Empire's End (9 page)

“Yes,” Jack said, “but we’re in debt—we owe
people and they want it all now. Or else.”

“I see.” Meyer crouched in front of them and
said, “Maybe you should refinance with me. Wouldn’t that be better
than selling off the girl?”

Jack and Molly looked anxiously at one
another. “You’re not really in debt, are you?” Meyer smiled
coldly.

Jack stared at his feet, clearing his throat
again, trying to find the right words to say. “Just tell me the
truth,” Meyer said. “What are you into?”

“You must know about the airfield,” Jack
said. Meyer frowned. “Airfield?”

“They’re building an airfield east of the
city. The Senate. I think they’re going to have planes come from
somewhere and take them out of here. We just—I need to buy seats
for me and my wife. We have to get out of here. The girl—Lily—we
only took her in for the government support check. We can let her
go. We just want the money.”

Meyer stood in silence, staring at them while
he sucked on a piece of candy. The room seemed to grow even smaller
to Jack and Molly, pressure building behind their eyes, hands
trembling... finally he spoke.

“Seven thousand credits.”

Jack nodded immediately. He’d probably
expected a lot less than ten. He put his arm around his wife and
said, “Yes. Seven. All right.”

“Give this man here your account number.
Expect the transfer within the hour. It’ll be entered in as a tax
refund. Understand? You were never here. In fact, you never had the
girl—I’ll take care of it. All of that clear?”

They both nodded. They looked like they
wanted the hell out of there. Meyer decided to suck his candy and
let them stew a few more minutes.

What sort of person would sell their child,
even a foster child, into sexual slavery? Of course Meyer could
make it right on his end, but how did they live with themselves?
Heartless people. At least she’d be taken care of now. And she’d be
loved... oh, his clients would love little Lily with her budding
breasts and long dark hair. S.P.O. Casey would
really
love
her.

“All right. Give my guy your account and walk
out of here, and then forget all this,” he said. They scuttled from
the room like spooked roaches.

He opened the door to the smaller room. Lily
looked a bit more apprehensive. She hadn’t figured it out yet, but
she soon would.

“My name’s Finnegan,” he said. “Want some
candy?”

She shook her head.

“That’s good. You don’t take candy from
strangers. But soon I won’t be a stranger, and then when I offer
you candy you’ll take it. Okay?”

He knelt in the doorway like he was talking
to a puppy. “Jack and Molly can’t take care of you anymore. They
want you to stay here for now. There are lots of other girls here.
You’ll like it.”

She drew into a ball and whimpered, “I want
to go home.”

“You
are
home, sweetheart.”

A light dusting of snow had given the earth a
corpse-pallor which was matched by the night sky. A black shape
broke the monotony of lingering clouds and headed north.

It had been ages since Dalton had seen a bird
in the sky. There was one high above him now, a hawk, circling over
a shadowy patch of earth beyond the Wall.

What was the hawk stalking? Based on its
behavior it seemed likely that it wasn’t infected, that it was
after a small mammal. An infected raptor wouldn’t look outside its
own species for prey. But Dalton had orders, and he sighted the
hawk through his rifle’s scope and fired.

It was true that people had become infected
through contact with animals. If you cornered one, forced it to
bite, you’d signed your death warrant; Dalton had seen too many
soldiers infect themselves by catching and eating plague-ridden
rodents out in the field. There were so many ways that the
nightmare could begin—so the military demanded every safeguard
enforced. So he fired.

The hawk plummeted to earth, out of view.
Dalton needed night vision goggles. The pair he’d owned had been
“requisitioned” by a burn team for their evening sweeps. The lights
on the Wall just weren’t enough, but they’d have to do. He heard
generators humming to life as they came on.

No rotters today. Fewer and fewer each week.
But wasn’t it only a matter of time, some would ask, until the
hungry dead clustered in the badlands ventured north in search of
food?

No, the scientists said. Field studies
indicated that the dead stayed close to the communities from which
they originated. They didn’t think like people, nor like animals;
they didn’t think at all. If they sensed meat nearby, they went
after it. Otherwise they just stood and rotted.

Dalton knew it was bullshit. He’d seen a
newly-dead soldier shoot at human prey. He’d seen rotters that had
felled small trees to block a road and then laid in wait for the
next Army patrol. Most of them, he believed, retained some scrap of
intellect. If you believed the stories about regeneration, maybe it
was possible for rotters to get even smarter.

Don’t worry, the scientists said. Even if it
was true, their food supply was dwindling. They were starving out
there in the badlands. Someday, Americans could live outside the
Wall again. Maybe even in Dalton’s lifetime.

He didn’t buy it. Because he knew that the
apocalypse wouldn’t just fade away. He was a man of God and he’d
seen the signs. He’d seen the Reaper.

What did the scientists say when confronted
with dozens of accounts of the rider on his pale horse?
Post-traumatic stress disorder. Psychotic break. Those who openly
spoke of seeing the Angel of Death were flagged and relegated to
menial jobs: quarantine watch, processing center clerk, orientation
aide. Their personnel files had extra forms with red ink. They were
called in periodically to chat with a counselor. And hey were
always asked: do you still think you saw Death?

Dalton had seen him riding his white steed in
the burning remnants of a Louisiana town called Jefferson Harbor.
Like many towns, including the Great Cities, Jefferson Harbor had
its own wall. It hadn’t made a damn difference.

Bigger walls. More soldiers. More work for
the undead, but hardly a deterrent. There was no deterrent. They
were zombies.

A runner came into the light. Stumbling
toward the Wall, clothed in bloody rags, jaw hanging slack,
fingernails black with old gore—the rotter streaked into view and
right toward Dalton.

The hawk must have been circling him. It had
alerted Dalton to the enemy’s presence, and he’d rewarded it with a
bullet.

It wouldn’t make things right, Dalton knew,
but he went ahead and put two rounds through the top of the
runner’s spine, nearly severing its head from is neck. Then he
grabbed his radio.

“Section nineteen. One rotter down.”

His dogs were asleep in the guard post. They
were probably awake now, even with his gun silenced. Assured there
were no other undead coming, he climbed down to see the
Rotties.

At least Logan hadn’t made any more excuses
to come by. He was probably busy in Gaylen, anyway. The night made
it easier for him to go about his disgusting business.

* * *

“I’m looking for a date,” Logan said to the
woman in the doorway of the apartment building. She tossed her dark
hair back and looked him over.
Already back?
her expression
said.

The transaction was completely under the
table. No credits. Just bullets. Two full clips.

She led him down a dark hall. Campbell was
well-built, firm and leggy and all, but she was also tough as
nails. At least around her clientele. Logan had thought a few times
about asking her out, getting the both of them away from this ratty
dump of a tenement, but he quietly laughed the idea away.
After
what she’s seen me do?

Campbell led him down a well-lit flight of
stairs with a murderous-looking black guy watching Logan’s every
move. It was the walk of shame, that hallway, these stairs. All for
a few seconds of pleasure. But his heart was already pounding with
anticipation and he felt himself stiffening.

Down one last hallway, one with several doors
and a man guarding each one. Sometimes Logan forgot just how
dangerous this was. If the P.Os or the brass ever found out, they’d
burn the place to the ground. He’d be discharged, maybe sent away
to some awful place where the unwanted were sent. But he told
himself:
They aren’t women. They’re things. Like a pinup or
something. It’s not unnatural.

Campbell opened the last door in the hall and
tapped a scarlet nail against her cheek. “Same girl, right?”

He nodded at the floor as a man patted him
down. Campbell pulled on a glove and tugged at his pants. The man
who’d searched him shone a lantern’s light down there. Logan shut
his eyes tight, feeling himself go soft in her hand, resisting the
urge to push her away and leave and forget all about it. Finally
satisfied, the girl stepped aside and allowed him into the dark
room.

There was a candle burning beside the door.
Once that door was closed, it was the only light. But it was a
soft, small light and it helped with the fantasy. It helped hide
some of the sores and the rot, if there was any, which there almost
certainly was. The air was thick with a flowery scent. That helped
with the odor that occurred once things got going.

And then there was her, splayed out on a
mattress with hands heavily bandaged and chained to the wall behind
her head. She still had nice legs. They kicked, and the teddy
shifted, revealing her in the candlelight.

It was a thin, loose bit of lingerie, easy to
pull up over her hips and down past her breasts. Her skin looked
clean; she was checked frequently for any signs of blood or open
wounds. Occasionally someone would get in with a knife and cut a
girl up. Depraved. Guys like that were beaten to a pulp out back
and banned from the joint. Perhaps more depraved were those who
tried to fuck a girl in the mouth and got it bitten off. They were
taken out back, too, but they didn’t return to the lights of the
city.

Yeah, at least he wasn’t one of those guys.
He knelt before his girl, holding her legs apart with his knees,
and undid his pants. There was a bowl on the floor with wrapped
condoms from some other decade. He hated that. He and she had both
been checked out, so why not let them both feel it? Yes, he still
believed that she could feel it, and that it felt good. He knew she
would get wet when he touched her. Part of her wanted him.

But still, not a woman. Not rape. Just a
thing
.

She was heavily made up. He couldn’t tell
what she really looked like under there. Just as well.

He pulled the teddy down, and her marbled
breasts fell free. Her head started to move. She looked at him with
yellowed eyes.

Her teeth were gnashing. They left the teeth
in to dissuade kissing. She tossed her head, blonde wig falling in
front of her eyes, and she ground her teeth and bucked her hips.
She wanted him all right, but not in the way he believed. Logan put
that out of his mind and entered her.

She made low rasping sounds. Her hips
continued thrusting, and he slowed his rhythm to match hers, as if
they were making love. He stared into her face and kneaded her
breasts, pinching her nipples to harden them. The hair fell out of
her eyes, and she glowered at him, mouth wide open, just waiting
for him to make the wrong move and come close enough for a bite. He
kept himself propped up and rocked against her, whispering: “I love
you. You feel so fucking good, I fucking love you.”

She tugged at her chains and started shaking
her head. He knelt to kiss her breasts, keeping his scalp away from
her teeth. Moaning, Logan thrust deep into her, sitting up and
spreading her legs wide, and he came staring into her defiant dead
eyes.

Pulling the condom off with a wet snap, he
tied the end and held it between his fingertips. He’d have to take
it out with him. Buckling his pants, he turned away from her, not
wanting to see her now as the monster she was. Not wanting to
acknowledge that he’d fucked
it
.

Another walk of shame, another night of
trudging through the streets and trying to justify it to himself.
Eventually he’d smoke some pot and go to sleep, but then the dreams
would come, dreams about teeth and tearing and Logan loving it and
he’d awaken in the morning in a film of sweat.

* * *

There was something very wrong here.

The other girls had too much makeup on, and
they looked miserable. Lily sat in the long room and watched as the
children in neighboring beds trembled or rocked or just stared
blankly at the ceiling. When the man named Finnegan entered, they
all flinched and tried to make themselves invisible. He walked from
bed to bed, looking each one over. “Is that a bruise? You’re
getting too thin. Start eating. I mean it.”

He came to Lily and smiled. “I’m going to
take you to meet someone.”

“Who? A new mom and dad?”

“No, not like that. A new friend.”

He reached his hand out, but she ignored it,
getting off the bed by herself and pulling on her shoes. “I don’t
have any of my stuff,” she told him.

“You’ll get new things,” he replied
curtly.

He led her out of the warehouse and into a
side street, where he stopped to talk to someone. Lily stayed at
his side, not wanting to make him angry like the other girls had.
They must have made him mad for him to do whatever he’d done.

Glancing up at the sky, she saw s tiny
silhouette in an upstairs window. Another girl, about her age,
staring down. Lily waved. The girl didn’t wave back.

There was something wrong with the way she
looked; as Lily stared. She began to make out the girl’s features,
and the girl turned slightly toward the light in the window and
Lily saw that a smile had been carved into her face.