Last Rites (17 page)

Lucy followed the others through the front room. She wanted to think of herself, to simplify things in that way. But her head always got so filled with other things—the hunger, of course, but also anger and disgust at other people, and those feelings seemed to grow stronger rather than weaker. She couldn’t ignore them. But they grew equally as fast and powerful as other thoughts: worries about an ever-growing list of other people—at first just Truman, but then she’d added Will and Rachel, and now the three women here were just as important to her. Then at times like this morning, Lucy would worry about the craziest things—like whether she’d had children, and what had happened to them and whether they might, just possibly, be all right. Think of herself? She didn’t really remember what that would be like, and it seemed like a long time since she had. Sometimes it seemed like she was the last thing she thought of.

The sun was low, not even over the tops of the trees. It was still cool, too, with mist off in the forest and hanging in some of the lower places in the fields. Everyone assembled in front of the gate, the black and white stripes of their uniforms swaying in a mass. Outside the fence Lucy saw a large vehicle. She didn’t know anything about cars and trucks, but it was one of those big, squat things the Army started using, after they got rid of Jeeps. It was done up with greys and greens in an attempt at that pattern hunters or army men would wear, with the letters “NSP” stenciled on the hood and door. A man dressed in a uniform stood at a machine gun mounted in the open back of the vehicle. He raised a bullhorn to his mouth.

“All right, you pus fucks!” the amplified, crackly voice from the bullhorn announced. “You’ve got work to do. If you understand what the hell I’m saying, make sure those other dumb fucks around you follow orders. If you do what we say, then there’ll be lots to eat when you get back. I’m talking the real stuff.”

The crowd murmured and seethed around Lucy. Even Carole and Christine looked excited by this offer, though Becca appeared more noncommittal.

“Yeah, yeah,” the man spoke from the army truck again. “You understand that part, don’t you? Follow the road northeast. We marked it along the way with yellow paint. Just follow the yellow signs. There’s a big truck stop. You’ll see the sign—really tall. You can’t miss it. More of you dead fuckers must have moved in there, because our foraging parties were attacked. We need it cleared. Then keep going till you find a town. That must be where they’re coming from.”

Two other men came from behind the truck with big duffel bags, which they set on the ground. “When you get to the town, use these,” the man with the bullhorn said. “I know some of you old timers know how they work. But do
not
use them at the truck stop. If any of you do, I’ll shoot every one of you myself. Do you understand?”

Enough of the gathered dead nodded to satisfy the man, apparently. “Good. So let’s review.” He held his hand up and extended a finger for each instruction. “Follow road. Attack truck stop. Follow road some more. Open bags. Attack town. If you do all that right, then it’s feeding time when you get back.”

The truck started up and drove a little ways off, then the gate slid to the side. The group marched slowly through the opening. Lucy watched the men in the towers and on the truck. They didn’t look too concerned at having so many dead people now loose. They’d gotten used to it, and the dead around Lucy looked pretty unlikely to go against orders. Everything went according to plan. Everyone here was too used to rules, too used to how things were “supposed” to be. Lucy didn’t really know how things should be, and if she tried to think about it she got distracted and confused by all kinds of thoughts, but she knew somehow that shuffling along in a crowd like they were now was guaranteed to fuck things up worse, turn them around and make them uglier than they were to begin with.

As they got farther from the compound, the mob could spread out more and they weren’t jostling one another so much. Lucy looked off into the fields and woods and considered just wandering away. But then she’d definitely never find Truman again. And what about Will and Rachel? She doubted they’d ever really come back for her. People made all kinds of crazy promises. Maybe they even meant to keep them at the time they made them, but life got in the way of that. Life had its own demands and schedules and it seldom matched up with anybody’s plans.

She didn’t really blame them. But she did want to get back to Truman. She didn’t think there were many dead people like him. He’d need her help to survive, and she needed him to make survival more bearable. The women here were nice, but most everyone else was a sick savage, and God knows anyone she’d find out in the wilderness on her own would probably be worse. No, better stick with the group for now and see what happened. Not everyone had someone to come back to, however, so why were the others marching along so obediently, once they were away from the living people and their guns?

“Why don’t people wander off?” Lucy asked.

“Better to stay in a group,” Carole said. “Safer. Easier.”

“Food,” Christine said. “No more food anywhere out here. Nothing good out here. Just wild people and broken things.”

Lucy didn’t know what to think of that. Killing was one thing—that was a thrill she missed even more than life itself, because she didn’t remember what life had been like, while she contemplated and longed for the perfection and purity of a good kill every day. And to eat after such an act? That was glorious and fulfilling in every way. But to kill dead people, whom you couldn’t eat? That didn’t make much sense. And then just to be given food? Handed it like a pet? That didn’t sound right either, but all Lucy could do was go along with it for now.

They marched all day at their slow pace. As the man had said, various abandoned vehicles and other things like overpasses and telephone poles were marked with yellow paint to remind them of the route. Then the sign he’d spoken of loomed ahead of them. It was shattered and bent, but it was definitely the one. Under it the large, low building of the truck stop spread out, surrounded by islands of fuel pumps. Most of these still had roofs over them, though some had collapsed. Burnt-out vehicles were everywhere.

The horde stopped at a distance from their target. There was some shuffling around as some of the dead men went through the group, growling orders. Lucy noticed one tall black man in particular. His name was Ben, and she had seen him in the camp before, usually with a couple men following him, as if he were special or in charge. Ben and his current group of men took the children and some of the women to one side and told them to stay there, along with the two big bags and whatever they contained. The men then separated the remaining people into two groups, which would attack the building from different sides. Lucy stayed close to her friends so the four of them would be in the same group.

At the end of these preparations, one dead man jumped on top of a wrecked car, holding a pipe above his head as he shouted, “New Sparta!” The crowd gave a low rumble of approval. “Fresh meat!” he shouted louder, and the response was much more vigorous. In the distance, Lucy could hear an inarticulate moaning in response. She thought how much more comforting that sound seemed when you were a part of the group making it, compared to how chilling it seemed now.

The man jumped off the car and the two groups surged forward. “Kill! Kill! Kill!” they chanted. Now the group identity and hysteria were much more infectious and intoxicating, and Lucy felt herself chanting with them—at first just in response, but quickly building in intensity as the feeling took hold of her.

Plants had reclaimed the parking lot entirely, with grass up to Lucy’s waist. Suddenly she heard screams up ahead, and she stumbled into the people in front of her, who had stopped running. The chanting stopped, too. When the group started moving again, sifting off to the right and left, Lucy saw what had stopped them: a large pit, into which three of their men had fallen. The pit must’ve been covered and they hadn’t seen it. They were writhing and moaning, impaled on dozens of pointed sticks, the tips of which were now stained black from their insides. These dead people they were fighting were smart enough to lay traps? Lucy didn’t know if her group had expected such behavior, but they didn’t show any fear or concern at this development. The pit was too deep to reach the wounded men, and the sides too steep to climb in and help them. Lucy seemed to be the only one concerned with them anyway, and she doubted the three men could still move even if they were pulled out.

“If I get like that, finish it,” Christine said next to her. “No sense sitting around, waiting for someone else to do it. It looks like it hurts.”

Lucy nodded, then turned her attention forward as the crowd again picked up momentum. Off to their left, the other group seemed to have encountered some similar traps, because they’d fallen behind. Lucy and those around her came around the building, milling around the fuel pumps. There was no more chanting or moaning, just the shuffling of their feet and some sniffing as they tried to locate their enemies. The wind must not have been right, because Lucy couldn’t pick up any new scents.

Inside the building was dark and she couldn’t see any motion through the windows. Shit—they were probably going to have to charge in there? Lucy tightened her grip on the pipe.

None of this felt right. It was—what would you call it? Not just foolish and dangerous—it was definitely those things, but that wasn’t what was bothering her. It was wasteful, senseless, even—dishonorable? She didn’t really know what made her think of that, but the word stuck with Lucy as she looked around. Then her gaze went up to the canopy above the fuel pumps. An enormous log hung there, maybe eight feet long and two feet thick. It looked like it had lots of short branches sticking out from it, like one of those prickly plants people used to have in pots on their desks. What the hell was that doing up there?

Lucy only walked away from the truck stop that day because it suddenly clicked in her mind that the log was another trap. With a shriek, she lunged to the left, slamming into Christine and sending both of them down behind a fuel pump. They knocked over a couple other people, just as Lucy heard the whoosh of the log swinging by, and more screams. She also heard what sounded like the metallic ring of an aluminum bat clanking on the pavement.

At almost the same moment Lucy and Christine landed on the concrete, there was a shout, and people came streaming from the building. Lucy stood, hauling Christine up next to her, just as their attackers came within reach. Filthy, nasty things they were. Half naked, they looked like they had lain in the dirt every night since the world ended. Worse than living people, if that were possible. At least they didn’t smell bad, like the living, but their bestial, ruined faces and bodies more than offset that slight grace and made them the most repulsive things Lucy had ever seen.

As she raised the pipe over her left shoulder for a backhanded swing, she knew she’d been correct a moment before: this was sickening and stupid and—most of all—pathetic. But looking at these open-mouthed wrecks was so revolting, it made swinging the pipe seem the only reasonable response. Then when she felt the shock of the weapon impacting a skull, that made it seem not just right, but good. Really good.

As the first hideous thing fell to the side, Lucy remembered that, try as you might to dress it up before or after, and call it honor or rightness or necessity, killing finally came down to that glorious moment of power, when you took away someone’s last bit of energy—their last hold on this world—and let it flood into you, as though it would fill you with everything you ever needed or wanted, in one rapturous burst. Then Lucy didn’t need to think, didn’t want to. It all just came naturally and beautifully, her arm coiling and uncoiling with an agility she had previously only felt when playing the violin. The whole experience was quite close to that, in fact—furious, passionate, and beautiful.

Christine moved beside her, swinging both her weapons, as well as slamming her shoulder, butting her head, or kicking her feet into everything that got in her way. The larger woman was slower and more methodical than Lucy, but no less graceful. As she fought, Lucy realized the usefulness of their absurd uniforms: in the chaotic jumble of flailing, grappling bodies, there were several times she would’ve smashed some of the people in her group, if they had not been wearing the distinctive striped shirts.

The whole fight lasted no more than three minutes, certainly less than five, though it seemed as if they had been hacking their way through the stiff, ugly bodies for hours, turning such unclean matter into a perfect, sublime spirit of destruction and cleansing.

They both turned as soon as the last one fell, and climbed back over the bodies to where the log trap hung from the canopy above them. Lucy now saw that wooden and metal spikes covered its surface. Becca’s baseball bat was on the ground there, and Lucy bent down to pick it up, then looked to see what had happened to the girl. She lay about twenty feet away, on her back. Her arms moved up above her, like she was trying to clutch at something, or swat something away.

Lucy and Christine went to her, kneeling down next to her. She smiled up at them. “I’m sorry,” Becca said. “I didn’t see it. I should’ve—I should’ve warned you.”

Lucy brushed the girl’s hair from her face. The exhilaration of the battle had drained from her as soon as she saw the poor woman on the ground. Now Lucy felt numb, even a little dizzy. Becca obviously couldn’t get up. Her back was probably broken and she was going to die here in this shitty little dump, so some loud, stupid assholes could get fuel to drive their noisy, useless cars and trucks. It shouldn’t be this way. This didn’t make any sense, but this is what happened when you did what you were supposed to, what you were told to do. Lucy seethed inwardly—not just at Becca’s injury, but at the fact that they were all denied the tiny relief of being able to shed tears. Why was that so much to ask?