DAVID DUNWOODY

EMPIRE

WEB SERIAL

Prologue

Letter Dated Sept. 20, 2007

To whom it may concern,

To anyone that's still alive, anyhow. If you're holding this letter, presumably you've looted the Pointe Bank in Jefferson Harbor. No hard feelings, though I am curious as to how valuable - if at all - the dollar is in your day. I guess there will always be those who stake their well-being on green pieces of paper, even when society lies in ruins around them.

So what do I need to tell you? You must have already gotten the jist of what's happening. Yes, they're undead. No, they're not your friends or loved ones anymore. The soul has left the building and been replaced with...well, something.

Let's go back to the beginning. I mean the beginning of everything.

When the universe erupted into existence, spitting cosmic detritus across infinity, tears were made in the fabric of space. Now, the universe is constantly opening and healing wounds on a quantum level, but these were unintentional rifts. Big ones. And though they were sealed off in a nanosecond, things still managed to pour through.

Tendrils of dark energy, unlike anything in our reality, stretched out and were snarled in the cooling masses that would become planets, moons, asteroids. One of these tendrils got caught up in our planet, Earth.

There are a handful of places on the surface where the dark energy breaks through. We called them Sources. By "we" I mean the United States government. I assume it's still called the United States? After all, a bank doesn't go unburglarized for centuries. Anyway, these Sources had a singular, horrifying property. Any dead animal - from dogs to humans - lying in the vicinity of a Source would return to life.

Most Sources are located in places that Man left long ago. That's why you never heard accounts of the dead getting up and walking around - at least not enough accounts to make anyone believe it. But the government still looked into it. You'd be surprised at the ridiculous bullshit that we spent taxpayer money investigating.

Now see, those first undead - or "afterdead" as we classified them - weren't contagious. They fed on the flesh of the living, of course, but they couldn't pass the reanimation catalyst into their victims. There was no epidemic, no plague.

Until we made it.

You won't believe me, but it was an accident. We weren't so stupid as to think we should engineer and weaponize a "zombie virus". It just happened. Evolution, perhaps. Judgement, maybe.

So here we are. At the time of this writing, the infection is spreading at a maddening rate. It's strictly blood-borne but it's already gotten overseas. We're well into the "martial law & religious panic" phase of the apocalypse. The public are learning about the afterdead's abilities. Things you probably already know. If you don't, here's the cardinal rule: headshots don't kill them. HEADSHOTS DON'T KILL THEM. Burn them to ash. Always.

It won't be long before most countries have collapsed beneath the ever-increasing weight of the zombie threat. I personally believe we're already outnumbered. I can only wonder what sort of world you live in.

Now you know where it came from. I know that, somehow, understanding your end makes it easier to accept. I've accepted it. The bite doesn't even hurt anymore...admittedly, I'm a little curious about what happens next.

Sergeant First Class Esteban Cervantes

United States Army

1.

Still Life, Blood on Assphalt

May 1, 2112

Atherton was dying and he knew it. With every weak beat of his heart he felt his life ebbing out onto the road. He wasn't sure where he was wounded, or how. Didn't really matter.

He was lying a few hundred yards from the overturned towncar, which itself rested against a smoldering military Humvee. The road was supposed to be secure but they'd gotten an escort anyway. And it was the escort that had flipped up ahead of them, and Atherton had swerved the towncar, but not quick enough to avoid the collision.

He angled his head towards the wreck and looked for signs of life. None. Was he the only one ejected? It figured. Thirty-four, in his prime, handsome swatches of gray just starting to show in his hair. At least he would be prepared for death, could breathe his last words as he felt it coming over him.

A pale horse walked around the wreck and towards him. Upon it was a rider and Atherton knew his name was Death.

He wondered if Death looked alike to every soul he claimed. For Atherton, at least, it was the traditional black robes, with a hood casting a shadow over the spectre's face. As he drew closer and dismounted, Atherton saw his white face and black eyes, like marbles set in clay. "Have I already died?" He asked.

"Not yet." Death answered dispassionately. He stood over Atherton, blocking out the noonday sun, and surveyed the landscape. The silence was unbearable. Would Death just wait there until Atherton bled out? "I work for the Senator," he coughed.

"The Senator?" Death frowned. "He was in the towncar." Atherton explained. "I am - was - his aide."

"The Senator isn't dead." The spectre murmured.

"The others...?"

"They are."

"I don't understand." Atherton could taste blood on his lips and gums. His head was swimming from the heat, and he forced himself to concentrate on speaking. "You just got here. But they're already dead?"

"I don't normally collect souls myself." Death replied. "I merely mark their passing. Only in extraordinary circumstances..." His monotone voice trailed off. He was eyeing the wreck. All the while his ghostly steed stood silently.

"Why did we crash?" Atherton croaked. Fate? Was there such a thing? Did Death have a contemporary who wrote the endings of human lives in a great book? Or was it just an accident, a fucking accident? He wasn't sure which possibility offended him more: for some emotionless sentinel to decide that he should be torn open and dumped onto burning asphalt in the middle of nowhere; or for shitty driving to be his undoing.

"There was a body in the road," Death said. "The soldiers drove over it, believing it was dead. It wasn't." Death's gaze was fixed on the wreck, and he reached a chalk-white hand into the folds of his robes.

"It was an undead?"

Ignoring the question, Death pulled his hand out, and with it a massive scythe, far too long to have been concealed on his person, the curved blade catching the sunlight and throwing it into Atherton's eyes. He groaned and rolled his head to the side. That's when he saw it.

The lone undead shambled around the towncar and stopped. It could see them both, Atherton realized. Its hands and face were caked with blood, not its own. Must have been in the Hummer, feeding. It had caused the crash so it could eat. Atherton felt blood and bile rise in his throat. Wait...was that how he'd die? Was Death here to watch as this undead dug out his guts?

Then, the spectre took two steps forward and swung the scythe out in a horizontal arc, passing cleanly through the belly of the zombie.

He rested the scythe at his side and stood still with the patience of eternity.

The undead didn't move. There was no cut across its midsection, as if it had been struck by a phantom blade. Then, like a paper cut, the line bled into view, and the zombie's torso fell to the ground, sputtering brown viscera.

Atherton tried to process what he'd just seen, lying on a deserted road in his own blood with the Grim Reaper leaning against his dreaded scythe. The zombie...it wasn't just cut in half, it was dead. Really dead.

"You came to kill it."

Death nodded without looking down at him. "It, and others."

Atherton tried to speak again but couldn't. His vision was failing. Death turned now, and Atherton trembled at the sight of the blade. Without a word, it was slipped back into the dark robes and out of sight. Death knelt beside him. "Your life is like a flame." He again reached into his robes, this time pulling out a burning candle. Despite the blinding sunlight, the flame seemed to cast its own luminescence. It didn't hurt Atherton's eyes at all. It was calming. Familiar.

Death poised his thumb and forefinger around it. "When you die, the flame merely ceases." And the tiny, pulsing light did grow smaller, then faded altogether.

Atherton was dead. Death crushed the candle's wick out and returned it to its place.

The spectre gathered his robes and climbed back onto the pale horse. They continued for a while down the road at a lazy gait, down to the gates of Jefferson Harbor.

2.

AfterBirth

The Jefferson Harbor Landfill was located at the end of town, near the swamp that defined the western perimeter. Concrete slabs had been erected in a crude wall at the edge of the swamp, with wire fencing used to cover any gaps. The whole mess was threaded with equal parts barbed wire and overgrowth. The west wall was a worthless measure if ever there was one, nothing like the well-built barriers on the north and eastern perimeters. To the south, the Gulf of Mexico.

Gene Pastore stood atop a mountain of filth and stared at the dense swamp. What was the point of putting that eyesore inside the perimeter? It wasn't even worth dumping in. The landfill's girth was expanding south, onto the beach. He'd have to burn another ton of this shit before it hit the water.

There was a P.O. boat just off the shoreline. Gene waved to the two patrol officers standing on it. They stared through him. "Didn't see me, I guess." He muttered. They were local boys, weren't they? No reason not to be polite, unlike the stone-faced Army fellas that had just pulled out of town. The radio said that military support was being withdrawn from all coastal cities. The Senate wanted people to move inland. Why? So the Senators and their families could take all the country's provisions? "Beats me," Gene said to himself. As far as he was concerned, moving everyone into the heartland was like building the rotters a triple cheeseburger.

God, it was hot. Boiling inside his ratty old uniform, Gene mopped his brow with an old handkerchief and dropped it into the garbage. His back was killing him too. At the age of sixty, he had hoped someone else would take his place, give the old man a break. But there was no retirement in his future. Just rats.

Rats, rats, rats. Most of them were undead, too. Only Gene could tell the living from the dead. They just had a look about them, a cold, solitary look. And the dead rats were fatter than the other ones. They fed on their own kind, and their kind were plentiful.

He was wearing waders and thick work gloves. The bastards wouldn't try to eat him but they'd probably bite if he wasn't careful. Gene carried a shovel to pin the vermin down and hack them up. Kicking them into a fire was easier, but garbage burns had to be controlled, small. The smoke rising into the sky brought undead. Not only that, but while Gene was used to the stench of the landfill, burns were another story. Maybe it was the charred, half-rotted flesh of the rats; the smell of death after death. Gene spat and wiped his mouth with a gloved hand.

"How does a starving town make this much fucking garbage?" He asked an undead rat. It was perched atop a broken chair, watching him intently. Part of its face had been gnawed off. A tiny red eye still rolled around inside the bony eye socket.

"You and me both." Gene said. He swung the shovel and smashed the rat down through the chair. These little buggers had actually given him a respect for the living rodents that still dared enter the landfill. It wasn't man versus animal anymore - it was the living against the undead. Gene brushed a fly off his cheek and wondered if they were undead too. Gone from eating shit to eating each other.

There was a sharp crack from the ocean, then another. Gene saw one of the P.O.s pointing a sniper rifle past him, toward the swamp. Must've seen something. What good did shooting at it do? Those boys were too scared to come ashore and nail the rotters. Gene hefted his shovel in one hand. He'd take care of any unwelcome visitors.

Speaking of which, another rat was lumbering over piles of soggy cardboard, distended belly dragging along. Gene aimed the blade of the shovel at its dark face and thrust downward. The rat skittered aside with surprising speed, just in time to avoid the strike, and the shovel sank into the refuse.

Gene shook the crap off the shovel. There was something bloody underneath the cardboard, too big to be a rat. It was partially wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket with smiling dinosaurs in bright colors. He considered this for a half-second before a terrible thought came to him.

"Oh my God."

He gingerly worked the shovel underneath the blanket and peeled it away. The underside was crimson, yellow dinosaurs obscured by gore. It was difficult to loosen; someone had lovingly bundled the misshapen form, tiny and frail and barely recognizable for what it was.

Gene stumbled back with a cry, dropping the shovel. His foot struck the ruin of the broken chair, and he fell flat on his back. A foul wetness seeped through his uniform and he found himself sliding helplessly down an incline. He pawed at the garbage around him; a glove came off and his bare hand sank into some curdled mess. "Shit! God!" He tried to orient himself so he could see where he was going, but only managed to go elbow-deep into the garbage, all the while still sliding.

He nicked his ungloved hand on something. Yanking it free, he saw the ragged little bite, and he saw the rat's head as it struggled in the garbage. It was dead.

He plowed headfirst into an array of discarded plumbing. Gene felt the surreal but distinct sensation of metal slicing through his cheek before he fell unconscious.

3.

Off to Market

Fred R. Moorecourt, Senator from the great states of Illinois and Indiana, beat on the gates of Jefferson Harbor and hollered until his already-pounding head threatened to erupt. There was no scaling the gates, with loops of barbed wire welded to each pole. The walls were fifteen feet high and perfectly smooth. He stumbled along the perimeter in desperate search of a handhold. Senator Moorecourt cursed the wall and kicked it. That's when he learned that two toes on his right foot were broken. Moorecourt fell to the ground in a ball.

Walls, borders, bullshit. The imaginary lines that defined the United States were eroding every day. Already representing the combined territory of two states, Moorecourt expected more to fall under his jurisdiction as Americans moved inland. Maybe that's why he had risked coming out here: to expand his rule. It was a miserable thought, but it rang truer than any of the noble rhetoric that he & his colleagues broadcast from the north.

Goddamn coastal refugees. Anarchists. Of course, when they ran out of supplies, when troops stopped patrolling their perimeters, then they blamed the Senate. The Senate told survivors to migrate away from the oceans, to consolidate aid and resources; men like Moorecourt put their lives on the line on these goodwill missions. Still this stubborn distrust. And now, two broken toes, a concussion and this goddamn wall.

He looked back down the road; the wreck was a blot on the horizon. He should have gotten into the Hummer and grabbed a gun. Too tired to go back, though. Too risky. The badlands were crawling with hungry undead.

"Oh, Jesus." Turning northeast, he saw two shapes moving through blighted grass. Their stiff movements and emaciated bodies gave them away immediately as dead. God willing, their eyes had shriveled and fallen out of their heads, and they weren't really ambling straight toward him.

Or maybe they were.

Using the wall for support, he limped along as quickly as he could. He thought about Atherton, whom he'd seen gasping for breath in the middle of the road, and whispered a silent prayer that the undead would catch his scent. Maybe they'd even eat the fresh corpses in the vehicles. Moorecourt's sister and her husband remained in the towncar. Why Amanda had insisted on coming along, he didn't know. Husband Doug had represented the P.O. Union and was supposed to talk to local law enforcement about withdrawing. But Amanda loathed politics almost as much as she loathed Moorecourt...

"It's going to play real well with the Harbor residents when you show up escorted by soldiers." She'd said, sitting directly across from Moorecourt, the sun bringing out deep, cruel lines in her smirking countenance.

Moorecourt massaged his hand and smiled thinly in return. "It'll serve as a reminder of the security they're losing if they stay out here. Believe it or not, I did think this through."

Doug, as usual, was reticent while the siblings sparred. He buried his face in some paperwork, thumbing through the same pages again and again. Moorecourt stared at him until he turned to look out the window. Doug was a strong lobbyist; he fought tirelessly for the rights of others. It seemed, however, that he left in himself no fire to defend his own interests. Over the course of the car trip he'd slowly shrank into his corner, hunched over like a child begging to wake up somewhere else. Boyishly handsome, his behavior only made him more enticing to the senator.

(Did she know?)

Moorecourt applied skin cream to his hand, frowning at veins visible through papery flesh. Amanda pursed her lips and started to coo something witty. He didn't hear it, because the sun outside seemed suddenly to roll violently across the sky, and Atherton cried out from the front seat, and metal groaned before Moorecourt's head cracked against the bulletproof window.

When he'd awakened, he was lying on the ceiling of the towncar. Amanda was still looking at him. Her neck was bent obscenely so that her cheek was crushed against a breast, and her eyes were red with blood. Doug was beside Moorecourt. His chest rose and fell slightly, though the expression on his face was frozen. Moorecourt, without thinking, reached out to touch it. He tried to say something and couldn't. Doug stopped breathing.

The senator was now limping along the north wall of the Harbor, glancing over his shoulder to see the two undead in slow but relentless pursuit. They were starving, desperate, and wouldn't give up until they fell completely apart; just like the survivors inside these walls.

He breathlessly turned a corner and found that the west wall wasn't like the others. There might be an opening! Moorecourt tore at the fencing and felt it giving. His hands were red and raw. He screamed and pulled with his entire body. The fence snapped free, hitting his face and knocking him to the ground. Wetness spread quickly from the cuts in his skin. He didn't care. Through the fence and into the city.

He was greeted by what appeared to be a cluster of storage units. The size of garages, most of them were wide open and empty. To his right, past a weathered wooden fence, was a foul-smelling swamp. He weaved through the units and ignored the ache in his lungs. At least he still had a good heart. Moorecourt had always kept himself in shape. At first it was for his constituents, but once it became clear that his post was probably a lifelong one he did it for himself. Boys could barely resist his status; his lean physique more often than not closed the deal. And of course the other senators knew. No one tried anymore to conceal habits that, for previous generations, spelled political suicide. For any Americans who still paid attention to the government, the Senate was their only hope. They were more than politicians now - a woman in Chicago told him that she prayed to the Senate.

There was no President of the United States. After the Secret Service was forced to dismember the last Commander-in-Chief on his desk in the Oval Office, the romantic notion of one man's will leading a people lost its luster.

How long had Moorecourt been running since the accident? An hour? Two? The sun was no help at guessing the time. He couldn't stand to look up at it. Moorecourt paused in the doorway of a storage unit and felt the stiffness in his neck. He couldn't move it at all.

The swamp had ended, giving way to several large buildings. Warehouses? Surely a place to hide, maybe a radio. He pulled himself over the creaking wooden fence and tried not to land on his wounded foot.

BAM! Something struck the other side of the fence. Moorecourt staggered back, seeing the yellowed eyeball of an undead staring through a knothole. His pursuers had caught up with him. They beat their open hands against the wood, gaping mouths never making a sound. The old fence shook precariously. Moorecourt ran.

Faded letters on the largest warehouse read KAGEN'S OF LOUISIANA, a grocery. Moorecourt collided with the nearest entrance and was thrown back onto the sidewalk. Locked? WHY? Was there still food kept inside? He couldn't imagine. Moorecourt slammed his fists against the door. "Anyone inside LET ME IN!!" A block behind him, a section of wooden fence collapsed and the two zombies staggered through.

A loud crack tore through the air. The senator looked back to see a chunk of skull and hair flying away from one zombie's head. Thank God! Moorecourt peered around the corner of the warehouse to see where his rescuer was- -

Another shot buzzed past his ear. He fell to the pavement again. "I'M NOT ONE OF THEM!!"

The undead were still coming. Moorecourt searched for another entrance to the warehouse. Another door, slightly ajar, reluctantly gave way under his weight. He fell into the building and kicked the door shut with his good foot.

He was on his back in an enormous room with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with boxes. Using a shelf for support, he made his way down an aisle, reading the contents of the boxes. Soup, ramen, seasoning, powdered milk, all non-perishables. Just add water. He was shocked to see so much still here, then he nudged one of the boxes and realized that it was empty.

There was a clatter from across the warehouse.

Moorecourt pushed a box aside and crawled onto the bottom shelf, his foot throbbing now. He eased himself between the boxes as quietly as possible. Damn hands shaking, threatening to give out beneath him; he fought to hold himself steady, knowing that if he lost his balance and fell in either direction, the empty boxes would give way and dump him into the open.

Someone walked past the end of the aisle. Moorecourt saw ratty hair & pale skin, but clean, pressed clothing. The footfalls of several persons echoed through the room. Would they believe who he was? Would they care? Or would revealing himself to them result in a fate worse than being caught by any undead? He cursed himself again for leaving behind the weapons in the Humvee. Then, a young woman entered the aisle, wearing a flowery spring dress, and he saw the dead glaze of her eyes and realized she was a zombie.

She came down the aisle with a man in a suit jacket and slacks. His hair was combed. COMBED. Moorecourt looked back at the woman's face, so lifelike - she was wearing makeup. His heart was seized by terror. He had heard that the dead could regenerate tissue if they fed often enough, but had never seen a well-fed rotter. He'd doubted that such a thing could possibly exist out in the badlands. But these...had these undead restored their flesh, their muscles, their very minds? Were there remnants of memory that compelled them to wear clean clothing and groom themselves? It wasn't possible. Couldn't be. Yet as the lady stood before Moorecourt, the senator cringing, barely concealed behind a box, he noticed the lovely shape of her calves, white as they were.

The afterdead had a sole purpose: self-preservation. They didn't reproduce, they didn't interact with one another, and they certainly didn't bathe. They only ate and ate and ate in order to keep from rotting into nothing. But these two in the aisle were opening boxes on the upper shelves, searching them - together - for foodstuffs. The male produced a large bag of rice and tucked it under his arm. None of it made sense. They evidently ate enough human flesh to stay healthy, yet they were raiding the warehouse for rice?

Something about it all nearly clicked for Moorecourt as he trembled on the bottom shelf. Makeup, clothes, groceries. But the answer was just beyond his grasp. The answer was something that he could never have imagined, even if he had lived many, many more years, which wasn't going to happen either.

4.

The House in the Swamp

It was a three-story manor fashioned from stone, a stately Victorian nestled in the overgrowth of the thick, dark green swamp. Contained within an ivy-thronged iron fence, it barely stood above the heads of the encroaching trees. Some of the manor's outermost extremities had fallen into disarray; the greenhouse adjoining the north wing had lost its roof in a storm years ago. Some of the ground floor's grime-streaked windows were broken. Errant stones loosed from the wall lay in the spongy grass. The south end of the manor had sunk slightly into the mud, and moss crawled skyward over its surface. And for all its grandeur, even in such a condition - there was an air of rot that hung over the house. Even the clouds overheard seemed to be stained gray. Things moved in the tall grass, in the remains of a once-beautiful garden and in the swamp beyond the gates.

The gates opened. Four afterdead entered, the first holding a key. He waited to lock up behind the others. They were the ones from the Kagen's of Louisiana warehouse and they'd brought back several boxes filled to the brim with groceries. The young woman in the spring dress led the procession through the manor's front doors.

It was dim inside. Their vision, poor as it was, failed completely inside the foyer. But they knew the halls and rooms of the house by heart and walked, single-file, past the grand staircase and through the dining room.

"Stop."

The voice came from behind them. The woman in the spring dress halted in the doorway leading into the kitchen.

A man entered the dining room and stared hard at the four undead. They each looked straight ahead, clutching their boxes.

He was in his late twenties, perhaps, younger in appearance than the dead ones; tousled hair fell in front of bright green eyes as he knelt to scrutinize the carpeted floor. He dragged a fingertip along the fibers, pulled up a glob of mud. The man rose to show the mud to the zombies.

"I told you," he said in a calm-before-the-storm tone, "to bring things into the kitchen through the rear entrance. I also told you to remove your shoes when you entered the house. Even in the foyer. It doesn't matter if the floor is stone." As he lectured them, the man seemed to be speaking more to himself, realizing that the dead felt no shame or remorse for disobedience. But there were still consequences, ones that they could understand.

"You won't eat today. Put those things in the kitchen and go outside. Aidan, Harry - trim the grass and maybe you'll eat tomorrow."

The afterdead shuffled out of the room. The man sighed and looked at the filthy carpet. "Prudence!"

A female undead in a maid's uniform loped into the room. One of her legs had been gouged by something and hindered her movement. The man pointed to the mess. "Clean it. Dust this entire room in fact." He left her and went into the foyer, up the staircase.

Baron Tetch had lived here for as long as he could remember, but things still weren't to his satisfaction. Maybe they never would be. Not only was he a savage perfectionist, but he was suffering from a growing misanthropy and a bitter contempt for this whole earthly plane. There was very little to keep him grounded here. Entering his second-floor study, he locked the door behind him and kicked off his loafers.

A corpse lay on the floor. It had been some intruder from the previous week who'd climbed the fence, probably fleeing from undead. But the feral zombies that occasionally penetrated Jefferson Harbor were nothing compared to Tetch's. They'd made short work of the man. Tetch had rewarded them with his internal organs before having the rest of him brought upstairs.

Swathed in moist rags scented with spices, the body lay spread out in the middle of the room. The face was caved in, gray flesh like paper peeling away from the wound. Tetch spread a blanket over the open cavity of the corpse's torso.

Even those who died under normal circumstances had dormant energy lying in their husks, of that Tetch was certain. Pulling a tattered shroud over his bony shoulders, he straddled the corpse's body and closed his eyes. The wasted energy inside the eviscerated man was drawn through Tetch's flesh, saturating his bones, travelling like a lightning bolt to his head. He plunged his fingers through the blanket and into the corpse's body. Tetch spread crimson grit across his forehead, throwing open the conduits throughout his self. A throbbing erection grew between his legs.

He heard the study door open. Tetch yanked the shroud around his body and glared.

It was Lilith. Her frail little body looked as if it could be torn asunder by the rage from Tetch's eyes; he quickly softened his face, clutching the shroud over his groin, and stood up. "Why didn't you knock?"

In response, she held out her pale arms. She'd cut her wrists. Tetch rushed to her, pushing back the sleeves of her dress and catching droplets of blood in his hands. "Lily, why?? Oh, God!" She'd cut across rather than down, and not very deeply thanks to her child's strength. Still the sight was horrifying, her perfect ivory flesh marred and her bright blue eyes devoid of reason. "They don't bleed like I do," she mumbled. "Of course they don't. You're not like them. You know that!" Tetch grabbed the shoulder of her dress and tore its sleeve free. Lily squealed, but he silenced her with a stern look, tying the fabric over one of the wounds. She didn't say anything when he pulled the other sleeve off. "This is why we can't have nice things." He snapped. She caught herself before rolling her eyes.

There. She was patched up, for now. "Do NOT remove these. Now tell me what you used." He rose over her, arms crossed. She stared at the corpse behind him. He stepped over to block her view. "Lily. Look at me."

She complied. Her lip was trembling slightly. In fear? Of him? It was hard to resist the urge to take her into his arms. Her ripening breasts, almost visible through the thin fabric of the dress, reminded Tetch of his erection, and he realized he was idly nudging it with his fist. Turning from her, he went to his desk and fumbled through the drawers until he found his camera.

"Oh no, not like this!" Lily raised her bandaged wrists and frowned at the ruined dress. "This picture will be a reminder to you," Tetch shot back. He loaded a fresh roll of film. It was a precious commodity and he only used it to mark the days of Lilith's life. "You're not like your brothers and sisters. You can get hurt, you can bleed, and you can die." A thought struck him: was she bleeding herself to take away the power of his threats? His power? He studied her glassy eyes. She could never... "You don't want to be like them, Lily. It's not real. Your beauty could never be preserved in death, do you understand? Your soul would be lost." He raised the camera to his face. She forced a smile. "Don't." He ordered. Snap. Snap. Snap.

"Now I want you to stay inside, up here. Don't go downstairs. I don't want to risk anything happening, should they smell your blood." They were animals after all, despite the facade of sophistication he'd crafted. Lilith nodded and left the room.

Of course, she went straight downstairs and out the front doors.

Lily saw her brother Aidan pushing an old-style lawn mower through the grass. She wondered how sharp its rusted blades were. "Hello Aidan!" She waved. He paused, looking blankly at her, then raised his hand as he'd been taught. He then resumed his task and forgot about her.

She walked through the grass he'd already cut and to the fence. Plants grew so thick and huge around here. It was like the swamp was wrapping ivy-green arms around her, constricting her, smothering her. Like her brother Baron. But he did love her, she knew that, and he gave her so many pretty things. Still, it was only natural to be curious about the world beyond the estate. Lily knew she was thirteen or so, and she wondered if there were other children out there.

Then, there was someone out there. A man in black kneeling in the bog. He had a big stick that he leaned upon and his skin was bone-white. Another dead man like the others? No, his eyes...his eyes were alive and they were fixed on her.

He approached the fence. Lily pressed her face to the bars. "Hi."

"What are you doing in there?" The man in black asked. She saw now that his big stick had a big knife on it. Maybe he was cutting grass too. "I live here." She answered. His skin was like clay, wasn't it? So perfectly smooth, even when he frowned. And his eyes were big and black and shiny. Lily thought that maybe that was what beautiful really looked like. "What do you mean, you live here?" He was looking past her at Aidan. "That's my brother," she explained. "What's your name?"

"I don't have a name." He said matter-of-factly. "I'm Lily." She told him. "My brothers and sisters all live here. Daddy doesn't live here anymore. I don't remember him much anyway. I'm not allowed to go outside the gates. What's it like?"

"It's not a nice place." Kneeling to bring himself face-to-face with the girl, the man in black looked at Aidan again. "Do they try to hurt you?"

"No, they're not allowed." She glanced at her wrists and was flushed with shame. The man followed her eyes. "Why did you do that?"

"I don't know." Lily put her hands behind her back and stepped away. "I have to go." She ran into the manor.

Death studied the architecture of the house. If there was a human quality that he admired, it was imagination. For him, imagination had no purpose; his entire existence was laid out in black and white. But those idling in this life took wood and rock and metals and forged wonders merely from pictures in their minds. It didn't matter that they would one day depart the mortal coil, nor that their cathedrals and skyscrapers would one day be razed to the ground. Just to have created, that was enough.

The mowing afterdead had seen him. Death leapt into the trees with barely a whisper, back into the swamp, back to his white steed.

5.

To Have Created

"Did you go outside this morning?" Confusion was a rare feeling for Lee. He usually kept everything in its place with little effort, especially Cheryl. But he remembered awakening from a drunken stupor at six A.M. and hearing the front door before blacking out again. Cheryl's guilty white countenance confirmed his suspicions. "Where were you?"

She only shook her head in response. Her clothes were filthy. Lee could tolerate her plump figure when she at least looked clean; he'd send her to the rooftop today to do laundry. Lee's head ached so he plopped down in his recliner, narrowing his glare. Bitch had better not relax thinking he was just going to sit there and nurse his hangover. "You're lying." He said flatly. "I can't believe it but you are. Where the fuck could you have been that you'd even think of lying to me about it?" Lee tapped his index finger against his cheekbone. "Maybe you were with that guy in the next building. Maybe you went over there to suck his cock."

Cheryl shook her head rapidly. "I wouldn't do that, Lee."

"The fuck you wouldn't. You've always been a whore. Keeping you in this apartment the rest of your life ain't gonna change you, I know that. Hell, I'm family and I've caught you staring at my cock, Cheryl. You don't care where you get it as long as you get it. You'd probably be on the street sucking dead dick if I didn't keep you on a leash. And..." He rubbed his neck, grunting, fished through his jeans for a couple of white pills. "And just like that, I pass out for a few hours and you sneak out. Break all the rules. I take care of you, Cheryl, why do you hate me so much?"

Cheryl didn't have the heart to tell her cousin that he'd been unconscious for a day and a half. Actually, it had less to do with her heart than her nose and the fear of having it shattered again. Even if she was the whore Lee said she was, no man would want her like that. He didn't just make her feel ugly, he slapped her around for good measure. How could he possibly accuse her of being hateful when she stayed for that? She wasn't afraid to fend for herself. She made regular trips to Midtown to get his drugs, didn't she? Lee was the one scared to leave the apartment. He only knew that a man had moved into the next building because he'd seen him from the window. And things had gotten worse since then. Lee wouldn't stop talking about the man - whom Cheryl had never even seen - and how she would almost certainly betray her loving cousin for him.

Loving. She shuddered involuntarily as Lee's glare bored into her. He had his hand down his pants. Lee wasn't a hard one to figure out. She knew what he was about. Why he kept calling her a whore. It had nothing to do with his so-called faith or her lack thereof. When Cheryl looked at him (and she NEVER stared at his crotch) all she saw was an ugly, possessive addict living in another reality. But when he looked at her, it was with dark desire.

"I don't hate you." She forced herself to say. "I didn't go out. Where would I go? I was here. I was watching TV- -"

"Bullshit." Lee turned the recliner to face the television. "My DVD's still in there." One of his pornos. She'd never be caught dead watching that. Cheryl was busted.

Lee smirked at her. His DVDs were all he had left, the rest of his things traded away for drugs. As such he spent a few hours of every day jerking off in his chair, usually while high, and Cheryl would get a beating if she happened to walk into the room. He'd probably sooner trade her away than that smut.

Chewing the white pills from his jeans pocket, Lee swallowed them dry. "So, want to tell another lie, or just tell me who you've been fucking?"

"I didn't do anything. I didn't go anywhere. Why don't you believe me?"

Lee stood up. Trying the guilt card with him had been a mistake.

His eyes clouded over and he gave her a familiar, numb look. Then the backhand sent her sprawling.

Cheryl stayed on the floor while Lee yelled. Her ears were ringing but he was probably berating her for making him raise his hand. Tears stinging her eyes, she briefly considered telling him the truth. Fact of the matter was that Lee was all she had, the only one she could ever turn to - but he'd never buy the truth, not when she was a godless whore.

She'd been raped four months prior while on a run to Midtown. Her attacker had worn a moth-eaten ski mask over his face, held her facedown in the refuse of an alley. Had whispered while he was inside her, "Could kill you where you lay bitch, feed you to the rotters. Kill you." He came on the word KILL and repeated it feverishly, then he melted into shadow and was gone.

Cheryl hadn't known she was pregnant until that very morning, until the miscarriage.

Thank God Lee had been passed out, because she had screamed to wake the dead, even with a rolled-up towel clenched between her teeth as she lay on the bathroom floor. She'd screamed even louder and cried and beat the tiled floor when it was over and she saw it. Transferring the towel from her mouth to between her thighs, she used another one to clean the mess and then wrapped it - him, her? - in a dinosaur blanket. Then she'd gone out to the landfill.

What would Lee say if he knew?

"I knew you weren't just getting fat, bitch. Fucking whore. Rape. Rape! Ha." He'd punctuate every word with his fists. Things would be worse than they'd ever been.

"I..." She mumbled, though still unable to hear, "I heard a noise. A cat. I was just looking for it."

"You better not have given any of our food to a fucking stray." He snapped. "I didn't." She replied. "I couldn't find him...I wouldn't have fed him anyway."

"Goddamn right. I'd skin and eat the little bastard before taking him in. You better feel the same way, Cheryl, because I'm the provider here. I take care of YOU. You don't have a goddamn thing to be giving away to anyone." He dug his toe into her ribs, making her whimper. "Except that filthy cunt."

He left her on the floor and went into his bedroom. She stayed there another hour, just to be safe.

6.

Dirt on Dirt

The signage on the Holy Covenant Community Shelter was illegible, every letter of every word punctuated by bullet holes and smeared with crud. It was just as well, seeing how the shelter didn't have much left to offer. Just a roof and some blankets - there'd been a time when Reverend Palmer was able to convince her charges that such meager provisions were a blessing. Nowadays she could barely say it herself without bitter laughter.

Oates, a bearded black man in his late sixties, was helping her put new boards up over the windows. "Just what are we protecting?" Wheeler asked in his usual manner. "You." Palmer replied.

Wheeler brushed back his shock of white hair and picked at a scab on his chin. "I ain't worth protecting. None of us are. Truth hurts."

"So why don't you kill yourself instead of bitching all day long?" Isabella barked from a cot across the room. The reverend shot her a look. Wheeler shrugged. "Mother Theresa here says that suicide's a sin. I'll go to Hell if I do that. Apparently Hell's something worse than this putrid shithole." All things considered the shelter wasn't in awful shape. Palmer knew that Wheeler just thrived on misery. He was scared to feel a shred of happiness, lest something tear through those boarded-up windows and take it away. Palmer could barely hold her tongue around the man. He never helped to scrounge for supplies, never comforted any of his equally-distraught companions. The world owed Wheeler, always would, and that was that.

Something thumped against the board Palmer was hammering. She cried out and Oates pulled her away, turning his hammer to wield its claw as a weapon. "Whoever's out there, speak up!"

"Patrol Officer!" A young male voice.

It was a common ruse among most cities in the badlands, thieves posing as P.O.s. "Let's see some ID!" Oates shot back.

A laminated card slipped between two of the slats and into Palmer's hands. Michael Weisman, it said. Based in Miami, it said. "Long way from Florida." Oates called, reading over her shoulder.

"Florida's gone. I've been here for months. I just want to check up on you."

"No one checks up on anyone," Wheeler spat. Two other men, J.J. and Yeats, trudged into the room. "What's going on?"

"We got ourselves a P.O. outside." Oates muttered. He peered between the boards. "It's Weisman all right."

"The ID's fake," said Wheeler. "Don't even think about letting him in!"

"Come around to the front." Palmer said to Weisman. As she left the room with Oates she glanced at Wheeler. He stuck his tongue out and flipped her off.

She and Oates cleared the crude barricade from the front entrance and unlocked the door. Weisman was wearing his uniform, though it had clearly seen better days. He patted a pistol strapped to his hip. "How many you got in here?"

"Ten." Palmer extended her hand and introduced herself. "Do you have any food?" Weisman asked. "Medicine? Plumbing?"

"Pipes are fine." Oates slapped Weisman on the shoulder and ushered him in. "You're looking at the Harbor's best plumber. We're getting a nasty soup of ground water and seawater, but I threw together a filtration system."

With sandy brown hair and deep eyes, Weisman was good-looking. Damn good-looking. At fifty-something, swatches of gray among her long blonde locks, Palmer rarely felt attractive nor attracted. But damn. Smiling sweetly at the P.O. she led him into the building. Oates stayed behind to restore the barricade.

"How long have you all been in here?" Weisman asked next. It sounded to Palmer like he was taking mental notes. "Most of us have been here a year or so. We took a young woman and her boy in last week, and that's it."

"Has anyone been assaulted recently?"

"No, not at all."

"And how many of the ten are men?"

"Uh, six."

"And there haven't been any problems."

"You sound surprised, Officer Weisman."

"Mike, please." He stood in the doorway of the community room and returned the questioning stares of its inhabitants. "Any of the men ever leave the shelter?"

"Oates - our resident plumber - he leads supply runs every week. Everyone stays together out there." Palmer touched Weisman's arm and lowered her voice. "Why are you asking these questions?"

"There- -" Weisman was cut off by the appearance of Oates, followed by a tall balding man in a trench coat. Nodding to Weisman, the bald man showed his ID to the reverend. "Senior P.O. Voorhees. We're checking up on Midtown residents now that the military's left us." Voorhees took Weisman's position in the doorway. He made a not-so-subtle display of the firearm beneath his coat. "You're Reverend Palmer?"

"Yes. What is this about? Is this about the supplies we've taken? We only go into abandoned buildings."

"No," Voorhees responded, loud enough for everyone to hear. "It's about a rapist. He's been roaming Midtown for weeks. We think he may have come to the Harbor from out West. My communication with neighboring towns is limited, but there have been similar reports out there." Locking eyes with the sneering Wheeler, Voorhees said, "It ends here."

"Shouldn't y'all be playing escort to Senator Moorecourt right about now?" Wheeler asked. "What does it matter if we're raping and killing each other? There's an honest-to-God statesman gracing the Harbor with his presence!"

Weisman interrupted Voorhees' reply. "The Senator never arrived."

Wheeler groaned. "I knew it. Bastard was never coming."

"Officer Weisman and I are going to want to speak with each of you individually." Voorhees said. "Reverend, would you get everyone together please?"

She nodded reluctantly and headed down a dark hallway. A serial rapist in Midtown? None of the women would be going on supply runs anymore. Oates would have to stay here, he was the toughest...no, no, no. She couldn't let their simple way of life be turned upside-down by this. If she showed fear or weakness it would spread to the others. Except Wheeler - if he saw her limping at the rear of the pack he'd pounce.

She rapped on a restroom door. "Al? Still in there?" Al had been sick for days since she'd discovered he was still using. The restroom floor was a terrible place to detox, but there was nowhere else. Palmer pushed open the door.

Al was sitting in the far corner under the window. The window was broken. It had been intact last night. She moved closer and realized he was dead. The needle was still in his arm.

Reverend Palmer sat down beside the cold body, pulling Al's discarded jacket over his chest, over the needle, closing his bleary eyes. She whispered a prayer. It was a little late, but what the hell.

She left the room and shut the door quietly behind her. Death stood beside Al's corpse. It was not infected, and would not rise again. The dying flame of Al's candle would not swell at the last second with a cold blue light. It was as it should be.

7.

Sly Silver's Brains Taste Like Sugar

Two blocks from the homeless shelter, Club Fetish was similarly boarded-up, windows covered with the splintered remains of tabletops and flooring. The main dance floor was all colored lights, no longer aglow. The light and sound riggings hanging from the ceiling were equally useless and their creaking made those in the club nervous. The bar had been cleaned out long ago and the consequences had clogged every toilet in the joint. The air was musty. It was dark. A tiny giggle escaped from behind the bar.

Jenna O'Connell awoke with a start. The tinny laughter increased in volume. She found an empty bottle at her feet and chucked it over the bar. "Fuck you, Syl!"

Lauren poked Jenna's arm. "Don't let him get to you."

"It's past getting. He's already gotten to me. I hate the prick." Jenna ran her fingernails through her golden hair. Lauren had thick red hair that now reached her waist; she actually looked better than she when they'd first arrived in Jefferson Harbor with their entourage of makeup artists and stagehands. Jenna could feel her hair becoming more brittle by the day. Her eyes ached from straining to see. Her stomach ached from hunger. And there was no longer anyone here to wait on her, no one except that gruesome photographer sitting on the dance floor. What was his name, Duncan? Mark Duncan. Even now he was still playing with his digital camera.

Lauren had been the band's drummer, and Jenna the singer. They hadn't known the rest of the band that well; this whole thing had been cobbled together at the last second as a morale-booster for the troops out here. The troops that had pulled out the day Jenna arrived.

And Duncan. What the hell was he following the tour for? The only publications that got any attention were sensationalist rags about the zombies. They were mostly full of bullshit about religious prophecies and supposed cures, alongside Duncan's daring close-up images of shambling undead. So why document a rock tour? She put the question to him. Duncan's eyes lit up at the attention.

"People are getting tired of zombie stories," he said, dry throat croaking a bit. "They want to see people living. They want to pretend that celebrity tabloid trash still matters in their world."

"Is that what this is?" Jenna gestured around the shadowy room. "Tabloid trash? The life of a celebrity? Everything's a fucking zombie story."

Duncan put the camera down and stretched his legs. Before he could begin opining on his so-called career, club owner Sylvester Silver vaulted over the bar, slipped in something and smacked his head on the floor. "God DAMN." He muttered.

"Are you high?" Jenna asked. Rhetorical question. Silver said something unintelligible but surely vulgar in response. He got up and stumbled around a bit. "Z!"

He was whining for Zaharchuk, his dealer. The greasy little sleaze hadn't been here in days. In fact, Jenna had reminded Silver of that fact on several occasions. "Z!" He cried again. A leather vest and pants barely clinging to his emaciated body, he staggered toward one of the windows. "Oh, shit," Duncan said.

Jenna got up, slapping Lauren's hand away, and chased after Silver. The man grabbed at the boards covering the window. "Fuck this! I'm leaving! Fuck this place!" Jenna grabbed his shoulder and he swatted at her. "Fuck YOU! You never played one fucking lick! Bitch!"

Duncan joined her behind Silver. "Get away from the window, man."

"I don't want to live here!" Syl bellowed, and he began choking on tears, or snot, or both. Jenna rolled her eyes and punched him in the back of the head.

He caught her in the mouth with an elbow. She went flying and, just as she'd dreaded, Duncan ran to her. "Stop him!" She snapped. Silver tore a board from the window. "I'm out- -"

A hand came through and took hold of his ear. Syl immediately exploded into hysterics. A second hand grabbed the vest, and blood streamed down his neck as several ear piercings were tugged through cartilage. Syl beat weakly on the two arms, which obviously belonged to the same body, and he howled as his head was pulled out into the open.

Jenna and Duncan ran back and grabbed the waist of his pants. If he wasn't bitten - it wasn't too late- -

Outside, Syl felt hair being torn from his scalp and threw his head back, banging against the boards. He was stuck. He was looking into the yellow eyes of an undead. Then his head was forced back down and teeth dug into the skin behind his ear.

"Let go!" Jenna yelled. Duncan did, watching silently while Syl Silver's legs kicked and his shrieks became garbled. He fell back into the room. Sans head.

Duncan puked on the ragged stump of Silver's neck. Jenna spun away, Lauren catching her, both screaming. An old man stared through the window, gnawing on the severed head's cheek, then he sent his fist crashing into the remaining boards.

"Christ!" Duncan spat bile and grabbed a nearby barstool. "We've gotta cover it back up!" Jenna thought he'd take a shot at the zombie, but instead he shattered the stool over the bar. Good thinking. Attacking the zombie was pointless. Better to fix the window before more showed up. She busted a second stool and told Lauren to find the hammer and nails in Syl's office.

Duncan brought the seat of the first stool down on the undead's prying fingers. Jenna joined him. "Lauren!!"

"Coming!" Lauren dropped the box of nails halfway across the room. "Just grab some! Hurry!" Jenna yelled. She felt her feet dragging through Syl's spreading blood and steeled herself against vomiting. Lauren drove a tenpenny nail through the seat of Duncan's barstool. Through the tiny gap between the two seats, Jenna could see that the zombie was no longer interested in the window. He thrust a hand into Silver's head through the open throat and yanked out a handful of tissue. The undead walked away from the club, chewing.

"We've got to get out of here." Jenna said.

"We're still safe. This building is safe." Duncan argued. "We're right in the middle of town."

"There's no food." Jenna shot back. "I haven't had anything to eat in days except dry noodles and apple schnapps. Do you want to feel safe or live, Duncan?"

He backed away from her, allowing Lauren a better angle to hammer from, and sighed. "There's a Kagen's at the west end of town. Not a store but a distribution center. I guarantee it's already been raided."

"It's worth a shot." Jenna peered outside again. "It's not like the streets are crawling with zombies. We just need to stay sober..."

Gene Pastore spat Syl Silver's hair from his mouth and hooked his fingers inside the head's nostrils. Nightfall was fast approaching. He didn't remember how he'd gotten to Midtown from the landfill, but it didn't matter. What mattered was right now, and right now was hunger. Meat fell through the hole in his cheek. He stooped to retrieve it from the ground.

There was more inside the head but he couldn't get to it. Shaking it over his open mouth, Gene grunted. He remembered something - shovel - that could have been used to get to the meat. He didn't have the shovel. He hurled the head into the curb and heard bone crack like a gunshot.

Gene sat on the curb and fished the brains from the fractured skull. They tasted sweet.

8.

Food Run

They left at midnight, going through the recently-damaged window and crossing the street to the Donner Convention Center. Streetlamps flickered and made clicking noises. There was no other sound.

Duncan was fiddling with his camera. "Why did you bring that?" Jenna whispered harshly. "It's got a night-vision mode," he replied. "Not much, but it'll allow us to stay in the shadows." He pressed his eye to the viewfinder and searched the Convention Center parking lot. "All clear."

Lauren pushed her sleeves up to her shoulders. She was clutching the leg of a barstool; the girl was small but those drummer's arms were strong. She'd fended off enough unruly fans (and some of them wanted to bite her too), so the rotters were no worry.

"Four blocks west to Kagen's." Duncan said. He crept along the wall, holding his camera like a weapon. Jenna wondered what it was like to photograph the undead at close quarters. Maybe looking at them through the camera made them seem somewhere far away, made Duncan feel safe. Maybe he was just crazy.

Duncan ran across an intersection to the burned-out shell of an outlet mall. Peering through the viewfinder, he threw his hand out to stop Jenna and Lauren from following him. Zooming in, he waited for the grainy green shapes in the street to resolve themselves. There was something smoldering...no, two somethings. Despite the poor quality of the image he was able to identify them as bodies.

A hand fell on his shoulder and he slammed back into the wall. "FUCK!!" Jenna slapped her other hand over his mouth. "Jesus, Duncan!"

He pushed her away and pointed to the bodies. "Rotters. They've been torched."

"How do you know they're rotters?"

"One's still moving a little bit."

Jenna leaned over his shoulder, squinting. He handed her the camera. "Who do you think did it?" Lauren asked. "P.O.s," Duncan answered. Did this mean there was still order in Jefferson Harbor, despite the military pullout? "I thought the cops would've left with the troops." Jenna murmured.

"I'll bet most did." Duncan took back the camera. "Few more blocks. Keep quiet." Shooting a you-should-talk glare at him, Jenna stepped back and let him take point.

The last leg of the journey was uneventful but still seemed to take a lifetime. Duncan kept stopping at every corner to scan the area. Jenna's heart pounded against her ribs with every distant and unidentifiable noise. Finally, Duncan found the Kagen's warehouse entrance and peered inside. "Okay." He went in first. Jenna followed and Lauren, just before stepping through the door, thought she heard a soft grunt from the darkness outside. She hurried in without glancing back.

Duncan felt along the wall for switches and flipped them. Only one light came on, in the far corner, past rows and rows of shelving. Lauren tugged the door shut and frowned. "I think the lock's broken."

"Wouldn't surprise me." Duncan shook a nearby box. "Empty. I knew it."

In the far, well-lit corner, a door opened with a metallic squeal.

They all dropped into crouches. The door slammed. Duncan instinctively raised the camera, finger on the capture button. Jenna stole a peek between two boxes, and she saw it.

It was a monster. Its head, a skull, pale and elongated. Eyeless. Fanged. It...wait, the bone was wired to the raw red flesh of a rotter's head, the skull being worn like a mask. God. What had it been, a horse's? The undead turned in her direction and she realized that, no, it was the skull of a large dog.

That wasn't the worst part. The worst part wasn't even the obscenely-long knife in each hand. It was the surgical apron and scrubs. Where had been a simple, animal thing, Jenna now saw intellect - purpose. The rotter set the knives down on some unseen surface and pulled latex gloves over its scabby hands.

"W-w-what is it?" Lauren stammered. She gripped Jenna's arm like a vise.

Duncan's camera hitting the floor sounded like a thunderclap from the heavens.

He stared in horror at the shattered bits lying at his feet, then looked up through the shelves at the rotter. It had its knives back and was moving forward.

Jenna dragged Lauren toward the door through which they'd entered. Duncan was trying to pick up the camera parts. Jesus! He WAS crazy. "Mark!" She shouted, and the rotter grunted loudly. The photographer was snapped back to reality.

The rotter shuffled down the first aisle, then the next, weaving back and forth, grunt-grunt-grunt-grunt. It planted a knife in one of the many boxes and hurled it to the floor, stomping through the cardboard. Grunt-grunt-grunt-grunt. Jenna grabbed the doorknob and pulled. It was stuck fast.

Duncan wrapped his hands around hers and pried at the door. "C'mon, c'mon," he breathed, barely audible, then a hysteric "FUCKING C'MON!!!"

The rotter swept boxes from shelves and searched the room with its empty dog's-eye sockets. It began loping down the aisles at a frenetic pace. Lauren screamed.

Then, something fell from a shelf and collided with the rotter's legs, sending it to the floor. The door tore open and Jenna, Duncan and Lauren fled into the night.

The rotter sat up, jerking its head back to see what had tripped it.

Fred Moorecourt pawed the floor in a madness, crawling in place as his bloody feet failed to gain traction and drew crimson scribbles on the concrete. The rotter slapped at his heels until he got a hold of one.

"NO!!" Moorecourt hollered. He saw the inhuman thing towering over him, then he tasted blood thick in his mouth, and he saw light; an audience of fist-pumping constituents at a speech; Doug's face, his smile, turning away in a silken pillow; he saw his life, and saw that none of it had mattered, then the rotter planted a knife just below his chin and opened his throat.

9.

Sawbones

Throat to sternum. Blood welling inside canyons as they're carved from flesh and bone. Both knives through the ribcage now, spreading it apart. Skin, muscle strain and finally tear. This isn't one of the warmbodies that was seen coming into the warehouse. Doesn't matter. It's meat. Placing one boot inside the garbage bag to hold it open and feeding pulpy organs into it.

The hunger was strong, worrying at every inch of Sawbones' insides. He hurried to finish bagging Moorecourt's innards, then started ripping at his flesh. Thick strips dripping blood came away in Sawbones' gloved hands. He longed to pry apart the dog's-jaws and feed. He couldn't. Sawbones grunted and shoved the skin into the bag.

When he was finished, Senator Moorecourt was a ruddy skeleton with a few bits of gristle clinging on. Blood covered the floor and spread beyond the solitary light's reach into darkness. Sawbones splashed through it and out the door.

Eyeing warily the shoreline beyond the landfill, Sawbones made his way into the swamp, trudging through knee-deep muck. The trees were all enormous here, roots and branches threaded around the rotter's boots with every step. Bark and leaves alike teemed with moss. Algae-covered fungi jutted from semi-solid patches of earth. The swamp seethed with life. Sawbones felt warm inside as he passed through it. His hunger subsided.

Aidan and Gerald opened the gates for him. They stared through their fellow zombie, at the garbage bag.

He knew to go around to the rear kitchen entrance. There Uriel was waiting, and he ushered Sawbones in, locking the door behind him.

Rather than entering the kitchen, Sawbones went into a narrow hallway, its floor caked with blood, and upended the bag.

Baron Tetch stood in the foyer of the manor. His brothers and sisters gathered around him, glassy eyes pleading.

"Eat." He said. They rushed into the narrow hallway. He shut the door to muffle the nightmarish din of their supper.

Sawbones padded into the foyer, sans boots and apron. He bowed his head before Tetch. "Go downstairs." Tetch ordered. "I'll be down later." The rotter shuffled off.

Sawbones didn't eat with the others. Measures had been taken to ensure that, the dog's skull among them. He only took nourishment intravenously, not only because he was charged with the task of fetching meat for the undead, but because Baron Tetch didn't want his father to heal too much, to regain any scraps of memory. Worse yet, of his personality.

The manor in earlier years had been known as the Addison Estate. Addison himself had been a surgeon and noted member of the Jefferson Harbor elite. As society's decay continued, Addison had retired and sequestered himself in the house. Soon thereafter, he put out a quiet call to the city's other wealthy families: Send me your children. I can take them off your hands, he said, relieve your burden - what's more, I can protect them. I don't mean simply to shelter your young ones from the undead outside the city. I mean, through my research, to cure this plague.

Addison had adopted eleven children in total. Most of their families left the city in that same year.

He'd never cured anything.

Baron Tetch turned three locks on the basement door after Sawbones went down. He stood back, trying to ignore the ravenous crunching and slurping of his siblings.

Lily came down the grand staircase, dressed for dinner. She was a vision. Tetch clapped his hands and met her at the foot of the stairs, offering his arm. Together, they went into the dining room where Prudence had earlier prepared a meal for them.

"I like your jacket." Lily said. Tetch lifted the cover from his plate and inhaled the aroma of fettucine and herbs in a simple alfredo sauce. It drove the scent of spilled blood from his nostrils. "Is that one of Daddy's jackets?" Lily asked.

Tetch frowned. "Don't call him that." She didn't know who Sawbones really was, beneath the mask. "And no. It's mine. Everything in this house is mine."

"Like me." The girl said with a pout. "What?" Tetch lowered his fork. "I want to go outside the gates." Lily said boldly.

Tetch nodded, stirred his pasta. "I knew this would happen sooner or later. Was bound to. You've always been very brave, Lily, too brave for your own good. If you want to know what's out there, I'll tell you. More dead, only they're not like Aidan and Ruth and Simeon and the others. They've not been taught proper behavior. They'd tear you apart. Is that what you want?"

"Are there more people like us?"

"No." He stabbed his fork into the fettucine for emphasis.

"I saw a man today. He had all-black eyes."

"A dead man."

"No, he talked."

Tetch's grip on the fork tightened. He wound a spool of pasta around it. The sauce was a bit watery. Prudence would be punished. "You're sure he talked?"

"He asked me why I was in here. Inside the gates I mean."

So, some of the city's survivors had decided to venture into the swamp. He was certain that Sawbones' exploits had kept the living at bay, but all good things came to an end.

They couldn't enter the swamp. They couldn't find the manor. They couldn't discover what Tetch already knew.

"I'm not hungry anymore." He muttered, rising from the table. Lily frowned guiltily. He said nothing to comfort her, just left.

10.

Only the Living are Evil

Lee rocked silently in his recliner. He was shivering. Cheryl noticed from across the apartment in the kitchenette. She'd soaked a month-old bag of Fritos in water and was mashing them into something resembling tortillas. There was nothing to top them with but a can of refried beans. The gas had gone out a few hours earlier, so no stove. Lee didn't know yet.

"It huuuuurts," he said through gritted teeth. "Cheryl, it hurts so fuckin' bad." As she watched him cradle himself, she was struck by something, or the lack thereof; she didn't pity him at all.

She hated him.

This miserable man locked in the throes of withdrawal, on the verge of tears, was still the man who'd backhanded her earlier that day. And the day before that. And before that.

What was she to do, make another run into Midtown? Put herself at risk of being assaulted or killed (or eaten) so she could find Zaharchuk? And even then how would she pay for the drugs?

She knew how Lee would expect her to pay. She knew that Zaharchuk liked to pull hair and choke a woman on his unwashed manhood. It was probably another of Zaharchuk's "customers" who'd raped her, if not the man himself. But Lee would expect her to pay, to do the only thing he thought she was good for so that she could bring a fistful of meth home to him. So he could level out and "get right". So he'd be able to beat her black and blue.

Lee turned his puppy-dog gaze toward her and wiped sweat from his brow. "Fuck, Cheryl, please go get me some stuff."

"I'm making dinner." She said flatly. Fished through drawers for a can opener.

"Cher-YLLL," Lee whined. "Fuck dinner. I'm not hungry, Jesus I just need some. I NEED it. I'm dying here."

The TV was on in front of him. Nothing was playing. "We need to save power." Cheryl said, pointing to it. Lee snapped out of the chair. "Are you fucking listening to me?? GODDAMN!!" He kicked right through the television screen. There was a loud POP and then black smoke belched forth. Lee grabbed his foot and yelped. "CHERYL GO GET IT!!!"

"NO!!" She shouted. Even as a tiny part of her mind screamed at her to shut up, to get the hell out of there and head to Midtown while Lee tore around the apartment - she screamed at him. "I'm not gonna get it! You can lay here and die if you want to! Nothing's going to change if I get you your fix, I don't care what you say! You know it! I know it and now your damn TV's gone- -"

He staggered, hit the counter separating the two of them, then caught her by the throat with a white hand and squeezed. She grabbed his wrist. Her other hand was caught in the utility drawer. He squeezed and squeezed, staring her straight in the eye with desperation and something much worse. "You die. You die."

Cheryl's other hand came free. She tried to loose Lee's stranglehold, but his grip was unbreakable. He gritted his teeth and leaned forward. "Die you whore, you fucking bitch, no one will ever know you're gone but me and I'll be happy, SO HAPPY!!"

(Could kill you where you lay bitch, feed you to the rotters. Kill you.)

"I'm gonna LOVE it," Lee hollered, wrapping his other hand around her neck and thrashing her back and forth. "I'M GONNA LOVE YOU DEAD, I'M GOING TO FUCK YOU RAW AND CUM ON YOUR DEAD FACE OH GOD!!!" He shoved her so hard she careened into the fridge, bounced back into the counter and knocked the wind from her lungs. Cheryl collapsed on the tile. Lee stumbled into the kitchenette, tugging at his belt.

Cheryl looked for a weapon. She couldn't reach anything from her position on the floor. She couldn't breathe, could barely move...and that tiny part of her mind that had pleaded with her to obey her cousin now told her to give up. She felt her will being sapped away.

Lee stood above her, mumbling under his breath, pants coming down.

(Kill you. Kill you kill you.)

He fell to his knees and forced her legs apart. He clawed at her pants, then pushed her legs closed again and tried to yank them off. His flaccid penis swung over her, and she knew he'd never get hard enough to rape her but it didn't matter to him anymore. Lee saw what she was looking at. He slapped her hard. A knife of white light tore through her vision. "FUCK YOU!!" He hollered, and began to choke her again.

(killyoukillyoukillyoukillyou)

He groped briefly at her breasts before slapping her again, then again. It was getting him off more than she did. "Stupid, fucking, goddamn,"

(killkillkillkillkillkillkill)

This time it was a closed fist that struck her cheek. A sound like a gunshot filled her senses, though she was sure she couldn't hear anything anymore. Her lungs stopped protesting and she felt darkness overcoming her.

"No." a voice said. It sounded unfamiliar. Was it Lee's, distorted - or was it her own?

"No," again. Cheryl, blind, felt herself being dragged across the linoleum to the carpet in the living room. Her mouth was forced open by several fingers. Please God, she wept in her mind, don't let me live through this. Let me die now.

She slipped away into blackness.

Then she was back. There were lips over hers. They pulled away and she opened her eyes.

A young man knelt over her. "Can you hear me?" He asked. It was his voice she'd heard before. Cheryl nodded.

"Stay here. Don't try to get up." He ran out of sight, then came back with a glass of water. He propped her head up to pour it down her throat. "Just take it easy. I think you're gonna be okay."

Her head began pounding. She whimpered, the last of the water spilling over her shirt. The man laid her back down and she felt something like a pillow underneath her head. Taking a few shallow breaths, Cheryl smelled acrid smoke.

"Who was - is - this man? The man who attacked you? Do you know him?"

"You shot him, didn't you?"

The young man sat back on the floor and nodded.

"His name's Lee. He's my cousin. He's dead, then?"

"He's dead. He was...he was trying to..."

"I know." Cheryl attempted to sit up. The man firmly laid her back down. "Please don't move. It's for your own good." Almost as an afterthought, the man fished an ID card from his pocket. She saw the service pistol in his waistband.

"My name's Mike Weisman. I'm a Patrol Officer." He said. "I live in the next building over."

"Thank you," Cheryl whispered, then fell unconscious.

11.

Strays

As dawn crept over Jefferson Harbor, Senior P.O. Voorhees was making his way back to the homeless shelter. He was passing the East Harbor Mall when he saw a dog walking across the parking lot. As it came closer, what he thought to be mange turned out to be rot. The dead dog looked at him with milky eyes and turned to go in the other direction.

He almost couldn't bear the thought of harming the creature. Then he thought of the other dogs it would feed upon. Voorhees dropped to one knee and patted his thigh softly. "C'mere boy."

The dog glanced back but kept walking away. He couldn't bring himself to draw his sidearm. "C'mere boy! C'mon!"

Voorhees was fifty-nine years old. The outbreak began nearly half a century before he was born, but when his mother learned she was pregnant she resolved to keep the baby. His father had reluctantly agreed. The old man wasn't a bad parent; he fulfilled all his duties, taught his son to be a man in the face of a nightmare world. The old man just wasn't there in his heart, and Voorhees had always known it, as far back as he could remember.

They had a hound, a mutt named George; Voorhees never knew his father's first name but he suspected it was the same. One morning, before the sun had risen, ten-year-old Voorhees' father had pulled him from bed and taken him behind the house.

George was tied to a post amidst the tall grass. The property was surrounded by a ten-foot fence and the dog acted as a lookout in case rotters came from across the fields. On this morning, George had been lying on his side. His tail wagged feebly when Voorhees and his father appeared.

"He's been bit." The old man said without emotion. He gave the boy a few minutes to let it sink in, then continued. "A couple of days ago I guess, when we were hunting. I never saw the dog - or whatever it was - that did it. Didn't even notice the bite until last night." Voorhees thought he heard his father's voice break and looked up. The old man quickly knelt to raise one of George's forelegs, exposing the wound.

"We're all scared to die," he whispered, "even George here. He knew what was gonna happen and he hid it from me. But what's best for George - son, you know what's best."

Voorhees tasted tears on his lips and nodded.

"There's a reason why I'm making you do this." The old man said. He pulled a revolver from his jeans pocket. "You love George, don't you?" The boy nodded.

"So do I." His father replied. He pushed the gun into Voorhees' trembling hands. "But this is what's best, what's right."

"Dad- -" The child began.

"One of these days," the old man stammered, and tears formed in his eyes, the first and last time Voorhees would ever see such a thing, "one of these days, son, I'm gonna get bit. It just happens when you go out there as much as I do. And I'm gonna hide it..." He choked, cleared his throat loudly, continued in a croak. "And I'm gonna beg you not to kill me, son, but it's what's best. I need to know you'll do it and then burn what's left."

The old man stood back, away from Voorhees and George. He did one more thing that he had never before done and would never do again.

"I love you, son."

"I love you too Dad."

Voorhees knelt and scratched George's head. Through a blurry sea of grief he aimed. The mutt sniffed the barrel of the gun and rested his head on the ground, as if to say it was all right, that he understood, even if every animal instinct in his body was telling him to run.

Thirty years later, Voorhees had seen the same look of pained acceptance in his father's eyes. He'd raised his service pistol through a blurry sea of grief, blinked the tears away to ensure his aim was true, and pulled the trigger.

"C'mon then, George," Voorhees said to the dead dog in the parking lot. He held his hands out. Something in the vestiges of the canine's brain stirred. It sat and stared at him. Then it came.

The gun was meant for the living. It could only slow an undead down, and that was a crapshoot in itself. Even a bullet to the head only did so much. If you were lucky, you maybe crippled or blinded it. No, fire was the only way to end them, and the best way to incapacitate a rotter prior to setting it ablaze was decapitation. A "widowmaker" was a sort of cleaver designed for that purpose, capable of parting bone as easily as flesh, in the right hands; Voorhees loosed his from its sheath on his back and waited for the dog.

When it was done, he drenched the body in lighter fluid and struck a match on the asphalt. Its soiled fur went up in seconds. Voorhees sat on the curb and watched it burn away.

At the Holy Covenant Shelter, a new arrival was being checked over by Yeats, the resident doctor. He'd been a paramedic at some point in his youth; without the proper medicine and equipment, his knowledge wasn't really worth much, but it brought peace of mind to the group.

"What's your name again?" He asked the grizzled, muscular man sitting on the cot before him. "Shipley." Came the answer. "And where are you from?" Reverend Palmer followed up.

"Nebraska."

"What brought you here?"

"I was...I was with an Army platoon, you know? They gave the order to start pulling back and, I dunno. I just didn't want to go back."

"Why not?"

"Prison tats." Voorhees' voice startled all three of them. He stood with Oates, who'd just let him in. Lifting the sleeve of Shipley's t-shirt, the P.O. studied the numbers there. "When did you get out?"

"I was drafted while I was still inside, man. Couple years ago." Shipley eyed Voorhees suspiciously. The look was returned tenfold. Yeats and Palmer excused themselves.

"So you deserted, rather than head north with your platoon?" Voorhees scratched the stubble on his chin. "They probably wouldn't have locked you back up. They need soldiers more than inmates." Shipley shrugged, and Voorhees finished, "Maybe you just didn't want to be someplace where it'd be so easy to get caught committing another offense."

Shipley grimaced. "Man, I ain't gonna do anything else wrong. It's just, I still had another seven years on my sentence."

"They didn't commute it when you were drafted?"

"I don't know what that means."

"Right. What were you in for?"

Shipley looked down at his grimy sneakers. Voorhees waited.

"Assault. Of a minor."

"You mean sexual assault."

Shipley nodded, almost imperceptibly.

"Just one minor?"

"Just one."

Voorhees sat on the cot and clamped a hand on Shipley's knee. "So, what does it for you? Boys or girls?"

"I haven't even thought of doing it again. I swear."

"Boys or girls?"

"...She was a girl. She was fourteen. And it was fucking consensual, I don't give a fuck what the court or anyone else says. They weren't there. Okay? I'm not a repeat offender, it wasn't like that. I LOVED her. It wasn't like I just saw some random piece of ass at a bus stop- -"

"It's never 'like that', is it?" Voorhees put on a pitiful frown. "It's not like you're a filthy pedophile. Not like you deserted so you could come down here and pick up where you left off. Are you always the victim, Shipley?"

Shipley didn't answer. Inside he was fuming, but he didn't dare lose it with this guy. He'd hacked his way across the badlands of five states to get here and it sure as hell wasn't for any girl...

Across town, in the landfill, Gene wiped a syrupy film from his pale skin. He was secreting fluids, attracting flies and ants; there were ants in his pants, something that briefly struck him with an odd feeling before he forgot all about it. The insects were feasting on his flesh, and though he didn't register any pain he did need to stop them. Gene went into the shack where he'd once lived. Card table, bed, radio, shelf of foodstuffs and chemicals. He fumbled through the shelf's contents while hiking up his pants leg. There were a couple dozen ants teeming on his calf. Ants. Ants. He repeated the sound in his head and studied the cans on the shelf. Ants. Ants. The letters on the cans were all gibberish, lines and loops forming a language he no longer understood.

One of the cans had a cartoonish drawing that resembled the insects eating his leg. He pried the lid from the can, exposing a spray nozzle. The cartoon ant grinned happily at him and he wondered if the stuff inside the can was good or bad for the bugs.

Kneeling stiffly, Gene sprayed his leg up and down. A faint burning sensation accompanied the writhing and falling away of the ants. He followed them along the floor with the spray to make sure they didn't come back. Maybe there were some on his other leg. He sprayed down the front and back of his uniform until the can sputtered and gave out.

Bluebottle flies swarmed around his head. He searched the shelf for a can with flies on it. There wasn't any, but one can had other winged bugs on it. He sprayed it up and down his body. His eyes stung, but he could still see.

Gene walked out of the shack. He thought of something. Shovel. He could get at more meat inside a body with the shovel. Where was it? It was supposed to be here. He tried to

(remember)

picture it. In his mind it was laying atop of mountain of garbage. There were lots of those here. Gene clambered up the nearest one.

Reaching the top, he didn't see a shovel. From here, though, he could see the next hill, and there it was.

A sharp crack drew his attention to the boat chugging along the shoreline. A half-second later the bullet tore through his shoulder and he fell.

12.

Duel

Death sat on his steed outside the walls of the city. He sensed with every passing moment the birth of new afterdead; were he able to deal with them in his true element, all their flames would already be long extinguished. But he had to be here, in the living world, and bound by unnatural laws.

Throughout existence the Reaper had silently walked along an endless tunnel, its walls lined with candles, each tiny pinprick of light a soul. When a light died - sometimes when the candle was melted completely, other times when it had barely sprung to life - he marked another passing. Without question or emotion he walked the tunnel, he watched each flame dance and struggle and eventually join the shadows like all the others. There was no warmth from the fire, no texture to the cave floor - there was neither a sensation nor detail without purpose.

That was a long time ago. Time had held no meaning for Death there, but here in the living world every second was like an eternity. The insignificance of days, years and millennia had become startlingly relevant to the spectre.

He'd visited this world many times before - mostly in earlier times, when Man still communed with the other side. Though he had no name he had been given many by those who would presume to know him. Thanatos, Azrael, Yama. He was assigned genders. "He" only thought of himself as a male because that was the most popular conception. It seemed to hold more authority with the living, though females clearly held the key to life. They'd also dreamed up manners of appearance, clothing, and equipment - and when appropriate he did indeed present himself as a winged angel, or a skeleton in a tattered shroud. In many ways, Death realized, he had given himself over to the whims of Man's imagination. Perhaps it was because their ability to imagine fascinated him so.

When the outbreak occurred - when orange flames blinking out were suddenly replaced by undying blue ones - he had assumed a look that was an amalgamation of several mythologies for his journey to this world. Still, he didn't often allow the living to see him. The afterdead were another story. They saw him always. He had no influence over them - hadn't, at least, until he'd forged a scythe from their bones.

There was one crossing the badlands toward him now, a female with rail-thin legs and a lipless grin. He drew the blade of bone from his cloak.

She knew he was not meat; there was something intrinsic about his offensiveness, about the way her insides burned when she saw him. Patches of scalp dangling over her eyes transformed her face into a glaring, toothless jack-o'-lantern, and she quickened her staggering pace.

He dismounted and walked calmly toward her.

As he raised the scythe, she lurched forward and tore a bloodless gash in his chest.

Death stumbled back, the blade missing its mark, and he barely warded off her second attack. He brought the scythe's handle up against her knee. Bone blistered and fell apart; she clawed at his robes, the slightest touch opening fissures in his being. He swatted her to the ground.

The horse stamped its hooves in the dirt. Glancing back, the Reaper saw wounds like stripes opening along its flank to mirror his own. Sitting up suddenly, the she-zombie buried its fingers in his thigh, pulling out a handful of crumbling clay. Death retreated. She followed.

He feigned a stumble and threw the blade back, under his arm and through the cloak, into her sternum.

She stood impaled on the scythe, watching streams of black ichor wind down her shriveled breasts. Death smoothed the blemishes on his chalk-white body and jerked the blade free.

The she-zombie crumpled without a sound.

She had marred him; nothing that couldn't be restored now, but it was troubling nonetheless whenever he allowed one to get that close. "I still have much to learn," he told the horse, patting its wounds together. They passed through the gates back into the city.

Death rode along a residential street, its houses abandoned and looted, some of them burned-out shells. The steed took him from there into a cemetery. The uneven earth was dotted with burial vaults. For whatever reason - maybe none at all - they'd been looted too.

There were two men standing in the open door of a family vault with GREELEY chiseled into the stone over their heads. He walked the horse around the vault, listening as they spoke.

"I like this guy Shipley for the Midtown Rapist." The balding one said. The other one, standing in the bald man's shadow, picked lichen from the vault wall and replied, "I met a woman last night. Well, met...she was being attacked by her housemate. I shot him."

"I never saw a report." The bald man scolded. "What's the point?" The young one shot back. The bald man was ready with a retort. "If it weren't for reports still being filed in other cities, I wouldn't know that we had a serial rapist on our hands."

"I just don't see- -"

"We continue doing things by the book. Mike, if there's no book, what is there? What authority do we have? Might as well throw out our shields too."

"All right, all right."

"Anyhow, what about this woman?"

"She was raped a few months back. Never reported it."

"Jesus, another one..."

Death's thoughts drifted. He could see both men's candles in his mind's eye; both were perilously small.

13.

Among The Dead

They were howling, reaching for her, clambering up the sides of the stage. Her song turned to a hellish scream and yet Jenna couldn't drop the microphone, couldn't fend off her audience as they tore first at her clothes, then her skin...

She woke up in the backseat of a car. The sun shone directly through the windshield, but she was wracked with shivers.

Lauren and Duncan lay in the front seats. His seat reclined, Duncan's head lolled to the side and his eyes settled on Jenna. "You okay?"

"Fine." She didn't remember screaming herself awake. Maybe it was just the look on her face. Sitting up, she eyed herself in the rearview mirror. She was a perfect picture of misery.

They were in the Liberty Auto lot, in one of the few stripped vehicles still sitting out. This one had windows intact and locking doors, that was all that mattered. Lauren idly turned the stereo knobs. "Maybe the keys are still in the office?" She wondered aloud.

"Isn't going to run without wheels, hon." Duncan said. Lauren narrowed her eyes. "I mean for the radio."

"Does it matter?" Duncan stretched his arms, yawned and studied the streets. They hadn't been followed by the rotter with the dog's-skull, he was pretty sure of that. He'd sat erect through the night, waiting to see it, until finally passing out.

"There could be food inside." Jenna said.

"Doubt it."

"It's still worth a look, isn't it? God, Duncan, if you want we'll go look and you can stay here and play-drive."

He scoffed and threw open his door. "Way to lead, O'Connell."

"Who said I was the leader?"

"You haven't listened to a damn thing I've said. I did the math."

Lauren and Jenna walked together behind Duncan on their way to the sales office. "I know what it means when you talk to a guy like that." Lauren said softly. Jenna elbowed her in the breast. "Don't start."

Duncan checked for zombies and gave the all-clear. The first thing Jenna saw upon entering was a toppled vending machine, its contents gone. Duncan yanked open a few desk drawers. "Nope, no food here. Anyone need a pen?"

Jenna stared at a banner sagging from the ceiling across the room. WELCOME TO THE LIBERTY FAMILY. She imagined that the Liberty Family wasn't looking too good these days!

"I found it!" Lauren cried. "A radio!" She held up a small boombox, then placed it on the nearest desk and pulled on the antenna. The radio signal was faint, like the batteries were on their last legs, but there was a signal. A voice.

"The withdrawal is proceeding on-schedule, even as thousands of civilians join the troops in their move inland. Measures are already in place to provide medical aid and nourishment to everyone that's answered the Senate's call. Seven states with powered and fortified cities are ready to house the American population."

The voice was Senator Gillies of New England. Most of his territory had been wiped out. "Most important of all," Gillies went on, "to answer a question that I'm sure is on every American's lips - the dead are NOT following us inland. Rather, they are descending upon each coastal city as the living vacate. So it is more prudent than ever that we come together as a people. Your Senate and military have spent months planning this operation, and we assure you that, together, we will succeed."

"Bullshit." Duncan said. He punched the radio's Off button. "The zombies aren't following them? What a load of buuuuull-sheet."

"So? The zombies are after everyone. Might as well hedge our bets with a military convoy." Lauren snapped.

"They're LYING. Get it? If they're lying about that, they might be lying about everything else." Duncan shook his head at the girl. Her face reddened. "Lauren, ever read about when New York fell? After evacuations failed, they told everyone to gather in hospitals, stadiums, they said everyone would be protected. It's all bullshit. All it takes is for one barricade to slip, for one survivor to get bit and hide it beneath his sleeve. People forget it's a fucking virus that's spreading this. You concentrate the population, all you do is speed infection. Get it?"

"Yeah, I get it. Fuck the establishment, every man for himself. I get it. You're too scared and stupid to put your trust in other people." Lauren turned and stalked into a manager's office.

Jenna said nothing. Sighing, Duncan turned the radio back on.

"Hi." Zaharchuk murmured behind Jenna's ear. She felt the barrel of a gun nudge her neck.

The dealer's face was gaunt and translucent, his hair missing in spots where it had been pulled out. An unlit cigarette dangled between his lips; baggies filled with white rocks were tied around the belt loops of his jeans.

Duncan sat up. Zaharchuk put the gun on him, staying behind Jenna. "So," he said in his lilting voice, "I was just at Fetish. Went to see my friend Syl, ya know?" He sniffed, laughed. "You cut his fucking head off? Why'd you have to do that?"

"No," Duncan said, "It was a rotter- -"

Lauren exited the manager's office. Zaharchuk turned the gun on her with a scream. "STAY THERE!! EVERYONE STOP MOVING!!"

"Okay. No one's moving." Duncan stammered. "Turn that fucking radio off!" Zaharchuk ordered. Duncan got a good look at the gun; it was a .50 Desert Eagle. Seven in the magazine at best, maybe one in the chamber. Overkill for a dealer in a ghost town, even with the occasional zombie. He was itching to use it, too. "Z," Duncan said slowly, "Listen. A rotter killed Syl. He was trying to climb outside. Why would we murder him?"

"Why would you leave?" Zaharchuk spat. "I came back and...and..."

"We didn't know you'd come back." Jenna said. She could see the pistol shaking in the corner of her eye. "We're here now, all right?"

"I don't want to stay with you people." Zaharchuk whispered. He backed toward the door, alternating his aim between Duncan and Lauren. "You killed him, you fed Syl to the zombies. You'll do it to me. No. NO!!!" He bolted out of the building.

No one moved. They waited, waited for him to reappear and start shooting, for it all to end. He didn't come back.

"We should get going." Jenna said. Duncan nodded in agreement. Lauren pointed to the manager's office and said, "There's a hall that goes to the rear exit."

"Good idea." Duncan looked at Jenna. "You okay?"

"It wasn't pointed at me." She replied, and went into the manager's office.

14.

Surf and Turf

"Was that the garbage man I shot?" Patrol Officer Douglas asked, propping his rifle on the bucket seat beside him. P.O. Hamman shrugged and kicked an empty cooler across the floor. Every beer he'd drank had made him more seasick as they patrolled the Harbor coast, but it was better than being sick and sober. Steadying himself on the boat's railing, Hamman stepped into the pilot cabin and slapped the radio. "Damn thing. I know I heard something about a storm earlier."

"So let's go to shore." Douglas rummaged through their dwindling supply of ammunition. "We can camp on the beach for a few nights."

"I'd rather drop anchor and stay out here." Hamman replied. Every rotter they'd picked off was probably on its feet and walking through the city. In better days, they'd been able to radio the positions of downed zombies to burn teams on the shore; now they were alone. "What if we're the only cops left in town?" Hamman mused.

"Then we can run ashore and steal some more beer." Douglas quipped. He stared down the barrel of his sniper rifle, finger brushing the trigger. Another ounce of pressure and he could send his brains out across the water like chum for fish, the living ones anyway. Hamman eased his partner's head out of harm's way. "I need to eat something, man."

"We could cast a couple of lines and see if anything's still biting."

"Fuck fish. Dammit..." Hamman really didn't want to go ashore, even for an hour. He'd fired two dozen rounds into the city in recent weeks. There were rotters waiting for him, his bullets swimming in their soft guts. When he managed to catch a few hours' sleep he always saw their gray faces crowding around him. And he was always helpless to defend himself, or even to run away.

Douglas scanned the city through his rifle scope. "You know, us being stuck out here, with only these guns, we can't kill the rotters."

"I know."

"We could stop there from being more of 'em."

Hamman frowned at Douglas. "Whaddaya mean?"

"I mean, anybody still in the city's gotta be infected. Or will be. Right?"

"I still don't follow."

"Buddy, if WE got rid of 'em, like now, we could go home."

Hamman was chilled to his core. Douglas smiled as if he'd just crapped a kitten out on the deck. "We'd be done, we could call off the patrol and get the hell outta here! Think about it!"

"I ain't shooting civilians." Hamman said slowly. "You need to listen to what's coming out of your mouth. Been drinking seawater again?"

"Irrelevant." Douglas scooted another empty cooler out from under his seat and beckoned to Hamman. "Look what I found." He pried open the lid.

Inside lay a severed fish head, ragged pink tissue trailing from its gaping mouth, a mouth that opened and closed as its eye darted back and forth.

"Douglas..."

"I think it's funny." Looking up at Hamman, Douglas scowled as if offended. "It's a JOKE! C'mon! Holy Christ, we're not at a funeral here. You need to loosen up."

"Loosen up?! You were talking about murdering people!"

"They're already dead, they just don't know it." Douglas picked up the fish head. "They're like this guy here. See? And so are we, except we don't want to stay in this town! It's them that's keeping us here!"

"No." Hamman stepped back into the cabin. "If you want to leave, just leave now. Go. I won't tell anybody. I'll take you in to shore and you can just go. You'll leave that goddamn gun here, but you can go."

"We're partners." Douglas tossed the fish head overboard and wiped his hands on his pants. "I'm not gonna leave you behind."

"It's either that or stay with me and shoot rotters."

Douglas seemed to consider the ultimatum. He sat back and gazed over the ocean, watching clouds gather on the horizon. He saw a dorsal fin skimming the surface of the water and grasped his rifle. "Shark? No, dolphin." He pointed and stood up. "You see it Hamman?"

"Yeah, great."

Douglas took aim at the dorsal. Hamman almost made a move to stop him. Almost. But he saw his partner's eyes glazed over with madness and stayed put.

The rifle bucked in Douglas' hands. A chunk of the fin sailed into the air. "HA! Nailed the fucker." The fin stayed visible, and he followed it with the scope. "Five will get you twenty that he's undead. I'll bet his head is right...about...there..."

Something knocked against the boat, spilling Douglas onto the floor. He swung around and spotted more fins at his back. "It's a school or pod or whatnot of the fuckers! Get your rifle, Hamman!"

Hamman stayed in the cabin, fiddling with the radio. No signal.

Douglas righted himself and aimed for one of the other dolphins. The boat rocked again. "Dammit!"

Standing straight up, he fired through the floor.

"Douglas!!" Hamman left the cabin now, grabbing his partner's wrists, but Douglas fired again and again into the floor. Water spurted over their feet. "What've you done??" Hamman cried.

"I dunno." Douglas stared blankly at the holes he'd made. "Well, why were they bothering us anyhow?"

Hamman spun Douglas to face him and shook him by the shoulders. "They WEREN'T!!"

Douglas pulled himself away from Hamman and sat back in his bucket seat. "Huh."

He put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Hamman stood and watched Douglas' brain matter spray into the air and then pepper the waters above the heads of the dolphins. One of them poked its head out to look at Hamman, and he saw that most of its snout and the skin around its eyes were gone. A pinkish stream shot out its blowhole and it descended below the surface.

Hamman started the motor and headed to shore. He never saw the wet hands clambering over the boat's rear, never heard the squishing of footsteps entering the cabin, felt nothing at all until teeth sank into his neck.

Gene stumbled back as the boat ran aground. Hamman's corpse fell atop him, still gushing blood, and Gene opened his mouth to catch it.

He sat on the deck for hours, watching the sun crawl across the sky as he chewed. The weakness in his arm, where he'd earlier been shot, went away.

Then he remembered something. Eating until his stomach could hold no more, he climbed off the boat and headed back to the landfill. He would return once he had his shovel.

15.

Tea in Hell

Harry, at twenty-four, had been the eldest of Addison's adopted children. Two years his junior, Baron Tetch never wasted an opportunity to remind Harry and his other siblings who the man of the house was. He arranged for tea in the early afternoon, and they all gathered in the sitting room, which looked into a lovely wooded atrium, sun streaming down through its skylight. Harry served tea.

Tetch looked around the room to see that they were all holding their cups properly, dressed and groomed neatly for the occasion. Bailey had a spot of dried blood on his cheek. Tetch grimaced. Lily, of course, looked and behaved perfectly. So much easier to train a person than an animal.

Aidan looked questioningly at Tetch. The latter nodded his permission, and Aidan spoke in a garbled, broken voice, as if he did not truly understand the words he was saying.

"Lurvley day."

"Love-ly, Aidan."

"Lo...lurvely."

Tetch took a slow sip of chamomile. "Harry, another sugar." The afterdead in his butler's uniform hastened across the room.

"I saw a bird on the fence today." Lily said brightly. "You didn't touch it, did you?" Tetch replied. Lily's smile faded slightly but she pressed on. "Of course not. I just looked at it. It was three colors - brown, red and white."

Tetch raised a hand to silence her and leaned forward in his chair. "Ruth, your dress." A brackish stain was spreading across the material covering her legs. The undead looked down and lifted the dress. Tetch gasped, not at the fact she was naked beneath, but at the gaping flayed wounds extended from toe to thigh. "What did you do?" Ruth gave him a vacant stare. Must have been some rudimentary attempt at shaving. But shaving what?? She didn't eat near enough to be growing new hair. Sakes alive, she was wearing a wig! "Get out," he growled. "Disgraceful."

As Ruth shuffled past the others, Lily patted her hand. Tetch's glare burned into the little girl's head, but she would not meet his eyes.

"Man." Aidan said, tea dribbling down his chin.

"What, Aidan?"

"Man, at outside. Yurst-day."

"Yes-ter-day, Aidan. It's not worth teaching you to speak if you're going to sound like a mongrel."

"Yes."

"Anyway, what man?" Was it the man Lily had told her about last night? "Outside the fence?"

"Yes."

"He was meat?"

"No." Came the answer. But Lily had said the stranger was alive...no matter, the child was probably mistaken. "So he was like you, then."

"No."

Tetch sighed. Aidan, the most able of his servants, had seemed worthy of speaking privileges. But he didn't know what he was saying. Just making nonsense sounds to placate the hand that fed him.

"So the man wasn't alive, and he wasn't dead either. Very good."

Lily realized what Aidan was talking about and picked up his end of the conversation. "His eyes were all black. They were pretty."

"I don't want to hear any more talk about this man." Tetch said. "Aidan, you and Uriel walk the grounds tonight, until sunrise. Lily, forget about it. Understood?"

"Yes, I guess."

"Don't give me any crap young lady."

There was a thud beneath them. Sawbones in the cellar. Tetch took another drink and tried to force the thought of strange dark men from his mind, but it brought memories to the surface...

He was thirteen, Lily's age, when he first came to the house. Dr. Addison was a large, steely-eyed man who always wore his lab coat, and was usually flanked by an equally imposing Great Dane. He usually took dinner by himself in the cellar. None of the children were allowed down there; it was said to house his research on the zombie plague. Whether or not that meant there were rotters in the basement, Tetch had never dared ask.

One morning he'd gone upstairs and into Addison's study. The doctor was there, turned away from the door, a box on his desk. As Tetch silently watched Addison had poured a cup of dead flies into the box. A moment later, they filled the air around the doctor's head.

He saw Tetch, saw accusatory eyes. "Baron!" He thundered across the floor. The boy scarcely made it out the door before a hand clapped down on the back of his head, then all was dark.

His eyes opened to a sea of garish crimson light. Head throbbing, limbs paralyzed, he tried to orient himself. Was he lying on his back? The room had no definition, no depth. It was all red. It was hot. He opened his mouth and a tiny croak escaped.

A huge, angular head with colorless eyes lurched into view. Tetch wet himself at the sight.

At the time he was certain that it was the Devil, and at that point he believed he understood what had happened and where he was. Yet he had no strength, no breath, to scream. He could only shake his head from side to side until he lost consciousness.

The next time his eyes opened, he was lying in his own bed, Addison holding his wrist and glancing at a pocket watch in his other hand. He felt thick gauze around his crown. "What happened?"

"You fell down the stairs. Don't you remember?" Addison's tone was dispassionate. "Before I had a chance to explain what you saw in my study - which you wouldn't have seen at all, had you observed the house rules - you practically threw yourself down the staircase. You were actually dead for a time before I managed to revive you."

The mind of thirteen-year-old Tetch was gripped by terror: it HAD been Hell, after all. But why would he be so condemned? Because he was disobedient? Addison stayed at his bedside for a time and lectured him about interrupting important work in forbidden rooms. Tetch resolved to stay out of the doctor's way from that day forward.

Two years later, after he'd murdered Addison, Tetch would discover that the garishly-lit "Hell" was the cellar, and the head he'd seen looming over him but a crude mask carved from wood. He suspected he hadn't been the only child put through that nightmarish routine. The only one, in fact, who probably never saw Addison's "Hell" was young Lily.

Nightfall found Lily slipping down dark corridors in her nightgown, whisper-quiet, bounding down the stairs and out the front door.

Uriel was at the gates with an axe. Keeping to the shadows, Lily stole around the corner of the house. She darted through the grass to the ivy-wrapped fence and peered into the swamp's inky blackness.

There he was, as she'd known he would be; the man in black came forward with a beautiful white horse. He stood silent as the horse bowed its head, and Lily reached through the fence to stroke its muzzle.

"Why aren't you afraid of the dead?" The man finally asked. "Baron makes them be nice," she answered. The horse had black eyes just like its owner. "He won't let them eat if they do bad things. Like one time Bailey bit me, and Baron put a rope around him and tied him to the fence and he had to stay there all week."

"You were bit...?" The man in black knelt and she held out her hand. There was a faint white scar below the thumb. "Didn't you get sick?"

"No. They aren't like the other dead people."

"How?"

Lily shrugged. The man in black studied her hand and her face. He touched her fingers with his, briefly; though his skin was icy cold, Lily felt warm in her chest and she couldn't help smiling at him.

"Do you like it here?" He asked. She nodded quickly. "Then tell me why you cut your wrists." He said. She stared at the ground.

"I'll come back later." The man climbed onto his steed. Lily wanted to ask him if she could ride the horse, just around the house a little, but she knew he'd say no. Despite that, she looked forward to his next visit.

16.

Safer?

"Yeah. You'll be safer with me, at my place."

"I appreciate it Mike, really. But--"

"Cheryl, I understand why it's hard for you to trust me - or anyone for that matter. I really do. And my saying that probably isn't going to ease any tension either, but the simple fact is that if you stay alone in this apartment, you run the risk of being cornered by rotters, looters - maybe friends of your cousin."

"Lee didn't have friends. He didn't even go outside."

"But he had a dealer..."

"Yes."

"Look, I've been sleeping on the floor in my living room. You can have the bedroom, I'll help you move your things in there. And I've installed new locks on all the doors. Nabbed 'em from the hardware store. No one can get into the apartment if I don't want them to. No one will be able to get into your room if you don't want them to."

"It's not so much about trust, Mike. It's just...I don't know. Lee's dead. I've been staying with him since I lost my brother, and I don't even remember how long ago that was. My brother controlled me too - he wasn't mean though, he had the best of intentions - but still I couldn't make a move without him. Then Lee. Nothing I did was right in his eyes, even if it was his own damn idea. I just want to run my own life for a change."

"Makes sense."

"But?"

"But safety in numbers still applies. And I broke your lock when I kicked the door in."

"Nice."

"You're right though. It's your choice. I'm just putting the offer out there. Okay?"

Mike pulled a pistol out and handed it to her. "I assume you know how to use this."

"I do." Cheryl was still reluctant to take it. "The least I can do," he said. "The very least."

"I'll think about it, okay?" She smiled. Mike doubted that, but he smiled back and left.

Meanwhile, the guests staying at the Holy Covenant Community shelter had already worn out their welcome. Oates threw open every cupboard in the kitchen and swore. "When did we run out of everything??"

"There are too many of us here." Reverend Palmer said, leaning against the sink as she filled a pitcher with water. "But I'm not going to ask anyone to leave. I've got no right to decide that one life is worth more or less than another."

"Then let me do it." Wheeler stood in the doorway. "That ex-con can go first."

"Shut up, Wheeler."

"You heard him talking to the cop. He's a pervert! None of us know him anyway."

"I barely know your ass," Oates barked, "and I hate you more."

"I'm not leaving." Wheeler said firmly. "I was here 'fore the troops cut and run off. I've been out there gathering food and shit so we can stay alive. But like the Rev said there's too many damn people here now. You know more are on the way, Oates - and I'm not giving this place up just because she can't say no!"

"This is my shelter." Palmer said, her voice barely above a growl. "If you don't like the way I run it, too bad."

"You're running it into the fuckin' ground."

"Then save yourself, Wheeler."

"I ain't the one leaving!!" He stamped his feet like an obstinate child. "You leave, Palmer! Go somewhere where there are still resources to be wasted on goddamn charity! These are the fuckin' badlands, sister! Those soldiers left us high and dry!"

"Then. Save. Yourself."

Oates stepped between the two of them. Though neither had made a move toward the other, threats burned in both of their eyes. Oates had never seen Palmer like this. She was fed up with Wheeler's bullshit, and so was he. "Take a walk." He told Wheeler. The other man snorted in his direction. Oates stood his ground. Wheeler finally groaned and left the doorway.

"Thanks." Palmer set the full pitcher on the counter. Her hands trembled. "What do you think, Oates? Should we leave the Harbor?"

"Hell no."

"He may be a bastard, but he's right about one thing. No matter how many people we have in the shelter, be it ten or two - it won't be long until the city's got no resources left. We're fighting a losing battle."

"Well, Reverend," Oates replied, his voice shaking as much as her hands, "I don't think nothing's gonna change that."

He picked at a splinter on one of the boards covering the kitchen window. "This is the end after all, ain't it?"

Funny, the reverend didn't think about it too much. When Palmer was born there had already been zombies walking the earth. If this plague was the end, THE end, then it was taking its sweet time.

A young woman named London poked her head into the room. "Can I grab that water from you?"

"Of course. Sorry." Palmer handed over the pitcher. Oates rapped his knuckles on the boards. "No, I don't imagine I'm gonna find a better place to die than this."

"So you say stay put?"

"That's what I say."

"All right then."

On the other side of the boards, standing outside the broken window, Aidan listened. The words that he recognized wormed into his brain, the rest quickly faded from memory.

He straightened his necktie and walked off down the street at a measured, almost-human pace.

17.

Clown

It pulled itself through an opening in the west wall, jagged bits of fencing flaying open its back, and staggered onto an empty street. Most of its colorful costume still clung to the body, pasted there by grime and by fluids seeping through bloated skin.

The clown stood in the street and looked from side to side. Its red rubber nose was distracting; the clown pulled the nose off and felt most of what was underneath come away with it.

Rouged lips were turning gray and falling off as the clown idly chewed through them. The white grease paint covering its face was hardly whiter than the skin beneath; an orange wig crawling with maggots was stuck to its bald head. Kid gloves stained brown with old blood. Oversized shoes filled now with pus and rot that squeezed out over the laces with each heavy step. The clown stood in the street and looked for food.

Someone was coming now, but he wasn't alive. The clean man in his nice suit gave nary a look to the other zombie as he passed. The clown thought of following him, but a few seconds passed and he couldn't recall what he would be following, and where.

The clown walked down the street. Innards sloshed within its distended belly. A maggot squirming in the rotter's navel dropped past urine-soaked trousers to the ground and was pulverized by a red size 15.

Time passed; the zombie felt what might be a fracture grinding inside one of its legs. Then it heard a voice and stopped. The voice was coming from a nearby building.

Inside that building, inside the shelter, a young woman sat with her son. Kipp had been Wendy's foster child for a decade, and any boundaries created by their legally-defined relationship had been forgotten in short order. Kipp was desperate, not for someone to love him, but for someone he could love. Every day his eyes were alight with what seemed an endless affection. He was sixteen now, probably half that age in an emotional sense - Wendy wasn't qualified to make a diagnosis but she'd known from the beginning he was handicapped.

He was peering through the paper-thin space between slats in a boarded-up window. Wendy sat on a nearby cot fixing one of his worn sneakers.

"The circus!" He said softly, breathlessly. Wendy looked up and he smiled at her. Climbing down from his perch atop a broken radiator, he padded across the community room in his socks.

"Kipp!" Wendy called. "Don't go anywhere we haven't talked about. Especially without your shoes."

He nodded and continued out of the room. London followed Wendy's loving gaze. "He's a sweet boy."

"Yes, he is."

"What did you do before you ended up here?" London asked.

"I was - am - a social worker. I work with a lot of children like Kipp. He's actually helped me a lot with that - he always sees the brighter side."

"I think they've got it better than we do," London said, then blushed. "Sorry, that must've sounded awful."

"No, no, I think you're right," Wendy replied, "and we could probably stand to learn a thing or two."

At the shelter's front entrance, Kipp quietly moved the barricade back.

The clown stood out front now, listening intently. Its gloved hands tightened into hungry fists. A young boy's laugh floated through the door.

The door cracked ever so slightly and the boy peered out. The clown stood still, waiting to see what would happen.

Opening the door just enough to get his skinny body through, the boy came out, stood and smiled broadly. He was waiting too.

The clown opened its mouth. Its painted smile split like a wound to reveal the remnants of decayed teeth. It reached for him.

The boy screamed. He threw himself at the door, not thinking to try and squeeze through the space he'd made, his frail body useless against the barricade. The clown fumbled at his shoulders. Its hands were broken and numb. Carefully, it stooped so that it could reach the boy with its open mouth.

A woman's hand thrust out and slapped at him. "KIPP!!" The woman shrieked. The boy grabbed her arm, sobbing, and buried his face against the door. Other voices now. The clown was desperate. It grabbed a mouthful of the child's hair between its teeth and pulled back.

A man thrust a metal spike out, some length of pipe, spearing the clown's eye and sending the rotter stumbling back. The same man tore the door all the way open and grabbed the boy. The clown struggled with the pipe. It couldn't see straight, couldn't steady itself. Feeling was leaving its legs. It twisted the pipe around inside its brain and moaned.

Wendy seized Kipp from Shipley's arms, backing away from the door. The others crowded in to restore the barricade. Shipley stood silent, watching the child and his mother.

"Wait!" Came a cry from outside. "What the fuck??" Wheeler snapped. Oates shoved him aside and pried the door back. "Hey!"

There were three people, two women and a man, running across the street from Liberty Auto. The clown spun around and lunged at them. The blonde caved the rotter's face in with a brick.

Against Wheeler's mad protests, Oates opened the door wide and waved them over. The clown lay on its back, fists clenched. Watery discharge pooled around its mutilated skull, the pipe sputtered dark chunks - still the thing lived.

Oates slammed the door behind the newcomers.

Far from the writhing clown, far from Jefferson Harbor's last pocket of humanity, Baron Tetch listened to Aidan's slurred words and nodded. "All right, I understand. Go downstairs."

Uriel was at the study door. Tetch pointed at him. "Do you remember how to use the rifle?"

The afterdead responded with a blank stare. Sighing, Tetch rose from his desk. "Let me show you again."

It was time to take the city.

18.

Mouths to Feed

Mike's radio, strapped to his belt, squawked as he was helping Cheryl carry a few boxes up to his apartment. He'd scarcely returned home and locked his door when he heard her knock upon it. Setting the box in his arms on the living room floor, Mike spoke into the radio. "Come back?"

"Weisman. What's your 20?"

"I'm home."

"Good. Grab something flammable. I've got - wait for it - a damn clown thrashing around outside Holy Covenant. Need some help torching him."

Mike acknowledged the request and went to peer beneath his sink. "I've got to leave you here for just a few minutes, Cheryl. You gonna be okay?"

"I should be." She eyed the eight locks installed in the door and smiled wryly. Laughing, Mike grabbed a bottle from under the sink. "Go ahead and get settled in the bedroom. I've got the only set of keys so don't go and get yourself locked out. I'll make you some copies at the hardware store in a little bit."

"Mike?"

"Yeah."

"Thanks."

She touched his hand timidly, a true sign of gratitude, reaching outside a claustrophobic, barely-existent comfort zone to make contact. He nodded and headed out the door.

When Mike arrived at the shelter, the front doors were open and Reverend Palmer was arguing with one of the bums, Wheeler. Voorhees stood by, gun in hand, watching the streets.

Mike ignored the confrontation and emptied his bottle's contents onto the ridiculous zombie lying there. It swiped blindly at his feet, to which he responded by coolly snapping its fingers under his boot.

"You got a light?" He asked Voorhees. The bald man nodded and fished through his trench coat for his matches.

"Three more??" Wheeler bellowed. "You just let them walk right on in here after what happened?!"

"They stopped the damn rotter, Wheeler!"

"That retarded kid is the reason the rotter was a problem in the first place! Too many strangers running around this goddamn place!"

"All right, Mister Wheeler." Voorhees said. "We've heard enough."

"You can't tell me what to say or do! You can't push me around because I'm homeless! We're ALL homeless! I don't care where you're squatting, it's not yours! This isn't even a city anymore!"

"You want to bring more of them?" Mike snapped. He pointed to the clown. Voorhees struck a match and held it over the moving corpse. "If that's what you want to do, Wheeler, just keep throwing your tantrum."

It was like he didn't even hear them. "Don't burn that here!" Wheeler cried. "Not right in front of the fuckin' building!"

Voorhees dropped the flame. The clown was bathed in seconds by fire, still kicking, still trying to grab something warm and alive.

Voorhees pushed Wheeler into the shelter. Mike followed and helped Oates restore the barricade. "What's this about three more?"

"Survivors." Oates pointed into the community room where the trio was sitting. Mike squinted at the blonde. "Is that..."

"Jenna O'Connell, in the flesh." Oates grinned. "She is something, isn't she? Even all roughed up like that."

Mike murmured something in response and surveyed the rest of the community room. "Where's our friend Shipley?"

"Dunno. He saved that slow kid, though." Oates replied.

"I want to talk to him."

Voorhees already had Shipley cornered in the restroom. He'd found the ex-con zipping up at the urinal. "That thing even work?" The P.O. asked. Shipley shrugged. "Who cares?"

"You know, Shipley, the police station's in decent shape. Rotters can't get in. No one can. I've even got some food down there, if you care for coffee beans."

"Not interested. I'm not gonna let you lock me in a cell."

"I'm not giving you a choice."

Voorhees produced a pair of handcuffs. His other hand was on his gun. His grim smile was dark from eating coffee.

"I don't have enough room at the station for all these people, but I do have a room just for you. It'll be better for everyone. No harm will come to you."

Shipley, under any other circumstance, would have given up. But he didn't.

"I can't leave here."

"Why, pray tell, is that?"

"That kid..."

In the community room, Wendy stroked Kipp's hair and kissed his forehead. "I'm so sorry. It's my fault." He shook his head in the crook of her neck. "It was my fault, Mom."

"No. It's never your fault. You don't..." Her voice trailed off. She sat up slightly and brushed the hair back on Kipp's scalp. She saw the bite.

"Hey," Isabella said from a window, "I think I see another one out there. Hey, Voorhees!"

The boards over the window exploded, throwing splinters into Isabella's eyes, and before the pain had even set in, before she knew what had happened, a gray claw tore through the opening and grabbed her by the jaw.

Fingers stabbed down her throat and she bit into them. Her jaw was torn away with a wet crunch. Wendy screamed; Oates uttered something that was both profanity and prayer, and Mike Weisman yanked out his pistol and chased it as it clattered across the floor.

Hands, several of them, grabbed Isabella's tongue and hair and shoulders and dragged her out the window.

Oates ran to the front door and threw himself against the barricade. A half-second later, a rifle blast tore through the door and threw him into the opposite wall.

Mike gaped at the smoking hole in the door. A rotter crouched to stare back at him.

"Christ," Mike breathed, and around him, every covered window in the community room warped and groaned under the weight of a single, unified assault.

19.

Kipp

"How are there so many?!" Miss Palmer was saying to the bald cop, but before he could answer Miss Palmer ran over to Kipp and his mom and took each by the hand.

It sounded like they were in the middle of a thunderstorm, caught up in a dark cloud somewhere. Kipp briefly felt weightless as he was pulled across the community room and he imagined falling, helpless, from the thundercloud. Perhaps into the waiting arms of a hundred, a thousand dead men, all with blood-red painted smiles.

Wendy glanced back at him as the two of them were pulled along. He realized he'd wet himself and started to say something, but she interrupted him. "It's okay it's okay it's okay," she said breathlessly. Her grip was tight on his shoulder. Miss Palmer's fingers were interlaced with his. Miss Palmer opened a small door and pushed Kipp and his mom inside.

"The chapel," Miss Palmer said. She stepped back and shut the door behind them and darkness flooded the room. Kipp screamed.

Hands slapping on the walls; his mom's hands. She found a switch, and soft lights came on overhead.

Kipp turned to look around the room while Wendy ran to the door to ensure that it had a lock. It didn't.

The chapel had four rows of long wooden seats. The walls were wood-panelled, floors swept clean; Kipp felt oddly detached from the rest of the shelter. He thought it might be a secret room. Then, as his eyes adjusted, he saw the effigy: the dead man nailed to a crossbeam, his face sallow and streaked with blood.

Kipp threw himself gibbering into Wendy's arms. She pulled him down behind a pew and tried to calm him, but he wasn't hearing her words anymore as she assured him that the dead man in the chapel wasn't supposed to be like the things outside, that he wasn't really there.

And he wasn't, was He?

She had taught Kipp prayer, but Wendy didn't herself keep the habit up enough to set any kind of example. She didn't think much about God anymore. It wasn't that she questioned how God could let bad things happen to good people; she accepted that He did so, and hated Him for it.

Wendy crossed the aisle and pushed one of the other pews in front of the door. The reverend had whispered as she pushed them into the chapel, "Don't open it for anyone." Through the wall she could hear the others arguing and pounding, trying to drive back the attack.

Kipp drew himself into a ball. Kneeling beside him, Wendy gently pried his hands from over his eyes. "Honey, we're safe in here, I promise. But I need you to get up, okay?" She motioned to the front, to the crucifix. "We need to move up there so we can push these seats against the door."

He shook his head with a whimper. She took his hands and pulled. He resisted, his body - and fear - stronger than hers.

There was a loud thud against the chapel door. Kipp jerked away and buried his head in his arms.

"Open up! C'mon!!" It was the ex-con. The door rattled in its frame but held; Wendy grabbed another pew and dragged it across the floor. "Please help me, Kipp!"

In the community room, Shipley hammered frantically. Most of the windows had been cleared of boards, but thankfully were too high and narrow for the undead to climb through. The living fought off the rotters' grasping hands using the fallen planks.

Voorhees had followed Shipley back into the room. He aimed his pistol at a thin female face peering through a window. She met his gaze and opened her mouth, as if to protest; a second later she was sent reeling, leaving a red mist in her wake.

Yeats dragged Oates in, crying "One of them's got a gun!" Checking Oates' pulse, he groaned. "He's dead!"

Palmer saw the gaping hole in the front door and grabbed Mike's shoulder. "We've got to put more shit on that barricade!" The P.O. shook her off and aimed out one window, then another, as if he couldn't decide where to waste his bullets first. She spun him around to face her. "They can't get in that way! They CAN through the door!"

Mike stared dumbly for a moment, then nodded and followed her from the room.

Voorhees fired a second shot and turned to see Shipley wrestling with the chapel door. "Back off!" He shouted. Amidst the chaos, Shipley probably didn't hear him, or even know who was being yelled at. Voorhees crossed the room and shoved him roughly. "Forget it! Help us out here!"

Shipley turned and threw a fist into Voorhees' gut. The cop wasn't expecting it and doubled over, nearly dropping his gun. Shipley went for the door again and Voorhees grabbed his leg. He yanked the ex-con to the floor, pressing the gun hard into Shipley's back. "I said FORGET IT."

"Okay." Shipley said to the floor, relaxing his body. Voorhees rose slightly, keeping the pistol against Shipley's flesh. "Help us secure the building or everyone dies. You, me, the people in the chapel. Everybody."

"You don't understand," Shipley argued, though still lying prone. "The kid--"

"I don't wanna hear about it!"

Across the room, a board cracked over a leering zombie's ahead. Voorhees looked up. Shipley rolled over beneath him and drove a work boot into his groin.

Voorhees buckled again; the ex-con scrambled to his feet and grabbed at the chapel door. "You gotta let me in! Listen to me!"

Voorhees drew the widowmaker from beneath his coat and sliced cleanly through the meat of Shipley's right calf. The man howled and staggered back. Voorhees tackled him to the floor, snapping a handcuff around one of his wrists.

He yanked Shipley across the room and slapped the other cuff onto the broken radiator, just below an open window. A gray hand lurched inside and groped blindly. Shipley flattened himself against the floor. "Lemme go!!"

"You're staying right there." Voorhees fired out the window and the hand retreated. With a sneer, he muttered "Worthless," and left Shipley to his protests.

Inside the chapel, the soft lights flickered and dimmed. Wendy collapsed onto a pew while pushing it. Then Kipp was beside her, trembling, but fighting to keep his head up. "I'll help."

Though she barely had any strength left in her body, Wendy got back up and braced herself against the pew. "Okay honey. Let's go."

He brushed his hair from his eyes. She saw the dark outline of the bite again, just above his hairline, then the lights went out completely.

20.

Wheeler

"J.J.!!" Wheeler shouted from the mens' room. He pulled a screwdriver from his coat and worked furiously at the hinges of the stall door. The other man ran in to see the boards dropping from the window. The rotters would be able to get through this one.

"What do I do?" J.J. cried. Screws clattered at Wheeler's feet. "Just keep 'em away til I get this fuckin' door off!"

J.J. edged toward the window. A dead man thrust his hands through. J.J. staggered back into the doorway.

"C'MON!!" Wheeler bellowed. He dropped to his knees to take off the last hinge. J.J. slammed both fists down on the sink faucet, knocking the rusted length of pipe loose. "Okay!" Taking the pipe up in his hands, he turned to face the window.

Another rotter had taken the first's place. He pointed a rifle at J.J.

The stall door slammed against the rifle just as it discharged, and huge chunks of plaster exploded from the tall, spitting dust and debris into the air. J.J. felt tiny, hot daggers lashing his cheek and fell to the floor.

Wheeler pushed the rifle outside and held the metal door against the window. "Get up, J!"

The door rattled in Wheeler's grip. He put all his weight against it, but then there was a gunshot and the door rocketed into his face.

J.J. watched Wheeler drop. Getting to his feet, he caught the warped, smoking door and thrust it upward again. A dead hand snaked around it and grabbed him by the hair. "Aaaah!" J.J. let go of the door and grabbed the rotter's wrist, snapping it. As the door fell aside, J.J. saw something pushing past the other rotters, some kind of skull-thing dressed like a doctor, holding an axe.

It was planted between J.J.'s eyes with a solid thud. His body was pulled outside.

Wheeler feebly pulled himself from the room, and before he kicked the door shut he saw their faces, crowding the window; a cry escaped him.

The young cop hauled him to his feet. "Are they in?" The cop shouted. "ARE THEY IN?!"

Wheeler nodded. "Addison. They're the Addison children, I know them. He sent them."

"What? Who?"

"Addison," Wheeler answered, then passed out.

Several years prior to taking up permanent residence at the shelter, Wheeler had moved from building to building, squatting a few days, stealing what he could. Sometimes it was an abandoned construction site or an alley where he spent the night, and without fail on those nights it rained. It had been raining when he'd entered the cemetery, and though he first huddled beneath a stone angel in his stinking wet rags, Wheeler was forced to give in and enter one of the burial vaults.

It would be safer in the vault, he told himself. All he carried for protection were a switchblade and a bat. The vault with its shadows and its coffins at least offered a place to hide. Maybe he'd spare himself pneumonia. Settling on the floor, Wheeler gripped the bat tightly and fought sleep until there was no fighting it.

A scraping sound awoke him. He sat perfectly still, eyes wide open in pitch blackness.

"Mrm," came the voice from overhead. The coffin that Wheeler was crouched behind trembled, then the lid fell on his head. He didn't move. Jesus, the body in the coffin wasn't ALIVE, was it? It didn't work like that!

"You'll do." Said the voice. Wheeler shut his eyes and waited for death.

"Who are you?" The voice snapped. He opened his eyes to see Dr. Addison standing there. He'd seen Addison a few times before, back when he'd earned a few meals working as security

(decoy)

at one of the west end's wealthy estates. Addison was the one that adopted all the kids, claiming he could cure the plague. And here he was, pulling a papery brown corpse from its coffin and piling it into a garbage bag. The doctor shot another look at Wheeler. "Do you live here?"

Wheeler shook his head. "Just getting out of the rain."

"You could probably use a shower and a shave."

Wheeler couldn't give a fuck about the shave, but a hot shower sounded like Heaven. He nodded.

"Help me here, then."

So Addison and Wheeler loaded a second corpse into a second bag, then carried both out to a pickup with some landscaper's faded logo on the side. "This yours?" Wheeler asked. He knew the rich guys still had cars but he thought they'd be a little nicer. "Don't ask questions." Was all Addison said in reply.

They drove across town - it took a couple of hours, Addison silently cursing at the manual transmission - and to the edge of the swamp where Addison's house lay. Addison turned on a powerful electric lantern, they got the bags out of the back, then they set off into the swamp.

"Does anything strike you as unusual about this place?" The doctor asked. He was short of breath, as was Wheeler; the soft earth was threatening to swallow the damn bags. Wheeler shrugged. "It's creepy. People don't come out here much."

"Why is it 'creepy'? What's so unsettling about it?" Addison pressed. Wheeler looked at the gnarled trees, their clusters of branches covered in moss, with great leaves dragging them toward the boggy ground. The night sky was completely obscured. He opened his mouth to speak but Addison spoke first.

"You don't see plant life like this anywhere else, do you? So green, so full, devouring everything around it - it won't stop growing. We have to cut it back every day to keep it from overtaking the manor. What's your name?"

"Wheeler."

"Mister Wheeler, this swamp is a sort of Source - a wellspring, if you will, of some energy. It feeds the swamp, engorges the swamp, infuses every cell of this place. Hold tight to that bag! This place...well, rather than try to explain it I'll just show you."

Stopping, Addison opened his garbage bag and let a pair of bony arms fall out. Barren of life, wrapped in shriveled skin and tissue, the arms lay like little fallen branches among the trees.

Then they moved.

The skin tore, and stringy tendons produced only subtle, jerky movements, but Jesus Lord they were moving. That's when Wheeler felt a shuffling about inside his own bag and dropped it with a cry.

"It brings the dead to life." Addison said, his smile horrifying in the lantern light. "This is the Source of the plague. Here it isn't contagious, caught up in the simple trappings of a virus - I suspect we're responsible for that particular development - but it still infuses dead tissue." Addison watched the two corpses shaking themselves free of the bags, teeth in hollow skulls click-clacking and the bodies themselves crumbling under the strain of new life.

"How does something like this exist? Why? Did God put it here?"

Wheeler realized that what Addison was talking about had nothing to do with science or medicine. The doctor knelt and rapped his knuckles on the forehead of his corpse. "This isn't of God. He and the life He's slapped together are impermanent. Look at our bodies. He did make us in His image, after all, didn't He? Do you know why, Wheeler? We're just a shallow attempt by God to leave His mark after He's long gone.

"This energy came before God."

Wheeler was backing off, in the direction from which they'd come, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to find his way out of the swamp before - before--

"We can rise above the flaws of our 'Father' and His finite purpose. We need only appeal to the Old Ones that have given us this gift." Addison saw Wheeler backpedaling through the mud and laughed. "Run if you want. Where are you running to? Man has already set the wheels in motion, whether or not he knows it! God is dead, Wheeler, and He's not coming back!!"

So Wheeler ran. He ran and ran and ran until his legs burned and his lungs screamed. He fell into a ditch and covered himself with dirt and prayed that he'd never wake up.

Now, in the shelter, he did wake up.

To the realization that Addison had been right.

21.

Mike

After getting Wheeler on his feet, Mike returned to the front entrance, where Palmer was throwing anything not nailed to the floor onto the barricade. Undead hands came through the hole in the door to sweep the obstructions away. Now would be a good time to use his gun.

He emptied the clip through the hole and went into his jeans for his backup. This was the last of his ammo. He shouted for Voorhees.

Outside, Aidan pointed to the smoldering clown; it had stopped moving. Harry lifted the mass into his arms.

The corpse crashed through the upper half of the door and clipped the light overhead, throwing the room into a tumult of shadows. Flames from the clown's ruptured gut lapped at the surrounding debris and cast an eerie new glow.

Voorhees grabbed Mike's arm. "Kitchen! The fridge!"

Palmer stomped the clown, choking on smoke; Mike pulled her off and gave her his gun. The others came running from the community room with boards in their hands. "Keep the rotters back!" Mike said, and followed Voorhees.

They wrenched the refrigerator away from the kitchen wall and lugged it across the floor with an earsplitting screech. Gunshots were heard, and the pounding of Mike's heart drove the other sounds away.

As they passed through the community room, he saw Shipley cuffed to the radiator.

"Voorhees--"

"Forget him! Move!"

Palmer tried to keep her hands steady as she held Mike's gun through a thickening haze of smoke. The evening sun backlit the undead as they tried to get in; they were a mass of writhing silhouettes, heads barely distinguishable. She whispered a prayer and pulled the trigger.

One of the dead flew back into the street. A second later Palmer was jostled aside by the cops with the fridge. Slamming it into place, Mike grabbed the gun from Palmer's hands and gasped a quick "thank you" before turning away.

Jenna and London pulled the clown into the community room and smothered it with blankets. The stench was nauseating. Blackened fingers on one hand curled into a fist; Jenna nearly fainted, but London shook her roughly. "Stay with it now!"

In the street, Harry raised his arms and studied them. His sleeves had caught aflame when he picked up the clown.

Aidan nudged him toward the broken door, even as the living blocked it off. Harry, his flesh being rapidly devoured by the heat, threw himself at the door. The refrigerator, with the survivors behind it, held fast.

Sawbones appeared with the axe; he pushed the other undead back and attacked the fridge.

Harry shuffled around the corner of the building by himself.

Mike looked from the entryway to Shipley. "We need him," he told Voorhees. The bald man shook his head. "He's the last damn thing we need."

"Give me the handcuff key."

"Weisman..."

"I won't ask again!" There was the slightest tremor in Mike's voice as he realized he had no idea what to do, if not ask. Voorhees leaned against the fridge and once again shook his head. "No."

Harry's flaming arms plunged through the window over the radiator. Shipley screamed.

Harry fought to get his shoulders through the window before the living reached him; bones snapped and flames swept up over his face. He could no longer see. There was no feeling in his upper body. Still he thrashed and thrashed and then felt himself hitting the floor, inside the shelter, bathed in fire.

Shipley kicked madly at the zombie. Mike ran up and beat at it with a board. The blanket on the nearby cot went up in seconds. "Voorhees!" He hollered. "THE KEY!!"

Voorhees entered the room. He pulled the widowmaker from his trench coat. Shipley cowered at the sight.

But the P.O. lopped the zombie's burning head off and kicked the body across the floor. He tossed the key to Mike. "Cut him loose if you want." Voorhees upended the flaming cot.

Mike knelt by Shipley. The handcuffed man kicked his legs and cried "Look...!"

The decapitated body had rolled underneath another cot and set it ablaze. "Fuck, Voorhees, fire over there!" Mike turned back and unlocked the cuffs.

Another cot was burning - dirty clothing piled beneath it sent a foul-smelling smoke into the air to join the clown's putrid odor. The whole place was going to go up. Palmer entered the room. "We've got to get out of here!"

"That's what they want!" Yelled Mike. "They're smoking us out! They're all around us!"

"If we can't--" Throwing her arms into the air, Palmer screamed "SHIT!" and ran to the chapel door. "Wendy? Kipp? You've got to open up!"

"Didn't you hear what I said?" Mike snapped. "YES I fucking heard it!" Palmer shot back. "We can get onto the roof from inside the chapel!"

"Then what?!" Voorhees coughed violently, swatted at the smoke around him. "The auto shop next door," Palmer said, trying to calm herself, to think. "Their roof's lower. We can make it over there, I'm sure of it."

Voorhees looked at Mike, who returned his hapless expression. "We're surrounded. They've got weapons. They've got a PLAN."

"Then we've got the roof." Voorhees muttered. "All right, everyone c'mon!!"

Through all this Shipley was silent, rubbing his tender wrists, watching the cops through the smoke.

22.

Tetch

Lily knocked on the study door and Tetch bade her enter. "Where is everyone?" She asked.

"Come over here, and I'll tell you." He motioned to a chair on the other side of the desk. Atop the desk, where stacks of books had been pushed aside, he had a shoebox filled with dirt. Lily eyed it with interest.

"I know how you've been wanting to go outside the gates," Tetch said, "and the truth of the matter is, I've been laying plans to make that possible. I'm tiring of the house myself, large as it is, and I don't want you to grow up and live your entire life inside these walls."

He emptied something into his palm from a paper bag. It was a dead frog, hard and black. Lily grimaced at the sight.

Tetch dropped it into the shoebox.

"You know your brothers and sisters aren't like the other rotters." He said. She nodded. "Here's why." He gestured to the box of dirt, and she craned her neck to peer inside, and the frog's frail little legs were kicking.

"It's earth from around the estate." Tetch explained. He loved the way her eyes shone as they followed the tiny movements of the born-again amphibian, the way she looked up at him, he who had done the miracle. "Harry and Prudence and all the others were brought back this same way."

"How did they die?" Lily asked boldly.

Clearing his throat, Tetch placed the frog on the back of his hand. "It was Doctor Addison - Father." He was lying, of course, but she was still too young to fully understand. And they had died peacefully besides, slowly poisoned by the exotic toxins Tetch had used to flavor their meals. None of them had ever suspected him of foul play; after all, he was the one who'd saved them from Addison.

The memory was clear as day, one he often replayed. Addison strapping the fifteen-year-old boy to a chair and presenting an instrument tray, upon it a mallet and steel spike. "You're stubborn." Addison was saying while he jotted notes. "Your soul simply isn't pliant enough - yet - to accept the Old Ones." These Old Ones, Addison was always rambling about them but refused to explain who they were. He refused to explain how feeding the children dirt and pricking their arms a hundred times a day did anything to find a cure for the plague.

Addison raised the spike; Tetch's arms tensed, but found resistance in the leather straps binding him. "This will be painless. Soon you'll be a more agreeable subject - they'll be pleased with you, I think."

"T-they who?" Tetch demanded, trying to sound strong. "The Old Ones?"

"The Old Ones." Addison set the tip of the spike just below Tetch's eye and reached with his other hand for the mallet. Tetch, unable to look directly at the spike, glanced down at Addison's notebook. He saw FRONTAL LOBOTOMY in a haphazard script.

"Living tissue, living bodies for them. Much better than the rotting animals out there, so much better." Addison leaned forward and moved the spike slightly. It was huge and cold in Tetch's tear duct. He was terrified. His arms strained and he felt the buckle give on one of the straps.

"Oh, no." Addison lowered the mallet and grabbed Tetch's arm. "I told you this won't hurt, Baron. I need you to relax. I've brought you out of Hell, son, in more ways than one, and I need you to trust me."

Son.

Something about that, at that moment, in that precise tone of voice, caused Tetch to snap.

He yanked his arm free and snatched the spike from Addison's hand. Tetch said something then, though he could never recall what it had been; nor could he recall planting the spike in Addison's throat. He only remembered the doctor flailing across the room with gouts of crimson erupting from him, then suddenly it was over.

Under cover of darkness, Tetch had taken Addison into the swamp to dispose of him. There, as he saw the body resurrect in the bog, saw it stagger about and then look questioningly at him...he'd begun to understand.

Killing the doctor's Great Dane was done out of necessity more than anything else. Tetch did take exquisite pleasure, however, in wiring the skull to Addison's head.

"Father" had been going about it all wrong: groveling to the Old Ones, thinking that they wanted these fragile human bodies, living or dead - it was all utterly beneath them. Tetch had completed Addison's research and realized his own gifts. Now, it was he who had pliant, undying servants. It was he who had mastered necrophagy, feeding his body on dormant energies - but unlike his siblings, retaining his soul.

Lily was captivated by the frog. Tetch extended his arm and allowed her to scoop it up.

"Gifts such as these weren't meant to be squandered in some rotten old house hidden from the rest of the world. I want to go outside the gates as much as you do."

"When?"

"When we've secured the city. When everyone within its walls - living or dead - belongs to me. It's about trust, Lily."

Later she took the frog outside and let it go. The man in black was standing at the fence.

"Why do you keep coming here?" She asked.

"I wanted to see if you were still all right."

"Yeah. Soon I can go out there too, but Baron says everybody has to belong to him." Casting a downward glance, Lily continued, "I think you'll probably have to leave."

"I won't be doing that." The man crouched, his smooth black eyes drawing her in. "Baron is wrong. These things he wants, they won't happen. I think you know that."

"H-he's always right."

The man pointed to the fence. "In there. Not out here."

She didn't respond. She was mulling it over, but as a child she couldn't avoid some truths, even those that made no sense, like the frog in the shoebox coming back alive. It was just...just so...

"It's sad." Said the man. He said it like he didn't know what sad was. Lily nodded though.

"I have to go back into the city," he told her. "Be safe." Then he was gone.

Lily turned and froze. Her blood ran cold at the sight of Tetch in the yard. He'd seen the man.

23.

Palmer

The reverend was the first onto the roof. She turned to help Voorhees, but he was already hauling himself through the open vent cover, then reaching down through the chapel ceiling for Kipp.

Mark Duncan and Mike Weisman lifted the teen up to Voorhees. They had decided they would go up after all the others; a ladder leaned against the wall for whoever was last.

When Kipp got onto the roof, he immediately started shouting for his mother. Palmer took him in her arms and assured him, "She's coming right up! She's next!" In an urgent whisper. The rotters on the ground must have heard him...

After Wendy, Wheeler elbowed his way forward. "Ladies first," Duncan said. Wheeler opened his mouth to start a tirade, but Mike shoved him back into one of the pews blocking the door.

Dead hands exploded through and grabbed Wheeler's coat.

Mike whipped out his pistol and pushed the hands aside. They clawed at him; he dropped the gun. Wheeler fell to the floor in hysterics.

"Help me out!" Mike yelled, sweeping the floor. He couldn't see shit. The gun might be under one of the pews. "Fuck fuck fuck--"

The head of an axe split the door near the top, and the rotters' hands began prying, trying to tear the whole thing apart.

Palmer watched from over Voorhees' shoulder. How could the damn things be so smart...how could they be working together like that?

"Found it!" London cried. She reached between two of the barricade's pews to grab the gun. A rotter snatched her long hair and yanked her into the door with a crash. Mike leapt atop her and struggled with the hand. "GET THE GUN!!!" Wheeler hollered.

London's head smashed into the door a second time. It left behind a bloody stamp matted with hair. Her body sagged in Mike's arms.

"The GUN, man!!" Wheeler wouldn't dare approach the barricade but he didn't hesitate to scream orders. Yeats got on the floor to reach underneath the pews. Brushing the pistol with his fingertips, he wedged his shoulder deeper.

Suddenly he screamed. As the door was ripped away, piece by piece, he felt his arm seized and wrenched from its socket, then flesh tore and muscle snapped and he was soaked in blood.

Mike rolled him away from the pews. The arm was gone. Yeats stared dumbly at the spurting stump, already half-dead. Jenna O'Connell mashed her fist into her mouth with a cry.

Shipley waved at Duncan. Together, they lifted a pew off the floor and turned it toward the crumbling door like a battering ram. "Everyone out of the way!!"

The axe burst through again, and behind it was a skull-faced monster that surveyed the chapel's inhabitants with empty eyes.

The pew plowed straight into the rotter, sending it careening into the fiery community room.

Yeats was gone. Mike and Duncan immediately returned to the spot below the vent. "Let's get outta here!" Duncan grabbed Jenna and lifted her foot into his hands, boosting her into Voorhees' grasp.

Lauren was next, then Wheeler got his turn. After Shipley went up, Duncan and Mike were alone. The undead were clambering through the doorway. Mike knelt and cupped his hands. "No, you first!" The other man argued. Mike shook his head grimly. Duncan stepped up and was thrust skyward.

Voorhees dumped Duncan roughly on the tarpaper and dropped his arms again through the ceiling. "Weisman!"

Mike started toward the ladder, then stepped back; he'd never get around the rotters if he went for it. Standing atop the nearby pews couldn't help him reach his escape route either. The dead lurched into the room, one after the next, and fixed their eyes on him; the gun was still under the barricade, it was hopeless...

He remembered Cheryl, sitting alone in his apartment. And no one knew. Voorhees didn't even know which unit he lived in.

The zombie with the rifle lifted it to its shoulder. Lunging forth, Mike grabbed the barrel, twisting the weapon from the undead's hands. He smashed the butt into the zombie's teeth and spun the rifle around to point it at the others. Smoke poured into the chapel, hungry flames close behind.

He fired. He fired and fired and fired until his hands were numb and the rifle was empty, and all the dead were flailing on the floor with chunks of flesh and bone scattered around them.

Mike hurled the rifle through the door and grabbed the ladder. A female swiped at his ankle. He stomped her face into a pulpy ruin. Staggering up the rungs, Mike linked his arms with Voorhees'. He felt himself rising into the fresh evening air.

Palmer pointed to the auto shop at their rear. "It's an easy jump." The last syllable had scarcely left her lips when Shipley leapt across the gap, dropping into a roll as he hit the steel roof on the other side.

"The kid!" He called, opening his arms.

Voorhees placed a firm hand on Kipp's shoulder. "Weisman, you go next."

Palmer knew that Voorhees had Shipley pegged as the Midtown Rapist, but what did that have to do with the boy? Maybe he thought Shipley wanted Kipp as a hostage, to secure his freedom? Hell, he could just run right now if he wanted to. The fact was, there was as much "freedom" out here as there was law.

The reverend watched Mike jump across, and he motioned for Kipp to come over. "You can make it!"

Shipley stepped aside with a look of resentment.

"Can you do it?" Duncan was asking Jenna and Lauren. They both answered in the affirmative and approached the edge of the roof. The entire shelter shuddered. "We've got no time! Move, move!" Voorhees barked. The two women jumped.

Palmer steeled herself for the leap. It was easy, just like she'd said. She bent her legs slightly, took a deep breath, and ran forward. As her feet left the tarpaper, she said a silent goodbye to her home.

She collided with the edge of the other roof, knocking the wind from her lungs with an impact that wracked her entire body. The reverend tumbled unconscious to the ground below.

24.

Jack-O-Latern

Voorhees slung his legs over the edge of the roof and dropped into the alleyway between the two buildings. Lifting Palmer off the ground with one arm, he yelled "Just get across!" To the others above him.

He hefted his pistol in his free hand; a few bullets left, something to swat at the undead horde with before they overran him. He ran onto the street and saw the chained doors of the auto shop. Now there was a better use for the bullets. Voorhees held Palmer tight and took aim.

Atop the garage, Wheeler stomped on a cracked skylight. It fell in with a shriek, most of the glass landing on the roof of a rusted-out van. He jumped down without hesitation.

Voorhees emptied his gun into the padlock securing the door. A kick finished the job, and he lugged Palmer's dead weight inside. The others were climbing down from the van. Mike ran to shut the door and move a metal shelf in front of it.

"She smacked her head pretty good." Voorhees observed, laying Palmer out on the floor. Concussion, maybe, but she'd come around before too long.

As soon as Mike had stepped back, Wheeler went to the door and started moving the shelf out of the way. "The fuck are you doing?" Jenna snapped.

"We've gotta keep moving. Grab what you can and let's go." As he spoke, Wheeler snatched a wrench off the shelf. But before he could nudge the shelf another inch, Mike braced himself against the other end. "Have you lost it?"

"They'll be here any minute!" Wheeler protested.

"They're still in the shelter. Probably feeding..."

"Not with that fire raging! Look, you don't know who they are. Those are the kids from the Addison estate!"

"Addison?" Palmer sat up, looking at Wheeler through half-closed slits. Voorhees pressed an oily rag to the gash on her head. "You mean from the house in the swamp?"

"Yes! I'm tellin' you, Addison sent them out here! He wants bodies for his fuckin' research! I know what I'm talking about!"

"You want to talk about it without screaming?" Jenna said. Wheeler was ready with a smug retort. "The nice officer here says all the rotters are having dinner next door. What're you worried about?"

"Shut up, Wheeler." Palmer got to her feet and took the rag from Voorhees with an appreciative glance. "We just need to keep quiet until they're either dead or gone."

"I won't keep quiet!" Wheeler hurled the wrench across the room with an ungodly clatter. Mike wrestled the bum's arms behind his back and produced his handcuffs. "Oh no you don't!" Wheeler hollered. "You've got no right! No right!"

Palmer picked up the wrench. Wheeler's eyes met hers and he yelped as she came at him.

The window in the door exploded, peppering Mike and Wheeler with glass. The axe head swept through, only to get caught on the edge of the shelf; holding it was the skull-faced rotter.

"We saw him!" Lauren cried as Jenna pulled on her. "We saw him, remember?"

"Get into the pit!" Voorhees gestured to the dark workspace beneath the van. Breaking away from Mike, Wheeler pushed past the others to crawl under the vehicle.

Sawbones freed his axe and attacked the door with renewed vigor.

"I'm out of ammo." Voorhees told his fellow P.O. "No gun." Mike replied. Someone tapped his shoulder; it was Palmer, and she handed him the wrench. "Just split his damn head open so he can't see straight."

"Easier said than done." Mike murmured. The reverend slipped down into the pit, leaving them alone. Then the shelf fell over.

The door swung inward, and the rotter entered to face the two policemen.

Voorhees grabbed a length of pipe by his feet. In the pit, Kipp screamed. It didn't matter, the rotter already knew where they were.

Sawbones ran at Mike. The cop ducked aside and the axe buried itself in the side door of the van. Sawbones tugged frantically; Voorhees smashed his pipe against the exposed backside of the zombie's head.

Sawbones turned and snorted. He jerked the axe free and delivered it to Voorhees' gut.

"No." Mike could only stare in disbelief as his mentor doubled over.

But it was the blunt side of the axe head that had struck Voorhees; he rose and hit Sawbones square in the chest with a THWACK!

It made no difference to the rotter. He lifted the axe again, this time for the kill.

Mike bashed him in the side of his head. The dog's-skull mask cracked. The wrench cracked again across his face and Sawbones careened into the far wall.

Voorhees was on it. No sooner had Sawbones bounced off the wall than the pipe came down to blow out his knee. The rotter slumped against the axe handle for support; Voorhees kicked it from his hands. He hit Sawbones in the head. The fractures already present in the skull webbed out, and bits of bone fell to the floor. The cop followed up with his bare fist.

Seizing Sawbones from behind, Mike hurled him facefirst into the wall. The snout of the dog's-skull ruptured like cheap plaster. Dust filled the undead's eyes; he thrashed blindly, but his clawing hands found no purchase.

Bright red fire spewed from a road flare in Mike's hand, and he crammed it into Sawbones' eye socket. The skull lit up like a hellish jack-o'-lantern. Sawbones mewled and dug his rotten hands into his mask to get the fire out.

With a roar, Voorhees lifted the fallen shelf and threw it onto the monster.

Mike leapt atop the shelf before Sawbones could buck it off. Taking up the axe, Voorhees held it over the thing's kicking feet. "Hold still, Mike. I don't want to get you."

"I'm doing my goddamndest."

Voorhees slammed the axe through Sawbones' left heel, then his right. Ichor pooled around the severed extremities, now attached only by a few stringy bits.

"Everybody out here quick!!" He yelled. The others obeyed, each gazing in horror at the squirming zombie as they passed it.

Mike wriggled off of the shelf and left Sawbones to paw at the floor.

Running to the door, Voorhees peered outside. "It's clear--"

"Wait."

Mike narrowed his eyes. "Is that a bite?"

Wendy clutched Kipp to her breast, heart pounding.

But he wasn't looking at the boy.

Wheeler followed Mike's gaze to his hand and snatched it into the sleeve of his coat, looking at the others. "What. What."

Barring the doorway, Voorhees' cold stare bored holes into the back of Wheeler's head.

The others stepped away.

"It - what, this?" Wheeler held his hand out now, shaking it at them as if offended. "The kid did it, down in the pit! He was scared!"

No one spoke. The pit had been dark and horrifying; with the fight going on overhead, everyone was in a stark panic. Reverend Palmer looked at Kipp. Maybe the child really had bitten him. "Kipp?" She asked. Wendy shook her head quickly. "No, no, we weren't anywhere near him--"

"Then who the fuck did it?!" Wheeler snapped. "Because it happened down there, and if it wasn't that retard I don't know who it was!"

The wrench smashed into his brainpan with a solid THUNK; strands of bloody hair came away on the tool, then it struck Wheeler again, this time with a wet sound, and he fell, gibbering.

Voorhees knelt over him and brought the wrench down one last time.

Wendy smothered Kipp against her. The others just stared. Blood pooled rapidly around the bum's dashed skull, nudging them further back.

Mike stooped on the other side of the body, opposite Voorhees, and took the wrench away. He turned Wheeler's hand over and examined the bite. It had broken the skin, barely, and if it was a rotter's, then Wheeler had likely been infected.

"Come here." He motioned to Wendy. She shook her head again, so he went to her. Tears coursed down Wendy's face and fell onto his hands, which lay on Kipp's shoulders. "I just want to see his mouth." Mike assured her. Knowing the P.O.'s politeness wouldn't last if she refused, Wendy slowly turned Kipp to face him. He touched the boy's mouth, parted his lips, examined his teeth, sighed.

"I think he was telling the truth."

There were a couple of short gasps. Voorhees was frozen beside the corpse. Beneath the shelf, Sawbones grunted.

Voorhees coughed into his fist and stood up. "We've got to keep moving." What Wheeler had said minutes earlier.

Mike began to ask, "Should we burn--"

"There's no time." Voorhees answered, and walked out the door.

So they left.

25.

Death in the Family

The afterdead made their way out of the shelter as the roof caved in, forming a maw with a thousand fiery tongues that belched smoke into the sky.

Aidan held his blackened fingers out in front of him and counted his siblings. They were three short. Three still inside, including Harry (but not Sawbones, as he'd fled earlier), and all of them were probably now covered in flames as Harry had been. There was some formality that Tetch had taught them to observe in such an instance, but Aidan had forgotten it. He searched the streets for Sawbones.

The man in black climbed down from his white horse and drew a scythe from his robes. Aidan's corrupt innards roiled at the sight of him.

Uriel had retrieved the rifle and loaded fresh rounds into it with his cracked, charred hands. He took aim at the man in black and fired.

The man flew back, struck the curb, folded over like a doll and lay still.

His flesh would not be tinged with smoke. It was white and unblemished and Uriel's mouth watered as he shuffled forward, leading the pack.

Death stayed in the prone position and listened for their approach. The rifle hadn't left a scratch on him. He needn't have even reacted to the impact except to draw the rotters in. And now...

NOW

He rose, robes billowing out as he swept the scythe in a broad arc, black eyes rolling over white and reflecting nothing in their depths. The setting sun played brilliantly across the blade as it glided toward Uriel, halving the barrel of the rifle, halving the zombie's torso, sending a geyser of brown filth spraying from dead arteries.

Uriel slumped into Prudence's arms. She dropped him and came at the man in black. He turned the blade flat and hit her across the face with a clap that shattered bone.

Sweeping his cloak around his back, Death swung the scythe under his arm like a pendulum. One of the rotters had circled behind him; its groin was skewered and the filleted remains emerged from its backside, on the bloody tip of the Reaper's blade.

Death gripped the scythe's handle with both hands and hurled the impaled rotter into the others. They fell in a heap of tangled, thrashing limbs.

Aidan struggled to his feet and reached into his suit jacket for his knife, taken from the butcher block in the manor kitchen. Its size was pitiful in comparison to the other's blade, but the other wouldn't be able to kill him. Shouldn't...

Peering over Death's shoulder, Aidan saw that Uriel was still motionless in the road. He frowned.

The scythe pierced him beneath the chin and parted his tongue on its way through his mouth; he felt foul liquids erupting inside his head, felt his limbs go numb as his brain was speared, and then nothing as Death lifted Aidan off the asphalt and dangled him before the others.

The white-eyed spectre glowered at them, at their senseless gaping faces. He jerked the scythe free.

"Come. Come at me."

They didn't. Four of them left, they stood together and stared at him but did not attack. They were wary of this new threat.

Why did these empty things seek to protect themselves? What purpose, what order was there in their existence? He knew now that the undead had existed as long as there had been life on Earth, but he'd not sensed them, not felt their cold blue flames until the plague began. Man had made the plague. Perhaps that was why he had finally been allowed to see them, and why he felt a responsibility to deal with them.

It was his responsibility, that was all. He wasn't angry at them. He wasn't vengeful.

It wasn't possible. Death felt nothing.

But, watching the rotters as they stood their ground and stared that same blank stare, all four of them - impatience stirred within him. He wanted to feel his blade pierce their flesh, resistance yielding as their insides were split, then entire bodies torn asunder; he wanted to destroy them with his bare hands, but his hands couldn't extinguish their candles. No, he could only reap the miserable things using their own bones. He who marked the passing of each and every life found his sole purpose defied and defiled by them, found himself forced to adapt to THEIR laws, to meet them on THEIR turf.

Walking corpses.

An absurdity.

He stepped forward and swung the scythe with the intent of cleaving each and every single one of them in two.

The first caught the blade in its side and stopped its progress with both hands.

The handle was yanked from Death's grip. He lunged at it, and one of the females raked her thin gray fingers across his face. His eyes rolled back and his flesh opened beneath every fingertip as if fleeing from the zombie's touch. He spun away, blind, clutching at his face; an arm snaked around his waist and hands began ripping at his cloak.

He tried to summon the horse, but its wounds mirrored his own and it was folding over on the asphalt. He thought of a stillborn child he'd seen the morning before, ferried to the landfill by its haggard mother, another caught helpless and unaware in a world that shouldn't be.

In Mike's apartment, Cheryl was squatted on the toilet seat, clutching her abdomen. The dull ache was growing into something worse and there wasn't any sort of medication in the place. Maybe there was a little something stashed away back at Lee's...? No, she shouldn't venture out alone, even with a gun. She could barely get around the apartment. Bunching herself up on the toilet seat, squeezing tears of pain from her eyes, Cheryl rocked back and forth and tried to think of something else.

No, not the baby. Think of...of what. Kittens? She'd once seen a litter in a cardboard box devouring their mother, long dead from the strain of labor. The kittens had been born infected, yes, but weren't nearly dead yet. Maybe it was just in their nature.

To give birth to an infected baby, the dying child of a dying mother, there could be no greater heartbreak in the world. Yet Cheryl had known women who'd insisted on carrying their pregnancies to term after being bitten. That wasn't human nature though, was it? Weren't people supposed to be more rational than that?

Maybe not. Maybe the plague had forced Man to acknowledge what was true all along, she thought. What was rationality, but people turning their back on instinct?

Perhaps the spread of the plague and the decline of rationality had been the reason why undead sideshows enjoyed brief popularity. Her brother had taken her to one such show in a foul-smelling circus tent, with hand-painted signs declaring HORRORS OF THE DEAD WORLD! COME FACE TO FACE WITH THE FLESH-EATERS ROAMING THE AMERICAN BADLANDS! CERTIFIED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

That last disclaimer meant that the sideshow didn't cultivate plague for their own use, nor did they display human rotters. Any group alleged to do so was classified as terrorist. No, this was an all-animal attraction promising wild beasts decaying before the audience's own eyes. Cheryl had protested all morning long but her brother wanted to see and, well, he sure as hell couldn't leave her home alone for an hour. So they'd sat in the hot tent amidst morbidly curious others and waited.

A spotlight clapped on and illuminated the sawdust-covered floor in the center of the bleachers. A man in a crimson top hat and suit vest paraded into the light. His face was painted white with black circles around the eyes. His grin was all too similar to that of a lipless rotter. The man plucked his hat from his head and bowed all around. "I am EVISCERATO!!"

Cheryl snorted at the name. Her brother elbowed her with a stern look. "What," she whispered, "am I supposed to show this guy respect?"

"Don't cause trouble." Her brother answered in a low voice. "These people are--"

"AND NOW," Eviscerato bellowed, "THE FIRST OF OUR CARNIVAL'S MANY UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS, A FEARED PREDATOR TURNED GHOUL!!" Handlers in blood-stained jumpsuits emerged from the shadows, pulling on chains. The chains were fastened around the neck and limbs of a grizzly bear, most of its face eroded away, leaving a fanged skull that emitted a warbling cry.

Cheryl moaned and grabbed her brother's arm. He ignored her, studying the animal.

Eviscerato danced around the bear and its handlers, shouting taunts. The bear seemed oblivious to his presence; indeed it didn't appear to have either of its eyes. All of its claws were intact, of course. If she squinted Cheryl thought she could see bolts keeping the grizzly's paws in one piece.

The handlers pulled the bear into a standing position. It made a sound of protest and its belly shifted. The thing's innards were sloshing around in there. Was it able to eat? Did they even feed it, and what? Unnatural as the beast was Cheryl found herself pitying its condition.

Waving his arms like a madman, Eviscerato approached the standing grizzly. "LOOK!" He cried, pointing like a rude child at the distended belly. Then, another handler trudged out, this one holding a chainsaw. Eviscerato accepted it from him with a flourish.

"I want to go." Cheryl stammered. She squeezed her brother's arm until he shoved her hand away. "It's just another rotter, Cheryl. Jesus."

"It's an animal - it doesn't know--"

"None of them know! Shut up!"

The saw came to life, and there were scattered cheers from the audience.

Eviscerato drove the sawteeth into the bear, just above the groin, and spilled its guts over the floor.

A short, squat man tumbled from the yawning wound and splashed down in a soup of gore and sawdust.

He rose to one knee, thrusting his bloody fists into the air. The audience laughed and applauded. Cheryl slumped against her brother.

"They just stuck him in there beforehand and stitched it up," he would explain later. "They probably reuse the same bear until it falls apart - it's not ALIVE, Cheryl, why the hell do you care? It's not like it's a goddamned puppy and even THOSE things don't have feelings." He'd try to rationalize it: "I wanted you to see once and for all that there's nothing there, nothing in those animals. I should've known you'd react this way."

Months later she heard on the radio that Eviscerato had been mauled and infected by a wolf during one of his "performances". He'd spent his last days doing illegal shows where he'd taunt human rotters, letting them bite him, even biting them back.

She hadn't felt sorry for him.

Cheryl was stirred from the memory by a knock on the door. Mike had a key...maybe it wasn't Mike. She reached across the sink for the pistol he'd given her and stood up.

Cheryl hobbled out of the bathroom and across the carpet to the door, quiet as possible, and she looked through the peephole.

There was a dead man there. He was holding a shovel.

26.

Interlude - The King of the Dead

(An oral tradition from the badlands)

The boy had never been to a circus before. The circus was a place where animals and clowns and magicians performed. It was rarely seen, but when the circus did come through a part of the badlands, all the people there were happy for just a little while.

The boy's father often told him about the last circus, many, many years before the boy's birth. A caravan had appeared over the hills with the rising sun, a train of brightly-colored wagons with all sorts of animals - some of them alive - displayed in cages. For the price of a scrap of food, everyone had gone that night and seen dancing clowns, majestic beasts and other sights too fantastic to share.

Almost every night the boy asked to hear about the circus. Almost every night, after his father kissed him and the world grew silent, the boy prayed for the circus to come.

One day it did, and it was just as the boy's father had described it. A line of wagons pulled by dead horses stretched far into the hills, full of colors and animals he'd never seen! Men with painted faces waved and smiled at him as they passed.

At the far edge of town, where there had been nothing but dirt, they put up a giant tent that nearly scraped the sky. The boy sat and watched for hours as men and animals went in and out of the tent. He wanted to follow along, but his father wouldn't let him. "Not yet," he said. "They're putting the magic in."

The boy knew that there were wonderful and secret things going on inside that tent. He desperately wanted to see, but knew to behave lest he never see the circus at all, so he sat and waited until the sun began to descend. At twilight his father came and found him. "Now we can go in."

Each act that the boy saw that night made his heart thunder and caused a grin to spread from ear to ear. He clapped until his hands were raw and red and kept clapping. All the while, his father watched him with a smile as big as his own.

Then they brought out their most special act: THE KING OF THE DEAD. He was a dancing jester painted in a rainbow of colors. His limbs flew and spun and kicked up a storm of dust. His name was Eviscerato.

Other men, dead men, were brought out to stand around the King of the Dead. They were chained to posts in the ground. The boy's father told him not to be afraid, but he wasn't. His eyes followed every movement of Eviscerato's feet as the nimble jester came just within reach of each dead man, then pulled away from their snapping teeth. All the while he smiled and laughed and sang! Everyone in the audience applauded madly.

Eviscerato spun in a tight circle, in the very center of the dead men, then stopped cold. He looked into the audience, right at the boy. He reached out a hand. One of the dead bit into it.

The crowd roared. The boy stood and stared as all the dead men grabbed Eviscerato and chewed and tore at his brightly-colored costume. All the while the King of the Dead smiled! How could a man smile through such terror? The boy was mesmerized. Blood pooled at Eviscerato's feet and he danced in it, he nipped at the necks and fingers of the dead men, he continued to sing and laugh and despite the horror of the scene there was not a face in the audience that did not grin from ear to ear.

When the torches were extinguished and the crowd was ushered out, the boy climbed onto his father's shoulders and searched for his new hero. Eviscerato was nowhere to be seen.

His father tucked him in very late, and they stayed up a while longer talking about all the things they'd seen. The boy kissed his father and settled down to dream about the circus.

When he awoke, it was still dark. A few fires glowed outside the window of the shanty, and the boy got up to see what was happening.

The circus was leaving. The tent was gone and the animals were motionless in their cages. As the caravan passed the window, the boy saw men without makeup or smiles sitting atop the wagons. He watched them until the last light faded over the horizon.

Then another wagon passed by the window, and stopped. The King of the Dead was the driver. He smiled his painted smile and reached out a bloody hand.

"Come with me." Eviscerato said. "Come dance forever."

The boy took his hand and climbed out the window. The King of the Dead whipped the horses and pulled away. The boy's father chased after the wagon, crying out his name, but the boy didn't hear him.

27.

Interview

Four.

Only four had come back. They were all disoriented, stained with soot and blood, and Sawbones was not among them.

Tetch made them wait on the porch while he spread plastic across the foyer, then he brought his siblings in and locked up behind them. Aidan hadn't returned either; without him, there was little hope of getting specifics on what had happened. "Stay on the plastic." Tetch muttered. He nudged Prudence, whose eyes refused to meet his, and leaned in close. "How many of them were there?"

She studied the grime at her feet, the blistering on her burnt flesh. Standing on her toe, Tetch lifted her chin with his hand. "Use your fingers. How many?"

She raised an index finger and averted her gaze.

"No. No." Tetch stepped back and glanced at the others, only to have each one look away. "Not just one. I want to know how many there were to begin with, how many of them did this to you! Bailey! How many?"

The rotter shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he wasn't ashamed, he simply had nothing to offer. Tetch grabbed him by the hair and shook him around. "Tell me! TELL ME!!"

Bailey raised one finger.

Tetch snapped it in his fist. The afterdead stood motionless.

"I sent all of you and only four came back! Why are you telling me this? Didn't you see any of them? Gerald!" Tetch backhanded the next in line. "Look at me!"

Gerald's glassy stare penetrated his brother. "Now," Tetch breathed, pulling a fountain pen from his jacket, "take this and write on your hand. You know numbers, don't you? Tell me how many people you saw, and if you put a 'one' down so help me..."

The rotter grasped the pen awkwardly and held it over his open palm. He wrote nothing.

"Gerald?"

Tetch's eyes widened as the pen, unused, was handed back to him.

He brought the pen up to stab it into Gerald's unblinking eye.

"Please don't!"

Tetch whirled to see Lily at the top of the stairs. "Go to your room!" He commanded. "What happened?" She shot back. He hurled the pen at her and missed by a mile. "GO TO YOUR ROOM!!"

Something struck him then. He thought back to when he'd caught Lily by the fence, how there had seemed to be a shadow in the swamp that fled from view when he came outside. He remembered that she'd said something the night before about a man with black eyes.

Tetch started up the stairs, and Lily backed away from him. "Don't be afraid of me," he said softly. "I take care of you. I love you. Don't you love me?"

She nodded. It was a quick, insincere gesture. Tetch lowered himself to her height and gave her a pleading look. "Lily, someone hurt your brothers and sisters. I think the others...they're dead. Really dead. Who were you talking to earlier?"

The girl turned on her heel and tried to bolt; he caught her arm and shoved her across the landing into the wall. Tetch pinned her there. She screamed, but he held fast. "Who are you screaming for, Lily? Who's out there that you trust more than me? Who do you love more than me? Don't say nobody, or you're a LIAR, Lily, and lying makes you an ugly little child and no one loves you then!"

"No!" She struggled against him until her face was bright red. "You're the liar!"

"I've never EVER lied to you!" Spittle struck her cheek and Tetch raised his cuff to wipe it away. She flinched, going limp against him. His body's reaction was quite the opposite.

"I've never lied to you." He repeated. She kept her eyes shut tight, face turned away. He pulled her into an embrace. "Lily..."

"You've never lied to me."

"But you don't really believe that."

"Yes I do." Like the others, she wouldn't look at him, but she said in a tiny voice, "I was just scared."

He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a bit of room to breathe. "It was the man with the black eyes, wasn't it? He came back."

She gave a reluctant nod in reply. Tetch whispered "Good," and kissed her mouth, tasting her breath, his hands trembling against the small of her back. "What's his name, Lily?"

"He doesn't have one."

Tetch's grip relaxed completely. Opening her eyes, Lily backed away from his pale face, his slack arms. He didn't even look at her.

She went back to her bedroom.

Outside the burning shelter, under a dark sky, a pile of crumbled and mutilated remains lay in the folds of a black cloak. There was a sound like dead leaves rustling and Death reconstituted himself.

He sat in the street for a long time, his steed pacing around him, and he thought. These undead hadn't been like any others. They'd been taught to behave and interact in some semblance of mortality. They were the ones from the swamp.

The Reaper spent some time looking through the clothes of the corpses around him, then got back on his horse. The living from the shelter were still nearby, and some of them would be dead very soon. Though he couldn't prevent that, couldn't add a single precious second to their flickering candles - he could at least see that none of them were added to the ranks of the afterdead...

Tetch lay on the floor outside Lily's door, ear pressed to the wood, until her breathing became deep and even. Then he returned to the foyer. The others were still standing there.

"Go out to the shed," he told Gerald, "and bring the crate inside. Be careful with it - Simeon, you help him."

He dismissed Prudence and Bailey as well, then went to the window and peered through the curtain into the blackness of the swamp.

"Can you hear me out there?" He whispered. "I know who you are."

There was a little story a bum had told him once when he was a boy, one that he had never forgotten. Pressing his face to the cold glass, Tetch spoke.

"I am the king of the dead."

28.

Dawn

The East Harbor Mall on the next block had been one of the first large buildings to fall when the outbreak began in the early 21st century. Some old movie about zombies had sent dozens of townspeople fleeing to the mall, hoping to barricade themselves inside its stores and wait out the nightmare. Those who didn't kill each other were quickly cornered and ripped apart by the undead.

Clothing outlets, restaurants, a department store and a movie theater were among the empty husks within the mall. Everything from underwear to cash to theater seats had been plundered, and the bloodstained floors were eventually licked clean and the place was abandoned to the elements. Squatters were known to spend a night or two in malls but they were generally regarded as unsafe.

Voorhees led the group, checking each outlet to see if it still had the security gate that would block its entryway. Most had been torn down.

Jenna and Lauren brought up the rear, holding each other to no effect. The terrified couldn't comfort the terrified, Mark Duncan observed. Still he thought he'd give it a shot.

"We'll be okay. We're with these people now." He told the women. Neither responded. "We're better off than we were at Fetish," he continued. "That cop said we're on our way to the police department. He's got it secured."

"The cop who killed that man?" Lauren stammered.

"Here we go!" Mike called. They were ushered into a store with nothing on its walls to indicate what it had once sold. Voorhees pulled down the security gate. "What good will that do?" Said Wendy. "It'll do." Voorhees grumbled.

"I've got to get back to my apartment." Mike told him. "Cheryl, the girl I told you about, she's there. You continue to the PD and we'll catch up."

"Out of the question." Voorhees shot back, then, lowering his voice: "You're the only one I trust. Probably the only one who trusts me, now."

"I'll take Shipley with me."

"Why would you do that?"

"What if Cheryl can ID him as her attacker?"

Cop instincts taking over, Voorhees considered it. He eyed Shipley, who was sitting alone in the back of the room.

"Take my gun, Mike. No one else knows it's empty."

Mike nodded gratefully and motioned to Shipley. "We've gotta go get somebody."

"What? Why me?"

"If you'd rather stay with me, just say so." Voorhees cracked. Shipley narrowed his eyes and got up. "Fuck that."

Mike raised the gate, and Voorhees handed over the pistol. Shipley stopped in front of the senior P.O. before leaving. "You take care of these people."

"That's my job." Voorhees pushed Shipley into the corridor and slammed the gate back down.

Mike led Shipley back the way they'd come, and they searched the mall parking lot for rotters. There were none. The shelter was being rapidly consumed by flames, filling the early morning sky with black smoke.

"Don't try running, or anything else." Mike told Shipley. The other man snorted. "If I wanted to run I'd have already done it. If I wanted to do something else, I'd have already done that too."

Shipley had deserted the military, had run from his prison sentence, but with a purpose. He wasn't a coward. He was running TO something, not FROM it.

He'd deserted with two other soldiers: King, a female, and Bish. The pair were in love, and talked all the time about escaping the badlands and finding some lost beach to fuck on for the rest of their days. Shipley had thought they were both out of their gourds but kept his mouth shut.

They tromped across the dry, barren earth with a few stolen supplies. There was no safe cover under which to set up camp, so they each slept with one eye open. Tried, anyway. More than once Shipley had been stirred from a foggy dream to spy King thrashing atop Bish like she was a porn star. More than once she was watching Shipley while doing it.

"I'm bit." Bish said one morning while picking the charred skin off of an unlucky lizard. He pulled up his camouflage tee and showed Shipley a bite on his side. It was old. "How long ago?" Shipley demanded. They hadn't seen a rotter since they deserted.

"A few weeks?" Bish shrugged. "I don't think I'm infected. The window's five to ten days before you croak, isn't it?"

"They don't know. They don't know shit about it, no matter what they say." Shipley replied. King was relieving herself behind a bush. "She know?" He asked.

"She's seen it." Bish bit into the lizard with a crunch. "She don't care."

Because she can just plant herself on my face once you're dead, Shipley thought. He took a tiny sip from his canteen. "Maybe I can't get infected," Bish mused through a mouthful of guts. "It's like Gerry, you know, how she can't get pregnant."

Bish was functionally retarded, Shipley decided, and went hunting for his own lizard.

It was a few nights later that Bish slipped into a coma. He'd just shot his wad, and King shook Shipley awake with a rumpled shirt held to cover what he'd already seen.

"Maybe it's heat exhaustion." She said while he looked over the unconscious soldier. She'd pulled on the bottoms of her fatigues and was walking around topless; Shipley ignored the swaying of her breasts as she took shallow breaths.

"He's dead." Shipley muttered. They didn't have anything to decapitate Bish with, let alone torch him. The cheap combat knives handed out to grunts by the Army could barely cut a steak. Shipley would have to saw at muscle and bone until the blade broke, then wrench the head completely off.

King wailed. "He can't be! How did it happen? Not the bite! It wasn't the bite!!"

"OF COURSE it was the bite, you fucking..." Shipley spat and turned away. He pulled out his knife and she seized his wrist. "Please don't do this to him! Just leave him in peace--"

"Cut the crap! You didn't love him!" Shipley plunged the knife into Bish's throat. King opened her mouth, but no sound came out. "I know what love is," Shipley said softly, and started sawing.

Bish threw him off with a gurgling cry.

Shipley lost the knife in the darkness. He scrambled to his feet and saw Bish sitting up, blood gushing down his bare chest.

"Oh GOD!!" King sagged, sobbing hysterically. Bish turned to look at her and more blood spurted from his ragged wound.

"King - Gerry! Get away from him!!" Shipley crawled in circles trying to find the knife. How far could the fucking thing have gone?

"I DO love you!" King cried, taking Bish's face in her hands. He stared dully upward, and she knelt to kiss his mouth.

Shipley's finger found the tip of the knife. Cursing, he grabbed the handle. King's muffled scream rang through the night.

Bish tore her lips away, greedily gashing at her face, one arm wrapped around her back and the other mauling her breast. Blood spilled over his face, into his gullet, and his wide open eyes stared into hers the entire time.

Shipley buried the blade in the back of Bish's head. There was no response from the undead; as the tip of the knife emerged from his mouth, he met the dying King in a hungry kiss.

Grasping the handle with both hands, Shipley threw all his weight against it. Bish's head was ripped from his neck.

King slumped over on the headless, spasming corpse of her lover. Shipley wrested the knife from the zombie's skull and stood over her, sawing into her throat. He screamed to drown out any sound she might make, and screamed and screamed and screamed until he was utterly alone with the soldiers' unrecognizable remains.

Gerry King was the first and last living person he'd ever killed.

"Here we are." Mike pointed up the staircase of an apartment building. The sun had risen a bit and, though the sky was slightly overcast, it cast its warm light down upon them. Things almost felt normal - normal meaning Jefferson Harbor without a family of rotters prowling inside its walls.

Mike followed Shipley to the landing, then had him stand back. He rapped on the door. "Cheryl! It's me."

A series of locks could be heard turning. Cheryl yanked the door open and wiped tears from her eyes. "There was one out here! It had a shovel, going from door to door, and I didn't think it could get in but if it had been here when you came back--"

"It's okay, the coast is clear." Mike stepped into the doorway. "We've gotta go. There's a safer place downtown, with other people. I just need to grab a few things, then we can go."

Yet he didn't go in. He stood beside Cheryl, closing his grip around Voorhees' pistol. There was ammo inside, but her eyes had already met those of the man on the landing.

"This is Shipley." Mike said.

Cheryl smiled.

"Hi."

29.

Deconstructing the Dead

Just before noon, a series of explosions rocked Jefferson Harbor.

Boiling smoke tore into the sky as tongues of flame reached heavenward; at the east end of town, the great gates set into the city wall were flung from their hinges like so much rubbish on the wind.

The medical plaza went up in an unimpressive smattering of flames, but the Donner Convention Center's entire roof swelled like blistering flesh and was ripped away by the explosions within. And the city landfill ignited like a mountain of gas-soaked rags, spewing noxious black smoke that seemed to swallow the sun and stretch its tendrils across the sky.

Gene stood at the edge of the flames and studied the smoke tower. His cheek was scabbing over where the pipe had cut him, before he died; gaseous rumblings in his lower organs had ceased and he felt less pressure inside his abdomen. He was regenerating.

Noon. Voorhees and his survivors were taking the scenic route to the police department. He led them into a long-abandoned construction site to rest. Duncan pointed out the numerous empty buildings across the street, but the cop just shook his head. "Don't trust 'em."

"But--"

"Did you not hear those explosions earlier? Look at the smoke out there. Let's stay out here a while - we can spot a rotter coming from blocks away in any direction."

"What if Mike and the others reach the PD before we do?" Palmer asked. "Does he know how to get in?"

"He can figure it out."

"Wheeler--" Jenna began. Voorhees shot her a dark look. Staring right back at him, she went on. "He said something about the 'Addison estate' - a house in the swamp?"

"I said that. The house in the swamp part." Palmer sat on a concrete slab and peered up into the steel ribcage of an unfinished office building. "Addison was a doctor who lived out on the west end. That was years and years ago, he's got to be dead."

"Well, what about those rotters then? Wheeler said he recognized them. He called them kids."

"I'm hungry." Kipp mumbled. Wendy patted his head. "We'll eat soon, honey."

"It looks like rain." Voorhees observed. Jenna walked past him to Palmer. "Wheeler called the rotters kids."

"The children that Addison took in, the children of the wealthy. I wouldn't be able to recognize any of them, especially if they were undead. I don't see how Wheeler could have."

"It's just..." Jenna sighed, picked up a rock, tossed it into an open basement. "It's something."

"We all want answers." Palmer replied, in a counseling tone. Jenna flinched. "Reverend, don't start with that."

"I wasn't going to say anything about God, if that's what you mean. If God knew something that He was willing to share with us, I'd sure as shit know by now. I ask Him every morning and every night. Look. We were all born into a world with undead. We've all spent our entire lives asking questions, and we each desperately want something to hold on to. An answer." Gesturing around the site, Palmer smiled bitterly. "You really think there's an answer in Jefferson Harbor?"

"Why are we still alive?" Lauren asked. She was looking at Kipp, who had knelt to follow a beetle's progress over the soil.

"Laurie, please. I want to find out about these Addison kids." Jenna said.

"Let it go." Duncan grumbled. "The Rev's right."

"They were working together!" Jenna shouted. Lauren went white and pressed a finger to her lips; it went unnoticed. "I've never seen anything like that! And all of them looked PERFECT. Didn't you notice? They almost seemed alive. Not a mark on them! Those clothes...somebody KEEPS them. Somebody ALIVE."

She pointed to the darkening sky. "Those explosions..."

"Okay, now you're grasping at straws." Duncan stood to face her. "I'm a journalist, Jen. I made a whole fucking career out of seeking answers, taking picture after picture of those things until they all looked alike to me. They were here before any of us, and they'll be here after we're gone. All we can hope is that we're not walking among them."

"Very moving, Mark. You want to jot that down before you forget?"

"Jen--"

"Don't call me that, asshole."

"I think Kipp's getting sick." Wendy broke in, quickly adding, "from the weather. Looks like it could rain. Between that and the smoke don't you think we should be indoors, Officer?"

"There's shelter here." Grabbing a bit of plastic sticking out of the earth, Voorhees pulled an entire sheet from the dirt and shook it clean. "Let's get beneath the scaffolding, and if it does rain we can drape this over the planks. Okay?"

The group reluctantly gathered together, in stubborn silence, but thankful for the company.

In the auto shop behind the remains of the shelter, Sawbones had managed to work himself out from under the shelf. He rolled over, propped himself up and looked at his nearly-severed feet.

Carefully he took them, one at a time, in his hands, and he tore them off.

The damage done to the dog's-skull had loosened the wires holding it on his head; he rolled over and slammed his face into the floor. The skull shattered, bone hanging in bits from the sides of his head. He tugged the wires out of his flesh.

Sawbones' exposed head was raw meat with patches of malformed skin here and there. His jaw had been wired shut. He pawed at the workbench beside him until it spilled tools into his lap. There, pliers.

The doctor went to work.

When it was done, he parted his lips, breaking capillaries that had formed along the seal, and spat black blood. Reaching in, he felt a full set of teeth there. Despite only being fed through an IV, he had eaten well. He massaged his jaw until he was able to open and close his mouth without using his hands. Not much biting power, but there were ways he could work around that until he was stronger.

There was no going back to the house in the swamp. No more master, no more others. He grabbed the axe and began the process of standing on the stumps of his legs.

Rain started falling on the roof. He rose, fell, rose, fell, carved bits of meat and bone away from his ankles to improve his balance.

Finally, he stood and stayed standing. It required the support of the axe handle, like a crutch, but he was standing. Sawbones took slow, wet steps across the floor. Several times he grabbed at the wall to steady himself. He'd need a better crutch. Especially since the axe was used for other things.

Sawbones walked out into the rain and opened his eyes and lips to receive it.

It felt good.

30.

Under

"What about food?" Wendy complained.

Voorhees dragged the plastic sheeting over their heads. "It can wait. None of us are starving yet."

Standing over an unfinished basement, Lauren watched rain pool at its bottom. Jenna gently brought her away from the edge. Duncan watched them confer in hushed tones.

"What's with her attitude?" Voorhees asked him. "She's not a goddamn rock star anymore."

Duncan was surprised at the words from his own mouth. "Don't pigeonhole her as a spoiled bitch. She wasn't making demands, she was looking for answers. Like the rev said."

"Doesn't matter. You'd better take her aside and let her know that she better listen to me, for her own damn good." Voorhees pressed a finger into Duncan's chest. "Unlike the rest of you, I still have a job."

Duncan stared silently at the finger between his ribs. The P.O. removed it, saying "I'm not trying to come off like a sonofabitch here. But I won't compromise anyone's safety. Got it?"

"Tell her yourself." Duncan muttered.

Lauren pulled away from Jenna and walked out from under the scaffolding. "Come back here!" Voorhees yelled. He grabbed Jenna's arm. "Go get her!"

"For fuck's sake--"

"I won't tell you again."

Jenna threw his hand off. "We made it long enough without taking crap from people like you."

Palmer wedged herself between the two of them. "This isn't accomplishing anything."

"No shit." Voorhees snarled through gritted teeth. Then he saw it, from the corner of his eye: Lauren stiffened and came to a dead stop in the rain.

Climbing over a concrete abutment, Zaharchuk trained his Desert Eagle on her.

"Stay there," he coaxed, hands trembling, the gun jerking from side to side. Lauren whimpered, but remained still until he was able to slip his arm around her and turn her to face the others.

Voorhees' hand flew to his empty holster. "Fuck." He reached behind his back for the widowmaker.

"Leave it, old man." Zaharchuk called. "I've seen you, I watch you when you're not watching me. I know all of you."

"He's crazy." Duncan whispered. Voorhees stepped out from under the plastic. "STOP!!" Zaharchuk barked.

"Okay." Voorhees held up his hands. "I'm unarmed. Why don't you lose the gun?"

"I know you've got a cleaver strapped to your back, shitheel." The mouth of the Desert Eagle dug into Lauren's neck. She closed her eyes. Zaharchuk pressed his cheek against her shoulder, peering at Voorhees as if from a foxhole.

"Tell me what you want." The patrol officer said. There was silence in response. "We don't have any food or drugs. We don't have anything to offer but shelter. Safety. Is that what you want? Do you want to travel with us?"

Zaharchuk's eyes narrowed, but still he said nothing. He adjusted his grip on the rain-soaked pistol.

"We're all in the same situation here," Voorhees continued. "If you want our help, you need to let that girl go. Put that gun away."

Jenna stared hard at Lauren, trying to send her strength through her eyes. Just hold on - don't move, don't cry, don't make a fucking sound.

Zaharchuk wiped his nose on Lauren's shoulder. "This is my gun! I'm the one who's safe!"

"Then get out from behind that girl."

Zaharchuk's fried logic had put him in a corner, Duncan knew, and the maniac would only try to shoot his way out.

Wendy screamed from the back of the group. Zaharchuk yanked Lauren's hair back and pressed the Eagle to her chin.

Voorhees, glancing back, saw Wendy teetering on the edge of the unfinished basement; Sawbones had come up and grabbed her by the ankle. Sawbones, the one they'd left behind, the one they'd crippled, had her leg. She shrieked and reached for the others.

Then she lost her footing and dropped into the cellar.

"What the FUCK was that! WHAT THE FUCK?!" Zaharchuk shoved Lauren forward. The gun was trained on her head. He was going to shoot.

Voorhees whipped the widowmaker through the air; it buried itself between Zaharchuk's eyes, and he flopped back into the mud without so much as a squeal.

Palmer dragged Kipp away from the edge of the basement. Sawbones was on top of Wendy, tearing at her clothes, her flesh. He pressed his gaping maw into her throat, and the puddle beneath them turned dark crimson.

Voorhees tore off his trench coat and made a running leap into the basement. Pain stabbed through his legs as he landed with a splash. Sawbones, the horror under the mask revealed, turned and grunted.

He had the axe. Voorhees was driven back by a wild swing. Clambering over the earth like an infant, Sawbones swept the axe through the air, scant inches, then millimeters from Voorhees' knees.

Duncan landed behind the rotter and ran to Wendy. Her throat was an open wound brimming with blood. Her eyes, unblinking, collected rainwater.

Voorhees moved in a wide circle. Sawbones followed. Did he remember the cop? Of course he did, and he knew that Voorhees was his greatest threat. Nothing would stop the undead from taking him out. Except... "GET THE WIDOWMAKER!!!" He screamed at those standing topside. "THE BLADE!!"

Jenna ran past a sobbing Lauren and wrenched at the handle jutting from Zaharchuk's face.

Duncan grabbed Sawbones' leg and pulled it from beneath him, sending the rotter facefirst into a puddle. Sawbones sputtered and rolled over - heaving the axe with both hands.

It spun past Duncan, and searing heat lanced his thigh; he saw the bloodless gash open wide and turn red in the space of a second.

Voorhees fell upon Sawbones and locked his arms around the rotter's neck. SNAP-SNAP-SNAP-SNAP went vertebrae and still it clawed at the cop's eyes.

Jenna jumped down. She saw Duncan lying in a red-and-brown paste. "Mark!!"

"KILL IT." Duncan groaned through white lips.

She ran at Sawbones. "Move, Voorhees!"

He released the rotter and rolled through the mud.

Sawbones stared up at Jenna, at the widowmaker, followed the gleaming steel through the rain and into his throat.

She straddled him and hacked away at his face, driving the blade all the way into the ground, again and again, blending the pulverized remains of Sawbones' real skull with the earth under him.

Voorhees ripped a sleeve from his shirt and tied a crude tourniquet around Duncan's leg. "She's still..." Duncan pointed at Jenna's frantic chopping. She was chopping nothing. Voorhees laid Duncan back. "Don't talk."

"I could hear you from a block away!" Someone shouted over the edge: Mike. Then the scope of the carnage below hit him, and he fell silent.

"Wound's not that deep." Voorhees said to Duncan. He heard a slapping sound and turned. Sawbones' head was gone. Jenna was attacking a slick of gore.

She fell into the mud and screamed.

A moment later, Shipley's voice rose even above hers.

"Where's the kid?

WHERE'S KIPP?!"

Had any of the survivors scaled the skeleton building and stood at its peak, they would have seen the boy stumbling out of the construction site, heading west toward the Jefferson Harbor Museum.

Turning east, they might have also seen a cloud on the horizon, not in the sky, but on the ground.

Feral undead converging on the pillars of smoke that rose from the city.

31.

Daddy

Mike pulled Shipley away from the others. "Cut the hysterics!"

"He's my SON." Shipley gasped. "They took him when I went to prison. They took him but I kept track of him, I knew where he was, I came here for him, don't you fucking get it?? WHERE IS HE?!"

"Jesus. All right." Mike glanced at the dead guy a few yards away, a local dealer he'd seen in Voorhees' files. The Desert Eagle still lay in his hand.

Retrieving the gun and checking its magazine to find it full, he trotted to the edge of the basement. Voorhees was standing between an unconscious Duncan and a weeping Jenna. He himself seemed to be in shock.

Mike gestured for him to approach and lowered his voice. "I think Shipley and I should go look for the boy."

"What?" Voorhees turned the words over and over in his head, but could make no sense of them. He was still seeing blood, pools and geysers and clouds of blood. The rain on his head felt like blood and he swatted angrily at it.

"I'm going to take Shipley to look for the boy." Mike repeated.

"No, no. We all need to stay here. That kid's a goner."

"I know..." Mike leaned into the hole, whispering "...Cheryl ID'd him. It's HIM."

He showed Voorhees the Eagle, and the man understood.

"Don't do anything stupid." Voorhees mumbled. "Don't waste any bullets. One shot."

Mike nodded and lifted his head out of the basement.

"W-what happened?" Cheryl stammered. She was still standing away from the others, an outsider, not sure if she wanted in.

"It's all right now." Palmer took her hand and led her beneath the scaffolding. Mike gave her a smile as he tucked the Eagle into his waistband. "I'll be back in a little while."

"We'll be okay." Voorhees called to the group as he climbed up. "That rotter was alone. We'll just wait for Mike - and Shipley - and Kipp - then we'll get the hell out of here."

Mike led Shipley over a mound of debris. Voorhees patted Cheryl's shoulder. "It's all going to be okay now."

She nodded absently. "I mean," he said, "Shipley won't be coming back."

"Huh?"

"Mike told me. We've been hunting for this bastard for more than a month." Still getting a questioning look from her, Voorhees sighed and said as softly as possible, "Mike told me Shipley's the one who raped you."

Cheryl's frown melted away into a horrified, gaping stare.

"I...I never told Mike that...I never even told him I was raped..."

Mike tossed Voorhees' gun to Shipley as they walked down a slope. "Here. I've got the Eagle."

"This one ain't even loaded," scowled Shipley. "You really think I didn't know?"

"You're a smart guy." Mike smiled at him. There was something wrong about it. The Eagle, turning playfully in his hand, came to rest aimed at Shipley's chest.

"What is this? What are you doing?"

"You know I could kill you right now. I could. Shoot you where you stand and leave you for the rotters."

"Whoa, whoa." Holding his hands out placatingly, Shipley dropped his gruff tone. Only way to deal with cops when they started losing it. You fought back, you got swatted down and maybe never got back up; he'd seen it a dozen times in lockup. You rolled into a ball and started begging, they kicked you while you were down. Shipley steadied his tremulous voice and spoke. "I'm not this guy you've been looking for. I'm not a bad guy. I know I've fucked up before but I've never, ever hurt anyone like that. I came here to get my son out of this hellhole and head north. I know where the troops are headed, I know where the cities are. You could come with us! We'd all be safer. But what's important to me - the only thing - is that Kipp's safe. That's all."

"You were serious about that?" Mike laughed, the pistol never wavering. "He's your kid? I'm starting to see the resemblance." As he wielded his power over the other man, Mike seemed to be lost in the moment; but rushing him would break the trance and end in death, Shipley knew.

"How're you going to explain to that retard where you've been? What Daddy did? Sorry son, Daddy liked little girls, not little boys."

"I'll explain as best I can."

"You won't explain shit - you won't tell him A THING, and you know it. He's better off out there with THEM."

Shipley looked around in desperation. Kipp could be blocks away. He could be in the hands of an undead, another clown...

"Just let me go. I'll go myself. We won't come back, we'll leave you alone. How about that? Just let me go, Officer?"

"Ohhhh. 'Officer'. You can go then. I'm sorry." Mike sneered and leveled the pistol with Shipley's head. "Don't condescend to me, cocksucker. EVER."

"Okay, okay."

"Turn around, Shipley."

Knives of ice drove deep into Shipley's veins.

"Offi - Mike..."

"Turn. Around."

Shipley's eyes studied the ground. There had to be a rock, a pipe...he could run, just run. NOW!! No, the cop wouldn't miss. The falling rain drummed maddeningly on his head.

"I want to tell you," Mike called genially, "one thing before we do this."

"Tell us both."

Not Mike's voice.

Voorhees kept his distance from the other P.O. He let his presence sink in before saying another word.

"What are you doing here? I've got this." Mike growled.

"She got pregnant, Mike. With your baby. She miscarried."

In a half-second the entire scene shifted. Weisman was exposed, he had no way out, no excuses, no lies. He kept the gun trained on Shipley and looked at his partner. "Cheryl."

"Yes." Voorhees scratched his stubble. His stomach mewled. Mike lowered the gun slightly, just slightly, the barrel still pointing at Shipley, who stood stock-still.

"How did I miss it?" Sighed Voorhees. "You could hardly wait to start once you'd arrived in town." Then, angrily, "You interviewed each of those victims. You comforted them, held them, sent them north 'for their own safety' with their boyfriends or sisters or, if they had nobody left, nobody. Why'd you really pressure them to leave the Harbor? Did you think something might click, that they'd hear the perp's voice in their heads and realize it was yours?"

"They always do," Mike answered, "eventually. I wish I could be there when it happened...but I wanted to stay here. I mean, I like it here. Just the two of us working the case, the only cops in town, the only ones they had. And then this guy--"

Mike pulled the trigger. Shipley flew back. The gun was pointed at Voorhees before he could draw a breath.

"With him I could stay even longer. There wasn't any need to convince you, was there? You liked him for it the second you saw him!"

Shipley twitched in the mud. He'd taken a gut shot. It was a wonder he wasn't screaming. Voorhees glanced over and saw that the man's eyes were locked on the two cops.

"I think I know how this is going to work." Mike murmured. "That first shot was Shipley. He popped you with your gun, the one I gave him. The second shot is me killing him."

"Is this what you wanted all along?" Voorhees asked. The widowmaker's sheath on his back was unclasped; he faked shivers and tried to drop the blade into his hand. "You wanted to take control of the group? Have those women relying completely on you?"

"Well, I didn't plan it out like this, but it works."

"Sure it does. You'd need to get rid of me, of course, wouldn't you Mike. Because I'm stronger than you, because they listen to me even if they don't like me. That's real power, isn't it?"

"Oh, FUCK YOU." Mike spat. "They'd turn on you just like that. I could turn them--"

"We'll never know, will we? You're gonna kill me and go back there with some bullshit story that makes you look like a hero. Bullshit, bullshit--"

"SHUT UP!!"

"Bullshit, Mike. You're full of it. Cheryl knows you raped her. What're you going to do about that? How're you gonna walk away from that a hero? Think fast, Mike!"

Voorhees hurled the widowmaker. It glanced off Mike's knuckles and he dropped the gun with a howl. Just as quickly, his other hand dropped to scoop it up.

Voorhees delivered a knee into Mike's forehead with a CRACK. Weisman went sprawling and Voorhees grabbed the Eagle. His knee gave out from under him and he rolled toward Shipley.

Mike got up, screaming, and found the widowmaker. There was a thunderclap, and he spun wildly through the air before landing facedown.

Shipley could barely hold the gun. He dropped it in his lap.

Voorhees cradled his kneecap and fumbled through his pockets for a handkerchief. "Hold tight Shipley."

"No." Wheezing, the man rolled over and struggled to a standing position. "What are you doing?" Voorhees demanded.

Slipping the Eagle into his jeans, Shipley pointed west. "I'm gonna get my boy. Then we're gone."

He staggered off. Voorhees fought to get back on his feet. "I'm sorry!"

Shipley gave him half a glance and a dismissive wave.

Jenna came over the hill where Mike's body lay. She took the widowmaker from him and, searching her surroundings for any sign of the undead, descended toward Voorhees.

Shipley left the construction site. He crossed the street and headed up the steps of a museum with its doors hanging open. About halfway up, he stopped to catch his breath, to stem the pain radiating through his entire body, and he saw Kipp come out.

The boy's gaze, which once had bespoke nothing but love, was now only hungry.

He shuffled down the steps with arms open to receive his father.

32.

Empty Places

Down a set of stairs at the rear of the police station, through a locked door and into a dark tunnel beneath the three-story structure, Voorhees led the others to the PD's only unbarricaded entrance. The door had a new lock and four bolts, for which he had all the keys.

The others were silent. They'd heard the gunshots, heard Jenna and Voorhees' accounts of Mike Weisman's death and what had preceded it. Shipley and Kipp were gone. Cheryl was in shock, and Palmer drew her coat around the girl and held her close.

The only light in the lobby came not from the many doors and windows, which had been covered with every available board, desk and shelf; but from a shattered skylight overhead. Rain pooled on the floor and Voorhees led them carefully around the water. "Up those stairs." He tossed his keys to Lauren. Jenna was supporting Duncan, but Lauren turned and handed the keys to her anyway.

"It's the first hallway, first door on the right. My name's on it." Voorhees walked to the barricades and reached between two overturned desks, pulling out a pump shotgun. "There's a first-aid kit up there too, in my desk. Clean Duncan's wound."

"How?" Jenna asked from the bottom of the steps. Voorhees sighed. "Hold on."

Leading them upstairs, he unlocked a room marked HOMICIDE - EVIDENCE and went inside. A second later, he appeared with two jugs of distilled water. "One of these is for drinking. Conserve it." He handed that to Palmer. "Use the other one to clean his leg. I'm gonna have to stitch it up."

"Whoa, whoa." Duncan swayed in Jenna's arms. "Let's just dress the leg and call it a day."

"It needs to be closed up."

"Just bandage it. I don't want stitches."

Voorhees reached back into the darkness of the evidence room. He pulled out a dusty plastic bag with pills in it, some crushed. "You'll forget all about the pain. Deal?"

Duncan shrugged helplessly. Voorhees stuffed the bag in his pocket and locked the room up. He brought everyone into his office: chair, overturned buckets stacked with files, a water jug and a can which purported to hold coffee beans. Sure enough, it did. Voorhees popped one into his mouth and gestured to the open can. "Eat up."

Cheryl stared blankly at the can. "Sorry, fresh out of roast duck." Voorhees grumbled. "Leave her be." Palmer said sternly.

Duncan was rested on the floor, back propped against the wall. Voorhees handed him a few pills. "What are those?" Jenna asked. "You don't recognize these babies?" Voorhees answered. "I thought you kept bowls of them backstage." Before she could retort, he said to the others, "The squeamish need to wait outside. Don't leave this floor, don't mess with locked rooms. Okay?"

Palmer took Cheryl out of the room. Lauren looked from Jenna to the door. "I'm staying, Laurie." Jenna said quietly. "Just hang out in the hall. Okay?"

Lauren nodded glumly and left. The door clicked in her wake, and the room was silent.

Duncan took the pills with a mouthful of water and closed his eyes. "How long?"

"Ten minutes and you'll be under. You'll feel like it, anyway." Voorhees fished the first-aid kit out from under his files and, removing the tourniquet from Duncan's leg, pressed a wad of gauze against the wound. "O'Connell, there's a little bag under the chair. See it? Needle and thread are inside."

Jenna opened the bag. "Are you kidding?"

"What?"

"These are for mending socks."

"You got another idea? Kiss it better maybe? We need to close this gash up before it gets infected."

Infected...what a choice of words. Jenna threw the bag to Voorhees.

Duncan's breathing had relaxed, and he looked like he might be unconscious. Jenna sat in the chair and watched Voorhees thread his needle. "I don't know what kind of person you think I am, but I was never a drug-addicted slut."

"Every professional musician since the plague has been a drug-addicted slut." The cop replied flatly. "It's their escape from the world."

"So what's yours? Playing policeman in a ghost town?"

He didn't say anything for a few minutes. Duncan moaned slightly, then his head fell onto his chest.

"I stayed here to help the residents who refused to leave. It's their right to stay and it's their right to be protected."

"Did you ever ask yourself why I came out here?" Jenna felt something rising in her throat, a sob maybe; she choked it down and went on. "Why would I come to a coastal city under martial law if I was just a party girl? I thought maybe...I don't know, I thought I could make people smile a little. There's nothing wrong with forgetting about the hell we live in for just one day. If all we're doing anymore is surviving, what's the fucking point?"

Voorhees removed the gauze from Duncan's wound and shifted to sit beside the unconscious man. "You've got me there."

In the hallway, Cheryl and Lauren stood quiet while Palmer rummaged through another office. She came out with a pair of gloves. "Anyone cold?"

The girls shook their heads. Palmer went to put the gloves on, and a crumpled cigarette pack fell from the left one.

She knelt and picked it up. There were smokes inside.

"Mother of God." Cheryl whispered.

She leaned forward eagerly, and Palmer handed her one. She stuck a second cig in her own mouth and went back into the office. "There must be a light in here. Lord, let there be a light."

A cry of triumph, and she came out holding a tiny flame to her lips. Cheryl ran over to light up. They both inhaled slowly, filling their throats, their lungs; they sighed happily.

"You smoke?" Palmer asked Lauren. She shook her head no.

"I never, ever, ever dreamed I'd smoke again." Cheryl held her cigarette out before her, as if it perhaps weren't real. "I haven't smoked since I was seventeen. And just one cost you the shirt off your back! This..."

"It's a blessing." Palmer spoke through a gray cloud. She propped herself against the wall. "It'll help with the hunger pangs. Are you sure you don't want one, Lauren?" Another shake of the head.

"Where did you come here from, hon?" The reverend asked Cheryl.

"The badlands."

"Really? How'd you end up here?"

"Long story."

"We've got plenty of time."

"I was with my brother, and he was dodging the draft. There are thousands of people out there in shanty towns. It's really not that bad, about the same as it is here...just no walls."

"No cops either."

Cheryl shuddered at that. "I'm sorry," Palmer gasped, "I didn't mean--"

"I know, I know. I can't even bring myself to think about that right now. But my brother...well, as we moved further south he started dropping hints that I should stay with my cousin here in the Harbor. He was only trying to look out for me, but I felt like I was a burden or something. I got more and more difficult...those last weeks together we fought constantly. I cursed him for running away from the Army and taking me with him, even though I knew Portland had fallen. Portland, Oregon, our hometown."

"Ah."

"Anyway, we weren't too far outside the city gates when a couple of rotters hit us. They must have been wandering all around the walls, because as soon as I screamed more of them came stumbling out of the night. There were...there were runners. Have you ever seen them?" Tears welled in Cheryl's eyes. "I have," Palmer nodded. "You're lucky to be alive."

"I'm not lucky. He saved me. He pulled them off of me and onto himself...he laid there, and they took the easy prey while I ran."

"If he hadn't, you wouldn't be here now - and I know you'd say that's not much consolation, but you can't blame yourself. You can't tell yourself that you weren't worth saving. If you do, that means his death was a waste."

Cheryl stubbed her cigarette butt out on a windowsill. She didn't speak. Palmer gave her another one.

"Maybe you're right." The girl finally said.

A few hours later, Duncan was awake, though groggy, and he was carried by Voorhees and Jenna down the hall to a dark room. They placed him on a cot. The door closed, and Duncan stared into blackness.

He heard a weight shifting beside the cot.

"Someone there?"

"It's me." Jenna's voice. "How does the leg feel?"

"I don't feel much. A dull ache I guess. Ugh, I'm fucking stoned."

"How's your head?"

"Iffy."

Her hands, on the edge of the coat, moved to touch his side.

"Jenna?"

She kissed him on the cheek. Her breath smelled like coffee. "Is this okay?"

"What?"

"I want to do this. Do you?"

"Jenna--"

"If you can't, because of the leg, it's all right." But she began undoing his jeans. And, though he could have stopped her, could have done more than say her name, he didn't.

Water sloshed. A wet cloth slipped into his pants and massaged his crotch. His loins throbbed and he nearly came. "W-what are you doing?"

"I want to be clean." Her pants rustled, descending to her ankles. "I want this to be good. I don't want to fuck, Mark, I want to feel good." She was still massaging him with the cloth, and he rolled slightly, searching with his hands. "You have another?"

She handed the other rag to him. Steadying himself on his elbow, he found her in the dark. Feeling her through the cold cloth, seeing nothing, hearing only his own labored breath - despite it all he somehow felt closer to her than he'd felt to anyone.

She sucked in a deep breath. "Are you crying?" He asked.

"Is it okay if I am?"

"It's okay."

He drew her onto the cot, Jenna carefully straddling his legs, easing herself down. He felt her bare breasts brushing his shirt and he unbuttoned it. Their lips met in a single sigh as their flesh met.

"Oh God."

"You don't have to hold back," she breathed.

"No, it's not that." He pressed his mouth over hers, tasted her, moaned again. She moved slowly and twinges of pain, of anxiety, gave way to warmth. Outside the room, in the light, in the world, were the dead and the almost-dead. She felt alive, so fucking alive that the tears streamed down her cheeks onto his. He kissed them away and her fingers travelled the rough contours of his face. Getting close, she buried her face in the crook of his neck and instinct drove her rhythm. He pushed his face against hers, groaned in release.

Feeling erupted through her and she pushed herself back, arching her body to feel the waves in her back, her toes, her fingertips.

Wary of his thigh, she slipped off of him and found her clothes.

"Jenna?"

"Mark, don't."

He touched her shoulder and plied her back to the cot. "Just stay. Just a while."

"I want to, but..."

"Then stay."

She touched his face again. It was the face of a stranger. Jenna fought back the tears this time.

Down the hall Voorhees stood outside his office. The others were inside; he knew Jenna had stayed in the room with Duncan, so there was only one explanation for the soft footfalls coming from downstairs.

He crept out of the hall and panned the lobby with the shotgun. "Come on up. I've got something for you. All of you. Come get it."

"Don't shoot...?"

A man in a soiled dress shirt and slacks poked his bearded head over the bannister.

"I'm Thom. I work for the city?"

33.

Silent Running

"I thought that tunnel was sealed off." Voorhees muttered into his fist. "What tunnel?" Palmer asked, studying Thom's ragged form.

"There's a security tunnel running from the PD to City Hall. Few people outside the mayor's office knew about it. Of course, that was before the mayor jumped." Turning to Thom, Voorhees asked him, "I've never seen anyone going in or out of that building. Every door's barricaded to the max. How many people are over there?"

"Oh, it's just me." The man's voice was timid, quiet. He was used to speaking in whispers, or perhaps not at all. His hands trembled excitedly as he described his situation. "There were other staff staying there, but some left...and others..."

"Others what?"

"They just didn't make it. There's no food, not much water except what leaks in when it storms like it is now - do you have any food?"

"Not much, but we'll get you something." Voorhees replied. The man, hugging his emaciated frame, smiled gratefully. "I was a clerk in the mayor's office. The mayor was writing a biography, you know. I've spent the last few months proofreading the manuscript."

This guy was just a little mad. Palmer offered him a cigarette, and he refused it with a wary look. "Terrible for you. Can't fight or run with emphysema. Some of my colleagues were heavy smokers. That's what got them in the end. It eats you from the inside out. Cancer, I mean. It's like a rotter growing inside you. Makes you ashy." Thom grimaced.

"How did you know we were in here, Thom?" The reverend asked.

"I saw you going in. They saw you too, I think. That's why I came over, through the tunnel - thought you ought to come with me to City Hall."

"Wait, who's 'they'?"

Thom gestured toward the lobby entrance. Hefting the shotgun in his arms, Voorhees climbed onto the barricade and peered through a paper-thin slit, through the damaged doors.

"Christ Jesus."

Jenna clambered up beside him. He directed her to another crack looking out onto the city plaza.

Dozens of rotters were pouring out of the suburbs that lay beyond Greeley Park. They must have broken through the east gates. But why so many at once - why a horde? She could see why they were congregating around the plaza: if some of them had seen the survivors going into the PD, the rest would follow that group's frenzied activity. Still that didn't explain why they'd entered the city in such numbers to begin with. The undead population was said to be sparse around the Harbor...

She thought back to the radio broadcast she'd heard, the senator claiming that zombies were migrating to coastal cities as the military withdrew their forces. It didn't make any sense. This many rotters had no way of knowing that military support was gone; it wasn't like they were camped out in the badlands, watching the city. Even if they were picking up federal radio frequencies in their fucking fillings, they couldn't understand the transmissions.

Could they?

Mark was beside her, making an effort to prop himself up. "How many?"

"Too many."

"It's the smoke." He slumped down on the barricade. "I've seen mobs of them drawn to fires before. Burning trash or bodies always requires extra security...those explosions all over town caught us off-guard and they saw it for miles around."

Grabbing Jenna's hand suddenly, Mark sat up. "What were you going to say back in the construction yard? About the fires?"

"You mean before you cut me off? Told me I was grasping at straws?"

"Yes, before that."

"Don't start this that again." Voorhees yelled. "It doesn't matter right now, we just need to get the hell out of here. Thom, you're sure that City Hall is clear?"

"Absolutely, Officer."

"Lead the way."

They went to the rear of the lobby, to a small room adjacent to the defunct elevators. Thom opened a hatch set into the floor and started down the ladder there. "Be careful, it's pitch black in here."

"Great." Lauren pressed herself against Jenna, who embraced her. "We'll go together."

Thom was telling the truth; the tunnel was absolutely dark. His voice echoed off the damp walls. "Just walk straight ahead, keep your arms out - there's some crud on the floor so be sure of your footing. Easy to slip. Plus it smells."

"We noticed." Voorhees grumbled. He was bringing up the rear. Shutting the hatch and securing it as best he could, he dropped into the passage. "Everyone all right?"

"I felt something! On my leg!" Cheryl cried. "There's nothing down here but us," Thom assured her, but his frenetic tone didn't help to calm anybody.

There was a dull thudding overhead. "What's that?" Lauren asked. They group stopped moving.

"I think they're in the PD." Voorhees said softly.

"We've almost reached the end of the line." Thom called. "We can seal the hatch once we're out, keep 'em from following us. Just have to keep moving. It's not like they even know--"

A shaft of light appeared at the PD end of the tunnel.

"RUN!!" Voorhees dropped into a crouch, facing the PD, and the others rushed toward City Hall. Screams bounced off the walls and into Voorhees' head, rattling him, but not as much as the silhouettes interrupting the shaft of light.

The undead began coming down.

He fired a shotgun blast straight down the tunnel, briefly illuminating the gray-and-green forms of the rotters. It did nothing to slow them down. Voorhees turned and ran.

Thom threw open the City Hall hatch and pulled himself up into a room almost as dark as the tunnel itself. He knelt to assist Cheryl, and they in turn each took one of Palmer's arms. "HURRY!!" Lauren cried from below.

They were dropping into the tunnel at a horrifying rate until the light was no longer visible. Voorhees fired another shot. A rotter scant yards from him was caught and thrown back into the horde; they swallowed him and kept coming. Voorhees pumped and fired again, this time at an upward angle. Curdled brains sprayed the tunnel ceiling.

He lunged for the ladder and the others yanked him up, nearly tearing his arms from their sockets. The hatch clanged down and Thom dragged a shelf over it. "We need more!!" The rotters beat on the underside of the hatch. Locked as it was, it still jostled in its frame.

Opening the door that led out of the room, Jenna found herself in a narrow hallway with offices on either side. She seized a file cabinet just inside one of the offices and wrestled it down the hall. Voorhees helped her throw it atop the shelf. "More!"

They grabbed a second file cabinet and a desk, shoving as much furniture as they could into the tiny room. Then Thom locked the door and they began to pile more things in front of it. "Follow me to the fire stairs." Thom said when they had run out of barricading materials.

"The top floor's the most secure," he said breathlessly, taking three steps at a time. The others could barely keep up. "The other floors are bad. People died there, I haven't been able to get 'em out with the windows all boarded up. You'll notice the smell." It was like a guided tour of Hell.

The fourth-floor corridor was lit by candles. "Not a safe idea," Voorhees commented. "Oh, I hardly ever leave. I just had to get you guys." Reaching the end of the hallway, Thom moved a shelf away from a window, and they were able to look out over the plaza. "See, this is how I spotted you. I just sit here most days." He gathered a pile of papers and shoved them into a box. "That's the mayor's book."

"What sort of supplies do you have here?" Voorhees peered down and watched the rotters cram themselves through the doors of the police department. Pieces of the barricade spilled down the stairs and were stomped to bits.

"Well, candles and matches, obviously." Thom was pacing around the others. It made Lauren uneasy, and she sat down on the floor. "Lots of paper. Pencils too, plenty of stationery in general. Weapons - well, there are scissors and letter openers, things like that. The guards took all the guns when they deserted us. They left even before the Army did, but the mayor refused to leave."

"Yeah, then he threw himself off the roof." Muttered Voorhees.

"That was a terrible day." Thom nodded solemnly to the others, as if he weren't the only one that cared. "His secretary died that morning. I think they were in love. He told me he was going to do it, too - 'the only place where the dead no longer outnumber us', he said, 'is on the other side'. It was a sad moment, but as far as last words go...I'm going to include that in the afterword of the book, I think."

"There are runners down there." Cheryl said. She pressed her face to the glass. "Stand back," ordered Voorhees, but Thom laughed idly. "They can't see us up here, especially on this side of the building with the way the light hits it. Besides the barricades here are better than the PD's - no offense Officer. Oh God, I can smell rot coming up through the vents. I'm going crack a few windows, all right? Nothing they'll notice down there." Without waiting for an answer, he left.

"He's more than just a little mad." Palmer thought aloud.

A lot of the running dead were poorly coordinated, stumbling about, some of them moving sideways like crabs. Their muscular constitution gave them an edge over the walkers, and getting to the meat first kept them healthy, kept them fast, superior to the other rotters - but their faces remained dull and lifeless. There was no primal aggression, no snarling or baring of teeth. They were just as blank and silent as the rest. To be chased down by them was...Cheryl saw her brother's face, covered in bloody bites, telling her to go, to leave him with the runners.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Runners clambered over the backs of slower zombies and into the PD. Palmer took Cheryl away from the window.

Lauren covered her nose and mouth with her left and left the hallway. The odor of decay in the stairwell was even worse. She could see a door standing open on the next landing. That must have been where Thom had gone. She wanted to offer him some help with the windows, but she couldn't bear to see any bodies.

Do it, Lauren, she told herself, snap out of this. She began descending the stairs.

Thom emerged from the doorway with a severed hand in his mouth. He glanced up at her and stopped.

The hand had been removed with surgical precision, and bites were already missing from it. Thom's lips were dark red.

He said something through a mouthful of meat. Lauren screamed and turned to run.

He caught her ankle and hurled her down the stairs. The hand fell on her face, and she screamed louder. "No, no!" He cried. "It's not what you think - BE QUIET!!!"

A long pair of scissors plunged into her abdomen. Her scream bubbled away.

Voorhees ran into the stairwell and saw Thom trying to pull the scissors free. "She fell! She fell!" The man was yelling, stringy bits of muscle falling from his mouth.

Voorhees didn't think. He only saw what he saw, and reacted.

The shotgun blast tore Thom's arm off and peppered his chest, his shirt opening up and flesh splitting. Flying into the wall, Thom sank wordlessly.

Voorhees dropped the shotgun and ran to Lauren. She was in the grip of abject horror and crippling pain, blood pooling rapidly around the scissors. The cop pressed his hands over the wound, around the blades.

Jenna shrieked from the top of the stairs. She grabbed the shotgun. Mark wrested it away.

"I'm not, I'm not a zombie." Thom whispered. "I didn't even kill them. I just needed to EAT." The blood pulsing from the stump of his arm diminished. His face was bone-white, and he shook as he spoke. "I told him, the mayor, I told him it wasn't her anymore, it was just meat. I told him we could eat her together and the rotters would never have her. He'd see her on the other side..."

Thom shrugged and died.

"She's still alive. Help me." Voorhees kept one hand on the wound and slipped the other beneath Lauren. "HELP ME."

Jenna came down and blinked her tears back to look into Lauren's eyes. "You'll be okay. She'll be okay, won't she?"

Voorhees said nothing.

Outside, the faintest of screams had caught the attention of a few rotters. They looked around hungrily. Others were exiting the PD, having found no sustenance; one of them gestured toward the street with a moan. The others in the plaza shuffled to follow its gaze.

A man on a horse was galloping toward them. A scythe glistening with rain swept over his head, and they realized that, in fact, he was no man just before he cut them all in half.

34.

Like Moths...

Baron Tetch caught a snarl of fencing around his pickaxe and tore it down with a roar.

At the swamp's edge, he and his remaining afterdead had nearly opened up all of the west wall's vulnerable areas, the places where there was no concrete; the ferals would soon be entering the city from all sides. Addison's explosives, old as they were, had been even more effective than Tetch had anticipated. The doctor's journals suggested he'd collected the dynamite in hopes of loosing more energy from within the ground. Everything to Addison had been a surgical procedure, hadn't it? Flaying away flesh and earth in search of answers. All his tools could never have found the knowledge that Tetch now possessed.

Simeon was helping him in this area. He saw the rotter eyeing his flesh with furtive glimpses. "Are you hungry?" He asked. Simeon nodded.

Tetch held out his hand.

Simeon stared, confused, though he was gnashing his teeth behind closed lips. Hesitantly he reached out, took hold of the hand, and opened his mouth.

Tetch jerked it away and slapped him across the face with resonating force. Simeon staggered back and fell over the fencing.

"Without me, you never eat again. Do you understand? You don't know how to hunt, and even if I taught you, you'd forget. No, I bring you the meat! Without me, you'll simply waste away. Is that what you want? Or are you patient?"

Simeon understood maybe half of the words, but he got the message, and nodded. He could wait to eat.

Tetch was still hoping that Sawbones would come back with something for the others - he was tougher than any of them were, and maybe he'd stayed back to field-dress his victims - but as the storm abated and the sun began to descend, hope faded with the light.

He wasn't concerned at all about the survivors' presence in the city (not anymore), but he was preoccupied with thoughts of Lily's dark man. He had strong suspicions as to who the spectre was, or at least what it represented - but its motives were unclear. Perhaps it had targeted Lily because it could exert no influence over Tetch.

"Simeon," he said suddenly, "go back to the house and check on your sister."

The rotter licked his lips. Tetch threw down the pickaxe. "Never mind! I'll have Prudence do it."

Back at the manor, Lily sat alone in the foyer. She stared at the door. It was locked, as they all were, but she knew how to get out. It was just a matter of having the courage. She'd believed that she did, but here she was, sitting and staring.

She wished the man in black would come back and take her, but he didn't seem to want her. No one wanted her - not her parents, not Daddy Addison, not the man in black, no one but Baron. And Baron...he had taken notice of the fact that she was growing up. He kept telling her that she was becoming a woman, and the way he said "woman" made her uneasy. There was something about the word when it came from his mouth, as if to Tetch it were a key that opened the door to a very bad place.

The doorknob rattled. She ran to the staircase and knelt behind the bannister.

Prudence entered, a husk of a woman with spindly legs that looked as if they could barely carry her along, thin as her frame was. Her face was sunken and empty, searching the foyer, the rotter waiting expectantly for Lily to emerge from a room or come down the stairs.

The girl stepped slowly into view. Prudence's head on its twig-like neck turned in the shadows and settled on her. The afterdead didn't move. "Here I am," Lily said uneasily. Prudence had a large house key in her fingers. It pointed accusingly at Lily, who had been thinking of running...still was...

She ran. She ran at the towering zombie whose weight was probably equal to her own, and hit its body with a thud, and there was no resistance. Prudence slumped to the floor with a papery sound. Lily stumbled over her and out the door.

It was hard to see and she braced herself for the grasping hands of the others, of Baron, but she heard nothing - no one else was there! Lily ran for the gates, praying Prudence had left them open.

She had.

The child ran free into the swamp.

As the sun's light bled from the clouds and sank into darkness, her feet plunged through lush grass, soft earth. She scraped her palms pulling herself along on gnarled trees and stubbed her toes on huge roots jutting from the mud. She didn't care. Exhilaration overtook Lily and she ran even faster.

Soft glows began to emanate from the trees - clusters of fireflies, some of which lit into the air and whispered past her face. There were so many! She'd never seen such a thing. A few stars became visible overhead, and though the sky was smoky, she could see tree branches threaded through one another and birds scuttling through them. The swamp seemed so alive, in stark contrast to the house and its inhabitants.

A bird landed on the grass before her with a soft slap. She stopped in her tracks and peered down at it, able to discern its pointed beak and glittering eyes. Lily knelt. "Are you all right?" She rolled down one of her leggings and pulled out a cigarette lighter she'd concealed there. It had been Daddy's (she'd taken it from the study), and sometimes she'd use it to navigate the corridors of the house in the dead of night. Now she could see a bird up close for the first time, one that wouldn't take off and leave her trapped inside the gates. Lily thumbed the flint and a small flame sprang up.

The bird's breast was wet. Touching it, her fingertips came away red. "Oh, no--"

Several other birds flew toward her, squawking dully. Their wings beat at her face and she fell back with a cry. They descended voraciously on the fallen one.

"No! Stop it!" Lily swatted at them, losing the lighter. She felt through the grass for it, wincing as she heard the weak cries of the victim.

There! She found the lighter and struck it. One of the birds looked up from its feeding, beak crimson, eyes black; feathers and flesh were missing in patches from its body. She could see the tiny bones in its thighs, pushing through well-worn holes in dead flesh as it stamped its feet. She'd led it and the others like it right to the wounded bird, to their living prey. Screaming, Lily kicked them all into the darkness.

A man pushed through the trees and groaned at her.

He was dead. A chain dangled from his hand. He had no lips, and his bare genitals were flayed away. He clicked his teeth at her and advanced.

Lily ran a wide semicircle around him and continued through the trees. She just had to get out of the swamp, to the city. There were people like her there, she knew that now. She knew Tetch had tried to kill them. He was a liar and a bully and if there were people in the city that he hated that much, then they must be nice people.

But, emerging onto a paved road, she saw only a few scattered rotters, and when they saw her they began running.

She looked down a side street and spied something beyond the swamp's silhouette: a huge bonfire. That was the source of all the smoke. There had to be people there! "HELP!!" Lily screamed, pumping her legs until they were numb, until she felt like she was about to pass out. She stole a single glance over her shoulder and saw the rotters gaining. The one with the chain was using it to knock the others back. He wanted her all for himself, like Tetch. "NO!!!"

Lily careened breathlessly over a sand dune and came to a stop at the edge of the burning landfill. A foul odor swept into her nostrils. She nearly threw up, but then she saw the other rotters milling about the flames.

The chain man grabbed her shoulder, then pain rang through her skull. He brought the chain down on her back; she pushed away from him, turning, and was hit in the chest. The world spun and roared around her. Sand was in her nose and shoes and the other rotters were coming. A fierce heat came off the burning garbage, making it hard to keep her eyes open. The chain man swung and missed. THUMP. He gathered the chain up and prepared to strike again. She ran into the fire.

There was a smoke-filled path between the mountains of refuse. Her lungs about to burst, she couldn't help it - she inhaled deeply and was wracked with crippling coughs. The chain man, stepping through the flames, watched dumbly as his legs caught fire. He spied Lily and resumed his shambling pursuit.

She ran again. Slammed into something solid: a wall, a shed. The door was open. She fell in, pulling the door behind her and grappling blindly with the deadbolt. Something brushed her legs and she shrieked through a throat scorched raw, but it was only a cot.

The chain crashed against the door. Her mind stopped working then.

Outside, Gene watched the ferals swarm over the flaming hills and writhe as they began to be consumed. He knew what the fire could do, both to himself and to the child-meat - he also knew that there was a place in the landfill where the child might think herself safe.

Starting forward, he searched through his pockets for the key to his shed.

"She's going to die."

Voorhees tried to take Jenna out of the stairwell but she pushed him off.

"Didn't you hear what I said, O'Connell?"

"I heard. I'm staying."

A blanket of coats had been placed over Lauren, and she lay on the landing near Thom's corpse. Her glazed eyes stared at nothing. Her lips moved, but she wasn't saying anything, at least not that Jenna could hear.

"Yes, I can hear you." Death said. He knelt beside Lauren and studied her face. "Not long now."

"I don't...I don't want to die." She whispered.

"It won't hurt anymore."

Tears welled in her eyes. "I know. But Jen...she's going to be alone. She needs me."

The woman in question was standing on the stairs; a young man with a bandage around his leg embraced her. The spectre realized something, though he wasn't sure what it meant, and looked back at Lauren. "It's you that needs her."

"Yes."

"Do you love her?"

"Yes."

"What does it feel like?"

Lauren met Death's black gaze. "It...hurts." He thought at first she was talking about her wound, but she could no longer feel that. She was slipping away, a pinprick of flame sputtering in a pool of wax. "It's an ache. A beautiful ache. God, I love her...please take care of her. Just...just don't let her suffer."

There was nothing he could say. But he did. "I will," he lied.

The light in her eyes went out and didn't come back.

Jenna buried her face in Mark's shoulder. Voorhees grimaced, pumped his shotgun and walked out. Reverend Palmer stepped silently past the couple on the stairs and whispered a prayer over the departed. Death wondered if there was anyone who heard such things.

Maybe they did, and maybe they lied too, telling humanity "I will."

He had to return to the outside and hold off the undead. It was the only thing he could do. The Reaper melted into the shadows.

35.

A Pale Horse

Gene navigated the flaming refuse until he saw the shack, surrounded by hammering undead. He shook the keys in his hand, but the sound was lost amidst crackling flames and groaning. The girl had to be inside. With the shovel in his other hand he began to beat and pry at the backs of the other dead. Many simply stumbled away, disoriented by the smoke. Reaching the door, Gene worked the keys into the lock with awkward hands.

Throwing the door open, he glanced in and immediately spied her under the cot. She tried drawing her legs further in, but it was no use. Gene dropped the keys and gripped the shovel handle tightly, lowering it in order to drive it into her body and tug her into the open.

The girl did something unexpected then; rising up, she overturned the cot onto the shovel, then screamed and ran at him. She tried to duck around him, and he caught the collar of her dress, but the others had seen her and lunged forth as one. Gene let her go and stabbed at them with the shovel.

The girl ran brazenly into the zombie horde. Their stiff arms swept over her, tearing out handfuls of hair and fabric, then smoke poured into the shack and Gene lost all sight of her.

Rotters pressed against him in the doorway as if the child hadn't just escaped. Planting the shovel's head in the chest of the nearest one, Gene threw them back and set off in pursuit of his meal.

A soft, steady sound, like a wind, led Lily away from the landfill, and she saw for the first time in her life waves gently crashing against the beach. The sight was horrifying and liberating all at once - she couldn't swim, she was trapped, unless she braved the waters and kicked her feet and prayed that the ability to stay afloat came naturally. She could swim and swim and swim and never see Jefferson Harbor or its ghouls again.

There was one standing in the sand, looking out on the water; it turned, and she stopped dead in her tracks.

It had a gun. It pointed it at her. She screamed.

"What?" It spoke.

It lowered the gun and walked toward her, then broke into a jog; it was a he, a living man! "Little girl? You're alive?" He cried. He took her arms and looked at them, then at her singed curls, and her face, smudged with soot. "Are you all right?"

"They're just over the hill, in the fire." She stammered. "They'll come!"

He nodded and, taking her hand, led her briskly down the shoreline. They both watched over their shoulders, but there didn't appear to be any pursuers; Lily hoped they'd all been burned up.

"Are there more people?" She asked the man. He stopped and mulled the question over. "Yes," he finally answered, "and they can help you. I can't..." Turning his arms over, he showed her a series of bites on both and palms filled with blood.

"I'll take you to them." Shipley said quietly. He looked back at the dark waves, the beckoning sea. It could wait. He could still save a child tonight.

He took her hand again, and then a shovel crossed the beach like a missile and punched through his chest, clearing it of bone and muscle with a THUK before exiting out his back.

Lily ran with a shriek that split the calm of the beach and restored the world to its nightmare order. Gene retrieved his shovel and shambled after her.

"LILY!!!"

The girl turned. She hadn't told the man her name - did the zombie know...?

The man in black tore down the shoreline on his horse, scythe held high.

Gene turned and raised the shovel just in time to block the blade, but was thrown back into the sand nonetheless. Horse and rider continued unabated toward Lily. She opened her arms and let him sweep her up.

And so it was that they came to sit on an outcropping of rock far from the Harbor wall. Death gathered his robes around his feet and watched the ocean's ceaseless dance. Lily, picking bits of ash from her hair, gazed up at him until he returned the look.

"Who are you?" She asked.

"I am the angel of death."

"Am I dead?"

"No. It's not your time yet. That's why I was able to intervene back there."

"But if it was, you couldn't have saved me?"

"No."

She frowned, and so did he. It was difficult enough explaining this to an adult, especially the ones that thought they could bargain for their insignificant lives.

"Couldn't, or wouldn't?" Lily asked.

He opened his mouth to deliver the standard response, the clinical, unfeeling response, to tell her that he had no influence over her insignificant life; but as he thought of the undead, particularly the one that had been after her, and as he thought of the fate that might await her, suddenly Lily seemed...significant.

He had no answer for her. She nodded and looked out at the sea.

On her other side, the horse lowered its head. She nuzzled it and watched its eyes close, its posture relax.

Death's eyes closed, and the contours of his face smoothed.

"Does your horse have a name?"

"I...it's me. My essence, like everything else about me, except for the scythe." He opened his eyes and said flatly, "I am the horse."

She giggled. "I thought so." Then she turned and nuzzled it again. It seemed like she was doing it for his benefit, and it was wholly unnecessary, but he let her continue. For her sake.

"How many people are still alive?"

"Many. Most of them are very far from here."

"If they get bit by those wild rotters, do they die right away?"

"No."

"How long does it take?"

"Sometimes it takes a very short while, other times not. I'm not sure why. It might have to do with their spirit."

Turning from the horse, Lily moved her hand to touch Death's. "Cold."

"Yes."

"If you're the angel of death, why can't you make them all go away?"

"I don't know."

He waited for the next question, but the girl was silent. Eventually it was he who spoke, in a voice that nearly trembled.

"I hate them."

"Daddy Addison wasn't my real daddy. My real one, I don't remember him at all. Or my mom. Do you know who they are?"

"I can see your lineage. I could tell you their names." But it wouldn't much matter, nor would it matter if she knew the name they'd given her at birth.

"Are...are they rotters?"

"No."

"They're alive?"

"No."

"What happened to them?"

He set his jaw and stared hard at the water. She prodded him with her bare toes. "I wanna know."

"You shouldn't...it'll make you sad."

She tried to look tough, but she spoke barely above a whisper. "Did they get eaten?"

"Yes. But there's more to it than that. It's about Baron, it's about why you can never go back to that house."

"What does Baron have to do with it?"

"Your parents came back to the house a few years ago. They wanted to take you away. Addison was already dead then. Baron killed him, just like he killed your brothers and sisters."

"Did..." Tears filled her eyes and they looked black as his. "Did Baron kill my mom and dad?"

"Yes."

"I HATE HIM!!" She shouted. Death flinched away. She grabbed his robes. "You have to kill him. Please!"

"I can't. It doesn't work that way."

"You just don't want to! Why not?? Why won't you do ANYTHING?!"

"I'm not a judge!"

She balled her hands and beat on his shoulder. "I HATE YOU! YOU'RE JUST LIKE HIM!!"

He grabbed her arms and tried to steady her. She shrieked and thrashed in his grip, and her curses turned to sobs, and she fell against him.

The horse stepped forward and pressed its muzzle against her shoulder. She threw her arms around its neck and cried long into the night.

In the house in the swamp, Baron Tetch raged.

36.

Bait

"Just listen for a minute. Just let me walk you through it." Duncan said quietly. He and Voorhees sat by the window at the end of the fourth-floor corridor. The sun was coming up behind a miserable-looking cloud cover.

"I suppose I've got nothing better to do," muttered Voorhees. "Shoot."

"Addison's got 'domesticated' rotters, like the ones that attacked the shelter, like the one with the skull that followed us. We managed to kill some of them and get away. Then, you've got these explosions all across the city, and ferals start homing in on us. Now do you really think it's all a coincidence?"

"Of course I don't." Voorhees said sharply. "But what you're saying is ridiculous. If Addison was still alive, and had trained up these zombies, why would he send them to kill us? Why would he lure the ferals into the Harbor?"

"He wants us out." Duncan replied. "Simple as that. I don't know why - and I'm not saying this guy is thinking rationally either - but that seems to be the answer."

"Let's say for a second that you're right, Duncan."

"Jenna's the one who put it all together, you know that."

"Fine. Let's say for a second that O'Connell's right. What, then, do we do about it?"

"You're a P.O."

"I'm not going to make anyone here any safer by running off into the swamp to arrest a guy who might not even exist. That's assuming I get past the horde in the plaza."

Duncan shrugged. "I'll go with you."

"Forget it."

"Look." He tapped his bum leg. "You remember what happened here? The axe?"

"Yeah."

Duncan's face fell, as if he was reconsidering what he was about to say. Voorhees looked from his eyes to the bandaging, then it clicked.

"Duncan, that's very unlikely. What you're getting at is very unlikely."

"How do you know?" The man's voice was a soft, scratchy whisper. "You used that axe to take the rotter's feet off. The blade had his blood or whatever it is all over it...I could be infected."

"Very, very unlikely." Voorhees said. Even as he did, he was studying Duncan's pallor. How long did he have left if he was right? Should he be quarantined? Or would it be better just to...no. No, there wasn't any way to be sure. Voorhees had never seen the infection transmitted by needles, or sex, or toilet seats, and this here was simply outside the realm of possibility.

Almost. Almost outside the realm of possibility. The cop still had room to be skeptical.

Palmer was alone in the stairwell, sitting above the remains of Lauren and Thom. Voorhees had removed the heads and intended to get rid of the bodies later. How? Throw them out the window and confirm the survivors' presence to all the rotters? Maybe set fire to them on the roof, that'd be brilliant.

"Lord," Palmer said, "what do you want me to do? Anything? Do I just keep praying for the dead until I'm dead, too?"

The door to the third floor was still slightly ajar. There was an infinitesimal movement. The reverend didn't notice. She folded her hands together and let out a long sigh.

"I'm okay, I guess. As okay as I can be. My faith is my faith. But these people don't have anything to hold on to except each other. I have been ministering to them, through my works - right? - but I'm not about to start preaching. If this is the end of the world, no one cares.

"Do you understand? Whether you meant to or not, you've answered the question of what comes after death. We see it all around us. No one looks for God anymore.

"I just don't get it. If you don't have anything for me, I suppose I'll just keep doing what I'm doing."

Eyes closed, she listened intently with her heart and mind. She thought that maybe, somewhere out there, she felt a slight shrug.

Then she cursed in pain.

A few moments later the reverend returned to the fourth floor. Jenna and Cheryl were sitting in a vacant office, and Voorhees and Duncan were in the hall. They each glanced at her, and the look on her face was enough to hold their attention.

"There are rats on the third floor." She said.

"Dammit. Did you close that door?" Voorhees asked. "Yes," she replied. "Good." He nodded.

"I got bit." Palmer said. She wriggled the toe of her shoe.

"Is it bad?"

"The rat was dead."

Jenna and Cheryl came out of the office. The men rose to their feet. Palmer gave them a pained smile. "I asked for it."

"No, no you didn't." Cheryl exclaimed.

"I can still run. I can lead the rotters away, to the north. You all have to clear out of here. You need to leave the city."

"No. No to all of it. Never." Taking her arm, Voorhees shook his head insistently. "What then, stay and starve?" Palmer snapped. "The city has fallen! It's done!"

"You..." Voorhees bit back his words and stamped his foot. "I get it," Palmer told him. "This is your city. You want to die here, then fine. But don't bring the rest of these people down with you under the pretense that you're protecting them."

"You don't get it at all!!" The cop bellowed. "I don't want to fucking die! I don't want anyone to die! The last thing I'm going to do is let you walk out of here!"

"H-he's right." Cheryl stammered.

"I'm already dead." Said Palmer.

"Are you sure," Jenna asked, "that the bite broke the skin? Here, take off your shoe--"

"I'm going out there. PERIOD." Palmer said. Voorhees tried to grab her again. She shoved him across the hallway. "If you don't want to use this opportunity to escape, don't."

"Leave, stay, leave, stay, what's the fucking point?" Cheryl cried. "Why are we arguing over WHERE we want to die? Why do you WANT to be eaten alive, Reverend?!"

"Because the alternative is that I become undead!"

"I can take you out right now," shouted Voorhees, "without any suffering! You want to be a fucking martyr, that's all it is!"

"My leg--" Duncan began. Voorhees slugged him in the stomach. Jenna threw herself on the cop's back. "Stop it! Don't!" Duncan gasped, pulling at her.

"I'm trying to help you, Voorhees!" Palmer beat her fist against the wall. "I'm trying to help you do your damn job! You cannot save these people AND save Jefferson Harbor!!"

"ALL RIGHT!!!" Dumping Jenna into Duncan's arms, Voorhees grabbed the shotgun leaning in the doorway nearest to him. The others froze, watched him pump it and dig shells from his coat pockets.

"I'm taking you out there. Rear entrance on the first floor should be relatively clear. We've got to make it quick, and we need a distraction. O'Connell, check all these offices until you find Thom's stash of matches. We need fuel - Duncan, grab a box of paper from the copy room. Then you can help me break down some chairs."

Voorhees turned to hand Palmer the shotgun, but she shook her head. "You'll need it more than I will."

"Right." He tried to think of another order to bark, but there was a silence. He looked back at the reverend. "If I was the last one...but I'll never be the last one."

"You're too good at your job." She replied.

Twenty minutes later, a series of blazing torches flew off the roof of City Hall and landed out front in the middle of the plaza. The rotters searched the sky to see where they'd come from, then staggered toward the flames.

The rear door flew open; a jawless zombie cocked its head at the sight. A shotgun blast sheared its torso off at the waist.

Voorhees hustled Palmer out the door. Without a word, she ran for the street. The cop went to shut the door, but he saw something coming from the south. A man on a horse.

As the horse neared the plaza, a rotter emerged from behind an overturned bus with a shovel in its hands. It cleaved right through the stallion's front legs as if they were clay. The man tumbled forward, and clinging to his back, Voorhees saw the little girl. He heard her scream. He ran.

The rotter's detail came into view, and by God he recognized the son of a bitch. "GENE!!" Voorhees shouted. The garbage man turned and caught a blast right in the chest.

The ferals were swarming around the City Hall building. Voorhees ran to the man and girl.

The man looked up. Without reason Voorhees knew immediately who he was.

"Take her," Death rasped. The cop grabbed the girl and slung her onto his back.

"Hold onto my neck," he said to her, and loosed a hail of fire from the shotgun into the oncoming horde. They stumbled and spun and continued forward in a deranged dance. He sent the butt of the gun through a rotter's gnashing teeth and tore its throat open. The door he'd come through was wide open. If he could reach it before any of them saw...please...

"I'M OVER HERE!!!"

Holding a torch over her head, Palmer screamed at the top of her lungs. Another rotter ate shotgun and its cold brains showered over the rest. They abruptly changed course.

Voorhees ran into the building and slammed the door, throwing every bolt and pushing a wall of furniture back into place. The girl hung on him like a corpse. He glanced over his shoulder at her just to be sure.

Palmer's feet pounded the asphalt until she couldn't even feel them, just a vibration in her head, just the cold wind. She looked back and saw even the runners falling behind. She slowed her pace. "DON'T GIVE UP ON ME NOW, YOU ASSHOLES!!"

Their stolen bodies writhed as they pushed onward, driven only by hunger, driven only to survive. They would never know why her death was so much more than that. In that moment, she found a God that she hadn't realized she'd lost.

Then the ones up ahead grabbed her.

One of them rolled back the cuff of its jacket and pointed a revolver into the horde.

Addison's children.

Palmer screamed as they carried her toward a pickup truck with a landscaper's faded logo stenciled on the side.

37.

Twenty Questions

She awoke in Hell.

The room was so red, so deep red, so overpoweringly monochromatic that it struck Palmer's senses like a wave, all sight sound and feeling. Then the prickling of her flesh gave way to an oppressive heat. Sweat stung the corners of her eyes; she blinked through the pain and tried to discern shape or depth in the room.

The heat faded. So did the light, and it was soon replaced by a soft glow from behind her. She tried to turn and couldn't. She was in a chair, and her arms and legs were bound.

"I told them they might taste you later, if they behaved." A voice at her back said; it was malicious, but youthful. "I'm not entirely disappointed - they couldn't find Lily, but they did fetch one of the maggots that conspired to take her from me."

The speaker stepped around the chair and pulled another from the shadows for himself. He turned it backwards and straddled the seat, resting his chin on the back of the chair. "What's your name?"

"Reverend Palmer. What's yours?" She felt swelling in her mouth, where one of the rotters had cuffed her. The last thing she could remember was being thrown in the back of a truck. If they were Addison's "children" then this was Addison's house. But the man before her wasn't Addison...

"My name? Don't have one," he replied with a glib smile. "Like the dark man. He has no name, does he?"

"I don't know what you're talking about. Where am I?"

"You helped the dark man take Lily, isn't that right? Or is it the other way around? Did you people summon him here?"

She had no idea who this guy was, what he was talking about, nor his relation to Doctor Addison - but he looked like he was on edge. Scared, for himself or someone else. This "Lily" maybe. If she asked the right questions, she might be able to get some answers and even get these ropes loosened. "Where's Addison? Isn't this his house?"

His face paled. "No more questions from you. I ask the questions!" He slammed his fist against his chair.

"I'm just trying to understand why I'm tied up," she said firmly, "and why I'm in this house. You sound like you need someone's help. Maybe we can start over--"

"I'm not untying you." He snapped. "Your mouth still works. I suggest you use it to tell me what I want to know, rather than trying to fuck with my head."

"I don't want to make you tense." Palmer lowered her head. "Ask away. If I know anything, I'll tell you."

"Where's Lily?"

"I don't know who Lily is."

The man rapped his knuckles on the back of his chair, humming discordantly. "What does she look like?" Palmer asked, then, "is she one of the rotters--"

"She's NOT a rotter. And you KNOW it!!" He stood and cast the chair aside, leaning into the reverend's face. "If you think the dark man can protect you, you're wrong. I will tap into forces that..." Stepping back, he smiled again. It was worse than the first time. "You say you're a reverend?"

"Yes I am."

"So you must be praying with all your heart right now for God to come down from the clouds and save you. Are you?"

"Should I be?" She retorted. Her boldness surprised him, but he seemed to enjoy it. His posture changed and he began to pace around her. "I don't pray to the Old Ones. They don't want lowly supplicants. Your god is a petulant child, so insecure...my tribute to the Old Ones is to realize my own greatness. You rummage through this ghost town, praying for enough to get you - little, pathetic you - through the next day. I look out there and see an empire for the taking.

"Men can be the new gods, you know, we can take what is ours - we only need the will to do it! But no, not you. You can't. You'd rather die on your knees and awaken a zombie. I'll be your new god.

"I think Addison knew that, in the back of his mind, but he was afraid. He wanted to give us as offerings to the Old Ones."

Palmer studied the man's face as he spoke. So he was one of the children the doctor had adopted? What had really gone on in this house?

"Addison," the man continued, "was too frightened to accept that what the Old Ones really want is for us to take for ourselves! The groveling supplicants with their pitiful offerings will become the walking dead! As they should! As YOU should!

"But not Lily."

The man opened a folding straight razor in his palm. "My name is Baron."

Palmer strained against the ropes. "I don't know who Lily is, I don't know where she is!"

"Then you're no good to me."

"That's it then? You were so convinced that I had the answers you needed, and now you're just going to - to--"

"Cut your throat? Mm-hmm." The razor danced in the light before her eyes. "I'll deal with the dark man himself if I have to. I'm not afraid."

"Yes you are." Palmer spat. Baron held the blade a hair's breadth from her eyeball. She blinked rapidly, trying to hold her gaze steady. She thought she could feel the cold steel against her eyelashes. Her bladder failed her, and Baron laughed.

"I think I'd like to show you something, Reverend..."

Voorhees took Lily to the window at the end of the fourth-floor corridor. They watched the remaining undead shuffle about.

"Her name's Lily. Lily, this is Jenna, and Mark, and Cheryl." Voorhees gestured to the people behind them. Lily didn't take her eyes away from the plaza. "Where is he?" She asked.

"The...man you were with...he told me to take you. I didn't see what happened after that."

"They got him." She breathed. "How can that even be?" She stared hard at the glass, at the tears forming in her reflection's eyes.

Jenna touched the girl's shoulder. "Where are you from?"

"I won't go back."

"You don't have to. I promise." The girl turned and Jenna offered her a warm smile, something she hadn't thought herself capable of. "We won't make you go back."

"Daddy Addison's house."

"In the swamp??" Voorhees choked. Mark Duncan nodded grimly at Lily. "Who else is there? Addison?"

"No. Baron killed him. Baron killed my mom and dad. He's all alone in that ugly house."

"Who's Baron?" Kneeling, Duncan said softly, "He never has to know that you told us."

"He's my brother. He killed all the rest of them. He made them into rotters and now they do whatever he says."

She'd been around the same undead that had attacked the shelter...? Voorhees tugged at the sleeves of her dress. "Have you been bitten?"

"Sometimes." She jerked her arms away. "Wait, what?" Voorhees exclaimed. "You mean you've been bitten before - and you're not sick?"

"They aren't like the other rotters. They didn't get bit either. The swamp made them come back."

"All of them?" Duncan felt a twinge of hope - maybe he wasn't infected after all - but the girl's impression of how things worked was probably skewed. Half of what she was saying might not be true at all. "Even the one who wore the skull on his head?"

Lily nodded. "The swamp makes everything come back. Bugs and frogs and birds. Just magic I guess." She held up her fist, showing them each the scar of a bite below her thumb. "It's not like the city." Baron had been truthful about that, at least.

"Okay, I need to think about this." Voorhees slouched down on the floor and rubbed his temples.

"What's there to think about?" Duncan shrugged. "Everything we've been arguing about makes sense now."

"Lily," Jenna said, "I'm so sorry about what happened to your friend out there. But you'll be safe with us. We're going far away from here."

"He can't be dead!" Lily cried. "He's an angel!"

Jenna looked questioningly at Voorhees. The cop wouldn't even lift his head.

Out on the street, Death's body was a crumbled ruin. Gene dragged his shovel through the chalky remains. Neither horse nor rider had been able to fight him off, as if he'd crippled both when he ambushed them.

But the girl was gone. The girl was meat and this wasn't. Gene took a mound of the pale quasi-flesh in his hand and studied it. Then he packed it into his mouth.

It tasted like nothing. It fell apart between his gnashing teeth, and he tilted his head back to force the dry mass down his throat.

Then every muscle in Gene's body seized, and black blood spurted from his eyes and nose and he fell stiffly on his back. A paralyzing rigor had taken hold of him. He stared blankly skyward, unable to move even his eyes.

Beside him, a disembodied finger curled and rolled onto its back.

38.

Empire

"This," Tetch said as he descended the steps into the cellar, "my afterdead found when they were laying the explosives in the garbage dump." He was carrying a small bundle in his arms. Palmer craned her neck to follow his progress across the room.

"I want to see what you think." Tetch brushed specks of dirt from the blanket and uncovered whatever was inside. There was movement within; Palmer steeled herself. It had to be some sort of animal. "I brought it back in the swamp. Now, you take a look at it, and you tell me whether or not I am a god, a god without fear of death."

He thrust the premature infant at her. Its toothless mouth opened and let out a gurgling sound; thick red bile spattered the reverend's face.

Palmer wailed and turned her head away, but the vile smell of the baby surrounded her and she retched. Tetch danced around her, pushing the bundle into her face every time she turned. Palmer cried to her lord, but there was only the stench of the dead thing in the blanket and Tetch's earsplitting laughter.

Then, with a howl, he turned and hurled the baby into the brick wall. A wet smack, then silence.

The razor swept across Palmer's throat in a flash. Her screams drowned in a torrent of blood that spilled into her lap and pooled at her feet.

Tetch straddled her, letting the blood soak his abdomen and groin. Taking her limp head in his hands, he pressed his face to hers. He threw open the conduits in his body and called her dying breath into his lungs.

Tell me, he thought, tell me everything.

He saw others in the city and saw that their number was four. They had slaughtered as many of their own as his afterdead had. They were hiding in the police house - no, the city hall. He strained to catch a glimpse of Lily among them, but there was nothing there in the reverend's memory.

Yet they must have her, he thought.

Shaking the scraps of Palmer's subconscious from his mind, he refocused and tried to locate the dark man. Nowhere to be found. Only the feral undead wandering the streets. Hundreds of them.

This was his empire - though the city had originally been much larger, before the security walls were erected, it was enough to serve his needs at the moment. And these brainless rotters could be educated. Yes, they could be trained, but he would go farther - and before long they wouldn't just be going through the motions of people in a proper society. The dead would come to comprehend their role in the empire, they would fill his court and worship at his feet and would be far more sophisticated than the living that struggled to subsist in this new world.

He'd considered moving his home to the old bank, but ultimately decided he would stay here in the swamp, the source of the energy that permeated the virus, the so-called "plague". Dealing with these infected rotters instead of his murdered siblings would be a new challenge, but he welcomed any opportunity to prove himself.

Now he just needed Lily. LILY!

WHERE ARE YOU?!

(I gave you pretty dresses and I watched you dance. I gave you warm food and watched you eat. I gave you a safe bed and I watched you sleep)

He concentrated hard, gathering the energy that ebbed from the reverend's body, and sought Lily's spirit. He knew intimately her heart and mind

(and you will know her flesh)

and might be able to sense her innocence out there, burning bright amongst the primal fear and hunger of the city. So he rocked atop the corpse in the chair, overturning every grain of sand in Jefferson Harbor.

There!

Yes, she WAS with the living!

He tasted of her hatred for him and nearly fell to the floor.

"The dark man...how has he poisoned you against me? Lily...I love you..."

The reverend's blank face seemed to mock him. He backhanded her, spilling more blood from her throat.

He called for his siblings. They came down the stairs and fixed their eyes on the corpse.

"Eat." He told them. "Then clean up and meet me in the yard. We're going to get her."

The bundle lying against the wall squirmed. Creeping closer, Tetch pried the blood-caked fabric back and saw there, in that corrupted flesh, a tiny hand. Its webbed fingers clenched and unclenched without purpose.

He covered it back up and stepped away. "I'm not your god."

The others had descended on Palmer. Tearing thick ribbons of skin away in their teeth, they paused only to yank bits of clothing and hair from their mouths, pushing at each others' hands to get to the best parts first. Her breasts were ripped off and gnawed for a few seconds before being discarded. Simeon pushed his hands down her throat and tugged at her innards while the others groaned in anticipation.

Tetch stared in disgust. When Palmer's ribs began to crack he went upstairs.

39.

Mine

So it came to be that, as Voorhees dragged the headless bodies of Lauren and Thom to the roof of City Hall, he found a man waiting on the roof of the police department and was greeted with a wave and a smile.

"So you're the city's policeman?" The man called.

Voorhees dropped the bound feet he held in either hand and hissed "Quiet!"

The man shrugged. "They're all busy." He gestured downward, and Voorhees peered over the edge. On the plaza, a pickup truck was making lazy circles. The rotters still left in the vicinity had gathered around and were lurching feebly at it with each pass.

There was a goddamn rotter behind the wheel.

"I'm Baron Tetch." The man said.

"Senior P.O. Voorhees." Came the reply. The cop gritted his teeth. He'd left the shotgun inside.

"The last of a dying breed." Tetch remarked. He studied the sky, still stained with smoke. "I'm not dead yet." Voorhees called back.

"You found my little girl, didn't you?" Asked Tetch. "Saved her life. I can't thank you enough. I'd offer you a ride out of town with us, but there isn't any more room in the truck."

"There would be if you dumped that corpse out of it."

Two gunshots rang out. Voorhees stumbled toward the edge again.

A well-dressed rotter, standing outside the entrance to the PD, had kneecapped another one that tried to get inside. Voorhees watched in horrified fascination as the undead reloaded its revolver.

"Those corpses mean a great deal to me." Tetch said as he followed Voorhees' gaze.

"Of course. They're your brothers and sisters."

"So Lily's been talking." That cold smile never left Tetch's face. "You want to bargain, then?"

"There's no bargain to be made." Voorhees let his voice rise in volume. If it attracted any attention, Tetch's little helpers could deal with it. "You're responsible for more deaths than I can remember. You think I'm going to hand over that girl to you?"

"Going to arrest me?"

"Doesn't seem like there'd be much point."

Tetch clasped his hands and cocked his head. Waiting for Voorhees to exhaust his bravado and realize that he was the lesser man. To give up the child. Instead, the cop stepped to the edge of the roof.

"She's talked about other things. You like 'em young, don't you Baron?"

The young man's arrogance drained from his face and he was the pathetic little worm that Voorhees had seen all along. The yawning space between them seemed to contract, Tetch's shoulders dropping, his stance changed from threatening to threatened.

"I can see why you prefer the company of those maggot-eaten retards. They don't judge you, do they? They don't care what you do in your house out there in the swamp. Out there, you're the only man Lily needs - isn't that right?"

Tetch's lip curled as he glared in the cop's direction, but he wouldn't look directly at him. Voorhees pushed further. "I've been here a long time. I know people like you. You think you can do whatever you want. But this city still has a cop." He slipped his hand into his trench coat. "And no, I'm not going to arrest you."

Tetch shook his head angrily. This wasn't going the way he'd planned. Voorhees grinned, even though the hand in his coat was closed around nothing but a belt loop. "I don't think I even have handcuffs. Lost 'em at the shelter. You hear about that? Did your dogs report back to you about the bang-up job they did?" He stifled a chuckle. It didn't register that he'd done it with the hand in his coat. "Speaking of which, we hacked that skull-faced rotter to pieces. Was he your favorite doggy?"

It was Tetch's turn to chuckle.

"Not really." He said.

Then he shouted "KILL" and the doggy guarding the PD snapped the revolver upward and fired.

It missed Voorhees by a hair. He threw himself to the rooftop. Another shot grazed the edge of the building, spitting dust into the cop's eyes.

"Pull out your gun and shoot me!" Tetch laughed. He clapped his hands and turned away. He was leaving. Leaving without--

No--

Voorhees began a frantic crawl toward the access door. "DUNCAN!!" He bellowed. "THEY'RE INSIDE!!!"

Down below, the undead gunman, Gerald, walked across the plaza to the de-barricaded City Hall entrance. Prudence and Bailey were already making their way across the lobby.

On the fourth floor, Jenna heard Voorhees' voice bouncing down the stairwell. "What's he saying?" She asked Duncan. He didn't hear her; he was letting Lily see the shotgun, warding her curious hands away with an attempt at a stern look.

Cheryl poked her head past Jenna into the stairwell. "Voorhees?...He's saying something about 'inside'. Voorhees!"

The two women stood in the doorway and listened for a response. It came.

"That sounded like a moan. Like he's hurt!" Cheryl whispered.

"That came from downstairs," Jenna gasped.

A thin woman appeared on the landing below. Cheryl was halfway down the stairs when she realized the woman was dead, but she ran into its arms anyway, senselessly, shrieking all the while; and Prudence, embracing her, clamped rotted teeth down on her cheek just beneath the eye.

Duncan shoved Jenna aside and took aim. Cheryl turned, her face a bloody screaming hole, and he blew her away.

Gerald staggered into view and fired wildly. Duncan and Jenna fell back. The shotgun clattered at the rotters' feet. Bailey passed Gerald as the latter emptied the revolver and reloaded from his pocket.

"God! God!" Duncan stammered, covering Jenna with his arms, protecting and restraining her at the same time, watching Bailey come up - but the zombie simply made a left into the fourth-floor hallway.

Lily let out a terrible cry.

"No!" Jenna tried to thrust Duncan off of her. A bullet whined past the pair as they struggled. "Stay down!!" He yelled. "LILY!!" She wailed.

Bailey emerged with the girl writhing in his grip. Gerald clumsily ascended the stairs and trained the revolver on the two adults. Lily strained at them from over Bailey's shoulder. "DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!! PLEEEEEAASE!!!"

Voorhees stumbled down the stairs from the roof. He saw Gerald and leapt to the floor just before a flurry of gunshots chewed up the wall where he'd been. "Shotgun," he breathed, slapping at Duncan, "shotgun--" Then he realized it wasn't in the man's hands.

Gerald continued to lay down suppressing fire. There was a hollow click. He lowered his head to reload.

Voorhees leapt over the stairs and slammed into him, dashing Gerald's skull against the wall. They fell in a mess of thrashing limbs. He heard the others coming down after him, saw Jenna tear the revolver from the undead's hand. She rushed downstairs after the others.

A few ferals had entered the lobby. Bailey swatted them out of his path. Simeon and Tetch waited right outside in the idling truck. "Hurry now!" Tetch yelled encouragingly.

Jenna burst into the lobby - and right into a feral. They went down with a crash. The revolver flew into the shadows. Bailey and Prudence crawled into back of the pickup, holding Lily down, and it sped out of view.

Jenna went limp with horror as the feral straddled her.

Duncan cracked its temple with the butt of the shotgun. The zombie sagged; he jammed the gun into its desiccated belly and blew it in half.

Gerald's twitching body, head crushed beyond recognition, thundered down the stairs. Voorhees followed, shattering another rotter's fractured grin with his fist on his way to the doorway. "Oh God."

He turned to the others. "Back upstairs NOW!"

They fled past the shambling dead, who stared blankly at one another as they tried to process what had just happened. The halved rotter lying on the floor blinked at its smoking innards.

40.

Lies and Consequence

Once the manor gates had been closed behind the truck, Tetch pulled Lily out of the back and wrestled her into the house. She screamed and kicked all the way up the stairs, but once they reached the study she fell silent. He deposited her in a chair by the window and glared at her sullen face.

"What the hell is wrong with you?"

He slammed the door and locked it, then paced back and forth in front of her. "You've seen the city now - happy? Was it everything you'd hoped? If I hadn't come and gotten you, do you have any idea what those people might have done?"

She had closed herself off to him and stared at the carpet. He stamped in his foot on the spot where she was looking. "So there are people in the city. So I lied. But now do you see why? It's Hell out there!"

"You killed my parents," she mumbled.

He dropped to one knee before her and clasped her hands. "Who told you that?" She tried to pull her hands free, but he tightened his grip so she just gave up and looked at the wall.

"I'll ask you one more time. Who told you?"

"It's true." She replied.

"No - before I say anything about that I want to know who told you! Was it the man in black? Where is he? Has he left the city?" She bit her lip anxiously. "You don't know where he is." Tetch smiled grimly. "He's left you. Of course he did. But I came looking for you."

Voorhees' words from the rooftop bored into Tetch's mind. He winced and pushed them back.

"Your parents - if you can call them that - they abandoned you too. When they came back it wasn't because they cared about you, Lily!"

"Then why?!" She spat. Her hands trembled inside his. "Because," he pleaded, "they just wanted to have you so they could make people feel sorry for them! I mean, first you're a liability that they have to get rid of and then you're a meal ticket. I've never treated you with anything but love, you KNOW that. I didn't tell you about them because I thought it would hurt you. To know that they were like that."

"Is that what they said?" Her eyes were dark with mistrust. Her hands still trembled, from rage Tetch realized. "Of course they did." He answered.

"You let the others eat them."

"What was I supposed to do, Lily? Bury them in the swamp? Think about it. I just didn't want you to see them...now that you know, do you feel any better? No. You feel awful. And I don't know what the dark man told you about it, but he wasn't there."

"Yes he was. He's the angel of death."

"I know." Tetch said. It had a sobering effect on her. For the first time since he'd brought her back she made eye contact. "I know," he repeated, "and it doesn't matter. He has no place in the world anymore. I can bring the dead to life, Lily." He stroked his fingers along the back of her hand. She shuddered. "He doesn't understand things like I do. Neither did Addison. Neither did your parents."

Her lips parted, she wanted to argue; but there was no argument. He leaned in to kiss her.

She jerked her hands free and drew herself into a tight ball on the chair. "Liar!"

He slammed his fist against the nearby desk. She whimpered. He wanted to take her into his arms and comfort her, but she wouldn't let him. She wouldn't let him love her when he was the only one who could.

(You're the only man Lily needs - isn't that right?)

"I'll prove it to you. You'll see. Soon." He left the study, relocking the door from the outside.

Addison, Death, Jesus - all hopelessly irrelevant, hopelessly wrong. Cut from the exact same filthy cloth. Tetch pocketed the study key and headed up to the third floor. The servants' quarters up here had been mothballed years back, and a thick skin of dust coated the bare wood beneath his feet. He stood in the silence of one of the front rooms, at a window, and contemplated the encroaching swamp through a film of grime.

There were ferals out there. He could see some of them, eyeing the house from the shadows.

In City Hall, Jenna stood at the window in the fourth-floor corridor. They'd barricaded the stairwell entrance, and could hear the ferals that had followed them shuffling outside. "We can't just forget about that girl." Jenna muttered.

"I know." Replied Voorhees. He toyed with the shotgun in his lap. "We could make a clean break if we had that truck."

Jenna turned to face him. "Are you suggesting we go to the Addison house?"

"I think we're both suggesting it."

"Make that all three of us." Duncan stood uncertainly on his leg. He was paler than he'd been before the attack. "Maybe we can use the sewers to get across town. At least part of the way."

Voorhees shook his head. "Sewer access is all sealed up. We're going to have to take our chances on the streets. I think - well, frankly, I don't think we'll all make it. We might all reach the house, but..."

"Someone will get bit, at least." Jenna finished.

She pulled down the collar of her shirt. There was a gash on her collarbone. "The one that pinned me in the lobby."

Duncan let out a long sigh. "Jen."

"All that matters is that somebody gets that truck and gets Lily out." She smiled sadly. "As for me...honestly I just don't care anymore. But she hasn't lived life long enough to be sick of it."

"I'm infected." Duncan said. "The axe, it had that rotter's blood on it. I can feel it inside me." Duncan gave a mild shrug. "I wouldn't know where to go anyway. I spent my life chasing the dead, not running from 'em."

"I know the Army's withdrawal route." Voorhees kneaded his hands. "They briefed us before they pulled out. I'll take her to them. There might be refueling sites along the way, but if we end up running out of gas or just breaking down, we'll hoof it. If I can just get her out of town, I know I can keep her safe."

"We're really doing this." Jenna whispered. "Okay. When?"

"No time like the present," said Voorhees. "We've gotta get to the house by twilight."

"Okay." Jenna motioned toward an open office. "I'll make some more torches to throw the rotters off."

Voorhees turned to Duncan. He knew in his core that Duncan wasn't infected, that he felt nothing coursing through him but his feelings for that woman. He'd seen Duncan's photography of the undead hordes. There was always an intimate quality to the images, to the way he framed both soldiers and rotters, unlike the stark gore-laden pictures snapped by most freelancers. Mark Duncan was a romantic. It was a stupid way to live. Maybe, though, a nice way to die.

41.

What You Sow

Death stood in an endless tunnel with candles set into niches in the walls, their halos of light constricted so that he was in complete darkness.

He began to reconstitute his body in the living world, but stopped. He knew Lily was alive - her flame still burned bright - but did it even matter? When her candle went out, it went out. As they all eventually did. He watched the tiny fires around him flicker and jump in life's dance.

I don't want to do this anymore, he thought.

(Then quit.)

Who are you?

(Don't worry about it. So are you quitting?)

This is all I am - my purpose is my being. If I quit, I cease to exist.

(No, not really. I've never made anything that didn't eventually find its will. Will becomes being, purpose becomes secondary. That's life I guess.)

You made me?

(I sure did. As I made others before you, and as, if you quit, I'll make another one.)

I'm not the first? The first Reaper?

(Humanity was around long before you were. Don't feel bad for being so presumptuous - you've been nothing but an ego for so long, you weren't meant to ponder things like that. But you, my friend, have begun pondering. Can I ask a question?)

Of course.

(What was it? What woke you up?)

It was...a child. A little girl.

(But for thousands and thousands of years you've seen a parade of children living and dying. What was it about this one?)

It wasn't just her. It really started with the afterdead. I have to ask - did you make them? If so, why?

(Ummm. Maybe I did. I don't remember. Doesn't seem like my work though, does it? No will, no soul.)

That's it?

(If I knew more I'd say so. Sorry. But back to this girl.)

She doesn't have much time left. But I can't just let her die. It's not...it doesn't seem...

(Doesn't seem right.)

Yes. Exactly. But as you said I've seen billions of young flames snuffed out. I don't remember a single face or name. I don't know what's different about her.

(What's her name?)

Lily.

(Lilith? I like that. How do you feel about her?)

It makes me angry when I think about what might happen to her.

(Anger. That's fear, really, did you know that? You're afraid of what might happen. And what might happen is her death. You see, she made you look at yourself and you didn't like what you saw.)

I suppose that makes sense. Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Perfect sense.

(Yeah I can be fairly perceptive sometimes)

(So you are going to quit, right?)

Yes. I am.

(Do you have any more questions before I cut you loose?)

I can go back to the living world, can't I? And help her?

(Sure. But you won't be able to reconstitute yourself again after this next time. When you're done, you're done. There's no Heaven or Hell or anything else waiting for you. If anything, I guess you're about to enter your afterlife.)

My scythe.

(You made it, it's yours. I like it by the way, novel idea to forge a tool from their bones so that you could affect them. Did it ever occur to you that the concept was born of your own imagination?)

It didn't...

(See, it was only a matter of time before you found your will.)

If I'm not the first - and not the first to quit - that means are there others like me out there?

(Hmm. Well, there were. Like I said, you'll be a wholly corporeal being - your existence will become temporary. Theirs were temporary too.)

Do you know what happened to them?

Do you?

(I can't go down this road with you. Foresight is one of the things you're surrendering. You won't be able to see Lily's flame anymore, but you will be able to intervene in her life. And you won't know how much time you yourself have left, but you'll have a life of your own. You're trading certainty away. Do you understand?)

I understand.

(Anything else?)

Do I...have a...

name?

(Not until you pick one.)

That's it then.

(Oh. Farewell.)

And just like that, it was.

On the thoroughfare south of the city plaza, the nameless being stirred and rose to his feet. His steed rose with him, and he stepped over Gene's prone body to climb atop the horse's back.

Most of the afterdead had cleared out of the plaza. The sun was going down, filling their eyes with light, and they shuffled blindly amongst themselves.

He backed cautiously toward a strip mall across the street. None of them appeared to have noticed him - then one let out a baleful moan...

And was knocked down by a crushing blow to the head. P.O. Voorhees stood over the rotter and swung his widowmaker into its face. The skull split like an overripe fruit.

He handed the cleaver to Mark Duncan, who nodded in understanding and took it, giving Voorhees the shotgun in return. Jenna O'Connell had the revolver that Tetch's zombie had dropped in the City Hall lobby. The fallen rotter continued to flail its limbs as they walked past it, but it wasn't getting back up, nor could it moan.

The man on the horse, sitting motionless in a long shadow, saw that Lily wasn't with them. He decided to follow. The horse's hooves were eerily quiet on the asphalt.

The living moved quickly from block to block, staying behind businesses to avoid the intermittent clusters of undead that stood in the streets. Just after they left the cover of a small building, a rotter stumbled out the back door and saw them crossing the road. It opened its bloody mouth--

And a scythe exploded through its chest.

Duncan had taken point and was ready to quietly dispatch anything that got in their path. Voorhees wielded the shotgun like a club; firing it was his last option. Jenna tucked the revolver into the waistband of her pants.

"Please. Please." A voice called.

A man, shirtless, walked toward them. He held out a grasping hand and repeated, "Please." His tone was flat, without urgency or emotion.

It was a rotter, parroting something it had probably heard from one of its victims. Voorhees motioned for Duncan to hand him the widowmaker, but the latter shook his head and approached the talker himself.

"Please." The undead said mechanically. Saliva ran in thick gobs down its chin.

Duncan swung the blade into its neck and wrestled it to the ground. He sawed frantically through meat and bone until the gurgling head fell free. Its eyes stayed focused on him.

Voorhees touched his shoulder. "Leave it."

They were nearing the construction site. Bad memories, recent ones. Duncan silently vowed there wouldn't be any more.

42.

House of the Dead

They'd surrounded the house.

Standing along the fence, studying the crumbling manse with its dark, broken windows, its ivy-covered stone walls, studying what for all intents and purposes appeared to be a home abandoned to the elements.

Yet, they knew that wasn't the case.

The front door opened. Simeon came out and stood in the yard.

He examined each of the undead that stood silently before the gates. A female with half her scalp missing, a scrap of fabric caught between her teeth. A squat rotter that had died in his teens, his muscular arms purple and streaked with cuts. An adult male barely holding himself together - his hands clutched at a ponderous bloated stomach that wept dampness through his button-down shirt.

They were out there, Simeon was in here. They weren't to be allowed in. If they did come in, they would take his meat. And Tetch would be angry; he wouldn't help Simeon find more nourishment.

Bailey emerged from the back door and surveyed the yard before him. Rotters were crammed into every available space along the fence. Some of them had wrapped their thin fingers around the iron bars and were tugging.

Tetch was still observing from the third floor. He heard feet scraping behind him and turned to see Prudence's silhouette. She tilted her head, expecting an order.

"Just go downstairs." He told her, in a strangely reserved tone. "Stand outside the study. Lily isn't to be let out. Is that clear?"

With a half-nod, Prudence left him.

"Prudence!" He shouted. She reappeared. "Bring Bailey and Simeon inside."

Another slight sway of the head. Tetch returned his attention to the yard below.

Deep in the swamp, huddled beneath the sprawling mass of an ancient tree, Voorhees whispered "Shit."

"We'll never make it past them." Jenna breathed. They could see the undead milling around the Addison house. They must have followed Tetch's truck into the swamp. For one terrible second she considered the possibility that Lily had been pulled - or thrown - from the back of the pickup and into the ferals' grasp.

There was a rustle behind them. She yanked the revolver from her pants and spun, but Duncan was in the way, and she couldn't she what was threatening them in the dying light.

Voorhees whispered again. "You."

The man on his horse stood before them like something out of a fairy tale. Duncan had become accustomed to describing things as something "out of a nightmare", but he wasn't frightened at all.

The former Death read little more than curiosity in their faces. He was no longer able to disappear from the view of mortal men, and along with that ability it seemed he'd also lost his unmistakable presence as the Grim Reaper. He was just a strange man.

"I can help you get inside," he said.

Jenna stepped out from behind Duncan. Remembering what Lily had said, she asked, "Are you an angel?"

"Not anymore." The man answered.

At the gates, the dead began rattling the bars with fervor. They knew there was something in there; as to whether or not it was meat, there was only one way to find out. They rocked against the gates and moaned.

The man in black swept the scythe through the crowd, turning his steed sharply in the soft earth and making a second pass. Before they even knew what was happening, several of the undead found themselves falling, legless, armless - then the scythe swung low and burst their skulls.

The horse collided with the horde and the man in black fell. He landed in a crouch, severing the feet of rotters as they crowded in around him, then rose to open their chests and spill their guts. They collapsed against him, gnawing madly - but before they could do any damage their energy had left them.

Voorhees watched in disbelief as the undead were killed by the dark man's simple weapon. The horse reared up and drove its hooves through the hearts of rotters, pinning them down so that the scythe could slice their throats with ease. Those who hadn't already fallen victim to the dark man began staggering away from the gates.

The scythe struck a padlock, and through a brilliant rain of sparks, the chains holding the gates closed fell away.

The undead grabbed at the horse's kicking legs and overturned it. They plunged their hands into its clay-like flank. The man who was Death turned away as a part of himself was torn to pieces.

Voorhees slapped Duncan's shoulder. Duncan sprinted through the gates, swiping the widowmaker at any rotter within range. One of them grabbed at the back of his shirt; Jenna filled the zombie with bullets, giving it pause long enough for the dark man to split its body from groin to gullet.

Tetch saw it all from the window. He ran across the hall into a room filled with boxes and tore through them. A pearl-handled .22 fell into his shaking hands. Hearing a commotion downstairs, he instinctively cringed behind the boxes.

"It's him," he was saying, over and over again.

Voorhees entered the foyer and caught Prudence at point-blank range. The shotgun kicked her waifish body into the stairs with a roar. She sat up. He aimed into her expressionless face.

Her head was pulverized by the second shot. Tiny fragments of bone fell over her convulsing body as it slid to the floor.

"LILY!!" Jenna hollered. Duncan started up the stairs.

Bailey kicked open a door behind the staircase and heaved an axe over his head as he charged. Jenna pulled the revolver's trigger. Click-click-click.

Voorhees shoved her aside and blew a chunk out of Bailey's side. He stumbled forward, bringing the axe down. Voorhees blocked it with the shotgun. They both fell.

Duncan turned at the top of the stairs to see if Jenna was following. A hand closed over his shoulder, and Simeon groaned.

He hurled Duncan into the opposite wall. The world leapt out of focus as Duncan's head smacked off the wood, and he felt Simeon grappling with him. The widowmaker - where the fuck was it?

Jenna grabbed Bailey around the neck. He bit into her wrist and she closed her teeth around his ear. Prying him up off of Voorhees, a scream building in her chest, Jenna walked her fingers up the rotter's papery gray face and plunged them into his eye sockets. They went in much easier than she'd expected. Bailey began flailing in a panic.

"Get off of him!!" Voorhees cried. "I don't have a shot!"

"Don't - need - one!" Jenna growled, and she brought Bailey's head down on the marble floor with a sharp CRACK. Then another, and another - brackish brain matter erupted from his skull, and he stiffened. Paralyzed and blind, Bailey spat up a mouthful of bile and lay silent.

Duncan let out a cry from upstairs.

He was lying on the widowmaker - its cold steel dug into his back as Simeon tried to bite his throat. He heaved the rotter down the stairs and rolled over to retrieve the blade.

Simeon sat up - Voorhees pumped the shotgun--

Duncan whipped the widowmaker down the staircase and into Simeon's eye. A good third of his face was sheared away. Voorhees blasted him across the foyer.

He and Jenna headed upstairs to join Duncan...

And outside, the dark man was trying to hold the gates closed, but was pushed back by the undead mob. They came at him en masse. He rose, scythe in hand, to face them for the last time.

43.

The Cavalry

On the second-floor landing, Voorhees stopped the others and pointed downstairs.

A few ferals had entered the foyer. Their glassy eyes met those of the living.

"I've got this." The cop muttered. "Find Lily, and stay with her."

It was then that Tetch rounded the corner and emptied the .22 into Duncan.

Mark made a quarter-turn and slumped over the railing overlooking the foyer. He looked into the eyes of the ferals below. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, Jenna was screaming. Suddenly feeling heavy, he slumped to the carpet.

Voorhees, halfway down the stairs, fired a shot and opened the wallpaper beside Tetch's head. He retreated to the hall from whence he'd come. Jenna heard his feet on stairs as she fell beside Duncan; and saw that Mark was dead, and she felt the last of the terrible scream scraping through her throat and past her teeth.

It was quiet in the house.

Voorhees whirled around and blew a rotter's chest open. It caught hold of the banister and held its ground. Voorhees dug through his pockets. No more shells. "I'm--"

Jenna was gone.

The rotter grabbed his arms. He threw it down the stairs and swung the shotgun like a club into the next zombie's skull. The widowmaker, down in the foyer - and more undead crowding through the front door...

He steeled himself and charged down the stairs.

On the third floor, Jenna's feet clapped down in a layer of dust. She searched the darkness: there were several doors, all of them slightly ajar. She recalled distinctly the clicking of Tetch's empty pistol before he'd fled the scene of Mark's death. "You don't have a gun," she whispered, a sob threatening to break her voice.

He threw open the nearest door and flew at her.

They slammed into the opposite wall with a fearful racket, dust falling in torrents; he slapped her across the face, grabbed at her neck. He pressed all his weight against her.

She bit into the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He howled, trying to jerk his hand back, but she clenched her jaw as tightly as she could and gave him entire body a shove - his hand tore open like crepe paper. Blood followed him across the hall in an arc. His head cracked off the wall--

And he was on her again. He shouted incoherently and snatched her throat in his good hand. She slammed a knee into his groin. He grunted, but held fast. She felt her head crashing into the wall over and over and over, and the world began swimming away, leaving an oppressive blackness. Tetch roared distantly. She fumbled with his arms, his chest - he was hard like a tree and his roots were snarled viciously about her windpipe.

She grabbed his balls through his pants and twisted with the last of her strength.

He released her as his mouth fell open; no sound came out. He seized her wrist. She put her weight into the twist. She could feel his balls squeezing together in her palm. Tetch's eyes filled with tears, feet dancing on the floor. "MURDERER," she rasped.

Something gave.

Tetch fell back, and upon impact he let loose a thousand screams. Her foot caught his gut as he tried to roll into a fetal position. She pried him open and kicked him in the sternum. Fell atop him, raked her nails over his face. Blood beaded on his crimson cheeks, and he let out a tortured cry. She drove her fist into his teeth. Again. Again. His lips were swollen purple and he couldn't scream. His hands swatted feebly at her. She parted them and hit him again. Again and again, and she was going to beat him to death, she knew it--

But

Lily.

Jenna grabbed Tetch's hair and yanked his scalp until he cried. "I will ask you once," she said through her teeth. "Where is she?"

Tetch gave her a broken smile. A senseless, red-and-black broken smile.

It bought him the half-second he needed.

He seized both her breasts in a vise grip and dug his claws into her flesh. Jenna shrieked, and he threw her to the floor, scuttling away like an injured spider. Grabbing a 2x4 lying against the wall, he put everything into the swing.

It folded over her shoulder with a CRACK. Pain exploded through her mind. He grabbed her hair and slammed the broken board over her taut stomach. WHAP! She grabbed at her hair, her abdomen, she kicked her feet - her legs went limp as he hit her again. WHAP!

"You came for my little girl?!"

WHAP!

"You think you can take her from me?!"

WHAP!

"You think you can take ANYTHING from me?!"

WHAP!

He dragged her across the floor. Shock gave way to burning pain across her torso. Pulling her through a door into one of the empty rooms, Tetch twisted her blonde locks around his fist. Every inch of her scalp screamed with agony. She was sure that it was all about to come off - that he'd rip the skin from her head with his bare hands...

He let go. He let go and kicked her in the back of the head. She slumped forward. The 2x4 finally snapped in half when it struck her forehead.

Tetch straddled her. "Oh. Oh god." He saw the blood soaking through the crotch of his pants. More blood dripped from his nose and mouth onto her face. He smeared it over her eyes. "Kill you. I'll kill you. Right now." He grabbed her breast, clamped his fingers around her nipple. She groaned, eyes half-shut - he twisted and they opened wide.

She slammed her palm into his chin. He spit on her, and she elbowed him off, bringing both fists down on his back. He coughed up blood and began a desperate crawl across the room. She followed relentlessly, beating on his head, until he stopped, about to collapse.

But he wasn't. He turned and slugged her in the nose. It popped audibly.

She stumbled to the floor. It creaked as Tetch leapt back onto her and began pummelling her face with renewed vigor. Each strike brought a flash of light, and she let her hands fall at her sides, thinking of Mark dead downstairs. Her head was thick with blood and pain and she wanted to be free, with him. Tetch's gleeful cries faded.

The floor yawned and gave way beneath them.

She landed flat on her back, knocking the wind from her lungs - he landed on his knees and felt knives erupting through his legs and spine.

They'd fallen into a vacant bedroom. Tetch wrapped his arms around a bedpost and tried to get up. Jenna jumped onto his shoulders. With a pained cry, he staggered back and struck the edge of a vanity - the mirror exploded behind Jenna. Glass rained over the floor as they both went down again.

He grabbed a shard and slashed at her legs. His entire face was red, his eyes bloodshot. He pushed the glass dagger into her thigh with deliberate slowness, nodding along as she screamed. She tried to stop the glass and flayed her fingertips wide open. He leaned into it. "DOES IT HURT YET? DOES IT HURT? TELL ME IT HURTS!!"

"YEEEEEEESSS!!!" She shrieked. He roared, drove it deeper. She battered his grinning face, but he fed on the pain; he laughed and spat, "BLEED ME. BLEED MEEEEEEE."

Jenna flailed her arms above her head and found the leg of the vanity. She brought it down on him and he fell away.

Still laughing. "Why are you even trying anymore?" He gasped. "You want to be dead. YOU WANT IT!! Let me give it to you. Tell me you want it." His fingers picked up another long shard of glass.

Her entire body was throbbing with numbness. She lay there and stared at him, his chest heaving with exhaustion. She could barely breathe. And she DID want it to be over.

"But not you," she whispered. "Not you."

She lifted a thick shard to her throat.

He heaved himself at her, and she thrust it at him; the glass chewed deep into her palm and she thought maybe it hadn't penetrated him at all.

Tetch sat up. It had.

He coughed up a gout of blood, spattering both their faces, and fell against the bed with a groan.

"Where...is she?" Jenna asked.

He sneered. "'Where is she? Where is she?' She's DEAD. DEAD!!"

Jenna's eyes fell to Tetch's waist, just below where the glass had embedded itself, and she smiled grimly. "No. You wouldn't kill her, not ever."

Crawling to him, she pulled a ring of keys from his pants pocket. He clutched pleadingly at the air. "Don't take her. Please..."

Jenna made her way to the door. She could barely see it through the blood blisters swallowing her eyes.

"I'M BEGGING YOU!!!" Tetch howled. Meat tore and wept inside him. He couldn't get up. He beat his head against the mattress. "PLE-EA-EA-EA-EASE."

He heard the door open, then quietly close.

In the foyer, Voorhees yanked the widowmaker from one rotter's face and buried it to the hilt in another. The undead's neck cracked with a sharp twist, and a second turn ripped its head clean off.

Still they were coming. He'd been forced to retreat up the stairs, and every rotter he dropped was replaced by three.

Behind him, Jenna was knocking on the walls. "Lily!"

She heard the girl's cry two doors down from the bedroom.

Voorhees met her at the top of the stairs. "It's no good. We can't..."

The man in black cut a mighty swath through the foyer, sending corpses through the air. The scythe skewered rotter after rotter and sent them reeling, lifeless, just ugly dolls scattering across the marble.

"Let her out." Voorhees shouted. Jenna unlocked the study door and collapsed at Lily's feet.

"C'mere!" Voorhees cried. He waved to Lily, who was staring in horror at Jenna. She began to kneel - and Jenna pressed the keys into her hands. "Go, baby."

Voorhees scooped Lily up and rifled through the keys. The truck key was there. He leapt down the stairs as the dark man pushed the undead wave back.

"Where's the truck?" Voorhees yelled as they ran outside. "In the back," Lily said, staring at the doorway, looking to catch another glimpse of her angel. Wasn't he coming? Wasn't he--

A rotter careened into the door and it slammed shut.

Voorhees backhanded a shambling ghoul and threw open the truck door. Lily clambered inside. Voorhees plunged the key into the ignition; for one awful second, he couldn't turn it. Then it gave.

Headlights illuminated the zombies coming around back. Some of them came out the back door of the house. He gunned the engine and swerved around them, not willing to risk a breakdown just to splatter their gaping faces. Lily covered her eyes and pulled her seat belt over her head.

Out the gates and a sharp turn left, going back around the manor, heading for the west wall. With the wall's condition, and this many undead, there wouldn't be much of it left standing. No point in speeding eastward through the city...

His eyes checked the gas gauge, at one-quarter full.

Not much point in speeding anywhere.

The truck bounced over fallen slabs of concrete and out of Jefferson Harbor. Lily raised her head and let the belt pull snug against her chest. She glanced, once, over her shoulder, then out into the endless expanse of the badlands.

"Where are we going?"

44.

Out

Mark was still warm.

Jenna pulled herself to him and kissed his face. There was no feeling in her lips. She nestled her head in the crook of his neck and sighed.

The man in black was still fighting in the foyer. After a few minutes, the fighting ceased.

He threw the bolts in the front door and ascended the stairs. Jenna looked hopefully at him.

"I don't do that anymore." He said. But he knelt beside her, gathering his robes to cover her broken body.

"Will Lily be all right?" Jenna mumbled. "I'll keep watch over her." He answered. She nodded and turned to caress the dead man beside her.

"A beautiful ache?" He asked.

Jenna smiled. "I wrote a song that said that." Then she died.

He went into the bedroom.

Tetch's eyelids fluttered. Heavy with drying blood, they lifted, and his red gaze took the spectre in.

"Are you here to kill me?"

"In time." The dark man said.

An hour or so later, the ferals outside were drawn into the house by a long, tortured scream. When they reached Tetch, he was dead. They sat around him and used broken glass to cut his flesh.

Hundreds of them crowded inside, searching every room on every floor, packing the house. It groaned madly around them. Then it all came down, wood and flesh and stone, all came down into the cellar, into the Hell a man had made. They lay pinned in the wreckage and pawed at one another, a cacophony of groans filling the night sky.

(Where are we going?)

"I'm not entirely sure." Voorhees finally replied. "North, I can tell you that much. That's where all the other people have gone."

"What people?"

"There used to be a lot of people in Jefferson Harbor. They left when the Army did. There are cities, safe cities, in the north. And I don't know how to get all the way to those cities, but I think we can catch up with the Army."

"Why did they leave?"

Voorhees frowned over the steering wheel. "They decided it wouldn't do any good to keep fighting for this place."

Lily stared at her hands, folded in her lap, and said, "I guess they were right."

"We tried." Voorhees snapped. She cast a frightful look in his direction, and he tried to soften his tone. "The people who died back there at the house, they didn't die for nothing. They died saving your life."

"I'm sorry." She pleaded. Pursing his lips, he offered her his best facsimile of a smile. "You'll get it when you're older."

In the middle of the night, they reached a military fuel station. Voorhees whispered a silent prayer that there'd still be gas beneath the cement slab; he slipped the pump into the truck and waited.

The gentle sloshing brought a genuine smile to his face. Looking toward the cab, he saw Lily watching him through the rear windshield. She returned the expression.

The headlights caught the faintest hint of something moving on the horizon. Voorhees leaned into the cab and flipped on the high beams. It was a single rotter, a good thousand yards away, moving on a broken ankle.

He pulled the widowmaker from its sheath. "I'll be right back. Keep the doors locked."

"You could just let it go." Lily said. He fixed his eyes on her naive little face and shook his head. "Be right back."

He strode across the barren soil toward the undead. It lifted its bloody head to study him. He stopped, waiting to see what it would do.

It opened its mouth and moaned for his flesh. It came at him.

When it was finished, he replaced the fuel pump and got into the truck. Lily was silent.

"I didn't do it because of what he was." He told her. "I did it because of what he used to be."

Back in Jefferson Harbor, at the city plaza, Gene was standing. He felt the night wind picking up and let it caress his face. Something inside him tugged gently, pleasantly, and he didn't move a muscle for several minutes. Just stood there, feeling.

He knew one thing: he had tasted the flesh of the man in black, and he was no longer what he had been. His stomach still yearned for meat, and he kneaded his palms as the nagging, maddening need made his mouth water. But there was something else, too. A new purpose.

Gene picked up his shovel and started walking.

Epilogue

To Dream

Chicago's security wall, three stories high, was manned by dozens of armored troops that paced atop it. The one gate that cut through this concrete and steel was surrounded by guards, and a fenced quarantine center was just inside. The city proper was still a few miles off.

A young Latino soldier, maybe twenty years old, sat on a stool with a laptop propped on his knees. Behind him, a canvas tent flap whipped in the wind. "You want some water?" He asked Voorhees. "God, yes," came the reply.

"And you're a cop?" The soldier pecked at the computer keys with inexperienced fingers. Voorhees felt a little resentment at being interrogated by these kids, but as he looked toward the city in the distance, as he watched a female solder kneel to chat with Lily, he figured it was worth the hassle.

"I'm a P.O. out of Louisiana."

"Once you're approved and entered in the system, it'll kick your record out to Employment Services. They'll help you get work. We need cops - you'll probably end up doing exactly what you did back in Louisiana."

I hope not, Voorhees thought.

"Is she your daughter?" The soldier motioned to Lily on the other end of the tent.

"No, we're not related."

"Legal guardian?"

"No..." Voorhees narrowed his eyes. "She's a refugee like anyone else."

"I know, I know. Don't worry about it." The soldier, hunched over the laptop, kept pecking keys. "I just mean they'll probably put her in foster care." The boy looked up and quickly added, "You can probably apply for custody. Honestly, I don't know how it works--"

"I've only known her a few days." Voorhees brushed dirt from the sleeves of his coat. "Am I going to get the widowmaker back?"

"The...oh, the cleaver? Doubt it."

"How about that water?"

"Right! Sorry. Just a sec."

Voorhees nodded and settled in for a long wait.

In the badlands...

Two ferals, staggering side-by-side across the parched earth, saw something on the ground ahead. Through shimmering waves of heat, their pus-encrusted eyes discerned a man's body lying prone on its back.

They increased their pace. The sun beat on their bare backs, blisters running over raw red flesh. They teetered on bones, stomachs aching, and lunged at the corpse in its ragged gray suit.

It sprang to its feet.

The scythe halved the first rotter at a diagonal and lodged itself in the second's skull. The man in the suit yanked the blade free and watched the undead collapse into rancid piles.

He'd broken off part of the handle, making the blade easier to wield. It slipped into a makeshift pocket inside the suit jacket. He'd taken these clothes off of another zombie; it made his own "corpse" all the more authentic, as he'd learned over the past few weeks.

His recent time among the dead had only made him yearn for the company of the living, of one little girl in particular. She was somewhere out there dreaming of him. He was sure of it, because he'd begun to sleep, and dream, and all his dreams were about her.

He hoped Lily was still with the policeman. He remembered that, at one time, the policeman's flame had been close to burning itself out; that was before he had intervened. Maybe he'd given Voorhees a new lease on life. He would never know for sure. Someone else knew, and that same someone knew Lily's remaining time on this plane, recording it without a second thought.

He'd find her. He'd carve a great bloody canyon through the plague-ridden badlands to do it.

That was settled, then. Now all he needed was a name.

The man stood over the remains of his prey and thought for a moment.

Then he continued on his way.

Before The Withdrawal

February 20, 2112

Stacy Bekins was sitting on the steps of the Jefferson Harbor Museum. Rain pattered on her thick brown hair, running over her shoulders and down her back to the cold stone beneath her. She watched dully as her shoes darkened with moisture, feeling the water pooling in the soles.

"What are you doing out here?" P.O. Voorhees threw a plastic raincoat over her shoulders. "Stacy? You with me?" She was unresponsive. Voorhees knelt to bring himself eye-to-eye with the girl. She stared through him. She was in shock.

Stacy was a checkout girl at the PX the troops had established inside the museum. The portraits, skeletons and relics once kept there were decades lost; the building had served off and on as an emergency shelter. Major Briggs, the latest man placed in charge of the Harbor's security, had decided the space would be better utilized as a grocery store.

The soldiers were being paid in credit, and they spent it all inside the museum. MREs were often passed up in favor of luxury items like cigarettes, aspirin and underwear. Voorhees had noticed the soldiers getting thinner and thinner inside their fatigues. And they all smoked.

He helped Stacy to her feet - hauled her, really - and took her through the doors to the guard post in the museum entryway. A grunt with glazed eyes watched them from his reclining chair. "She's been out there for an hour," he said.

"You didn't think to say anything? Ask her if she was all right? Get her out of the rain?" Voorhees gave the soldier a dark glare, but the disinterested boy merely looked away.

A woman Voorhees knew as Corporal Elliot strode toward them from the PX. She had a brown paper bag under her arm. The only thing they bagged were personal hygiene items. The young guard also noticed the parcel and smiled slyly.

Elliot kicked the chair out from under him. Chair and grunt slammed into the floor with a sharp crack. "You sit up straight. You're not on vacation." The corporal snapped.

Voorhees gave the guard a sly smile of his own, then turned to Elliot. Stacy hadn't made a sound this entire time; hadn't reacted to the guard's fall. "Something's wrong with this girl." Voorhees told Elliot. She nodded with concern and gestured outside. Her Humvee was across the street.

They hustled Stacy through the rain to the vehicle. Soldiers posted on the sidewalk saluted crisply.

"She works in the PX, doesn't she?" Elliot asked. Voorhees nodded as he eased Stacy into the back seat.

"Stacy, did something happen?" The P.O. looked into her eyes for any glimmer of awareness. It wasn't uncommon for people, especially young people, to have a breakdown or two when faced with the reality outside the city walls. The soldiers had been very, very good, working in conjunction with Voorhees' men to keep the perimeter secure and torch anything that managed to worm its way inside. But the threat of the undead wasn't what made these kids crack, Voorhees knew; it was knowing that they'd never live a free, "normal" life, the life that had existed a century prior. They would grow up always having to look over their shoulders, like early Man did, except that today's humanity wanted more than survival. They wanted their lives to mean something greater.

He forgot all that when he saw the bruising on Stacy's underarms. He reached gently for her arms to get a better look, and she recoiled. Her face became a rictus of abject terror.

"Stacy," he asked softly, "it's all right now. You're safe.

"Did someone attack you?"

Corporal Elliot's jaw was working as she silently observed. She knew where this was going. A burning apprehension was building in her breast.

There had been two sexual assaults reported in the city since the year began. The victims were women, both grabbed in an isolated area of town, both raped from behind while their assailant whispered vile threats. Neither could identify him. But they both thought it was a soldier.

Of course they did.

Was there any proof? A shred of evidence? No. It could just as well be a longtime resident of Jefferson Harbor...but Elliot's pride would only take her so far before her common sense stepped on the brakes.

The soldiers were the ones in control, the soldiers were empowered to protect civilians from the rotters and each other. And soldiers whose psyches were bent and frayed by the horror of modern combat sometimes took out their frustration in unspeakable ways. There wasn't a counselor or chaplain in sight to speak to; prescription meds were out of the question in the field. It was all blood and rain and the endless, fruitless battle against the undead.

Was it really fruitless? The corporal asked herself. Did she believe that they were at a stalemate against the rotters - or worse, that they were losing?

Who could say, really? She only knew what was going on with this unit. The radio propaganda from the north wasn't informative in the least. She knew there was talk among the ranks, again, of a possible withdrawal. Did that constitute a stalemate? Or was it merely surrendering to the dead and retreating?

(They'll follow us you know they will)

Stacy Bekins looked as if she'd already surrendered her sanity.

Voorhees noticed that her jeans were zipped but not buttoned. Her shirt, untucked, had a few stains on the front, but they were faded...

She'd walked back to the museum from the scene of the rape and sat there in the rain, trying to wash her body and mind clean.

"Was it just one man?" Voorhees asked. Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She stared past him still, until her lip began to tremble controllably. Then she looked away.

"Stacy," Elliot whispered, "would you feel more comfortable talking alone with me?"

"I need to be here to take her statement." Voorhees muttered. Elliot frowned. "Come on."

"It's nothing personal, Corporal--"

"It's nothing but personal, Patrol Officer." Elliot nodded toward Stacy, the girl's white-knuckled hands clasped in her lap, eyes glued to the window. Voorhees didn't have any female officers.

"I...I'll stand outside." He turned away before Elliot could respond and stepped out of the Hummer.

Back in the rain. Pulling his walkie-talkie from his trench coat, he tuned it to the band reserved exclusively for his officers. Didn't want any of the Army grunts listening in. "Wood, what's your twenty?"

"Sir. Heading south through Midtown Park."

"Good, meet me at the museum entrance. Looks like we've got another two-six-oh. Weisman, you get all that?"

"Yes sir." Mike Weisman was acting as dispatcher back at the PD. He'd have to record the shift's radio traffic by hand. It was a bitch, which was one of the reasons Voorhees often did it himself; that, and he couldn't read the chicken scratch that half of his officers used.

"You want me out there?" Weisman asked through static. He'd interviewed the last two victims. Voorhees responded, "No, you stay put. We'll compare notes later on."

"Copy that."

P.O. Wood slipped and stumbled as he rounded the corner of the museum. Voorhees waved him over to the Humvee. "Corporal Elliot's in there trying to calm her nerves. It's Stacy Bekins from the PX, looks like the attack just happened. I want you to go in there and get her work schedule. Find out if she was there today."

Wood nodded and hustled across the street. Elliot propped open the Hummer's passenger door. "Officer?"

He stepped back into the vehicle, out of the harsh weather and into a young girl's relived nightmare.

It was hours later, with the sun parting the storm clouds, when Voorhees headed to the Greeley district of town to make his rounds. The residential area was right beside the eastern wall, and though soldiers frequently patrolled the streets, people still liked to see a familiar face out there. He knocked on the front door of the Stanton house. Their boy was sick with a cold.

"How's he doing?" Voorhees asked when mother Marie opened up. She smiled. "A couple of soldiers brought us some medicine. They paid for it themselves down at the PX. Wasn't that nice?"

"It sure was." He felt a twinge of shame at being unable to provide the same services himself. The Harbor Medical Plaza's pharmacies had been emptied out, mostly by looters, and the rest was now housed in the PD's basement, but supplies were running low.

"Cody's feeling much better," Marie continued. "Once he's fully recovered from that bug, I think...well, we're talking about leaving."

"Where will you go?" Voorhees asked. "Haven't you heard?" She replied excitedly. "It was on the radio this morning. The Senate passed a new bill--"

"Hey there Voorhees." Bill Stanton stepped out from behind the door and gestured for the P.O. to come in. "You want a drink? This Army shit almost tastes like water, you should try it."

"Bill." Marie said scoldingly. Her husband grinned and pulled Voorhees in by his shoulder. "Take a load off for a few minutes."

Twelve-year-old Cody was on the couch in the living room, covered by a blanket. There were a couple of chairs for the adults, and on a table across the room, patriotic hymns played softly on the family radio.

Voorhees took a chair and waved to Cody. "What's this I just heard from your wife?" He called over his shoulder. "About a Senate bill?"

"It's the withdrawal," Bill said with a sort of shrug. "Passed unanimously. It starts in a couple of weeks."

"They want to have everyone out of the badlands by July." Marie said, tucking the blanket in around Cody's legs and feet. "By the badlands, they mean here, and everywhere else outside of the 'New Great Lakes area'."

"So they've redrawn our borders again?" Voorhees smirked and shook his head. Invisible lines that the rotters paid no mind to. He hadn't paid much mind to them either; few people had, in fact, in the beginning. When the Senate started designating areas of the country as "uninhabitable", there had been protests from the cities still standing in those areas. Of course, the cities fell without any federal support. Then, the Senate declared over the airwaves that they'd been right, and more people started listening. And so it went: the government continued erasing and redrawing America's lines, abandoning the East and West Coasts, abandoning the U.S.-Mexico border, abandoning those who had seen their nation helplessly eroding and who had decided that they wouldn't give up their "uninhabitable" communities while they were still breathing.

But this withdrawal, this was something much bigger. As Bill and Marie described it, the government was giving up all but seven states - and even then, to call those complete states was an exaggeration.

(Had Elliot known about any of this when he'd talked to her earlier?...)

"They say they have enough room up there for everybody." Bill sipped lukewarm water from a plastic bottle. "They say we're spread out too much right now for their support to do any good."

"How do they even know how many people there are? Did they take a census?" Voorhees accepted a bottle of water and wrenched the cap off.

"Well, they might not have hard numbers, but what they're saying makes real sense." Bill reached over from his seat to pat Cody's head. "Yeah, this town is done for, but the people in it can still survive. We're talking about massive military convoys escorting us north, protecting us from any rotters that might think it's a travelling smorgasbord. Cities with huge walls, thousands of troops, and all the resources you'd ever need. It'll be safe, relatively comfortable, like the way we used to live here - maybe even better."

"So, our Senators-for-life are making us an offer we can't refuse." Voorhees' smile was bitter. He spat a mouthful of water back into the bottle.

"I love the Harbor, Voorhees, just like you, but I can't put my family's safety on the line for that."

"I get it." The cop replaced the cap on the water bottle. "I really do. But there are other people who won't feel the same way. There are people who don't give a damn about lines on a map or any carrot the government's dangling in front of them. They're going to stay and I have to stay with them."

Bill laughed incredulously. "No you don't!"

"When do they want everyone out again?" Voorhees asked Marie. "When are they cutting us off?"

"July."

"Independence Day." Voorhees rose from his chair. "I need to get back on my rounds."

"We're going to leave with the first convoy." Bill said. He averted his eyes to look at his son, giving Cody a reassuring squeeze of the hand. "It just makes sense."

"You're right." Voorhees said quietly. "But I can't leave people here. That doesn't make sense. I'm a cop."

Bill stared solemnly at him. The man just didn't understand. Later that evening, he and Marie would discuss all the irrational reasons why Voorhees must have insisted on staying. They'd call him suicidal, lonely, afraid. Bill's reasons for evacuating were plain as day, but Voorhees...Voorhees said he was a cop, and that wasn't an answer, not to them. "Yeah." Bill said.

Voorhees left the house and crossed matted dead grass to the sidewalk. He'd probably be hearing from the P.O. Union before long about pulling out. The Union, a lot of spineless bureaucrats who'd forgotten what it felt like to walk a beat. If they called him north, he'd ignore them, he'd lose his job; but he'd still be a P.O. in Jefferson Harbor, just as those who refused to leave their homes were still Americans.

He wondered if any of his officers would stay with him.

ss - THE OMEGA

Postman drags himself down the front hall of Llewellyn House. It's important to remember locations: this is Llewellyn House, at the north end of the city. North is veering to the left of dawn. The sun rises in the east. Sets in the west. This is all that Postman's curdled brain can hold onto. Locations.

Location, location, location! Someone used to say.

Postman drags his severed torso down the porch steps.

For one hundred and five years, Postman has kept his route in the city. The route is something, the one thing, ingrained in Postman's soft brain, and in fact it has served him well. Still wearing his whisper-thin uniform, a few things sticking out here and there (arrow, stick, whatever catches him as he walks) he would walk the route, and on occasion, find meat wandering by.

Meat hasn't come by in a long while though. Postman is old and dry and falling apart, and yesterday a crumbling brick wall tore his legs and groin from his waist.

Postman is approaching something that he recognizes as an ending. There is no more meat in this city. No more meat will come to this city because there is nothing for them to take; the buildings are skeletons now, seared by the sun overhead.

His bones are brittle. He realizes it is no longer important to remember locations. Synapses let go and fall, like broken bridges, into warm goo.

Postman stops in the yard in front of Llewellyn House and lies in dead grass, knuckles scraping dirt, one milky eye studying bits of sunlight. No more. His hat slides over the exposed bone of his forehead, nudges the spot of brown flesh on his cheek.

Another is coming down the road, toward Llewellyn House; coming north. Coming at a measured, healthy pace. His clothes and hair are soiled but his flesh seems robust; he has eaten well in recent days, this one, this other. He drags a tool over the asphalt; a shovel.

This other kneels beside Postman and jams the shovel into his guts. Postman looks up with his one eye, watches quietly as he is dissected by handfuls, and pushed into the maw of the other. His uniform is opened and laid back, threadbare, the sun striking through its weathered fibers; His head is gently peeled, and then that eye is taken, with its tiny bit of moisture, and life, and it enters the jaws of the Omega.

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