Order of the Dead (3 page)

5

Senna allowed herself a backward glance, reassuring herself that Alan was still
behind her, and, had she needed it, that would’ve helped brace her for what was
about to happen, but she didn’t need it, because this was routine and safe, for
the most part. They were inside the perimeter, and though something could
always go wrong, the elements that could be controlled here, were.

Past Alan, she could see that the town
was quiet, encapsulated in a semi-darkness made of night, moonlight, moonlit
reflections, and the dim, wandering emissions of lamps from a few of the
houses.

The lights were low because it was
late, but also because electricity was carefully rationed to avoid overloading
the transmission lines. An overload might require Senna, Alan, and some of the
other experienced townspeople to risk their lives traveling outside the
perimeter for repairs.

A person could be kicked out for
wasting power, but it had never been done, even with drunks like Larry Knapp
who frequently passed out with their lights on. He was the town’s expert
imbiber, after all, and New Crozet looked after its own, such as they were.

People didn’t use that much power
anymore anyway, hardly running ACs in the summer or using appliances, as if electricity
had gone out of style over the years. Maybe it was because turning the machines
on brought the past to life, reminding them all of what was lost for good and it
was better not to stir up those feelings, better to sweat it out in the heat of
summer without the latest soap opera on the tube than to dredge up idle sharp
things.

The zombie had now closed most of the
distance to the open window, in front of which the three townspeople were
standing. Given the state of its body, its bones, it was a wonder the thing
didn’t fall over—you had to give it to the virus sometimes.

Rosemary edged closer to Senna, and
Alan took in the movement with his peripheral vision, but his gaze remained
fixed on the open frame.

Up in the tower, Corks said, “Here it
comes,” letting the words spill out just under his breath. “Hell on earth.” He
set his jaw, firmed up his grip on the rifle, and braced himself.

Opting to skip any further
introductions, the zombie thrust its misshapen head through the open window,
scraping off a scraggly, decay-chewed ear in the frame. The loss of the ear was
like a small dead Lego popping off of a larger Lego structure, said larger
structure being just as lifeless as the earpiece—no bleeding, hardly any wound,
no harm no foul.

Its mouth was working furiously,
snapping at the air with the four teeth it had managed to keep unclaimed by the
elements, chipped and blackened though they were, each separated from the
others by pockets of gum so decayed that the collapsed tooth sockets weren’t
visible.

An eye was missing, its empty socket
fringed with tattered eyelid remains, and the eye that was left was bulging out
of its hole, looking like it had been caught on something and pulled out
partway.

Then the zombie opened its mouth wide
enough to unhinge its deformed jaws, and its rot-blackened nub of tongue lolled
out to the limit, reaching for the girl with the virus’s desperation.

“Now,” Senna said. “Squeeze the
trigger, just like we practiced.”

Raising the gun, Rosemary tried to
keep the weapon upright and aimed at the intruding, rotten head, which now
appeared to be stuck in the window, but her fingers were rubbery and numb and
she felt as if the gun might tumble out of her hands.

She’d known what she was going to have
to do at the fence before they’d come there, had been preparing herself for it
mentally, practicing each step in her mind, but now, in spite of all that, she
found that she was more afraid than she’d ever been in her life. Children were
kept away from the perimeter so she’d never seen a zombie up close and the
sight was more horrible than she’d imagined.

She wanted to turn and run, wanted to
get away more than anything else in the world, but she wouldn’t because Senna
and Alan were there, and she wasn’t going to be weak in front of them, and as
much as the tears wanted to come—they were already there, ready and waiting
behind her eyes—she wouldn’t allow it, she wouldn’t surrender to fear.

Senna stepped forward and steadied
Rosemary’s hands just as the girl’s own resolve was strengthening, as if she’d known
what was going through Rosemary’s head and when to step in for that final push.
Probably, she did know, in the same way she knew when a dormant zombie was
about to break.

“Do it now,” Senna said firmly.

Rosemary obeyed. Holding the gun
steady with both hands, she squeezed the trigger, and the gun coughed, emitting
a pathetic noise from its sound suppressor. Though it would have preferred more
fanfare, the bullet flew regardless.

6

The first silenced shot put a hole in the zombie’s nose, to the right of center,
the bullet forging a dark pathway into putrefying flesh.

There was a short pause, like a
stutter, as the zombie’s head jerked backward, and then it was straining to get
through the window once more.

Choking back a whimper, Rosemary
squeezed the trigger again.

The second bullet found the empty eye
socket and there was another pause in the zombie’s movements, but this time,
there was no restart.

The zombie went limp, its head sagging
over the window frame, which kept it hanging in place like an accidental
gallows.

The girl took a breath, and it felt
like the first one she’d had in a long while. Eyes wide and realizing her
entire body was shaking, she looked at the gun in her hands with wonder, and
then turned and stared up at Senna, whose hand touched down on her shoulder and
gave a brief squeeze.

Then Rosemary turned and looked at
Alan, who nodded, trying to make the gesture supportive.

After failing to force a smile onto
her face, Rosemary looked away, her gaze drawn uncomfortably to the corpse that
was hanging partway through the fence. Senna took the gun from her and put it
away, and Rosemary was glad to be rid of the thing.

Alan was pleased, and he was so
pleased in fact, that he almost smiled, and if the circumstances had been
rosier, he might have, because he was happy that Rosemary had fired again after
the first shot hadn’t worked, and that she’d done so on her own. Getting the
children used to the zombies enough so they could do more than freeze up, so
they could take action and fight and get out of harm’s way, was the first step.
As Alan and Senna knew well, being frozen by fear did not a survivor make.

Alan went to the limply hanging head,
and its stench reached for him, the familiar notes it played on his olfactory
nerves recalling scenes from his past, images that he normally suppressed.

Now it was the Voltaire II
flamethrower’s turn to work. He hefted it, swung it backward and then swiftly forward,
connecting its muzzle with the sagging and disfigured jaws that had sought them
all so doggedly moments earlier.

The strike with the thrower was a
trained behavior, engrained in him through years of service on the rec-crews,
with Senna, and with many others, most of whom were now gone, and not to
settlements like New Crozet. Hitting a zombie corpse with a different part of
the Voltaire II, one that wouldn’t later be cleaned by the fire’s heat, risked
contaminating the weapon and returning to town with a piece of poisoned flesh
hanging stuck to the Voltaire II’s chassis.

He hit it again, and one more time,
and knocked the grotesque beast back through the fence and out of the town, where
it fell on the bare dirt and kicked up a meager cloud of dust around its
lifeless body.

From his post in the watchtower, Corks
thought the corpse, lit up as it was in the spotlights, made an image that was infernal
enough to decorate the cavernous hallways of hell. He hadn’t been religious
before the apocalypse, but now that demons had crawled rotten from the nether and
occupied the space of the living, faith seemed an appropriate response. And
better late than never.

Alan climbed a ladder to the platform
that had been sitting, parked in its space against the outer gate, waiting for
them to be done with the first part of their work. He went to the edge, aimed the
Voltaire II, and fired.

Flames leapt from the flamethrower’s muzzle
and spilled eagerly through the chain link, engulfing the corpse and window as
Alan swept the Voltaire II from side to side, the stringy muscles of his arms
and upper back drawing taut under the strain.

Beads of sweat grew on his face and
glimmered in the firelight, which illuminated his brown hair, giving it a
reddish tinge. When he was satisfied that enough of the zombie had caught, he
let go of the trigger and gestured for Rosemary to join him up on the platform,
though it made him near sick to do it.

Was there shame in making a child look
at this? Maybe, but what choice did they have?

She had to see it, to be desensitized,
gradually, and that was why he’d climbed the ladder and ignited the zombie without
her, because she didn’t need to see the full extent of it, not yet.

She’d probably seen more than enough
through the fence tonight, but maybe not, and if she saw all of it before the
fire could drown it out, there could be questions that were better left for
another time.

Why did they look like that? What did
the virus do to their bodies, to their bones, to make them look that way?

Yes, it was better to talk about all of
that later, after she’d had a chance to digest this fine morsel of experience.
It was a wonder there were children at all, and ones who’d grown up in
settlements without ever seeing…without ever knowing…

There would be questions either way,
he knew, about what she’d heard, what she’d smelled, what she’d done and why.
But that would come in the future, when she was no longer too scared to ask
them, and that would buy them all some time, for a while, anyway.

Rosemary climbed the ladder and got up
on the platform next to Alan. Without being prompted to look, she craned her
neck toward the flames while keeping her feet away from the platform’s edge.

The corpse let out a series of pops,
spitting embers at the fence, like a poorly-timed salute of moldered fireworks.

Frowning, Alan looked at the tree line
once more. There was no movement there other than that of the shadows, which were
creeping back and forth as their conductor, the moon, floated in and out of
cloud cover.

He looked behind him, making sure
Senna was still there, then up at the watchtower, where Corks was, glancing
between them and the forest. Something wasn’t right. But that was a matter to
bring up later.

Alan turned back to Rosemary.

“You did fine tonight,” he said.

He wanted to ask her if she was
alright, and tell her that she’d been brave, but it was better not to weaken
the girl’s resolve with talk like that. She could do better than she had
tonight, and she should. She would need to be far better if, God-forbid, she
was ever outside, or if the perimeter was breached.

7

“The virus is in the soft matter,” Alan said, “in the skin, meat, organs, and
bone marrow and it doesn’t go away when we kill them. It stays there and if we
eat the meat or if we have an open wound that comes in contact with the meat, the
virus gets in us, and we become like them. That’s why we burn them, and we keep
burning them until we can see that the bones are charred and all the soft
matter, everything that can have blood or liquid in it, is gone.”

Rosemary was looking from Alan’s face
to the burning corpse, doing an admirable job of keeping her trembling down to
a minimum and entranced by the image that his glasses were reflecting, that of
a burning carcass shooting sparks from its grizzled remains.

“Do you understand, Rosemary?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Good.”

He noticed movement in the periphery,
turned to track it, and his eyes found the tree line, but he could still see
only the shifting of the shadows there. Apparently, musical chairs in the
autumn moonlight was a game they didn’t tire of. He turned around and watched
as Senna moved to the window at the far end of the alley and looked through it.
After a moment she turned to him and gave a brief, puzzled expression, and he
nodded. She’d seen it too.

“All the meat has to be burned away,”
he said, turning back to Rosemary and reiterating the point.

The creature’s hide, now a burning patchwork
of matted fur and ulcerated flesh, was beginning to show the sinew and bone
beneath it. The fire was working its way into the muscle meat, and thin smoke
trails rose up into the night air when the flames pressed into a moist spot.

He wondered how there could be any
moisture left in the zombies after all these years, but it was no more unlikely
than a virus that killed its hosts and animated their bodies after death.

Probably from soaking up the rain, he
thought.

A gust of wind snatched up the smoke, lifting
it to the platform, and the heavy odor of rotten meat burning made him grimace.

Trying to avoid the smoke with no eye
to what was behind her, Rosemary stepped backward and though the ball of her
foot was met by the wood of the platform, her heel found only air. She screamed
as she began to fall and immediately clapped her hands over her mouth, so much
stronger was her training to stay quiet at the fence than her instinct to grab
hold of something to stop her fall.

His jaw clenched, Corks saw Alan catch
hold of Rosemary’s elbow with one hand, and pull her back onto the platform
effortlessly as smoke from the corpse billowed around them.

Alan was only slightly taller than
average and wiry, but years of carrying the Voltaire II and his survival gear
had made him stronger than his size suggested. Even if Rosemary had been a full
grown man, he would have had no trouble.

“Be careful,” he whispered. “No matter
how bad the smell may get, no matter how unpleasant the situation you find
yourself in, you always have to stay focused. It’s better to hide in the most
disgusting hole than to show yourself to the virus because you’re uncomfortable.”

“I understand,” Rosemary said,
stammering. “I’m sorry.”

“Now look,” he said, pointing through
the chain link at the zombie. “Do you see how the bones are turning brown and
opening up in places?”

Rosemary nodded, stifling a cough. Unabated,
the smoke was continuing to surround them.

Senna looked on, her face wearing an
expression of familiar distaste. She and Alan both knew the girl had asthma,
and they were trying to be as quick about it as possible, but these points were
vital, and had to be made crystal clear.

“That’s a good sign,” Alan said. “It
means that the fire is getting in them and purging the virus from the deepest
parts of the body.”

Rosemary wheezed, and Alan knew he had
to cut it short.

“It’s hot enough now to burn all the way
through without us watching,” he said. “Alright. That’s enough for tonight. You
can climb down now.”

The wind shifted, directing the acrid smoke
to the tree line and then westward along it.

Rosemary began to climb down from the
platform on unsteady legs. Senna stood behind her in case she stumbled, but she
managed to climb all the way down without help. Alan descended the ladder after
her.

Senna put an arm around the girl and
they backed away from the gate. When they were aligned with the sentry’s tower,
Senna signaled to Corks, who nodded and began to open the gates gladly,
relieved that the exercise was over.

Alan stayed behind for a few moments, looking
through the window while the middle gate was opened, watching the flames eat
away the zombie’s carcass. The putrid meat had disintegrated quickly, and with
it now gone, the bones were winking at him, seeming to want to discuss
something. That was all in his head, he knew, but he sometimes got that way
when he watched them burn.

The bones, he thought.
God,
the
bones. What the virus did to them, seeing it could drill madness straight into
your brain.

The break. The fucking break, over and
over and over until they looked like this.