Order of the Dead (39 page)

5

Under Tom Preston’s direction, the townspeople quickly set up a temporary
barrier of netting that would protect them while they worked to repair the
fence. After that they began to clear away the rubble and bring in new building
materials. The plan was to work in shifts without pause until New Crozet was
secure again.

Minutes earlier Alan had run back
inside the town, forcing his way through the temporary net and then sealing it
behind him with Corks’s help. He’d been shot in the shoulder, and then the
zombies had come and he was no longer the pursuer but the pursued, a
three-legged zombie foxhound leading the bite-Alan chase for a quarter mile,
and he’d been forced to run back to New Crozet for cover.

Tom was in full swing directing the
working men. Since climbing through the temporary barrier, Alan had been
holding his wounded arm and trying to get Tom’s attention.

Now, frustrated at the lack of
response, he grabbed Tom by the shoulders and squeezed, getting Tom to stay
still. Alan’s shoulder was throbbing, but he held on, sending fresh shards of
pain clinking up his nerve endings and into his brain.

Bargaining commenced, which gave way
to pleading, and then to yelling, but Tom wasn’t having it. The big man stood
there, glared at Alan, and shook his head.

How could he still be shaking his
head, after what Alan had just said? There were people who could go, people
whose lives were worth less than those of the children. Wasn’t that the point?
Wasn’t that the objective answer? The children mattered more than some grumpy
settlement hideaways. They had to get after the Tackers
now.

But tomorrow was Tom’s answer, and
maybe. Tomorrow? Maybe?
Tomorrow! You’re her father!

Alan flew into a real rage for the
first time in…well, in his whole life. Four men, Corks and Tom among them, had
to get him under control.

Larry Knapp watched the struggle, his
mouth agape. When Tom threatened to lock Alan in the jail, the fighting
stopped. Alan knew he had to let them finish securing the town, and he could do
no good locked up in a cell.

But he wouldn’t help with the fence.
There were more than enough hands stirring the temporary barrier pot. He would
find something else to do.

The light was stealing out of the day
as if the fire in the sky—the same scenic burning that Alan had wanted,
needed,
to show Senna and to share with her—were burning it out, leaving behind a
charred dome that the light wouldn’t be able to shine through anymore.

After Alan was done making his scene
and left the outer gate, Knapp went to sit in a corner of the church. All the
cheer was gone from him now.

Despondent, he thought that Jack was
missing for sure, and Sasha, he was beginning to realize, probably was too.
Since the explosions, he hadn’t been able to find either.

The Tackers had taken them, and now,
despite Alan’s efforts, there would be no search party.

Briefly, Knapp considered going after
them alone, but he knew that was pointless. He hadn’t been outside in years,
and would likely be dead in minutes.

They’d taken Jack.

And Sasha.

Knapp took his head in his hands and
tried to understand that his children had been kidnapped, and not just them,
but other children, and other townspeople, too—adults. He knew what could
happen outside the settlements, what did happen. Jack could be…

“God I fucked up,” he said, with
hardly a slur to it. It wasn’t just Jack. Sasha was his too. Of course she was.
How foolish he’d been this whole time, and what terrible things he’d done to
both of them, worst of all to her.

He hadn’t taught them enough stranger
danger lessons. He hadn’t imparted anything to them at all.

He thought of the beer brewing in his
home, and when he pictured it all he saw were vats and bottles of maggots, wan,
yellow and crawling, looking for a way out of their containers and into his
belly, from which they’d wriggle up into his brain, because, after all, that
was where they fed.

Trying to swallow, he found that he
couldn’t. His mouth had become too dry. The big-breasted, beer stein-carrying
Tinkerbelle was gutted, her wings having been pinned down for the job. Someone
had upended the steins she’d used to carry and poured their malty goodness into
her gaping chest.

With this image in his mind, and
thirsty though he was, he swore he’d never drink again.

Outside New Crozet, the storm flirted
with the tree line, feeling it out with its rainy fingers, its plundering will
set squarely on the ruined town.

6

New Crozet was burnt and bleeding. Where meticulously groomed holly bushes had
stood as stout but proud ushers there were now charred and broken skeletons,
which, in the places where they were still intact, were held together by
smoldering joints.

Small fires were still burning at the
fence, and tiny ones in the bushes. The shrubs’ newfound, orange eyes were
glinting sadly, at the coming dark, at the forest—which they now saw too
directly through the gashes in the fence—at the town they’d watched over, and
at the world.

One team at a time, the ashes of the
bushes’ prickly leaves would play a bitter game of tag with the nearing
shadows. This would go on for a brief stretch until the bits of charred matter
were swept up by a blast of wind and carried from the clearing, just like their
predecessors had been, and just like their successors soon would be, until the
water got them and pinned them to the earth with its weight.

There the water would keep the burned
leafy remains, and the ground would eat them up and be made whole again.

7

Alan took the cinnamon from its hiding place in his pocket and stared at the
dingy, scratched tin in his hands. It looked back, and didn’t know what to say.

Would you, if you were a tin that had
been the first home to some breath mints thirteen years ago? Would you, if,
say, you were just you?

Senna.

How could this be happening? This
can’t
be happening.

Senna.

He’d meant to give it to her at the
market. It was supposed to have made her happy. He’d wanted to… His thoughts
stopped connecting with each other, and incoherence entered his mind, pushing
everything else out.

Senna.

Blood was dripping from his wound and
pattering to the floor. The townspeople were shouting outside as they worked on
protecting and repairing the perimeter.

Senna.

In a moment of clarity, Alan went to
the kitchen and hastily dressed the hole in his shoulder. The dressing was
ragged and clumsy, far below his skill at such things, and too much blood was
continuing to seep through the bandage. He didn’t care. It was only his arm,
and they’d taken his heart.

Senna.

The clarity left him again.

Senna.

He couldn’t think. All he could do was
feel anger, hatred, grief, and loss.

Senna.

Holding hands with his feelings was a
bitterness, jagged and cold, colder than all the suffering and death that he’d
seen.

Senna.

They’d stolen from him.

Senna.

They’d taken Senna.

Senna.

He’d lived for her.

Senna.

She was all there was in the world that
mattered.

Senna.

They’d taken his chance to give her
the cinnamon. That was supposed to be a private moment, a perfect snapshot in
time when her face registered what it was and took on an expression of surprise
and delight and...

Senna.

Now that would never happen.

Senna.

She was everything, and without her,
there was nothing, no point in denying the virus further, no sense in excluding
it from the vestiges of an extinct civilization. Life without her would be
utterly without purpose, incomprehensible and meaningless.

Senna.

He fell to his knees, feeling as if
some malignant spirit had ripped out his spine and was holding the chain of
vertebrae links over his head, mocking and triumphant, intending to use his
backbone as an accessory, a belt, perhaps, or a bony tie.

Senna.

She’d been his heartbeat and the
rhythm his soul had moved to, and now what? What could he ever do again?

Senna.

A frail cloud of dust rose up from the
floorboards where his knees had hit, the gathering of motes disorderly and
purposeless. The dust seemed uncertain of its own role in the world, and was
hesitating, because it suspected that no matter which way it chose to travel,
its path would end in the same way: a return to the old place from which it had
come. And wasn’t that the path of the doomed?

Senna.

There, kneeling on the well-trodden,
oak floorboards of their home, feeling like his soul was collapsing in on
itself, Alan cried for the first time since the outbreak.

8

The dam—the one that had held its own for so many years—burst. All the pain
that Alan had kept inside since the zombies had come broke out of him, all of
the anguish intent on rushing out at the same time, its millipede feet tripping
over one another.

After so many years, he’d thought
himself no longer capable of tears, that perhaps the virus had dried up their
waterways with its callousness, that he would never cry again.

Now it was as if the floodgates had
been torn to bits by a gathering of wrecking balls, and the emotions came all
at once in a violent rush of loss, and fear, and shame, and regret.

The uninhibited agony seemed intent on
undoing him, on crushing him to the tapestry of this diseased world until all
that was left of him was a smear, a squashed, bitter collage that could never
convey the depth of what it felt like to lose the woman he’d lived for.

No matter where he looked, and even if
his eyes were closed, all he could see was her. She was everywhere still.

Through the running blur of his vision
he saw the occasional long, golden hairs on the floor, and one in particular
was in a small loop shaped like a noose. They’d loop like that sometimes if
they weren’t swept up soon enough, like miniature hangman’s friends.

Now she’d never leave her hair behind
again. What was there now was all there would ever be.

He picked up a strand, and, clutching
it helplessly, shut his eyes. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed long enough, the
single strand would become many, and some locks of Senna’s full and lustrous
hair would be in his hand, and connected to it would be Senna in the flesh.

The lunacy of the thought struck him
and he opened his eyes, disgusted with himself. But when he tried to brush the
strand from his fingers, he found that he couldn’t bear to let it go.

It was like trying to tear away a
piece of his own skin. He put the artifact in his pocket, and thinking of it as
such, as a relic, something of the past that couldn’t be had again, made him
yearn for his own life to become faded by history, forgotten, and the pain he
felt gone.

She’s dead, Alan thought. Dead.

Maybe not yet, but soon.

And there would always be the
uncertainty, not knowing what had happened to her, just like with his own
family. Not knowing if she was alive or dead, if she could still be helped or
not, if there was still a way to save her. That was a burden he couldn’t carry.

Finding her—going after her and
finding her and taking her back—was the only path forward.

9

He was trembling, and tears were running down his cheeks and dripping from the
sharp lines of his jaw. Most of the tears were landing on the floor, but some
were finding the lid of the cinnamon tin, and some of those were negotiating a
crevice in the wax paper through which to reach the spice.

Humans who were captured in this world
were always met with grim fates. Senna might be sold into slavery, raped and
tortured for years, then cannibalized. She would fight as hard as she could,
but eventually, she’d be overpowered and forced to submit.

There was still a chance she might
escape, assuming she was still alive.

There’s always that chance, Alan told
himself.

Still, he felt sure he’d never see her
or her playful smile again, or feel her warm touch, or tell her how much he
loved her, or hold her and let her curl up and feel safe in his arms.

And where had he been to protect her
today? How could he have let this happen?

Shaking, he set the tin of cinnamon on
the floor, close to the spot where the strand of her hair had been before he
picked it up.

The townspeople wouldn’t help him
until tomorrow, if at all, and by then it would be too late...too late for
Senna. His mind grappled with the selfishness of what he was about to do, with
the pure self-interest that motivated him. He should have felt more concern for
the kidnapped children, or for the children who were still in town, or even the
grown women and men who were still here. Senna was only
one
woman.

Yes, she was an amazing woman, but
what of the greater good?

Then again, he reminded himself, going
after her meant a chance to save the children as well, and risking his life for
her
and
the children was worth it.

But he knew he wasn’t going for them.
He was going for
her,
and for her alone.

The singular purpose that was motivating
him to go after the Tackers seemed wrong, shameful, and it was putting a sour
taste in his mouth.

Did it matter why he was going,
though? And if it did, did he
care?

Why should he? Why should he care
about anything or anyone if Senna wasn’t there beside him, if she wasn’t his
and he wasn’t hers?

In all likelihood, they were all dead
by now anyway, so there was no one to save.

If he found them dead, if he found
them at all, he’d do the only thing that was left. He’d kill every single one
of the Tackers and their accomplices, all those who’d infiltrated the market.
He’d kill with the last of his strength, with his dying breath growing stale in
his lungs if that was what it took.

Nothing else mattered anymore.

Without her, everything was meaningless.

Humanity, Alan thought bitterly, and
not the virus, is the worst plague of all.