The Living Read online

  Two vehicles roll into the lot with a snarl of gravel. The first is a beefed-up Land Rover with oversized tires and an urban camouflage paint job. The second is an armored bank truck hauling a horse trailer.

  “Here we go,” Abbot sighs. “Another game of Red Rover.”

  The bank truck backs its trailer up to one of the convoy’s. A young man with black frame glasses hops out and heads around to where the trailers meet, but Abram can tell by his quiet efficiency that he’s not the one in charge. While he’s busy unlatching the trailer doors, another man emerges from the Land Rover.

  “How was the service, Pastor?” Abbot says with a smirk. “Everybody on fire for the Lord tonight?”

  The man is around Abram’s age but with the sunken cheeks of someone much older. His shirt is thick and bristly like burlap, and small burn scars blotch his head, face, and hands like some kind of extreme body art. He regards Abbot with a stiff reserve, chin raised, eyes narrow, as if trying not to breathe a foul smell.

  “Got an answer for us about those rituals?” Abbot continues, ignoring the man’s disdain. “You’ve got a fun little rave going on out here, I’d hate to have to shut you down.”

  “We’re praying about it,” the pastor says. His voice is flat and empty, giving Abbot as little as possible.

  Abbot chuckles. “You do understand it’s not a choice, right? Uprooting you would be expensive and Management doesn’t spend unless it has to, but obviously we can’t have you burning down our assets.”

  “Obviously,” the pastor says.

  “It’s a new era. Law and order. Religion has to adapt to the times.”

  “We’re praying about it.”

  Abbot stares at the pastor, searching for a crack in his wall, then he shakes his head wearily. “All right, Koresh. I’m trying to help you, but we’ll table that one for now.” He turns to the horse trailer. “So what’ve you got for us here? Anything fresh?”

  Abbot disappears into the church’s trailer. The pastor disappears into the convoy’s. Abram glances at the faces around him, searching for some hint of what’s going on here, but they’re all as stony as the pastor’s.

  The inspection doesn’t take long. A moment later the two men reconvene in the patch of gravel between the trailers, squinting into the glare of the criss-crossing headlights.

  “You got another truck coming or what?” Abbot says, gesturing back to the trailer with a frown.

  “That’s all we have for you,” the pastor says.

  “This better be a bad joke,” Abbot scoffs. “There’s only ten in there.”

  The pastor nods thoughtfully. “We’ve been praying about this too. The gain is worth the sacrifice, but God is telling us to give less.”

  Abbot chuckles. “Oh so you want to bargain now? You’ve got God playing sales manager?”

  The pastor shrugs. “Not bargaining. Just stating a fact.”

  “We’re already giving you three for one! You expect to get our whole load for that sad little crew?”

  “Broken bodies can’t do your work. They’re garbage to you.”

  “And what are they to you again?”

  The pastor doesn’t miss a beat. “God’s creations. Our sick brothers and sisters.”

  “Right, right,” Abbot sighs. “Why do I keep forgetting you people are crazy?” He tosses up his hands. “Fuck it. You’re wasting our damn time, but fuck it.” He turns to the troops and shouts, “Full swap!”

  The pastor’s assistant unloads the horse trailer: ten men and women bound together on a rope, Dead but intact, eyes clear and hungry, like they died yesterday of natural causes. From the convoy’s trailer comes the opposite end of the spectrum: a grotesque procession of oozing corpses, some rotted to slimy black leather, some still fresh but hopelessly mangled, torn apart by weapons or teeth.

  The Axiom Group and the Church of the Holy Fire exchange their cargo. The intact Dead file into one trailer while a far greater number of ruined ones stumble into the other, dragged by collars and chains. Most of the latter show awareness levels on par with the state of their bodies: slack jaws, drooling lips, eyes blank in their sunken sockets. But Abram notices one who stands out. Her eyes dart in a panic as she’s prodded up the ramp. The headlights shine through large, dripping gaps in her naked torso, but her face—

  “Shit,” Abram grunts under his breath, a jolt of surprise. He takes an instinctive step forward. “Wait.”

  The soldier dragging her stops, and Abram stares at the woman’s face, pale gray with a hint of pink. This pink wasn’t there the last time he saw this woman. It wasn’t there when he flew her across the country, leashed to the floor of the plane while her daughter pried at her heart. It wasn’t there when they shared a prison in Manhattan, or when men like the ones around him dragged her away to be shipped off like freight. He has to be imagining it. It must be a trick of the light. But when the woman finally notices his stare and her eyes latch onto his, it’s impossible not to see the cognition in them. And the recognition.

  She knows him. And apparently she knows him as a friend, because her features flood with an unmistakable emotion.

  Hope.

  Abram feels the balloon of black blood pulsing in his brain, screaming for release.

  “What’s the problem?” Abbot says.

  Abram shakes his head and steps back, swallowing hard. “Nothing.” He swallows again; there’s a dry lump that he can’t seem to get it down. “Thought her collar was loose.”

  He keeps his eyes on the ground as the woman disappears into the church’s trailer. Under his breath, inaudibly, he murmurs, “What is your job?”

  When the exchange is complete and the doors are latched, the pastor turns without a word and heads back toward his Land Rover, but Abbot grabs his arm as he brushes past.

  “Hey, Bark.”

  Bark shakes him off with a sharp jerk and glares at him.

  “I was raised Catholic,” Abbot says in a low, man-to-man tone. “I know the drill about the ‘sanctity of life,’ but come on. We’ve given you, what, six hundred by now? What the hell are you doing with all this rotten meat?”

  “When we hit rock bottom,” Bark says, “when we’re utterly lost and broken, that’s when God can use us.”

  Abbot rolls his neck and groans. “Don’t you people ever drop the act? Do you recite the gospels while you’re fucking your wife?”

  Bark is already turning away but Abbot keeps pushing.

  “I’m done humoring your bullshit! Turn around and start talking like a human being or this our last trade!”

  Bark stops. He turns around and looks Abbot in the eye. “You want me to talk like a human being?” He cocks his head, sounding genuinely intrigued. “You mean you want me stop telling the truth? You want me to soften it and modernize it so everyone can be comfortable?” An unsettling smile is creeping into the rigid mask of his face. “You want me to say I don’t really believe any of this, that I’m just playing a role for money or power because that’s something you could comprehend, right? Is that about right?”

  The mask has melted into a toothy grin. He takes a step toward Abbot and Abram is surprised to see Abbot step back.

  “But see, I do believe it.” His voice is a fervent whisper. “All of it. And I don’t just believe it, I do it. Because a real man does what he believes. A real man doesn’t make excuses for the truth or sand off its sharp edges. A real man takes the truth and”—he makes a double fist and strikes his chest—“shoves it into his heart. And dies on it.”

  Abbot watches him with a flat glare. Bark takes another step closer.

  “I am not a human being.” He gestures down at his body with a grimace of revulsion. “I’m not this.” He extends his disgust to the surrounding forest. “I don’t live here.” He thumps a hand to his chest. “I’m spirit. I live with God. And he’s coming to take me home.”
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br />   He stares Abbot in the face for a moment, then abruptly steps back, tossing out his palms in an easy shrug. “No act, boss man. Just faith.” His smile is relaxed. “And faith doesn’t bargain.”

  He hops in his SUV and slams the door. It lurches into the woods with a spray of gravel, and the trailer truck follows it.

  Abbot’s face is a granite slab as he watches the vehicles disappear. “Roberts,” he grunts. “You got any scouting experience?”

  Abram swallows again and this time it goes down, his autonomic reflexes finally regaining control. “Some,” he says. “I served on the Goldman and Citi acquisition teams.”

  “Get a few guys and head into town. Snoop around. Go to church.”

  “Yes sir. Anything specific I’m looking for?”

  Abbot lights a cigarette. He breathes out a cloud and stares through it into the trees as the headlights fade from view. “These people have been waiting a long time for Armageddon, and I’m sensing some impatience. I want to know what they’re up to.”

  As Abbot is speaking, Abram’s desperate brain lapses into a flicker of microsleep. His daughter is wandering off into the forest but he doesn’t run after her, he is occupied with some important task that requires his attention, he just needs another minute, just a few more seconds to finish and then—

  “Yes sir,” he says, blinking hard.

  Despite the agony in his head, he is fairly sure he said it without hesitation, the way Jim Roberts would say it. Jim Roberts would follow orders. Jim Roberts would do his job and get his pay and go home to his family, just like the man in the RV who is now sporting a beige jacket and studying the company handbook while his wife and children stare out the windows in mute horror.

  Abram emerges from the forest and begins his trek across the plain. There are other men with him, but we are not interested in them. Their stories are dull and small, but Abram has ties to more lives than he knows. Many of them, like Jim Roberts, are snarling at him from the depths of the Lower, and these he hears clearly. But other voices come from above, and these he ignores, even though they are louder, stronger, and far more beautiful. Even though—or because—they are voices of love.

  You are not this man, one of them whispers. You are not this mask. When you find her, will you be able to take it off?

  The grass is silver in the moonlight and it clings to his feet, whispering warnings as it rustles in the wind. He kicks it and stomps it down, keeping his eyes straight ahead, locked on the lightless outline of the town on the hill.

  • • •

  In the back of a filthy horse trailer, a Dead woman shivers. The sensation of cold surprises her, as have so many others in these last few days. The sensation of longing. Regret. Hope and fear. She presses her face to the window slits and her eyes scan the night, darting from shadow to shadow.

  Where is she?

  The inside of her head, so cold and silent for so many years, is filling with a trickle of warmth. A single thought repeats like a steady drip:

  Where is my daughter?

  She keeps searching as the men load her out of the trailer. As they drag her into a dim, echoing warehouse. As they prod her into a cage. She searches the faces around her, the stern grimaces of the Living, the slack confusion of the Dead, but she finds nothing resembling what she sees in her daughter’s face. She finds nothing at all like love.

  Where is my daughter?

  It is thus far a simple thought, lacking much context. Most of what she remembers comes to her second-hand, from the stories her daughter told her. Her daughter’s name. Her own name. Vignettes of their shared history. But she believes these stories, and she is slowly making them real. Each word wipes a little soot from the scorched photo of her life, and to her great surprise, she wants to see more.

  She wants to see who she is, even if it’s an ugly portrait. Even if it’s despair and surrender and betrayal. She wants another chance, even if it’s brief. Her chest clenches with this longing as the cool night air passes through it, caressing her desiccated heart.

  “Ju…lie,” she whispers, a feeble breath lost in the groans around her. “Help me.”

  WE

  Nora Greene listens to the band play a song about dying. Or surrendering. Or accepting fate. She’s not sure what most of the songs mean; the lyrics dance circles in her head, just out of reach. But they do rhyme, and their melody is sweet, like songs from the old days.

  She did not like the sermon. It was loud and muscular and simmering with hate, and she struggled to reconcile it with the gentle conviction of her new companions. She watched Peter and Miriam as the sermon raged on, and she could see a tension in them too. They smiled at the pastor’s jokes, but they didn’t laugh. They nodded at his pithy aphorisms, but they didn’t shout amen. They shifted in their seats and shot glances at Nora, and she kept waiting for them to lean in and whisper, It’s not normally like this! But they held their ground. They pursed their lips and flexed their jaws and nodded.

  And then the pastor left the stage, and the music started again. And the music is nice. The music washes away the sermon’s lingering stink, and Nora thinks of her mother’s church, its hellfire homilies followed by lovely chorales, and then fellowship in the foyer, tea and jelly donuts, and the weekly potluck dinners—and yes, the study sessions after the meal, the scripture, the guilt, the confusion—but then card games! Laughter! Homemade dessert! She thinks maybe she thinks too much. Maybe she should close her eyes and plunge into this warm pool.

  But as she is bracing for that plunge, someone sits in the empty seat next to her.

  Miriam peeks around Nora’s head to see who it is, then frowns warily. She mumbles something to Peter, but Nora isn’t listening. She is trying to decide what to feel as she stares at the side of her friend’s face.

  Julie doesn’t speak. She doesn’t even look at Nora. She watches the band play, but Nora is fairly sure the wetness in her eyes isn’t from the music. Nora is disarmed. She forgets her urge to run.

  They listen to two more songs together, eyes locked firmly ahead. The first is about war, judgement, the earth burning away. The second mentions blood sixteen times. Both have joyous melodies.

  When the third song begins—something about the depravity of the flesh—Julie finally looks at Nora. There is hurt and confusion in her red, round eyes, and Nora feels things she can’t process in this place. She gets up and rushes outside.

  She stands in the empty town square and looks up at the stars. Why do they look so big? Like fat globes of white fire?

  Julie stops beside her and follows her gaze skyward. The music is muffled now, reduced to a slow swirl of soothing tones. It’s far lovelier without the words.

  “Remember when we camped on the stadium roof?” Julie says. “You and me and Perry and the guys from the foster home?”

  Nora doesn’t respond. She scans the sky for Orion, for Venus, something familiar to make the world sane again.

  “And Perry made a campfire and I tried to roast Carbtein and it just exploded? And the coals slid off the roof onto the gate guards and they thought they were under attack?”

  Even the moon looks alien, menacing the earth with its razor sharp sickle.

  “And then we got really high and started making up new constellations?”

  Nora sighs and stops searching. “Phallus Minor,” she murmurs. “The Little Dick.”

  Julie points at a curving cluster on the western horizon. “Is that yours there? Whorion?”

  A small smile forces itself onto Nora’s face. “We were so mature.”

  Julie lets out a wistful sigh. “I can’t believe I’m saying this about those years but…simpler times.”

  “Twelve-year-old Julie would have clawed your eyes out for that condescension.”

  Julie shakes her head. “Fucking kids. We really thought we’d seen it all.”

  “We’
d seen a lot,” Nora says, dropping her eyes to the ground. “But yeah…there was more.”

  Julie turns to face her, and Nora forces herself to meet her gaze. “Do you want to talk?” Julie asks her.

  Nora shakes her head.

  “Okay.” Julie glances back at the church. A tall figure with bad posture is silhouetted in the doorway. “I don’t either. Let’s go for a walk.”

  “Where?”

  Julie turns her back on the tall figure, and it wanders off into the dark. “Introduce me to your brother.”

  • • •

  Nora’s earlier anxiety feels foolish as the kindly old matron of Redemption Hall welcomes them at the door. She leads them to a padded room full of Mostly Dead children, some free to roam, others strapped to their bunk beds. Addis has not been carved up by scientists or used for target practice. He’s sitting on the floor with the other children, playing quietly with a pile of toys. Or rather, picking them up and examining them like an archaeologist identifying ancient tools.

  “Addis,” she says, “this is Julie. My best friend.” She takes a deep breath. “Julie…this is my brother.”

  Julie crouches down and smiles, her throat clenching with emotion. “Hey, Addis.”

  He looks up from his study of the toys and begins to study Julie. He stares at her very hard, until she starts to squirm. Then he smiles.

  “Whoa!” Nora says, shooting Julie a wide-eyed glance. “That’s a first.”

  “He’s gloating,” Julie says. “He destroyed me in that staring contest. Not that I stood a chance against those eyes.”

  But Addis is not gloating. He is not playing a game. He’s not smiling because he’s in a good mood or because Julie is pretty and speaks to him with respect. He’s smiling because he knows her. Because he remembers a day long ago when her voice reached out to him, echoing through empty streets and piercing the fog of his fever, a ringing rebuttal to the skeletons all around him: You’re not dead.