The Living Read online

  “Feel better?” Tomsen asks.

  “Maybe.” Her grip on the tire iron relaxes until she sets it in her lap. “A little.” She’s no longer panicking, but her eyes still comb the dusty plains with a nervous intensity. “But I don’t get this. Why would Boneys swarm out in the desert? There’s no one to eat.”

  Tomsen nods. “Strange phenomenon. Started about three months ago. Mass migrations. Retreating from the cities, swarming in the empty spaces, like they wanted to get away from the Living instead of into them.”

  We enter a nameless little town and come out the other side, still the only moving object for miles around.

  “I took this route on my last trip to New York, before I heard about the migrations. Hundreds of Ossies here. Barely made it through.”

  “What were they doing?” Julie asks. “Just standing in the street?”

  “Seemed confused. Purposeless. I got the feeling they were waiting for something.”

  “Like what?”

  Tomsen shrugs. “For the field to tip back in their favor? Their next opportunity?”

  I remember the last thing I heard from their dusty archive of prerecorded messages, the anonymous voice of some long-dead spokesman buzzing with immutable confidence:

  You will become us. We will win. Always have, always will.

  The wrench trembles in my hand. Half fear, half rage.

  “R,” Julie says as Tomsen guides the RV around a wrecked convertible. Its driver is grinning at us, and Julie holds eye contact with its hollow sockets until we pass. “What are they?”

  I watch the skeleton recede behind us, now grinning at nothing.

  “They’re not just dried-up zombies,” she says. “They’re different.”

  I nod.

  “So what happens? How does a shuffling corpse turn into a running, jumping, roaring…” She trails off with a shudder. “What’s the line they cross?”

  “There’s no line,” I reply. “It’s gradual.”

  “But…what makes them get stronger and smarter when they should be falling apart?”

  I shake my head. “Boneys aren’t smart.”

  She gives me a skeptical side-eye. “R. They had you guys serving them dinner. They were judge and jury. Everyone knows the Boneys run the hives.”

  I consider this for a moment. “They’re not smart, they’re just…unencumbered.”

  She raises an eyebrow.

  “Self-awareness…empathy…perspective…all heavy weights. Boneys climb to the top…by shedding them.”

  Julie nods. “Okay…” We drive past a wrecked RV with all its windows broken, doors torn off, claw marks gouged into its sides, and cracked-open skulls littering the ground around it. “But that doesn’t explain how they can do that.”

  She has me there.

  “How can something get stronger the more it rots?” She stares into the rippling liquid of the horizon, and I can tell that she’s high but this is no dismissible stoner rambling. Her questions are disturbingly valid. “It’s like…inverted life. Like they’re feeding on the entropy.”

  Dark thoughts begin to cascade in my head. Perhaps this is the reality of the undead world: a physics of consciousness, a biology of intent. Perhaps when I consumed the Living, it wasn’t the life itself that fueled my unnatural body, but the very act of taking it.

  Where did this come from? In what tarry bog of the universe did such a monster evolve? And how do we send it back?

  • • •

  An hour later, Julie and M are deep in quiet contemplation. Tomsen, meanwhile, scans the horizon with a puzzled squint and increasing agitation, like a lost tourist looking for landmarks. “I don’t understand,” she mutters. “Two months ago, they were everywhere.”

  The highway curves away from the train tracks and into another little village. The road is more pothole than pavement here, and Tomsen slows to a cautious creep, babying Barbara’s delicate joints. I see two skeletons in the shadow of a police station and I stare into their grinning faces as we approach. My mind is far away, still exploring Julie’s questions, so the skeletons are already behind us by the time it registers:

  They were standing up.

  A crack from the rear bedroom. A scream from the cushion fort. I whirl around just as Tomsen hits the gas and the surge sends me stumbling back onto the bed, landing face to face with the nearly toothless skull of a long-dead officer. It has punched a finger through the rear window, but as the coach accelerates it stumbles and falls, leaving its finger quivering in the glass. Sprout pops out from the cushions and pushes it back through the hole, then returns to the safety of the fort.

  The spike in my heart rate slows as I watch the Boney cop and its partner scramble after us. This isn’t the threat we’ve been bracing for, the swarm of catlike demons that clawed its way up the stadium walls. They lurch. They totter. They are stripped of tissue, almost ready to become dust. And still they pursue us, as blindly certain as ever that they’ll win.

  “Bye,” M says, waving at them through the window.

  “Maybe that’s all that’s left,” Julie says. “Maybe the rest all starved.”

  Tomsen shakes her head. “The swarm’s always shedding its old and weak. Leaves them behind like dandruff. But there were thousands of thousands, like ants, termites, wasps, locusts, cicadas—they didn’t all die in two months.”

  “So you think they…migrated again?”

  Tomsen shrugs. “I don’t think anything. No idea. But if they’re not here anymore, they’re somewhere else.”

  I spot a few more as the sun dips into the west. Some linger around towns and rest stops, others have wandered into the desert on splintering legs or no legs at all, dragging their torsos through the sand on fingers worn to sharp points. I think of insects crawling across a parking lot. What brings a bug to that endless expanse? What tiny blips of thought inform its decisions? What does it imagine it’ll find at the end of all that effort? Like insects, like animals, like most human beings, the Boneys don’t pause for such questions. Their line of inquiry stops far short of introspection, landing somewhere around how do I get?

  It’s a pathetic sight, but every time I feel the urge to empathize, they twist their heads around and snap their teeth and struggle in our direction, revealing the brutal monomania that drives them, and my empathy recoils. These things are not people. They’re not even creatures. They’re the embodied reverberations of a single ancient utterance, and I have heard it too many times.

  • • •

  We pass a sign announcing: Highway 50, Loneliest Road in America. Below it, another one warns: No Services 88 Miles, but the 88 has been sprayed over and amended to 146. No doubt it’s due for another update.

  The road is a straight line all the way to its vanishing point. Mountains rise and fall on the horizon like frozen waves. We are approaching the end of the Midwaste, and Tomsen’s swarm is still a no-show. Somehow, this is far from comforting.

  A high metallic squeal has joined the rattling in the RV’s front axle. Combined with the whistling from the hole in the rear window, it sounds like an aural expression of a panic attack. Julie and M are mellow now, but I see Tomsen’s eyes twitching in the mirror.

  “Sounds bad,” M says. “CV joint?”

  “I keep replacing them,” Tomsen says through gritted teeth. “Barbara hates these roads. She’s an old lady. She wants to go home.”

  “Should we stop and check it?” Julie asks, grimacing as the noise drills into her high.

  Tomsen’s hands twist on the steering wheel like she’s wringing out a rag. “Of course we should stop! That’s the herald horn of a breakdown! But we can’t stop on the Loneliest Road a few hours from the witching hour. Can’t trust reality out here, it’s liquid, it’s slippery! Shows you cracks and holes, ghosts and demons, things you’re not ready to see. Very bad place for a pit stop.” />
  Julie watches Tomsen’s hands tremble. “Huntress…are you sure you don’t want some weed?”

  “No weed. No damn cannabis. I told you it makes me jittery.” She’s shaking her head violently.

  “I just thought—”

  “Open the glovebox,” Tomsen snaps, sharper than I’ve ever heard her. Julie opens the glovebox. “Hand me that case.” Julie hands her what looks like an antique silver makeup kit. “Hold the wheel.”

  While Julie reaches over to comply, Tomsen flips open the case to reveal a mound of white powder. It’s not makeup. She cuts a vague line with her fingernail, pulls a hundred dollar bill out of a jacket pocket, rolls it up with a flick of her fingers, and snorts.

  “Jesus, Tomsen,” Julie says with wide eyes. “We were trying to calm our nerves, not fucking party.”

  But Tomsen’s nerves suddenly do look calm. She gives the case back to Julie and takes the wheel with steady hands, and then she closes her eyes. The shriek from the axle winds down as the RV decelerates. When we come to a full stop in the middle of the highway, Tomsen’s eyes slide open.

  “Okay,” she says with a hazy smile. Her voice sounds lower and softer, like she just woke up from a nap. “Okay.”

  She climbs down from the cockpit and moves to the back. She opens a cabinet and pulls out a big, jangling tool bag. “Give me two hours,” she says, casually swiping the tire iron out of Julie’s lap, and saunters out the door.

  Julie and I exchange dumbfounded looks. The kids wait in their cushion fort, worried and silent. For a moment, the only sound is the desert wind, then there’s a clanking and a cranking, and the front of the RV rises notch by notch.

  “What’s she take when she is trying to party?” M wonders, staring out the open door. “Chamomile tea?”

  Julie chuckles. “Tomsen in the club, snorting lines of Ambien.”

  A smile creeps onto my face. Their high is infectious. I enjoy it for a few seconds before a voice from the cushion fort punctures the levity.

  “What about Nora? Won’t we lose her?”

  Our smiles fade. Sprout Kelvin: our six-year-old voice of responsibility.

  “Maybe her train will make some stops too,” Julie says. “Suggest that to the universe.”

  M steps out the door and stares west. His posture is hunched in odd ways, favoring his many wounds. “What Tomsen said…ghosts and demons…she’s just crazy, right?” He turns slowly, scanning the horizon. “None of that’s real, right?”

  The sun is retreating toward the mountains. A bruise-blue shadow spreads in the east. “Zombies weren’t real,” I mumble, imagining things springing to life in that shadow, emerging from lairs of nonbeing as the sun abandons its watch. “Until we decided they were.”

  WE

  Abram squirms in his seat. His forearms stick to the leather. The interior of the huge SUV is inexplicably cramped, all black, and hot despite its tinted windows. He sweats in the humid darkness. He swears he can hear the heartbeats of the two soldiers squeezed against him, like they’re a set of triplets in some monster’s leathery womb.

  He can’t stand it. He has to do something. He wants to kick and thrash but he sublimates his panic, funnels it into yet another cautious probe.

  “Hey, uh…” He considers asking the man on his right for his name but quickly scraps the idea. “You guys heard about the new program? Orientation?”

  “It went public two weeks ago,” the man says dully, staring straight ahead.

  “Pretty crazy, though, right? Zombie employees?”

  The man says nothing.

  “How many do you think we have working for us by now?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “In the facilities I’ve seen, there’s more of them than us.”

  “And?” The man keeps staring at the seat in front of him.

  “Just wondering if we’re putting ourselves out of a job.”

  The man looks out the side window and says nothing. Abram turns to the woman on his left. “I mean, they’re using Living subjects now, right? Kids, even?”

  The woman shrugs. “Whatever it takes.”

  She’s young, possibly a teenager, but she sounds as blank and disinterested as the man staring out the window. Women are rare in Axiom’s field ranks, especially young ones. Abram wonders what degradations she had to crawl through to reach this position. Her black hair is dull, her tawny skin is scarred, her dark eyes look haunted behind their heavy lids.

  “Do you…” Abram says, struggling to continue his subterfuge through a sudden wave of emotion. “Do you know what they do with them? The Living subjects?”

  The girl squints at him like he’s crossed some line of decorum.

  “They don’t tell us much in Nashville,” he adds. “Just wondering if you know what’s—”

  “Hey.” A grizzled face leans around the front passenger seat. “That’s enough back there. Orientation’s not our problem.”

  The team manager is an older man, past his prime but sturdy, graying everywhere but his thick black eyebrows. Abram is still waiting for someone to say his name.

  “Sorry, sir,” Abram says. “Just curious, sir.”

  The team manager studies him in the mirror for a moment. “I don’t recognize you.”

  “Jim Roberts, sir. I joined up in Nashville.”

  The manager nods. “Well, Roberts, ‘curiosity’ isn’t a good fit for this company. If you’re worrying about someone else’s job, you’re not doing yours.”

  “Yes sir.”

  The manager’s walkie squawks. “Scout Beta to Team Manager Abbot.”

  “Go ahead,” Abbot replies.

  “Civilians two miles ahead of you. Large RV.”

  “Profit-loss?”

  “Gas cans, supply crates, no visible weapons. Worth a stop.”

  “Do it.”

  Abram leans forward. It’s a smaller world than it used to be; there are only three passable highways to choose from when traversing the length of the country, so run-ins with familiar faces are far from impossible. But it can’t be them. It can’t be.

  He restrains a sigh of relief when the RV comes into view. It’s a blocky modern coach, adorned with gaudy swooshes in four different shades of beige. The scouts have already lined up the passengers, eight people ranging from elderly to adolescent. A family.

  The scouts haven’t drawn any weapons and are no doubt employing Adaptive Inducement to seem less threatening, but the effect only seems to work on the youngest of the children. Everyone else looks terrified.

  “PR time,” says Team Manager Abbot as he steps out of the vehicle. No one else moves to follow him. The driver keeps the windows up despite the heat, and Abram watches the proceedings through the tinted glass, a mute procession of gestures and expressions like a grim silent film.

  Abbot approaches the family with his hands outstretched, greeting them jovially.

  The family listens with increasing unease.

  Abbot gestures to their RV, the supplies on its roof, then to the Axiom convoy. His face adopts a soliciting look, like he’s asking for a favor that’s significant but not unreasonable.

  One of the younger men takes a step forward, his mouth moving rapidly. He waves his hands at the empty wilderness around them, then to the rest of his group, with an emphasis on the children.

  Abbot appears to consider this, then brightens like he’s had an idea. He points to the group, then spreads his hands to indicate the Axiom convoy, then concludes his statement with a proud grin, like a gameshow host announcing a prize.

  The young man shakes his head vehemently.

  Abbot shrugs. He says something to one of the scouts, who climbs into the RV and slowly drives off, leaving the family in a cloud of dust.

  The young man shouts at Abbot’s back as Abbot walks away, and it’s loud enough to be hea
rd inside the Hummer.

  “Wait!”

  Abbot stops and raises his walkie, waiting.

  The young man looks at his family. One of the children is crying. The man nods to Abbot, and Abbot smiles and speaks into his walkie and the RV comes to a halt.

  Abbot returns to the Hummer while the remaining soldiers escort the family back into their vehicle. A minute later, the convoy is back on the road, and the RV looks right at home among the small army of buses.

  “Eight new hires,” Abbot says, leaning back in his seat with a satisfied groan. “Thought these ones might actually stand on principle but they always come around once reality sets in. No choice, when you’ve got kids.”

  Abram notices no one else in the Hummer is sweating. He notices the sun is setting behind the approaching mountains.

  “You got kids, Roberts?”

  Abram looks up to find Abbot’s eyes watching him in the mirror. They look small beneath his heavy dark brows.

  “Yes sir,” Abram says.

  “Then you understand why we keep our heads down. Why we focus on the job at hand.” Abram knows he should say “Yes sir” and do his best to fade from Abbot’s awareness, but he’s distracted by the heat and the sticky seats and he hears himself say, “I’m not sure I do understand.”

  Abbot’s eyes flicker with surprise and perhaps renewed interest. The girl on Abram’s left raises her eyebrows at him and even the dead-eyed drone on his right gives him a glance. Abram’s face pales beneath the beads of sweat.

  “How long have you been with Axiom?” Abbot asks neutrally.

  “Not long, sir. About a year?”

  Abbot nods, and his gaze drifts out toward the reddening horizon. “Well let me tell you something. You make a lot of hard choices in this company and you have to make ’em fast.” His voice sounds distant, tired. “They’re coming at you down the assembly line, and if you pause to get philosophical and ask what it is you’re building, they roll right past you, the machines jam, and the factory shuts down. And then you’re unemployed, and your kids are hungry, and you’ve failed as a father and a man.” He straightens in his seat and tightens his voice. “So don’t do that, Roberts. Do your job.”