Empire's End (32 page)

Grimm pushed a box of wine from between his
legs. “I don’t know you,” he croaked.

“I’m the new guy.” Cervantes lowered himself
to eye level with the man. They had feared for Grimm’s safety, but
it appeared that his sanity had wasted away long before the flesh.
Grimm used his thumb to wipe out the contents of a plastic cup and
tilted the box’s spigot over it.

“Tell them I’m fine. I really am. You
wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I am. I like it here.”

“What do you like about it?” Cervantes asked.
He began probing Grimm’s mind. It was an incoherent ruin in there,
akin to an attic overtaken by cobwebs. Nightmare images of the
undead hordes flashed before him. Bloody meat, grasping fingers.
Lips smacking.

Grimm laughed boisterously. “I like the
quiet.”

“Why did you stop communicating with the
base?”

“Radio’s busted.” Grimm gestured in no
particular direction and took a gulp of his cheap wine. “I dropped
it outside. They just walked all over it, the pissers. I
contemplated smoke signals.” Cervantes pushed deeper... Grimm was
hiding something within the rotted walls of that attic. Behind a
door in this house. He saw the radio, not dropped but hurled to the
street. He saw Grimm greedily scooping meat from the street into
his arms, stealing it from the afterdead.

“Sergeant, you know you’ve worried a lot of
people. Surely you would have made some effort to contact them if
this was all an accident.”

Grimm’s crusty eyes narrowed. “You don’t
believe me? You don’t know what it’s like out here, bud. You don’t
KNOW. You’re on the outside looking in. I sleep with the dead. I—”
Grimm stopped himself suddenly. Cervantes tore through the attic
wall and saw the horror.

“Oh my god.” He was on his feet, moving back
down the hall.

Grimm leapt up, spilling the box, and cried
“NO! Nooooooooo...” Glancing back, Cervantes saw the other soldier
wringing his hands like a child who knew his number was up. He
pushed open the last door on the left.

It was impossible to tell she was undead,
save for the blood caked around her mouth and on her nightgown. She
was very healthy, lovely even. Of course she was—Grimm brought meat
home for her. Only her wrists and ankles, where she was bound to
the bed, showed signs of damage: flesh had been sloughed from bone,
most likely in her struggling. Her eyes lit on Cervantes and she
began to twist and lurch.

Between her bruised thighs... Cervantes saw
carrion flowers and vomited.

“No, no, no.” Grimm paced in the doorway,
beating his head with his fists. “It’s not... you don’t KNOW!!”

I don’t want to
, Cervantes thought,
shaking the stolen memories from his head. He felt Grimm’s hands on
his shoulders, pleading, trembling with sobs, then he was thrown
violently into the hallway, and Grimm locked himself in the room
with a howl. “Sergeant!” Cervantes shouted, his head ringing from
the fall. And now he could hear them: outside, pawing at the doors,
the windows... he rushed down the hall to slam shut the window
through which he’d come. Just as it came down a gnarled hand shot
through. An eyeless face smacked against the glass, spraying pus
like a sponge. He’d lost contact with them, and now they were being
drawn to the tumult inside. Cervantes looked back at the locked
door.

Inside, Grimm knelt beside the female and
pulled a jackknife from his boot. “Ryland put me out here, he made
me stay out here,” he called, sawing through the afterdead’s
restraints, “because I KNOW. I know what he did and what he’s going
to do. Ryland’s the bad one, not me! Not—”

Cervantes shut his eyes tight and willed away
Grimm’s screams, the snapping of bone and the voracious roars of
his former lover.

“Clarke, Harmon, lost in Congo. Grimm,
committed suicide right here on the base.” Commander St. John
rattled the death list off as if he was reading sports scores. His
team had lost.

Behind his great desk, littered with medals
and keepsakes from his years in the battlefield, the old hawk
loomed like an angry father, white hair meticulously-groomed over
steely gray eyes. Those eyes were locked onto Nathan Ryland. He
glared silently, expecting something.

“These things happen,” the other man finally
said, gloved hands folded.

“‘These things happen’? You’ve been given too
much pull around here,” St. John growled. “It was your idea to let
Grimm play out there with the rotters, and he cracked. You pushed
for an expedition to Congo and two good soldiers are dead as a
result. Hell, now Whittaker’s been AWOL for a week. He’s a combat
vet, a hero, and lately I’ve seen him following you around like a
goddamned puppy. Have any idea where the hell
he
is?” St.
John grasped his temples, wincing: migraine. Suits like Ryland
sauntered into military operations from their “classified
backgrounds” and fucked up the whole works. Ryland was like the
executive branch’s little spy, carrying out the silly whims of
armchair warriors and putting St. John’s boys in the dirt. He
sighed. “Bradshaw takes Clarke’s place as leader of the field unit.
And he selects his new teammates. Not
you
, Ryland,
him
.”

“Fair enough,” Ryland replied. His pale,
fatty jowls made his smile all the more repulsive. He was soft all
over, wasn’t he? St. John just shook his head. “Get out.”

Bradshaw met Ryland outside the
administrative building. Ryland clapped a hand on his back. “I
didn’t even have to bring it up. He promoted you. Now, I only ask
that you put Sergeant Cervantes on the team. His assigned duties
aren’t important, I just want him out there.”

Bradshaw nodded, and they walked along the
electric fence separating their world from that of the afterdead. A
few rotters milled around in the grass, probably in search of
overlooked chum from a previous feeding. “Who else will you
choose?” Ryland asked.

“Stoddard and Thomas,” Bradshaw replied
quickly.

“I see you’ve been thinking about this,”
Ryland grinned. “Captain.”

Bradshaw offered an insincere smile in
return. He’d just flown up the ranks to a critical leadership
position—all because he was a killer, and worse than that, a
lackey. He still didn’t know the reason why he’d shot Pete Clarke
through the heart. It would have made as much sense at a backyard
barbecue as it did in Congo. And Ryland... something was wrong with
him. His face was more sunken and pale than usual. He carried his
bulk with an awkward gait. Looked like a...”Ryland, I’ve got to get
down to the warehouse for a pickup. Talk later?”

“Of course.” The pale man nodded curtly and
wandered back to the administrative building.

Joe Stoddard was already stationed at the
warehouse. Bradshaw had Cervantes and Thomas meet him there as
well. Thomas was an older woman, hard, not a feminine bone in her
body. What hadn’t been drilled out of her when she transferred to
the base had been washed away at the sight of the lunging rotters
(Bradshaw wondered if it was different for a woman, seeing new life
created, but from death). She’d stopped wearing her bite jacket
long ago, and both her arms bore scars as a result; nonetheless
she’d definitely be an asset in field missions. As for Cervantes...
Bradshaw hadn’t seen much of him since Grimm’s death. There were
murmurs that Cervantes was some sort of psychic, the sort of
nonsense the Defense Department had messed with fifty years ago.
Maybe they were still messing with it. Hell, Bradshaw had seen
stranger things.

“I appreciate your choosing me,” Cervantes
said.

Bradshaw decided against saying
you’re
welcome
. “We’ve got a truck coming in five minutes.”

Stoddard barked from his post, “It’s already
here!” and opened the main loading door to admit the semi’s
refrigerated payload. Bradshaw slapped a button to start the
conveyor belt that led from the warehouse to the scientists’
underground compound.

“Let me ask you something,” Cervantes said.
“What do they do down there? What tests do they run on the
afterdead?”

Had he just been reading Bradshaw’s mind? The
captain crossed his arms and gave Cervantes a stony look. “It’s not
my jurisdiction. I’ve learned not to ask.”

Stoddard slapped Cervantes’ back as the truck
opened. A steel box came out on rollers and they guided it onto the
conveyor belt. There were five more inside, each coated with ice,
electronically sealed; and within each, a fallen soldier who would
be inducted into the undead population. Somewhere, Stoddard knew,
there were graves with empty coffins upon which grieving mothers
placed tiny flags. But these boys were still serving their
government, in a way
. Whatever helps me sleep at night
.

“Seal’s broken!” Thomas snapped, banging on
the lid of the next box. Stoddard came around and hoisted the lid
up to look inside. Though the body was in a clear bag, he wasn’t
able to tell if there was any putrefaction. “You think it matters?”
he asked Bradshaw.

“Dead is dead,” came the reply.

Stoddard forced the lid down and pushed the
box onto the belt. “Can’t argue with that logic, boss.”

“Don’t call me boss.” Bradshaw tried to
grimace, but Stoddard’s expression teased a hint of a smile from
the corners of his mouth.

* * *

Ryland locked his office door and sat on the
edge of his desk. His breathing was growing more shallow with each
passing day. It didn’t hurt, it wasn’t uncomfortable; he was just
afraid someone might notice. Good thing a yearly physical wasn’t
required of him. He dropped into his chair and turned on his
computer, entering several encryption keys before he could get into
his files. Despite all that security—and a few extra measures he’d
added himself—he knew that there was always someone reading his
e-mail. That’s why his most precious files were in paper form.

Unlocking the bottom desk drawer to produce
those files, Ryland checked the contents. All there. Could never be
too careful. A medical report, written up by one A. Harmon, dated
seven months prior. Blood work results. Digital photographs of his
right hand. Removing his glove, Ryland saw the ugly scars. He tried
flexing his fingers. There was stiffness and pain, only the pain
seemed strangely distant, and even as the skin cracked and bled he
continued closing his hand into a tight fist.

The URC, the energy in the earth that revived
the dead, was never intended to be weaponized. Maybe in some horror
movie, a corrupt military lab would try to turn URC into a
contagion, but the real government understood the possible
consequences. Still, factions within were sparring over what to do;
and several months ago, Ryland had led a group of private
contractors to New England to check out another Source. And... he
began to laugh uncontrollably at the memory, the goddamn absurdity
of it. “Fucking cat,” he gasped between giggles.

The cat’s love bite shouldn’t have had any
effect, but Harmon had discovered an anomaly in Ryland’s blood when
he returned to the base for stitches. He knew immediately what had
happened. The URC had bonded with some virus lying dormant in the
feline’s system. Some thought it possible. Now he knew it was. And
just like that, it was a contagion. A cosmic roll of the dice, a
sick twist of fate. All these hundreds of thousands of years, and
only now had it happened... and to Nathan Ryland.

It took a few months of watching his arm die
before he made the decision to transfer Harmon to the field and
silence her. Grimm had been another story altogether...

Though the tissue in Ryland’s body was dying,
he didn’t feel much discomfort. The infection was turning him
undead piece by piece, yet he retained all his mental faculties,
even if there was a cold hollow growing inside of him as his soul
was forced out. Thus he had reasoned that, like the afterdead, he
could maintain a healthy appearance and a clear head if he fed. The
afterdead’s chum was trucked in biweekly and stored at the ass-end
of the base where the smell wouldn’t offend. So Ryland had gone out
to the storage building, walked in, shut the door, and promptly
vomited at the sight of the festering meat spread before him.
Dropped to his knees, dry heaving, arms shaking until he was prone
on the floor in his own puke. “I-I can’t,” he had whispered,
fighting the urge to keep retching. He looked at his dead hand. It
felt so detached, like it wasn’t really part of him. It was almost
surreal to see it scooping up a handful of rancid medical waste. He
forced it down, stuffing his fingers into his throat and trying not
to taste it. But the smell hit him again. He spewed chum all over
his pants.

Then Grimm had walked in. He looked through
the visor of his gas mask at Ryland’s bloody mouth and hand and
clothing, Ryland sitting on the floor with a blank stare, like a
boy caught playing with himself. Two days later, Grimm was living
out in the neighborhood with the afterdead. Ryland had figured no
one would believe the story if Grimm told them, but why take any
chances?

Most of his body felt dead, somehow, and even
though he was now able to eat chum and keep it down, there were
still signs of it. If he sat in his chair too long he’d get mottled
purple spots all over his buttocks, legs and back. Sometimes at
night he’d wake up to discover his bladder had emptied itself.
Trying to get out of bed, he found himself paralyzed by what seemed
like rigor mortis. And Jesus Christ, he farted all the time,
expelling the noxious gases of internal decay. He couldn’t eat
nearly enough to stave off such things; he couldn’t risk being
caught shoveling chum into his mouth again. St. John was already on
his ass for three deaths.

Day by day, Ryland was growing accustomed to
the spreading infection, and so was his ego. He decided it wasn’t
chance, but that he’d been
chosen
. He would be the first
true afterdead—not some soldier who took shrapnel in Lebanon and
had his dead body dumped in that accursed swamp. No, Ryland was
willingly giving himself over to the other side. There had only
been one more test to pass, and that was Cervantes. The telepath
hadn’t sensed Ryland’s condition at all. He was now confident that
he was not dying, but
evolving
.