Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 37

He turns away from the beach. Invisible in his black jeans and sweats.h.i.+rt, he works rapidly but quietly from tree to tree, heading uphill from the palms on the beach to the dense foliage of the rain forest. At the north end vegetation meets slanting gla.s.s panes. He pulls a box from his nylon backpack, wedges it between two aluminum struts, and turns a Radio Shack wireless intercom to "receive." He hurries toward the west wall, where he places another box and attaches another intercom.

He pauses at the screen door to the access corridor that leads back to the agriculture wing, where he broke in ten minutes ago. Floodlights are on outside the staff quarters, illuminating neat rectangles of crops. Getting in there isn't going to be easy.

Bill looks from the carnitrope lying in tattered Grace to the missing panes at the end of the orchard. "All right, now, let's not jump to any conclusions," he says. "It could be that one just got in here and went for the pigs, and Grace found it."

"Right," says Leonard. "It ruh-ruh-rented a Ryder truck and d-d-drove on up here to see if it could buh, buy a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich." He wipes a shaking hand across his mouth.

Bill narrows his eyes.

"It was eating her," Bonnie says flatly. She looks strangely calm, as if Grace's death at the teeth of a reanimated corpse is yet another factor to account for in the many trivial events that accrue during the normal operation of the Ecosphere. Yes, Grace is dead; now work schedules will have to be adjusted, and the sudden one-eighth surplus of food and water will have to be noted, and of course a new person will have to be appointed to moderate the weekly gripe sessions, not to mention someone else having to slop the remaining pigs.

Bill, Dieter, and Leonard regard her stonily. It is as if her casualness toward Grace's death is more repulsive than the fact and manner of Grace's death. There is something alien about it. If only she would go into hysterics, they would understand. That's what a woman is supposed to do when this sort of thing happens; they're conditioned by society. They can't help it. So why doesn't Bonnie just have a screaming fit and get it over with?

"I guess we shouldn't a.s.sume there aren't any more of them," Dieter says.

Bill nods. "Someone let them in here deliberately. An infiltration."

"Huh-who?" asks Leonard.

Dieter cradles his arms and rocks them, humming "Rock-a-bye Baby."

Bill frowns. He inclines his head, slowly. "We have to stay together," he says. "I don't want-"

Pop.

Their heads jerk.

Pop.

"Beach," says Leonard.

"Deke and Haiffa," says Diefer.

Bill brandishes his pistol. "Leonard, you come with me. Dieter, stay with Bonnie."

Bill trots away without waiting for Leonard, pistol in the lead.

Crack! Different sound from the beach. Bill stops. He glances back. "Leonard?"

Leonard swallows and cuh-cuh-catches up to Bill, his rifle held before him like a s.h.i.+eld he doesn't trust.

15.

Marly in the southern access corridor, trying to decide what to do. First three shots from near the agriculture wing to the northwest, and now three more from the vicinity of the beach. Which way should she go?

Well... a.s.suming it's the same people shooting, she ought to head in the direction of the most recent shots.

She firms her grip on the carbine and turns back.

"I don't want to wait here."

Dieter looks at Bonnie as if suddenly remembering she is there. "We have to wait till they find out what's going on."

"I don't want to wait here." She glances toward the pen at the bodies of the two pigs, the carnitrope, and Grace. The other pigs snuffle and make nervous sounds, run into one another, trample the bodies, sometimes stop to nuzzle the freshly dead, and raise their piggy heads with piggy noses freshly red.

Dieter goes to the pen and bangs the low wall to calm the pigs, but they only bleat louder. "I'm gonna let 'em out," he decides. Bonnie says nothing, and Dieter opens the little wooden gate. The pigs do not bolt, so Dieter enters the pen and drives them out.

"I'm going inside," says Bonnie. "I'm going to my room. Until this is over."

"Hey, you can't do that. You heard what the man said."

"He's got no authority over me. There's no rank here. I wouldn't have volunteered if there was. f.u.c.k that supremist bulls.h.i.+t."

"I mean about the zom-the carnitropes." He walks from the pen, and they head toward the front of the staff quarters. "There are probably others in here," he continues. "And someone let them in. You don't even have a gun."

"I despise the things. They're male weapons. Extensions of the male s.e.xuality. If you can't rape something, you exterminate it."

Dieter gives a moment's thought to exterminating Bonnie, but none to raping her.

"I'm going to my room," Bonnie continues, "and locking the door. No one will bother me there. I'm not going to be a party to you people acting out your primal hunting instincts. I am civilized, and I refuse to collaborate."

"You are one f.u.c.ked-up a.s.shole," says Dieter. "You know that? I use the word a.s.shole because it is nonchauvinistic. Everyone has one, y'know?"

Bonnie opens the front door to the staff quarters and goes inside. Dieter shakes his head. He levels the 30.06 extension of his male s.e.xuality and surveys the flood-lighted area. He wishes he had a cigarette, the first such craving he has felt in a while. Or a joint. They had to give up cigarettes when they entered the Ecosphere, and bringing in marijuana seeds was out of the question, even though Marly claimed theyd grow fine in the tropics.

He stands stiffly and swiveling, trying to make his face hard. Dieter the Martian colonist standing sentry duty within the lone gla.s.s island, the only thing between safety and the living-dead invaders who threaten their very- Something pokes his back. "Don't move." The voice is tight, as if the throat that produced it is constricted.

He begins to move anyway, then stops.

"Drop the gun. Now."

He lowers the rifle. Holds it at arm's length. Let's go.

Loud thud of a large-caliber handgun from somewhere near the ocean.

Someone shoves his shoulder. "That way. Inside."

Dieter attempts to walk normally. If he pa.s.ses an opened door, a corner to scuttle around- "Keep your hands up. I have a submachine gun, and you wouldn't get five feet without looking like an outtake from Bonnie and Clyde. Got it?"

He glances back despite himself. "Bonnie and Clyde?"

Poke in the kidneys. "Move, a.s.shole."

"Where are we going?"

"Power room. Battery room. Whatever the f.u.c.k you people call it."

"I don't know how-"

"I don't care what you don't know. You take me to it. f.u.c.k with me and I'll kill you. And I'll put the bullet in your heart so you come back, like my friends out there."

Dieter imagines himself an automaton: stumbling, agape, hands outstretched, eyes needy, drawn to living flesh. Turning left toward the power room, he finds himself wondering just how different it would really be.

16.

"It's Deke."

"It got him? The, the carnitrope, it got him?"

Bill toes Deke's face-down body, which yields jointlessly. There is a small, nearly bloodless hole between the shoulder blades. Bill bends and turns the body over. The torso rolls, but the legs stay knee-down, body twisted at the waist.

That's how you know someone's dead, Leonard thinks. Because they don't care what position they're in.

Bill rolls the lower half of Deke's body as well. Out of some sense of decorum? Whatever; he squats before the big man's chest. A larger, more ragged exit hole exactly at the solar plexus. "Someone shot him in the back," Bill says.

Leonard glances around the beach. They're pretty exposed here. Something floats against the sandbar in the water. A sniper there, p.r.o.ne in the water? Too far, too dark, to tell. "Shouldn't we take cuh, cuh, cover?" he asks.

"Whoever shot him wouldn't remain in one position." Bill stands and goes to the corpse of the carnitrope, "They'd sweep the terrain, continue mobile. Tactical maneuvering. Offensive advantage. Search and destroy. Divide and conquer."

Leonard comes up beside him. "Took one with him," Bill observes.

They do not see Deke's body stir behind them.

"Lot of guh-good it did him," Leonard replies.

They do not hear it regain its feet and begin to slouch toward them.

Leonard maintains a respectful distance from the morbid X of the carnitrope. "So... w-what should we duh-do now?"

Bill never answers, because Leonard's shoulder is grabbed. He turns and finds himself face to face with Deke. At first he is relieved: They made a mistake and Deke is not duh-duh-dead after all. But realization floods in: Deke is wall-eyed and slack-faced. Thickened blood stains his chin. Sand clings to the right side of his face, to his eyelashes-Leonard can even see grains in his eye. But Deke does not blink. He does not breathe. He does not have any light of life in his eyes. His cold fingers curl on Leonard's shoulder, and pull. What do you want to say, Deke? What are you trying to tell me? Nuh-nuh-nothing. His mouth opens. Bill is shouting something, but Leonard is so fascinated by the sight of Deke back from the dead like some redneck Jesus that he doesn't really hear Bill. Deke the Resurrected pulls him nearer, and Leonard knows he ought to do something, but all he can do is stare. The rifle is a piece of wood in his hand. Flesh of my flesh, good buddy. That's what Deke would say if the front part of his brain was still working. You gonna be baptised now! You gonna get the faith! The Holy Spirit gonna enter you! WhosoG.o.dd.a.m.never believeth in me shall not perish, but shall dwell in the House of the Bored forever.

But Deke the Saviour stops. He stares at Leonard in a kind of open-mouthed sorrow, a wistfulness like a child denied a sugary cereal on a trip to the grocery store with Mom. The hand still holds his shoulder, but no longer clutches with need, no longer pulls imploringly. A dog-like, questioning look enters the dull eyes. Leonard feels a kind of stupid disappointment. He feels a sudden compulsion to reason with Deke, dead or no, to ask him just what the heck is going on here, good buddy, you gonna eat me or what? But the enormously long, black barrel of a pistol enters the scene and taps Deke on the temple. Leonard sees the hand curled around the handle, bite-nailed index finger curved over the trigger, hammer c.o.c.ked. Bill to the rescue. Bill who nightly yearns for rabid dogs, broken legged horses, mortally wounded soldiers in a platoon pursued by enemy soldiers. It is the proof of your grit to shoot your own dog; it is the token of your humanity to put a thing out of its misery. Bill has wanted to put something out of its misery for as long as he can remember. An unnatural and unsanctified reanimation stands between Deke and his heavenly reward; Bill as G.o.d's agent shall liberate his spirit.

The finger squeezes, the hammer descends, the bullet flies, the locker of Deke's being sprays onto the sand. Father forgive them.

Marly ducks back behind the tree. Jesus Christ, they killed him; they shot Deke- No. No. Think. Piece it together. Deke was dead already.

All right. Then maybe Bill and Leonard knew what was happening here, what this madness was all about.

Sweating in the artificial subtropic night, she steps out from behind the tree. She lowers her rifle and waves. "Hey," she calls.

Bill whirls and fires. The.44 magnum goes off like a cannon. Behind her she hears the bullet slam into the tree. A splinter strikes her arm.

She drops, rolls sideways, and ends up p.r.o.ne with the b.u.t.t of her carbine against her right shoulder, left eye sighting. "It's Marly," she calls. "Drop your gun."

"Marly-" Bill heads toward her.

"Drop your gun, or Deke's gonna hold the door for you on his way in."

He hesitates, possibly thinking about the independent clause of Marly's sentence, but drops the gun. His left hand goes to his wrist.

"You, too, Leonard."

"Listen, Marly, there's muh, muh, more of those things around here. I don't think it's such a g-g-good-"

She pulls the trigger. The rifle doesn't buck nearly as much as she thought it would. A plume of sand kicks up behind Leonard's right leg, and he drops his rifle. Marly stands and heads toward them. "Now what the h.e.l.l's going on?" she demands as she approaches.

"Someone's b-b-broken into the station," Leonard says from the beach.

"Infiltration," adds Bill. "Carnitropes for distraction. Behind enemy lines. Liberating the soles in limbo. Tactical incursion, hit and run, select firepower for multienvironment guerrilla warfare. Strategic placement, Staff on alert." He is breathing heavily. His right wrist is swelling.

Marly looks at Leonard, who shrugs and looks momentarily worried. Bill, he seems to be indicating, is playing poker with a pinochle deck.

"Grace is dead," says Leonard, and Marly feels someething with blades unfold in her chest. Not because she cares especially for Grace, to be quite honest, but because their hermetic group is irretrievably reduced. Change has been introduced into the system; ripples will spread from this splash. About f.u.c.king time.

She indicates the corpses on the sand behind Leonard. "One of them?"

He nods. "Huh-Haiffa, too, we think."

"I saw what happened with Deke. Why did he stop? He had you, but he just stopped."

"Because I liberated him," replies Bill. "I freed him, I cast him from limbo. Because I blew his G.o.d d.a.m.n brains out."

"Why did he stop attacking you before Bill shot him?" Marly firmly directs her question to Leonard, who shrugs.

"I don't know. One m-minute he was all over me, and the nuh, next it was like he'd smelled bad muh-muh-meat, or someth..." He stops.

Marly frowns.

"B-b-bad meat," says Leonard. "Oh, my G.o.d. That's it. Culls from the herd. Cellular awareness." He looks at Marly. "Jesus Christ, that's it." His stutter is much slighter.

"It's an extremely good pistol, actually," says Bill.

Marly ignores him. She is uncertain what to do. Now Leonard seems to be popping his excelsior, too.

"Hodgkin's disease," says Leonard, and thumps his chest. For a moment Marly thinks it's another non sequitur, but then she realizes.