Dead Things (7 page)

She explained how astrology was once almost indistinguishable from astronomy. Astronomy, a hard science, has its roots in prediction and divination.

This did not help. The only thing the church hates more than other religions is science.

She was adjudicated a pagan. “Only God can influence life on Earth,” the synod ruled, not planets or other interstellar movements.

Even after they tied her to a stake, stoned her with rocks, and burned her arms, torso, and face, she did not recant or provide the names of her customers.

Only after the stomachs of the spectators collectively turned at the sight of this beautiful woman literally melting before them, did the synod grant a reprieve. She was spared, the first to lose her citizenship in this new church-state.

Citizenship. Obtaining that stature doesn’t necessarily convey benefits, but it does ensure one’s privileges are not limited. Non-citizens—so-called conscientious objectors (for how can someone object to the destruction of a ghoul?), draft dodgers, and others like Stella Mayberry whose citizenship was revoked by the church—are fated to a lesser life. If they are able to work, they are doomed to the worst and most dangerous of jobs, like working the coalmines or maintaining the radio and phone towers in the forbidden zone. The towers are the only link to places like Padre Island, Captiva, and the Keys. Without them, communication to the colonies would be lost.

Anne still remembers when she was returned to her mother six months later. How could she forget? Her mother was half wrapped in rags, like some creature from Egypt in a creature feature. How she cried when her mother pulled her hard against her despite the immense pain it must have caused.

So, does Anne really believe this stuff?

Anne can’t muster a reply. She starts to weep silently.

“Anne, I was just joking around,” Van says. “I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry. I can be a real idiot sometimes. Just ask Ian. He’ll tell you. But I never really mean anything by it. Honest!”

She sniffles and nods.

Van smiles and gropes clumsily for her hand.

She has to smile back, not so much as a response to Van, but in recognition of her convictions. She knows something deep in her heart that the doubt of others cannot shake: she is here, now, for some greater, yet unknown, purpose.

She knows this. She’s read it in the stars.

**

They move north along a deer path, Ian noting the sun’s passing through foliage above. A patchwork of light and dark shadows passes across his left cheek as evening approaches, mimicking camouflage.

As dusk sets in, the terrain abruptly changes. The bogs and marshes that they battled most of this day and the last give way to sturdier trees and rockier earth. It reminds Ian of parts of eastern Kentucky, places he and Josh hunted with his uncle over long weekends.

For Kari Wright, the change of scenery carries more weight. Her face remains impassive, concealing her private delight. Although the hills will provide challenges, they also provide cover. The marshes and their murky waters are better suited to hunters than their quarry. The castaways have been lucky, so far, to have not come under attack by predators, natural or otherwise.

And if Wright is correct, the deciduous forest means that the plane went down much farther north than she originally calculated. While there are likely wetlands ahead, the party is far abreast of New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Those cities are surely teeming…

They are graced with a full moon and cloudless sky. The blue glow allows them to drive several more miles into the night before setting up a camp upon a projecting crag.

Fortunate, for it puts distance between them and the shadows that doggedly stalk them.

Chapter Six: Walk Like an Egyptian

Anne rises on her toes and utters mysteries into his ear. Her balance slightly off, her chest presses against Van’s arm and stomach.

Van is a womanizer. Granted, he’s no Casanova, but he’s a “player,” as they used to say. Van’s life is measured by conquests. He counts the skirts he chases and tallies the skirts he catches.

Ian wonders if Van would be this way, so willing to break young hearts, if he hadn’t lost his mother at such a young age. He winces as he watches Van slide a hand around Anne’s waist.

Literally and figuratively, Ian is last in line.

He cannot dwell on it now, though. Wright has just signaled them to seek cover.

**

U.S. 167 bifurcates Louisiana, running north and south. Wright happens upon it much like most archaeological discoveries: accidentally. Surprisingly, its lanes remain relatively smooth and unbroken. She takes out her compass. Follow the road north, and they would likely be on their way home.

“Let’s go!” Van urges. He and Anne are next in line behind Wright. He begins to rise from his belly, but he feels a hand firm on his back, Wright pressing him to the ground.

“Stay in the reeds,” she says quietly. “We don’t know what’s out there yet.” She knows the ghouls are territorial. It is safer, here, at the edge of trees, thirty or so yards from the highway itself.

She looks up the interstate. The woods runs along the roadway, rising and falling with man-made embankments carved from the limestone decades ago. Here and there it gives way to open prairie. There, in the grassland, they will be the most vulnerable. Wright will need to steer them to the hem of the woods, avoiding whenever possible the open plain.

In the rear, Ian is becoming a master of the army crawl, clawing his way forward on elbows and knees, ass close to the ground. His reptilian crawl is accentuated by his color; he is stained green and yellow from his chin to his shins. Ian is so adept, he often threatens to overtake the pair before him.

Averaging their years, the Hestons would be considered middle-aged. Mr. Heston is the older of the two. Despite being a doctor, he carries too much mass about his mid-section. Heart attack potential, Ian thinks.

Ms. Heston is, well, a doctor’s wife. She is ten years his junior and overly tan with a practiced smile full of large, luminescent teeth. Once, she was probably striking, but repeated augmentation has left her with a constant look of surprise, a weathered version of Munch’s “the Scream.”

Worse, the Hestons are painfully slow crawlers. Ian is forced to move at a snail’s pace, sometimes stopping entirely, before budging. These lulls, alone and defenseless in the dense grass, are unnerving. Ian feels vulnerable, like a turtle forced to lie on its back in the sun. He waits anxiously for the pair to noisily progress.

Mr. Heston carries his ass too high—a beacon in the mid-day sun, a neon sign that screams, “Fresh Meat.” His body thrashes about, causing waves of grass to crash about him like ocean swells.

Ms. Heston is no better. She yelps and chirps every time a bramble catches her hair or her elbows strike a pebble.

Together they are sure to draw a horde of the dead. Never would a meal come more easily.

The Hestons halt yet again, this time near the top of a slight slope, barely concealed. The prairie grass is much thinner here than in the valleys. Ian is annoyed, but, as the minutes pass, his anger gives way to alarm. Just what is happening up there? Are we separated from the group? Panic creeps up his spine.

And then he sees movement. Just to the right of the couple and slightly farther up the hill, something is stirring, shifting through the grass, advancing on them.

The couple is oblivious of the danger along their shoulder. Ian wants to warn them, but the lump in his throat conspires with his better judgment to stay his call. Perhaps the creature will pass and leave them undetected. No, it moves forward still.

Frantically Ian searches about for something,
any
thing to use as a weapon. Dead grass. A twig. A large clod of dried dirt plowed decades ago. It will have to do. Ian grabs it, prepares to engage…or flee.

The grass before him undulates in little bursts. It creeps past the Hestons, moving with intention towards Ian. He sees something taking shape through the blades now six or so feet away.

Ian’s heart races, beating hard in his chest, drumming against his rib cage. It will surely hear him. He starts to inch forward, to take this monster on before it is upon him. Maybe the Hestons will alarm the others once he is engaged.

Wright edges forward, revealing herself in inches. She stares at him, raises a critical eyebrow. “You were going to kill me with…a dirt clod?” She can’t help but smirk.

**

Van is given the duty of point and asked to stay back while Wright and Ian crawl fifty yards farther up the road before halting in a deep patch of grass.

“Okay, here,” she says. She passes him binoculars. “Take a look. But, take care not to move about too much. Any reflection from the lenses might attract it.”

Ian shakes uncontrollably, kind of like a wet dog. He takes the binoculars in both hands in an effort to steady his hold and mask his fear.

Wright notices. “Easy, Ian. Just take a deep breath.”

He gawks at her in disbelief. Then, slowly, he rolls to his chest and scratches his way to the verge of the knoll. Rising on his elbows, Ian peeks.

Emerald and gold dance before him, a twisting kaleidoscope. He stabilizes himself and takes a deep breath. The viewfinder settles upon a swath of gray. Adjusting the focus, the asphalt of U.S. 167 crystallizes in front of him. There are two lanes in each direction, separated by a median. At the top of the frame there’s an off-ramp.

“A little more to your right,” Wright whispers.

Ian pans. The scenery blurs and bounces until he sets his eye on the red roof of a Stucky’s. He lets his focal point drop to the entrance. He sucks air in a quick burst.

Ian grew up conscious of his attempts to limit his exposure to the creatures, just books and TV, nothing direct. He once had a chance to see them up close on a field trip to the Cincinnati zoo. Rather, he opted to linger in the primate house. He was more comfortable with the monkeys—these unbeknownst ancestors—than the monsters that plagued his dreams.

Kari Wright watches Ian with interest. She notices his initial gasp, the fright taking hold. She watches for signs of nervousness, twitching around the corners of his mouth or tremors in the furrow of his brow.

But Ian seizes control. His jaw clenches and juts forward in a determined fashion. He readjusts his grip on the binoculars.

A minute passes, and Ian lowers them. Wright moves to relieve him of their weight, but before she can take them, Ian deftly adjusts the magnification. Oblivious to her, he raises them back to his eyes and leans farther into the landscape hundreds of feet before him.

It is hidden in the shadows of the overhang near the diesel pumps.

Its face is gaunt, almost skeletal, but not without features of the living. Dry, dark skin stretches taught across the creature’s cheeks and forehead, the bones underneath threatening to pierce their thin veil. Vestiges of cartilage remain, the thing’s blackened ears and nose shrunken and shriveled. Shadowed by the sharp ridge of its brow, two alert eyes survey the lot before it. Bright white with dead pupils, they dart back and forth, scanning.

Ian is struck that it remains ambulatory, despite extreme decay. “Robby,” as indicated by the name tag clinging to its shredded gas station attendant uniform, shuffles slowly in the shade between the pumps and the broken lobby entrance. It has worn a path through shattered glass that blankets the sidewalk and parking lot. Ian looks more closely. It has also worn the shoes and much of the skin from its feet. Strips of leather and tissue trail its skeletal ankles.

Ian drops his focus. “How can there be anything left of them? Shouldn’t they have decomposed by now?”

“I don’t know,” she lies. She has barely begun to gauge how much she should tell Ian, when suddenly she finds herself blurting out a word: “Mummification.” She says it like fact, not a guess.

Ian’s eyebrow arches. Wright is privy to information unavailable to him and the populace in general. His lips part—

She anticipates a question and cuts him off. “Ian, you must keep what you’ve seen to yourself, at least for a little while.” She explains that she’s only showing him this—this ghoul—because he has been manning the rear. He should be aware of the dangers surrounding them.

And
, she contemplates,
this kid may just end up leading this group should something happen to me.

Ian agrees to keep the proverbial skeleton hidden.

They drive deeper into the woods, Wright choosing to forego both the guidance, and menace, provided by the road. The trees are safer for now. She pushes them hard, forcing them to cover nearly a dozen more miles before nightfall.