Divine Fantasy (12 page)

I nodded. “So, okay, we’re not that kind of patriot. I don’t think either of us is personally or morally cowardly.” This was a bit of stretch. I
was
a dreadful coward, but I had chosen to stick around for this fight, so I was giving myself some bonus points. “Not that I’m looking to die for the cause of stopping Wal-Mart’s conquest of the world or anything. I believe in free trade and so forth. We’ve just gotten unbalanced.”

“Thank God—and I mean that sincerely. The world has enough martyrs. One needn’t die to demonstrate that one has principles and feels answerable to a higher power than wealth. Sometimes living and speaking the truth is the bravest thing we can do. And the most powerful. It may be cliché but it is also true that, even in this day and age, the pen can be mightier than the sword.”

I nodded, thinking of the small statue of Lazurus I’d seen in Ambrose’s room “The pen
can
be mightier than the sword—if it writes for television.” I was thinking sadly of the number of people who chose to watch television instead of reading.

“And it may be time to start doing that,” he muttered. “I think it is time for a new career.”

Ambrose stopped me as we neared the rear entrance of the resort kitchens. I had been so distracted by our conversation that I hadn’t realized we were there already. Sand slithered down the leeward slope of the rocky outcrop where we waited—or rather where Ambrose waited and I cowered
with splayed fingers that were trying to become one with the up-thrust stone.

The wind was blowing hard now and it hurt to face it. Suddenly my thoughtless, greedy body couldn’t seem to get enough oxygen. No matter how my lungs bellowed air in and out, there wasn’t sufficient oxygen. I wasn’t near fainting, but I felt like it had been hours since I had been able to fully catch my breath.

I put my back to the wind and swiped at my tender face. I noticed that the world had a funny red glow about it. I would have said that there was a fire somewhere, but I smelled no smoke. Maybe my brain had just started wearing Hell-colored glasses all the time so I wouldn’t keep being surprised when new devils appeared before us.

There’s something inside
. This time I was watching Ambrose’s profile and was certain that his lips hadn’t moved. Either he had one hell of a bent for ventriloquism or he was somehow managed to speak to me inside my mind.

The thought was disconcerting, but not entirely impossible given everything else. I decided that there were better moments to ask about this, though, and kept silent.

We sidled up to one of the shuttered windows and took a peek through the slats. The room seemed as empty as the rest of the buildings, but Ambrose remained alert, his posture tense, so though suddenly exhausted, I stayed focused too. We didn’t discuss a strategy but that was fine. I never get hung up on the whole Plan B thing. If I thought things through,
nothing would ever get done. Ambrose seemed to be of the same school of action. The situation was fluid; we would have to be extemporaneous and think on our feet.

The air that leaked out at us through the shutters smelled awful, far worse than it had in any of the cottages. Part of it might be that the spilled food on the floor had begun to rot—unnaturally, considering the short time it had taken. A quick peek suggested that it was mostly staple items, flour and sugar and so on, but it had been slimed with something yellow and puslike, and the resulting mixture had a pronounced odor of decay.

“Ewwww,” I complained, but very quietly. Nothing rushed out at us, but still Ambrose waited another ten-count.

Finally he went to the door and eased inside. He hadn’t told me to stay out so I followed close on his heels, my left hand clapped over my mouth and nose. We were careful not to track through the mess on the floor as we headed for the storage room. As we got closer, I began to hear a sound that was at first difficult to place because it was so oddly juxtaposed with the cacophony of blowing sand, thrashing flora and agonized waves that were pummeling the nearby beach.

It wasn’t until I smelled something especially vile, a cross between rancid oil and rotting meat left in the sun, that I placed the noise. Someone had turned on the microwave (a shameful time-saving device, Ambrose explained later, that they kept in the pantry where food critics wouldn’t see).

Ambrose stepped into that storeroom and made a place for me in the doorway. He didn’t attempt to keep me from seeing what had happened in the pantry, though I could tell he didn’t like being so equal-minded; if his cottage had been left as a sanctuary, he would have locked me up there. I didn’t hold this whole protect-the-little-woman attitude against him, first of all because it came with the era he was born into, but also because I
wanted
to be protected. He was the superman, not I. Let him catch the speeding bullets. Or zombies.

“The evil bastards.”

“Oh good God.” My eyes latched on a red blot that had crusted against the glass door. I don’t know what had been put in the microwave, but it had exploded, and clotted gore and bits of bone were glued to the small window. I prayed that, whatever it was, it hadn’t been living when it went in there. The act was malicious and required thought—not what I had come to think of as standard zombie activity. The average zombie seemed about as bright as a Mr. Potato Head doll.

Eventually I pulled my eyes away from the glass window and noticed that every cupboard large enough to be used as a hiding place had been emptied with violence; canned goods were smashed and the shattered glass of jars spilled onto the floor. A part of me wondered who was going to have to clean this mess up and whether the damage would be covered by insurance. Could you get a policy that covered fire, flood and zombies?

A small beep announced that the microwave was
done cooking, but neither Ambrose nor I reached for the door. This was beyond weird, beyond explanation, beyond psychosis or any ring in Dante’s Hell.

But it was not beyond Saint Germain or his ghouls. And besides, if something was still alive in there, we didn’t have the tools to deal with it.

Shaking his head in disgust, Ambrose began picking out a path through the glass to the walk-in freezer at the back of the room. This time, I didn’t follow. It was a dead end, and if there was anything living—or undead—in there, I was going to let Ambrose cope. I was busy trying not to toss up the hollow part of my stomach where my nonexistent breakfast should have been.

Reaching the brushed metal door, Ambrose laid his ear against it and stopped breathing. For a moment he was as still as a statue and appeared almost as lifeless. Looking back at me after a moment, he nodded his head once. It took me a split second to realize that he was signaling there was something moving inside the freezer.

Unprompted, my hands brought the Colt up and my body braced itself. Theoretically, cold should make a zombie slower, but I was taking no chances. I nodded back.

Try not to use the gun. The sound might attract others
.

I nodded again, in response to Ambrose’s mental words, but didn’t lower the weapon.

Ambrose wisely shifted to one side, drew out a spike and then opened the door. Something huge
and hissing and inhuman filled the opening and spilled out into the room.

At the same time, something just as large came up behind me and bit my shoulder.

For those who share my typical twenty-first-century academic resumé, which does not include a self-defense class, gang-banging or any practical experience with hand-to-hand combat, let me explain the physiological changes that happen in the body when it is assaulted or even just threatened with physical violence. Reaction time in a deadly encounter can be divided into a trifecta of critical responses. The first is when the mind recognizes that it is in danger. Many people die at step one because they don’t even realize they are in peril and fail to react.

The second step is to formulate an appropriate response to the threat. Again, very difficult when one has no training or experience with violence.

The third is to carry one’s plan through without hesitation. All of this happens faster than most crises in one’s average daily life when you face different sorts of non-life-threatening emergencies, like a backed-up toilet or a flat tire, or even something large and dangerous like a blizzard or hurricane. Unlike normal life, there is rarely time for cogitation in a combat situation. Nor do you get to phone someone for assistance with your problem. We had no AAA or 911 to call.

Had we been outside and standing downwind, the smell or sound might have warned me sooner
that evil was near. As it was, the only hint of danger I had was the fall of a hulking shadow over my left shoulder. My subconscious—which thinks faster than my conscious does when my life is at stake—said that giant shadows in an abandoned building on an abandoned island could only belong to something dangerous. Moving out of its way seemed the correct response to this threat, and I did so with all the speed my adrenaline-laced muscles could give me. I moved very quickly indeed—know this—but it still wasn’t fast enough. The zombie was on me before I could twist around or shoot it. In less than a second, I was involved in a life-and-death struggle with a monster that was twice my weight and a foot taller, and who was doing his level best to bite through my clavicle. The pain was excruciating.

It shoved me against a counter. I shoved back and spun hard, managing to get my back to it again. My shoulders hunched down tight, trying to make me as small a target as possible for clawing fingers and teeth. I had the tiniest instant of hope that Ambrose would turn and rescue me, but then I heard a terrible screeching from the freezer and the sound of bodies hitting the floor, and then more of those dismembering-chickens sounds that had turned my stomach. Someone or something was getting ripped limb from limb. Ambrose was busy and I was on my own.

Most of you won’t know this—and pray to whatever god you worship that you never do—but this kind of fighting is very personal. You look into your
enemy’s rotting eyes, smell his rancid breath…and in this case his decomposing body. This is horrible beyond description, but it does do one thing for you; it makes you focus. It also makes you angry. No, more than angry. Enraged. My very soul was offended by this thing. I was so filled with revulsion and wrath that I had no trouble forgetting about babying my damaged heart, and giving my full attention to dealing with the creature trying to chew on my shoulder.

Fortunately for me, its lower jaw was mostly torn off, so it was having trouble getting a grip with just its upper teeth through my thick shirt. Evidently realizing that this tactic wouldn’t work, it next tried to gets its bloated hands around my neck. Again, fortune favored me. Several of its digits had fallen off and, as it squeezed, more of the skin sloughed away and its finger bones poked through. Not that this ended the assault. Zombies have no off button. They just keep doing what they’re told to do until they fall into little pieces, and then the little pieces still keep trying to kill you.

I felt the wiry hair on his swollen forearms as he wrapped those about my face when his hands failed to get a grip. He’d seemed to be going for a snap of the neck, or perhaps to bend me back far enough that he could tear my throat out with his few remaining fingers, but I’d dropped my head in time and he only got my face. Three long, filthy fingers wrapped around my chin, and strips of dead skin slipped on my cheek as he tried to turn my head in a way it was never designed to move. In
spite of the shedding skin, inch by inch, he was succeeding in forcing my neck around.

Knowing it was dangerous, that I might actually kill myself if the gun slipped even an inch, I brought the Colt up and aimed it as best I could over my shoulder. I felt the barrel enter rotting flesh—was it the creature’s face?—and pushed a bit harder until I met with bone. A human would have backed off at this point, but not the zombie. It wrenched its head from side to side but didn’t let go. It was much more difficult to pull the trigger in this position, but fear and anger lent me strength. I didn’t even flinch when I felt the flash of heat on my cheek and the explosion deafened my left ear. Only later did I find that I had dislocated my index finger when the gun bucked.

The first bullet removed about a third of the creature’s skull. This didn’t kill the thing, but stunned it enough to loosen its grip. I shoved backward hard with my elbow, using the creature’s toppling body to launch myself toward the freezer where Ambrose and some other monstrosity were wrestling. Not that I wanted to get close to that fight, but it was the only open spot I had in the pantry. My abused shirt tore at the sleeve when the zombie refused to let go. I didn’t like leaving my skin exposed, but at least I was free to move.

Turning, I took aim at the thing that had assaulted me. It was standing there, almost naked, holding my shirt sleeve in its right hand. My vision began to darken at that point but I ordered my body to do what it must. Feeling like I was being guided
by unseen hands, I switched my middle finger to the trigger and followed Ambrose’s instructions. I put the first bullet in the thing’s heart and then a second in what was left of its head. Thank God it did what was expected and fell to the floor. It kept twitching but didn’t get up.

I glanced up at the door to be sure that no other creatures had followed us into the kitchen—I did not want to be surprised twice—and then spun around to help Ambrose with whatever was hissing like a giant snake.

The spirit was willing to keep fighting, but my body was ailing. It was an off-balance spin and I fell to the slimy floor, banging my left knee. My clumsiness was partly because the floor was covered in slop, but it was also my damned heart, once again failing to pump enough blood to my lungs. I could feel it shuddering, jittering in my chest. At least I didn’t drop the gun when I hit the tile, though the Colt was now useless because I couldn’t see clearly enough to risk a shot.

I lay there and wheezed while the nasty sounds went on.

Gradually my vision cleared and I got an up close and way too personal view of the mortal—or maybe I mean immortal—struggle between Ambrose and another of the monsters that had invaded the island. It was hard to tell at first what was happening because there was blood everywhere and my more or less horizontal angle presented me with a limited view of the freezer’s mostly dark interior. I could see by the one remaining light that the stuff
leaking out of Ambrose was a normal blood color. The ichor running out of the creature was a nasty dark brown.