Resistance (18 page)

The silence in the tent stretched out uncomfortably. Dave could hear the shouts of military personnel outside, the grumble and grunt of heavy engines, but they didn’t sound nearly as loud to him as the ticking stillness around the map table.

‘Okay,’ he said, after a moment, his resistance deflating. ‘Just askin’ is all.’

The tension which had been building dissipated some. He heard Emmeline breathe out loudly, but whether in relief or frustration he couldn’t say.

‘Could I ask one thing, sir?’ said Captain Heath, addressing General Salas. ‘My briefing wasn’t clear about how the Djinn had made contact and asked for Dave in person. I was hoping you could clear that up. It might be important.’

Salas looked embarrassed and De Brito’s frown grew even deeper.

‘Well, I’m not sure how to put this, Captain, Mr Hooper. But I guess you’d call them the talking dead.’

13

‘Oh Hell no,’ said Zach Allen. ‘Zombies? No way. I hate those guys!’

‘Talking zombies,’ said Dave, shaking his head, almost grinning at the madness of it all. ‘I forgot about them, or, you know, Urgon never had reason to think of ’em.’

‘Tell me this isn’t going to get any weirder,’ said Igor as he spooned up a plate of meatloaf with mac and cheese. It was splattered with red tabasco sauce which he’d produced from one of his pockets.

‘This could work for us, Dave,’ said Boylan. ‘Zombies are hot right now. The project Brad Pitt is putting on hold to do your film? Unless we give it to Bay, of course, it’s his zombie sequel! Coincidence? I think not.
Walking Dead
is still coining it for AMC. Again, zombies! I’m excited by this, Dave. Very excited. Numb with terror and horrified too, naturally, but very excited.’

Dave pushed away the empty platter that had held his Cracker Barrel sampler, a generous pile-up of chicken-n-dumplings, meatloaf, and sugar-cured ham. He pulled the plate of chicken-fried chicken toward him, much to Zach Allen’s disgust.

‘Couldn’t you at least try a salad?’ Zach asked, working on his own chef’s salad and pinto beans.

‘And they’re not really zombies,’ said Dave, ignoring the chief petty officer’s dietary advice. ‘More like meat puppets. Tümorum on the other hand
. . .’

‘Meat puppets?’ asked Emmeline.

‘Yeah, that works,’ said Dave as he loaded up on fat and protein, feeling strangely content. Even Lucille was humming softly as though she’d eaten her fill of Cracker Barrel’s ‘fancy fixin’s’. Cracker Barrel was Dave’s sort of place. Partly because Annie hated everything about it. Half of the building was set up like a general store which sold bric-a-brac, trinkets and souvenirs, the sort of crap that caused children to howl if they didn’t get their way. Annie resented the temptation of soda pops and candy, preferring the boys to snack on a wholesome avocado half or an apple, but even more than that she resented Dave undermining her, getting the boys a chocolate bar for the road or a Coke to ‘top up the ol’ tank’. He supposed he’d been a bit of a jerk, but on the other hand
. . .
avocado? Seriously?

The reduced Super Friends team – both SEALs, Emmeline and Boylan – sat in the dining hall, which could easily have done duty as a medieval dining hall. Behind them a stone fireplace lay unlit and cold due to the late September warmth. Dead fireplaces always struck Dave as looking colder than they actually were. Heath had remained in the tent to talk to the generals about important soldier stuff, with some important neckbeard input from Compton. Emmeline had stalked out with Dave, who’d announced he needed to do some important superhero stuff because he was hungry. He found he could get out of anything by saying he was hungry.

‘You said something about meat puppets,’ Emmeline reminded him, ‘before you put half a chicken in your face. What did you mean?’

He swallowed the food and took a mouthful of black coffee with it. He had no idea if the caffeine would help supercharge him like food seemed to, but he’d grown so used to drinking black, sugarless coffee with his meals out on the rigs that it had become a habit as unconscious as scratching his ass with his right hand instead of the left. Not doing it felt wrong.

‘They aren’t real zombies,’ he said, searching out his knowledge of the
. . .
well, Urgon had no name for them. ‘They’re most likely just some poor folk the Djinn had killed that were raised or reanimated by a
. . .’
he paused to make sure he was translating the term correctly from the Olde Tongue. ‘By a Revenant Master.’

‘Ah, come on! What the fuck is that?’ asked Igor. He’d moved to three pancakes, drowning them with the contents of half a dozen mini bottles of syrup. Dave had to pay the guy’s appetite. He knew his way around a plate.

‘Nothing like a Hunn,’ Dave said. ‘You don’t normally find them working with the clans. In the ancient times
. . .’
He shook his head at his choice of words, which sounded as though he was reading from a scroll. ‘Back when daemons and such were livin’ large on our scrawny asses, the Revs were, uhm
. . .’

Dave searched his inherited memories again.

‘They were like wild catters. Sole operators. Might sometimes align themselves with a clan or sect in return for tribute
. . .’

‘What sort of tribute?’ asked Emmeline, who was spooning small serves from a bowl of natural yoghurt with honey and berries.

‘Dunno,’ said Dave. ‘Just tribute.’ He thought about it some more. ‘I think if someone acknowledged they were the baddest motherfucker in the valley of the shadow of death that was good tribute. Or something. Anyways, they raise the dead, control them like Muppets.’

Zach bowed his head and clasped his hands together to say grace. Or at least Dave assumed he was giving thanks for his chef salad with a side of pinto beans. Then again, maybe not. Unlike Marty Grbac, Chief Allen kept his religion close.

‘So, when you shoot ’em, the meaty puppets, are you going for centre mass?’ asked Igor. ‘Or is it like with zombies? A head shot?’

‘Head shot’ll do it,’ Dave confirmed. ‘But Urgon seemed to think chopping them up worked just as well. Maybe it gets harder to control them the more they come to pieces. Or maybe there’s less reason to bother. Dunno. As I said, old Urgon seemed to know of them more as a legend. Might be more of a Djinn thing, too, of course. The different sects, they do have their ways. But as to killing them, best way is to put down the master pulling the strings. You drop him, you’ll drop all of them. That’s why you don’t see Revenant Masters very often. They’re sneaky fuckers.’

Igor nodded, ‘Be bringing the nine iron then.’

Zach raised his head from his contemplations and unfolded his napkin. ‘I still say a Beowulf and a Barrett is a little much.’

‘Eat yer greens,’ Igor said.

‘And they’re dead, right?’ asked Emmeline. ‘The people, the meat puppets,’ she added with evident distaste.

‘Deader than Elvis,’ said Dave.

‘Won’t be an issue for you anyway, ma’am,’ said Zach. ‘You’ll be chilling here with Professor Compton at D-Tac. We’re taking Dave and the captain for their meet-up with the big bad.’

‘And I’ll stay here too, Dave,’ said Boylan. ‘As per my previously stated preference for not approaching too closely the Gates of Hell. I had intended to seek out a serviced office in the downtown area, but the city seems to be in turmoil with a large number of businesses simply shut down, which I find remarkable given my need to rent a serviced office and the presence of so many of our fine military personnel and their massively destructive weaponry between the monster encampment and the central business district. Have people no faith?’

Dave thought about ordering up some of Igor’s pancakes for himself but he was actually feeling a little bloated and sick from everything he’d eaten. He knew that’d pass quickly, but it was probably better he didn’t waddle into any conference with the BattleMarshal of the Djinn Regiment drumming a march on his distended belly with greasy, maple-syrup-covered fingers.

‘S’cool, X,’ he said. ‘You need anything here? Desk space or something? I could ask the management.’

‘Already taken care of, my friend. You just need to pose for an Instagram with the manager before you go.’

*

Driving southwest down I-80, Dave and Heath were sandwiched between four Hummers commandeered from the Nebraska National Guard. The roads were clear of civilian vehicles, to Dave’s initial surprise. But when he thought about it, who but an idiot would drive toward the daemons? That question was answered when they passed a state patrol/military police checkpoint where officers were busy detaining a couple of men with video rigs and sound-recording equipment, which looked a little like Knoxy’s crew had used back in Vegas. These guys weren’t Fox News though. Their van was pimped out with some sort of storm-chaser artwork he couldn’t quite make out as the Hummers roared past.

Something was bothering Dave. He didn’t understand the military’s plan and he said as much.

‘What don’t you understand?’ Zach asked.

‘All of it.’

‘Ever make a sandwich?’

‘Well duh.’

‘Same thing,’ Zach said. ‘These guys are the meat and cheese in the middle. One slice of bread is the heavy armour guys from Fort Riley. They’re setting up down in Lincoln, which is on the other side of the Djinn. That’s mainly because they are closer to Lincoln and they can’t get around all of the traffic, obstructions and what not to get to Omaha.’

‘This an open-faced sandwich?’ Dave asked. ‘Where’s the other slice of bread?’

‘That’s us,’ Zach said. ‘Plus the police, what national guard units there are and those airborne guys if they get into position. But the main barrier is the Platte River. If we can’t work out a deal we’ll blow the bridge and crush them between the two ground elements.’

‘Plus air power,’ Igor said. ‘Lots of air power. Think of that as the gravy.’

‘Make sense now?’ Zach asked.

‘Maybe.’

As they got closer to the river, they encountered lone figures who seemed to point at them, or reach for them, watching the vehicles roll past, stumbling awkwardly to follow them for a few steps. Some were still flush with signs of their recent departure from the land of the living while others had turned grey and flyblown.

Tümorum.

‘Fuck!’ spat Dave. ‘There’s your zombies, Igor,’ he said when they’d passed the third shambling husk in a row.

‘One of those Revenant asshole things?’

‘No,’ said Dave. ‘Worse.’

He leaned forward and tapped Heath on the shoulder.

‘You got a radio, or a cell or something? You want to get on to your general buddies and tell them anybody sees one of those shambling fuckers, they need to put them down, hard. Right away.’

Heath looked slightly confused.

‘But didn’t you say the Revenant Masters are the target?’

Dave scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration. It was tough being the one guy who knew any of this stuff, and not even knowing what he knew really. He hadn’t shaved in Vegas and stubble was coming in hard on his cheeks.

‘Sorry,’ he said, breathing out in exasperation. ‘My fault. Look, the shamblers who carried the message to your guys that the Djinn wanted to see me? They were controlled by a Revenant. That’s why they could moan a few words. Not many, and don’t ask me how. It’s probably a question for Ashbury. Some muscle memory thing, or residual brain function or something. Seriously the Horde don’t go in for deep academic papers on this shit.’

Their Hummer rolled past a nameless overpass after the speed limit sign advised them that they could go seventy-five miles per hour, although the armoured Hummers struggled to do better than fifty. Dave felt his balls crawl up into his body as a whole family of grey-faced ghouls reached for them from the ditch by the side of the road. Their pallid skin was painted with slashes of dark, dried blood and, looking more closely this time, he could see the telltale signs of Tümor infection. Jagged yellow spurs of bone erupted through the skin at seemingly random places all over the body. Festering pustules boiled up and broke like giant blisters pouring bad blood and toxic discharge from the wounds.

These ones would have no words. They would answer to no master. They were just a shuffling set of teeth and bone-knives. A transmission vector.

‘Stop the car,’ he demanded.

Heath was genuinely surprised. ‘What? Why? We’re on a schedule here, Dave.’

‘Stop the fucking car or I’m just gonna warp out of here anyway.’

Zach looked to his officer who nodded. They pulled over to the side of the road, the Hummer behind them crunching off the tarmac too. The lead vehicle took a little longer to realise it had lost its companions, but eventually slowed and stopped a hundred yards or so further on.

‘Don’t get anywhere near them,’ said Dave. ‘Igor, Zach, you think you can put a clean round through their heads from here?’

Igor snorted at the idea that he might not be able to.

‘Just wait a damned minute,’ said Heath.

‘Hey! You! Soldier!’ Dave yelled at the man from the vehicle behind who had started to move toward the creatures. They in turn had locked on to him. Their arms, mutated with eruptions of mutant bone spur and dripping pus from the weeping lesions, lifted as if drawn up by a puppeteer. ‘Get the fuck away from them. They’re infectious. Move!’

The man did not need telling twice. He jogged up to where Dave and the SEALs stood on the highway.

‘We can’t go shooting civilians,’ Heath protested.

‘They’re dead,’ said Dave. ‘Have been for hours. And now they’re looking to share the love.’

He could hear their footsteps, or the dragging and slapping of their dead flesh on the hard concrete. A mother, a father, two kids.

‘Look, I don’t have time for a history lesson,’ Dave said, as the first Hummer in the little convoy reversed toward them. ‘I’m still unpacking most of this shit myself. But those things coming down the road? They’re worse than zombies. They don’t need to bite you. Just a poke with one of those bone shards you can see sticking out of them, or a juicy dollop of zombie custard from one of the boils will do it if it gets in your eye or mouth or up your nose or in a cut. I’m telling you, Captain, you got to put them down now, from here. Honestly. Just shoot them in the head now. They’re not people. They’re
Tümorum
.’

The soldier who’d joined them looked sick and horrified. He was staring at Dave as if he were the abomination, not the shamblers.

‘Captain? I
. . .?
’ said Zach.

Whatever Zach wanted to say, he couldn’t find the words for it. The Tümorum were only a hundred yards away now. Close enough to hear the low animal noise they made. A predator’s growl. The two smallest, the kids, even appeared to pick up a little speed. The girl – Dave assumed she was a girl because of the length of her hair, which still caught the afternoon light and threw off a few golden highlights – caught her foot on something, a break in the tarmac perhaps, and pitched forward. They all heard the hard-soft thud and crack of her face hitting the road surface. None of the others slowed or even moved to avoid her. Zombie Mom actually got her legs entangled with the kid’s and went down too. The bone spurs on their lower limbs locked them together like fighting elk, leaving only the grown male and younger boy.