Resurrection (55 page)

Dear God…how could it be over? How could it end like this?

Like anyone else, Mitch had maybe wondered in some back room of his mind which of them would die first. And maybe what that would be like. But he’d always seen it as some impossibly distant point in the future when they were both white-haired and used-up. Not now. Not while they were in their prime. Christ, maybe forty-four seemed old when you were twenty, but when you were forty-four and healthy and on top of your game, it seemed like you were in your prime. And it was not natural to be throwing dirt in the face of the love of your life when you were in your prime. It was just…well, it was fucked-up, that’s what it was.

Mitch sat there, sweating and shaking, drawing from his cigarette and just dying inside. There was a great aching swell in his belly that went right up into his chest. He felt feverish, yet numb and cold and hot and too many thing to catalog. His skin felt tight like it couldn’t fit over the skeleton beneath anymore.

But was Lily really dead?

Was that the absolute truth?

And, yes, he knew it was. He could sit around pretending that she might turn up unharmed, but in the end that was only self-denial and self-denial was just the suspension of truth. Self-denial was keeping the razor of acceptance from laying your wrists open. You could hold it back only so long and when that blade finally cut you, it could be really bad. Better to let it cut a little at a time, rather than letting it gore you in one fell swoop.

Finally, if he hadn’t before, Mitch accepted.

And in accepting, there was torment beyond anything he knew or could imagine. Nobody ever claimed that life was fair, but this pretty much tipped the scales a bit much, now didn’t it? You wake one gray morning hearing that cold rain falling and falling, worrying about your wife who’d been on the edge of a nervous breakdown ever since her dirtbag nutso sister killed herself, and by the end of that day you see the dead walk and things crawl out of the cellar of hell. And to cap it off, one of them

possibly

calls your wife out into the storm and that’s all she wrote, man. End of story. End of the romance, end of the road. This was the big zero and eating lunch with the damned and trying to see by the light that failed.

Mitch opened the door of the van and stepped out into the police garage, buzzing fluorescent lights overhead casting an unreal illumination over him. He saw the battered green bench where they’d sat with Tommy’s cousin earlier that day. He dropped himself into it, wanting badly to fall to his knees on the concrete floor and cry his eyes out.

There would be no trip to the Rocky Mountains and no retiring to the Carolinas where Mitch had family. No more nights spent talking in bed or big Sunday morning breakfasts or lazy Saturday afternoon naps or backyard cookouts. No, in fact, there was no more anything.

And this was how the grief finally set its hooks into Mitch Barron. How it found him and held him and would not let him go, just kept whispering memories into his ears and taunting him with what could have been but would never be. Odd as it sounded, it was like being castrated. Having your balls cut off and held out so you could see them, see what you had and would never have again. And the really ugly part of grief is that this was only the beginning of the pain and torture and ugliness that would eat his mind away slowly in economical, bite-sized portions.

“How you doing, Mitch?”

He looked up and Tommy was standing there, looking uncomfortable, looking like he was on the edge of tears himself. Caught between a rock and the proverbial hard place. Wanting to grab his old friend and give him a hug, but unable to because of how he was brought up, the things that had been pounded into him by society. Men did not cry and they did not hug other men regardless of the circumstances. It was positively antediluvian and ridiculous, but still those archaic working class values and mores held on tight. Tommy was fighting against them, but in the end he simply lost.

“How you doing, old buddy?” he said again, choking on his own words.

Mitch stared up at him through red-rimmed eyes. “Not so good, not so good at all.”

Tommy swallowed. “You look like shit, too.”

Mitch wiped some moisture from his eyes, laughed despite himself. “Tommy, you’re a fucking asshole.”

“I know I am. Sometimes I wish I could be something else,” he said, seeming to mean it. “But, you know like I always say, my mother told me to go with my strengths.”

There was a few minutes of silence, then Mitch said, “I’m not leaving this town until I find Chrissy.”

“Sure, but Wanda Sepperley said she’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, but I got me a feeling in my belly that’s telling me otherwise,” Mitch admitted. “I got to find her. You with me on that?”

“Of course I am. Where do we start?”

“Let’s go see Wanda again.”

7

“All I’m saying, Neiderhauser, is to give peace a chance,” Henry T. Oates said now that his command was decimated, his mission scrubbed, and his raft done sunk. “You gotta quit trying to cornhole every unfriendly you meet, son. Now, next worm-sucking zombie you find, try hearts and flowers first. Because, as the Lord is my witness, one-two-three-four, we don’t want your fucking war! Sing it with me, Neiderhumper: One-two-three-four, we don’t want your fucking war! Louder, you ass-fucking communist flag-burning red limp-wristed pinko, louder! With conviction, I say! ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR, WE DON’T WANT YOUR FUCKING WAR!”

Neiderhauser stood there, making a sound that was close to a whimper.

Oates spat into the water. “Why, you war-mongering, peace-hating, red neck right-wing mother-raper! I’m thinking you’re enjoying this, Neiderhumper. I’m beginning to think that you are one Grade A, Class One lifetaker with absolutely no respect for human life. And, to tell you the truth, you are scaring me, son. You are making my pink, un-probed asshole pucker tighter than a virgin’s first kiss.”

Neiderhauser continued to stand there, the water up above his knees, that dead expression on his face. After they made it out of All Saints Cemetery, where Hinks had been pulled into the drink by that rabid pack of dead things, the Zodiac raft was in rough shape. The flotation chambers up near the bow had all deflated and they had a bad list that made it real tough to get any speed out of the old girl. But she’d gotten them out of River Town and into the fringe of Crandon before she gasped her last breath. And that was something.

Now they were on foot, all that remained of the squad, Neiderhauser and Oates. At first the water was up to their waists, but now it was down near their knees and that was saying progress, in Oates way of thinking.

Neiderhauser was in shock or maybe just fucking crazy, Oates was thinking. Hinks had gotten like that, too, after the tango in the alley. Now Hinks was dead and Oates’ squad consisted of just Neiderhauser and him. And wasn’t that just sweet? Oates had marched through the shit before with bodies dropping quicker than panties at a frat party, but he’d never lost so many men so quickly. Sure, Witcham was a hellzone, but command wouldn’t understand that and would like it even less.

Tell you what, Angela,
Oates thought, imagining his wife once again,
they’re not gonna sink me on this one. Don’t recall the captain saying I was taking these boys into combat and surely not against dead people. No, I will not be hung out to dry on this one, for Henry T. Oates might be one foul-mouthed, ballbusting, intolerant sonofabitch, but he is not stupid. And he will not be taking the fall for this.

Oates was standing at the intersection of two streets, studying his pocket compass with the luminous dial, knowing he had to head east to make it back to whatever civilization still remained in Witcham. West was River Town and the swollen Black River and east would carry them out of this. But to go east meant heading down a very narrow street with lots of abandoned vehicles and crowded buildings, too many places for unfriendlies to be hiding. And it was dark, damn it was dark.

“Well, I tell you, Neiderhumper,” he said. “This is certainly a pickle we’re in. I’m not liking what lays just ahead, but I’m not seeing a choice either.”

Neiderhauser just stood there impassively.

“Are you with me, son?”

Yeah, Neiderhauser was in shock. Just too much death and insanity shoved down his throat at once. It had sunk his mind down somewhere south of bad. He was physically there, but that was about it. Oates had seen it before. He remembered when he was with the 101
^st
over in Kuwait. They’d opened up on a Republican Guard unit with recoilless rifle fire and heavy machine guns, finished them off with a mortar barrage. They’d been driving old Russian trucks, those ragheads, and when the party was over with, there was nothing but a lot of mangled metal, burning bodies, and clouds of black smoke spiraling into the air. The stink of cremated flesh made quite a few of Oates’ platoon go to their knees and vomit. But there was a black guy named Robbins from Des Moines who was one tough boy, a real hard-charger. He went over to the trucks and caught sight of an Iraqi hanging from the wreckage of a truck, impaled by a shelf of twisted metal. He was on fire. In fact, his guts had been blown out and they were on fire, too, his bowels draped over the cab and on the ground, smoking and sputtering like those snakes you light up on the Fourth of July.

Robbins just lost it.

First he started crying, then screaming, then he fell to his knees and did the craziest thing Oates had ever seen: he yanked out his dick and started pulling on it. Poor thing was shriveled-up like a sun-scorched blacksnake on an Alabama turnpike, but Robbins kept pulling on it. And it did not seem to be out of any sexual need, for that dick would not grow, but maybe to assure himself that it was still there or maybe that
he
was.

The other men got real uncomfortable about it all. Oates walked over there and said, “Robbins? Daddy says no pee-pee pulling in mixed company, so put that little thing away.”

But Robbins kept at it. His eyes were glazed and he did not seem to aware of anything around him.

“I said, put that fucker away,” Oates told him. And when raising his voice an octave got no response, he went wild. He pulled Robbins to his feet and slapped him across the face and kept slapping him until that poor bastard fell down, sobbing. Afterwards there wasn’t a damn thing to do put shoot him up with some Demerol and medvac him out.

Combat and death got to men like that sometimes.

And that’s what had happened to Neiderhauser. Thing was, there was no medvac out here, wasn’t even a radio, and being that the squad was down to two, Oates needed Neiderhauser and needed him in command of his faculties.

“Listen, Neiderhumper, I’ll get you out of here, but you got to snap out of this shit because we just don’t have the time for a fucking touchie-feelie encounter session and a good cry. So I’m telling you

no, fuck that, I’m
ordering
you

to find your balls and act like a goddamn man. Now are you going to do that or am I gonna have to traumatize your ass with some of that world famous Sergeant Henry T. Oates cock-knocking therapy that’s known far and wide?”

Neiderhauser did not move.

“All right then,” Oates said, shouldering his rifle. “I am not gonna stand here playing fucking Statues with you like a couple kids in the park. No, sir.”

Oates walked over to him, slapped him across the face and then promptly kneed him in the belly. Neiderhauser doubled over with a gasp and Oates punched him in the back of the head with enough force to drive him down into the water. Neiderhauser came up swinging. He caught Oates on the side of the face and nearly flattened him. He swung a few more times and Oates just kept slapping him until he came out of it.

“What…the…fuck,” he kept saying as Oates put an armlock on him and held him pretty much immobile. “What…the fuck…did…you…do…that…for?”

“Because I had to, son, only because I had to.”

Neiderhauser stood there, panting, the rain running down his poncho. “I…I lost it, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“I’m okay now.”

“Sure, you are. Now let’s get out of here.”

They had powerful halogen flashlights taped to the barrels of their M-16s and they turned them on, heading down that winding street. With all the water, there was just no way to be quiet about it. They splashed along, all that racket echoing off the faces of the buildings, announcing their presence to anyone that might be listening.

Nothing but black water everywhere, rain falling into it and stirring up a mist that blew lazily over the surface. The lights created too many shadows and sometimes it was hard to tell if they were just shadows or something else entirely.

Oates heard a splashing just ahead.

“Oh, boy,” he said.

They came around a truck and three forms were standing there…a man, a woman, and a child. They were holding hands like they were waiting for the bus. But there was no way in hell they were normal, for they were pale and stinking, their eyes glittering like wet stones.

“Shit,” Neiderhauser said.

The little family let go of each other’s hands and started moving in Oates’ direction. There was something impossibly blank about those faces in the beams of the flashlights. Yes, they were decaying and bleached white, but they had a stupid, idiotic look about them as if they were doing things without knowing why, driven on by forces they could not comprehend.

“Take a walk,” Oates told them. “I hear there’s a Halloween party downtown.”

They did not even acknowledge that he had spoken or seem to understand. They just plodded forward, not stiff and shambling, but almost gracefully as if they had lived in deep water all their lives.

Oates sighted in on the child, a little boy. Swallowing, he gave the kid a three-round burst to the head. It blasted away lots of meat and skull, but that was about it. The kid kept coming. Neiderhauser opened up on the adults. The rounds chewed into them, but they kept coming, smoke boiling from the holes in them.