Empire (6 page)

    Duncan ran across an intersection to the burned-out shell of an outlet mall. Peering through the viewfinder, he threw his hand out to stop Jenna and Lauren from following him. Zooming in, he waited for the grainy green shapes in the street to resolve themselves. There was something smoldering...no, two somethings. Despite the poor quality of the image he was able to identify them as bodies.

    A hand fell on his shoulder and he slammed back into the wall. "FUCK!!" Jenna slapped her other hand over his mouth. "Jesus, Duncan!"

    He pushed her away and pointed to the bodies. "Rotters. They've been torched."

    "How do you know they're rotters?"

    "One's still moving a little bit."

    Jenna leaned over his shoulder, squinting. He handed her the camera. "Who do you think did it?" Lauren asked. "P.O.s," Duncan answered. Did this mean there was still order in Jefferson Harbor, despite the military pullout? "I thought the cops would've left with the troops." Jenna murmured.

    "I'll bet most did." Duncan took back the camera. "Few more blocks. Keep quiet." Shooting a you-should-talk glare at him, Jenna stepped back and let him take point.

    The last leg of the journey was uneventful but still seemed to take a lifetime. Duncan kept stopping at every corner to scan the area. Jenna's heart pounded against her ribs with every distant and unidentifiable noise. Finally, Duncan found the Kagen's warehouse entrance and peered inside. "Okay." He went in first. Jenna followed and Lauren, just before stepping through the door, thought she heard a soft grunt from the darkness outside. She hurried in without glancing back.

    Duncan felt along the wall for switches and flipped them. Only one light came on, in the far corner, past rows and rows of shelving. Lauren tugged the door shut and frowned. "I think the lock's broken."

    "Wouldn't surprise me." Duncan shook a nearby box. "Empty. I knew it."

    In the far, well-lit corner, a door opened with a metallic squeal.

    They all dropped into crouches. The door slammed. Duncan instinctively raised the camera, finger on the capture button. Jenna stole a peek between two boxes, and she saw it.

    It was a monster. Its head, a skull, pale and elongated. Eyeless. Fanged. It...wait, the bone was wired to the raw red flesh of a rotter's head, the skull being worn like a mask. God. What had it been, a horse's? The undead turned in her direction and she realized that, no, it was the skull of a large dog.

    That wasn't the worst part. The worst part wasn't even the obscenely-long knife in each hand. It was the surgical apron and scrubs. Where had been a simple, animal thing, Jenna now saw intellect - purpose. The rotter set the knives down on some unseen surface and pulled latex gloves over its scabby hands.

    "W-w-what is it?" Lauren stammered. She gripped Jenna's arm like a vise.

    Duncan's camera hitting the floor sounded like a thunderclap from the heavens.

    He stared in horror at the shattered bits lying at his feet, then looked up through the shelves at the rotter. It had its knives back and was moving forward.

    Jenna dragged Lauren toward the door through which they'd entered. Duncan was trying to pick up the camera parts. Jesus! He WAS crazy. "Mark!" She shouted, and the rotter grunted loudly. The photographer was snapped back to reality.

    The rotter shuffled down the first aisle, then the next, weaving back and forth, grunt-grunt-grunt-grunt. It planted a knife in one of the many boxes and hurled it to the floor, stomping through the cardboard. Grunt-grunt-grunt-grunt. Jenna grabbed the doorknob and pulled. It was stuck fast.

    Duncan wrapped his hands around hers and pried at the door. "C'mon, c'mon," he breathed, barely audible, then a hysteric "FUCKING C'MON!!!"

    The rotter swept boxes from shelves and searched the room with its empty dog's-eye sockets. It began loping down the aisles at a frenetic pace. Lauren screamed.

    Then, something fell from a shelf and collided with the rotter's legs, sending it to the floor. The door tore open and Jenna, Duncan and Lauren fled into the night.

    The rotter sat up, jerking its head back to see what had tripped it.

    Fred Moorecourt pawed the floor in a madness, crawling in place as his bloody feet failed to gain traction and drew crimson scribbles on the concrete. The rotter slapped at his heels until he got a hold of one.

    "NO!!" Moorecourt hollered. He saw the inhuman thing towering over him, then he tasted blood thick in his mouth, and he saw light; an audience of fist-pumping constituents at a speech; Doug's face, his smile, turning away in a silken pillow; he saw his life, and saw that none of it had mattered, then the rotter planted a knife just below his chin and opened his throat.

    Throat to sternum. Blood welling inside canyons as they're carved from flesh and bone. Both knives through the ribcage now, spreading it apart. Skin, muscle strain and finally tear. This isn't one of the warmbodies that was seen coming into the warehouse. Doesn't matter. It's meat. Placing one boot inside the garbage bag to hold it open and feeding pulpy organs into it.

    The hunger was strong, worrying at every inch of Sawbones' insides. He hurried to finish bagging Moorecourt's innards, then started ripping at his flesh. Thick strips dripping blood came away in Sawbones' gloved hands. He longed to pry apart the dog's-jaws and feed. He couldn't. Sawbones grunted and shoved the skin into the bag.

    When he was finished, Senator Moorecourt was a ruddy skeleton with a few bits of gristle clinging on. Blood covered the floor and spread beyond the solitary light's reach into darkness. Sawbones splashed through it and out the door.

    Eyeing warily the shoreline beyond the landfill, Sawbones made his way into the swamp, trudging through knee-deep muck. The trees were all enormous here, roots and branches threaded around the rotter's boots with every step. Bark and leaves alike teemed with moss. Algae-covered fungi jutted from semi-solid patches of earth. The swamp seethed with life. Sawbones felt warm inside as he passed through it. His hunger subsided.

    Aidan and Gerald opened the gates for him. They stared through their fellow zombie, at the garbage bag.

    He knew to go around to the rear kitchen entrance. There Uriel was waiting, and he ushered Sawbones in, locking the door behind him.

    Rather than entering the kitchen, Sawbones went into a narrow hallway, its floor caked with blood, and upended the bag.

    Baron Tetch stood in the foyer of the manor. His brothers and sisters gathered around him, glassy eyes pleading.

    "Eat." He said. They rushed into the narrow hallway. He shut the door to muffle the nightmarish din of their supper.

    Sawbones padded into the foyer, sans boots and apron. He bowed his head before Tetch. "Go downstairs." Tetch ordered. "I'll be down later." The rotter shuffled off.

    Sawbones didn't eat with the others. Measures had been taken to ensure that, the dog's skull among them. He only took nourishment intravenously, not only because he was charged with the task of fetching meat for the undead, but because Baron Tetch didn't want his father to heal too much, to regain any scraps of memory. Worse yet, of his personality.

    The manor in earlier years had been known as the Addison Estate. Addison himself had been a surgeon and noted member of the Jefferson Harbor elite. As society's decay continued, Addison had retired and sequestered himself in the house. Soon thereafter, he put out a quiet call to the city's other wealthy families: Send me your children. I can take them off your hands, he said, relieve your burden - what's more, I can protect them. I don't mean simply to shelter your young ones from the undead outside the city. I mean, through my research, to cure this plague.

    Addison had adopted eleven children in total. Most of their families left the city in that same year.

    He'd never cured anything.

    Baron Tetch turned three locks on the basement door after Sawbones went down. He stood back, trying to ignore the ravenous crunching and slurping of his siblings.

    Lily came down the grand staircase, dressed for dinner. She was a vision. Tetch clapped his hands and met her at the foot of the stairs, offering his arm. Together, they went into the dining room where Prudence had earlier prepared a meal for them.

    "I like your jacket." Lily said. Tetch lifted the cover from his plate and inhaled the aroma of fettucine and herbs in a simple alfredo sauce. It drove the scent of spilled blood from his nostrils. "Is that one of Daddy's jackets?" Lily asked.

    Tetch frowned. "Don't call him that." She didn't know who Sawbones really was, beneath the mask. "And no. It's mine. Everything in this house is mine."

    "Like me." The girl said with a pout. "What?" Tetch lowered his fork. "I want to go outside the gates." Lily said boldly.

    Tetch nodded, stirred his pasta. "I knew this would happen sooner or later. Was bound to. You've always been very brave, Lily, too brave for your own good. If you want to know what's out there, I'll tell you. More dead, only they're not like Aidan and Ruth and Simeon and the others. They've not been taught proper behavior. They'd tear you apart. Is that what you want?"

    "Are there more people like us?"

    "No." He stabbed his fork into the fettucine for emphasis.

    "I saw a man today. He had all-black eyes."

    "A dead man."

    "No, he talked."

    Tetch's grip on the fork tightened. He wound a spool of pasta around it. The sauce was a bit watery. Prudence would be punished. "You're sure he talked?"

    "He asked me why I was in here. Inside the gates I mean."

    So, some of the city's survivors had decided to venture into the swamp. He was certain that Sawbones' exploits had kept the living at bay, but all good things came to an end.

    They couldn't enter the swamp. They couldn't find the manor. They couldn't discover what Tetch already knew.

    "I'm not hungry anymore." He muttered, rising from the table. Lily frowned guiltily. He said nothing to comfort her, just left.

    Lee rocked silently in his recliner. He was shivering. Cheryl noticed from across the apartment in the kitchenette. She'd soaked a month-old bag of Fritos in water and was mashing them into something resembling tortillas. There was nothing to top them with but a can of refried beans. The gas had gone out a few hours earlier, so no stove. Lee didn't know yet.