Bits & Pieces (38 page)

The little girl began screaming, and Rags saw that more and more of the dead were circling the center of the fight, ignoring the combatants to pursue an easier target. They closed in, drawn by the shrill screams of the child.

“No,” murmured Rags. Ghoulie gave a sharp warning bark. This whole fight was about to collapse into a feeding frenzy if it kept going like this.

Rags broke into a run and closed on where the girl cowered. In the heat of the battle, the heroes had lost track of her. Or they thought their two lines formed enough protection. The
woman in red turned to look, but her eyes went wide as she realized too late that the mindless dead had outflanked her.

“Charlotte!” screamed the woman, but two zombies closed on her and blocked her way.

Rags skidded to a stop beside the girl, spun, and crouched with her back to the child, arms out, fighting sticks ready. Ghoulie took position on the other side, forming two sides of a box. Rags hoped it would be enough.

There were so many of the dead. The girl—Charlotte—started to bolt, to run toward the woman in red, but Rags growled at her.

“No! Stay behind me.”

Charlotte dodged backward from the grasping hands of a man in a long black cape, like something a magician might have worn. Rags ended him with a one-two blow to the head.

As he fell, though, another staggered forward. And another.

Rags clanged her pipes together to give Ghoulie a combat command. This was what Ledger had taught her, and Rags had revised and developed the rhythm. First with Bones, and then with Ghoulie. Countless hours of training and practice, of refining their battle skills to suit her body type and his. To suit her fighting style and his. Now that shock and surprise were gone, they settled into the work that they had done in a hundred towns during their long journey.

Ghoulie bounded forward and smashed into the side of the pack of zombies. His sheer bulk knocked them back and down and sideways. As Ghoulie disrupted and destabilized them, Rags used her pipes to smash and destroy.

“Come on,” she called, both to the dog and to Charlotte, as she began moving away from the center of the street.
Ghoulie backed up, forcing the girl to scuttle along behind Rags. All the time, though, the dead lunged in and were met by spiked armor and flailing metal rods. They fell.

And fell.

But still they came.

Rags could see the heroes, and she saw the exact moment when they realized their own danger, and the fact that they were in the presence of something tougher than them. Something more real and powerful.

“Get behind me!” yelled Rags to the heroes. “Spread out. Form a defensive circle. Everyone facing out. Protect the girl. Do it.”

The heroes stared at her for one moment, not quite grasping what she meant, but then the woman in red nodded. She—the obvious leader of the group—began yelling to the others, pulling them away from the battle, shoving them into position until the bunch of them formed a protective ring around the little girl. Ghoulie ran up and down the lines, throwing his bulk at the dead to drive them staggering toward the heroes.

“Let them come to us,” commanded Rags. “Don't chase—you'll just waste energy. They'll come to us.”

They did.

Wave after wave of them.

“Work in teams,” snapped Rags. “Short ones go for legs, big ones go for heads.”

“Do it,” ordered the woman with the sword. “Work in pairs. Iron Fist and Luke. Wolverine and Hulk. Tabby,” she said to the black-haired fighter dressed as Wonder Woman, “you feed them to me.”

And that was the rhythm. Four pairs, each knocking down, smashing skulls, or chopping necks.

Over and over and over again.

It was clear to Rags that the woman in red was the most effective of the heroes. Even more so than the one she called Iron Fist. Even so, Rags could tell that the woman had no formal training—some of her cuts were too big and required too much muscle rather than letting gravity do more of the work—but she had speed and instinct. And she was aggressive. That was good.

The zombies came at them in a relentless tidal surge of hunger.

Rags, Ghoulie, and the people dressed as heroes stood their ground.

One by one, the dead fell.

It took a long, long time.

Behind the town, beyond the trees, the last of the sun melted down into the west and darkness took possession of the world.

Doylestown

They stood for a long time.

Bodies trembling with fatigue. Clothes streaked with black blood. Chests heaving, sweat running in lines down faces and arms and legs. Eyes bright with shock and the fires of destruction.

Around them, spread outward like some mad sculpture created in hell, lay the bodies of fifty-seven zombies. Not whole bodies. Limbs and heads, torsos and pieces were scattered in a pattern of artless slaughter. In the center of the debris field stood the survivors.

Rags and Ghoulie.

The child dressed as Batgirl.

The heroes.

The woman in red.

For a while all they could do was stare at what they had done. And then, slowly, they lowered their weapons and turned to look at one another. To confirm that others had survived, as they each had survived. To look at the living and remember that this was what they had fought for.

Rags watched them. She knew that she was often aloof, that she considered herself a warrior rather than merely a fighter, and with that came some elements of snobbery that she chose not to eliminate from her disposition. She waited to see if these people celebrated their victory, and if so,
how
they celebrated. If they mocked the dead, then they were of a kind she had seen too many times. People who had come to enjoy killing.

She wanted to see if they were mad. After all, they were dressed as comic-book characters.

She watched to see if they were the kind of people that Rags had spent so many years avoiding. And in that moment she remembered why it was that she'd never settled anywhere. Despite her loneliness, people had disappointed her too many times. So she waited. And watched.

She did not lower her weapons, and Ghoulie—alert to
her moods—stood wide-legged and ready to do whatever she asked of him.

The woman in red sheathed her sword, went over to the little girl and checked her for bites, found none, and pulled her into a fierce hug, kissing the girl's face, her hair, her cheeks. Then Thor came over and snatched the girl up and held her to his chest, burying his nose in her hair.

“Oh my God, Charlotte—why did you
do
that?” he demanded.

“But—but—you
said
to!” insisted the girl as she burst into tears.

“No, honey,” said the woman in red gently. She came over and touched the child's hair. “Sweetie . . . don't you remember what Mommy told you? We went over and over it. All you were supposed to do was walk to the barrier and back. That was it. We just wanted them to see you so Donnie could let one of them inside. But you went outside, honey. You left the gate open.”

Tears ran down the child's face. “No, Mommy, Donnie said he'd close the gate. I didn't go outside. I didn't leave the gate open. I—I'm sorry. . . .”

Rags cleared her throat. “The gate was open when I came through,” she said. “Your man Donnie must have been sleeping on the job.”

The woman in red studied Rags as she stroked her daughter's hair. “Brett,” she said to the man dressed as Thor, “take her back. I want her to write out the rules fifty times and then she can have supper.”

“But Mommy, I—”

“Shh, now, baby,” said the woman in red. “It'll be okay. You
do your lessons and we'll talk before bedtime. Go on now.”

The big man—Brett—carried Charlotte away toward the other end of town.

Rags held her ground, waiting.

The woman in red turned toward her. “You saved my daughter's life.”

Rags said nothing.

“You probably saved all our lives. Some of those things might have gotten us, or gotten past us.”

“Both,” said Rags bluntly. “You were going to lose this fight.”

The woman studied her face for a long time, and then she nodded. “I guess so. It . . . um, wasn't what we had planned.”

Rags said nothing.

“We teach the kids to draw them in, one at a time. The kids are fast.”

“You risk your kids?” asked Rags, biting back harsher words.

“No, we train them. Charlotte's good at this. She's done it fifty times. Today . . . well, today she did it wrong. She left the gate open, and a whole bunch of them came in.”

“I told you, there was no one at the gate,” said Rags. “I know. I came in that way too.”

“There was supposed to be someone there.”

“There wasn't.”

They both looked down the street. “Then,” said the woman sadly, “either Donnie's dead or he ran off.”

“He have a grudge against you? I mean . . . leaving the gate open and all.”

The woman shrugged. “This was a training session. He's supposed to let one in every few minutes so some of our newbies
can practice hunt, control, evasion. Like that. Donnie's supposed to keep it controlled. Not too many and such. But Donnie's lazy and he's not a very good team player. Maybe an even worse lookout.”

She stopped, frowned, and then walked to the far side of the street to where three zombies lay in a heap. She bent, grabbed one of them by the shoulder, and hauled him off to reveal a fat woman and a thin man.

The woman had clearly been dead for years.

The man was different. His skin had gone pale from blood loss, but it wasn't weathered. Except for the color—and the deep impact crater on the top of his head from one of Rags's clubs—he could have been sleeping.

He was dressed as Robin from the old Batman comics.

“Ah . . . jeez,” said the woman.

“Donnie?” asked Rags.

“Donnie.”

Rags did not comment. The man had made a mistake—inattention or perhaps falling asleep—and had paid for it. The fact that his error could have resulted in a slaughter—not just of the little girl but of everyone—was obvious, so she left it all unsaid. The truth burned in the air all around them.

The woman straightened and began walking toward the gate at the far end of town. Rags fell into step beside her and sent Ghoulie ahead to scout for lurking dead.

“Look . . . who
are
you people?” asked Rags. “And what's going on here?”

Rachael smiled, and it was a bright and genuine smile, so at odds with the carnage spread around them.

“We're training.”

“Training?”

“Sure. Teaching the kids, mostly. Helping some of the adults get better at fighting the Orcs.”

“I'm sorry but . . . ‘Orcs'?”

“Well, dead people. We call them Orcs,” said Rachael. “Do . . . you know about Orcs?”

“I've read some Tolkien.”

Rachael sighed. “I remember the movies. The movies were great.”

“I was too young. My parents wouldn't let me see them. But . . . why Orcs? They weren't living dead.”

“No, but they were horrible monsters. They ate people. There were a lot of them, and they made war on the world of men. And,” she said, adjusting her tight-fitting dress as she walked, “the world of women, too.”

“Ah,” said Rags. “Orcs.” It wasn't the strangest label she'd encountered for the zombies. There were monks out west who called them the Children of Lazarus. People called them rotters, stenches, walking dead, walkers, living dead, zombies, critters, ghost-people, harrowed, and a score of other things. Each isolated group came up with their own names, their own beliefs, their own rituals.

They reached the gate, which stood open as it had earlier. Rachael sighed and closed it, dropping the crossbar into place. Then she leaned back against it and blew out her cheeks. Sweat beaded her forehead, and she fished inside her broad leather waistband for a handkerchief.

Rags nodded to Rachael's costume. “What about this stuff? The superhero stuff? What's that all about?”

“The world needs heroes,” said Rachael, and then, apparently realizing that more of an explanation was required, explained. “We're—or we
were
—cosplayers. Do you know what that is?”

Rags shook her head.

“Before the Fall, back when there was a world, they used to have these big conventions for pop culture stuff. Y'know, for people who were into comics and video games and movies and like that. The events were huge, and some people—like my friends and I—used to go to things like San Diego Comic Con, Dragon Con in Atlanta, Katsucon, Megacon . . . a slew of them. We'd make costumes and wear them. God, there were times I'd bring fourteen or sixteen different costumes. Really good stuff, too. I wanted to get into professional costuming, so I really put my heart into what I wore. I helped some of my friends, too.”

“I'm confused. So . . . this is all fake?”

Rachael shook her head. And it was then that Rags took a closer, harder look at the woman. She had scars on her arms and face. Not bite marks, of course, but the kinds of scars a person gets from a hard life. From surviving, from fighting. Maybe from intense training while preparing for the realities of life out here. Rags had some similar scars. Despite the costume, she knew that this woman was a real fighter.

“No, it's not fake. Not anymore. It's how we live.”

“Pretending to be superheroes?”

“Superheroes, video game characters, gods and demigods. Whatever.”

“Why?” asked Rags.

Rachael looked at her. “Why not?”

“No, I—”

“I know what you mean. You think we're all crazy, right? That we're playacting while the world eats itself. But . . . we're not. That's not what's going on here. Or at least it's not what we're trying to do.” Rachael smiled. “On that first night, when the plague broke out, Brett and I were in New York, at the big comic convention. One of our friends was bitten, and so were some people on the floor of the hotel we were all staying at. It was so wrong, so scary.” She crossed her arms and shivered. “Even now, after all these years, it still gets me every time I think about it.”