Empire's End (4 page)

They were alarms to announce the presence of
afterdead.
Afterdead
... he hadn’t called the rotters that
since he’d shed his robes. It seemed so long ago. Strange, when he
had existed for ages; as Death, every moment had been the same, and
time without meaning. A thousand years or a day, it had mattered
not to him. But now he marked hours, days, weeks. He rose with the
sun and would observe the changing of the seasons. He bore scars on
his hands and feet, and in his reflection he saw not a being frozen
in time but a man living his life.

In his reflection, in the lizard’s eyes, he
saw torchlight, and spun to meet the young woman climbing out from
the sea of shadows that filled the quarry.

She stopped short, gaped at his face. “Is it
you?” she asked, blue eyes shining. “Are you the angel?”

He frowned and took a step toward her.
“I—”

THWACK! An arrow planted itself in the tree
beside him. “
Don’t move!
” barked a man’s voice.

Another man, old and frail, stepped out from
behind the girl with a bow pulled taut in trembling hands. “Do as
the boy says, friend.”

“
Are you alone?
” A third voice
called.

“Yes,” Adam replied.

“
Are you Army?
”

“No.”

“How could you be out here by yourself?”
stammered the old man. “Better tell the truth before you get
hurt!”

“It’s the angel,” the girl breathed. What did
she mean by that?

Gravel crunched beneath boots as a man
approached, a man with a hard face, shirtless body slick with
sweat. He had a camouflage tee tied around his waist. Combat
fatigues. Maybe Adam would have been better off saying he
was
Army.

The man saw Adam studying his clothing and
grinned. “They’re stolen,” he said. “We used to raid Army camps
back before the withdrawal. It’s a lot tougher finding something to
eat these days, I’m sure you know that—but at least we’re
warm.”

The man extended his hand. “I’m Thackeray,”
he said. “You look like you’re an albino. Must be brutal for you
out here.”

Adam nodded quickly, shaking the man’s hand.
“Stand down!” Thackeray shouted over his shoulder.

“Come down into the crater. I don’t want our
torches visible up here too long.” Thackeray patted Adam’s back and
led him past the old man and girl; she looked woefully
disappointed.

* * *

“Must’ve taken a lot out of you to get here,”
Thackeray said. “How did you hear about us?”

“I didn’t—I was just passing through.”

“Now that I find hard to believe.” Thackeray
smiled. “I know the welcome wagon was a little rough, but you’re in
good hands now. Matter of fact, some people around here call me the
boss. Not a title I much care for, but it seems to stick.”

He pointed toward the top of the quarry and
the darkness beyond. “Tons of rotters in the cities around here.
They tend not to wander off in our direction, though. If they ever
thought to come a-hunting, we might be in trouble. But for now all
we have to deal with is the occasional feral.”

The camp at the bottom of the crater was
comprised mainly of Army tents. Small fires burned here and there,
but nothing that would attract attention topside. In fact, even as
he came down the slope of the quarry Adam hadn’t seen any light at
all; the fires were each concealed behind boulders.

The people there were families of all ages,
and mother and child alike tensed when they saw Adam; but relaxed
when they saw Thackeray at his side.

A large rodent turned on a spit in front of
Thackeray’s tent. “Hungry?” he asked. Adam shook his head.

“It’s been overcast the past week,” Thackeray
remarked. “Guess it’s a lot harder for you when it isn’t.”

“Yes.” Adam sat on a rock beside the fire.
Thackeray stabbed a fork into the rat. Blood ran, sizzling, into
the flames.

“We always have to make sure they’re not
undead before we eat ‘em,” Thackeray said. “What have you been
living on?”

“Uh... mostly berries.” Adam silently begged
for the questions to end. He tried to avoid badlanders, and had he
not been mesmerized by the lizards with their tiny bells he would
have turned and gone in the opposite direction. As much as he
yearned for companionship—

(Lily)

He didn’t expect all people to be as
accepting as the child had been. The man who’d helped to get Lily
out of Jefferson Harbor, Voorhees—he had regarded the former Death
with more than a bit of apprehension. But he’d been a good man.
Adam had watched him for a long time to make sure of just that.

“You’re lost in thought,” Thackeray said. He
chewed an ear off of the rat’s blackened head. “I don’t think you
heard a word I just said.”

“I’m sorry. What was it?”

“I said the berries around here are deadly
poisonous.”

“Oh.” Why was the man telling Adam that? He
was forgetting his own lies.

“Let me try something,” Thackeray said
through a mouthful of rat meat, and sank the fork’s tines into
Adam’s shoulder.

They both stared down at the handle of the
fork. It had gone clean through the new suit Adam had taken from
one of the rotters back in town.

“This is where you would express some sort of
discomfort,” Thackeray said.

Adam looked across the fire at him.
Tentatively, he grasped the fork and pulled it free. “I... it
didn’t...”

“I know who you are,” Thackeray said softly.
“Josie was right. You’re the angel. The angel of death.”

He reached out and took the fork back. “Sorry
for the whole ‘stabbing you’ thing. I’m a little eccentric, they
say. Maybe that’s why I can sit across from you and keep a straight
face. If the others knew...” He shrugged and took another bite of
his dinner.

“How do you know of me?” Adam demanded.

“Most badlanders in these parts have heard of
you. I mean, you’ve saved so many lives, cut the undead down right
in front of them—did you really think no one would tell?”

“I’ve appeared to many in the past,” Adam
said. “I didn’t think anyone would believe them.”

“Well, in a world where the dead walk,
nothing seems impossible. I’ve heard old folk say they saw you
killing rotters seventy, eighty years ago. Were you?”

“I have been hunting them since it began,”
Adam said. “But things are different now. You have to
understand—I’m no longer the Reaper.”

“I guess that explains the suit. Sorry for
ruining your jacket, by the way.”

“It’s fine.”

“So what’s been strapped to your back all
night?” Thackeray asked.

Removing his jacket, Adam loosed the ropes
securing the scythe blade to his pale torso, and handed the weapon
across the flames. “Jesus, that’s heavy,” Thackeray whispered. “So
this is it.”

Adam nodded. “You don’t talk to a lot of
people, do you?” Thackeray asked.

“I’ve not had much need to,” was the reply.
“There was one, but...” His face brightened with hope. “Maybe
you’ve heard of her. Maybe she told you her story. Her name is
Lily.”

Thackeray shook his head. “Sorry friend.”

“I shouldn’t have thought so.”

“Where did you know her?”

“Somewhere far away. A man took her north. He
said she’d be safe there.”

“Maybe he meant the Great Cities?”

“I don’t know them.”

“It’s the place where the government’s
hoarded away all of our country’s resources.” Thackeray’s
expression grew dark, angry. “It’s where they’ve consolidated
America—leaving Americans like us here with nothing. And now all
the troops are there too. They’re walling themselves up in there
and going on as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist, as if the
plague doesn’t exist. They’re wrapping themselves up in a blanket
of ignorance and trying to sleep through the apocalypse. As for the
rest of us—the people who choose to keep fighting for this land,
the people who are actually
living
—we’re condemned along
with our homes. But make no mistake, the Great Cities aren’t going
to last. Unless something’s done, the bubble is going to burst, and
then no one will have any resources to use against the undead.”

He spoke with a fervor that drew onlookers
from the shadows. People murmured in agreement and clenched their
fists as his voice rose. “Either we can watch the Great Cities fall
to the rotters or we can do something ourselves, to give all of
America a fighting chance!”

He lowered his head. “I’m sorry. The anger is
always there—anger and helplessness. The outrage at what they’ve
done! That’s what drives me.”

The people around them had begun to drift
away. “I understand,” Adam said.

“Do you?”

“I feel the same way about the undead.”
Taking the scythe from Thackeray, Adam added, “But not
helpless.”

Thackeray nodded grimly. “There is still
hope. We can still... but the rotters, some of them, are getting
smarter. I suppose you’ve seen that too.”

“From time to time.” In his mind’s eye Adam
saw the ones Lily’s mad brother had trained, like dogs. Only those
dogs nearly behaved like living, breathing humans.

“The King of the Dead,” Thackeray whispered.
“Is he real?”

“I don’t know of whom you’re speaking.”

“Oh. Never mind then.”

“They’re beasts. They have no king,” Adam
told the man. “Whatever you’ve heard is likely just a story people
tell.”

“What do you call yourself?”

“Adam.”

“Well, Adam, you were just a story people
told, not long ago,” said Thackeray, and he disappeared into his
tent.

“I can point you toward the Great Cities, but
that’s all I can do,” Thackeray told Adam the next morning. “We’re
moving east.”

Adam had dreamt of Lily again. This time he
saw her huddled in shadow, shivering, as thick flakes of snow
settled in her long dark hair.

These were more than just dreams, he was
sure. Once, he could have held her life’s flame in his very hands;
now he could only guess at what fate had in store for her. He had
to reach these Great Cities.

The girl, Josie, set about drawing Adam a map
using charcoal on sackcloth. She paused to whisper something into
Thackeray’s ear. He nodded at her, and the girl beamed at Adam.

The angel
. It had been one of many
personas he’d adopted over the years in order to deal with mortals.
But it was this form, that of the pale man in black, that he was
most comfortable in. Perhaps that was why he’d been reborn with
this look. Perhaps he himself had willed it. So hard to remember.
Day by day he was forgetting the details of his service on the
other side.

“Before you go there,” Thackeray said,

“let me tell you why we’re not going with
you. Let me tell you what I know about the men who built the
Wall.

“A few years ago, I lived there. I trusted in
the Senate, and even worked for them—I was an aide to the Senate’s
President-for-life. Gillies. God-fearing son of a preacher. He
really believed—still does—that it’s his calling to rebuild the
world. For who, Man or God or both, I can’t tell ya. But he truly
believes that what he’s doing is good, and
right
—and that’s
the problem.

“When we came out here to try and sway the
badlanders, I was on his side. Even when rotters swarmed the convoy
in Utah and half of us were left for dead—still I was on his side.
I shrugged off the badlanders’ offers of food and shelter and
trekked back to the Great Cities with my colleagues. Back to
Cleveland, where my mother lived.

“What happened there is beyond reprehensible.
What they’ve done, in the name of what’s good and right, is
depraved—and these atrocities are bred by ignorance, not evil.”

Adam listened, and Josie drew, while
Thackeray told him everything.

“Here we are free,” he said when he was
finished. “Here we take the good with the bad and we face our
problems. We share grief as well as joy, and it makes us appreciate
the joy all the more. I understood that, for when I came back to
Utah, back to the badlanders, grieving, they took me in with open
arms.”

He placed a hand on Adam’s shoulder. “You
know what Man is capable of. You’ll see, and then you’ll understand
too.”

Josie handed over the map. It was simple and
straightforward: northeast until he hit the fabled Wall.

“We’re headed for the East Coast if you ever
want to look us up. Maybe you’ll join us out there someday. Someday
things will be right again. Trust me.”

Thackeray said those two words with such dead
certainty that Adam wondered what he
hadn’t
been let in
on.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, rolling
the map up and placing it inside his jacket. “I wish you the best,
Thackeray.”

“Please. Todd.” Thackeray shook Adam’s hand
for the last time. “Take care of yourself. And her.”

“I will.”

* * *

Thackeray and a couple other men walked Adam
to the edge of the quarry.

“Listen, I have to ask you something,”
Thackeray said. “You probably get this all the time...” He looked
expectantly at Adam, who stared blankly back.

“About... the nature of things. God.
Afterlife.”

“What about them?”

“Are they real?”

The other two men stopped, the same yearning
in their eyes. It was almost childlike... and what good would it do
them, really, to know?

Adam didn’t have to wrestle with that
particular quandary. “I don’t know,” he said. “You have to
understand that it was never necessary that I know such things as
God’s nature, or where people go... so I never did.”

“Well, what do you
think?
” Thackeray
pressed.

Adam forced a smile. “I think it’s all in
what you believe. There’s no knowing.”

He had sensed high beings before. He knew
there was
something
out there, that he’d come from
somewhere
... but whether or not that something gave a damn
about humanity was another story.