Book of the Dead (39 page)

No T-shirt. Kimono, parted to expose one breast. Doesn’t say a thing. Germ circle of light slides up to dead eyes, drilled forehead, red hair.

Bonnie.

[18]

Leonard walks the forest of the dead. He is one of them and they leave him alone. He is tainted. He is taboo. He is
bad meat
.

Leonard laughs.

In the distance, gunfire.

Sweating he wanders smiling through lush tropics. He’ll make it. They’ll leave him alone. Leonard alone may run the gauntlet of the dead. The rejected cull triumphant. Darwin in reverse: Those who have not survived will allow the genetic undesirable to continue.

Another shot.

Leonard pauses. There is more to fear from the living, he realizes.

Then I shall climb a tree. I will sit in a branch and await the dawn. And then? I will be free. To do whatever I want. For as long as… as I have left.

He finds a tree and hoists himself up from the leaf-carpeted ground.

Marly thinks it’s about time to abandon ship. At the first sound of gunfire she was acting out of concern for the Ecosphere and the safety of the others, but now she realizes that the Ecosphere has been a ghost ship for quite some time, Flying Dutchman in the Arizona desert, and the truth about her crew is that it’s
always
been every man for himself. The current situation merely brings the point home.

Nope: too late to repair the leaks, to Band Together As A Unit; no returning to Those Golden Days of Yesteryear. Time to jump in a lifeboat and row for shore.

Marly exits the access corridor and crouches low near the glass. In her pocket is the key to the armory, taken from Deke’s body on the beach. In the armory are the keys to the Land Rover, along with more guns and ammunition.

She runs forward, bent low, carbine ready. She nearly trips over the body of a pig. Half its head has been blown away.

Billtheasshole.

She hurries on toward the habitat. In the darkness every shape is a threat. Why didn’t she think to grab a flashlight? Well, this wasn’t exactly the sort of emergency they’d planned on.

But wasn’t it exactly the sort of emergency they should have considered? Didn’t crop blights sort of pale in comparison?

She heads toward the three tall rows of corn; from there she can survey her surroundings before proceeding.

Body among the stalks. Face up, face gone.
SAVE THE WHALES
beneath. She steps around it and puts some distance between it and herself, then kneels in the rich soil. Tang of nitrogenated fertilizers.

She looks toward the staff quarters. The door is partway open, propped by a body. She can see it only from the waist down; from the waist up it is inside the building. Too dark to tell who it is.

Cornstalks rustle.

Marly grows still. She strains to hear, but it is difficult because of the sound of her breathing, of her heartbeat in her ears. She turns her head slowly. The sound is approaching from her right.

She turns that way and steadies in a marksman’s stance, right leg back and weight over the knee, left leg forward, left elbow on left knee, rifle steady.

There
.

It lurches toward her almost drunkenly. It’s moving pretty slowly; she has plenty of time. She steadies, sights, and fires. The rifle bucks slightly. The drunken figure staggers back, trips over the body behind it, and lands on its butt. It gets to its feet again.

Go for the head
, Marly remembers.
The chest is the easier target, but the head is the only thing that powers it. Medulla oblongata
.

She slaps the bolt of the carbine with the heel of her hand and pulls it back. The cartridge spits out. She pushes the bolt forward, and it sticks. She pulls back, pushes again. No good. She glances again. Scarecrow approaching through the corn.
If I only had a brain
. She stands and turns—

—into the arms of another. It hugs her. Stink of rotten meat. Opens its mouth. Gold filling glints. Half-moon crescent in one earlobe where an earring has been ripped away. Its head bends toward her.

Marly gets an arm up and grabs it by the throat, forcing its head back. The flesh against her palm is loose and leathery cool, like touching the neck of a turtle. She bats her rifle against its side, but can get no room for a powerful swing. The creature bleats softly. Smell of stale air from dead lungs. Quiet, so quiet; absurdly, she thinks there ought to be more noise.

Her hair is tugged from behind.

She turns and the hungry thing turns with her, wedged now between her and the first one. She pushes against the unbreathing throat while the other tries to reach around the one holding her. She can’t get loose.

Pop!
like a champagne cork. The carnitrope not holding her cants to one side, balances on one leg like a street mime doing an obscure impression, and falls. The one holding her works its head from side to side and snaps its teeth to bite the hand it wants to feed it.
Clack-clack! Clack!

“Turn it!” someone yells. “Turn it toward me! Goddammit—”

Marly strains. For a panicked moment she feels overbalanced, about to fall over with the creature on top of her, but she jerks a leg back, brings it up into the creature’s groin, and pivots.

A loud riveting sound from her right. The creature’s head peels away like a rotten plum. It holds her a moment longer, and she feels its dead fingers spasming against her. Then it drops, and she pushes it away and jumps back, turning toward the sound of the gunfire.

A flashlight, but who’s behind it? Bill? Dieter? Leonard?

He walks closer. The light shines beneath the squarish barrel of his submachine gun.

“You…?”

He nods. The light does not waver. He cups it with his left hand. “Get out of here,” he says.

“But—I don’t—”

“Go on. Party’s winding down.”

Marly considers him for a moment, then nods. “I was just leaving,” she says.

“Good idea.”

She starts to thank him, but stops. Thanks are not called for here. He hadn’t thanked her for the basket, had he? She nods again. “I have to get ammunition and supplies.”

“You have about ten minutes.”

“The others,” she begins. “I have to—”

“Fuck the others. Get your shit and get out of here.”

Still she hesitates. “I—I’m a botanist. I can keep this place going. I know how. It can keep you and your wife— and your baby—”

“Wasn’t a real baby.” The light dips, then raises again. “Deadhead.”

“Dead…? Ohmigod.”

“There’s a lot of ’em out there, deadheads. But you wouldn’t know. You’ve been in here.”

She feels a clammy turning inside. World of dead babies, relentless crawling, toothless chewing. “You want the station,” she says. “I understand that. But look, I know how to maintain it. It won’t last without—”

“I don’t want it to last. I want to bring it down.”

“To…” She searches out his face above the light. Again she nods. “Yes,” she says. “Yes, I guess so.”

“Eight minutes.” The light clicks off, and he’s gone.

[19]

Bill with his Tekna light in the apple orchard. Gun in hand, swollen wrist. Incursion. Evasion. Stealth. Sentry removal.

There’s one up ahead. HE’S DEAD, JIM. No shit, Sherlock.

*  *  *

     things on trees food once but no more smell i remember made water in my mouth but nothing now is light toward light for food with light she with light her hands would hold the treefood would feed would let into my mouth and i would eat the food of the tree but not the food that is her hand that holds the light and behind the light is food and if i reach the light i will eat and i will be and i will know

Bill holds the flashlight in sprained right wrist and raises the gun in his left hand. Marly unlocks the dark storage closet-become-armory, takes a flashlight from a shelf, plays it around the room, and begins cramming boxes of ammunition into an orange crate. Dieter pushes his bullet-riddled body from the floor and staggers down the dark hall; behind him the power-room door thuds shut. Bonnie grows cold half-in, half-out the front door of the habitat. Leonard awaits the dawn on the limb of a South American tree. Haiffa bobs gently on the ocean, nuzzling the little sandbar. Sailor sets a final charge. Pigs run blindly through dark geometry of cropland. Bill aims and fires at the thing that gropes toward his light, bracing for the recoil. Marly shoves packets of dried food into a plastic garbage bag.
Click
: Bill stares in wonder at the gun.

the light i reach for behind the light is always food

Heading for the front door with supplies and a slung carbine, Marly sees Dieter shambling away from her down the dark corridor. Sailor pauses at the air-lock door when he hears Bill’s scream. He smiles, he claps softly, he bows. He leaves; wait for the encore, folks. “Dieter?” Marly ventures. Leonard stands in the tree and peers into the lightening east. Dieter turns toward Marly. Sailor trots down the hill and opens the driver’s door of the Ryder truck. Marly drops orange crate and garbage bag, saying, “Shit.” Dieter’s eyes fill with something not recognition. Leonard drinks in the faint coral tinge bleeding into the horizon. Jo-Jo drinks in tincture of Bill beneath apple blossoms. Marly raises the carbine. Dieter’s face is a rictus she remembers from orgasm. Sailor turns the key, depresses the clutch, puts the truck in gear, and eases onto the road. Bill stares unblinking at the infinity of departing night above the glass roof of his little pocket of civilization. Marly lowers the rifle. Dieter reaches for her needfully. Leonard sits again on his leafy throne, feet dangling, to watch the sunrise. Marly picks up garbage bag and orange crate, turns, and steps over Bonnie holding the front door for her.

light then food i move from sound not from the box but sounds i hear anyway and she holds out her hand

Sailor drives a mile away and pulls off the road beside a low hill, turning the truck to face the Ecosphere. Sparkle of glass and aluminum by dawn’s early light. Marly runs from the air lock, throws bag and crate into the back of the Land-Rover, sets carbine on passenger seat, slides key into ignition. Sailor glances into the long side-view mirror. He will wait until the sun clears the horizon. Faint buzz from under the hood: battery dead.
Shit
.

and the sound louder and others move with and she looks at me with her hand out to me and her mouth opens and sound from it

Leonard on high looks down on Marly opening the hood of the Land-Rover outside. Let her go; let them all go. Leonard knows who he is now; the death inside him has found the pure unfilterable fundament of death without. Sailor opens the door and gets out. The sun is a dome on the horizon, a frozen nuclear explosion, the Eye of God. Marly removes the battery and tosses it onto the asphalt. Spare in the back of the Rover; Bill is—was?—nothing if not redundant. Motion turns her head: A figure inside the Ecosphere presses against the glass, flattened dead features of its face above a T-shirt that reads
RUGBY PLAYERS EAT THEIR DEAD
. Sailor breathes in the cool morning air that blows across the desert floor. He pulls the elastic band from his hair for the breeze to have its way. He feels very alive. In the distance the Ecosphere gleams like a discarded toy. Marly slams down the hood, gets in the Land-Rover, and turns the key. Once, twice, and it starts. She squeals out of the lot, and Leonard waves good-bye.

[20]

The sun clears the crooked line of mountain-limned horizon. Sailor goes to the back of the truck and raises the door. He removes a box from the wood-slatted bed, and from it removes another box. He raises the telescoping antenna in back of this, and presses a button. A red light glows:
CHARGE OKAY
. He carries the box to the front of the truck and sets it on the high hood. He hoists himself up beside it, then sets it in his lap and throws another switch. Another red light winks on above the white-painted word
ARMED
. Sailor cracks his knuckles and looks to the framework of aluminum struts supporting triangular glass panels in the distance.

“It is a far, far better thing I do,” he says, and flourishes a finger.

“Oh, no, you don’t.”

The finger pauses. He glances right. The wind blows his hair over his eyes. He shakes his head to move it out of the way. The Chinese woman stands on top of the hill, carbine trained on him. They stare at each other across the orange-lit slope. The rifle barrel traces a curt line to the right; Sailor sets the transmitter aside. She juts her jaw; Sailor eases down from the warm hood of the truck. She heads down the hill toward him; Sailor spreads his fingers and holds his hands away from his body.

“Have a seat,” she says.

Sailor sits.

“Hands on top of your head.”

Sailor puts his hands on top of his head. “You never let me have any fun,” he says.

“What were you going to do,” she asks. “After this?”

Sailor shrugs. “Don’t know. Got a bunch of shit in back of the truck. Oregon, maybe. Find some asshole survivalist’s nuclear bomb shelter, set up camp. I try not to think that far ahead anymore. How ’bout you?”

Her turn to shrug. “Yosemite, maybe.”

He grins. “Bears and ’possums. Raccoon stew.”

“This what I think it is?” She nods toward the transmitter on the hood.

“Ain’t about to play no rock and roll, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean.” She keeps the carbine aimed toward him and grabs the transmitter. The two red lights shine steadily:
CHARGE OKAY. ARMED
. And a button with no light:
DETONATE
.

She looks back to see him wincing under the vacant, one-eyed stare of the rifle. “Nervous?”

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

“I can’t let you do it,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

“Why not?” Sailor lowers his hands. “You like the rest of those assholes? Are you
endeavoring to persevere
?”