Order of the Dead (7 page)

16

Alan and Senna were lying on the bug bite couch. The couch was draped in brown,
unfinished leather, like a relic from another time, which it was. It creaked
beneath them, showing its age and entirely unashamed of doing so.

There were several scatters of bug
bites in the leather—on one of the side cushions and the arm opposite it and
the back—that gave it a noble authenticity Alan loved. It still smelled faintly
of leather, especially in the places where it was stretched and cracked, and
there were many such places.

Uninfected leather, Alan thought,
beautiful, natural, clean leather. Then he thought of what animals were left
that could be used to make leather, only one obvious one really, and his
expression soured. You could always hope that the stories of wildlife refuges
untouched by the virus were true, but then you wouldn’t be in your right mind,
but then again, if you were thinking that, you’d be living after the outbreak,
and being of sound mind wasn’t exactly high on the priorities list any longer.

Some people had left in search of those
refuges. Six since Alan and Senna had moved into New Crozet. They’d never
returned, and probably hadn’t gotten very far, either.

It’d be crazy to leave here, Alan
thought, to go back out there, in search of clean animals, or to see what was
wrong if something was—thinking of the oddity they’d noticed at the fence
tonight—or to search for the answers that had eluded everyone when they were
still trying to win the world back.

And though neither of them knew it,
Senna echoed the same thought in her mind some moments later. That was how
attuned they were to each other.

Unbeknownst to either of them, they’d
have to do just that: leave the perimeter very soon, and for the worst reasons imaginable,
but, thankfully, that was a thing outside their realities at the moment.

For now they were lovers, elegant in
the simplicity of their happiness, and shouldn’t they be allowed that? Hadn’t
they earned at least that much?

Their breathing had settled some since
their last bout, but not completely. Alan was spooning Senna, and the couch was
just deep enough so that he had to hug her tightly to keep her from rolling off.
His face was resting against the nape of her neck, and he was breathing in her
wildly delicious scent.

“I want you to hold me like this
forever,” she said.

He smiled and gently bit the back of her
neck.

“I will,” he said, meaning it.

He watched her, lying there in his
arms, feeling her warmth and her resilient heartbeat, fully aware that he wasn’t
sure what she looked like anymore. What he did know was that she was perfect in
every way, made so by the interplay of her beauty and her even more beautiful
imperfections.

She drew closer to him, adjusting her
hair too keep it out of his face, and sighing contentedly.

In the fireplace, the frantic leaps of
the flames had died down to steady hops and caresses. Embers were lighting up
in places and glowing like tiny furnaces, smoldering defiantly in the places
from which the fire had retreated, saying they were now the lords of their
domains.

Alan watched the flames, trying to
reinvigorate them with his will, to push them back into the places where they’d
feasted hungrily moments earlier, and, apparently, grown sated. There was so
much nuance in fire, in its movements and chatter, that he’d become
increasingly fascinated with it over the years. It was the only tool they had
with which to force the virus from the world, and for that he sometimes thought
it was mankind’s only remaining ally in nature.

Cold had begun to enter the room,
displacing the fire’s fading heat, and Alan squeezed Senna’s body even more
tightly, wanting to keep her warm. In this moment, he knew she was his, and he
was hers, and that was all that mattered.

When they were together like this, the
reality of the world and the horrors that went on unchecked outside the fence shrank
away almost to nothing until it was just the two of them, living out an
effortless joy.

“You’re friskier than usual,” Alan
said, thinking of her spirited mood of late.

She turned to look at him and gave him
a challenging stare.

He grinned. “I’m not complaining. Not
at all.”

“That’s right,” she said.

He laughed. “Were you always this
feisty?”

“Ha, I go easy on you. Way easy.
You’re an old man, after all.”

He laughed again. There was an age gap
between them, it was true: he was forty-one and Senna was thirty-three, but you
could hardly tell by looking at them. Even with the wear of the extreme stress
of outlasting the outbreak, and their sun-cured skin, they each looked the
better part of a decade younger than they were, and they were in the best shape
of their lives.

What the outbreak had done was give each
of them a choice between achieving the limits of their physical capabilities,
and death. Alan and Senna’s strength and stamina had grown by leaps and bounds
after the virus ran loose, out of necessity.

It had been the ultimate adapt or die
scenario, and on top of that, one had to have been lucky to have even had the
chance to adapt. They’d been among the fortunate few who got the chance to
survive, and they’d taken advantage of it.

Now, there was more than enough
physical work to be done within the perimeter, farming and maintaining the
town, and with less stress than they’d had on the rec-crews to beat them up. It
was as quiet and healthy a life as you could get after the outbreak.

Alan considered this for a moment. Was
that why sex with Senna was the best he’d had in his life, because they were so
fit? Or was it because their fates had let them give in to each other with the
reckless abandon of prisoners condemned to death?

It was probably a combination of the
two, he decided, and something else, as well, something that was just beyond
their understanding, and outside of what language could describe. They both
felt it on occasion, and Alan was feeling it now. It was a higher…something.

He looked with longing at Senna’s
naked belly, taking in its subtle curves, and was reminded of how he very badly
wanted to have a child with her, and how imagining the way she would look
pregnant sometimes drove him near madness with desire.

They’d tried for a while without
success, and had given up two years earlier, and that was probably for the
best, anyway, given the life the child would have in this world, a life in the
shadow of the virus. They didn’t speak of it anymore.

He tensed, remembering what had
worried him earlier that night.

“At the fence tonight,” he said, “why
do you think more didn’t come? We had to wait a long time for the one that did,
and then there were no others. What do you think it was?”

She turned to him, and he saw that all
the relaxed contentedness that had been on her face a moment earlier was gone,
and at once he regretted disturbing her mood.

“I was wondering when you’d bring that
up again,” she said.

She sat up on the couch and looked at him
as he propped himself up on an elbow, then she reached over the couch’s side
and pulled a down comforter from the floor, drew it around her shoulders and
covered Alan with the rest of it. The comforter was mostly patchwork now, and
the patched parts didn’t match and had different textures, each more rough than
the comforter’s native fabric. Its inside was still soft, however, though more
than half the feathers were gone.

“Could it be the market?” she asked.

Alan shrugged. “I would’ve thought
it’s too early for that, and it doesn’t explain why there weren’t at least some
more animals besides the deer. Even if the market is close already, I don’t
think it could be attracting all the animals in the forest. The traders don’t
usually travel together, and they move quietly and use noisemakers to divert
the zombies.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Looking troubled, Senna pulled the comforter
around her and lay down, then closed her eyes and pressed her forehead into
Alan’s shoulder.

They remained silent like that for a
few minutes, then he said, “Do you think it’s worth bringing up tomorrow, in
the town hall?”

She lifted her head. “I’m not sure
what it’ll accomplish. It might just upset people.”

“It could be a good sign.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the zombies are
getting weaker. Maybe they’re dying.”

“I don’t think anyone will share your
optimism,” she said. “It will probably just scare them, and only that. Another
mutation, they’ll say. You know how they’ve been lately.”

“I know,” he muttered. “I know. I’m
sure there’ll be more talk of it tomorrow, as always.”

He frowned.

“What?” she said.

“Corks was up in the watchtower and he’s
sure to have noticed it too. He could say something.”

“I’ll talk to him before the meeting.
If he thinks it’s important, we can bring it up with Tom in private.”

“We should talk to Tom about it either
way,” he said.

“Right. Not sure what it’ll do, but
yeah, we should.”

They were silent for another while,
then Senna said, “What do you think about how Rosemary did tonight?”

“She did alright,” Alan said. “It’s
always hard, the first time.”

Senna nodded. “That’s true. You know,
she talks about traveling with the traders and seeing other settlements,
especially the underground ones.”

“She’s a long way off from that,” he said,
wondering what there would be left to see when she was old enough, and if New
Crozet would still be around.

“I know, and I wonder if after
tonight, she’ll still want to.”

“She did fine, and we’ll take her
again, and she’ll get better. She’ll get used to those things. She’s a
resilient girl, firing that second shot the way she did, on her own without you
prompting her.”

Senna nodded. A few minutes later, she
said, “Do you miss…the outside?”

“What?” Alan said incredulously. “Do I
miss it? I don’t want to see the other side of the fence again for as long as I
live. If we never have to go back out there, it’ll be too soon.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Just
wondering.”

“I don’t think we’re in too tight a
cage,” he said. “If that’s what you mean. And being stuck here with you isn’t
exactly a punishment. More like I won the post-apocalyptic lottery, and big
time.”

Senna’s face brightened. “Do you want
something to eat? You’re all skin and bones, as usual.”

“If it’s as usual,” he said, “why do
you think some food will help?”

“I’m persistent, you know this.”

“That you are,” he said, smiling.
“I’ll have some of whatever you’re having, within reason.”

“Strict vegan for you, then?” She
grinned.

“Please,” he said, suppressing a
shudder.

17

Senna opened her eyes and saw Alan sleeping quietly beside her. They were in
semi-darkness, the room lit partially by moon rays stealing their way in
through cracks in the blinds.

The night sky had become mostly clear
as the dopey puffs of cloud finished their exit stage left. Senna’s gaze
caressed the lines on Alan’s face, finding familiar, masculine reassurance in
each one, but even the comfort of his presence wasn’t enough to quell the anxiety
she was feeling.

They’d made love again after eating,
and then they’d drifted off to sleep. And then the nightmares had come, again.

She thanked God that she didn’t scream
when she had them. She would feel even worse if she cost Alan his sleep too.
That, and she didn’t want him to know she was still haunted by her past.

There were things she wanted very
badly to undo and un-see, and remove from her memory. During her waking life,
blocking the images was more or less achievable. When she was unconscious,
however, it was a different matter.

Dreams made her defenseless,
subverting her will, and she hated that. If she could find a way to stop
dreaming altogether, to stop the nightmares, she would do just that. Then she’d
only have to repress during the day, and that was manageable.

There were sometimes days at a time
when she didn’t think about what had happened, and what she’d done, but it always
returned sooner or later. She wished it could have been confined to nightmares,
but it had been real, it had all been real, and it had happened in front of
her, to her, and had affected the course of her life.

I’m one of the lucky ones, she
reminded herself, lucky to be alive, lucky to have any nightmares at all.

She looked at Alan and took some
comfort in the regular rise and fall of his chest, and the slight noise of his
breathing.

You still won’t tell me everything
about how you survived, she thought, so you must’ve been through worse.

The thought brought tears to her eyes.
A feeling of hopeless dread seized her, bringing with it an inexplicable
certainty that something horrible was about to happen, something far worse than
she could imagine. The conviction that propped up the feeling made it
unbearable. She felt the anxiety on top of her again, crushing, and the more
she tried to make herself relax, the worse it got.

After some moments and when she’d
gotten close to panic, the feeling lifted on its own, as if drifting off in
search of a new victim. Variety is the spice of the anxiety demon, perhaps. She
stifled a gasp as it left her.

As her breathing began to settle, she
got up and quickly went on tiptoe to the kitchen, not wanting to disturb Alan—she
was glad she hadn’t already. She put the kettle on and boiled water, turning it
off just when she could hear the water beginning to boil but before the steam
became excited enough to blow the whistle, then made herself a cup of chicory
coffee and sat down at the table.

Steam from the cup began to rise in
front of her face. Her eyes flitted about the room, looking for something out
of order, something out of place or dirty that she could set right or clean.
There was nothing.

She turned her attention to the
surface of the ersatz coffee and her eyes found a silvery sheen on top of it,
as if she were looking at a cup containing a black cloud, behind which was a
sun of silver whose rays were traveling up the unknowable space between the dark
liquid’s edge and the glass’s sides, and then assembling on the cloud’s face.

The thought made her remember something
that had been at the tip of her mind’s tongue for some weeks. She thought of
Alan, slumbering peacefully in the next room, and she knew that she couldn’t
bring herself to wake him.

Then she remembered the dishtowels
were fraying, and she got up, took a pair of scissors from a drawer, and began
to trim the towels’ loose ends. When she was satisfied that the tattered parts
were short enough not to catch on anything, she put the towels and scissors
back in their places and returned to the table. She drank the cup of chicory
coffee, washed the cup, dried it with one of the towels she’d just trimmed, and
went back to the bedroom.

Alan had rolled over onto his side. He
was facing the door, where Senna was now framed, and beside him in bed was an
empty spot. It looked like he was waiting for her to come back, even though he
was asleep.

She got in bed next to him, inserting
her body under the covers with practiced stealth, then she turned toward the
door, her back to Alan, and pressed her body against his. He stirred, and
sleepily put his arm around her. She smiled, brought his arm to her lips, and
kissed it.

The reassurance of his embrace was
real, the comfort of his touch unassailable, and she hadn’t known that it could
be like that until she met him and got to know him. He made her feel like she
was the most important thing in his life, just how she felt about him, like
they would do anything for each other. To her, he was the perfect man, and she
sometimes felt as if he’d actually been made for her, like a custom job, and
she for him, as if such things were possible, and, silly or not, she was feeling
that way now.

“I love you, Alan,” she whispered, her
voice trembling.

He mumbled something that she couldn’t
understand.

“I love you so much,” she murmured.
“Please never leave me. Never leave me here alone.”

Without waking, he pulled her toward
him.

She closed her eyes and breathed in
his familiar smell. At once she wanted to do more than just spoon with him, but
she didn’t want to wake him. She would have on a different night, she wasn’t
shy about such things, but Alan hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and she
wanted him to get some rest. She kissed the line of his jaw and snuggled closer
to him.

After a time, she fell asleep again,
and, shortly thereafter, was back in a dreamland that was ruled by monsters wrought
from guilt. Their power in the night was as great as that of the virus’s legions
that controlled the world outside New Crozet. From some torments, those of the
soul, the perimeter fence offered no protection.