The Return Man: Civilisation’s Gone. He’s Stayed to Bury the Dead. (32 page)

Every fifteen feet or so, a tombstone stuck its weathered head from the grass. Marco had always appreciated San Jacinto for not being a cemetery with a warehouse mentality, the kind that cram graves into every square inch. Here the plots were spread out, each gravesite separated by a modest expanse of lawn. The effect was more personal, more respectful. When you visited, you could believe the dead were at peace.

He rubbed the corner of his eye and swallowed.

Almost there. The AK rattled in his hands; he noticed he was trembling. He hated this, he hated this…

Please, Delle. Please just be here.

The path bent around a gnarled oak tree–he’d sat under that tree once with Danielle, cradling her into his chest, her tears dabbing his shirt…

… and fifty feet ahead were two gravestones, side by side.

Just the gravestones.

Danielle wasn’t here.

He exhaled in a burst, a rush of air that choked off halfway into a tortured groan. His face seemed to catch fire, burning and wet at the same time.

Goddamn it. Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it.

He managed to walk without breaking stride, hiding his anguish from Wu on the trail behind him. He focused on breathing… slow, cooling lungfuls…

That’s okay. It was a long shot.

You’ll keep looking, you’ll find her. Plenty more chances.

By the time he reached the gravestones, he’d recovered… almost. And then his heart shifted again, sucked into a whirlpool of even greater force, down to an even blacker depth. Panic seized him.

He thought he’d be ready for this. He wasn’t.

He stepped past the gravestone on the left.
Amanda Pierce.
Danielle’s mother.

Then took a final step closer, stopping in front of the second stone.

Smaller, newer. A sculptured dove sat atop, its wings open, poised to fly.

The space around Marco stretched, adding distance, so that the gravestone at his feet seemed a mile from his pounding head.

And far, far below, etched in block letters, the stone read:

HANNAH ISABELLE MARCO.

7 DECEMBER 2012–9 DECEMBER 2012

His throat tightened. His stomach cramped.

He closed his eyes. The darkness was timeless, a fusion of past and present, and Danielle was suddenly beside him in that void, alive, the way he remembered her on that last morning in June, saying goodbye on the drive from California to Arizona.

The year after they’d buried Hannah.

We can’t, Henry. We can’t leave her here. Alone.

Baby… we’re not leaving her. Your mother, your mother’s right here.

Don’t make us. Don’t make me…

Delle. Baby, we have to go… I promise she’s not alone.

She wants me here.

She wants you to be happy.

I’ll never be happy.

His eyes flicked open, red and glassy. He sniffed and wiped his nose, not caring that Wu had arrived next to him. Fuck that. Fuck pretending. Let Wu see this–Wu, who didn’t have a fucking emotion in his blood.

Beside Marco, Wu lowered his chin as he absorbed the gravestone etchings. He held his hands together in front of his body, the posture of a man paying his respects.

‘Your daughter,’ he stated.

‘Yes.’

Wu nodded, pursed his lips. He hesitated and then spoke again. ‘The infant, the baby who passed away under Roger Ballard’s care…?’

‘Yes.’

Wu blinked, depositing the information into his lockbox, and responded with a step backwards and the slightest bow of his head. ‘I’m sorr—’

A crashing of leaves interrupted him.

Both men snapped straight, whirled towards the sound. The high grass to the west whipped left and right, then split down the middle.

Something–something big–was charging at them through the grass.

No time to think. Marco whipped the AK towards the approaching attack; whatever was coming, it was coming fast, rifling through the green stalks. Beside him Wu sprang to a fighter’s stance, hands up, knives gleaming atop his fists.

The men locked eyes. Wu nodded, his jaw clenched.

Here we go.

The brush burst apart…

… and a snarling yellow mastiff barrelled out, its fur caked and bristled, closing the distance with a furious thrashing of legs. Marco’s stomach went weightless, as though he’d stepped off a cliff, a scream trailing from his throat. For a paralysing moment he forget about the gun in his hand; Frankie was all he could remember, the mongrel dog
next door that tore his ear when he was seven, exploding through the hedge, tackling him…

I’m getting eaten

… and the mastiff, somehow it read his mind, knew he was weak and
chose
him instead of Wu. It leapt at Marco, jaws snapping towards his throat, and Marco braced…

… yelling out with surprise as the giant dog crashed sideways away from him, its ribs cracking against Hannah’s tombstone. The mastiff yelped and rolled to the ground in pain.

Wu stood on one foot, his right leg extended; he’d booted the dog mid-air with a thunderous kick. He replanted his foot and cast Marco a puzzled look. ‘Just a dog,’ he chastised. ‘They’re not bullet-proof, in case you were wondering.’

Marco looked at the AK in his hands, felt himself blush. ‘I don’t like dogs.’

He stopped and frowned. Listened. The blush on his cheeks suddenly chilled.

Everywhere behind Wu, the grass began to shake.

‘Dogs…’ he said.
Oh Jesus.

Lots
of dogs. Slinking from the brush, fur raised, heads low like hunters. All sizes, all kinds–mongrels, black and spotted, ears pointed, muzzles slick with brown slobber, pure breeds, too, German Shepherds, retrievers, hounds, lips curled back to reveal long curved fangs. Thirty, forty, fifty dogs emerging from the cemetery hollows, a massive hungering pack. Fierce growls rattled within their necks.

Collars and dog tags on them all.

Pets
, Marco realised.

Former pets. Gone feral, reverted to wild instincts. The Resurrection only took men and women; it left their dogs behind. No one to care for these creatures or put kibble in the bowls. He imagined the dogs in Hemet roaming the streets after the Evacuation, scrounging to survive. Then
finally, driven by starvation, they’d banded together to hunt.

Feeding on squirrels, birds, cats…

With a chill he recalled the torn-up corpse he’d seen downtown.

So that unlucky bastard had been dog food.

The animals spread wide, a quarrelling half-circle around the men, awaiting some instinctual cue to attack. A filthy-coated Dalmatian darted forward, snapping, then retreated to the line. Then a second dog did the same. Then another.

Riling each other up. Any moment now they’d swarm.

‘Too many to kick, Sergeant.’ Marco’s tongue was a chunk of dry wood.

‘And too many to shoot,’ Wu said. He gestured at a drooling Great Dane, big like a bear. ‘Put a bullet in that one. Then run.’

‘Right behind ya.’ Shakingly Marco aimed at the massive dog. Its right eye was gone, the lid infected shut, seeping fluid. Marco hesitated.

Somebody had loved this poor animal once.

Sighing, Marco lifted the AK straight up into the air and fired.

The warning shot blasted a hole in the morning, loud and stupefying. The Great Dane dropped flat, its good eye rolling in terror; the pack of dogs scattered, ears pinned to their matted heads. Confused–but it wouldn’t last.

‘
Go!
’ Wu slapped Marco’s arm and bolted down the flagstone path.

And then Marco fled, too, bounding in high steps through the grass, empowered with adrenalin and fear. Behind him he heard the baying of the dogs; they’d regrouped, refocused on the hunt. The soft earth sounded with the drumming of a hundred paws, and everywhere was the jangling of silver dog tags, chasing him, coming to drag him down
from behind; he fired the AK wildly to the side, mowing a wide swathe of grass with bullets until the clip emptied, but this time the dogs weren’t deterred, and the barking pulled closer.

He was losing his lead. The grass crunched under his boots, throwing him off balance. Twenty feet ahead, Wu sailed along gracefully, light like a deer, evolved in the art of escape. His wounds hadn’t slowed him so much, after all.

Survival of the fittest
, Marco thought, demoralised.
And Wu’s winning.

He wasn’t even sure they were on the path any more; the grass had grown too thick to see the stones, and in his panic the trees seemed different, too; he didn’t remember this hill, or that gravestone with the statue of a man holding a book…

‘
Wu!
’ he bellowed. ‘
Wrong way!
’

He swivelled his head frantically, seeking the path…

… and never saw whatever his foot snagged in the grass, a rock maybe or a fallen branch, pitching him ass-over-head to the ground. He cried out, horrified, and tumbled, somersaulted down the incline, thumping against a mossy gravestone at the bottom; he landed with his cheek to the dirt and a mouthful of damp grass.

Help,
he thought, half-dazed…

… because in another moment the dogs would be on him, ripping him to shreds of wet, shivery meat, tussling over the scraps of his organs, just like the corpse in town.

He almost screamed when the first set of jaws clamped on his arm…

… except it was Wu, pulling him to his feet.

‘Hurry,’ Wu ordered. ‘Over there.’ He gestured to a modest white building a hundred feet ahead. The cemetery chapel. In the madness of flight they’d taken a sharper angle through the cemetery grounds, reaching the chapel from the rear.

At the top of the hill the crazed dogs streamed over the crest and charged down.

Frantic, spitting grass from his lips, Marco sprinted towards the chapel. He pumped his arms, running; he’d lost the AK in the fall, goddamn it, but that didn’t matter now,
just get to the chapel, get to the chapel, please let the door be unlocked, please!

He made it two steps ahead of Wu, his heart stuck between beats as he rammed the oak door, fumbled for the brass handle. The latch popped–
thank you Jesus
–and the door collapsed open; he spilled inside, Wu right behind, and flung the door shut.

Immediately the oak rocked with a barrage from outside, dogs launching against it, claws scrabbling the wood. Barks and howls thundered in Marco’s ears.

‘
Christ!
’ Marco backed a step from the door and half collapsed, hands on his knees, chugging air. ‘Do you think,’ he asked, refilling his lungs, ‘they’ll stay or go?’

Sweating furiously, Wu shrugged. ‘Go away, I would think. There must be some slower-moving prey out there in the graveyard. Corpses, like we saw in town.’

‘I had the same thought.’

‘The more urgent question is,’ Wu said, ‘are there any corpses in here?’

Sobered, the men turned their eyes into the chapel. They were standing in a small marble vestibule, next to a table stocked with pamphlets on dying and afterlife. A giant vase loomed in the corner, once full with flowers, now withered to petrified stems.

The lighting was dim, suffused with blue and red; stained-glass windows admitted a weak glow. Marco squinted against the gloom. The whole interior wasn’t large at all–a single set of pews, six rows deep, facing a gargantuan statue of Christ on a cross at the far end, beyond a podium and a
small brown altar. A red carpet led from the vestibule and then split in two, each path following a coiled radiator up the side aisles.

The air was stale and foul. Yellow-smelling, like a bedpan.

And something else. Marco sniffed. Something rancid, infected.

His jaw twitched.

There was a dead man in the front pew.

Definitely a corpse–its head leathery and bald, and on the back of its crown the skin had eroded to reveal a worm-holed patch of skull. It wore a collared shirt, above which the knobs of its upper vertebrae poked through the decomposed skin on its neck.

‘Is it alive?’ Wu asked, then frowned at the wording of his question. ‘You understand what I mean.’

‘Resurrected, yes,’ Marco answered in a whisper. Despite his caution, the words struck loud against the vestibule’s marble walls. ‘Look–it’s moving.’

The corpse’s head bobbed, a feeble motion, down then up again like a sleepy man prodding himself awake. It moved three or four times, then went still.

‘Why isn’t it getting up?’ Wu wondered.

‘I don’t know. We made a hell of a racket coming in.’

Outside, the dogs continued their siege on the chapel. Marco heard them racing back and forth along the walk, barking and hungry and very pissed off.

‘Wait here,’ Wu said and crossed the vestibule. He gave the door a strong tug, satisfying himself that it was shut solid. Just to be safe, he dragged the table over and, dumping the pamphlets to the floor–a hundred copies of
Coping with Loss
spilled across the marble–Wu tilted the table edge against the latch.

Then, knives readied, he returned to Marco’s side.

‘Go slow,’ he said and stepped onto the carpet runner. Puffs of dust rose from the red felt under his boots.

‘Hold it–what’s your plan here?’ Marco asked.

‘Getting a look.’

Marco shook his head, uncertain. But damn, he was curious, too.

He pulled the Glock–one bullet left–and followed Wu into the church.

They crept softly up the side aisle, Marco alert for any sudden movement from the quiet corpse. The dead man’s head bobbed again, once, but that was all. Pew by pew the men approached; Marco aimed the Glock into each row as they passed, anticipating an ambush–some dead pastor or nun to spring hissing from beneath the hymnals.

At the corner of the front row they stopped.

‘Holy shit,’ Marco muttered.

The corpse was elderly, a male in its seventies, its facial skin loose and sagging like an ill-fitting mask; its nose was bulbous, etched with purple capillaries. It wore a striped necktie with a fat clumsy knot draped down its bloodstained shirt. Its pants were bunched at the calves; black socks drooped atop its bug-eaten dress shoes, exposing two milk-white, hairy, rail-thin legs that barely reached the floor.