I Will Rise (31 page)

Staring harder I notice certain peculiarities within the mob. I notice missing limbs and frozen scowls and mindless clawing. I notice how it pushes and pulls and tears itself apart with no regard for safety, personal or otherwise. I notice that the streets, the concrete sidewalks, the celebrity stars that line them, are no longer visible. As the mob twists and turns and pockets of space briefly appear, I can see hundreds, thousands, trampled underfoot. The city streets are quite literally being repaved with the flesh, with the bones and blood of its denizens.

“The dead.” Allen delivers a nonchalant gesture down at the street and then turns from the window and returns to the couch. For once, he looks his age—old and tired and disheartened. Again, he careful lays the sword across his lap and motions for me to join him.

Again I refuse. Instead, I sit on the ground next to Annabelle and ignoring the mess, I pull her ruined head into my lap.

Allen lets out a huge sigh. “It’s a shame, you know. We really didn’t anticipate any of this. You were supposed to put an end to it the moment she was shot. I am afraid we underestimated your control. We overestimated the depth and intensity of your emotions.” Allen gets up yet again and walks over. “Alice was so sure of you. I was so sure of you.” Standing over me he unsheathes the sword and tosses the scabbard over his shoulder on to the couch. “You better move.” Allen takes a breath and raises the sword. “She’s about to wake up.”

I want to say fuck off, but sure enough, Annabelle’s head begins to shake from side to side. Her jaw opens wide and snaps closed. Mechanically, detached, like a fish in the throes of death, the mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, opens and closes. Her eyes roll wildly and a horrible groaning sound rumbles within her throat. It is clear that she is beyond fucked up, crazy, zombified, and I should be scared or abhorred, but I don’t care, I won’t let it get me down, she’s back and I love her and besides, who am I to judge? I’ve been dead for days.

Please be here
, I pray,
please be
dead like me and not like the roving hordes of beasties outside
. “Annabelle,” I whisper with hope.

Her head stops shaking, her mouth stops mawing and she stares up at me. Marvelously, the eyes seem to work. Dead, she is no longer blind. Cured by the absence of life, her eyes dart and take it all in. I smile and raise my eyebrows, but it doesn’t matter. There is no recognition, no sense, no humanity left in her eyes. A cold chill rattles up my spine and a sorrowful lump blocks my throat.

“Get back, Charles,” Allen urges.

“Fuck you,” I seethe. She’s dead and beyond, but just the same, I’m not letting him hurt her.

Annabelle’s head whips lightning fast at the sound of Allen’s voice. Her eyes become slits and a thick trail of saliva runs over her bottom lip and down her chin. Her body goes rigid. Before you can say “holy shit,” she is off my lap and rushing at Allen, jaws wide, demonically snarling.

I fall back from the force of her launch and inadvertently catch one of her lunging feet with my legs. Allen grunts and jumps back just out of her feverish reach as Annabelle crashes to the floor, arms flailing, mouth gaping. Before you can say holy sh—, Allen is on it. He jumps into action swinging the sword and a blinding trail of light slashes through the air. The blade makes contact and soundlessly slices through Annabelle’s neck. Cleaving flesh, muscle and bone with precision and minimal effort, the sword makes a loud crashing sound as it dead-ends against marble.

The snarling abruptly ceases and Annabelle’s damaged head rolls free of her body. Allen chases it, brings up a foot and holds the head in place with an expensive, impeccably shined loafer. A few swift blade swipes later he quarters the head.

I am shaking from head to toe, sweating profusely and about to lose it. My eyes jump from Annabelle’s headless body to her sectioned head and back. The eye wall resurfaces, guilt bears down, my mouth goes dry and I go woozy when I try to think about anything other than the living dead. My mind spirals and swings. It feels like my molecules are moving way too fast.

Allen is looking at me the same way he did earlier—you know, expectant, eager—and like earlier his fervent gape is about to throw the time bomb into reverse. He pushes with his eyeballs and nods his head.
Look at me
, he says without words,
Look into my eyes
. And I do, and I don’t know if this is his supposed physic ability or my fucked-up imagination, but through our eyes I experience a heightened flow of communication. Worlds of information pass between us.

Telepathically, Allen gives me his side of the story: I am here to save the world, not destroy it. Alice has been prepping Annabelle and me, for this moment since her death. We have been conditioned to stop the rising dead. I am here to release what’s inside me, what has been gestating inside me for the better part of thirty-three years, in response to the outbreak of “evil.” I am here to bring things to an end before the planet is overrun and the dead take over.

Enough.

But there’s more: Annabelle never loved me. She only pretended to do so to string me along to this point. Nobody loved me, not even my parents. Freak. Seizure Boy. Pawn. And on and on and on.

Inside I cower and ache and scream. Enough!

But there’s more: I am here to save the world. Save the world. Spare the innocents from violent, horrible deaths. Save the planet from sickness and decay and ultimate putrefaction. And on and on and on.

“Save us, Charles,” Allen mouths.

I am not necessarily fighting my impending eruption, but it seems to be waning just the same. “I don’t think I can,” I scream back at Allen. And I really don’t. I see what he is trying to do and it is a major impediment. Giving me a little hell, giving me a little heaven, telling me I am unloved and worthless and then telling me I am a savior is hindering me rather than pushing me closer to the brink. Whatever the truth, saint or sinner, I am sick of being manipulated. None of this crap makes me want to explode; it just makes me insignificantly angry and frustrated.

Allen waits and when he sees I am not going over the edge, his eyes widen nervously. He presses his unarmed hand to his forehead and yells, “Now!”

I think he is screaming at me and I am about to yell back that I don’t think it’s going to happen, when the bedroom door bursts open and Goon Number Two comes rushing out. He is carrying something. It is squirming and kicking and snarling.

Goon Number Two heaves the as yet unidentifiable fidgety thing onto the floor next to Allen, and then bolts away, taking refuge behind a minibar at the far end of the room. The squirming, kicking, snarling thing stands up. It is a little kid wrapped in an oversized pillowcase. In a matter of seconds the pillowcase is ripped away to reveal a wild-eyed, ravenous, zombie child. It takes me a second and then recognition floods. The zombie child is none other than Eddie.

Except it isn’t really Eddie. Well, it is—I mean it’s more Eddie than the Eddie in my dream, which explains my initial confusion. I remember him a certain way and dream him a certain way and here, in the flesh, I almost didn’t recognize him. He looks decidedly different than memory projects. But I digress—it is most definitely Eddie. Except it isn’t. Here we go again. I mean it is, but it isn’t the same way Annabelle wasn’t herself. It is Eddie zombified. It is Eddie dead and soulless and hungry. It is Eddie empty. It is a sight as horrid and ugly as it is heartbreaking and sad.

Eddie snarls a high-pitched snarl and rolls his dead little eyes. His head whips from side to side and his fingers tense into stiff little claws.

Allen seems barely aware of the miniature zombie before him. Instead he is sizing me up, trying to gauge my reaction. Yet another manipulation. If everything didn’t feel so forced and planned, I’d be nothing but mist, I’d have exploded a thousand times over at the sickening sight of Eddie in full-on zombie pain—but alas, it’s all too obvious and orchestrated. Besides, in my mind, Eddie is already dead. Not to be cold, but I am over it.

“We let him starve to death.” Allen tries to sound evil. He makes a harsh face and kicks Eddie in the back, sending him flying forward. The little zombie smacks his chin on the marble floor and a handful of baby teeth go flying.

“He begged and begged and we just listened to him waste away.” Allen lines up the sword and swings with crushing force, severing both of Eddie’s legs just below the kneecaps. The little zombie lets loose a bloodcurdling cry.

A shudder shakes me from the inside out. “Stop,” I shout.

My command eggs Allen on. He is trying to bring me over. He thinks it is working. “I let Harrison”—he gestures with his sword at Goon Number Two, who is still hiding behind the minibar—“stick his dick in this little fucker. I let him have his way with this sweet little child.” The sword flashes. Eddie is cut in half at the waist. Rotten intestines and glumpy organs splatter this way and that. Eddie’s mouth opens wide, but no sound comes out, just a river of black blood. The little guy squirms and tries to pull himself away with his arms, but doesn’t have the strength. In desperation he reaches out a diminutive hand and twists his dead face into a mask of agony.

I can’t watch anymore. This isn’t setting me off, it’s just making me sick.

I turn and look out the window at the sea of the dead.

“It’s not working,” I mutter over my shoulder. “It’s mortifying and it’s pretty damn disgusting, but it’s not working, so you can stop. I killed Eddie and I have to live with that. I touched him. It’s my responsibility and I can’t get angry at you for it. I can’t get angry over dead meat.”

On autopilot my left arm raises and shoots a barrage of tendrils at the loathsome, child-molesting Goon Number Two. They weave this way and that, encircling the minibar and reducing the goon and the bar to a pile of pulpy mush. The tendrils retract. Although I am finding it hard to get worked up over Allen’s zombie hacking, some crimes cannot go unpunished.

“But we kidnapped him! We hurt him!” Allen tries.

I can hear the blade slicing flesh and smacking marble, slicing flesh and smacking marble, slicing flesh and smacking marble. I keep staring out the window. I am not interested in seeing little Eddie diced into even littler pieces. “I’m sorry, Mr. Michael, if I could go off, I would. It’s just not happening.”

And it’s not, and I don’t know why.

I mean, I should blow the fuck up. I should spark off, what with Annabelle’s murder and Eddie’s kidnapping and the dismal trajectory of my own shitty life. There are thousands upon thousands of negative things I should be able to center on and draw from and use to will the instability inside me to come pouring out. On the other side of the coin, there are thousands upon thousands of positive reasons for me to detonate. Shit, I am your only hope. I and I alone can save the world. So what if the lot of you have treated me like shit—here is my chance to be the bigger man, to be selfless, the messiah, your savior. I can save you from having to endure the living dead, from hell on earth. Even better, I would finally be setting myself free. I would be able to take comfort in the notion that I was only a loser because I was designed to be.

There is major potential for a transcendent moment here.

So why can’t I do it?

Bringing it all down should be easiest thing in the world. I should be able to close my eyes and pull the pin. I would win either way. Positives, negatives, final freedoms—either way I win. Maybe that’s why it’s hard for me to get irate and go haywire enough to let go. Maybe I am too excited. Maybe I want it too bad. Joy only begets joy. Regardless, it should be easy.

But not for me.

Not for the number-one fuckup.

I just can’t do it. I’m trying and I can get myself worked up, but I can’t seem to take it beyond a certain point. There is something inside me that is fighting it tooth and nail. It is embracing what I have been designed to be.

It says,
Fuck them. Every last one of them.

It says,
You can really win, no trade-offs, no sacrifices, just pure victory
.

It says,
You could have more than you have ever dreamed of
.
You can take control. You can let them all suffer as they have made you suffer. You can let these idiotic groups of pseudo-compassionate, hypocritical liars die at the hands of the dead.

It says,
Fuck Annabelle and her duplicitous ways
.
She never cared about you, only her false dreamer.

It says,
Fuck Eddie, genius innocent, too smart for his own good, essentially only part of your life so that in the end he could be used against you
.

It says,
Fuck Allen and Alice
.
If the world needs saving from anything, it’s them and their disgusting, manipulative media empire.

I continue to stare out at the teeming masses.

The numbers of dead are growing by the second. In my mind’s eye I see dreams: a world of markers, a world of decay, empty, soulless, hungry. I see myself, arms raised, lording over the lifeless. I see destiny and a chance to change the world on my own terms. I see my place in a world of nothing.

I could be king.

I am not mindless and hungry like the others, but I am dead. I am one of them.

The empowerment amassing in my chest is stopped short. Before I know what’s going on I am flailing on the ground. My knees feel wet and cold. I look down to discover that fucker Allen Michael has chopped off my legs!

Bastard!

Millions of tendrils pour from the lacerated stumps. Allen slashes and hacks and jumps at me. Massive amounts of tendrils overtake him and begin scissoring him into pulp. The blade swings two more times before Allen is completely destroyed. The first swipe manages to take off my right arm. My good arm! The second powerful strike cleaves through my neck.

I watch the room tumble and spin.

After a few revolutions my head comes to a rest on its cheek, facing my ruined body. Miles upon miles of tendrils have spilled from my ravaged neck and the hole where my right arm used to be. Allen Michael isn’t even mush or a stain, he is dissolved completely; the sword, with stringy parts of his hand still attached, rides uselessly atop an ever-growing tide of tendrils.