Empire (10 page)

    "We're partners." Douglas tossed the fish head overboard and wiped his hands on his pants. "I'm not gonna leave you behind."

    "It's either that or stay with me and shoot rotters."

    Douglas seemed to consider the ultimatum. He sat back and gazed over the ocean, watching clouds gather on the horizon. He saw a dorsal fin skimming the surface of the water and grasped his rifle. "Shark? No, dolphin." He pointed and stood up. "You see it Hamman?"

    "Yeah, great."

    Douglas took aim at the dorsal. Hamman almost made a move to stop him. Almost. But he saw his partner's eyes glazed over with madness and stayed put.

    The rifle bucked in Douglas' hands. A chunk of the fin sailed into the air. "HA! Nailed the fucker." The fin stayed visible, and he followed it with the scope. "Five will get you twenty that he's undead. I'll bet his head is right...about...there..."

    Something knocked against the boat, spilling Douglas onto the floor. He swung around and spotted more fins at his back. "It's a school or pod or whatnot of the fuckers! Get your rifle, Hamman!"

    Hamman stayed in the cabin, fiddling with the radio. No signal.

    Douglas righted himself and aimed for one of the other dolphins. The boat rocked again. "Dammit!"

    Standing straight up, he fired through the floor.

    "Douglas!!" Hamman left the cabin now, grabbing his partner's wrists, but Douglas fired again and again into the floor. Water spurted over their feet. "What've you done??" Hamman cried.

    "I dunno." Douglas stared blankly at the holes he'd made. "Well, why were they bothering us anyhow?"

    Hamman spun Douglas to face him and shook him by the shoulders. "They WEREN'T!!"

    Douglas pulled himself away from Hamman and sat back in his bucket seat. "Huh."

    He put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

    Hamman stood and watched Douglas' brain matter spray into the air and then pepper the waters above the heads of the dolphins. One of them poked its head out to look at Hamman, and he saw that most of its snout and the skin around its eyes were gone. A pinkish stream shot out its blowhole and it descended below the surface.

    Hamman started the motor and headed to shore. He never saw the wet hands clambering over the boat's rear, never heard the squishing of footsteps entering the cabin, felt nothing at all until teeth sank into his neck.

    Gene stumbled back as the boat ran aground. Hamman's corpse fell atop him, still gushing blood, and Gene opened his mouth to catch it.

    He sat on the deck for hours, watching the sun crawl across the sky as he chewed. The weakness in his arm, where he'd earlier been shot, went away.

    Then he remembered something. Eating until his stomach could hold no more, he climbed off the boat and headed back to the landfill. He would return once he had his shovel.

    Harry, at twenty-four, had been the eldest of Addison's adopted children. Two years his junior, Baron Tetch never wasted an opportunity to remind Harry and his other siblings who the man of the house was. He arranged for tea in the early afternoon, and they all gathered in the sitting room, which looked into a lovely wooded atrium, sun streaming down through its skylight. Harry served tea.

    Tetch looked around the room to see that they were all holding their cups properly, dressed and groomed neatly for the occasion. Bailey had a spot of dried blood on his cheek. Tetch grimaced. Lily, of course, looked and behaved perfectly. So much easier to train a person than an animal.

    Aidan looked questioningly at Tetch. The latter nodded his permission, and Aidan spoke in a garbled, broken voice, as if he did not truly understand the words he was saying.

    "Lurvley day."

    "Love-ly, Aidan."

    "Lo...lurvely."

    Tetch took a slow sip of chamomile. "Harry, another sugar." The afterdead in his butler's uniform hastened across the room.

    "I saw a bird on the fence today." Lily said brightly. "You didn't touch it, did you?" Tetch replied. Lily's smile faded slightly but she pressed on. "Of course not. I just looked at it. It was three colors - brown, red and white."

    Tetch raised a hand to silence her and leaned forward in his chair. "Ruth, your dress." A brackish stain was spreading across the material covering her legs. The undead looked down and lifted the dress. Tetch gasped, not at the fact she was naked beneath, but at the gaping flayed wounds extended from toe to thigh. "What did you do?" Ruth gave him a vacant stare. Must have been some rudimentary attempt at shaving. But shaving what?? She didn't eat near enough to be growing new hair. Sakes alive, she was wearing a wig! "Get out," he growled. "Disgraceful."

    As Ruth shuffled past the others, Lily patted her hand. Tetch's glare burned into the little girl's head, but she would not meet his eyes.

    "Man." Aidan said, tea dribbling down his chin.

    "What, Aidan?"

    "Man, at outside. Yurst-day."

    "Yes-ter-day, Aidan. It's not worth teaching you to speak if you're going to sound like a mongrel."

    "Yes."

    "Anyway, what man?" Was it the man Lily had told her about last night? "Outside the fence?"

    "Yes."

    "He was meat?"

    "No." Came the answer. But Lily had said the stranger was alive...no matter, the child was probably mistaken. "So he was like you, then."

    "No."

    Tetch sighed. Aidan, the most able of his servants, had seemed worthy of speaking privileges. But he didn't know what he was saying. Just making nonsense sounds to placate the hand that fed him.

    "So the man wasn't alive, and he wasn't dead either. Very good."

    Lily realized what Aidan was talking about and picked up his end of the conversation. "His eyes were all black. They were pretty."

    "I don't want to hear any more talk about this man." Tetch said. "Aidan, you and Uriel walk the grounds tonight, until sunrise. Lily, forget about it. Understood?"

    "Yes, I guess."

    "Don't give me any crap young lady."

    There was a thud beneath them. Sawbones in the cellar. Tetch took another drink and tried to force the thought of strange dark men from his mind, but it brought memories to the surface...

    He was thirteen, Lily's age, when he first came to the house. Dr. Addison was a large, steely-eyed man who always wore his lab coat, and was usually flanked by an equally imposing Great Dane. He usually took dinner by himself in the cellar. None of the children were allowed down there; it was said to house his research on the zombie plague. Whether or not that meant there were rotters in the basement, Tetch had never dared ask.

    One morning he'd gone upstairs and into Addison's study. The doctor was there, turned away from the door, a box on his desk. As Tetch silently watched Addison had poured a cup of dead flies into the box. A moment later, they filled the air around the doctor's head.

    He saw Tetch, saw accusatory eyes. "Baron!" He thundered across the floor. The boy scarcely made it out the door before a hand clapped down on the back of his head, then all was dark.

    His eyes opened to a sea of garish crimson light. Head throbbing, limbs paralyzed, he tried to orient himself. Was he lying on his back? The room had no definition, no depth. It was all red. It was hot. He opened his mouth and a tiny croak escaped.

    A huge, angular head with colorless eyes lurched into view. Tetch wet himself at the sight.

    At the time he was certain that it was the Devil, and at that point he believed he understood what had happened and where he was. Yet he had no strength, no breath, to scream. He could only shake his head from side to side until he lost consciousness.

    The next time his eyes opened, he was lying in his own bed, Addison holding his wrist and glancing at a pocket watch in his other hand. He felt thick gauze around his crown. "What happened?"

    "You fell down the stairs. Don't you remember?" Addison's tone was dispassionate. "Before I had a chance to explain what you saw in my study - which you wouldn't have seen at all, had you observed the house rules - you practically threw yourself down the staircase. You were actually dead for a time before I managed to revive you."

    The mind of thirteen-year-old Tetch was gripped by terror: it HAD been Hell, after all. But why would he be so condemned? Because he was disobedient? Addison stayed at his bedside for a time and lectured him about interrupting important work in forbidden rooms. Tetch resolved to stay out of the doctor's way from that day forward.

    Two years later, after he'd murdered Addison, Tetch would discover that the garishly-lit "Hell" was the cellar, and the head he'd seen looming over him but a crude mask carved from wood. He suspected he hadn't been the only child put through that nightmarish routine. The only one, in fact, who probably never saw Addison's "Hell" was young Lily.

    Nightfall found Lily slipping down dark corridors in her nightgown, whisper-quiet, bounding down the stairs and out the front door.

    Uriel was at the gates with an axe. Keeping to the shadows, Lily stole around the corner of the house. She darted through the grass to the ivy-wrapped fence and peered into the swamp's inky blackness.

    There he was, as she'd known he would be; the man in black came forward with a beautiful white horse. He stood silent as the horse bowed its head, and Lily reached through the fence to stroke its muzzle.

    "Why aren't you afraid of the dead?" The man finally asked. "Baron makes them be nice," she answered. The horse had black eyes just like its owner. "He won't let them eat if they do bad things. Like one time Bailey bit me, and Baron put a rope around him and tied him to the fence and he had to stay there all week."

    "You were bit...?" The man in black knelt and she held out her hand. There was a faint white scar below the thumb. "Didn't you get sick?"

    "No. They aren't like the other dead people."

    "How?"