At the joint of the west wall and the ceiling there was a hole and it was from there that the bees poured. Bradshaw made it out, Dad didn’t. They said he was allergic. They said that thousands of bees had been nesting in the walls, so many that their honey seeped through when it got hot enough. That day, Nature had delivered a judgment against God, and that was the day Bradshaw realized He was just a snake-oil salesman, manipulating forces that were already there.
The lingering odors of slop duty hadn’t yet begun to fade when Bradshaw and Stoddard were sent into the bayou to harvest. The corpses seeded the previous day were reviving. There were a finite number of these Sources in the world — places where this strange energy, like honey, seeped through the soil and reanimated the dead — one was here in Louisiana, and so the base had been established. And despite the fact that fresh specimens were returning to life at that very moment, Stoddard was going on in a loud voice about the tattoo he always talked about and never got: “Death From Above” between his shoulder blades with an image of Christ behind the lettering. It was nothing but ironic to Bradshaw considering their occupation. Slogging through a stretch of mud filled with gnarled roots (nothing ever died out here, just kept growing), he ran that by Stoddard. His companion shrugged. “We didn’t make the URC, brother, we just plug them into it.” URC — Undefined Reanimation Catalyst. Scientific term for “we have no fucking idea.”
The first afterdead of the night was chained to a gnarled monster of a tree at the edge of the mud. It stared at them, perplexed. It was male, early thirties, saliva running from its lips and a rank odor coming off its soiled jeans. “He shit himself,” Stoddard spat. “Way to go, partner!” He clapped the undead on the shoulder and detached a thick chain leash from the tree. Bradshaw trudged on to the next rotter. “I’m thinking of getting a dog.” He told Stoddard as they hauled the lot out of the bayou, through a manned gate and onto a fenced pathway. “Retriever or something.”
“You’d keep it on-base?” Stoddard raised an eyebrow. “Why not?” Bradshaw replied. “You know they don’t mess with animals. Watchdog’s not a bad idea, anyhow.” He yanked one of his chains to get a straggler moving. It lurched at him; Bradshaw was ready with the stun gun and knocked it on its ass. He jerked impatiently until the wide-eyed corpse staggered to its feet. “Maybe I’m a little lonely. That’s not a crime, right?” Stoddard nodded in understanding. They were forced to make their home next door to these things — and the kicker was, the afterdead had better digs. It was almost maddening to plod through their rosy faux-neighborhoods, to look at that all day and then go back to an 8x8 room in a bunker. Grimm, one of the base’s certified lunatics, had decided to “move out to the suburbs” and seize a home from the afterdead. He’d done it, too. Cleaned out a house near the bayou, changed the locks and brought in what little furniture he could scrounge up. He actually slept every night with afterdead pawing at his bedroom windows — but still he slept in an honest-to-God bed, in a real house. Base Commander St. John normally wouldn’t have allowed such a stunt but Ryland wanted to see the outcome.
Ryland… shit. Bradshaw realized he was late for a meeting. “Let’s pick it up Joe.”
After depositing the afterdead in a holding pen and bidding Stoddard good night, Bradshaw walked to the truck yard. His path was protected by a low-voltage electric fence from which most afterdead had learned to stay away. Halogen street lamps cast the deserted streets beyond the fence in a garish light; that light ended at the yard’s gate, where he eased himself inside. “I’m late, I know.”
“Are you?” Seated on the front bumper of a slop truck, Ryland shrugged. “I lost my watch. How’re you holding up? You look exhausted.” It was a funny remark coming from him. Bradshaw sometimes thought that maybe, when God was putting Adam together, He wasn’t happy with some of the bones He’d rendered from the earth. Some were too angular, too odd, too cruel in appearance alone. So He threw them out, and someone else double-bagged ‘em in flesh and here you had Nathan Ryland. Cancerous jowls hung from sharply jutting cheekbones, above which sunken eyes were pitted into an oblong skull. And his face bore a greenish pallor, maybe that was just the lighting. Fish, the guys called him, though not to his face because he was frequently off-base as government liaison, and also because he’d have them castrated. Kneading his gloved hands, Ryland shivered. “So? How are you?” Bradshaw said he was fine and gave his report. The debriefing upon returning from Congo had been short and sweet; he’d been taken off field duty for a month; then ordered into counseling. “Hugs and hand puppets,” cracked Ryland with a lipless smile. “I’ve already spoken with Whittaker. So it was you who shot Clarke?”
Bradshaw raised an eyebrow, but nodded. “I’m sure you had no choice,” Ryland told the eyebrow. “Collateral damage. It’s a popular phrase with my friends in Washington. It means no more questions. You’ve got nothing to worry about, Ken.”
Bradshaw grimaced in the shadows. “I know that. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about Clarke.”
“No one said you had to be happy.” Ryland replied. “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get together with you. It’s a bad month. I’m flying to D.C. every other day and St. John’s on my ass to put in for a budget increase. He thinks I’m a lobbyist just because I don’t wear the uniform. But enough about my problems.” Standing up, he patted Bradshaw’s shoulder. “We’re good, okay?”
Bradshaw knew asking would be fruitless, but he did it anyway. “Clarke was a good… a good leader… why him? He didn’t need to be out there.”
“There’s always collateral damage. Remember that.” Ryland answered. His presence left the yard, and Bradshaw stood silent in his wake, a puppet without his puppeteer. After a few moments, he gathered up his strings and trudged toward the bunkers. On the other side of the electric fence, a silhouette peeled away from the night: a female, with papery gray flesh and hollowed-out knees giving her a strange falling-forward gait. She stopped a few feet from the fence, the muscles in her face working at something resembling a frown. Bradshaw ignored the thing and kept walking.
7,270 miles away, the relief organization Our World, based out of Brisbane, had set up a triage in Congo. They were dangerously close to the most recent clashes in the republic’s civil war, but Matt Hinzman knew that the needy tribal peoples would stay in their rainforest home — even if it meant running afoul of guerillas. As chief supervisor of the Congo effort, his decision went unchallenged, and even now, lying under a crumpled tent with his right arm gone, he didn’t regret making the call.
Sara Lister, a colleague of fourteen years, lay a few yards off. Her eye was pulled from its socket and rested in the hollow of a flayed cheek. Matthew heard feet shuffling at his back, but couldn’t turn over. He stayed motionless and hoped they couldn’t sniff him out.
The canvas tent pulled away from his body. He was turned to face a man wearing some sort of paramilitary uniform. Thank God! “The tribesmen,” Matt gasped hoarsely. “They tore us apart.”
The soldier traced Matthew’s jaw line with his fingertips. There was a nasty gash just below his chin. The soldier dug his fingernails in and pulled, paying no mind to the terrible screaming, which eventually stopped.
Sitting cross-legged in the middle of the camp, Clarke ate quietly. He eyed his surroundings in search of more meat. There was a half-devoured woman nearby clutching something in her hand. He recognized it: a pistol. He had one too, he thought, and fumbled around his waistline until he found it. The familiarity of it in his hand released a flood of memories, all clouded fragments. But recalling that he himself had been shot made him aware of the dull pain in his chest. Looking down, Clarke prodded the bullet hole. It hurt but wouldn’t keep him from moving. The hole between his legs was another story. He picked idly at the gashed tissue hanging out of his pants; more fragments came to him, the lingering memories of sensations for which he no longer had any use. Clarke tugged Hinzman’s upper lip off and chewed it for a while.