The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (15 page)

Now twenty feet away.

Now less.

Marco bucked, whipped his legs, yanked at his trapped arm, tried to roll the corpse sideways. No good–the thing was too goddamn strong, impossible to keep hooked much longer. Marco’s thumb trembled, bent backwards. Pain spiked up his wrist.

Gonna break
, he thought.

Fragments of dead skin flaked off the burning corpse’s arms and chest, swirled like embers past Marco’s face. The flames raged above him, around him; he tasted salt and gasoline on his tongue; his ears filled with the roar of the fire, the hiss of the ruptured engine, the grunts of the monster atop him. It was too much, all of it. For a moment he felt himself lost in the chaos, a sensory overload of smoke and death. Then he blinked, and blinked again. Regained focus.

‘Screw this,’ he wheezed.

He looked up, and the other corpses had arrived. Crawling towards him under the hood of the overturned truck. Hideous faces crusted with old blood, black gummy drool.

Just five minutes ago he’d been safe in the Jeep, focused on Danielle. Now he felt a new burning in his eyes, and he battled back tears.
Sorry, Delle.
He’d always called her ‘Delle’. A joke between them: he was too busy for her entire name. Had to be shortened, one syllable only. Then off to his next appointment, his next patient.
Sorry, Delle. I wanted to find you.

But he’d run out of time for her. Again.

Frustrated, he screamed with all the air he had left, choked off with a gasp as the burning corpse grabbed his throat, and the four other dead males crouched over him, and he wished that the truck’s gas tank would just fucking explode
now,
end him quick…

… and then a loud
whump
changed everything.

It happened fast, confusing him in a dozen ways before he made sense of it. He’d been bracing for the first cold touch of dead fingers, the first agonising rip of flesh from his body, when suddenly on all sides of him the four corpses crashed to the pavement, face-planted and twitching as if they’d been hit with a shovel, all of them at once. Christ, the truck
had
exploded–no, not exploded, but toppled onto the corpses;
no, not the whole truck, just the hood, he realised at last. The heavy hood had popped and swung down hard from above, clubbing the corpses across the backs of their skulls, dropping them. Only the fiery corpse atop Marco had been low enough to escape the blow. Unfazed, it snapped at his shoulder. Marco twisted, avoiding the bite, shocked to be alive still.

The scorched green metal hood hung a foot above his head.

Then it began to lift.

And locked back into place on the truck.

What the fuck?
Marco craned his neck, trying to get a look up behind him.

Around him, the corpses struggled to rise, stunned but not finished.

At the edge of Marco’s vision, a figure loomed. Another corpse stooping under the truck. But different somehow. Nimble, quick-footed. Hopping between the fallen dead men. It leaned in, and Marco flinched. But the hands didn’t grab for him. Instead they struck at the soldier and just as quickly darted away, leaving a white nylon rope strung from the corpse’s ankle.

And then an even bigger shock…

… a voice, speaking close behind Marco’s ear.

‘Hold on,’ it said. A curt command, odd sounding.

‘I can’t…’ Marco began.

Too late. The pain in his hand boiled over; he gasped as he lost control. His thumb popped from the dead man’s socket, and the corpse, now unstoppable, lunged for his neck…

… but instead it jerked backwards, teeth connecting with nothing. Behind it Marco saw the rope snap taut, a straight line vanishing from view. Dragging the corpse. The huge dead man launched in reverse, biting at Marco’s chest, hips, legs as it went, unable to connect, but at the last moment it lashed out a strong hand and caught Marco’s boot.

Oh shit
, Marco thought. Time for a ride.

Together they bounced from beneath the truck, and Marco had to contort to avoid a blazing puddle of oil as he and the corpse skidded onto the street. His mind was a daze of fear, relief, adrenalin. Bewilderment. His eyes followed the rope: fifty feet away, it coiled once around a telegraph pole and–holy Jesus goddamn Christ–there was a
man
, more dreamlike than anything real, a lean little man running back towards the truck, the rope slung over his shoulder as he hauled on his makeshift pulley, moving the giant corpse twice his weight.

The man pulled even with Marco. He was Asian, young, mid-thirties. Dressed in military fatigues, soaked with blood around the shoulders and chest. He nodded at Marco, but the gesture was nothing friendly; his eyes were hard and serious. An automatic rifle crossed his back.

A thought sped towards Marco’s lips–
use the gun!
–but before he could speak, the corpse howled and swiped at the passing man, releasing Marco in the confusion. The man skipped easily over the corpse’s swinging arms and continued up the street, still pulling his line.

Marco rolled twice and rested on his stomach, panting, his shoulders skinned. The corpse flopped away in the opposite direction, the pavement grating a trail of bad meat from its body. It slammed the telegraph pole where the rope looped, and with a grisly
snap
Marco heard even from a distance, the dead man’s knee snapped the wrong way–crumpled around the pole so that its toes flattened against its front thigh. Roaring, it writhed there, broken, sizzling with flame.

Marco stared, transfixed. A hand grabbed his shoulder.

‘Up,’ said the Asian man, beside him again. ‘Here come more.’

The four fallen corpses had recovered, crawling from beneath the truck.

‘I-I see them,’ Marco stammered, his throat hoarse from
the flu, and the noxious smoke, and the stranglehold clamped on him by the soldier corpse. He scrambled to his feet.

‘No,’ the man said. ‘Not them.’ He slapped Marco twice on the back, hard, and pointed at the silver-domed train depot. ‘
Them.
’

Dozens of bedraggled corpses flooded through the station doors. Across the parking lot.

‘Oh,’ Marco said. ‘Them.’

Wu was not impressed by Henry Marco–at least not the Henry Marco standing here, half dazed outside the Maricopa station, a husk of the man Wu had seen in photographs. The intelligence dossier from MSS had included personnel files hacked from the defunct mainframe of St Joseph’s Medical Center. Colour photos taken before the Resurrection–Doctor Henry Marco in a white coat, handsome, well groomed. His eyes had been sharp and intelligent, and on his mouth a reserved smile demonstrated politeness for the camera, nothing more. He had appeared fit, healthy in body and mind. ‘Cunning’, the dossier had warned. An ‘adaptive thinker’ with ‘strong survival instincts’.

Wu saw nothing of that now.

This Henry Marco was barely more than a corpse himself. Blood and black ash layered his face. Oily sweat streaked his forehead, drawing lines in the ash before dipping into dark hollows under his cheeks. His ribs jutted from his sides. His eyes were tired, unfocused, and he teetered on his heels. This Henry Marco was weak. He would have died, if not for Wu’s help.

Wu frowned. Either MSS had been wrong, or the years out in this punishing environment had ruined Marco, depleted his strength and vitality so that now he was nothing.

How can the mission possibly need this man?

Briefly he considered putting a bullet in the American now, then setting off to complete the objective on his own, leaving the doctor’s bony carcass for the dead to gnaw. But he bristled at the thought of so much wasted effort–the weeks journeying to Arizona, the enormous risks taken to remove the RRU squad and intercept Marco here in Maricopa with the burning truck.

And, most important, his orders from MSS were explicit. Get Doctor Henry Marco to Sarsgard Medical Prison–alive, by force if necessary. If the primary target–Roger Ballard–wasn’t at Sarsgard as speculated, then Marco’s personal knowledge might be critical. Disposing of him here, ahead of schedule, would be a flagrant disobedience, foolish and dangerous. If, for any reason, the mission failed, and MSS learned Wu had deviated from instructions…

He recalled agents he’d known in Beijing, deactivated and convicted of treason. Kneeling on their raw knees in concrete rooms. Pistols levelled at the backs of their heads.

‘Let’s go,’ he barked at Marco, frustrated.

The corpses from the train station had reached the closest kerb, a mob of rancid men in stiff-collared shirts and women in crusted blouses. A blue-uniformed ticket agent missing its lower jaw pushed through the crowd. Its tongue dangled, wriggling like a fat worm.

Marco blinked like a man coming out of a trance. ‘My Jeep,’ he ordered. The authority in his voice caught Wu off guard, and when Marco turned and bolted, Wu hesitated for the shortest moment, reconsidering.
So
… perhaps this
was
the Henry Marco described in the dossier after all. Wu frowned, uncertain about whether the realisation pleased him. He bent and grabbed up his daypack where it rested on the pavement, then sprinted after the American.

The orange four-wheeler sat lopsided on the next corner,
half up the kerb, its bumper crashed into a black trash can. The engine was still running. Without hesitation, Marco ducked into the driver’s seat and reached across to throw open the passenger door; Wu dived inside just as the corpses reached the Jeep. The dead ticket agent slapped the hood, its tongue bouncing.

Marco grabbed the wheel, then let go, hissing. ‘Fuck,’ he said and flexed his hands. His palms were burned and bloodied, sticky-looking. ‘That hurts.’

‘I can drive,’ Wu stated. His tone was factual, not sympathetic.

‘No,’ Marco said. ‘You’re shotgun.’

Wu frowned, not understanding.
Shotgun?

‘Passenger seat,’ Marco said, and Wu bristled, feeling the American had read his thoughts too easily, but there was no time for ego as the corpses piled and pressed against the vehicle, and the Jeep swayed from one side to the other, then back. The passenger-side window was a few centimetres open; grey fingers waggled through the crack.

‘Go,’ Wu said, annoyed. ‘They’ll break in.’

Marco answered with a gun of the gas pedal, and the Jeep squealed, its tyres seeking grip on the asphalt. With a shudder it surged from the kerb, chucking corpses aside, rolling over others; the ticket agent disappeared underneath, and the cracking of bones played loud in Wu’s ears as the Jeep gained speed. It broke from the crowd without trouble and hit the street, fishtailing as Marco fought the wheel with his damaged hands. Wu watched him, curious. The American stared ahead, his face scrawled with a pained expression.

A sudden roar of sound and light brightened his face, and the Jeep rocked.

The gas tank of the overturned truck had exploded–a dark red fireball mushrooming from the undercarriage, sweeping the street. The nearest corpses vanished, consumed
by the cloud; others vaulted forward, hit hard by the shockwave. A moment later the fire collapsed on itself, spitting out corpses that burned like walking torches as they staggered after the Jeep.

‘
Shit!
’ Marco yelled.

He wrenched the wheel, and the Jeep zigzagged between burning dead men and body parts as if racing a slalom course. Wu slammed twice against the passenger door, grimaced but said nothing. A block later they’d escaped, sailing westward up a side street, past a rickety wooden water tower. Wu observed the receding train depot in his side mirror, the metallic roof shimmering with red heat; below it on the street, unlucky corpses stood wrapped in shrouds of flame. One by one, they flopped to the ground and grew still. Smouldering away to ash.

Silently Wu bid them goodbye.

His plan so far had worked, much to his relief. Twenty hours ago, back on the mountain trail, he’d stood at his lookout above the Arizona desert, fresh from exterminating the American special forces team. A few metres behind him, the paralysed black soldier screamed pitifully as the old female corpse peeled apart the man’s face. Wu concentrated, blocking out the screams. His rifle weighed heavy on his back, as did his conscience. A single bullet could end the man’s suffering–but Wu needed the Resurrection to saturate the bloodstream, pumped by a beating heart. A quick death would not work. And so Wu waited. Patient. Preparing his next move.

Defeating the Americans had been a clever use of force.

But Henry Marco would require more.

Wu had paused then, noticing a sudden silence in the mountain air. The soldier had gone quiet–dead–and only the moist smacking of the elderly female’s mouth persisted. If the man’s body was not consumed entirely, he would
resurrect in any time from minutes to hours; it varied, based on some unknown variable between individuals–blood type? Immune system? Metabolism? Scientists had not yet unlocked the secrets.

But one thing
was
known: the dead repopulated by stealing numbers from the living. The old corpse, while alive, had likely been a mother, perhaps a grandmother. Now, resurrected, the female would be a mother again, this time reproducing in a manner that defiled nature.

Which was exactly what Wu’s plan required.

With ease he’d rolled the frail female aside with his foot, sending it down the embankment into a nest of saguaro bush; it stuck there, wailing. Dragging the soldier was harder. The man was large, nearly twice Wu’s weight. He grabbed the man’s ankle and heaved; the big body scraped a few feet along the trail. At least they’d be going
down
the mountain.

He’d dragged the man a dozen metres before he realised what his plan was missing.
Idiot.
With a scowl he looked behind himself towards the encampment.

He had to go back.

Cautiously he’d climbed the slope, poked his head over the low-lying rocks. The camp was a slaughterhouse, blood and innards and glistening flanks of fat and meat spread along the red clay of the mountain. Ten or so corpses squatted around the dead Americans–
Nelson, Guerrero, Pozzo
, he remembered–but to Wu’s good fortune, the headless grey-bearded sergeant lay off to the side, unattended. Wu crept into the clearing, keeping close to the rock wall. The corpses didn’t look up, lost in their own racket of crunching bones, snapping tendons, slurping juices. Wu held his breath. Gingerly he rolled the sergeant’s body to the edge of the plateau and dumped him over. The corpses didn’t seem to hear.