the collar, closer so he can further drive the flask into its demonic mouth. He is so near, he smells the decay, the methane venting forth.

Methane.

He reaches into his pocket, searches frantically. Yes, there!

Out comes the lighter. In a stroke, the flame flickers forth. He brings it to the monster’s face, and shoves himself free, landing on his back as the vodka burns above him.

The revenant is ablaze, yet it feels no pain. It continues to look for him—even though its eyes have boiled and its skin blisters—driven by the invader inside, arms outstretched, groping. It takes a single step forward.

Then,
boom
.

The methane ignites. The ghoul’s head is blown from his shoulders just before the flames flow further down the thing’s gullet into its chest. A chain reaction, the stomach ignites, detonating and spreading the foul monster across the parking lot.

Peter shields himself.
Just like a vampire in the movies
, he thinks.

The puppy, terrified, shoots out from the dumpster and into Peter’s lap. It whines and whimpers, and Peter strokes it. “It’s okay, little one. It’s okay.”

He puts the puppy inside his coat, letting it snuggle close. Moments later it is asleep in his warmth.

He strokes her neck. She has no tags. “What am I going to call you, girl? How about Addison? Do you like that? Addison? If not, we can always come up with something better later.”

She licks his hand. Addison it is.

Then he’s on the bike again, the two of them heading south.

**

“Because they are going to die out there.” She wants to know the direction they are heading, because when they escape—and they will escape—they are going to go in the opposite direction.

“Like getting married, for one.” Ian looks at Wright, then shies away. “I was looking forward to getting married, and starting a family.”

Van scoffs. “What type of dreams are those?”

Anne interjects, “I think they’re nice dreams. Don’t you, Ms. Wright?”

“Anne,” Wright says smiling, “call me Kari from now on, okay? And, yes, I do think they are nice dreams.” She sits back, pondering Ian and his disclosure.

As evening approaches, the chaplain arrives. He has brought meals for them—last suppers, Wright thinks—and asks them if they’d like to pray with him and share their last requests.

Wright might not make it home, might not even make it out of this cell. She has a notion. It is crazy, reflexive, and totally out of character. But she decides to act on it anyway. She wants to be assigned to a new mission.

Her heart beats heavily in her bosom. “Ian,” she asks, “will you marry me?”

Ian freezes. His face gives Wright second thoughts about this course. “You know, it’s okay if you don’t. I know I’m a little older and—”

“Yes,” Ian nods, a grin stretching across his face. “That sounds great.”

“Holy shit!” Van yells. “Can I be your best man?”

The chaplain agrees. He never imagined such a final request, but he is obliged to honor it. He asks them to come forward now. They don’t have much time.

“Wait,” Van says, “wait one second.” He runs to the corner, starts rummaging through his bag. “Aha!” he exclaims. He tugs at something out, beige and navy, and strides to Ian to present it.

It is Ian’s father’s necktie. Van rescued it from the pile of belongings left behind in a tree bow.

Wright takes it, wraps it around Ian’s neck, quickly tying it. She murmurs a rhyme about a rabbit as she does it, going around the tree, through a hole. The tie hangs evenly, ending at the belt buckle at his waist. Perfect on the first try.

The “I do’s” are exchanged quickly. The chaplain does not need to tell Ian he can kiss the bride. They are kissing before he can even pronounce them husband and wife. Van, Anne, and Burt, still stunned, clap enthusiastically.

“Enjoy your meals,” the chaplain says. “The pies are homemade, special. I think you’ll be surprised by them.”

And with that, the prison’s former residents were gone.

Wright and Ian forego their meals. They sit in the corner, holding hands.

I’m giggling
, Kari thinks.
I’m actually giggling!

In the midst of shoveling in his third piece, Van feels a pain in his jaw. “Fuck!” he exclaims. He spits, the bits of pie landing on the floor. But there’s no splat.

There’s a clink.

It’s a key. No,
the
key. The key to the cell.

The chaplain may have been a man of God after all.

Chapter Twenty-Three: The End…Well, Almost

They could wait until daylight, but it is best they go now.

The diesel engine drew the revenants from the prison, like witless children following the sounds of an ice cream truck.

In fact, the bus should attract monsters from every home, hotel, church, school, field, pitch, baseball diamond, food court, strip mall, Starbuck’s, Target, tavern, bar, museum, zoo, pet store, hospital, gas station, dealership, fire department and police station—anywhere where people used to live their lives—right up the interstate.

So they need a different plan. Wright decides to cut east, forgoing the highway as a guide.

She watches the tree line as they exit. She won’t look at the wall. She doesn’t dare. She doesn’t want to see Creedy, or what he’s become, hanging from a tether.

But, Ian can’t help but look. Creedy’s no longer living. Still, he’s not quite dead, either. He has turned, and he jerks spastically, bouncing off of the prison wall. Ian can’t help but stare.

In a couple of years, the rope will rot, and Creedy will plummet to the ground. He’ll get up again, even though his limbs will be shattered, and his crooked body will limp about, searching in vain to quench a craving that can never be satiated no matter how he tries.

Ian has a notion as he watches Creedy. Maybe the belief that vampires can fly took flight itself when someone mistook a ghoul’s terrible fall from some lofty precipice for actual flight? Conceivably, but Ian doesn’t want to stick around and recreate history.

**

When the bus breaks down, grinding to a stop less than two hours away, Ira Ridge goes insane. He screams at the driver to fix it. The chaplain says a prayer.

The driver ventures out, returning with a dire conclusion. He thinks the front axel is broken.

Ridge, in a rage, tells him again, “Fix it.” And don’t come back until it’s done.

The driver hesitates. He has doubts: doubts about his diagnosis, doubts about his ability to make the necessary repairs, doubts about this excursion. But he has no doubt that Ridge will kill him if he doesn’t try. Or at least look busy.

So he goes back to something approximating work, whistling to keep himself company and banging away on the undercarriage. So he does not hear the creatures when they crawl under the bus. His screams are muffled by the weight of them as they clamor over him looking for a piece.

**

Exhausted, twelve hours of ground beneath and behind them, the party collapses in a heap in the thick grass. They fall like dark dominoes upon each other in the twilight.

Wright uses Ian’s chest as a pillow. He strokes her hair, and she wraps an arm around his waist. But as tired as Ian is, sleep eludes him. He stares into the sky, the constellations above reminding him of the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree.

Suddenly a pinpoint streaks through the sky, drawing a reddish line east to west.

“A shooting star,” says Ian. Not the type of star you wish upon. It’s a “grazer,” a meteor that grazes the atmosphere instead of entering it. He remembers what Anne said about comets and the discord they bring.

In spite of what astrologists believed, scientists tried to quell the mass terror associated with comets and meteors. They tried to dissuade the belief in a death zone, a zone of poisonous gas in the comet’s tail suffocating all planets passing through its wake. If the tail did indeed contain cyanogens, they would be too diluted to hurt Earth’s creatures. But science did not stop farmers from letting their lands go fallow or cultists from taking their own lives. Even popular culture bucked science. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote of deadly zones in space, and Hollywood made films about people turning to zombies upon breathing gas from the comet’s train...

If they only knew how wrong, yet how right, they all were.

Wright feels Ian tense beneath her. “It’s probably just another satellite,” she says, reading his thoughts, “or space junk.” Before the New Order, NORAD tracked nearly 900 satellites and 13,000 other items, mostly defunct satellites, booster rocket parts, and fragments of both. Without NASA, a military, or news stations to operate, maintain, or track them, satellites changed orbit or collided with junk, begetting more junk exponentially (a phenomenon known as the Kessler Syndrome) and falling from the sky. This happens all the time.

This brings Ian some comfort. He tries to sleep.

They listen to their own breathing for an hour or more, too tired and too scared to drift into REM sleep. They waver between alertness and slumber, hovering in a semi-consciousness. Their breathing is rhythmic, almost like a song, like row-row-row-your-boat in round, a trance-like incantation.

Burt meets his gaze straight on. “You said that clowns were the only thing you can become simply by putting on the costume. I’ve got another. Transvestites.”