Empire

"I know."

"We could stop there from being more of 'em."

Hamman frowned at Douglas. "Whaddaya mean?"

"I mean, anybody still in the city's gotta be infected. Or will be. Right?"

"I still don't follow."

"Buddy, if WE got rid of 'em, like now, we could go home."

Hamman was chilled to his core. Douglas smiled as if he'd just crapped a kitten out on the deck. "We'd be done, we could call off the patrol and get the hell outta here! Think about it!"

"I ain't shooting civilians." Hamman said slowly. "You need to listen to what's coming out of your mouth. Been drinking seawater again?"

"Irrelevant." Douglas scooted another empty cooler out from under his seat and beckoned to Hamman. "Look what I found." He pried open the lid.

Inside lay a severed fish head, ragged pink tissue trailing from its gaping mouth, a mouth that opened and closed as its eye darted back and forth.

"Douglas…"

"I think it's funny." Looking up at Hamman, Douglas scowled as if offended. "It's a JOKE! C'mon! Holy Christ, we're not at a funeral here. You need to loosen up."

"Loosen up?! You were talking about murdering people!"

"They're already dead, they just don't know it." Douglas picked up the fish head. "They're like this guy here. See? And so are we, except we don't want to stay in this town! It's them that's keeping us here!"

"No." Hamman stepped back into the cabin. "If you want to leave, just leave now. Go. I won't tell anybody. I'll take you in to shore and you can just go. You'll leave that goddamn gun here, but you can go."

"We're partners." Douglas tossed the fish head overboard and wiped his hands on his pants. "I'm not gonna leave you behind."

"It's either that or stay with me and shoot rotters."

Douglas seemed to consider the ultimatum. He sat back and gazed over the ocean, watching clouds gather on the horizon. He saw a dorsal fin skimming the surface of the water and grasped his rifle. "Shark? No, dolphin." He pointed and stood up. "You see it Hamman?"

"Yeah, great."

Douglas took aim at the dorsal. Hamman almost made a move to stop him. Almost. But he saw his partner's eyes glazed over with madness and stayed put.

The rifle bucked in Douglas' hands. A chunk of the fin sailed into the air. "HA! Nailed the fucker." The fin stayed visible, and he followed it with the scope. "Five will get you twenty that he's undead. I'll bet his head is right…about…there…"

Something knocked against the boat, spilling Douglas onto the floor. He swung around and spotted more fins at his back. "It's a school or pod or whatnot of the fuckers! Get your rifle, Hamman!"

Hamman stayed in the cabin, fiddling with the radio. No signal.

Douglas righted himself and aimed for one of the other dolphins. The boat rocked again. "Dammit!"

Standing straight up, he fired through the floor.

"Douglas!!" Hamman left the cabin now, grabbing his partner's wrists, but Douglas fired again and again into the floor. Water spurted over their feet. "What've you done??" Hamman cried.

"I dunno." Douglas stared blankly at the holes he'd made. "Well, why were they bothering us anyhow?"

Hamman spun Douglas to face him and shook him by the shoulders. "They WEREN'T!!"

Douglas pulled himself away from Hamman and sat back in his bucket seat. "Huh."

He put the barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

Hamman stood and watched Douglas' brain matter spray into the air and then pepper the waters above the heads of the dolphins. One of them poked its head out to look at Hamman, and he saw that most of its snout and the skin around its eyes were gone. A pinkish stream shot out its blowhole and it descended below the surface.

Hamman started the motor and headed to shore. He never saw the wet hands clambering over the boat's rear, never heard the squishing of footsteps entering the cabin, felt nothing at all until teeth sank into his neck.

Gene stumbled back as the boat ran aground. Hamman's corpse fell atop him, still gushing blood, and Gene opened his mouth to catch it.

He sat on the deck for hours, watching the sun crawl across the sky as he chewed. The weakness in his arm, where he'd earlier been shot, went away.

Then he remembered something. Eating until his stomach could hold no more, he climbed off the boat and headed back to the landfill. He would return once he had his shovel.

15 Tea in Hell

Harry, at twenty-four, had been the eldest of Addison's adopted children. Two years his junior, Baron Tetch never wasted an opportunity to remind Harry and his other siblings who the man of the house was. He arranged for tea in the early afternoon, and they all gathered in the sitting room, which looked into a lovely wooded atrium, sun streaming down through its skylight. Harry served tea.

Tetch looked around the room to see that they were all holding their cups properly, dressed and groomed neatly for the occasion. Bailey had a spot of dried blood on his cheek. Tetch grimaced. Lily, of course, looked and behaved perfectly. So much easier to train a person than an animal.

Aidan looked questioningly at Tetch. The latter nodded his permission, and Aidan spoke in a garbled, broken voice, as if he did not truly understand the words he was saying.

"Lurvley day."

"Love-ly, Aidan."

"Lo…lurvely."

Tetch took a slow sip of chamomile. "Harry, another sugar." The afterdead in his butler's uniform hastened across the room.

"I saw a bird on the fence today." Lily said brightly. "You didn't touch it, did you?" Tetch replied. Lily's smile faded slightly but she pressed on. "Of course not. I just looked at it. It was three colors — brown, red and white."

Tetch raised a hand to silence her and leaned forward in his chair. "Ruth, your dress." A brackish stain was spreading across the material covering her legs. The undead looked down and lifted the dress. Tetch gasped, not at the fact she was naked beneath, but at the gaping flayed wounds extended from toe to thigh. "What did you do?" Ruth gave him a vacant stare. Must have been some rudimentary attempt at shaving. But shaving what?? She didn't eat near enough to be growing new hair. Sakes alive, she was wearing a wig! "Get out," he growled. "Disgraceful."

As Ruth shuffled past the others, Lily patted her hand. Tetch's glare burned into the little girl's head, but she would not meet his eyes.

"Man." Aidan said, tea dribbling down his chin.

"What, Aidan?"

"Man, at outside. Yurst-day."

"Yes-ter-day, Aidan. It's not worth teaching you to speak if you're going to sound like a mongrel."

"Yes."

"Anyway, what man?" Was it the man Lily had told her about last night? "Outside the fence?"

"Yes."

"He was meat?"

"No." Came the answer. But Lily had said the stranger was alive…no matter, the child was probably mistaken. "So he was like you, then."

"No."

Tetch sighed. Aidan, the most able of his servants, had seemed worthy of speaking privileges. But he didn't know what he was saying. Just making nonsense sounds to placate the hand that fed him.

"So the man wasn't alive, and he wasn't dead either. Very good."

Lily realized what Aidan was talking about and picked up his end of the conversation. "His eyes were all black. They were pretty."

"I don't want to hear any more talk about this man." Tetch said. "Aidan, you and Uriel walk the grounds tonight, until sunrise. Lily, forget about it. Understood?"

"Yes, I guess."

"Don't give me any crap young lady."

There was a thud beneath them. Sawbones in the cellar. Tetch took another drink and tried to force the thought of strange dark men from his mind, but it brought memories to the surface…

He was thirteen, Lily's age, when he first came to the house. Dr. Addison was a large, steely-eyed man who always wore his lab coat, and was usually flanked by an equally imposing Great Dane. He usually took dinner by himself in the cellar. None of the children were allowed down there; it was said to house his research on the zombie plague. Whether or not that meant there were rotters in the basement, Tetch had never dared ask.