“If you need more manpower, Georgia, then get it. You’ve got a whole damn city at your disposal.”
“Enough people already know about the airfield,” she retorted.
“Then lie,” came the exasperated reply. “Go outside of that construction company for volunteers — I don’t trust those people anymore. Tell the volunteers that they’re working on the site for a new hospital. They don’t have to know anything!”
Gregory had tuned out the conversation and was studying each Senator’s face. He tried to separate the loyal ones from the opportunists. It was always visible in the face. As a man of God — and Hand of God’s leader — he had honed his ability to sniff out sin.
Maybe that was why Gillies made him just a little uncomfortable.
But everyone had their flaws, their secrets; and, though he fought it, his mind drifted again to Barry.
The final days of the Wall’s construction… the burn pits, trenches twenty feet deep and piled with crippled, decapitated and paralyzed rotters. The foul stench of death, so thick and pervasive that all the soldiers standing guard had to wear gas masks. And the moaning. The moaning and gurgling as the undead flailed about in a slurry of leaking fluids and decaying meat. The burn team hadn’t come by in days and trucks were bringing in all of the ferals that had been picked off along the Wall’s perimeter. They said it would be more efficient this way. It was madness. Weird, otherworldly groans filled the sky day and night.
Finally the burn team arrived. The dead in the pits were liquefying beneath the summer sun, and a fog of putrefaction had settled over the place; seeping into clothing and skin, staining every man and woman on-site.
When the burn team pointed their flamethrowers into the pits, the things erupted like volcanoes. Instead of ash and lava it was gore and thrashing, living limbs that rained down on everyone. Suddenly all was chaos, and the insanity that had been building for a week finally screamed to life. Everyone was in a panic, including Sergeant Ian Gregory. He was frantically searching through the smoke and slaughter for Kendra Barry. He pulled off his mask and screamed her name, then the stench of roasting flesh filled his nose and eyes and throat and he fell to his knees vomiting.
Somewhere in there, in the madness, she had fallen. Perhaps shoved, perhaps tripped, or maybe she’d just run blindly into the flaming pit and been caught in the blackened claws of the undead.
They did manage to recover her body a few days later during the cleanup; official cause of death was smoke inhalation. But Gregory, identifying her body, had seen the marks around her throat where they had choked the life from her.
“Has Finn Meyer been extorting credits from you?”
Voorhees leaned on the counter and looked Becks hard in the eye. She gave him a what’re-you-gonna-do shrug and said, “It keeps people from stealing. He polices the market more often than the cops.”
“But he is stealing from you, don’t you see that?” Voorhees sighed.
“It could be worse,” was her reply.
“How, exactly?”
“I have a business here, Officer, and a home. I have a normal life. I was the only one from my hometown to reach the Great Cities. We were being followed by rotters. We had to try to swim across this lake — then suddenly there were rotters all over the shore, on all sides, surrounding u. Fourteen went in. By the time an Army convoy happened by, I was the only one still treading water.”
“I’m sorry,” Voorhees said. “I’m sorry that happened to you. But how does that make this all right?”
“It makes this tolerable,” she said. “I spent two days in that water. I watched as people sank, one by one, around me. I ran out of tears. I couldn’t scream anymore. I could only fight to stay afloat. And their eyes — the rotters, every pair of eyes was on me. Those soldiers could have just passed me by but they fought those bastards for hours just to get to me. They brought me here. I’m grateful.”
“Don’t be grateful to Meyer,” Voorhees told her. “His days are numbered.”
“What are you trying to do?” she asked softly, sadness in her eyes, pleading eyes. “Life is okay now. Please.”
Someone nudged Voorhees’ back. Remembering that he was blocking the checkout, he stepped back. A hard-faced woman in a long coat offered her hand. “Pat Morgan.”
“P.O. Voorhees.” He gave her a firm shake. “Are you another officer?”
“No, air,” she said, with the slightest twinkle in her eye. “I work for Mister Meyer. He’d like to buy you lunch.”
Twelve / Candy
Meyer had a handful of colorful rock candy, probably homemade, that he munched obnoxiously as he and Pat Morgan walked Voorhees down to the shore of Lake Michigan.
“I thought this was an invitation to lunch,” said Voorhees. Meyer shrugged. “Not hungry.”
“Crooked and cheap. But I’ll bet your whores are top dollar.”
“Interested in a lay, Officer?” Meyer grinned. “I can get you a special deal. You ever fucked an Asian girl? I do mean girl, by the way.”
A quiet chill settled in Voorhees’ gut. “What do you want? If this is about either bribes or threats you’d best just save your breath. I don’t care.”
“I have a lot of little girls,” Meyer continued, as if Voorhees hadn’t spoken. “In basements all over Gaylen. They’re quite willing, too—”
Voorhees seized Meyer by the collar of his coat. Morgan whipped out a.45 and stuck it against his temple.
“I didn’t think guns were allowed in Gaylen,” Voorhees said through gritted teeth. He didn’t let Meyer go.
“Oh, they’re not,” Meyer replied, his breath sickly sweet. “Neither are booze or hash or meth, but there seems to be a steady demand and, well, why send people away empty-handed? I don’t believe in that. The government doesn’t believe in that.”
“You’re trash. If this were my city I’d—”
“Yes, I’ve heard how you did things back in Louisiana. So trusted, so admired that nearly every citizen and all your cops bailed on you when the military withdrew? Leaving you with what, a handful of bums? What else happened down there, Voorhees? I’ve heard lots of strange talk about weird things in the southern badlands.
“You know what they say?” Meyer asked, delicately extracting Voorhees’ hands from the folds of his coat. “People say that there are ghosts and gods roaming about out there. They call these days the Last Days. But I don’t subscribe to that, and I’m sure you don’t either, being a rational man. Just the same—”
He slugged Voorhees in the stomach, doubling the old man over, and shouted in his ear “In here, I am God!”
Morgan clipped Voorhees in the back of the head with the butt of her gun. He fell to his knees, vision swimming, the voice of Finn Meyer fading in and out and then gone altogether.
He looked up to find himself alone. It was starting to snow.
Upon arriving back at his office — a warehouse basement downtown — Meyer was informed that he had a couple of sellers sitting upstairs. He liked to handle this end of the business personally. He removed his coat, smoothed his suit and headed up.
The couple was sitting in a small windowless room, isolated from the goings-on in the rest of the building. Entering with the lieutenant who had summoned him, Meyer shook their hands warmly and said, “First things first. How much are you asking for?”
The woman looked at the man, who cleared his throat and said, “Ten thousand.”
Meyer clapped his hands on his knees and laughed. “Well, this must be quite a filly! Ten thousand? Let’s see her. Where is she?”