Empire (14 page)

    "How does something like this exist? Why? Did God put it here?"

    Wheeler realized that what Addison was talking about had nothing to do with science or medicine. The doctor knelt and rapped his knuckles on the forehead of his corpse. "This isn't of God. He and the life He's slapped together are impermanent. Look at our bodies. He did make us in His image, after all, didn't He? Do you know why, Wheeler? We're just a shallow attempt by God to leave His mark after He's long gone.

    "This energy came before God."

    Wheeler was backing off, in the direction from which they'd come, but he wasn't sure he'd be able to find his way out of the swamp before - before--

    "We can rise above the flaws of our 'Father' and His finite purpose. We need only appeal to the Old Ones that have given us this gift." Addison saw Wheeler backpedaling through the mud and laughed. "Run if you want. Where are you running to? Man has already set the wheels in motion, whether or not he knows it! God is dead, Wheeler, and He's not coming back!!"

    So Wheeler ran. He ran and ran and ran until his legs burned and his lungs screamed. He fell into a ditch and covered himself with dirt and prayed that he'd never wake up.

    Now, in the shelter, he did wake up.

    To the realization that Addison had been right.

    After getting Wheeler on his feet, Mike returned to the front entrance, where Palmer was throwing anything not nailed to the floor onto the barricade. Undead hands came through the hole in the door to sweep the obstructions away. Now would be a good time to use his gun.

    He emptied the clip through the hole and went into his jeans for his backup. This was the last of his ammo. He shouted for Voorhees.

    Outside, Aidan pointed to the smoldering clown; it had stopped moving. Harry lifted the mass into his arms.

    The corpse crashed through the upper half of the door and clipped the light overhead, throwing the room into a tumult of shadows. Flames from the clown's ruptured gut lapped at the surrounding debris and cast an eerie new glow.

    Voorhees grabbed Mike's arm. "Kitchen! The fridge!"

    Palmer stomped the clown, choking on smoke; Mike pulled her off and gave her his gun. The others came running from the community room with boards in their hands. "Keep the rotters back!" Mike said, and followed Voorhees.

    They wrenched the refrigerator away from the kitchen wall and lugged it across the floor with an earsplitting screech. Gunshots were heard, and the pounding of Mike's heart drove the other sounds away.

    As they passed through the community room, he saw Shipley cuffed to the radiator.

    "Voorhees--"

    "Forget him! Move!"

    Palmer tried to keep her hands steady as she held Mike's gun through a thickening haze of smoke. The evening sun backlit the undead as they tried to get in; they were a mass of writhing silhouettes, heads barely distinguishable. She whispered a prayer and pulled the trigger.

    One of the dead flew back into the street. A second later Palmer was jostled aside by the cops with the fridge. Slamming it into place, Mike grabbed the gun from Palmer's hands and gasped a quick "thank you" before turning away.

    Jenna and London pulled the clown into the community room and smothered it with blankets. The stench was nauseating. Blackened fingers on one hand curled into a fist; Jenna nearly fainted, but London shook her roughly. "Stay with it now!"

    In the street, Harry raised his arms and studied them. His sleeves had caught aflame when he picked up the clown.

    Aidan nudged him toward the broken door, even as the living blocked it off. Harry, his flesh being rapidly devoured by the heat, threw himself at the door. The refrigerator, with the survivors behind it, held fast.

    Sawbones appeared with the axe; he pushed the other undead back and attacked the fridge.

    Harry shuffled around the corner of the building by himself.

    Mike looked from the entryway to Shipley. "We need him," he told Voorhees. The bald man shook his head. "He's the last damn thing we need."

    "Give me the handcuff key."

    "Weisman..."

    "I won't ask again!" There was the slightest tremor in Mike's voice as he realized he had no idea what to do, if not ask. Voorhees leaned against the fridge and once again shook his head. "No."

    Harry's flaming arms plunged through the window over the radiator. Shipley screamed.

    Harry fought to get his shoulders through the window before the living reached him; bones snapped and flames swept up over his face. He could no longer see. There was no feeling in his upper body. Still he thrashed and thrashed and then felt himself hitting the floor, inside the shelter, bathed in fire.

    Shipley kicked madly at the zombie. Mike ran up and beat at it with a board. The blanket on the nearby cot went up in seconds. "Voorhees!" He hollered. "THE KEY!!"

    Voorhees entered the room. He pulled the widowmaker from his trench coat. Shipley cowered at the sight.

    But the P.O. lopped the zombie's burning head off and kicked the body across the floor. He tossed the key to Mike. "Cut him loose if you want." Voorhees upended the flaming cot.

    Mike knelt by Shipley. The handcuffed man kicked his legs and cried "Look...!"

    The decapitated body had rolled underneath another cot and set it ablaze. "Fuck, Voorhees, fire over there!" Mike turned back and unlocked the cuffs.

    Another cot was burning - dirty clothing piled beneath it sent a foul-smelling smoke into the air to join the clown's putrid odor. The whole place was going to go up. Palmer entered the room. "We've got to get out of here!"

    "That's what they want!" Yelled Mike. "They're smoking us out! They're all around us!"

    "If we can't--" Throwing her arms into the air, Palmer screamed "SHIT!" and ran to the chapel door. "Wendy? Kipp? You've got to open up!"

    "Didn't you hear what I said?" Mike snapped. "YES I fucking heard it!" Palmer shot back. "We can get onto the roof from inside the chapel!"

    "Then what?!" Voorhees coughed violently, swatted at the smoke around him. "The auto shop next door," Palmer said, trying to calm herself, to think. "Their roof's lower. We can make it over there, I'm sure of it."

    Voorhees looked at Mike, who returned his hapless expression. "We're surrounded. They've got weapons. They've got a PLAN."

    "Then we've got the roof." Voorhees muttered. "All right, everyone c'mon!!"

    Through all this Shipley was silent, rubbing his tender wrists, watching the cops through the smoke.

    Lily knocked on the study door and Tetch bade her enter. "Where is everyone?" She asked.

    "Come over here, and I'll tell you." He motioned to a chair on the other side of the desk. Atop the desk, where stacks of books had been pushed aside, he had a shoebox filled with dirt. Lily eyed it with interest.

    "I know how you've been wanting to go outside the gates," Tetch said, "and the truth of the matter is, I've been laying plans to make that possible. I'm tiring of the house myself, large as it is, and I don't want you to grow up and live your entire life inside these walls."

    He emptied something into his palm from a paper bag. It was a dead frog, hard and black. Lily grimaced at the sight.

    Tetch dropped it into the shoebox.

    "You know your brothers and sisters aren't like the other rotters." He said. She nodded. "Here's why." He gestured to the box of dirt, and she craned her neck to peer inside, and the frog's frail little legs were kicking.

    "It's earth from around the estate." Tetch explained. He loved the way her eyes shone as they followed the tiny movements of the born-again amphibian, the way she looked up at him, he who had done the miracle. "Harry and Prudence and all the others were brought back this same way."

    "How did they die?" Lily asked boldly.

    Clearing his throat, Tetch placed the frog on the back of his hand. "It was Doctor Addison - Father." He was lying, of course, but she was still too young to fully understand. And they had died peacefully besides, slowly poisoned by the exotic toxins Tetch had used to flavor their meals. None of them had ever suspected him of foul play; after all, he was the one who'd saved them from Addison.

    The memory was clear as day, one he often replayed. Addison strapping the fifteen-year-old boy to a chair and presenting an instrument tray, upon it a mallet and steel spike. "You're stubborn." Addison was saying while he jotted notes. "Your soul simply isn't pliant enough - yet - to accept the Old Ones." These Old Ones, Addison was always rambling about them but refused to explain who they were. He refused to explain how feeding the children dirt and pricking their arms a hundred times a day did anything to find a cure for the plague.

    Addison raised the spike; Tetch's arms tensed, but found resistance in the leather straps binding him. "This will be painless. Soon you'll be a more agreeable subject - they'll be pleased with you, I think."

    "T-they who?" Tetch demanded, trying to sound strong. "The Old Ones?"

    "The Old Ones." Addison set the tip of the spike just below Tetch's eye and reached with his other hand for the mallet. Tetch, unable to look directly at the spike, glanced down at Addison's notebook. He saw FRONTAL LOBOTOMY in a haphazard script.

    "Living tissue, living bodies for them. Much better than the rotting animals out there, so much better." Addison leaned forward and moved the spike slightly. It was huge and cold in Tetch's tear duct. He was terrified. His arms strained and he felt the buckle give on one of the straps.

    "Oh, no." Addison lowered the mallet and grabbed Tetch's arm. "I told you this won't hurt, Baron. I need you to relax. I've brought you out of Hell, son, in more ways than one, and I need you to trust me."

    Son.

    Something about that, at that moment, in that precise tone of voice, caused Tetch to snap.

    He yanked his arm free and snatched the spike from Addison's hand. Tetch said something then, though he could never recall what it had been; nor could he recall planting the spike in Addison's throat. He only remembered the doctor flailing across the room with gouts of crimson erupting from him, then suddenly it was over.