Empire (17 page)

    They didn't. Four of them left, they stood together and stared at him but did not attack. They were wary of this new threat.

    Why did these empty things seek to protect themselves? What purpose, what order was there in their existence? He knew now that the undead had existed as long as there had been life on Earth, but he'd not sensed them, not felt their cold blue flames until the plague began. Man had made the plague. Perhaps that was why he had finally been allowed to see them, and why he felt a responsibility to deal with them.

    It was his responsibility, that was all. He wasn't angry at them. He wasn't vengeful.

    It wasn't possible. Death felt nothing.

    But, watching the rotters as they stood their ground and stared that same blank stare, all four of them - impatience stirred within him. He wanted to feel his blade pierce their flesh, resistance yielding as their insides were split, then entire bodies torn asunder; he wanted to destroy them with his bare hands, but his hands couldn't extinguish their candles. No, he could only reap the miserable things using their own bones. He who marked the passing of each and every life found his sole purpose defied and defiled by them, found himself forced to adapt to THEIR laws, to meet them on THEIR turf.

    Walking corpses.

    An absurdity.

    He stepped forward and swung the scythe with the intent of cleaving each and every single one of them in two.

    The first caught the blade in its side and stopped its progress with both hands.

    The handle was yanked from Death's grip. He lunged at it, and one of the females raked her thin gray fingers across his face. His eyes rolled back and his flesh opened beneath every fingertip as if fleeing from the zombie's touch. He spun away, blind, clutching at his face; an arm snaked around his waist and hands began ripping at his cloak.

    He tried to summon the horse, but its wounds mirrored his own and it was folding over on the asphalt. He thought of a stillborn child he'd seen the morning before, ferried to the landfill by its haggard mother, another caught helpless and unaware in a world that shouldn't be.

    In Mike's apartment, Cheryl was squatted on the toilet seat, clutching her abdomen. The dull ache was growing into something worse and there wasn't any sort of medication in the place. Maybe there was a little something stashed away back at Lee's...? No, she shouldn't venture out alone, even with a gun. She could barely get around the apartment. Bunching herself up on the toilet seat, squeezing tears of pain from her eyes, Cheryl rocked back and forth and tried to think of something else.

    No, not the baby. Think of...of what. Kittens? She'd once seen a litter in a cardboard box devouring their mother, long dead from the strain of labor. The kittens had been born infected, yes, but weren't nearly dead yet. Maybe it was just in their nature.

    To give birth to an infected baby, the dying child of a dying mother, there could be no greater heartbreak in the world. Yet Cheryl had known women who'd insisted on carrying their pregnancies to term after being bitten. That wasn't human nature though, was it? Weren't people supposed to be more rational than that?

    Maybe not. Maybe the plague had forced Man to acknowledge what was true all along, she thought. What was rationality, but people turning their back on instinct?

    Perhaps the spread of the plague and the decline of rationality had been the reason why undead sideshows enjoyed brief popularity. Her brother had taken her to one such show in a foul-smelling circus tent, with hand-painted signs declaring HORRORS OF THE DEAD WORLD! COME FACE TO FACE WITH THE FLESH-EATERS ROAMING THE AMERICAN BADLANDS! CERTIFIED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

    That last disclaimer meant that the sideshow didn't cultivate plague for their own use, nor did they display human rotters. Any group alleged to do so was classified as terrorist. No, this was an all-animal attraction promising wild beasts decaying before the audience's own eyes. Cheryl had protested all morning long but her brother wanted to see and, well, he sure as hell couldn't leave her home alone for an hour. So they'd sat in the hot tent amidst morbidly curious others and waited.

    A spotlight clapped on and illuminated the sawdust-covered floor in the center of the bleachers. A man in a crimson top hat and suit vest paraded into the light. His face was painted white with black circles around the eyes. His grin was all too similar to that of a lipless rotter. The man plucked his hat from his head and bowed all around. "I am EVISCERATO!!"

    Cheryl snorted at the name. Her brother elbowed her with a stern look. "What," she whispered, "am I supposed to show this guy respect?"

    "Don't cause trouble." Her brother answered in a low voice. "These people are--"

    "AND NOW," Eviscerato bellowed, "THE FIRST OF OUR CARNIVAL'S MANY UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS, A FEARED PREDATOR TURNED GHOUL!!" Handlers in blood-stained jumpsuits emerged from the shadows, pulling on chains. The chains were fastened around the neck and limbs of a grizzly bear, most of its face eroded away, leaving a fanged skull that emitted a warbling cry.

    Cheryl moaned and grabbed her brother's arm. He ignored her, studying the animal.

    Eviscerato danced around the bear and its handlers, shouting taunts. The bear seemed oblivious to his presence; indeed it didn't appear to have either of its eyes. All of its claws were intact, of course. If she squinted Cheryl thought she could see bolts keeping the grizzly's paws in one piece.

    The handlers pulled the bear into a standing position. It made a sound of protest and its belly shifted. The thing's innards were sloshing around in there. Was it able to eat? Did they even feed it, and what? Unnatural as the beast was Cheryl found herself pitying its condition.

    Waving his arms like a madman, Eviscerato approached the standing grizzly. "LOOK!" He cried, pointing like a rude child at the distended belly. Then, another handler trudged out, this one holding a chainsaw. Eviscerato accepted it from him with a flourish.

    "I want to go." Cheryl stammered. She squeezed her brother's arm until he shoved her hand away. "It's just another rotter, Cheryl. Jesus."

    "It's an animal - it doesn't know--"

    "None of them know! Shut up!"

    The saw came to life, and there were scattered cheers from the audience.

    Eviscerato drove the sawteeth into the bear, just above the groin, and spilled its guts over the floor.

    A short, squat man tumbled from the yawning wound and splashed down in a soup of gore and sawdust.

    He rose to one knee, thrusting his bloody fists into the air. The audience laughed and applauded. Cheryl slumped against her brother.

    "They just stuck him in there beforehand and stitched it up," he would explain later. "They probably reuse the same bear until it falls apart - it's not ALIVE, Cheryl, why the hell do you care? It's not like it's a goddamned puppy and even THOSE things don't have feelings." He'd try to rationalize it: "I wanted you to see once and for all that there's nothing there, nothing in those animals. I should've known you'd react this way."

    Months later she heard on the radio that Eviscerato had been mauled and infected by a wolf during one of his "performances". He'd spent his last days doing illegal shows where he'd taunt human rotters, letting them bite him, even biting them back.

    She hadn't felt sorry for him.

    Cheryl was stirred from the memory by a knock on the door. Mike had a key...maybe it wasn't Mike. She reached across the sink for the pistol he'd given her and stood up.

    Cheryl hobbled out of the bathroom and across the carpet to the door, quiet as possible, and she looked through the peephole.

    There was a dead man there. He was holding a shovel.

    (An oral tradition from the badlands)

    The boy had never been to a circus before. The circus was a place where animals and clowns and magicians performed. It was rarely seen, but when the circus did come through a part of the badlands, all the people there were happy for just a little while.

    The boy's father often told him about the last circus, many, many years before the boy's birth. A caravan had appeared over the hills with the rising sun, a train of brightly-colored wagons with all sorts of animals - some of them alive - displayed in cages. For the price of a scrap of food, everyone had gone that night and seen dancing clowns, majestic beasts and other sights too fantastic to share.

    Almost every night the boy asked to hear about the circus. Almost every night, after his father kissed him and the world grew silent, the boy prayed for the circus to come.

    One day it did, and it was just as the boy's father had described it. A line of wagons pulled by dead horses stretched far into the hills, full of colors and animals he'd never seen! Men with painted faces waved and smiled at him as they passed.

    At the far edge of town, where there had been nothing but dirt, they put up a giant tent that nearly scraped the sky. The boy sat and watched for hours as men and animals went in and out of the tent. He wanted to follow along, but his father wouldn't let him. "Not yet," he said. "They're putting the magic in."

    The boy knew that there were wonderful and secret things going on inside that tent. He desperately wanted to see, but knew to behave lest he never see the circus at all, so he sat and waited until the sun began to descend. At twilight his father came and found him. "Now we can go in."

    Each act that the boy saw that night made his heart thunder and caused a grin to spread from ear to ear. He clapped until his hands were raw and red and kept clapping. All the while, his father watched him with a smile as big as his own.

    Then they brought out their most special act: THE KING OF THE DEAD. He was a dancing jester painted in a rainbow of colors. His limbs flew and spun and kicked up a storm of dust. His name was Eviscerato.

    Other men, dead men, were brought out to stand around the King of the Dead. They were chained to posts in the ground. The boy's father told him not to be afraid, but he wasn't. His eyes followed every movement of Eviscerato's feet as the nimble jester came just within reach of each dead man, then pulled away from their snapping teeth. All the while he smiled and laughed and sang! Everyone in the audience applauded madly.

    Eviscerato spun in a tight circle, in the very center of the dead men, then stopped cold. He looked into the audience, right at the boy. He reached out a hand. One of the dead bit into it.

    The crowd roared. The boy stood and stared as all the dead men grabbed Eviscerato and chewed and tore at his brightly-colored costume. All the while the King of the Dead smiled! How could a man smile through such terror? The boy was mesmerized. Blood pooled at Eviscerato's feet and he danced in it, he nipped at the necks and fingers of the dead men, he continued to sing and laugh and despite the horror of the scene there was not a face in the audience that did not grin from ear to ear.