Through the glass doors, I see a convoy of beige trucks cresting the hill in a cloud of dust. I see the jagged mandalas painted on their hoods.
“Julie?” Nora says, shooting her a meaningful look. “I think I’m ready.”
-
WE SKIRT THE TOWN SQUARE and run into the leaf-strewn side streets, and Julie doesn’t talk to me. She stays at the front with Nora and doesn’t look back. I remember the youthful fantasy of the crisis that solves everything, the asteroid or alien invasion that renders all conflicts moot with no need for painful resolutions. But does this curative effect still work when we’ve already been through the apocalypse? Has disaster lost its potency?
We pass the bookstore where we parked the RV but Nora seems to have another destination in mind. The humid heat makes my skin sticky before I even start to sweat. A few raindrops hit the back of my neck like a cold finger tapping a warning.
A familiar building looms ahead, mossy and half absorbed into the forest behind it: the hospital, or whatever function it might serve now, with its hidden gravel road to a secret in the woods. Nora crashes through the front door and whirls left and right. “Addis!” she shouts, storming from room to room, tripping over piles of toys and knocking aside strange medical instruments. “Addis!”
A heavy, windowless double door opens a crack and an elderly woman in a lab coat peeks out. “Ms. Greene? What’s the matter, dear?”
“Where is he?”
“Addis? He’s still sleeping, along with all the others. Please keep your voice down.”
“Addis doesn’t sleep,” Nora snaps. “He hasn’t slept once since—” She cuts off as she registers the lab coat, its spattering of mysterious stains. “What is that? What the fuck are you wearing?”
“I beg your pardon?”
A shudder runs down Nora’s body. A tremor of rage and shame, like she has just completed a puzzle to reveal an image of her house being robbed.
She shoves the door open so hard the woman tumbles over backward. I am momentarily horrified as her brittle body crashes into a table and tools rain down on her, but then my eyes take in the context of the room, and I understand.
An echoing open space lit by the feeble glow of tiny windows. Dangling bulbs whose light doesn’t reach the ceiling. A few work stations with implements that aren’t quite medical or scientific: radios and stacks of photos, odd wooden rods and toy-like knitted things, like aids for some obscure form of therapy. And all along the walls, pacing slowly in chain-link cages: the patients.
Julie speaks for the first time, a bleak murmur. “Everywhere we go. Over and over.”
The patients are Dead, of course, hundreds of them, apparently sorted by decomposition levels. Nearest to us are the fresh ones: men, women, and children who look confused and hungry but otherwise normal in the dim light. In the middle: battered wrecks with dangling guts, gaping holes, missing eyes and faces—though no missing limbs, I notice. And at the back, hunching and lurching in the shadows like emaciated apes…the transitionals. Hairless, eyeless, naked and withered, hanging over the abyss and preparing to cut the rope.
How versatile the plague is. What a variety of tools one can mold from its cold clay. Whichever direction your particular madness drives you, whether to build misery or demolish joy, the plague is ready to serve.
“Addis!” Nora shrieks, running to a cage near the front. I see the boy inside, huddled in a corner while the adults stumble around in an agitated mob. A collective groan rises as the scent of life wafts through the space. One by one, the cages begin to rattle.
“Addis!” Nora yanks on the gate, trying to snap the padlock. She glances back at the doorway, but the old woman is gone. Nora forces a wordless scream through gritted teeth as she tries to snap steel.
“Nora,” Tomsen says, tapping her tool kit against Nora’s arm. “I can do it.” Without waiting for Nora’s response, she nudges her aside and crouches down to pick the lock. “But once I’ve done it,” she adds as she works, “a lot of bad things are going to happen very quickly so you should all get ready to—oh.” The lock clicks. “I’m getting good at that.”
The gate swings open and the Dead spill out. But before Nora can plunge into the mob, M rushes past her, holding a workstation table in front of him like a bulldozer blade. He plows the Dead back into the cage and pins them against the wall while Addis crawls through their kicking legs. M gives a last hard shove and drops the table, backs out of the cage and slams the door shut.
Nora and Addis both stare at him as he pauses to catch his breath. I wonder if Nora’s about to thank him, but no, this day won’t allow any such warmth. I knew from the moment I woke up: this day wants to be war.
A series of barked commands echo through the streets outside, and the air erupts with gunfire.
“What the hell is happening?” Nora yells to the ceiling.
“Guessing Axiom overheard the sermon,” Tomsen says. “Guessing they’re cracking down on religious liberty. Guessing we’re surrounded.”
Julie is shaking her head, lost in some private lament. She doesn’t even look up when the doors fling open and men in riot gear pour into the room. I grab her hand and run for the back exit, preparing to dodge bullets, but no one shoots at us. No one even chases us. I realize these people aren’t Axiom troops; they’re Ardents—but what are they doing? Why are they jabbing poles at their Dead prisoners and banging on their cages? Why are they wasting time teasing zombies while their town is under attack?
Just before I run out, I catch a glimpse of a cage door opening.
God’s House is emptying like a high school party busted by the cops. There are more direct comparisons involving cult compounds and federal agents, but this is the one that sticks in my mind. A mob of drunk, surly teenagers shouting empty threats while bored officers duck them into cruisers.
And Paul Bark, the nerd that would be prom king, shouting louder than anyone.
“You think your little pistols can stop God’s plan? Nothing has ever happened that God didn’t want to happen! God gets what he wants!”
I watch from behind abandoned cars and dumpsters as we sneak our way toward the RV. The bookstore that seemed so secluded when we parked behind it is now on the crackling edge of this conflagration. We advance in quick bursts, dashing between buildings in groups of two, hoping Axiom is too busy containing the church to worry about a few stragglers.
“Do you really want to fuck with the guy who invented Hell?” Paul is almost screaming now. “Do you really want to fuck with his servants?” His hands are raised over his head while a soldier prods him toward a Hummer, but he makes it look like a charismatic stage gesture. “Our God burns babies in his divine justice and we praise him all the more! We are harder than you pussies can imagine! We—”
He stops walking. To my amazement, he stops talking. The soldier jabs him in the back with his rifle but Paul doesn’t move. A strangely serene smile replaces his fiery glare.
“We bathe in God’s wrath every day,” he says, still projecting but softer now. “We are always braced and ready for it. Are you?”
There’s a gunshot. A scream. I see a soldier grappling with a shriveled human form, then he disappears into a surging swarm of them. The Dead flood the square from every street and alley, a rushing river of mutilated flesh, starving eyes, gnashing teeth.
I am standing in the middle of an intersection, and I hear my friends hissing at me from the other side, but I can’t move. I watch Paul Bark run away. I watch the rest of the congregation scatter. I see guns firing, some at the Ardents, others at the more immediate threat. The rain makes a soft patter as it falls in misty sheets.