Eyes of the Dead

 

ONE

 

Inside the crashed yellow school bus, the dead partied.

At least, it seemed so at a glance: a teenage jumble of football, cheerleading, and marching band uniforms, slow-bopping to music only they heard, knocking around a handful of teachers and coaches playing chaperone. They mimicked a wild homecoming party coming off the high of homemade speed from a punch bowl spiked by the school science nerd. Then they saw me, Della, and Christopher stepping out of our Toyota Camry. As if a silent, invisible DJ doubled the beat and pumped up the volume, they thrashed at the windows and rocked the bus.

“Party bus from hell,” I said.

“You think they were coming or going?” Della said.

“Hmm, let’s say, coming home.”

“Okay, Cornell, but did they win or lose?” Christopher said.

“Let’s give them the win. Figure they checked out on a high note.”

“Could they have been trapped in there from the start of the dead plague?” Della said.

“Safe bet, looking as intact as they do,” I said.

“Sucks for them,” Della said.

I slapped a hand against a bus window. The dead boogied down for me.

Clustered against the glass, they bared blackening teeth and stared at me with dozens of impossible eyes, the eyes of lost souls that never belonged to those cold bodies. They watched from every limb and wrinkle of exposed flesh, a winking pox. I used to pity the dead, raised up and filled by those invading eyes full of hate and envy. After so many hundreds of miles and months of living in this rotten world, after standing up over and again to the glare of those eyes, of them watching me fight for my life, I couldn’t muster an ounce more of sympathy.

I waved my hands in the air and yelled, “Like you just don’t care!”

It drove them wild.

“Maybe we shouldn’t mess around with them,” Christopher said.

Only twelve years old, his voice carried a layer of fear. Dirty blond and with a lanky build that would bloom into muscles in a few years, he put on a brave face, but horror remained fresh in his eyes, deepened by the reminder that the future he should’ve grown into no longer existed. The young adapt fast, yeah, but they feel things more acutely than grown-ups, especially the thick-skinned criminal kind like me or an ex-prison nurse like Della. Christopher had survived his own hell before we met, lost his entire family to the dead, but a light still burned in him, and I never wanted to be the one who dampened it.

“Don’t be nervous,” Della said. “They aren’t getting out of that bus.”

“No, he’s right,” I said. “We shouldn’t push our luck. Good call, Christopher.”

He smiled at me, anxious but a little proud.

The wreck had stopped us dead in our path.

The bus blocked the lanes on our side of the highway, part of a line of piled-up vehicles that stretched from shoulder to shoulder and clogged up the oncoming lanes, too, leaving no way to pass. The bus lay tilted about forty-five degrees on its side, propped on a BMW crushed under it. The twisted metal of the Beemer blocked the front door. A smashed Lincoln kept the dead from escaping by the rear emergency door. A streetlamp toppled in the collision pinned shut the rooftop exit hatches. Thick windows held but trembled in their frames as the dead surged against their glass.

All their hungry eyes focused on us. So many eyes peering out from every inch of their exposed dead flesh. Their stares burned with a critical mass of resentment and violence wrapped up smack in our path and packaged inside what, in the old, living world, would’ve been a microcosm of the next generation’s promise.

A breeze tickled the overgrown roadside grass. Empty blue sky sprawled above us.

The air reeked of the dead. No signs of the living anywhere—except for us.

Right then, a familiar, deep bark rattled in the back of my mind. The cackle of my old pal and constant companion, the jackal waiting somewhere in the world to claim me the way death claims us all one day. His breath blew hot across the back of my neck as it had so many times before when he crept up from the depths of my subconscious to remind me of my mortality.

“Shit, we have to make a way through,” I said. The jumble of torn metal and machinery hung together like a house of cards with no obvious move that wouldn’t upset the pile that sealed the school bus.

“We should double back and find another way.” Della wore jean shorts and a navy blue tank top, and the breeze plucked at her silky, black hair, sweeping it across her shoulders and the back of her neck. “Better not to fool with this mess.”

We’d fled crowds of the dead together for longer than I liked to remember. On the road, wormfeeders turned to give chase when we raced by, but, slow as they were, they’d never catch up to us on the move. Turning back meant driving into the thick of them.

I shook my head. “We go forward. Christopher, drag Birch out here. We need his help.”

Christopher jogged to the Camry and opened the rear passenger-side door. Fascinated by the dead on the bus, Della stepped into the glare of hundreds of eyes that watched us from hands, arms, necks, foreheads, even from tongues visible on one whose lower jaw had rotted out.

I knew more about those eyes than most, but I still didn’t understand the phenomenon of the disembodied dead returning from insubstantial limbo to reanimate rotten flesh. Not why it had happened or what it meant.

The dead pressed together on one window by Della, decomposing bodies a single, writhing mass—until, with a sharp snap, a hairline fracture cracked the glass.

Della jumped back.

“Shit.”

“Get away from there, Della,” I said. “Don’t rile them up.”

The rooftop hatches bumped and clanked against the lamppost as dead hands shoved at them from inside.

“Why do they have so many damn eyes?”

I met Della’s gaze for a moment, then shrugged and looked away. I knew one possible answer to the question, but until I believed it myself, I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do so either.

“They’re hardened,” Della said. “Flesh cured, like leather. Mummified, like.”

“They haven’t been out in the elements or fighting with the living. It’s a soft life on the school bus, all those cheerleaders with their pom-poms to keep your spirits up,” I said.

Della smirked. “Wise-ass.”

“You’re right, though. Thank your nurse’s eye for that. I’ve seen so many of these things, I can’t make heads or tails of them but to keep my distance.”

“That ought to be enough until we get where we’re going,” she said.

Lohatchie. The town on the edge of the Everglades where I grew up, where I kept a cabin hidden outside that forgotten scrap of civilization. I hoped no one, dead or alive, would ever find us once we settled in there.

Christopher returned with Birch, a former soldier turned microbiologist, who resembled a ghost—gray-haired, gaunt, eyes fixed on sights only he saw, his black cargo pants stained with mud and blood, but the Hawaiian shirt we’d found him clean and bright. His uncombed gray hair resembled a patch of dead weeds. He’d done no more than stare at us and nod or shake his head for days since he and I escaped a place called Deadtown.

“It’s going take all of us to fix this mess, Birch,” I said, “See the Buick sitting sideways against the bus?” Birch nodded. “That’s the only car not tangled up with another vehicle. It’s on the far side of the bus, which means we can push it out of our way, clear a path. The catch is the lamppost pinning shut those emergency exits is resting on its trunk. We have to heft that off there before we can move the Buick, which means we risk those hatches popping open and releasing the teen spirit brigade.”

“Why don’t we tie them shut?” Christopher said.

“Nothing there to tie onto,” I said. “All the hardware’s inside. Outside is smooth and aerodynamic.”

“Can we shove something else up onto them?” Della said.

“Won’t need to if we move fast,” I said. “It’ll take all four of us to lift the post, but if the Buick rolls, Birch and I can push it clear. Once we move the post, you and Christopher hop into the Camry and drive right up to the opening. Birch and I will jump in. We’ll be gone before that dead quarterback can call a play.”

“I don’t like it,” Della said.

“Neither do I, but that’s how it’s got to go.”

Della frowned. Christopher, I give him credit, kept quiet and listened.

“Birch, you in?” I said.

One nod. I studied his eyes, worried he might flake, but I saw enough of the old, scotch-swilling, mad-scientist Birch there to trust him for this.

I inspected the Buick for the dead and found it empty. Reaching through the broken glass of the driver’s side window, I put the car in neutral and hoped for the best. At least none of the damaged parts looked like they’d interfere with the tires.

“Everyone grab some lamppost,” I said.

We spread out, Birch and I along the length laying on the school bus, Della next, then Christopher at the top, the light itself embedded in the Buick’s trunk. Everyone gripped, then I counted down from three, and we pulled. The damn thing refused to budge. Our second try came no closer to freeing it.

“Christopher, you got the light end there, kid. What’s happening?” I said.

“The metal’s wedged into the lamp, kind of hooked on, but I see how to get it loose now. Give it another try, okay?”

I counted three again. We put our muscle into it. With a broken steel moan and a shattered glass tinkle, the lamp jolted loose. The weight of it shifted to our hands, heavier than expected, but we eased it clear. The bus hatches rattled like loose shutters in a hurricane. We strained and lowered the lamppost to the ground.

Della screamed: “Wormfeeders!”

From the near shoulder, a group of the dead emerged from the brush, all their hate-filled eyes sighted on us.

 

TWO

 

“Della, Christopher, back to the car,” I said.

“We’re not leaving you to fight them alone,” Della said.

“We’re not going to fight them. Birch and I can handle this. Please. Get in the car.”

Whatever Della meant to say next vanished into the clank of one of the bus hatches flipping open. Dead hands pushed through and groped for freedom. The second hatch opened. More dead shoved out into the fresh air. Another group of roaming wormfeeders appeared on the far shoulder, rambling toward us like our voices summoned them from a deep sleep in the roadside brush.

“Are you kidding me?” Della shouted.

“The car, Della. Please. Go. I’ve got this,” I said.

Trusting her to trust me, I tugged Birch along to the Buick, and we set to pushing it. The car refused to budge.

“Damn it, Birch, put some muscle into it, you stringy old bastard.”

He hunkered down, planted his feet, and threw his weight against the car. It rocked on its tires. Out of sight, the Camry doors slammed shut. My unwanted friend who lived deep in my head, my jackal, snickered in my ears as death approached. He breathed a hot gust down my collar. I pled with my eyes for Birch to push harder and saw the first signs of real life there in days. We nodded in unison three times then shoved again. The Buick rolled.

“Yeah!” I shouted.

The car moved smoother with each step we took. Three, four, five, six steps, then I stopped counting as the front tires reached the slight incline toward the center median and gravity took control. Birch and I jogged along to keep the hunk of metal and plastic moving until it slipped out of reach. It crossed the left-lane shoulder, knocked down a pair of wormfeeders scrambling onto the pavement, and then bumped to a stop on the overgrown median.

The path for the Camry gaped clear—except for wormfeeders.

The two roadside groups shuffled in our direction. The bus crew learned to let one at a time through the escape hatches. Already four football players aimed themselves at the Camry as two drum majors tumbled out onto the road. Cheerleaders lined up behind them. The dead kept coming. What had looked like a small gang inflated to a crowd with no end in sight.

Birch and I hustled to the space we’d cleared. The Camry came to life and shot forward, bumping aside three decomposed cheerleaders. Its engine noise excited the dead. They filled the road from every direction. Their stench hit like gut-punches. Birch and I gagged on it. If not for the wind, we would’ve smelled them the moment we’d stepped out of the car and never let them catch us by surprise. Their wordless moans drowned out the sound of the Camry. Their putrid bodies filled the gap we’d made for the car.

On the other side of them, Della stopped and honked the horn.

She screamed out the window, her words lost in the din.

Sit tight, sit tight, I thought, reassuring myself, willing Della to comply.

The dead swirled around me and Birch. We froze.

They came within inches of us, but not one of them touched us. They stared at us; I stared back, wondering who those eyes had belonged to in life.

They lost interest and shifted their attention to the Camry. The bus riders encircled it and pawed at the windows and doors. Birch and I approached the car; the dead backed off and kept their distance, providing us a clear path. We separated, using their aversion to us to reopen the gap. I waved Della through.

She drove clear of the crash zone. I jumped into the passenger’s seat. Birch climbed in back with Christopher.

“What the hell was that?” Della said. “Why didn’t they attack you?”

“It’s a long story. Better I explain while we’re on the move. Drive us out of here.”

Della frowned at me, then glanced in the rearview mirror, and her frown deepened.

Ahead of us, more dead wandered into the road.

“Now, Della, please, before there are too many.”

“Dammit, Cornell,” she said. “You and your damn secrets.”

She slammed her foot on the gas. The acceleration thrust me against my seat. I scrambled to put on my seat belt as Della wove through the gathering dead. She clipped a few, but it paid to avoid them to prevent damaging the car. They kept coming for almost a minute before open road stretched ahead of us. After a while of easy driving, Della calmed, settled the car into the middle lane, smooth and sure, then spared a glance at me and said, “Talk. Now.”

 

THREE

 

Where to begin?

I didn’t want to keep it from Della. Hated to hold secrets. Only I didn’t know how to explain so much of what had occurred in Deadtown. Della and I had forged a bond, running together since we’d escaped a prison transformed into a death house by a fanatic warden. We clung to each other even more after our friend, Mason, who’d broken out with us, died. Then came the mess at Camp Cady, a small, hidden community of the living, where we’d met Birch and Christopher. From there, Birch and I made the trip to Baxtonville, or Deadtown, where the dead gathered in their masses and the strange Red Man who could destroy them or control them with his touch or a thought waited for us. Especially for Birch. Thousands of the dead. Hundreds of thousands, maybe. Of all the living folks who entered that place, only Birch and I left, and the Red Man kept Birch’s tongue. Making sense of it proved impossible for me, so how could I have explained it to Della? Part of me still wrestled with the dead walking, that they had a purpose, a resurrection for a reason. Thinking about it at all made me feel like an ant trying to understand a lawn mower as it rolled over my anthill.

Still, I told her as best I could.

“Fifteen, twenty years ago?” she said when I finished.

“Yeah, on a raid because Stradley and his death-torture cult stocked up on weapons, including nerve gas. Birch took part on behalf of the military.”

“He shot this Darrell Philip Stradley guy?”

“Twice,” I said.

Della glanced over her shoulder at Birch.

“How could someone who died so long ago come back now? Wouldn’t he be a rotted-out pile of bones?”

“You’d think, but nope. He’s the Red Man, one evil bastard when he lived, and a true-life monster now. Something made him different. When he resurrected, he got up as if he’d died only an hour before. He knows what made the dead rise. He knows whose eyes stare out from their flesh. He’s part of why this is happening, maybe even caused it.”

Christopher leaned forward between the front seats. “Why didn’t you kill him?”

“Don’t you think we tried? Every man who went to Deadtown died, except for Birch and me. The Red Man wants something from the two of us. With Birch, it’s personal. I get holding a grudge against the man who killed you, but what the hell does he want from me?”

“How’d you two make it out of Deadtown?” Della asked.

“Stradley put his mark in blood on our foreheads,” I said. “After that, the dead wouldn’t touch us. I walked right through them.”

“You figured that would protect you when you sent us back to the car,” Della said.

“I hoped it would.”

“Bastard. You should’ve told me. I thought you were dead for sure.”

“No time for a chat. Anyway, I wasn’t sure it would still work. Wouldn’t look good if I started bragging then wound up chow for the wormfeeders.”

“Hell of a way to test it.”

“Got us out of there, didn’t I?”

Della rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Idiot.”

Christopher flopped back into his seat, jammed in beside boxes of stuff he and Della had grabbed from Birch’s lab when they fled Camp Cady. “Is it like he says, Birch?”

Birch raised his head from scribbling in his notebook long enough to nod then resumed writing. He no longer spoke since Stradley ripped out his tongue.

“I wandered out of Deadtown. Stradley took Birch prisoner. Tortured him, maybe. I don’t know, and he won’t say. We met up later in a grocery store. Stradley meant us to, I’m sure. Let Birch go on purpose,” I said.

“It’s okay, now, Birch,” Christopher said. “We’ll look out for you. Right, Cornell?”

“Do our best.” I swiveled in my seat to see Birch.

Christopher raised a hand for a high five. Birch squinted at him, then raised his palm and completed the gesture without enthusiasm. I swear the hint of a smile creased in his lips, though, before he resumed writing.

“Shit, we got more dead,” Della said.

Ahead of us, the highway stretched long and open, marked in places by abandoned or wrecked vehicles. About half a mile up ahead, though, a line of bodies stretched from shoulder to shoulder. Shadows cast by the high sun hid the details, but the way they moved left no mistake. A wall of corpses crept toward us. They reminded me of when people in search parties link arms and move together, one giant, organism scouring the earth in their path for missing kids or dead bodies.

“Can we drive through them?” Della said.

The line looked at least four or five bodies deep, maybe deeper.

“We’d get stuck then surrounded,” I said.

“Don’t say we have to turn back,” Christopher said.

“Back to what?” I said. “We got the dead behind us too. Only escape is to keep heading for Lohatchie. We keep moving southwest.”

“Guess we take the exit then,” Della said.

Between us and the oncoming dead, an exit ramp offered an alternate route. We stuck to the highway because sideroads and backstreets came with more blockages—and more places for the dead to hide. But I saw no other option.

“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said.

Della drove us away from the dead. The exit spilled us onto a two-lane road heading east, nothing around but sawgrass and trees. A U-turn directed us west again. Ten minutes later, we passed a gas station. A fast-food joint came next. Then a strip mall. Soon we rolled into a proper town with shops and buildings lining Main Street. Except for me and Birch in Deadtown, none of us had seen anywhere but the road or Camp Cady, tucked out in the woods, for a long time.

Della slowed the car to a crawl. Even Birch set down his pen and looked.

I don’t know what I or the others hoped to see, but the instinct to seek life still kicked within us. That urge, after a long drive, when you first come into a civilized place, to search for the familiar, to orient yourself, and size up the people and places around you. Like a dead phone line, though, the town created expectations doomed to remain unfulfilled.

Della stopped the car. “Gun shop over there,” she said. “Grab some goodies?”

“Maybe.” I rolled down my window. Engine noise from our idling car. Birds singing in the trees amidst the rustle of leaves. No other sounds. “I don’t hear the dead.”

Christopher rolled his window down too. “Sounds clear. Not too much stink either.”

I twisted around in my seat. “What do you think, Birch?”

Birch lifted his gaze from his notebook for a few seconds, then resumed writing.

“Gotcha,” I said. “Thanks for your helpful input, Birch.”

Della placed her hand on my arm. “Cool it. He needs time.”

“He can have all the time he wants once we get to Lohatchie,” I said. “Pull up in front of the store.”

The Camry slid in at the curb, and Della killed the motor. The shop looked intact, front door shut, windows unbroken, not an item out of place in the meticulous storefront display of hunting and fishing gear. In the door hung a sign: “Closed. Please call again.” The neighboring shops looked fine too, as if nothing bad ever happened in this town, and it had died in its sleep of natural causes. It looked like the perfect illusion of a town. A mask of life.

“Mayberry,” Della said.

“Bedford Falls,” I said.

Christopher frowned, confused. “What?”

“Like the dead never touched here,” I said.

“How can that be?” Della said.

I scanned the street then climbed out of the car. Off to the south, the top of a Ferris wheel crested a line of trees. A traveling carnival. I called Della and Christopher out of the car.

“Think everyone was down there when the dead hit?” I said.

“At a carnival?” Della said.

“Small town like this? Sure. They all went for some excitement.”

“Think they’re still there?” Christopher said.

“Yeah, I do, or at least nearby,” I said. “Smell that? We’re getting too used to it, taking it for granted, but there’s death and rot in the air.”

Christopher sniffed a long breath through his nose, then frowned. “Ugh, wormfeeders.”

“Let’s make this quick.”

I tried the gun store door, locked, of course. I rummaged a hammer out of the tools in the Camry’s trunk, wrapped an old shirt around my hand and forearm, and took a whack at the door window. It shimmied in its frame. Another blow. It thumped but didn’t break. My blows hit too close to the center of the tempered glass. Planting my feet, I put all my strength into a whack at the upper corner, and the glass cracked. Splinters flew back at me. Another strike. The upper portion of the door shattered. I knocked broken glass free until I could reach in, unlock it, then swing it open. I closed my eyes and counted to ten to prepare for the interior gloom, then stepped over the litter of glass. After a look around, I swore. Someone had emptied the place and not too recently, judging by the dust gathered on the displays. Figure the proprietor saw the writing on the wall when the first reports of the living dead hit the news, quietly packed out his inventory, then ran for the hills.

Della called me from outside: “Cornell!”

I left the store. “Someone beat us to it. Damn place is picked clean.”

“Forget that,” she said. “Look!”

My gaze followed where she pointed: a white church with a tall steeple down at the far end of the road. The double doors of its entrance hung wide. Wormfeeders streamed out. Even at that distance, I saw their sights set on us. Okay, so what? We had a car, and they were too far to catch us. Even as I formed that thought, a chorus of moans came from the direction of that Ferris wheel as the vanguard of another dead mob appeared on the side streets to the south. From an alley no more than a hundred yards away, another line of them straggled into the sunshine.

“We’ve got go,” Della said.

“Sonofabitch,” I said.

The few dead in sight posed no real threat, but small groups grew fast into big crowds. The dead had a way of sounding the dinner bell when they saw the living, a link beyond living senses. No point in waiting around for things to worsen.

I jumped into the car. Della jolted us as she made a wild U-turn, then gunned the Camry back the way we’d come. Along the road, more of the dead emerged from the houses and shops we’d passed. The path before us narrowed. A throng rushed us from a side street, stumbling against the Camry, scrabbling at the windows with rotted, gray-and-purple fingertips.

“Hang on,” Della said.

She gunned the engine.

Half a dozen wormfeeders clung to our bumpers, door handles, fenders, anywhere they could grab on, dragging themselves along the road, weighing us down. With every bit of speed they stole, I watched more of them assemble and constrict the road ahead, narrowing our exit until I thought of that Bible adage about running a camel through the eye of a needle, except I was no rich man, and heaven didn’t wait on the other side—only the way out of town.

More wormfeeders grabbed on as others dropped off.

The engine screamed against their weight.

“We’re not going to make it,” Della said.

 

FOUR

 

“Stop the car,” I said. “Stop!”

“No way! We stop, we’re done.” Christopher thrust himself between the front seats. “There are too many.”

“Trust me. It’s the only way we get out of here.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Della said.

“They don’t know who’s in the car,” I said.

“I don’t think they give a good goddamn,” Della said.

“They will when they see me and Birch.”

Birch tugged Christopher into the backseat and leaned forward in his place. He tapped his forehead, showing Della the spot where the Red Man had placed his now invisible mark.

“What if it doesn’t work this time?” she said.

“We’re goners either way.” Our speed slowed to a crawl. More dead surrounded us. Their wordless moans filled our ears, making my point for me. “It can’t hurt to try.”

Della slapped the steering wheel. “I hate these fucking wormfeeders.” She lifted her foot off the gas. The car ground to a halt.

The dead covered it like beetles scrambling over a scrap of taffy, like maggots on a dead bird. I opened my door a crack then shoved. Birch did the same. I figured he sized things up the same way I did. Good. That meant at least some spark of the will to live still flickered inside him. The dead weighed against our doors. We cracked them open and shoved until rotting hands yanked them wide and groped for us. They dragged me from the car, leaned over me with their slack-jawed mouths full of broken teeth protruding from gray, melted-cellophane gums. Then their touch fell away. Their many eyes glared at me and Birch with unwelcome recognition. As I’d done far too often of late, I stared right back.

I picked myself up from the pavement and stepped forward; the dead retreated.

Another step. They backed off farther.

Birch followed my lead. Those clinging to the car let go and slunk away on limbs shredded by road rash. Not far, but they emptied the road east, a channel lined by corpse-spectators waiting for a parade. Word traveled, but only in one direction. Behind us remained a solid sea of dead flesh. My personal jackal laughed; the sound echoed through my head.

“Guess the Red Man still has plans for you and me,” I said to Birch.

Birch frowned and flipped his middle finger at the dead.

“Yeah, right, fuck the dead, fuck the Red Man.”

We dropped back into the car, shut the doors. I slouched in my seat.

Della stared at me, and I didn’t meet her gaze.

“Well, go on. They won’t stop us now,” I said.

She put the car in gear and drove. The dead made no move against us.

Their myriad eyes only watched. Eyes connected to the dead, linked to a force out in the universe, full of rancid bitterness and concentrated hate, and headed our way in its full fury and malice. The Red Man had shown me that much in Deadtown even if I didn’t understand it.

Soon we passed the last of the wormfeeders. Della floored the gas. The Camry shrieked and shot down the road, leaving them all behind. No one spoke until we reached more dead, a few hundred, maybe, blocking our road, leaving us only one way to continue, a direction we didn’t want to go: north. We took the turn anyway.

“I swear I saw some of the same wormfeeders from back in that town,” Christopher said. “A guy with John Deere cap. A lady in a Prince T-shirt. Anyone else see them?”

“Those ain’t exactly uncommon items,” I said.

“They looked the same. Same faces, same pieces rotted away. No one else noticed?”

I shrugged. “Like it says in that old vampire book, kid, the dead travel fast.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Christopher said.

“Means the living travel slow,” Della said. “We’ve been driving all day, and we haven’t hardly made any progress with all this turning around and doubling back.”

“Ah, forget it.” Christopher slumped against his seatback.

We drove until the sun sank below the horizon. Worn out and wired, afraid to keep driving in the dark, we parked for the night at a gas station and garage. Pulled the car into the workshop, then shut and locked the door behind us.

Christopher raided the adjoining convenience store for food and brought back bags of chips, cans of chili, beef jerky, and bottled water. We ate the stale but edible chips and stashed the canned stuff in the car. Only Birch dared chow down on the jerky. We took turns standing watch and sleeping in a small, windowless back office.

All night the dead ignored us except in my dreams.

After my watch, I crashed hard. I’d slept little since fleeing Deadtown. Partly from being on the run, partly because I didn’t want to dream. The night before we entered Deadtown, the Red Man reached into my head and sent me messages and nightmares the way he’d been sending them to Birch since the dead began to walk, and he peeked inside my head while he did it. I hated it almost as much as I feared it. Every time I slept, I wished his touch wouldn’t come, but lately, it did more often than not, and tonight offered no exception.

I closed my eyes to find myself on the run, not from the Red Man, or the living dead, or even the police, but from a man with an oversized shotgun and a novelty hunter’s cap, like those goofball foam hats sold in sports arenas. He tiptoed through a forest that resembled a watercolor painting more than anything real and took great pains to keep quiet, making exaggerated tiptoes with his shotgun tucked under one arm, the ends of its barrels like mouths eager to spit lead. He walked past my hiding place inside a hollowed-out tree. I poked my head out, saw things the hunter didn’t. Behind a thick stand of trees hid a nurse straight out of a Tex Avery cartoon, full of curves and stuffed into a uniform straining at its buttons and seams. A boy hid behind another tree. He held a giant, all-day lollipop and wore a shirt that read “Little Orphan Boy.” At a third tree hid a man in a long, white lab coat. His hair stuck out in all directions. A flask bubbled in his hand, streaming vapors into the air. Blood covered his fingers. An overblown, silly-looking gun hung holstered at his waist. The hunter came on, tiptoe after tiptoe, oblivious.

Little Orphan Boy dropped his lolly. It hit the ground with a soft thump.

The hunter stopped, listened, only feet away.

The boy eyed the dirty candy. His face screwed up, and tears brimmed from his eyes.

Foxy nurse tried to shush him. The scientist ignored them both, pulled a test tube from his pocket, then poured its blue fluid contents into the flask. Colors rippled in the mixture, and sparks shot out. A mushroom cloud appeared in the flask, sprouting tendrils of glowing steam. When it settled down, the scientist drank it.

Afraid to see, I looked down and found myself dressed in a black-and-white striped shirt, black pants, and black gloves—a cartoon bank robber.

“Holy hell,” I muttered.

Little Orphan Boy lost it then and broke out bawling.

The hunter smiled and stalked him.

The wild-haired man’s potion kicked in. With an explosion of smoke, he transformed into a hideous, hairy monster, popping the seams of his lab coat. He snarled, jumped from his hiding place, and rushed the hunter, who aimed his shotgun and fired, but the shot went wild. The recoil hurtled the hunter against a tree. He recovered and aimed again. As the beast-man reached him, another eruption of smoke signaled the reverse of his metamorphosis, and he reverted to human form. He grinned, embarrassed as the hunter raised the shotgun, and donned eyeglasses from his coat pocket. “You wouldn’t shoot a man with glasses, would you?”

The hunter’s finger wrapped around the trigger.

I didn’t want to know the answer. I forced myself awake, snapped upright from the floor, and banged my thigh against the desk, waking Christopher, who slept beside me.

“What’s wrong?” he said.

“Nothing. Bad dream. Back to sleep.”

He closed his eyes, and his breathing soon settled into a deep rhythm.

I left the office and joined Della on watch. Birch sat in the Camry.

“Can’t sleep?” Della said.

“Sleep just fine, but I can’t not dream,” I said.

“Oh, lord, here we go. We’ve reached the point in our relationship where we tell each other our dreams. Oh, Della, what’s it mean when my teeth fall out? Can I just go fight some of the wormfeeders instead?”

I laughed. “I hear ya. This ain’t actually my dream.”

“Meaning what?”

“Someone sent it to me.”

Della eyed me, assessing me, smart-ass or serious. “Okay, talk.”

I did, and it resonated for her. I explained how the Red Man sent Birch dreams, how he’d started doing the same for me, and how I believed he’d sent this one, delivering a message whose meaning beyond the obvious eluded me.

“He knows about all of us?” she said.

“If he’s in my head, why wouldn’t he?”

“Think he knows where we are?”

“I think he’s herding us.”

“With the dead?”

“Yes.”

“I wondered why they seemed determined to keep us from going the direction we want but never interfering with us heading north. Chalked it off to coincidence.”

“He wants us up there for some reason, is my guess.”

“What reason?”

“Don’t know.”

“Maybe it is just coincidence.”

I shook my head.

Acceptance entered Della’s expression. It hurt me to see it. Acceptance meant giving up hope for a better option. I put my arms around her and pressed her tight to me. She returned the embrace. We kissed. I sat the rest of the watch with her.

In the morning, we drove out and again found it impossible to head south or west, those directions clogged with wormfeeders. Any attempt to plow through them would only jam up the car on their bodies. We landed on a rural route north, no sign of the dead. Coming around a long curve, though, we found something even more terrifying: Fifty yards down the road, two living people stood beside a pair of motorcycles, one with a small cargo trailer hitched to it. At the sound of our car, they turned and looked our way.

 

FIVE

 

“Are the wormfeeders starting a biker gang?” Christopher said.

“Doubtful,” I said.

“What do we do?” Della said. “Double back or roll up and meet the neighbors?”

“I’ve never been the neighborly type,” I said.

“If we turn around, won’t the dead send us back this way?” Christopher said.

“Kid’s got a point,” Della said.

I twisted in my seat to see Birch. “What do you say, Birch? Go forward or retreat?”

Birch only glanced at me, didn’t even stop scribbling.

“Thanks for the advice,” I said.

While we debated, the two bikers wheeled their motorcycles into the road, blocking it, and leaned against them as if waiting for us.

“There’s the welcoming committee,” Della said.

“Could be more of them hiding in the brush or farther up the road.” I opened my door. “Stay here for now.”

Outside, the steamy air carried the odor of death, less intense than it had been, which suggested fewer wormfeeders in our immediate area. I held a revolver at my side as I walked in front of the car.

“Hey there,” I called.

One of the bikers waved back. “Hi.”

“Haven’t seen many live folks for a while,” I said. “How’re y’all getting by?”

The one who’d waved removed his helmet, revealing a gaunt, pale face and sunken eyes inside indigo rings. “We’re alive. That’s pretty much the whole ballgame these days.”

“That it is,” I said.

“Listen, man, we don’t want trouble or nothing. You want to pass by, we’ll move our bikes. I just wanted a chance to talk before you moved on. We hardly ever see anyone alive. Thought maybe you’ve heard some news.”

“Nothing but the headlines, and they’re all bad.”

The second biker removed her helmet and shook loose her dark hair. She, too, looked thin and pallid, wasted, hungry, her eyes dull, expression flat. “My name’s Rhea. This is Damon.”

I nodded. “Name’s Cornell.”

Damon popped a hatch on the cargo trailer and reached into it. I cocked the hammer of my gun, ready to aim and fire, but then eased it back home when he produced a bottle.

“Y’all want to jaw a few minutes, I got some single malt to share.”

“Haven’t had that in a good long time,” I said.

“Getting hard to come by.”

One of the car doors behind me opened, and Birch emerged. He walked up beside me, eyed the gun, shook his head, and crossed the distance between us and Damon. His notebook poked out from under his arm. Birch took the bottle from Damon, read the label, and smiled. Damon stared at him, confused.

“You want a drink?” he said.

Birch nodded and winked.

“That’s Birch,” I said. “He’s quiet, but he likes his whisky. Guess we’re taking you up on your offer.”

I gestured for Della and Christopher to hang back in the car, knowing they would cover us if things turned bad, then joined Birch and the bikers. Rhea pulled plastic cups from the cargo trailer. Birch returned the bottle to Damon, who opened it and poured us each a measure.

“Cheers.” He knocked his back in one gulp then exhaled satisfaction.

I sipped mine, savoring the taste and the burn. So did Birch.

“The others in the car are welcome to join us. We don’t bite,” Rhea said.

“Pardon my asking,” I said, noticing close up the extremity of their pallor, “but you both look a little, uh, under the weather.”

“Yep, got us a cold or the flu or something. Been dogging us for days. Saps all the energy out of you, but what are you gonna do, right? Ain’t bad enough the dead trying to kill everyone, naw, here’s a fever and some chills to go with it.”

“I hear you. That sucks.” I watched Birch, and his expression told me the same question pinged around inside his head: How can they be ill? It had been months since either of us had seen anyone sick. Birch’s research at Camp Cady had found that for the dead time had slowed to a crawl, maybe even close to stopped at a cellular level and that something similar had occurred in living people. That’s the simple, explain-it-to-a-bank-robber version. I don’t pretend to get all the science behind it or why it only worked on a microscopic scale while the world at large went on unchanged. Bottom line, the effect slowed rotting and aging, retarded cellular processes to the point of making bacterial or viral illnesses impossible to catch because cells didn’t reproduce fast enough to make you sick. Damage by invader cells took so long to manifest that immune system cells, operating only slightly faster, wiped out pathogens before they took hold. Maybe Damon and Rhea mistook malnourishment for illness or lied to cover up for some kind of dope sickness. Or maybe things were changing.

“Do us a favor and cover your mouth if you sneeze,” I said.

The pair chuckled with little enthusiasm. Standing around talking seemed to drain them. They moved slow, spoke softly, and squinted whenever the sun hit their faces.

“Where you heading?” Damon said.

“Hoping to go west, but there are too many wormfeeders.”

“Yeah, they’re thick in that direction,” Rhea said. “Gets better going east. We’re on our way to Miami. Heard word there are other living people there, and a lot less of the dead.”

“Where’d you hear that?” I said.

Damon refilled our cups. “Fat Jake. He rode with us for a few days. He’d been there a while but left to look for his brother. Found him dead and decided to go back. We got overrun a few towns north of here, though, and he didn’t make it. Bunch of wormfeeders came out of the grocery store we were scavenging. Bad day.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“You’re welcome to ride with us down that way if you want,” Rhea said.

“Might take you up on that. Have to talk to my people,” I said.

“Sure, go on,” she said. “We’re in no rush.”

I walked back to the car and clued in Della and Christopher.

“They seem like a threat?” Della said.

“Seem like they can barely keep their eyes open and their feet under them,” I said. “Say they got the flu.”

“They don’t look too tough. We can take them for sure,” Christopher said.

I frowned at him. “Take them? Like jump them and steal their stuff?”

“I didn’t mean that. Like if they give us trouble, we could handle them. I don’t want to jump anyone or steal anything,” he said.

“Gotcha. Yeah, maybe we can take them if they give us a hard time. But they’re alive, and that means they’re tough enough to survive. Don’t underestimate them or anyone else we meet.”

I scratched the back of my neck, feeling for my jackal’s hot breath. For once, it felt cool and dry. “All right, we’ll drive with them for a while, see how it goes. We’re heading the same direction now anyway. Safety in numbers, I suppose. Maybe there’s something to this about Miami. We’re seeing a lot less of the dead traveling this way, so who knows?”

I worked it out with Damon and Rhea to follow us. That limited the risk of them herding us into an ambush. They agreed without fuss, relief in their eyes at letting someone else run the show for a while. They rolled their bikes to the shoulder. After a last nip at the single malt, Birch and I climbed back into the Camry. Della drove past our new friends. Their bike engines growled as they fell in behind us, their ghostly faces hidden again inside their helmets.

We drove the rest of the day, finding more clear roads than not, but detouring around the dead in some places and finding alternate routes in others where wrecked vehicles blocked our path. Heading east offered much easier going than west, but pockets of the dead and abandoned or wrecked vehicles still made progress slow. In the side-view mirror, Damon’s and Rhea’s black helmets reflected sunlight, bopping up and down with the road. When twilight signaled time for us to stop for the night, I saw another dark shape far behind them. A four-legged shadow keeping pace with us, shimmering in the heat mirage rising off the road. A shape out of my mind. Its laugh echoed but only for me. Its breath burned the back of my neck. Then it vanished in a wisp of shade.

“Damn it,” I said. “Where are all the dead?”

“Don’t complain,” Della said. “We haven’t’ had it this good for a long time.”

“I prefer seeing the knife aimed at my throat.”

We camped for the night in a fenced-in utility yard at the side of the highway. It held a pair of mobile, electronic road signs, which we wheeled out by hand to make space for our car and the motorcycles. We ate the last of the food scavenged from the gas station mart. Rhea and Damon produced another bottle of whisky, not as good as the first one, but no one complained. Even Christopher took a taste, his first. We all laughed at the face he made as he swallowed it and the sputtering cough that followed.

Afterward, our new traveling companions settled in by their cargo trailer to sleep. Della and Christopher took the Camry. Birch and I sat first watch. Cloudless sky and a waning moon lit the world bright. The night breeze blew around us, sweet-smelling and quiet.

“The air ain’t right,” I said.

Birch raised an eyebrow.

“No stink.”

He inhaled a deep breath, exhaled it in a long stream, and then nodded. He pointed to his ears and shook his head.

“Right. No moans. Can’t remember the last night I passed without hearing those fuckers. Goddamn, their voices carry.” Tension knotted above my eyes. I tried to rub it away, but it persisted. “Either there aren’t wormfeeders around, or they suddenly turned stealthy.”

Birch shrugged.

“Used to be I couldn’t shut you up.” I stood, stretched my back and legs. “I’m not exactly the ‘share-your-feelings’ type, but you ever want to talk about what the Red Man did to you after things went south in Deadtown, I’m all ears.”

Birch looked me in the eye. For a moment, it seemed he wanted to talk, but frustration crushed him as his physical inability to do so collided with his urge to communicate. He made an awful, hopeless face, then flipped me the bird.

“I hear you.” I grabbed my flashlight from the ground. “Listen, I’m going to check things out. I won’t sleep if I don’t see what’s out there. Keep the gate closed until I’m back.”

The chain link rattled as I shut it behind me. The latch clicked home.

I kept the flashlight off. The moonlight made it unnecessary.

Earth and gravel crunched underfoot as I walked to the road. A hundred yards back the way we’d come, I found nothing but empty blacktop and overgrown shoulder. I returned, passed our camp, and stalked another hundred yards in the direction we headed. Found the same. If something out there meant us harm, it hid too well for me to find it.

I took my time walking, sniffing the clean air, listening for any sign of life bigger than a raccoon. For a while, I gazed at the moon and considered how low we’d fallen as a species, reduced from sending men to walk the lunar surface to scrabbling to stay alive. The visions the Red Man had sent to my dreams showed a cosmic darkness sweeping over the universe, a malignant force ravenous for every life it encountered. A shapeless consciousness of shadow, brimming with hate and anger, and all the rotten emotions that make people the utterly flawed creatures we are. All the burdens of darkness unbalanced by light of any kind. That balance differentiated people from other creatures, our equal capabilities to do both awful and wonderful things.

Our light. Our dark.

Our capacity to choose, to learn. Our mistakes taught us to be better.

Before the dead plague, before prison, I’d held that light within reach with the woman I loved, Evelyn, and both of us failed to grasp it.

Our last bank job ripped it away from us. One final hit of greed and recklessness before we quit, went straight to raise our child growing inside her womb. Two lives ended when bullets ripped into Evelyn. My own life was thrown into endless darkness when I killed the man who shot her and two more in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guilt and grief made me a willing prisoner. Lock me up forever. Throw away the key, please. I deserved it for failing to protect the only lives other than my own that mattered to me in this rancid, corrupt world. I pled guilty to make sure I got a life sentence and not capital punishment. I didn’t deserve to die and escape. I needed to feel it for the rest of my days. I’d thought I’d made my peace with it and with Evelyn’s ghost, by later choosing to seek my freedom and live again in this dead world, but even when you’re okay with grief, failure, and regret, even after you’ve put them in proper context, compartmentalized them, and moved on, they have a knack of shooting to the surface when you least expect it. Then they wrap their cold, raw tendrils around your brain. They suffocate you, and squeeze your heart, and drag you down into their darkness. In the first true respite I’d known since that deadly day, all that guilt rushed back to me.

The moon and the stars blurred as tears filled my eyes.

They burned down my cheeks.

I stood there, silent, and cried, and stared at the blank heavens and light generations older than me when it reached my eyes. I lost track of time. The moon shifted to the horizon. My tears dried up. I wish I could say I felt unburdened after releasing all that pent-up emotion, but I only felt drained as I returned to our makeshift camp.

Into that emptiness flowed fear when I saw the gate hung open.

Rhea’s motorcycle stood outside the pen.

A voice whispered in my mind to stay cool, stay cautious. Every ounce of me wanted to rush in and investigate, but the smart part of me held back, reminded me that living predators still roamed the world, and they didn’t stink like the dead or make brainless sounds.

I crept toward the open gate.

Footsteps came from inside the fence.

Shadowed bodies moved around the Camry.

A muffled voice made a frightened whine.

One of the bodies approached the open gate, wheeling Damon’s bike with its cargo trailer attached. I waited until the bike and trailer filled the exit then flashed my light at the blacked-out face.

 

SIX

 

Damon squealed and recoiled from the brightness. The illumination turned his skin translucent, revealing veins running beneath it. His eyes bulged.

“Where the hell you going, Damon?” I said.

“Rhea, oh, shit! Rhea,” he shouted.

I swept the light across the pen. Birch lay facedown in the dirt where I’d left him, red wetness smeared on the back of his neck. Beside the Camry stood Rhea, dragging Christopher, gagged and bound with cord, out of the passenger side seat. Della, who’d crashed in the back seat, remained out of sight.

“Get him, Damon, get him!” Rhea screamed.

A high-pitched snarl grated my ears as Damon charged me. He reached to draw something at his waist from under his coat, but before he cleared it, I rushed forward and planted an uppercut with my fist wrapped around the heavy flashlight to the bottom of his chin. His jaw clacked shut. His feet left the ground. When he landed on his back, I pinned him in place with my knee and cracked the flashlight against his nose. Blood gushed out. He gagged for breath. I grabbed his hand, still reaching under his coat, and found it wrapped around a revolver. Another flashlight punch, this one to his throat. His fingers loosened. I yanked the gun from him.

Rhea shrieked and opened fire, but the car interfered with her line of sight. Bullets whizzed by me. I tumbled off Damon, rolled across the ground for cover behind a low hill. I lost count of how many shots Rhea fired, but none of them hit me, and wouldn’t you know it, the second I realized that fact, howling laughter rolled through the night, through my mind, from my old pal, the jackal.

“Yeah, real fucking funny,” I muttered.

I lifted my head as Rhea dragged Christopher across the pen. She stopped in the gate, gun still in hand, and knelt to check Damon. He spluttered blood and tried to sit up.

“What the hell is wrong with you two?” I called out.

Rhea fired in the direction of my voice. Her shot went wide.

“Shut the fuck up!” she cried.

I eased my head up to check my shot on her. She spied my movement and fired. Two more shots, both into the dirt mound in front of me, sending a spray of soil and grit into my face—then came the click on an empty chamber. I didn’t wait. I sprang up and fired four times. My first two shots went in low, but I corrected and took heart when I heard Rhea cry out and then topple over. Two shots left. I rushed in to finish her off but held my fire when I saw what I’d accomplished. My two low shots had hit Damon in the head and neck. The other two took Rhea in the stomach and lower chest. She lay gasping for breath, her gun spilled out of reach. She lay across Christopher’s legs. I thanked the heavens none of my shots hit him.

After taking Rhea’s gun and checking her and Damon for other weapons, I yanked the gag from Christopher’s mouth.

“Holy shit, Cornell. They wanted to eat me!” he said.

I untied his hands and legs. “What are you talking about?”

“They left Della tied up in the Camry. They were kidnapping me to eat me.”

“Della’s okay?”

“I don’t know.” Christopher stood, rubbing his wrists where ropes had bitten them. “It was their watch. I guess they knocked out Birch, and I was afraid they’d killed you.”

“Go check on Della while I see to Birch.”

He ran off to the Camry. Birch’s torso rose and fell as he breathed. I shifted him onto his back, and he roused. They’d hit him on the back of the head hard enough to stun but not kill him, a precious bit of luck. Della emerged from the car, walked to Damon and Rhea, spit on Damon, then kicked Rhea in the side. Rhea yelped and hollered, clutching her wounds with bloody hands.

We dragged her and Damon into the pen. A woozy Birch and I unhitched the trailer, then rolled their motorcycles down the roadside slope into the woods, out of reach, out of sight. While Della drove the Camry into the open, Christopher raided their trailer. Then he lurched away from it and screamed.

Unloaded liquor, ammunition, odds and ends such as rope, tarpaulins, camping lanterns, and similar gear circled him on the ground. Inside the trailer, though, lay Rhea and Damon’s food stock, fresh meat wrapped in plastic. Human arms and legs, other bits I couldn’t identify, even the partial remains of a head, all wriggling and twitching with unnatural life. Nauseated by the sight, I sifted through them, counting too many to have come from a single body. An eye opened on an ankle. I jolted from the trailer, stumbled, almost fell. When I forced myself to look again, more eyes looked back at me from all the limbs, staring at me with naked expectation.

I knew what they wanted. They wanted me to die.

I slammed the trailer shut.

Pointing at the stash on the ground, I said, “Load that stuff in the trunk.”

Before Christopher did, I plucked one item out of the pile, a padlock with a key stuck in it, probably for locking the trailer, but Damon had gotten lazy. Rhea glared as I entered the pen.

“How long you been doing that?” I asked.

She spit blood at me. It fell short and landed in the dirt.

“It’s not the flu, is it? You look all sick because you eat that rotten, dead flesh.”

“Eat the flesh. Steal their power,” Rhea said. “They don’t hunt us. They don’t bother us. We get a free pass.”

“Guess you smell like them.” I closed the gate then placed the padlock through the latch. It snapped shut with a metal click. I threw the key as far as I could into the brush beyond the road. “Maybe you’re already half-dead inside. Whatever it is, at least you won’t go hungry for a while in there since you got each other.”

Rhea snarled at me, tried to lunge, but fell to her knees, hacking and spitting up blood.

I helped Birch into the car, then climbed in beside Della.

She turned the Camry around and drove down the road, honking the horn twice as we passed the pen. We risked night travel, hoping to leave the memory of Damon and Rhea in our dust. Few other predators I’d encountered left me so disgusted. As abhorrent as I found the idea of cannibalism for survival, it made a desperate kind of sense. I could understand it if not accept or excuse it. But this? No, not this. Eating the flesh of the living dead, eating toxic meat with living eyes that stared at you, hated you, wanted to murder you, flesh that held consciousnesses embedded where they had no business being. Eating poison. Literal corruption. Devouring the perverted version of humanity. Nourishing yourself on the worst thing imaginable a human being could suffer. That reached next-level repulsive, a taboo too horrible to contemplate breaking. I thanked my luck for walking off to scout the road, or else I might have wound up dead, leaving the others for meals.

“They planned on coming back,” Christopher said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“They wanted to take you out tonight, hit the strongest first, they said, then come back and pick us each off along the road. When they couldn’t find you, they panicked and decided to butcher me, then follow the rest of you along the road, grab Della in a few days, then Birch, and then come for you, Cornell, when you were on your own.”

“Their brains must be rotting if they thought they would get us that way. What reduces a person to that?” I said. “I’d rather die.”

“You saw how they looked,” Della said. “Like addicts, like that dead flesh altered their metabolism. There’s more to it than survival. I wonder if they could even still eat normal food.”

“That possible, Birch? Junkies for the flesh of the living dead?” I said.

Birch reclined in the seat behind me, eyes closed, head resting on a piled-up sweatshirt. Della had cleaned and bandaged the bloody bump where Damon had hit him. He raised his head enough to see me, shrugged, and then nodded once before closing his eyes again.

“What a world,” I said.

“At least we know, we meet up with any other strung-out, pasty-looking people, we shoot ’em first and ask questions later,” Della said.

“Amen,” I said.

The road brought fewer and fewer signs of the dead as we traveled southeast, rolling on toward Miami. The air, unbelievably, grew even fresher and sweeter. Wildlife appeared. More birds in the sky. Squirrels in the trees. Snakes. Even a few alligators parked in a canal with their eyes and snouts prodding out of the water. Houses and stores looked cleaner and less broken than most, and we made good time. The rhythm of the road lulled me to sleep. I needed the rest, but I’d have paid a fortune for a giant, steaming cup of coffee to keep awake because as soon as slumber gripped me, the Red Man touched my mind.

I “awakened” inside my head, my body trapped in sleep.

Black nothing surrounded me. My dream flesh ran cold with the chill of the Red Man’s touch. A ruby light winked in the distance, a channel marker bobbing in the waves. I approached it, my legs heavy with dream sensation, the feel of trying to run through water. The light blinked out, then on, out, on, out, on, and came no closer, as if a treadmill scrolled beneath my feet—until raucous laughter came out of the darkness. Part of it I knew well, the bark of my old jackal friend. Part of it stabbed my soul, the laugh of the Red Man.

The ruby light erupted into a searing bright sphere. I cast my hand across my eyes and stumbled backward. The light surrounded me. The red intensified. My existence turned crimson, and some immeasurable length of time passed. The brightness faded. My eyes adjusted to shapes and shadows, a world delineated in red and utterly alien yet familiar. As my sight recovered, I recognized Acme Wonderland, a cartoon theme park I’d visited as a kid. Death stained my frivolous memories of it. Charred and cracked skulls littered the fairway. The entrances to all the rides resembled cave mouths brimmed with jagged stalactite teeth. Slowed-down, carnival music played like a dirge. Red light flared and revealed a tower of skulls reaching toward the sky. High atop it sat the Red Man on a death throne. He lounged in his seat like an emperor sated on power. Coruscating red light crept from the many scars on his body. A hundred eyes opened and glared from every part of him, his body a window to the deranged dead. A thousand more blinked open and stared, many searching the vast darkness swirling above as it spread and reached for him. He offered me a paternalistic smile that made me shiver to my bones.

I wanted to scream myself awake but couldn’t force the slightest sound from my throat.

Lazy, indifferent, the Red Man pointed in the direction of the park’s largest ride, Connie Caribou Mountain. A force outside myself turned me—or held me still while the park swiveled. Who knew how things worked when a dead man controlled your dreams? The Connie Caribou Mountain roller coaster filled the red sky, an architect’s nightmare of loops and knots, twisted tracks, and lines of cars racing along the rails at breakneck speed.

Connie and her gang of friends stood at the entrance, each a surreal blend of cartoon animal and actor inside a character suit, but all twice human size and putrescent. Connie’s ribs showed through torn patches on her trademark maple leaf print dress, and one loopy, cartoon eye hung partway out of its socket on a bloody strand of optic nerve. Marvelous Moose posed beside her, his super-hero cape and costume pitted with holes. Skulls dangled from his antlers. His own skull peeked out from rotted flesh; his eyes glared livid in their exposed sockets. Foxy Pinewood came next, matted with blood, his fine three-piece suit torn and smeared with gore. Decayed fur exposed muscle and bone, but Foxy’s face remained as roguish and handsome as ever, his sly tongue licking his chops. A sheriff’s star hung from his suit. A pair of rusty six-shooters dangled at his waist. The motherly Darlene Deer paced beside him, her dress torn. Tumorous, apple-sized growths dangled from her throat and ribs. A fierce muzzle full of fangs replaced her placid face.

Saturday-morning cartoon, sugary cereal binges had never looked like this.

I didn’t know if I should scream or laugh.

The piercing bleat of an airhorn filled the park.

Three figures appeared, fleeing from the mouth of the Polly Platypus River Run.

Little Orphan Boy. Mad Lab Coat. Red-Hot Nurse.

I clamped my eyes shut tight, counted to ten, and looked again. Still there, as if the entire dream hit pause while I couldn’t see it. I checked myself for my cartoon robber outfit, but I wore only my regular clothes, a hint that I did not play the same game as the others.

The three huddled together, unaware of Connie Caribou’s crew eyeing them from the Mountain. Again, I tried to shout, to warn them, but my lips produced not so much as a whisper.

I ran toward them on rubber legs and feet dripping invisible wet cement.

From his throne, the Red Man laughed.

Foxy Pinewood drew a gun and fired. The shot passed over Mad Lab Coat’s head. Now the trio dashed to the next ride over, Captain Capybara’s Congo Cruise. Marvelous Moose flew after them. The rest of Connie’s crew joined the chase. Connie and Darlene switched to all fours. Foxy slinked along behind them. In the Congo Cruise’s entrance awaited Captain Capybara, his nautical attire hanging in shreds from his decomposing body, a black tongue dangling from a mouth of overlong, razor-edged teeth.

I managed another step, then two more, a fifth, but drew no closer to the cartoon stand-ins for Christopher, Birch, and Della. Marvelous Moose reached them first and cut off the path to the next ride. The others soon surrounded them. Little Orphan Boy, Mad Lab Coat, and Red-Hot Nurse cowered, trapped.

A hand gripped my shoulder.

With a jolt, I screamed, at last finding my voice.

“Too late,” the Red Man said.

He squeezed my shoulder until it ached.

The cartoon monstrosities closed on my friends.

Connie Caribou took the first bite, wrapping her rotting mouth around Little Orphan Boy’s arm. Captain Capybara took the second, biting into Mad Lab Coat’s leg. Darlene Deer snapped at Red-Hot Nurse, champing down on her shoulder in an enormous, bloody chomp.

“Go ahead, now, and scream,” the Red Man said.

I did. My entire body trembled with it.

Then light filled my eyes. Hot air and stale sweat. The ugly, dry taste of waking up.

I banged my knee against the underside of the dashboard and yelped as I fought against a tightness pinning me until I recognized my seat belt and undid it. I sat alone in the unmoving car. A swift push opened my door, releasing me to stumble out onto all fours and dry heave into the weeds of a crumbling blacktop parking lot. When my convulsions ended, I clambered to my feet, steadied myself, and checked my surroundings: a gas station on the edge of an old shopping mall parking lot. Across from the Camry, Birch and Christopher siphoned gas from abandoned cars into our gas cans. Della approached me, concerned.

“We let you sleep. Figured you needed it,” she said. “You all right?”

I nodded and squinted against the high sun. “What time is it?”

“Almost noon. We had to go slow in the dark. We passed pockets of the dead. Covered sixty, seventy miles. Best we’ve ever done, I think.”

“Okay, good.”

I leaned on the car and reached in for a bottle of water. I drained most of it at a gulp.

“If it keeps on like this, we’ll reach Miami this afternoon, no problem,” Della said.

What to make of that good news, I wondered? The water restored me enough to notice the clean taste of the air and the absence of the dead’s anguished cries. Della offered me a worried smile. I returned it to reassure her while I struggled to regain my bearings and waited for the ground underfoot to feel solid and real. I tried to make sense of the quiet, ordinary morning occurring around me, hoping it could lift me from the terrifying remnants of my nightmare.

A mechanical sound broke the peace.

The grumbling motor of an approaching vehicle.

In unison, Della and I looked to the highway.

From back the way we came, a truck rushed into sight.

 

SEVEN

 

“Find cover, now!” I said.

I grabbed two rifles from the Camry then herded Della, Christopher, and Birch behind a rusting bulldozer parked in the high weeds beside the gas station building. I handed one rifle to Della. Christopher already had one slung on his shoulder, the kid always cautious and prepared the way I’d taught him back at Camp Cady. The truck grumbled along, visible through gaps in the mechanisms of the bulldozer. It brought a stench with it, a cloud of decay that rolled ahead, pushed into the air by the truck’s motion.

Stains of gore and scraps of ripped flesh covered the front hood and grill, remnants from collisions with the dead. Armored all around with sheets of steel, the truck looked impenetrable except for openings for the driver and narrow windows along the side of the body. Gun ports. An armored car. I’d studied them a long time in my bank-robbing days. Never could find a sure way to knock one over. I understood the appeal of riding behind such defenses, able to crush the dead under the wheels or plow through crowds of them, but I also saw a rolling deathtrap ravenous for fuel, straining under the weight of its shielded mass and forcing constant stops to gas up. Such a motored fortification might breed overconfidence that might leave its driver and passengers stuck high and dry amidst a thousand pissed-off wormfeeders when they overwhelmed its unprotected wheels. Better to move fast, avoid them altogether how we’d done since hitting the road. Never any downside to making a fast getaway.

The truck slowed then crawled into the gas station, bumping over the curb apron before grinding crumbling blacktop beneath its tires. It stopped. Plates slid back from the side gun ports. Shadows moved behind them. People inside the truck looked out. Then they closed. The engine died and clanked as it cooled.

Seconds passed. A minute. Two.

I hated when circumstances forced me to sit tight and wait, to let tension and uncertainty rise while the world carried on in total indifference. Insects flitted in the hot sun. Birds chirped. On the far side of the gas station, two squirrels chased each other around the trunk of a tree. But the odor of death wafted from the truck into the clean air I’d grown to relish, a reminder never to take anything for granted.

The truck bounced and creaked.

The back door banged open. A woman emerged.

Tall and muscular. Dressed in jeans, a khaki tank top, and an equipment vest from which hung binoculars, a knife, and ammunition for the scoped rifle slung from one shoulder. She wore a black ball cap, her brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Dark shades concealed her eyes. For a few seconds, she lingered at the truck, speaking with someone inside, then she slammed the door shut and walked toward the gas pumps. She lifted the nozzle from one, then, in a quick gesture that almost cracked me up, she pulled a credit card from her pocket, slid it into the pump’s card reader, and then pulled the trigger on the nozzle. Nothing came out. I knew the other three pumps would produce the same results. We’d failed with the same trick so often we didn’t bother anymore.

When she exhausted the pumps, she looked around and eyed the cars lined up along the far edge of the lot, looking right at our gas cans and siphon pumps and hoses, forgotten by Birch.

I steadied the others, kept them chill.

The woman tensed as she scrutinized our gear. She jogged out of sight on the driver’s side of her truck. Muffled voices carried across the distance. The woman walked to the center of the parking lot and crossed her arms over her chest. An unexpected memory burst into my mind, dizzying in its intensity, a recollection of Evelyn in the moments before she died. The way she stood, her confidence, her presence as we worked the crowd on our last, fatal bank job.

She called out, “Hello,” and her voice chilled me.

She even sounded like Evelyn.

We stayed quiet and watched.

The woman took off her shades and ball cap. She ran a hand over her head, then undid her ponytail, shook out her hair, then tied it back into a tail. She resembled Evelyn. Not in features, not exactly, but in her expression, in the set of her lips, in the way her eyes assessed everything around her, calm but alert.

“Listen, we didn’t mean to intrude on you. We thought no one was here. No one living, at least. I see your gas cans. I guess we have the same idea about fueling up.”

She looked the other way, then back to the bulldozer. She walked to the gas station shop, cupped her hands over her eyes, and peered through the window. She tried the door and found it locked like we had.

“We’re going to take some gas from those cars,” she said. “We won’t take it all. We’ll leave you some. If you want to keep your head down, fine. We don’t want trouble. But we’d be happy to see some living people.”

The whole time the woman’s hands never moved toward her rifle. She kept them either crossed over her chest or loose at her sides. I’d spent a lifetime before the dead plague judging people in an instant. Good, bad, trustworthy, or a threat. I trusted that judgment always. It had never led me astray. But this woman reminded me so much of Evelyn I didn’t know what to think. I wanted to see her up close. Because I sensed she was safe? Or because she stirred to life a part of me that died with Evelyn? I looked at Della crouched beside me and felt a pang of guilt for my traitorous thoughts. It must have shown on my face.

“You okay, Cornell?” Della whispered.

“Yeah, fine,” I said, and then, not knowing precisely why I made the choice, “Listen, I’m going out there. I think we can trust her. Cover me.”

Della shook her head and frowned. “Stay down until they leave. Let’s not risk it.”

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “She’s not sickly like the biker cannibals. Maybe we can help each other.”

I crept around the bulldozer, my rifle slung to my shoulder, same as the woman, although she wore hers with more ease and confidence.

“Hey there,” I said.

She didn’t flinch, only turned her gaze toward me and smiled.

“Hey there, yourself,” she said. “My name’s Vale.”

“Cornell.”

“Listen, I meant every word I said. My friends and I don’t want trouble. We’re surviving like the rest of the living. I lost track of how long it’s been since we’ve met anyone else, though. Except for the dead-eater we found back up the road.”

“Dead-eater?”

“Cannibals, sort of. They, um, eat the wormfeeders.”

I scratched my cheek. “The one you found, she didn’t happen to be locked up in a roadwork pen, did she?”

“You know her?”

“I’m the one who locked her up.”

“They’re gone in the head. The dead flesh melts the brain. Turns them into violent weirdos. It’s a mercy to put them down. Makes the world safer too.”

“I’ve never been one for killing in cold blood, though.”

A white lie. An image of Evelyn lying dead on a bank floor flashed through my head. Then the flash of my gun as I shot the guard who killed her and two more who rushed me. Ice running through my veins.

Vale shrugged. “Me neither, but when everything wants to kill you first, what counts as cold blood?”

“Long as you don’t turn that philosophy toward me.”

“The living need to work together. Or at least let each other be. Speaking of which, I’m going to take that gas now. Like I said, I won’t take it all. In case you get skittish, you should know my friends in the truck are covering me.”

“I’ve got friends too,” I said.

“Good. Keeps it fair.”

“You gotta wash that truck. It reeks.”

Vale laughed. “It’s awful, isn’t it? That’s camouflage. The dead smell their own, they’re less likely to swarm us.”

“Where you coming from?”

“Up north quite a ways. The airport at Actsburg. We had a refuge there until the dead overran it.”

“No place stays safe for long. How many in your group?”

“Back in Actsburg? More than a hundred before shit went south. Now? There’s three of us, and in case you’re a numbers guy working the odds, I guarantee no one in your crew is as good a shot as me.”

I laughed at her mix of bravado and sweetness. I’d only ever seen the like in Evelyn.

“Numbers guy? Maybe, but not the way you mean. There are four of us.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

She retrieved two gas cans and a siphon from her truck and then started at the car farthest from where we’d left our gear. Once the first can started filling up, we made eye contact, sizing each other up. I wanted to take the next step in trust, maybe even lend a helping hand, but despite the risk I’d already taken, I couldn’t surmount my fear of ambush, or lies, or being wrong again about throwing in with another human being like I’d been wrong about Damon and Rhea. That mistake had come damn close to costing us our lives.

After she filled her first can, she did the second. When that one filled, she carried them to her truck and poured the contents into its gas tank. She walked back to the same car, siphoned it dry, half a can, and then moved to the next car to continue. I watched her the way I used to watch Evelyn when she did simple things like put her clothes away after washing them or get dressed for a night on the town.

Footsteps crunching behind me broke the spell.

Della came out from behind the bulldozer.

“We’ve got some food if you’re hungry,” she said.

Vale scrunched her face, unsure what to make of Della, as if she thought we were playing a trick on her—or she had no idea anymore how to respond to kindness.

“I’m Della.” She gave the smile she used to put panicked patients at ease. It worked.

Vale relaxed. Her tension gave way to a grin. “Oh, yeah? What you got?”

Della walked over to the Camry, rummaged around inside, and came up with a package of Oreo cookies she’d been saving for a special occasion. I swear a tear ran down Vale’s cheek at the sight of them, but I stood too far away to say for sure. Vale waved to her people inside the truck. The doors opened. A man and a woman climbed out with guns handy but not a threat. The man wore jeans and a gray mechanics shirt. The woman sported running shorts and a fleece hoodie.

“This is Dawson and Gordon,” Vale said.

I whistled. Christopher and Birch rose from cover.

“The young guy is Christopher. The other is Birch. He doesn’t talk.”

“Nice to meet you all.”

Della ripped open the Oreos. We all dug in. Even slightly stale, they tasted magnificent.

“Where you heading?” Vale said around a mouthful of cookie.

“Long story. Right now, Miami.”

“That so? We’re heading there too.”

 

EIGHT

 

We wound up driving down Route 27. Vale’s crew took the lead, and we drove in their wake, windows up against the unrelenting awfulness of the odor, but it did the trick. The few times we passed clusters of the living dead, they paid us no attention at all. For a while, none of them showed up anywhere, then Miami embraced us. Route 27 became East Okeechobee Road. After that, we only saw dead bits and pieces, twitching limbs, or single corpses too broken to move, stuck in place as if the sun had melted them to the pavement.

Around Miami International Airport, the welcoming committee rolled out to greet us.

A red convertible parked in the middle of the road. Two men and two women stood in front of it, one couple black, the other white, all dressed in beach clothes—bathing suites, linen shirts, and flip-flops. They waved us down.

Vale’s truck stopped in the middle lane about fifty yards shy of them. Della stopped the Camry in the right lane so we could see. The locals spoke. I rolled down my window, but I still couldn’t make out what they said. The back door of the truck cracked open, and Vale dropped out with her rifle in hand. She gestured to me: She would provide cover while I found out what they wanted. For a moment, I froze. Did Vale trust me that much already? Did I trust her? I felt no natural hesitation about her. When I looked at her, I saw Evelyn in my mind.

“Cornell?” Della said.

“Yeah, got this.” I swiped a Beretta 92 from the glove box and stepped out of the Camry.

“Hey there,” the black man called and waved.

I waved back and walked as far as the truck’s passenger-side door. If shit went south, I could drop and roll under it for cover. Best I could tell, though, our greeters carried no weapons, and they’d come alone, not another car or person in sight.

“What can we do for you?” I asked.

“This may sound odd,” the man said, “but we’ve been waiting on you for weeks.”

“Waiting on who?” I said.

The black woman straightened from leaning on the car. “On you. You’re Mr. Cornell, aren’t you? Mr. Birch in one of these vehicles too?”

A warm breeze filled the silence. It carried a sound I’d lived with for far too long now, always on the edges of my thoughts: the jackal’s laughter, no less cutting in its mockery of my belief that I controlled any part of my fate. The message came clear: I would never shake free of it. The world wasn’t finished chewing me up, let alone ready to spit me out. Who could know me, know which direction I would go? Who could’ve sent all those dead to herd us down this path to here and now? Only the Red Man.

I pulled the Beretta 92 from the back of my waistband, where I’d tucked it as I left the car, held it low in front of me, ready to aim, to kill. The members of the welcoming committee flinched. Fear livened their expressions.

“You work for the Red Man?” I said.

“No, no, man, you got us all wrong,” the man said.

“What the hell does Stradley want with us? Huh? Why does he keep playing with me? He still after payback for Birch?” I said.

“I don’t know,” the man said. “We’ve heard of the Red Man, but we don’t work for him. We have no idea what he wants. Okay?”

The woman took a deep breath. She stepped forward, calm but frightened eyes darting between the gun and my face. I’d met half a dozen like her robbing banks. Terrified but capable of keeping composed, of navigating a fucked-up situation.

“I’m guessing you’re Mr. Cornell,” she said. “We don’t want to hurt you. We only know of the Red Man. He’s not here. He didn’t send us.”

“How the hell do you know who I am?”

“We see his mark on you,” she said.

“What mark?” I said.

“On your forehead. Where he touched you,” she said. “The Red Man isn’t the only one with power over the dead.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Listen, my name’s Erika,” the woman said. She pointed at the man who’d spoken, then at the white couple. “That’s my husband, Octavio. That’s Denny and Ruth. We’re no threat to you. We can’t answer your questions. If you come with us, we’ll take you to the ones who can. They know better than us what the Red Man can do and what he is.”

“If we don’t come with you, what then?”

“I really don’t know. We were told to expect you and Birch and another, a woman, Vale, and to show you the way into town, where it’s safe. Where you can rest without fearing the dead will come knocking any second. We all have a part to play in… the end of the world, I guess, and if you do our bit, things go one way. If you refuse, things happen differently.”

“That’s it? Plans change?”

Erika shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, we can’t force you. You’ve got to choose your own path for it to work.”

“Hey, man.” Denny pushed himself off the hood of the car. “We got no axe to grind with you. We’re here to deliver an invitation and guide you to the ones who have answers. You don’t want the answers? S’okay, cool, we go our own ways, the world keeps falling down this fucked-up rabbit hole of death, and everything turns to dust. That’s all.”

“What kind of answers?”

“The kind you get from a saint,” Octavio said.

“A lot more sinners in this world than saints. Make some damn sense already,” I said.

Footsteps crunched behind me. Instead of turning to see who’d stepped forward, I watched the eyes of our welcomers. Almost as one, their gazes shifted over my left shoulder, and their expressions widened with surprise.

“You got his mark,” Erika said. “Mr. Cornell’s is red, but yours is white. You must be Vale. St. Bianco told us you’d be coming too. We never figured you’d arrive together.”

“St. Bianco is here?” Vale said.

“Friend of yours?” I asked.

Vale shook her head. “Not exactly.”

“We don’t understand all this stuff,” Erika said. “The dead holy folk blessed us, which is why we can see your auras, see the marks on you, but none of us knows how it works. It sounds corny, but we’re taking all this on faith.”

“Come with us, get some answers,” Octavio said.

“Or don’t,” Denny said. “Save the world or let it die. Your call, man.”

“Dead holy folk?” I said. “As in living dead?”

Vale and I exchanged glances. She knew more about this than me. I read it in her face.

“They for real with this ‘holy’ talk?” I said.

“Could be, yeah,” she said.

I squinted at her. “Oh, yeah? You got a lot of saints for friends?”

“Only the one,” she said, “and when I knew St. Bianco, he didn’t have much to offer the living except staying dead for good when you die. So, what’s changed?”

“You’ll have to come with us and ask him yourself,” Erika said.

 

NINE

 

We followed the red Corvette into the big, bright city of Miami.

Buildings shone in the sun. Heat filled the air.

As far east as I could see, hazy light emanated from a point down by the ocean and filled the sky. I recalled the crimson glow that had flowed along the streets of Baxtonville, heralding the arrival of the Red Man and death for everyone with us except me and Birch. The dead had ruled that town. Here I saw life. It gave me a tiny flicker of hope I expected reality to snuff at any moment.

The ’Vette led us south and east until we crossed Biscayne Bay via A1A and drove into South Beach. Erika and her crew guided us along the strip. The sight set my head spinning. On one side of the street stretched green grass and beaches filled with people in bathing suits and summer clothes. On the other, sidewalks punctuated by outdoor cafes where people drank coffee and ate, where faces peered out from hotel room balconies and windows.

Living people.

Eating, walking, sunbathing, jogging. Smiling. Laughing.

Going about life like it used to be.

Music played. I rolled down the window. A band performed an acoustic cover of an old Stones’ song, “Gimme Shelter,” in one of the cafes. The sound faded as we passed.

I hadn’t been to South Beach in years. It looked like I remembered it. Alive. Set off from the rest of the world. Clean sand, lush strip parks, and the Atlantic Ocean rolling in on powerful waves. Untouched by the dead. It took more than Biscayne Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway to provide that kind of protection.

“So many people,” Christopher said. “So many bikinis.”

“Keep your eyes in their sockets, kid,” Della said. “How’s this possible?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” I twisted to face Birch. “Unless our resident mad scientist cares to enlighten us?”

Lifting his gaze from his notebook, Birch only shrugged.

Along the road, palm trees swayed in the breeze. A group played volleyball on the beach. Another group danced on the sidewalk to a hip-hop cassette playing on a boombox. Our caravan drew curious glances, even looks of disgust as the stink of Vale’s truck spread in the air. The aroma of meat and spices sizzling on a charcoal grill drifted into the car. My stomach growled; my mouth watered. The world as it had been before the dead rose, except for little signs of the new reality. People on the beach, yeah, but only a tiny sliver of a fraction of how many would’ve once been there on a gorgeous day like this, and more than a few carried weapons or kept them propped up against their beach chairs. Men with rifles stood watch on the roofs of the tallest buildings. The inner darkness of the hotels, shops, and restaurants without electricity. The expressions of people who looked upon Vale’s truck as if a horror movie had rolled into town, one they’d seen too many times already.

The convertible turned down an alley that connected to a parking garage behind one of the big, old art deco hotels. We followed. I kept my gun in hand. If we’d made the wrong call and Erika had led us to an ambush, we’d only have one choice: fight. But no attack came. Nor did I truly expect one. Something about all this felt, if not right, appropriate, as if whatever lay in our future, an innumerable array of alternate possible outcomes or a single, locked-in destiny, it lay on the other side of this place, a nexus through which we must pass to reach it. The Corvette rolled into a parking space far from the hotel entrance. Denny emerged and directed us to two nearby spaces. All the engines died, and the garage echoed with quiet.

Vale and I exited first, guns ready.

“You won’t need those.” Octavio pointed at our weapons.

“I’ll make that call myself, you don’t mind,” I said.

“Nah, man, suit yourself,” he said. “Trusting us is a lot to ask, I get it.”

Dawson and Gordon climbed out of the rot van, Della and Christopher from the Camry.

“Sorry to park us so far from the door.” Denny waved his hand in front of his face. “Need to keep that stink away.”

“Ready?” Erika said. “What about Mr. Birch?”

I knocked on Birch’s window. He gave me a look that said it all, and I heard his voice in my head, the way it used to sound: Are we really doing this? There’s no turning back. Why don’t we walk our asses across the street and sit in the sand instead? Soak in the sun and the salt air. Let this rotting world keep rotting and enjoy what’s left while we can.

I crushed his hopes. “Come on, Birch. The bastards in charge here can’t be any worse than the bastards in charge anywhere else, can they? So, let’s go meet the mayor, even if it’s just to tell him to fuck off and die.”

Birch cracked the first smile I’d seen from him since before Deadtown. We both had our history clashing with authority. That grin lasted only half a second then vanished. He shoved his notebook into the box beside him on the seat then opened his door. I backed up, gave him a hand getting out, and then the lot of us walked toward the hotel entrance. I whistled that old tune from The Wizard of Oz: We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz. Only Denny laughed. Octavio and Ruth held the doors. We entered into cool darkness.

Our eyes adjusted to the gloom. We stood in a small lobby that had popped wholesale out of a 1930s movie about big city life. Denny guided us along a corridor where a fuzzy blast of daylight glimmered at the far end, and we traversed it to a vast lobby. Accordion windows folded back along the front wall opened onto the street, permitting fresh air and light to enter. It overlooked a sidewalk plaza of tables, chairs, and palm trees, all with an ocean view. Daylight chased off the gloom, but another light illuminated the space too. A bright organic haze radiated from seven men and women seated in high-backed chairs in the lobby’s lounge area. About half a dozen people sat around them in smaller chairs or on the floor.

My chest muscles clenched as I saw how much the glowing people resembled the Red Man, skin almost vivid enough to pass for living, but too dry, too tight. Deep wrinkles around their sunken eyes. Little scars that would never heal or fade. They wore clothes unsuited to their mystical appearance. Tattered and stained shirts, ragged dresses, torn jeans, no shoes. Their bare feet mottled, black at the toenails. They looked asleep, eyes closed, expressions still. Every few seconds, I glanced away from them, let my sight focus on Della or Vale or the glorious day outside. Looking at them straight on for too long produced an ache behind my eyes that threatened to grow until it split my skull. Ideas and impressions pushed into my thoughts. Voices whispered at the edge of my hearing. Like the Red Man’s dream. Invasive species of the mind. Outrage filled me.

My voice, harsh and righteous, cracked the silence. “Get the hell out of my head, you goddamn wormfeeders.”

The glow of the dead holy folks brightened. Their eyes snapped open. Dusky, powerful glares, the whites of their eyes glimmering in dark pits. I glared back at them, fed up with staring down dead eyes. The walls and floor vibrated. A low hum quivered the room. The living people in the lounge area and our welcoming committee flinched and cowered. So did Vale’s people and mine, except for me, Birch, and Vale.

Instead of shrinking from the show of power, we stepped toward it.

“You want something from us, we’re here to listen,” I said. “Otherwise, I might like to go crack a few beers on the beach and work on my tan.”

Birch, of course, said nothing, but he put on a good show of looking bored.

The hum faded.

The dead holy folk stared a little longer.

The one in the center lifted a hand and blessed us with the sign of the cross.

“Don’t take it personally,” I said, “but I haven’t been to church since the sixth grade.”

Dressed in tattered black jeans, a once-white dress shirt, and a black leather jacket that looked like salvage from a motorcycle crash, he stood and took four steps toward us.

“Don’t turn your back on God, Mr. Cornell. You’ll need all the help you can get.”

“God hasn’t helped this sinner yet. Why would he start now?” I said. “How the hell do you know me, know any of us?”

He smiled, nothing pleasant in the expression. “Some of you know me. Vale. Gordon. Dawson. I trust your road here wasn’t too much of a trial. I don’t see Ms. Gallegos with you, though, so I gather you suffered a loss. Did she rise when death took her?”

We waited for someone to answer. Vale tried to bore holes into the dead man with her eyes until Gordon said, “She didn’t.”

“I’m gratified to hear it. May she rest in peace.”

Vale’s voice crashed out of her throat. “How dare you? How dare you leave the people we knew in Actsburg to die, then you come down here and set up your little beach party, and what—what the hell is it you want?”

“I understand your anger,” the holy man said. “I did, indeed, show those people mercy. None would’ve survived, would’ve lived more than a day or two after leaving the airport where you took shelter. None would’ve arrived here, now, and stood safe from the living death astride the earth. Only you, Vale. You were the only one I knew would live on. If I hadn’t blessed the others, they would’ve risen and added to the strength of the darkness aligned against the living. Do you understand?”

“No, I damn well do not,” Vale said.

“Wait a minute,” Gordon said. “You mean you thought me and Dawson would die, and you still withheld your blessing?”

“No. I gave you my blessing freely, as I did for Gallegos, then hoped for the best. Had you died, you wouldn’t have risen. Now here you are, alive, I’m overjoyed to see.”

Birch clutched my arm, gripped it so tight I winced. He looked at me, his face burdened by so much he wanted to communicate but couldn’t say. I knew, though. The same terrible idea had formed in my head too.

“Only one other person I know can keep the dead from rising. Only one other person can put the dead to rest,” I said.

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Cornell. I don’t put the dead to rest. I send the living to ultimate peace and remove their fear of rising,” he said. “Others hold power like mine—or like that of the man you mean, Darrell Philip Stradley. But while we are many, there is only one man I know of who can send the Red Man to true death forever, and that man, Mr. Cornell, is you.”

 

TEN

 

Seven living dead saints, holy folks, bodhisattva, prophets, whatever you call them, they set my skin crawling and tied knots in my gut. Their chests didn’t rise and fall with breath. Their lips never moved, except for St. Bianco’s. Their eyes never blinked, as if an artist had painted them on stone. I couldn’t say if I stood in the presence of divinity, spiritual miracles, or simply dead bodies less rotted than all the rest. Flesh with enough brain cells still sparking to pretend to something more than death. It didn’t matter.

For all their weirdness and formality, at heart, they were only another crew of people who believed they held the right to order me around, to control where I went and how I lived, to erase my wants and goals, and force their own into my head. Like Warden Lane Grove in prison. Like Sheriff Tom Weichert at Camp Cady. Like the Red Man. Self-appointed. Controlling. Arrogant. Indifferent to the hopes and desires of those beneath them. So unironically self-assured in their divine right to toy with the lives of others, they didn’t see how they destroyed themselves.

“You’re wrong,” I said. “The Red Man is already dead. No one can put that rabid dog down for good except maybe one of you if you’ve really got the magic touch. Anyway, I’ve got other plans. You and your creepy-eyed friends can do the same thing everyone else who’s tried to run my life has done, and go—”

“Mr. Cornell, you misunderstand us.”

St. Bianco’s voice boomed. It resonated in my bones, in the lobby walls.

It brought a cold wind that twitched at our clothes and hair.

Everyone, including me, flinched.

The misty glow around the dead holy folk intensified, deepened all the shadows in the lobby, and pushed the beautiful day outside away from the hotel. We stood in a bubble that his voice solidified. The sounds from beyond the open windows dimmed.

“You say we’re arrogant. Yet it’s you who assumes he can be a savior.”

St. Bianco approached me. His body glided, legs barely moving. Energy radiated from him and tickled my skin. His light filled my eyes, entered me, suffused me with a calmness I hadn’t known in years, and chased away my tension and anxiety. Even the breath of the jackal panting down my neck faded. His presence in the recesses of my mind vanished, leaving me free of him for the first time since before Evelyn died. All of this occurred so suddenly my head spun, and my knees trembled.

“We’ve seen many like you on this new dead Earth. People capable of adapting, of carving survival from the world no matter the obstacles stacked against them. People of spirit and willpower. Defiant, independent souls. The seven of us gathered here pooled our energies to repel the dead and create a haven for the living. The societies we knew, the natural order that once reigned, are decimated beyond recovery. A new world is quickening. We’ll all witness to its birth. There’s still time to tip the balance of things toward life and away from death, but it cannot be assured. Thus, we’ve followed the lives of people such as you and Vale, called to them in the night or touched their lives on our own journeys. We hoped for dozens, maybe hundreds of them to gather here. People with the spiritual stamina and the psychological surety to confront the Red Man. Since the early days of the dead plague, we’ve waited for you to come. Do you know many have arrived?”

All around me, confusion filled the expressions of my people, of Vale’s, of the four who met us coming into the city. Sadness darkened their eyes too. Outside the windows, a new thing revealed itself. An awful, persistent fear and resignation in the faces of passersby. No matter how safe they felt here in this blessed city district, they knew—and could never forget—a world of the dead awaited them outside the city limits.

“Vale and I are the first?” I said.

“The first and only.”

“What happened to the others?”

“Some died. Others broke under stress. Many ignored the greater needs before them and chose only survival in fortified pockets of apparent safety that one day will betray them.”

“Can’t blame them for surviving. That’s prerequisite to everything else.”

“Survival isn’t truly living. It’s scavenging off the corpse of the world.”

“Like insects on a dead body.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have the luxury of control over the dead like you do.”

“You have more power than you think. Why else would the Red Man work so hard to turn you to his side? He’s in your head, isn’t he? And Mr. Birch’s? He knows you’re here. He tried to divert you, but he succeeded only in keeping you from going where you wanted. He lacked the power to force you to him as he desired. You skirted the edge of his influence and the limits of ours. You traveled the border between the light and dark, life and death, and your path ended at life. The Red Man sends you dreams because he fears you. He’s done this to others. Many of those we hoped would join us turned to his side. None he’s touched have held their ground like you.”

“So, what? I’m supposed to play high noon with the Red Man? There can be only one? That kind of crap?”

“You’re not supposed to do anything, Mr. Cornell. Your life is your own. You have free will like all the others. My sisters and brothers and I hoped for many like you—those who frighten the Red Man—to face him together with each other’s support and protection. We wish a better future for the living. Only you and Vale have arrived. If I were you, I’d find those beers and head for the beach. The world belongs to the dead now. You and your companions, like everyone in this city, are dying by the second in a world that wants you only for raw flesh to house lost and angry souls.”

The words stung. Was that all we struggled for? The opportunity to die on our own terms, to depart this world the way we’d always figured we would, and leave behind our bodies to the awful, new, unnatural order?

“Something’s coming,” I said.

“Something?” St. Bianco said.

“A dark thing. I don’t know what it is or what to call it. The Red Man showed it to me in the dreams he sends. It’s vast, angry, bitter, all the bad things you can imagine.”

“We know.”

“What are you doing about it?”

“What’s to be done? If it is called, it will come.”

“The Red Man’s calling it?”

“Yes. And others like him. Stradley is only one of those who had a hand in bringing the dead to life. Others around the world have followed paths that parallel his. The details vary; the power doesn’t. Others like us and like you exist around the world too. Events similar to these are playing out, have played out, or will do so soon in many places. We can only hope enough of the ones who can make a difference choose to keep that darkness from arriving. Here, at least, we’ve failed. So why not enjoy the light and warmth, live in the brightness, until it vanishes forever.”

“That’s not the life I want.”

“What life do you prefer?”

Della held Christopher close, her arm around his shoulders. Her expression reminded me of when we first met, when she saw in me only a criminal, a convict, another untrustworthy man for her to guard against. Now she aimed that harshness and skepticism at the dead holy folks. She didn’t trust them. Good. Neither did I.

“To be left alone,” I said. “To get where we’re going and live our lives in peace.”

“If peace is all you want, I can provide it now. My blessing will stop you from rising after you die. We have a place here where you can go and the means to make it painless. Others have chosen that path. You can help the woman and the boy first, then see to yourself.”

St. Bianco reached for my forehead.

I stepped back. “Don’t touch me!”

I threw a punch at him, aiming for his chest, but my fist found only empty air. Without even appearing to have moved, St. Bianco stood six feet to my right, his hand lowered.

“Nothing ever against your will, my friend,” he said, “but the offer stands.”

Vale stamped up to him and slapped him, surprising him, connecting where I hadn’t.

St. Bianco’s face snapped sideways, then turned and glowered at her.

“Vale,” he said.

“You bastard. All you ever offer is death. You’re as much a part of this fucked-up world as any other rotting corpse. Just because your flesh doesn’t stink, you think you’re better?”

St. Bianco said nothing, only returned Vale’s stare. Long seconds passed. The silence in the room developed an almost physical presence. Then the lobby darkened. It took me a moment to realize the glow of the holy folks had dimmed. St. Bianco returned to his chair and grew still, like the others, only their eyes betraying the faintest hint of animation. The gloom deepened. The holy folk faded into it. A sweet aroma like honey wafted into the air. I inched closer to the dead people and squinted, wondering if I saw what I thought I saw, wondering if wet, crimson tears really flowed from St. Bianco’s eyes and down his withered cheeks.

 

ELEVEN

 

Erika and Octavio set us up with rooms on the fourth floor.

No power, so we used the stairs.

The previous occupants had removed the electronic door locks. You could lock yourself in with the latch and the manual deadbolt, but you couldn’t lock it from the other side. Not that stealing or any other crime posed much trouble, Octavio explained. We could take pretty much anything we needed or wanted from the shops in the city—and the dead holy folks had a way of weeding out bad apples upon arrival.

They housed us all in a row, our rooms overlooking the streetfront and the beach. Clean sheets, comfortable furniture, and working bathrooms. A little taste of heaven to go with the saints. Della and I roomed next to Christopher, with Birch on the other side. Then Vale, and then Gordon and Dawson, and part of me felt herded, livestock penned in stalls for the night. Except that night, the locals invited us to their party.

A bonfire roared on the beach. Flames licked twenty feet into the air, spitting embers into the dark. The smoke almost vanished against the night sky. Surf rolled onto the sand and brought a rhythmic pulse, the beat of an enormous hidden heart. The pulse of the Earth itself, carrying on, indifferent, while humanity died and ravened its own bones. A crowd gathered, a few hundred strong, with beach chairs and blankets spread round the blaze, and I thought if this was everyone in Miami, then the living stood little chance of outlasting the dead.

A group of musicians played music by the fire. Mellow, relaxing songs. Bob Marley. The Grateful Dead. The Beach Boys. Eternal beach music. People knew all the words and sang along. Some got up and danced. Della and I watched Christopher throw a glow-in-the-dark frisbee back and forth with some kids his age. Nearby sat Dawson and Gordon, snuggled together on a beach blanket, singing, almost happy. Beside them but alone sat Vale, back to the fire, gaze steady on the enormous blank canvas of the Atlantic Ocean and the starry night sky.

This defined our world now, this little pocket of safety with our backs pressed to the sea. Nowhere left to retreat. Our trust in a group of beings we would’ve called monsters in another life. Too stunned and numbed to feel much horror anymore. We could stay, enjoy a comfortable room, the beach, the community of the living, but like the other places I’d found myself since I lost Evelyn, it didn’t belong to me. I was living in someone else’s space, living by their rules, by their authority, enjoying security they provided, and that always came with a cost, an obligation. It required trust too, but my reserves of trust had long ago scraped bottom.

Lohatchie called to me the strongest when I found myself like this, with time to catch my breath. My place down there beckoned. Lohatchie would be mine, Della’s, Christopher’s, and Birch’s if he wanted, and the only authority there would be our own.

A truck grumbled onto the sand from one of the wide, paved paths through the park.

The music faded out. Voices quieted.

An old municipal pick-up truck with fat tires for the beach, it rumbled along, towing a cargo trailer equipped with an iron mesh cage. Probably once used to house tools needed to clean and maintain the beach, it now held half a dozen wormfeeders banging around inside, jostled by the motion and their own attraction to the living.

It stopped by the bonfire. The crowd gave a riotous cheer. They clapped and whooped when the driver emerged and waved his baseball cap at them.

The frisbee game ended. Christopher dropped to his knees in the sand beside me.

“What’s going on?” he said.

The fire glowed dull against dead flesh but glistened in the living eyes glaring out from it. It flickered on the faces of the living, filled with child-like anticipation. People encircled the truck with ritualistic excitement, and the band launched into that old song about not fearing the reaper. It transported me back to the prison yard, back to a warden with the faith of a martyr, who built gallows and a bonfire to separate sinners from saints and send us all to our just reward. The driver and others reached into the truck bed and dragged out long poles with wire loops at the end.

“Cornell?” Christopher said. “You all right?”

Della put her hand on mine.

“They’re going to burn them,” I said.

“Where’d they come from?” he said.

Octavio walked up to us then and gave the answer.

“These are stragglers from the city limits,” he said. “They never make it far, but we clean them out just the same. Catch a few every day. Then we bring them here and remind them this is a place for the living. Makes everyone feel better to see them burn.”

“Not everyone,” I said.

“Why don’t you join in? You’re the newbs. They’ll let you throw one on the fire.”

Della’s fingers tightened around my arm.

“Can we?” Christopher said.

He didn’t understand the harsh face I showed him. “No, we’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” Octavio moved on to speak with Dawson and Gordon, who took him up on the offer and walked over to the truck. Vale declined.

A group of four men and women looped wires around the neck of the first wormfeeder then used the poles to wrangle it off the trailer. It stumbled and fell in the sand. Laughter rippled from the crowd. The dead thing rose to its feet and swiped at them, gnashed its teeth. People threw trash and seashells at it, ran up, and jabbed it with sticks. A kid, maybe fifteen years old, rushed in and stuck a beach hat on its head. That brought guffaws.

The four working the poles spun the thing around, the poles like spokes on a wheel, the walking corpse its axle. One of the women tripped, fell, and let go of her pole. The wormfeeder raged at her, dragging the others with it until another woman seized the loose pole. Laughter again. As if a slapstick comedy routine played out in jest. This was sport to them. The first round ended when they shoved the wormfeeder into the fire then yanked the poles free, decapitating it with the wire. The other corpses rioted in the cage while the first one burned.

“Let’s call it a night,” Della said. “We don’t need to watch this.”

“Take Christopher and go ahead,” I said. “I’ll come along soon. Need to think some more, or I won’t be able to sleep a damn minute.”

“Don’t be long.”

“Nope.”

Della ushered Christopher off the beach. The boy glanced back at the fire half a dozen times, confused, fascinated, frightened, trying to make sense of what he saw and how Della and I had reacted to it. Trying to understand the adult world when even the adults didn’t understand it anymore. I laid back on the sand and listened to the waves break on the beach, wishing for them to drown out the voices around me.

Someone screamed. I sat up, startled, but the scream turned into laughter.

Over at the fire, Dawson and Gordon each held one of the long poles and grappled with the corpse of an obese woman in a tracksuit. Two others angled their loops over her head, and the four wrestled the wormfeeder toward the blaze.

Vale stepped in front of me, blocking my view. I hadn’t heard her approach on the soft sand. “Let’s talk,” she said.

I couldn’t read her face. Too many conflicting emotions—and a kind of hard-edged nerve I’d never seen before. I stood and brushed sand off me.

“What’s on your mind?”

“This place.” She led us toward the water. “Doesn’t feel right, does it?”

“Every place has secrets.”

“St. Bianco has secrets for sure.”

“How do you know him?”

“He turned up at the airport up in Actsburg out of the blue one evening. Set everything on its head, tried to warn us an army of wormfeeders would overrun the place. Everything turned to shit, and I lost a lot of friends.”