Order of the Dead (8 page)

18

Rays of sun broke through the sparse cloud tufts that were lackadaisically reassembling
themselves and beginning to chase one another over the Blue Ridge Mountains. On
its way down, the morning sunlight was fractured by branches and multicolored
leaves until what was left of it reached a forest clearing, which was crawling
with movement.

In the clearing, four-and-a-half miles
from New Crozet, robed men and women were moving quickly and with purpose,
seeming to slither like serpents. They’d started their work before dawn and now
not one of them stopped to look at the rising sun, or to notice that its rays
were filtering through to them and alighting on the dark fabric of their robes.

Wordless commands were communicated
via nods and gestures, and carried out precisely. Measurements were checked and
rechecked and adjustments made. They were quiet and efficient, giving the
impression of having done this many, many times before, their proficiency at it
resembling art.

The forest-dwelling zombies were
watching covetously, leaving dormancy one by one—though to give credit to the
robed ones’ mastery of silence, breaking slowly—and trying to enter the cluster
of humans. The zombies were surrounding their prey, but were finding their
efforts to reach it denied.

The campground was rising out of the dirt
and spreading outward, like a boil that had been lanced and was being squeezed
persistently in a vice grip, until all it had to offer was revealed. The men
and women applied more pressure, and the boil’s rancid contents erupted, poured
out farther, found crevices in the ground into which to seep, and took root in
those places, sucking from the earth its vitality and converting it to
vileness, to a venom more ancient than that of the virus.

The growing expulsion was made up at
its limits of a fine netting that the men and women painstakingly moved outward
from their circles of trucks. They dragged it along the ground until they
reached the limits of its measure, and there they raised it and pinned it up on
the trees, creating a shield against the zombies.

They weren’t using noisemakers as
diversions. This wasn’t the time to show their hand, not just yet.

Among them were some of the most
talented spotters in the world, and they made short work of the zombies that,
curious, found their way to the limits of the rising camp.

After the work was done, the men and
women retreated from the perimeter they’d created.

One by one, they crept back into the trucks
in which they’d come, in which they’d been driving around the night before
looking for a suitable spot to set up their base of operations.

In one of the trucks, the one that looked
like it was the most cared-for, a dormant zombie stirred, and broke.

19

Alan was on top of Senna in bed, his arms wrapped tightly around her upper
back. Her legs were on his shoulders and her knees were pinned against her. They
were playing that regular game of theirs, where she submitted to having her
limits tested. She was shuddering now, and her eyes were begging for more, and
for mercy at the same time.

Their sweat was mixing playfully into
salty cocktails.

He waited for her shudders to die down
and the pleading look to leave her face, and then the game’s next round began
and new limits were reached and pushed and broken and more rounds were played. As
the game wore on, Senna’s trembling grew wilder, as she was losing her mind in sensation,
in the complete abandon of it.

When her screams died down to whimpers
and her shaking subsided, he would let her free, not right away, though, not
until…

The entire scene wavered around Alan.
The walls, the bedposts, the damp sheets, even the writhing Senna herself. He
locked his eyes on her trembling body, glistening with sweat, and tried to
steady his shimmering lover with his will, but he couldn’t.

All that he saw yielded to a brief fit
of iridescence that threatened to unravel everything, as if the glimmers that he
saw were the frayed ends of a knitted tapestry that encompassed the essence of
being, and the tatters were about to be pulled by a force greater than reality
itself.

Alan’s suspicion was proved correct.
The ends of the weave were pulled by an otherworldly force and the beautifully
assembled fabric within which he found himself came undone.

It unwound itself with such precision
that he understood it had been made to do so from the start. It had been a
watercolor that was from the first splash of color destined for submersion. A wall-hanging
that captured the crux of lust and made just for him, but one that from its first
stitch was already in line for unthreading, so the stitches, first one and all,
were made loose from the start.

He woke, drenched in sweat, and alone.

Alan squeezed his eyes shut and let
his mind drift back to the dream. It had been a rendering of a game that Senna
and he played often, and the intensity of the imagery had been almost too much.

Shaking off sleep, he honed in on the
now-familiar absence of dogs barking and birds chirruping and cars being honked
and driven too fast by blurry-eyed commuters in the morning rush, sounds that
he’d found annoying back when they came free with every box of cereal, or
whatever you chose to eat for breakfast, really.

He opened his eyes and rubbed them,
then yawned and untangled himself from the comforter, setting the bed to creaking
under his shifting weight. He was no longer excited, and the urges he’d felt in
the dream had faded. He stood up and felt the cold floor against his bare feet.
It was early in the morning, before dawn.

Smiling groggily, he remembered a
prior version of himself, one that was entirely incapable of mornings. Now he
was okay at them, moderately competent, at best.

Only
mildly
competent, he corrected
himself, if that.

Before the outbreak, it would have
been an impressive accomplishment for him to make it out of bed by nine, and on
a workday no less—for some reason the prospect of work had always made
wakefulness a greater burden to lift.

Past girlfriends had found it
endearing. Some had even called him a ‘morning zombie.’ Imagine the irony.

Past bosses had tolerated it, because
he’d been pretty decent at his job, putting documents together. How pointless
that all seemed now, rushing to put words on paper in a particular order to
close some deal here or there.

Most normal things that people had occupied
their time with before the outbreak seemed meaningless now. Survival after the
outbreak had to be secured more directly, by fight and flight and food growing,
and not by working a nine-to-five for currency that could be traded for
something to eat.

Staying alive in post-apocalyptic
America was a twenty-four-seven gig, even in a settlement like New Crozet. You
could let down your guard some, thanks to the perimeter fence, but if you were
a constant worrier, and if you’d survived this long chances were good that you
were, you’d call a perimeter breach a ‘when’ not ‘if’ scenario, and you were
always on your guard for it, always thinking and obsessing about it.

Not to mention that food growing and
preserving and canning could be made to fill all of your waking hours if you so
chose. There was good farmland that was still untapped in New Crozet, and it
was a potential treasure trove of rations and tradable produce, if only there would
be more hands to tend it.

Senna had never had a problem with
mornings; she’d always been great at them in fact.

They always got up this way—Senna
first and Alan shortly thereafter. He knew that she was probably preparing
breakfast for the two of them, but he still was unsettled each time that he
woke without her beside him. He’d rather she were there, and they could eat
later, but he knew she was too fidgety and energetic to stay in bed after she
was awake. Up before the crack of dawn was the name of her game, and she played
that one every day.

Beyond the early rising, Senna was his
diametric opposite so far as her personality was concerned. He was in the habit
of overthinking everything now, even more so than before the outbreak, when
he’d already been a serial over-analyzer. Senna, on the other hand, moved
easily and instinctively through the world in a way Alan never could.

Maybe that was part of why he loved
her so much, because he just couldn’t understand her. They often spoke past
each other, and couldn’t quite connect mentally, but perhaps that didn’t
matter. They were helping each other survive, and they cared for each other,
Senna for Alan in her way, and Alan for Senna in his.

He peeled off his sweat-soaked shirt
and let it fall to the floor, then pulled on the sweater and pants of which
Senna had relieved him the previous night. Then he put on his glasses and went
into the kitchen, throwing his wet shirt into the hamper on the way.

Alan filled a glass with water, drank
it, and stepped outside in his bare feet. Day was breaking and the previous night’s
cold hadn’t yet left the air. He shivered briefly, then walked around to the
front of the house, stepping in dew-moistened grass and savoring the feel of
it. It was cold and wet, and wonderfully alive. The hairs on his legs stood up
as the cold feeling ran up his body.

As he walked, he stole a glance at the
early sun. He pushed his glasses higher up on his nose and squinted, creasing the
skin at the corners of his eyes.

The breaking day was beautiful, as it
had been before the virus, as it was now, and as it would continue to be long
afterward, if there ever was an after.

20

The sun was invigorating the world with its rays, which were caught by the
blades of grass and refracted by the dew that had collected over the previous
night. Alan felt as if the wet grass and sun were lending him a natural, ancient
strength, and he smiled halfheartedly. Aided by nature or not, no man could overcome
the virus. Nothing could.

When he got to the front of the house he
readjusted his glasses again—it really was time to get around to tightening
those screws.

Jack Hodgins, a painfully thin eight year
old boy, was there, sitting on the porch next to Senna. Jack’s half-sister,
Sasha Hartley, was there too, sitting beside Jack. She was six, and not nearly
as skinny as Jack, but she could have stood to gain a few pounds. Sasha went by
her father’s name, and Jack went by his mother’s. Neither wanted much to do
with Jack’s biological father and Sasha’s stepfather, local barfly Larry Knapp,
and that was understandable, although the man had been getting better of late.

Senna and Alan had taken Jack out to
the perimeter fence for training some weeks earlier. He’d done alright, but he’d
been more nervous than Rosemary. Even though he was more enthusiastic about the
idea of killing zombies than Rosemary was, Alan thought that Rosemary would
fare better in a real encounter than Jack would. They were close to the same
age, but Rosemary had a little extra oomph, more resolve, something.

Sasha was still too young to go to the
perimeter fence to kill her first zombie, but the time for that was fast
approaching, and Jack was beginning to coach her so that she was more prepared
for the encounter. He’d always taken care of his half-sister, with no help from
his father, the renowned New Crozet drunkard.

A smile tinged with bitter notes began
to spread across Alan’s face. He stopped it from reaching its full length and
tried to look cheerful for the kids. Seeing Jack look after his half-sister
made Alan proud, but the situation with his father was a damned shame.

Jack and Sasha shared a mother, Susan
Knapp, who’d been Susan Hodgins before she had the pleasure to meet Larry, who
at the time he wooed her, hadn’t yet fallen into a bottle. Susan was now
deceased.

While Susan was pregnant with Sasha,
Knapp thought he was the father. After Sasha was born, however, Knapp raised
the question of paternity. At the time, the two year old Jack was the spitting
image of his father, olive-skinned and black-haired, short and with a wiry
frame.

Sasha bore no resemblance to Knapp,
Susan, or her older brother, Jack. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a pale
complexion, a set of features that was rare in town, and owned only by Sasha’s
real father, Adam Hartley.

Knapp had long suspected that
something was going on between his wife and Hartley, and then it was confirmed
not only by Sasha’s features, but by one of Nell Rodgers’s drunken outbursts.
As it had turned out, Nell and a number of other townspeople were well aware of
Knapp’s cuckold status, and had kept mum for an impressive length of time.

New Crozet was a hotbed of gossip, and
that was understandable given the tight space, people’s natural curiosity, and their
need to jabber about something while they farmed and otherwise passed the time.
That it hadn’t cropped up during Susan’s pregnancy was a testament to…well,
maybe nothing, but it went unsaid far longer than most juicy bits of blather in
the town usually did.

Knapp couldn’t confront either of the adulterers
who’d forced him to bear the weight of this humiliation. Susan had died from complications—blood
loss—shortly after Sasha’s delivery, and Adam Hartley had died on a supply
excursion outside the perimeter soon after doing the deed with Susan.

But Sasha was alive, and she was the
evidence of the treachery that Knapp latched onto. She was someone on whom he
could take out his anger. She was a real thing that he could despise.

As soon as Nell confirmed that Sasha wasn’t
his, Knapp rejected the girl. The rest of the town took to looking after her
and passed her around like a charity case, but they cared for her deeply and
treated her well. After Senna and Alan had established themselves in New
Crozet, they rose to the top of the list as her stand-in parental units.

When she got a little older and could
run around on her own, she stuck more with Jack.

Knapp had softened some over time. Whereas
before she’d been entirely unwelcome in his life, now he looked the other way
if she slept in his house, though he still didn’t let her eat at the table.
Jack snuck food away for her, and the other townspeople continued to help feed and
raise her, as they’d done all along. She was doing well enough, all things
considered. She was bright-eyed, cheerful, and growing quickly.

Alan thought Knapp should have been
more of a man about it, now and before. What Sasha’s mother and the Hartley man
had done wasn’t the girl’s fault. Then again, it was an unfriendly world, and
Knapp’s heartlessness was hardening Sasha, and teaching Jack to care for his
half-sister. Perhaps the children were being taught lessons best learned at a
young age, before they could have the chance to hope for something better.

Aside from the contemptible state of
his fathering, Knapp drank too much wheat beer to be of any use, besides in trading
the small amount of it he somehow managed not to drink himself. He made the
beer on his own, from wheat crops that he grew on several plots throughout the
town, the largest of which was in his backyard.

No one got into his business as long
as he didn’t go out of his way to hurt anyone, and he didn’t except for the
occasional loud-mouthed remark or uncoordinated thrown punch, though the
fighting had stopped years ago. He was meaner without drink than with, anyway.

New Crozet people, like all the survivors
who were left, didn’t like to get into anyone else’s business when it wasn’t
absolutely necessary. The world was dangerous enough without starting anything
else up. If he wanted to drink himself to death and vomit up rude remarks until
he croaked, so be it.

On this morning, Jack had something in
his hand, and he was eating it and letting Sasha take an occasional bite of it
too. At first, Alan thought it was an apple, but when he got closer he caught a
whiff of it, and that changed his mind.

Senna smiled when she saw Alan
trudging out toward them, and then Jack saw him and he smiled too. The boy waved
with the hand that had the apple-like thing and Alan was sure what it was now:
an onion, which Jack was holding in his hand and eating as if it were an apple.

Alan was close enough now that the
sharp and earthy smell was stinging at his eyes, and, somehow, by the magic of
hunger, making his mouth water, too.

“Morning,” Alan said.

“Good morning,” Jack said
enthusiastically. He chomped on the onion, sending pungent juice squirting from
the corners of his mouth.

“Morning,” Sasha mumbled.

“That looks like quite a breakfast,”
Alan said, pointing at the watering onion. “You hunt that down all by
yourself?”

“Grew it myself,” Jack said, nodding
happily. “You want to try it?”

Alan did, but he said, “No thank you,
Jack. You and Sasha eat it.”

“Jack was asking me some questions
about the crews,” Senna said. “Maybe you’d like to answer them, Alan, if you’re
awake enough?” She winked at him, and stole a look at his crotch. He looked
down self-consciously, made aware of the bulge that hadn’t quite subsided since
the dream.

“Uh, sure,” Alan said, stammering and
repositioning himself so that the dream’s leftover eagerness was less obtrusive.

He turned to Jack, whose rosy cheeks
were brighter in the cool morning air. “What do you want to know?” The sharp
smell of onion wafted up at Alan and he felt a familiar tugging behind his
eyes. He took half a step backward.

Sasha smiled shyly up at him, and
looked from him, to her half-brother, to Senna, and back around again.

“What were the crews like?” Jack asked
with a gleam of delight in his eyes.

The boy had always been curious about
life right after the outbreak, back when the survivors still thought the world
could be reclaimed, back when that notion hadn’t been proved, beyond the shadow
of a doubt, to be wrong.