The Dishonored Dead (25 page)

In the northbound lane, a police cruiser darted past, its lights flashing gray and white.

“What about all the living at the facility?”

“Gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone,” Norman said. “Albert released them.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I don’t know. But Albert figured it was better than having them wait to be killed.”

A silence passed. The skyline of Olympus grew smaller and smaller in Conrad’s side mirror.

“So what do we do now?” Conrad asked.

“Now? Now we do the only thing we can do. We run.”

They traveled south
along the coastal highway. The ocean was off to their left, the waves breaking along the beach, dead seagulls scattered along the sand and bobbing up and down in the water.

Conrad had leaned back in his seat, watched the houses and buildings and fields sliding by. For almost the entire two hours he thought about Denise and Kyle. Not about what had happened between them recently, but the good times they’d shared. Playing catch with Kyle in the backyard. Sitting with Denise on the deck and holding her and staring up at the stars.

He sat up straight in his seat. “Stop the car.”

Norman kept driving.

“Norman, stop the car.”

When the old captain still gave no acknowledgement, Conrad leaned over and grabbed at the wheel. Norman pushed his hand away. He shot an angry glare at Conrad but then glanced at his rearview mirror. He let up on the gas, flicked on his turn signal, and cut across the oncoming lane to pull into a gravel turnoff overlooking the beach and ocean.

Once the car was stopped, Conrad flung off his seatbelt and opened his door.

“Wait,” Norman shouted.

Conrad stepped outside and slammed the door. He stood there then, listening to the crashing waves, to the passing traffic, to the caws of seagulls.

Norman got out of the car and glared at him over the roof. “We’re wasting time.”

“Go on without me.”

“Not this again.”

“I mean it. Go on without me.”

“Conrad, we’ve already discussed this. It’s not worth it.”

“That’s easy for you to say. Beth is already gone. She’s been gone. Denise and Kyle are still here.”

It was noontime and the sky was clear, the sun bright, forcing Norman to shield his face with his arm. He squinted at Conrad and slowly shook his head.

“I’m telling you, it’s a mistake.”

“And I’m telling you, I don’t care. I’m going back and you can’t stop me. Tell me you wouldn’t do the same if Beth was still animated.”

The old captain looked away from him, back out at the ocean.

“I’m decaying, Norman.”

“We’re all decaying.”

“But this is different. Every day for the past couple months I’ve been losing hair and skin. The doctors don’t think I’ll last the year.”

Norman was silent, still watching the crashing waves.

“Don’t you see? It doesn’t matter if I go back, because even if I get caught I’m going to expire soon anyway. And even if I didn’t, even if I was going to exist forever, I would still go back.”

Conrad looked down at his hands, moved his wedding band around on his finger. “I know I should have told you earlier, when I first found out. But I just … I couldn’t. It was my secret. But it wasn’t my only one.” He looked up. “When you had asked me before why I’d hesitated that night I said I didn’t know, but that’s not true. I did know. It had something to do with that adult zombie, something he’d said to the boy.”

A seagull squawked, another cawed. A third bobbing on the water dipped down low and came back up with a dead flapping fish in its beak.

“He said, ‘Don’t accept your existence for what it is. Question it. Question everything.’ I don’t know why, but those words stopped me. And … and ever since then I’ve thought about this woman I don’t know, but somehow I do know her, and I’m almost certain she first told me those words.”

Conrad placed his hands on the roof, stared straight back at Norman.

“Is it really wrong, sir? To accept our existences for what they are? To not question everything?”

Norman slowly tilted his face to regard Conrad. A heavy breeze picked up, swaying some of his short gray hair.

“I don’t know,” he whispered. “Right now I don’t know much of anything.”

“Thank you for everything you’ve done, sir. I truly appreciate it.”

“I can’t take you back.”

“I know.”

“Does that make me a coward?”

Conrad didn’t answer.

“I wonder. I wonder what Beth would think.”

Norman opened his door again, ducked inside. When he leaned back out, he glanced at the highway, waited until there was a break in traffic, and passed the pistol across the roof.

“Sir, I can’t.”

“Take it. I have another.”

Conrad took the pistol. He ejected the clip, saw it was fully loaded, slapped it back in.

“Do me a favor,” Norman said. “If you get the chance, use it to shoot Philip in the head.”

The distant roar of a tractor-trailer was approaching up the highway, headed north. Conrad stuck the pistol out of sight.

A thoughtful expression crossed Norman’s face. “That idea of the dead and the living existing side by side? It’s a nice idea in theory. But it’ll never happen. The world’s already too messed up. For the longest time the world’s been told there is only one way to exist. You can’t just go and change that. You’ll never be able to change that.”

Norman motioned Conrad to the front of the car. When they both met there, Norman saluted him. “It was an honor to have you as one of my Hunters.”

Conrad returned the salute. “It was an honor to serve under you, sir.”

“If and when you do make it back to Olympus, and if and when you do manage to track down your wife and son, what do you plan to do?”

“I don’t know. I hope I can figure it out by then.”

Norman smiled. “There’s that word again—hope. It doesn’t mean anything to us. Not in the way it should.”

The old captain turned away, began walking toward the driver’s side door. He opened it, paused, glanced once more at Conrad.

“When you do get back, you’re probably going to need help. And, well, I don’t know how you feel about him, but if you can, try to track down Gabriel. If anything, he’s your only hope now.”

The smile Norman gave him this time was hardly even a smile at all.

“But who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe he’ll find you.”

Without another word Norman got into the car. He started it, waited for a pause in traffic, and pulled away. Conrad stood there, watching until the car was just a dot on the highway, then nothing at all. Behind him, those dead gray seagulls continued to bob up and down on the water, waiting out their prey.

Chapter 34

He’d walked three
miles up the highway before a tractor-trailer picked him up.

“Where you headed?” the driver asked.

“Olympus.”

“Well then, hop on. I’m headed that way.”

Once Conrad was in the cabin and had the door closed, the driver stuck out his hand. “Name’s Ben. What’s yours?”

“Albert,” Conrad said. “Albert Hager.”

“No shit?” Ben stuck a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “Want one?”

Conrad shook his head.

Ben put the truck in gear and watched his side mirror until there was enough space to pull back onto the highway.

“Funny you have that last name,” Ben said. He was a large man but apparently not very heavy, because as the truck bounced he bounced with it. “It’s the same as that new Hunter General.”

“It is?”

“Sure is. Crazy fucker if you want my opinion. I mean, not that he’s a Hunter or nothin’—I don’t got no disrespect for Hunters, I ain’t one of those zombie sympathizers—but what he did to that other general, well that was just plain nuts.”

“What’d he do to him?”

“Cut his fuckin’ head off. You mean you didn’t hear about it? Happened earlier today.”

“I haven’t had a chance. My car broke down about ten miles back. I’ve been walking the entire time. Nobody’s been kind enough to pick me up.”

Ben finished his cigarette. He flicked it out his window and shook his head. “That’s some shame. Just goes to show you how fucked up this world really is. Won’t pick up a complete stranger walkin’ alongside the road. Just who the fuck do these people think they are?”

Conrad said, “Most people have a hard time trusting others,” and glanced out his window, watched the ocean, surprised at how easy the lies were rolling off his dead tongue.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Ben said. “That’s why I always keep this little baby right here next to me.”

When Conrad glanced over he saw a pistol similar to his own now cradled in the truck driver’s left hand.

“That’s why,” Ben said, “I never have no problems pickin’ up hitchhikers. ’Cause I know they won’t cause me no trouble. You ain’t plannin’ on causin’ me trouble now, are you?”

“No.”

“Good.” Ben made the pistol disappear, grinned behind his full beard. “I didn’t think so, but figured I should ask anyway. You know, with how fucked up the world is and everything.”

They drove on for another mile or so without saying a word. Then Ben asked what it was Conrad did for work.

“I work construction.”

“That right? You mean a ditch digger?”

“Something like that.”

“And what brings the two of us together like this?”

“My mother’s in the hospital. She’s going to expire soon. I wanted to make it up to see her before it happens, and then my cars just crapped out on me. I don’t have a phone, so I couldn’t call anybody, and even if I did I don’t know who I’d call. And money, well, I hardly have any of that either. Which means I’m afraid I won’t be able to give you much for the ride.”

Ben waved a dismissive hand as he bounced up and down on the seat. “Forget about it, Al. Company’s payin’ your way right now. Payin’ my way too, with a nice big bonus.”

“Why’s that?”

“The load I’m pullin’? Guess what it is.”

“I have no idea.”

“Weapons. A lot of weapons. A
shit
load of weapons.”

“Really? What for?”

“Well for that crazy motherfucker Hager. You know, the new Hunter General? He ordered over ten thousand assault rifles and ammunition and the company I work for got the bid and needed a driver and I was the closest one. So here I am.”

“Yes,” Conrad said and glanced again out his window, “here you are.”

And so it was in a tractor-trailer pulling an arsenal for his new nemesis that Conrad returned to Olympus, the world’s largest and greatest city appearing first off on the horizon as just a speck and then growing and growing until the skyline defined itself against the paling sky of late afternoon.

Ben had already told him that he could drop off Conrad about almost anywhere once he’d delivered his load, maybe even take him directly to his mother’s hospital, but Conrad never gave a definite answer. He knew he couldn’t go with Ben the entire way, that if this load was for Philip then Philip would be there to receive it, or Michael or Kevin, or some other Hunter that might recognize him. But telling Ben to drop him off sooner might cause a problem as well, most likely suspicion in the seat-bouncing, cigarette-smoking, pistol-carrying truck driver, and what would Ben do then if he suspected Conrad of lying to him?

These worries raced through Conrad’s dead mind as they approached Olympus, as they merged onto the Shakespeare and became one with the rest of the rush hour traffic.

He only had three destinations where he could go: home to Dead Oak Estates, to warn Denise; to the Psyche Institute, to demand to see his son; or back to Living Intelligence, to try to track down the zombie Conrad had tried to attack the last time he’d seen him.

The next exit, the one that would take him to LI, was coming up in less than a quarter mile.

“Can you drop me off here?” Conrad asked.

“Huh?”

“Can you drop me off at this next exit?”

“But I thought your mom—”

“She’s at the hospital in Olympus, yeah, but you see, she never told me
which
hospital that was. She was too far out of it.”

The exit was quickly approaching, five hundred yards away.

“My cousin lives just two miles from this exit.” Talking faster now, leaning forward in his seat. “And I don’t want you to go out of your way, because you’ve been so kind to me already …”

Ben took a final drag of his cigarette, flicked it out his window, and once again gave Conrad that dismissive wave of the hand.

“Sure, Al, no problem.”

He got over into the right lane and let up on the gas, shifted into a lower gear. The truck groaned in protest and Ben said, “Ah, quit yer bitchin’,” and then they were headed up the ramp.

When he stopped at the very top, Ben stuck out his hand. “Good riding with you, Al.”

“Thanks, Ben. You too.”

Conrad opened his door, started to get out, but paused when Ben said his name.

“Hope things work out with your mom. I was in the same place a few years back. It sucks. But you know somethin’? That’s just existence. Everything expires. Even zombies.”

He walked for
another five miles, passing homes, farms, dead cows and sheep grazing in fields overgrown with gray grass. A quarter mile before he came to the narrow, poorly maintained side road that would lead him to the Warehouse and Living Intelligence, he turned off into woods and started trampling through the trees.

This detour took him an extra hour.

He maintained his course the best he could, headed in what he hoped was the right direction. When he spotted the Warehouse, he knew he was on the right track. He paused there, listening past the sounds of nature, trying to hear any voices or engines or truck doors slamming.

He continued on, more carefully this time, the pistol now in hand, and paused again when he could make out the squat building of Living Intelligence through the trees. Like before only one car sat in the parking lot, what he assumed was Albert’s. Unlike before, all its windows were shattered, the hood and sides smashed in.