Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies (16 page)

"The Collective won't forgive you."

"I don't know who they are anymore, so I guess I don't really give a shit."

"Your brother has made a weapon from Hell," Ambala said. "He injected it in those men when we were in the Valley together, to test it. We know there is a siege now, at Vicksburg. General Grant sits outside waiting for the rebels to surrender. Your brother will use the weapon there, if he's going to use it at all."

"So we have a common enemy. You're going to help me."

"I can kill more white men. There is nothing more fun, besides you."

Neasa smiled. "You're the only one who's allowed to kill me."

Slow raindrops beat against the canopy above them, and the mosquitoes rampantly attacked exposed slices of skin. They spent the remainder of a long, slow day cleaning and loading their guns while sitting around a cook fire. Neasa listened to the reports of Confederate troop movements and the siege of Vicksburg. Most of Ambala's men believed the conflict in Mississippi was going to end in a Union victory; if they wanted to harass rebel soldiers, they would be more effective elsewhere.

Ambala refused to listen. She insisted there was still more work to be done, though it was clear their ragged band would either dissolve or they would
continue
without her. Ambala simply wasn't ready to let them go.

***

For three days, they roamed through the swamplands on their horses, looking for the rumor of the mad doctor and his deadly, experimental weapon. Neasa was happy to sit a horse once again; she tried to remember what it was like to ride Napoleon, and while no memories returned, she missed the horse she couldn't remember.

Neasa and Ambala rode beneath the heavy gray sky. They often rode through long periods of silence, each comfortable in her own thoughts. They might not have been looking for anything at all. In the dust-laden towns, they weren't disappointed to learn that nobody heard of Doctor Lynch.

The two women had each other; their time together was all that really mattered. 

Wounded rebels who limped back to their farms talked only of Vicksburg, and their prayers went out to General Pemberton's forces. To hell with Grant, they declared. With a wary eye, they would look upon Ambala and wonder at the future of their world if such an atrocity could be committed: a negro woman with guns, riding beside a white woman, also armed. But most men cooperated. There was nothing better for them to do, and their spirits had been crushed. They'd seen their friends and brothers get butchered on the battlefield, and while they meandered along on crutches that replaced legs, or they looked skyward with only one good eye, they realized the war no longer belonged to them. No songs would be sung about their exploits, and in fact, war had proven to be vainglorious. The heroes were the drunk generals who sat behind their lines and told their men to die for a flag that would be trampled into the dust or shot to pieces. The flag-bearer always died when leading the charge.

In the evenings, the two women slept beneath the black veil of clouds. They preferred the wilderness to the confines of a motel.

Words were not needed between them. They both thought about the wild creatures that Neasa's brother had unleashed, and how much time they had before Grant's siege was exposed to the diabolical gas that would ravage his troops. While Ambala thought about the future, Neasa tried to find her past. In each other's arms, they believed anything could be found or discovered. 

While they held each other in the dark, there was nothing in the world save the darkness and the slow breaths they shared. With Ambala's head upon Neasa's chest, they both wallowed in the calm serenity of a much larger question, a question that both frightened and excited them.

Why couldn't they run away together, and forget the war?

While pondering the question, they answered it, silently, without words, although the answer didn't satisfy them. It was as if they'd both been charged with a job neither wanted to do, yet they were only ones who could do it.

They continued to ask the jaded, haunted soldiers of disbanded and broken regiments about a wide-eyed doctor, and there were none who knew him. The women hunted for a dead trail in the sleepy saloons where unconscious men drooled into cups and even the whores, with bruised faces and pregnant bellies, had been turned into unwilling victims instead of war profiteers. There were rough men who decided Ambala and Neasa would be better employees than hunters, but a man's broken wrist and Ambala's amused laughter were enough to convince them otherwise.

The idyllic episode included a romantic struggle: a bar fight. A young punk spat on Ambala and recited an endless array of racial slurs. It was Neasa's pleasure to knock his teeth out and break a chair over his head. It was even more fun when an all-out-brawl ensued.

Their hunt seemed anti-climactic, as if neither expected to find anything at all. They went through the motions and rode their horses slowly beneath the clouded ceiling while the rain refused to fall. The silence between them stretched through the unspoken thoughts and made them real: to discuss their future together would be to kill each other. There was only now. They experienced a cathartic peace that joined them together on their second evening in the wild, but even then, there were no words. The painful past had been shattered by the mysterious present. There was nothing in the plains or in the liturgy of holy words that could define their unity. They were together as if they'd always been together, companions who'd experienced everything, and they'd been sobered by the possibility that their lives might someday end, or that when the world resumed spinning, they might be separated by interminable gulfs made real by an outmoded sense of duty. They captured each other's souls and held them for ransom against a treasure that could never be won, but could be lost.

There were moments, while they slowly lead their horses over grassy hills with the distant roll of thunder shattering the vast silence, where they could have been the only people left alive. They would not have mourned their race, but would have accepted it and continued along their empty road. Neasa wanted to hold her friend's hand, and more often than not, choked back words she didn't know how to say. She felt as if she were shedding her flesh and putting on a different skin.

But they didn't hold hands.

Ambala's skin felt silken and delicate. She could explore the curves and hidden depths of the other woman's body forever. More than anything, Neasa enjoyed lying beside her in the dark and listening to her slow, deep breaths. She could smell the smoke from their fire in Ambala's hair and in her clothes.

Neither one of them could shake the sense of foreboding that seemed to follow their hunt. 

On the third day, they returned to the mercenary camp as if they'd been drawn back through the force of human magnetism. Ambala suggested (and hoped) her fellow mercenaries may have given up and left, but the decomposing corpses of two Confederate soldiers hanging from trees greeted them when they returned.

The dream was over. The two dead men had brown skin.

Neasa drew the revolver from her left hip while holding on to her horse's reins. Ambala drew both guns and grabbed the reins with her teeth. Neasa was supposed to be the reckless one, but nothing could stop her friend from charging forward. Neasa put her hand up and called out, but it was too late. The members of Ambala's company were likely dead, and whoever did it would pay dearly, but they were clearly stumbling into an ambush.

She was prepared to die alongside Ambala.

She didn't see whatever it was that struck her in the back of the head, but as she tumbled backward from her saddle, she could see Ambala falling, as the sky rolled over her head, and the ground rushed to meet her.

They fell together.

May 28th, 1863: Eating as a Family

When the women stumbled back to consciousness, they found themselves bound and tied to a tree. They deserved it of course, for charging straight into an ambush. Whatever happened now was all a matter of course.

The smell of charred flesh is not unlike meat being cooked over a fire, and the smoking pile of dead men in the center of the ruined mercenary camp was proof enough that the attackers had been merciless.

Sitting on top of the pile was a fat man with a bright orange beard. He picked at his teeth with a tiny bone. On either side of him were the two creatures, both of them chained to nearby trees. They'd been lazily picking at the fleshy limbs of dead men with their teeth, but they were alerted by the presence of the awakening riders.

One of the creatures rose and stretched. The bones of its rib cage extended over a gaping hole where its stomach had been, revealing the spinal cord and groups of veins that hung like disconnected wires. The creature seemed an unfinished puppet that was supposed to have been made in the likeness of a man, yet it turned and move unnaturally, arms hanging as if they belonged to a simian race than a dead man, and its back arched backward at an impossible angle.

"It's about time!" Lionel McPhee shouted gleefully from atop the corpses. "We've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting…what took you ladies so long?"

Santiago stepped out of the brush with his hands planted on his hips, the black moustache appearing before his eyes could depart from the shadow cast by his hat's wide brim. Several other men stepped out with rifles pointed directly at the two women.

Neasa spat into the dirt and tested the strength of her bonds. "Looks like you crawled right back like a good little dog, McPhee."

"It's not about the money, Bannan! Not completely, anyway. You're just another naïve whore, though you're built like a boy. Don't think any of the boys would even be interested in your scrawny chicken-ass. You ever taste that, Santi?"

The killer said nothing. He didn't move.

Neasa had already counted ten men surrounding them, not including Santiago. They were good odds if they could somehow break free and steal guns.

Ambala smirked. "You can die like any other white pig. You will bleed much."

McPhee laughed. "You were a slave, weren't you? You talk like one. I owned one or three in my time. Wife never liked having them around, because she said they always looked dirty. You look like you're covered in mud." He stepped down from the pyramid of dead men.

Santiago still hadn't moved. He was letting McPhee run the show because the spy wanted to redeem himself and get back into Santiago's good graces, although the fat bastard was likely going to get himself buried as soon as he'd overextended his stay in the land of the living.

"You let him do your dirty work?" Neasa asked Santiago. "I thought you looked forward to killing me. At least torture us yourself. There must be some sense of dignity and honor in that hollow head of yours. Or maybe my brother's not done with me, yet. Isn't that right?"

Instead of replying, Santiago nodded his head slowly, as if agreeing with his own assessment.

Neasa fired her words at McPhee. "You know what's funny about you, McPhee? You're no different than anybody else. You know Santiago isn't going to pay you, because you're a dead man walking, but you got nothing better to do. Going to run home to your wife? I'd be surprised if she's still alive. You'd rather die a hero than a beggar, but you'll be both by the time it's over."

McPhee was surprised. "How'd you know Lola was dead? Bitch wouldn't stop nagging, but I guess that's another story, isn't it? But you're wrong about me. More than anything, I want to make you remember what you used to do to me. I was there at Harper's Ferry, and you were the reason I got picked up by the Yankees. Yeah, I sold out, but who wouldn't? I wasn't really reporting back to them…"

"Get on with it," Neasa said. "I ain't got all fucking day."

"You talk like a common whore," McPhee shook his head. "Your nigger girlfriend is going to die, but we want it
to
be fun."

"You'll have more fun with me," Neasa attempted to twist her wrists. Even if she broke skin and bled, she wouldn't let them get Ambala. "It will take a lot longer for me to scream if you torture me instead. You're missing out on a good time."

McPhee scratched at his beard. "Physical pain is nothing to you. I think I know a better way to hurt you."

Ambala was released from the tree by two men, and she immediately rushed one of them and easily wrested the rifle from his hands and blew a hole
through
his chest. She swung the gun around in an arc and slammed it on top of the other man's head, knocking him straight into the ground.

One of the creatures was unleashed from its shackles. It stomped toward Ambala while she held the empty rifle like a club, her chest rising and falling. Rifles were only as good as the single shot that was loaded into them. Without a bayonet, the guns were almost useless.

Neasa had to find slack in the bonds holding her wrists together. She couldn't sit and watch what was about to happen. She'd failed the woman she cared about once, and there was no way she would do it a second time. There had to be a way to free herself.

"Hit it in the head!" she tried to coach her friend.

Ambala mouthed a prayer in a language only she could understand, and brought the weapon up high where it was stopped by the creature's forearm. The weapon was twisted from her hands and thrown backward.