This Plague of Days, Season Two (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (26 page)

“What are we? What are we? What are we?” she cried out as he lay atop her, meeting each savage thrust.

“We are what we always wanted.” He bared white teeth. “Beyond fear.”

* * *

Later, the messenger appeared in his dreams. He somehow knew the boy slept in a van travelling through the night. Beside the boy sat a man in white. He took him to be the boy’s father. “I must speak with him!”

The man nudged Jaimie awake gently and the boy opened his eyes. Instead of eyes, two mirrors reflected the Alpha’s face.

“I know your name is Jaimie Spencer,” he told the boy. “I heard them call you by name when I was strapped to that table. But
what
are you?”

“An instrument of The Way of Things.”

“What’s that?”

“The Way of Things is all around us, shouting in many voices all the time. All you have to do is look at things differently. That’s all I’ve ever done, so the Things chose me as their Way. I speak with one small voice so you might hear me. But I doubt you will. You’re an Alpha and I’m still human.”

“The doctor named me an Alpha, right?”

“A weapon, yes.”

“I’m more than a weapon!”

“You believe you are new, but you’re not. You’re something very old that’s waited for eons to reemerge. You are more lizard than brain,” the boy said.

“No!”

“You have merely rediscovered
arte perditae
. You are a practitioner of
lost art
s, like me.”
 

“You’re wrong, boy! I am the next evolution of the species.” His irritation made the vampire feel like he was swimming out of sleep, clutching uselessly at a fleeting dream. He couldn’t lose hold of the boy. The boy was the key to the mysteries.
 

“I used to live on Misericordia Drive.” Jaimie shook his head sadly. “You know,
people
have names. Wild animals do not. You have no name. Things with no names are without
misericordia
. Names
matter
. Names have
meanings
. You are perfect and single-minded. You are a beautiful animal, but you lack a name and
misericordi
a.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Exactly.”

The Alpha tried to stay with the boy, but his anger drew him up out of sleep. “What does it mean?” he screamed.

The more he fought to stay in the dream, the more he pushed it away. In the last second before opening his white eyes, he saw the woman behind the white curtain. He was sure she was screaming to be let into his dream, pleading to be heard, but the boy kept her out.
 

He awoke in the arms of the former nurse as the wind shuttled and sighed through long grasses.

The wind whispered with the boy’s voice. “Mercy.”

* * *

At dawn, before the next hunt began, hundreds stood before the Alpha leader. “I have new orders. No matter your hunger, you are forbidden to hunt and kill any human under the age of twenty.”

Some grumbles leaked from the crowd. A few feet away, a tall, thin Alpha raised his arm to object.

The tribe leader sprang forward, grabbed the arm and threw him to the ground with a hip toss. With one foot on his victim’s forehead, Wiggins wrenched the arm from the man’s shoulder socket.

The victim screamed in agony, but Wiggins did not stop. He stamped the heel of his foot at the Alpha’s shoulder, snapping the clavicle. Wiggins bent and encircled the upper arm, squeezing tight at the bicep. He continued to pull and twist as the victim’s shoulder separated wetly. Wiggins heaved. With a sickening, sucking sound, the tribe mate’s arm came away.

The fallen tribe member shuddered and went white with shock. Wiggins waited and watched until the strength of the pumping blood ebbed.

The hundreds went quiet.

He threw the severed arm to the ground in disgust and stepped over the body. “As I was saying…no Alpha will kill a human under the age of twenty and no pregnant human may be killed. From today forward, each tribe member will have a new name.

“It came to me in a dream. We are not animals. We must have names. I am Misericordia. It means ‘mercy.”

The tribe looked to their fallen tribe mate.

“Say my name!”

“Misericordia!” the tribe answered.
 

The Alpha leader nodded. “Satisfactory.”

If Misericordia proved himself worthy, he was sure he would learn more from his emancipator.
There was much more he needed to learn from the dreamer. He had to communicate with The Way of Things.

And there was the woman behind the curtain. He could barely sense her at the edges of his dreams but she was trying to reach him, trying to get in. Something in his blood called her to him. She was familiar, but the boy kept them apart.

He scanned the assembled and knew the female he sought was not among them.
 

“You were all at the Battle for the Brickyard,” Misericordia announced. “That was our common birth. I
made
you. You are all special to me. To remain special to me, I will choose who will join us.

“We are Alphas. None of you will dilute that honor by making more of us without my permission. You hunt to
kill
, not to spread our tribe thin with the unworthy.

“We are strong. We’ll stay strong by those few
I
choose to join us. Now, each of you come forward, and I will give you a name. When we all have names, we will hunt. We’re going north to chase our dreams!”

F
ORTRESS
OF
T
RUTHFUL
L
IES
AND
N
IGHTMARE
S
CREAMS

T
he driving was easier now. Ahead, fellow travellers were on the same highway arcing east. Anna followed their taillights, keeping a respectful distance.
 

It was very dark when Jack awoke. She yawned, stretched and tried to shake the stiffness out of her arms. “Where are we?”

“Not sure,” Anna said. “No signs lately.”

“Try to keep track of where we are when you do see signs,” Jack said.

“Why? So if we break down, we can tell the tow truck where to find us?”

Jack ignored her. “It’s getting late and we need to stop soon. Look for a spot, maybe a place where we can blend in with a clutch of abandoned cars. Or look for a little logging road we could pull into and we’ll get back from the road among the trees.”

“I can keep going, Mom, at least until the next bio-break.”

“I don’t like driving these roads at night. I worry about carjackers during the day but out here at night? I worry about hitting a deer or a moose.”

Anna didn’t want to stop but didn’t want to fight with her mother, either. She stalled. “I’ve been thinking about
The Walking Dead
.”

“I loved that show,” Mrs. Bendham piped up from the back, surprising them. “Never thought I’d live it, but I loved it.”

“Is everything over, like in
The Walking Dead?
Too grim and no hope, I mean?” Anna asked.

“I did always wonder what they were fighting so hard for,” Jack admitted. “It seemed like a lot of trouble to go to, fighting for a future where appendicitis could kill you.”

Jack caught herself, realizing she’d spoken too freely. “But I think everyone will reorganize eventually. Things aren’t so bad as
The
Walking Dead
!” But her mind went to the infected man from the Brickyard. The pure animal ferocity of his attack made shuffling zombies look like a good thing.

“People will rise again,” Mrs. Bendham said. “They have before. They’ll do it again.”

“I don’t know. An awful lot of people are dead. Isn’t this how the people on Easter Island died out?”

Jack shook her head. “Easter Islanders wiped out all the trees while they kept building idols for God to save them. They should have been building boats.”
Too many missiles, not enough test tubes,
Jack thought again.

“In their defense, those Easter Island statues do look pretty cool,” Anna said.

“Isn’t that just
peachy?
” Mrs. Bendham shifted the cardboard boxes and backpacks around herself, like a child building a pillow fort.

They came out of a clutch of pine forest and were driving through farmland again so Anna kept driving.

In a few minutes, cars clotted along their left and their metal jumble grew into outlined hulks in the dim light. They saw no corpses, which somehow seemed more lonely.

The only evidence of human existence was metal and stone and dark, boarded up houses, far back from the road. Those houses would once have been reassuring to travellers. Now each structure stood as a bare threat hiding scared people with guns. Or perhaps only decaying horrors seething with typhus awaited intruders there.

Jack wasn’t sure who scared her more, the living or the dead?

“Where will we sleep?” Anna asked.

“In the van again,” Jack said. “I won’t let you drive in the dark
all
night.”

“Let’s put on a few more miles,” Anna said.
 

“I don’t want to hit a deer out here, Anna. Please look for a spot where we can pull over. We’ll eat and find a bush to poop behind and then we’ll recline the seats and sleep some more. We’ll collect more gas from cars in the morning.”

“Just a few more miles, Mom,” Anna repeated. “I don’t really want to go to Papa’s farm, but if we have to go, then I want to get there and get this trip over with. Kansas City to Maine should only be a couple of days driving straight through. Without all these crazy detours and obstacles, it’s like we’re driving through a lab rat’s maze.”

They crested a rise and drove straight into headlights. Driving blind, Anna stamped on the brake pedal swearing and swerving.

The way ahead was blocked by a row of people revving their motorcycles. Beside each bike stood the outline of a man with a gun. The silhouette of a tall, thin woman strutted forward. The bright, white light behind her cast a myriad of long crossing shadows. She came up to the driver’s side and tapped lightly on the glass with long fingernails.

Her hair looked like it was cut short with a knife, but she’d taken care to dye it bright pink. The white light from the motorcycle headlights washed her skin anemic. Shadowed, hollow cheeks made her cadaverous. She grinned at the Spencers. Her teeth were small and perfect, giving the impression that she had far too many teeth for a human being. She looked like a starving clown from a nightmare.

Anna hesitated to roll the window down. “What do you want?”

The woman smiled and yelled. “Don’t be shy, pilgrims! No fear, friends! What I want? That depends! Good news is coming! I’m Dahlia and I’ll be your escort this evening! Turn left here and follow me. I’ll be on the bike ahead of you! All will be well, you’ll see!”

Without waiting for a reply, she walked back to the line of motorcycles.

“Don’t do it!” Mrs. Bendham yelled from the back.

Anna turned the wheel and followed Dahlia north. Black fields spread out on each side of the road.
 

“What are you
doing
?” Mrs. Bendham said.

“She has a handgun on her belt.” Anna said. “That’s the bad news, so now we’re going to find out what the good news is.”

“Just a few more miles, Mom,” Jack mimicked Anna and sneered. “God help us.”

A motorcycle followed them, the shine from its headlight outlining them all. Jaimie, who now sat behind his mother, sensed Theo’s watchful eyes and turned toward him.

“God may or may not be with us, but we’re together. That’s what matters,” his father said, “so everything will be okay.”

Non semper ea sunt quae videntur
, Jaimie thought. Things aren’t always as they appear.

T
O
THE
D
REAMER
,
NOTHING
IS
AS
IT
SEEMS

T
he Spencers’ escorts roared beside them.
If Anna twisted the wheel, she could run one of them off the road, but this wasn’t like the confusion at the roadblock. The bikers could pursue them easily and shoot them.

Jack looked to Jaimie. His chin on his chest, her son slept soundly. How she envied him the dimensions he so easily retreated to.

Resigned, she searched the dark for signs of life. Farmland rolled beside them. Barbed wire fences stretched out on either side, occasionally broken by wooden gates. It would have been ranch land, but she saw no farm animals.

They followed the bright red taillights for miles. The glow over the crest of a hill turned into a valley awash in light. A tent city spread out before them. A vast white and red striped circus tent stood in the middle of a field. Electric lights flashed along the guy wires and spotlights roamed the tent walls. The outside of the tent was strung with white, red, green and blue strings of Christmas lights. More strings of little colored lights spread out like a vast spider web among the tents to light the little city of cloth and canvas.

“Like landing lights for aliens,” Mrs. Bendham said.

Ahead of them, Dahlia pulled off the road at a brightly lit gate. A dirty-looking boy of no more than twelve rushed to swing the gate open. Two long-haired men, all in leather, smoked and stood guard. Both waved them in with a friendly smile. Each cradled a shotgun in the crook of his elbow and directed them where to park.

“‘Park in the field.’ Sounds like back at the roadblock, doesn’t it?” Mrs. Bendham said.

“More like
Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome
,” Anna said. “Before that, it was
Mad Max
, I think. What was the first one? It looks like Central Casting got the gang together for a reunion.”

Dahlia waited until Anna shut off the engine before she dismounted and approached them. “Hey, my sweet baboos! The big event is in the tent, starting soon! Enjoy the show and you’ll get in the know! Despair is optional…fairly marginal. If you were going to die from the awful disease, you’d already be smelling like old cheese!”