The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (16 page)

Down below, Wu had worked with haste. He switched into the sergeant’s bloodstained uniform, at the same time
alert for the slightest twitch of the black soldier’s motionless body.

What would he do if the big man leapt up, snarling…?

But his luck held. Three hours later, he had the soldier strapped safely into the passenger seat of the American 7-Ton truck. The man had resurrected soon after; its one remaining eye sprang open, hungry and wild, as the big muscles thrashed uselessly against the seat belt, the broken body unable to move from the waist down, its hands tied with rope.

With the captured corpse, Wu drove to the address he’d located in his Droid GPS. Henry Marco’s house. From a hidden driveway up the road he’d spied on the home; it was sprawling, once lavish and proud–
a rich American home,
Wu thought with disdain–but all beauty had since faded, and the castle had been transformed into something resembling a junkyard with vast walls of rubbish and scrap metal. As Wu waited, the sun set. He spent a sleepless overnight in the truck. Beside him in the dark, the dead soldier grunted and hissed, and the truck cab filled with a ripe stink of flesh and gas. Even the open windows did little to diffuse it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Wu confided to the corpse–Baines, its name had been. Guilt beat like a second heart in Wu’s chest. ‘I mean you no dishonour.’

The Baines corpse growled and chattered its teeth.

‘It must be done,’ Wu explained.
Bao Zhi would not approve
, he thought. Bao Zhi, his uncle. Wu rubbed his bloodshot eyes, freshening them.

‘Thank you,’ he told Baines, and then did not speak again for the remainder of the night.

In the morning he’d snapped fully alert when Marco had departed the house. Driving behind at a safe distance, Wu had followed the American doctor to Maricopa. But when
Marco’s Jeep had unexpectedly departed the train station without waiting, Wu paled, worried he’d lost his chance. Thinking fast, he doused the front seat of the truck with lighter fluid and lit it…

… cut Baines free with a quick snap of his knife…

… then pointed the truck at the train station and bailed out through the door.

Crash, flames, Marco to the rescue. The action had escalated far more alarmingly than Wu intended; his impulsive fire-setting had endangered the American, and what had been meant as a distraction to gain trust became a near-fatal error when the doctor crawled under the truck.

But Wu had corrected the mistake. The two men were now travelling together.

With no more corpses in sight, the Jeep slowed and followed the avenue running parallel to the train tracks. Marco whistled, a hollow sound, and his jaw relaxed. He nudged his knees against the steering wheel to hold it in place, then uncurled his hands. ‘Son of a bitch, that stings.’

Wu surveyed the Jeep. Supplies and gear littered the floor and seats. He kicked aside a flashlight that had rolled up against his ankle, then cleared aside a few crinkling maps.

‘Is there a med kit in this mess?’ he asked with disapproval.

Marco threw him a look. ‘Yeah, somewhere. A gun, too.’

‘Somewhere,’ Wu mocked. ‘Wonderful. Perhaps I’m sitting on it.’

Marco glanced into the rear mirror and squeezed the brake. The Jeep rolled to a stop, half a kilometre from where they’d begun. The scream of the fire had vanished, and only the rumbling engine remained. Marco slapped the Jeep in park, then turned in his seat to face Wu.

‘So,’ he said. ‘I assume you’re my military escort?’

Wu’s eyes hardened as he stared back at the American. ‘Yes. I am.’

Gen wo zou
, Wu thought.
Come with me.

Marco cast a sarcastic smile at the soldier next to him in the Jeep. ‘So, you’re the army,’ he observed. ‘I thought there’d be more of you.’

‘Be glad there was me,’ the man answered dryly. ‘Or you’d be dead.’

‘True–or then again, I’d be on my way to California right now, happily by myself, if you hadn’t come along and crashed your fucking truck.’

The man glared at Marco, jaw tensed, but he said nothing.

‘So what happened?’ Marco prompted.

‘We were attacked.’

‘Ah. And you weren’t prepared for that? God bless the military.’

The soldier’s eyes sharpened over his high cheekbones. His eyes were green and unusual, a contradiction to his otherwise Asian features. Marco had never seen such a combination.

‘You listen,’ the man instructed. ‘My team is
dead
because of orders to help you.’ His speech was unaccented, indistinguishable by dialect. ‘You’ll show
respect.
’

Marco blushed. He knew he was being an asshole, for no good reason other than his contempt for Director Owen Osbourne. Contempt for this entire damn job. But lashing out at the soldier wasn’t fair–especially now, after the man had just risked his life for him.

‘Okay,’ Marco said, exhaling. ‘You’re right… sorry. And I’m sorry for your, uh, team, too.’ He fumbled, not sure what else to say. ‘Thanks for saving my ass,’ he added.

The soldier studied him, then leaned back against the seat, seemingly pacified. ‘Don’t thank me. Thank DHS. We wanted to go without you.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ Marco quipped. He regarded the soldier’s dusty brown uniform. The shoulders and chest were caked dark with blood.

The soldier read his look. ‘Not mine,’ he stated. ‘Baines–your wrestling partner back there in the truck–bled out on me.’

‘So what happened?’ Marco asked again.

The soldier shrugged. ‘We were up in Lost Dutchman, running recon on your house. At sun-up this morning, a pack of zoms ambushed our camp. Corpses. Baines and Pozzo had watch. They whooped us awake, but too late. I heard crashing, sat up and saw a corpse crawling through the tent flap. I flipped the blanket over its head and escaped out the back.’

He swallowed. ‘Outside Baines was down, being chewed. Pozzo was already torn apart. Twenty, thirty corpses. I grabbed the guns and ran to Baines, kicked a corpse off, and got him up. Guerrero, my rifleman, came charging, firing, bullets kicking off rocks–a miracle he didn’t shoot
me.
Then he was piled on, went down screaming, nothing I could do. Hard enough just keeping Baines on his feet. I didn’t see anyone else, but Nelson’s tent was shaking, he was screaming, too…’ The soldier trailed off, as if contemplating some private thought.

‘You got Baines out,’ Marco said.

The man nodded slowly. ‘Yes. Propped him up, pulled back down the trail. Luckily the dead didn’t follow. They had enough. I escorted Baines to the truck, bleeding bad, but I thought…’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’

‘He couldn’t have made it,’ Marco said, trying to help. ‘Not after he was bitten.’

‘I know that,’ the soldier said. ‘But I couldn’t leave him.’

‘So you drove him here?’

‘Had to catch up to you. Baines resurrected before I even knew he was dead. I wasn’t thinking. I should have stowed him in the back, but I had him up in the passenger seat so I could talk to him, maybe keep him focused. We were doing eighty just outside town–suddenly he grabs for me and tries to take a bite. I barely held him off. Baines was big.’

‘I noticed.’

The soldier continued in a flat voice. ‘I pulled my pistol, but he knocked my hand and the shot hit the dash. Must’ve punched the engine, caught the oil. Before I knew it, the truck was on fire, with a giant corpse all over me. I managed to stomp the brake once or twice, then got my hand to the door latch and popped it. Bailed out backwards, almost broke my spine rolling on the road. The truck went another hundred feet and crashed. And that’s where you joined the party.’

Marco studied him, perplexed. Throughout the retelling of the team’s death, the man had seemed curiously untouched. Maybe he was a tough bastard, burying his emotions–or maybe he had no grief to hide. Indeed, there was an air of cold functionality about him, like a decision-maker who operated by logic rather than heart. He was small, slighter than a normal RRU soldier–the complete opposite of Baines, but his eyes were striking and fearless. Intelligent. In the silence Marco sensed a thousand calculations taking place behind each intense green iris.

And that’s when Marco realised the soldier was measuring him as well.

A chill rippled through him–a hunch that the man was holding something back.

Well, no shit. Of course he’s holding back. God knows his exact orders, or what Osbourne told him about me. About Roger.

So be careful
, Marco reminded himself.
Wait and see before
you get too chummy.
He almost flinched when the soldier extended his right hand, blood-smudged and gritty.

‘Ken Wu,’ the man said. ‘Sergeant First Class, RRU.’

Beneath the gore on the man’s uniform, a military patch was just discernible. Three pointed gold stripes above, two rounded stripes below.

Marco nodded and shook the outstretched hand. ‘Henry Marco here,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘I guess you knew that, right?’

The soldier–Wu–did not return the smile. ‘I’ve been briefed.’

‘Yeah, well. I hope your brief was more informative than mine.’

Wu frowned. ‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, what the hell are we doing?’

‘I was told that you’d been apprised of the target.’

Marco scoffed. ‘Target? Yes, Roger Ballard–a friend of mine, by the way. But I’m sure your director told you that.’

‘You and the target were co-workers, yes.’

‘Jesus, stop calling him that.’

‘Ballard.’

‘Yes, Ballard.’ Marco sighed. ‘We worked at the hospital.’

The comment seemed to interest Wu. ‘And how did—’

‘Shit,’ Marco interrupted. In the rear-view mirror he’d seen motion.

Seven or eight corpses had caught up from the train station, lurching doggedly towards the Jeep from a block away. A dead male in a business suit led the crowd, smoke wafting from its jacket. It dragged its foot sideways, broken at the ankle.

‘We have to get going,’ Marco said.

Wu twisted around in his seat. ‘I agree.’

‘Great,’ Marco said wryly. ‘Your approval means
everything.’ He popped the gear into drive, and the Jeep rumbled forward.

Wu sat silent for a moment. Then he spoke, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. ‘This is a military operation, Doctor. Remember that.’

Marco drew a deep breath, his forehead burning as if he were still under the fiery truck.
Fucker.
He could tell he was going to hate this. For the past four years, every decision had been his own; nobody to approve or say otherwise. But now this–Wu, Osbourne, the United States fucking government telling him what to do, running his ass from here to California.

I was better off alone
, he seethed. But then another thought whispered in his head.

Quietly, almost sadly:

Hey buddy–you gonna be ready for society if they ever let you back?

Or have you been ‘alone’ out here too long?

The thought sobered him.

‘All right then,’ he said, swallowing his anger. The Jeep sailed up the street, heading west, the early sun behind them. Racing them to the left were the railroad tracks, bound off by a chain-link fence. Marco eyed a crossing, one block ahead. ‘California, here we come.’

Right back where I started from
, he thought.

‘I have a GPS—’ Wu began.

‘Don’t need it,’ Marco said, and swerved the Jeep through a gap in the fence. The vehicle skidded across a narrow bed of gravel, jounced twice very hard–sending both men briefly airborne, supplies flying–and smacked down onto the westward train tracks.

Marco shot Wu a devilish grin. ‘I know the way there.’

Just don’t ask me if I know the way home
.

Hours had passed, and the sun had climbed from behind the Jeep to a point high above, and then gradually nosed ahead as Marco drove west along the tracks out of Maricopa. Progress was slow–twenty miles an hour, tops. The terrain beside the tracks was frequently undriveable, extreme with rocks and abrupt hazardous ditches, and Marco often had no choice but to steer directly onto the railway. The haggard wooden ties pummelled the Jeep from below. Every few minutes a tyre swerved against a rail, and the men banged sideways in their seats.

On the passenger side Wu scowled, massaging his temple.

‘Headache?’ Marco asked.

‘I’m fine,’ Wu replied. He blinked and concentrated straight ahead.

Marco suppressed a grin. A long drive on the tracks was punishment on the body, the constant shockwaves hammering bones and sinew. Wu had no idea how sore he’d be tomorrow.

‘Sure,’ Marco said. His own neck was knotted tight; his entire frame throbbed with various degrees of pain, from the dull bruising in his legs where the giant corpse had fallen on him, to the sting in his burned hands, to the dry itch of his smoke-irritated eyes. ‘I’m fine, too.’

They were crossing the hottest corner of Arizona, the
Sonoran Desert. Around them sprawled harsh, waterless miles, tangled with prickly pear and burro weed. No human population–no corpses, thank god–just rattlesnakes, tarantulas, even jaguars farther southwest. Distant brown mountains caged them in. By mid-afternoon the dashboard thermometer read a hundred and ten outside, and even with the windows rolled up and the A/C cooling, the Jeep felt stuffy, brooding with an atmosphere of sweat and unspoken worry. The sun proved unstoppable; it reached through the windshield and pressed its hot hands on Marco’s forehead.

Ahead of the Jeep, a speckled iguana skittered across the tracks and disappeared into a scramble of red rocks. Wu turned his head to follow it.

‘That would have made a good meal,’ he remarked. ‘How are you for rations?’

Marco gestured to the back seat. ‘Jerky, water, MREs I grabbed from abandoned army trucks–plenty for me. I’ll share, but I wasn’t planning on a dinner guest.’

‘I don’t need your help.’ The condescension in the soldier’s voice was obvious.

Marco bristled.
Fine, asshole. Go hunt a fucking lizard.

Wu seemed oblivious to the insult he’d caused. He turned from the window and cracked his neck with a spiritless motion, to the left, then the right. ‘How far are we?’ he asked.