Order of the Dead (50 page)

7

Senna quickly withdrew the bangle and hid it in her pocket, then sprang
backward to the spot where she’d woken. She waved the children to a corner of
the cell and slumped into position, pretending that she was still unconscious.
She made her eyes into the narrowest slits she could manage while still looking
at the bars of the cell, distorted though the view was made by her squinting.

There were dragging footsteps and
audible breathing, each of which grew heavier and more lethargic as the visitor
came closer.

Then the footsteps stopped.

Senna could see there was someone at
the door, wearing the cloak of the Order.

“Come here, child,” he said. “Come
with me and you’ll be fed and watered.”

Senna’s face flushed, growing hot with
anger, as she recognized the voice.

“
Now,
” he said, his voice changing
seamlessly to a growl. “Don’t you make me ask again.” So much for the more
flies with honey approach.

Senna pushed downward on the building
anger, concentrating it and increasing the pressure inside her.

The lock clicked, the door opened, and
the brother entered.

With each short inward breath through
her nose, she was stoking the flames in her belly, consolidating the compressed
heat and adding to it.

Now!

She sprang to her feet, the distilled venom
in her burning away all of her body’s painful cries, and in two bounds she was
on him.

Brother Acrisius’s sallow cheeks
drooped with alarm. His eyes grew wide and his mouth lolled open as he put his
arms up in front of his face to defend himself. Senna sprang on him, the undone
bangle gripped firmly in her hand, and stabbed, easily maneuvering past his
clumsy defenses and plunging the edge of the metal into his eye. There was a
faint pop, like a slight sizzle of bacon grease in a pan heard from an upstairs
bedroom behind a mostly-shut door.

Acrisius squealed and fell backward. There
was something in his eye and it was going in farther, behind the eye, like a
searing poker that yearned to fry his brain. Senna pushed him forward, pinning
his body against the bars of the cell and putting more pressure on her hand,
driving the clasp deeper.

She lost track of her surroundings
then, an uncharacteristic lapse for a spotter. All she could think of was
Brother Acrisius’s pain, and how to increase it. She wanted him to suffer for a
very long time. But there were the children to think of, priorities greater
than her own revenge.

Brother Acrisius’s hands went to his
eye, clawing at it, trying to dig the metal intrusion out as Senna pressed it
deeper into the socket and knocked his hands away with her own free hand. He
was soft and weak, a boil that had been inexpertly shaped into a form akin to
that of a man, a boil that she was now lancing with an appropriately dull
implement.

“Do you feel that,
motherfucker?
”
she hissed through clenched teeth. “How does that feel? You fucking like that?
Deeper? Did you say you wanted it deeper? Okay.”

She pressed harder and Acrisius’s
squeal became a scream so horrible she felt it in her bones.

The goop that was left of his eye was
making its way down his cheek, toward his spittle-launching mouth. Tears were
flowing generously from the remaining good eye.

He reached for something at his side
and Senna saw it and her free hand flew to his, and then they were both holding
the handle of his knife.

“No you fucking don’t,” she said.
“You’re mine now.”

She put a knee in his crotch once,
twice, three times, and his body sagged, the weight of it on the bangle
inviting the metal farther into his skull to flirt with the beginnings of his
sick grey matter.

He was growing hoarse in his
screaming, and he kept writhing feebly, trying to get at his knife.

“Still not deep enough for you?” Senna
said. “You don’t quite feel it? You’re a hard nut to crack, Brother Fuck. Let’s
see what we can do about that.”

Senna pulled Acrisius’s knife free,
swung it backward, and stabbed upward into his groin.

Agony filled Acrisius’s world and he
cried out as the blade went into the space between his penis and testicles,
finding a nice morsel for skewering between the frank and the beans. His hands darted
to his genitals, but Senna was already pulling the knife twistingly out.

Then the blade was out, and she was
backing away from him, but not too far, not just yet. For now she was moving
back just enough so he could appreciate the situation, so he could take it all
in.

He grabbed at what was left of his
manhood, his hands seeking to stem the flow of blood there. The pain was worse
than anything he could ever have imagined, and now he’d never have to try, because
he was feeling it, and it was out of this world.

Howling, he moved toward her, his
mouth biting at the air as blood flowed in small streams from his mangled
reproductive organs, through the fingers of his hands, and down his legs to the
floor. His now pierced bladder let go, and a small volume of foul-smelling
urine joined the blood and moved past it, the yellow liquid moving with greater
speed from his body like a liquid projectile.

He crumpled and fell into the puddle,
one hand moving to cover his eye socket, and the other remaining in place at
his crotch. The howls became whimpers, but to Senna they were pitiless
emissions, just like the piss. The ooze that had been his eye was now running
over his upper lip and into his mouth. His Order’s cloak was growing heavy with
blood.

Senna leaned over his writhing body,
which was struggling to get away from her but making no progress, like a bug on
its back that couldn’t figure out how to flip over.

“Look at me,” she said, and then
louder, “
look at me.
Use your good eye.”

He obeyed.

She kicked once, planting the blow
squarely between his legs. He screamed, and his remaining eye rolled upward,
leaving behind a bloodshot white that was an unhealthy yellow, more the color
of a scrambled egg than the white of a human eye.

“No,” Senna said, and kicked him
again.

He began to sob now, and his eye
closed tightly.

“No,” Senna repeated. “I told you to
look at me.
So do it.
”

He did, forcing his eyelids open.

“Good,” Senna said. “This is for what
you did to my people, to the children, and to me.”

She took the exposed end of the bangle
in her fingers, and, just as he reached to stop her, she put the blade of the
knife against his nose, and positioned its point above his still-working eye.

“If you move, and if you roll your eye
at me again, this knife is going back where it belongs. Understand?”

He nodded, barely. “Please,” he began,
and he would’ve tried pleading with her and begging for his life, but as soon
as she heard the word leave his mouth she turned the knife in her hand and
carved a small section from his nose. As if motivated by his new screams, blood
from the wound began to run down his lips and chin.

Apparently, this wasn’t enough for
Senna, because in her spiraling rage she pushed the bangle deeper, and deeper,
until the blood that was obscuring the mangled eye was bubbling up around the
metal of the clasp. He was squealing like a stuck hog now, his paralyzed side
moving involuntarily as the rest of his body twitched. She twisted the metal,
like she was trying to work the blood up into a paste to butter on some toast.
His bowels let go, and he would’ve pissed himself had Senna not already
punctured his bladder.

“You disgusting child-killer. You
cannibal. You foul piece of shit.” And she added, stammering, “Child-murderer.”

And that reminded her—the children.
They were here with her, they were behind her, and she had to get them out of the
camp,
now.

She raised her hand over the
whimpering semi-paralytic’s head and opened her palm, splaying her fingers. He
only just had time to realize what she was about to do.

“Die a thousand deaths in hell,” she said,
and clapped her hand on top of his eye, pounding the metal all the way through
the gelatinous soup bubbling bloodily in his eye socket, and into his brain,
skull-fucking him to death with the band.

Brother Acrisius’s body heaved, and,
for a moment, he seemed like he was trying to reach up and touch the ceiling.
Then his fleshy mass settled back down to the floor and what little had been
left clenched in his bowels, now completely freed, began the oozing journey
from his body. He died, and even though he was still warm, he looked like he’d
gotten a head start on the whole rotting away thing.

Good for you, Senna thought. Being
early to the party was a good character trait. Latecomers were rude and
pretentious.

She wondered for a moment about trying
to pull the bangle out to see the brain matter clinging to it, the grey bits
that would look like overwatered oatmeal—the mind of a very sick and sadistic
man.

Then she felt eyes on her, turned
around, and realized that the children had been watching her. But for how long?
It didn’t matter, not right now. She went to them, tucking the knife into the
top of her beltless pants.

She knelt and spoke to Jenny and
Sasha, whose faces were pale with terror and splotched red from crying.

“We’re going to run away now. We’ll
see who else we can save and then we’re going to get away from this place and
never come back.”

As she spoke, she looked from the eyes
of one girl to the other, so that they knew she meant it.

“We’re going to get away. We will
survive.” The children looked at her and at the still cooling body behind her,
and she couldn’t read their faces. They appeared shell-shocked, and Jenny had
flinched away from her words. Sasha’s face was streaked with tear runnels that
marked curved paths through the dirt on her face, but she wasn’t crying now,
just staring, wide-eyed and...afraid of…her?

Didn’t they believe her—maybe they
didn’t really have a reason to think they could still get away—or was it
something else? Were they angry with her? Were they scared of her now? A child
should never have to see something like what Senna had just done and she knew
that, but it was done, and Jenny and Sasha would have to suck it up and get
over it. Yes, they’re kids, but it’s the fucking apocalypse.

I’ve got a bad side too, Senna
thought, maybe even an evil one. And right now that dark part of me is going to
get you kids home if I have to dismember every single fucking one of these
brothers and sisters with my teeth, because I’m going to make sure you have a
chance to get over this. I’m going to make sure you live long enough to have
the fucking privilege of coping with what you just saw me do. Right now,
anything goes, and only survival matters.

Hardened as she was, she prayed that this
would be the worst they ever saw her do. In only a few minutes, she would see
her wish, at least arguably, rejected. And it wouldn’t be much of a surprise,
because wish processing had become a real cluster-F after the outbreak.

8

They left the truck that had been their prison for less than a day, though it
felt like ages, and stole into the open campground, Senna clutching Jenny and
Sasha’s hands in her own. The feel of their hands was good, reassuring, as was
the weight of Brother Acrisius’s knife that was tucked into her waistband.

Three friends and that was all: Jenny,
Sasha, and the knife, and they would all have to work together to have a shot
at escape. Senna looked at the circle of trucks and moved away from the light
filtering out from one of them.

She took in the greater layout of the
campsite for the first time, now that she didn’t have a fucking escort holding
a bag over her head. She used the Blue Ridge Mountains as a reference point
with which to orient herself, and then she was moving away from the center of
the encampment, planning to find a spot where the children could wait for her
while she went to find Rosemary, and perhaps Rad and Molly, although she didn’t
have high hopes for the latter two right now. The Order was hungry, and she had
a feeling New Crozet’s captured adults were gone.

The rain was cold, soaking her and the
children in moments, but it was refreshing, too, after being locked up in the
holding cell and breathing that dank air, and after the encounter with
Acrisius.

Senna heard someone coming, and guided
the children into the shadows. Pulling them after her, she darted up into a
nearby truck, then, quietly, crept deeper into the cab and entered the truck’s
one and only room.

It was cool inside, but not cool enough
to keep down the stench, which seemed to jam itself up Senna’s nose and press
into her brain, wanting to go deeper and scramble everything in there and make
a fine mummy out of her. What she’d stepped into was a butcher shop that
specialized in all manner of human flesh, and a filthy one at that. Jenny and
Sasha began to cry.

Senna saw Molly first, having almost
tripped over the leg of the folding table she was on. It was the kind of table
a masseuse might bring with him for a house call, except this masseuse would’ve
been in the business of too-deep tissue massage.

The table was stained a maroon, and so
were its legs. Molly wasn’t breathing. Her body was naked and...not all there.
A leg was gone all the way up to the hip. The bones of one arm had been picked
clean. Strips of flesh had been peeled from her side, showing her ribs. Her
lips were gone, fixing a permanent and bloody grin on her face. From the looks
of it, she’d died of blood loss, but not before a good deal of suffering.

And then she saw Rad. He too was lying
on a folding table, naked, and strapped to it face down.

She went to him.

He was still moving—the parts that
were left of him that is. What was tied down to the table was not a man in his
prime, as Rad had been hours earlier, but a collection of meat and bone and
blood-soaked tourniquets. A plastic shopping bag was tied sloppily around the
stump of one leg. He looked more like a machine with parts missing than a man,
the contraption chugging along fitfully, in a struggle that needed an end.

Why would they keep him alive like
this? But of course she knew the answer to that: to keep the meat fresh. Rad
was the main course, and for a chaser, perhaps the liver of a little girl,
seared to perfection by Brother Mardu himself, the holiest of holies? But no,
the virus wouldn’t allow that. The little ones were sacred, and not to be
eaten. They were for the virus alone.

She ground her teeth into the rage
that was thick in her mouth, like a mass of mealworms squirming to get out. Biting
down hard, she swallowed their vile insides.

She was the shark now, and the air was
swimming with blood. Brother Acrisius was already dead, but she hadn’t hurt him
enough. They all needed to be hurt more, to be made to suffer, they needed to
feel all that they’d made Rad feel, and worse, because they’d done it.

They were the ones whose limbs should
be amputated inch by inch, who should be kept alive by a creeping team of
tourniquets that gathered closer and closer around their diminishing stumps.
And when they lost consciousness from the pain, they should be revived, and
made to feel all of it, made to live as balls of agony, their bodies peeled
away in strips.