Order of the Dead (38 page)

28

Pain exploded in Chad Stucky’s knee like a feeble wind chime caught in a sudden
gale. And that was still before he’d reached her. He was no stranger to that
pain, although it was usually far less sharp and not as sudden when it came, on
account of the exertion that typically dredged it up was lighter than what he
was currently doing.

Paying it heed in the amount of just
slightly above zilch, he kept going until he was kneeling by her side. Her
eyes—his woman’s beautiful green eyes—were wide and staring up in his
direction, but not really looking at him.

She tried to say something, but blood
bubbled from her mouth instead of words. The little spheres popped and let
loose red trickles, which then ran down the left side of her face and spread
into her silver hair.

She was prematurely gray, and Chad had
always thought the color suited her, especially frame as it did the green
luster of her eyes, without the streaks of blood in it, that is. Turning to
look directly up at him, her gaze connected with his own.

There was a final message she needed
to communicate, and the great strain of staying in the world a few moments
longer to do it would be overcome. She was stronger than this. They’d made it
so long together, and a few more seconds she could do—had to.

She didn’t need to say anything,
though, because Chad understood perfectly well. It was all there: in her eyes, in
the tiny, almost-floating spheres of blood spilling over her lips that should
have been streaming words instead of a red-coated, dying breath, in the feeble
attempts of her fingers to reach up and touch him that made her hands look like
they were pinned to the ground as if her palms were staked.

Helping her, he took her left hand
with his own and squeezed.

Kneeling lower, he kissed her forehead
and stroked her hair, in which the blood was spreading.

There was blood on his fingers now,
her blood, and he was massaging it deeper into the silver, and he could see
that, but that was okay, because it didn’t matter right now.

The only thing he could do, the only
thing there was
left
to do, was stay here, be with her. So he would do
that. He’d do that no matter what, even if the town came crumbling down around
him, until the zombies—and it would take more than one—tore him away.

She tried to raise her head, but he
didn’t let her, keeping her head in place with his hand in her hair, gently,
but also firmly. He wouldn’t let her eyes go where they wanted to. He wouldn’t
let them see what they wanted to see. To see,
that.

He could hardly look at it himself,
although he’d already acknowledged it was there. It was the exclamation mark at
the end of the sentence that was her life—
had been
her life.

“Look at me,” Chad said. His voice was
wavering, and it felt like if the words were allowed to keep on shaking, they’d
pull him into an inescapable madness, a padded room with no door, no windows,
no lights, only a solitary air duct, one that didn’t drip or rattle or make any
other noise that would allow him even a moment of distraction.

Because what she was trying to see he’d
already seen: the fragment of concrete from the fence that had knocked her
down, and which now was looking up at him
out of her,
occupying internal
space that was supposed to be reserved for organs.

And Laura obeyed and stopped
struggling to raise her head.

She gave her husband of the
post-apocalypse a beseeching look.

The red bubbles that weren’t words
were coming more slowly now. He watched them come out and pool at the corners
of her lips, gather and pool and wait.

A gurgle rose up from her throat, her
eyes took on a look of mild bewilderment, and then they seemed to be looking
somewhere else, not only past him, but past everything.

Chad Stucky went on stroking her hair
and kissing her forehead for a long time.

With its fence broken and parts of it
embedded in her, in his beloved wife, New Crozet seemed to have vanished. It
had been there one moment, and now it was gone and he was in the forest,
surrounded only by trees and the zombies lurking just over the next hill, or
just past the next cluster of oaks. It was as if being exposed to the outside
had popped a bubble that had always been transparent, but which had shown
itself more fragile than anyone had realized until now.

And she was his beloved, had been his
life, and now, he realized, he’d loved this woman more than he’d ever loved
anyone else before, in spite of what he’d thought. It had taken this ending to
make him see that, and isn’t that how those things always went?

She was gone, and so was New Crozet,
off with her in that place where her green-eyed wisdom could still shine.

He began to shake his head, as if
saying no, no, no.

But it was yes, yes, yes.

Yes.

The bubble was popped, and he could
sense no trace of its filmy residue on him or around him, couldn’t see it,
couldn’t smell it, couldn’t believe in it anymore. There was nothing of it left
in the entire world.

Behind his now resting wife, twin
columns of smoke were rising upward from the fence, thick and determined until
they got a little too high. There the wind began to pull them apart, tugging
them first one way and then the other, like some wind monster were sucking in
the smoke, delighting in the fine New Crozet cigar, or perhaps the Order of the
Dead’s smoke ’em war pipe, and then puffing it out across the rim of the sky.

Chad didn’t see that, because he was
still gazing at his wife. She’d been his last, and greatest, love.

PART THREE

Spotting

“The Order of the Dead isn’t real.

It’s just a boogeyman made up to keep kids
away from the fences.”

Senna Phillips, former rec-crew spotter, citizen of New Crozet,

the longest-lived settlement in
Virginia.

1

Shadows of dark were edging into the clearing outside New Crozet, reaching toward
the burning breaks in the perimeter fence with their long, misshapen fingers. Paw
at the town as they did, they were smothering the embers of daylight.

A mixture of sounds was coming from the
now-exposed post-apocalyptic town. Crying, screaming, command-shouting, and the
sound of feet scrambling on the dry earth could be heard distinctly in the
commotion.

Then there was another sound.

It was Alan’s voice, rising over the chaotic
din and cutting it off, and then he was yelling, which he did so rarely that no
one in New Crozet, and not even Senna who’d known him before they’d come to the
town, had ever heard him do it.

That was part of what made it so
powerful, that those listening hadn’t even been aware he
could
raise his
voice, much less do it so forcefully and with so much emotion behind the call
to arms that he was now declaring.

The Tack Truck was moving with great
speed toward the fence, mowing down anyone who was still in its path. Its
course was set for the advancing shadow carpet of storm that would be its
escape.

Moments later, it crossed the point in
the fence where Saul’s charges had blown New Crozet wide open. But perhaps the
town had done that to itself, by holding markets in the first place, by
allowing children to attend, and by wanting to welcome new traders at the end
of a long journey. By doing all those things good people were supposed to do.

In the darkening clearing outside the
town, the truck was taken in by the shadows. There, as if the cloud cover had
lent its engine strength, it accelerated, and sped off into the zombie-infested
woods.

Only one man followed the truck into
the forest. His scratched Wayfarers, which his lover had found for him in some
pile of old clothes in the New Crozet church, were gone.

They’d fallen and were lying in the
town proper, crushed and broken under the feet of the panicking townspeople.
The lenses, at long last, were scuffed up and broken too much for the vintage sunglasses
to ever be used again.

2

Alan’s pursuit failed. Sister Beth of the Order of the Dead shot him, and then
the zombies came to finish the job.

3

Brother Acrisius ground his teeth until he could feel the scrape work its way
down a nerve in his leg. He hated this. And soon he’d have to get one of the
children out of the camp and to the Fleshers to do his part and keep to the
bargain.

The exchange was to take place
tonight. If everything went as planned, the Order’s stock of the Sultan would
be replenished, Acrisius’s private stash of jerky would be as well, and they’d
all be packed up and on their way to the next town by daybreak.

Fuck,
how he could use some of that grand
Sultan right now, how he craved it, needed it, to ease the knots on his soul.

They were still a good distance from
the camp, and the world was becoming a sphere dominated by dark, even though it
was still early in the day. Ahead of schedule—tell that to the clouds, which
were preparing an onslaught this part of the world hadn’t seen in years, not
since before the outbreak.

The Order’s founder was behind the
wheel. He had on an expression of utmost serenity, of an otherworldly calm that
Brother Acrisius found unnerving. It was his old look—that of a man who had
access to an unseen world of information, of power.

The Order did business with the
Fleshers regularly, and needed to if they were going to stay in the running. The
Fleshers had everything: food, supplies, and a vast network of devoted
followers. They had dope too—the noble Sultan—and the Order needed the aid of
his great majesty to carry out their kidnappings.

The Fleshers had been kind enough, or
rather, had had enough business sense, to give the Order a taste of the Sultan
ahead of time, an advance. That advance was now keeping the townspeople unconscious
in the back, and some of it had been used in Acrisius’s and Saul’s private
games, but it was almost all used up now, and they had to get more.

To get it, they needed to trade
something for it, or rather, some-
one,
and that lucky individual had to
be under a certain age. ‘Not legal,’ as the Fleshers had put it to Acrisius,
who didn’t give a damn one way or another about their stupid jokes and hadn’t
laughed. It wasn’t like there were laws anymore, anyway.

A seam of lightning appeared in the
sky and the world seemed to collapse inward, toppling over onto itself in
great, ragged cutouts, some of which looked like they had barbs protruding from
them.

The first buckets of rainwater were
flung on the truck’s windshield, and more followed, obscuring the road. They
traveled like this for nearly half a mile, the storm growing thicker while
Brother Acrisius’s resolve thinned until it was the diameter of a saliva thread
just before breaking.

When his will reached that watery
girth, he was suddenly certain that they were being pursued, and not just by
one or two of the fucking townspeople, but by
all
of them. That was
impossible, of course, not only because the town had been full of worthless
settlement people but because the storm was making the forest near unnavigable.

Still, all he wanted to do was turn
around and look, and it was like a nasty, creeping itch that he couldn’t
scratch, because no matter how hard he stared into the side mirror, the only
thing he could see there was darkness and water. Dark water, watery dark,
sloshing back and forth, and back and forth and rolling nauseatingly ad
infinitum, and nothing more.

4

Mardu was squinting at the encroaching darkness. The headlights were off, and
they would stay off a little while longer to reduce their chances of being
followed, even though he was even more confident than Acrisius that the chances
of anyone coming after them were ultra-slim.

Settlement dwellers never went past
their fence. It wasn’t in whatever coward’s rulebook that passed for their
code. They’d stay put, even though their children had been taken from them,
because that was how the chicken-shit survivors lived.

Brother Mardu smiled. That was good.
Fear could be counted on. It was the gift that kept on giving, and it did so
predictably.

The next settlements they hit would be
easier, because now that they’d done it once, it was a known quantity. And when
they made their next run, it was unlikely they’d have to make their escape in a
storm quite like this.

The rain let up as they passed out
from under a heavy pocket, and they were afforded an illuminated glimpse at
what they were driving through. Tree trunks and pits in the road seemed
improbably close, as if they were conspiring to close in on the truck from all
directions.

Acrisius let out a squeal, then said,
“How can you see where you’re going? How can you see anything?” His voice was
higher than usual, and the words had come fast.

“Are you alright?” Mardu said. “Of
course I see where I’m going. Don’t you?”

Acrisius made no reply, and only
stared harder at the darkening murk of forest they were plowing into. He felt
like he was having an anxiety attack, and it wouldn’t have been the first one.

Brother Mardu shot him a look that was
equal parts concern and irritation, then fixed his eyes on the road again.

It’d be nice, Mardu thought, if the
ground didn’t subside on their way back. It was tough going, that was true, and
it was on his mind, but it wasn’t turning him into a nervous wreck like
Acrisius.

The ground wouldn’t give out beneath
them, Mardu was sure. Luck would be on his side on their journey back, he could
feel good fortune sitting there with him, and that reminded him of old times.
How strong he’d been then, how driven.

And, as he’d proven today, all the
luckier-than-the-devil days were
not
behind him. But that was a bit of
shit, too, because he was thinking about it, and when you’re
really
in
luckier-than-the-devil mode, you’re beyond analysis.

Fuck, he thought, and squeezed the
steering wheel harder.

The last of the light was fading from
the world as Mardu finally turned on the headlights. A trail of light began to
draw its way through the woods, marking the Order’s progress with a washed-out,
bumpily proceeding glare.

The truck was getting a good beating,
just the sort that it liked. From below by the uneven ground, and from the
flanks by reaching, greedy branches that scratched at the paint and exposed
sheet metal like the caresses of scraggly-clawed hookers. And the truck liked
that very much, especially the idea of it. To each its own, as they’d say if
they knew how the truck felt. To each their own is the fetishist’s sole rule.

Brother Saul—who was on his way to the
rendezvous point with Sister Beth—understood this concept well, too well for
his own good, in fact, but that was how he lived, and how he
wanted
to
live: under—or over, as the case may be, but usually under—Brother Acrisius in
all of his magnificent hideousness. And the truck, aspire as it might, had
nothing on Saul when it came to masochism.

To Saul, helping a man like Brother
Acrisius, one in so much pain, a victim to such
unique
disfigurements,
and with a passion to dole out wonderful abuse, was his highest calling,
the
highest calling, really. It was what he’d always wanted to do, to serve someone
so completely, to exist only for them, and he’d gotten exactly that with
Acrisius.

It hadn’t been the same with his prior
masters. Their hearts hadn’t been in it the way Brother Acrisius’s was. His
current master’s entire
soul
was in it, and when he was with Saul, he
expressed himself to the full, letting free all of his base desires, all of his
wrath, all of his venom, and with that, all of his being.

No one had ever opened up to Saul like
this before. On one occasion, after beating Saul with all of his might—which
did hardly any damage, the older man was weak and half-paralyzed, after
all—Acrisius had actually cried. He’d broken down and sobbed for nearly an
hour, telling Saul everything, baring all of himself.

At the end, Brother Acrisius had
confessed that he’d never shared this much with anyone, and, to Saul, that was
the greatest prize there was. Saul believed one thing that most other people
didn’t—or hadn’t come to realize or understand yet, is how he’d put it—and that
was that some people, Acrisius being one, could only show love by giving pain.
And in Brother Saul’s world, that was okay, more than okay, actually, sought
after.

Mardu looked over at Acrisius and saw
the sweat dripping from the man’s brow as if his skin were popping out kernels
of water. He was always emitting salty water from his face these days, and
Mardu suspected there was something really wrong with him, and more than just
the usual.

Maybe he was dying—not this moment,
but soon. The man had long seemed to have a tenuous grasp on life, like he was
hanging by a moldering thread, and the abyss beneath was waiting, looking into
his soul and grinning hungrily. But maybe that was all an illusion, a house of
smoke and mirrors haunted by semi-paralyzed reflections.

Acrisius and Saul were the only ones
he trusted now, the only ones who didn’t have a two-thirds-formed coup written
on their faces, and though they gave him the creeps, they were all he had. And,
he told himself, they’d be enough.

The Order had fallen apart some but it
was salvageable. He was really starting to believe that now. It could be saved.
The entire Order’s faith in him would be put back once he re-upped their fear.

Restore the fear and they’ll believe
again. And that’s exactly what he was going to do. He didn’t care if the storm
was trying to wash the whole damned, rotten world away, he was going to have
his Order back.

The truck’s wheels hit a dense
overgrowth of tree roots and the whole thing jerked sideways and careened out
of control. It was a familiar feeling for Mardu, one he’d come to know as the
captain of the Order’s sinking ship. He fought a tug of war with the steering
wheel, his teeth clenched and the sweat that had been building on his brow now
dripping from it. He would hold firm, the truck wasn’t going to flip over, and
the Order wasn’t going to be lost at sea. Not if he had a hand in it.

Tree limbs dragged new scars in the
truck’s sheet metal, but, under Mardu’s guidance, the truck found a way to get
all of its spinning feet back on the ground. He breathed a sigh of relief,
letting it seep slowly out of his nose. There was no need to let Brother
Acrisius see it, the man appeared to be on the verge of another stroke, and
Mardu still needed him, and, more importantly, the strength of his minion,
Saul. Mardu used a shirtsleeve to mop the sweat from his face, and on he drove,
straining his eyes to see in the gloom of the storm.

When they’d made it to the agreed-upon
rallying spot, they picked up a sopping wet Sister Beth and Brother Saul, then
got going again. Crowded in the cab with all of them, Beth looked angry as a
devil in an ice storm, and to add insult to injury, she was soaking wet too,
her clothes clinging to her small body.

She didn’t tell them about how one of
the townspeople had pursued them, because she didn’t care one way or another
and was preoccupied with her own problems—those of the failed coup. Saul didn’t
bring it up either, because Acrisius seemed extremely tense, so he figured he’d
save it for a calmer time when they were back with the others.

Saul looked like he was puzzling
through something in his mind, and though he was just as wet as Beth, he
appeared not to notice it, engrossed as he was with watching the gears turn in
his head.

Together, Mardu, Acrisius, Saul, and
Beth, with the prize of townspeople they’d captured, journeyed the rest of the
way to the Order’s campground in silence.