Empire (2 page)

    God, it was hot. Boiling inside his ratty old uniform, Gene mopped his brow with an old handkerchief and dropped it into the garbage. His back was killing him too. At the age of sixty, he had hoped someone else would take his place, give the old man a break. But there was no retirement in his future. Just rats.

    Rats, rats, rats. Most of them were undead, too. Only Gene could tell the living from the dead. They just had a look about them, a cold, solitary look. And the dead rats were fatter than the other ones. They fed on their own kind, and their kind were plentiful.

    He was wearing waders and thick work gloves. The bastards wouldn't try to eat him but they'd probably bite if he wasn't careful. Gene carried a shovel to pin the vermin down and hack them up. Kicking them into a fire was easier, but garbage burns had to be controlled, small. The smoke rising into the sky brought undead. Not only that, but while Gene was used to the stench of the landfill, burns were another story. Maybe it was the charred, half-rotted flesh of the rats; the smell of death after death. Gene spat and wiped his mouth with a gloved hand.

    "How does a starving town make this much fucking garbage?" He asked an undead rat. It was perched atop a broken chair, watching him intently. Part of its face had been gnawed off. A tiny red eye still rolled around inside the bony eye socket.

    "You and me both." Gene said. He swung the shovel and smashed the rat down through the chair. These little buggers had actually given him a respect for the living rodents that still dared enter the landfill. It wasn't man versus animal anymore - it was the living against the undead. Gene brushed a fly off his cheek and wondered if they were undead too. Gone from eating shit to eating each other.

    There was a sharp crack from the ocean, then another. Gene saw one of the P.O.s pointing a sniper rifle past him, toward the swamp. Must've seen something. What good did shooting at it do? Those boys were too scared to come ashore and nail the rotters. Gene hefted his shovel in one hand. He'd take care of any unwelcome visitors.

    Speaking of which, another rat was lumbering over piles of soggy cardboard, distended belly dragging along. Gene aimed the blade of the shovel at its dark face and thrust downward. The rat skittered aside with surprising speed, just in time to avoid the strike, and the shovel sank into the refuse.

    Gene shook the crap off the shovel. There was something bloody underneath the cardboard, too big to be a rat. It was partially wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket with smiling dinosaurs in bright colors. He considered this for a half-second before a terrible thought came to him.

    "Oh my God."

    He gingerly worked the shovel underneath the blanket and peeled it away. The underside was crimson, yellow dinosaurs obscured by gore. It was difficult to loosen; someone had lovingly bundled the misshapen form, tiny and frail and barely recognizable for what it was.

    Gene stumbled back with a cry, dropping the shovel. His foot struck the ruin of the broken chair, and he fell flat on his back. A foul wetness seeped through his uniform and he found himself sliding helplessly down an incline. He pawed at the garbage around him; a glove came off and his bare hand sank into some curdled mess. "Shit! God!" He tried to orient himself so he could see where he was going, but only managed to go elbow-deep into the garbage, all the while still sliding.

    He nicked his ungloved hand on something. Yanking it free, he saw the ragged little bite, and he saw the rat's head as it struggled in the garbage. It was dead.

    He plowed headfirst into an array of discarded plumbing. Gene felt the surreal but distinct sensation of metal slicing through his cheek before he fell unconscious.

    Fred R. Moorecourt, Senator from the great states of Illinois and Indiana, beat on the gates of Jefferson Harbor and hollered until his already-pounding head threatened to erupt. There was no scaling the gates, with loops of barbed wire welded to each pole. The walls were fifteen feet high and perfectly smooth. He stumbled along the perimeter in desperate search of a handhold. Senator Moorecourt cursed the wall and kicked it. That's when he learned that two toes on his right foot were broken. Moorecourt fell to the ground in a ball.

    Walls, borders, bullshit. The imaginary lines that defined the United States were eroding every day. Already representing the combined territory of two states, Moorecourt expected more to fall under his jurisdiction as Americans moved inland. Maybe that's why he had risked coming out here: to expand his rule. It was a miserable thought, but it rang truer than any of the noble rhetoric that he & his colleagues broadcast from the north.

    Goddamn coastal refugees. Anarchists. Of course, when they ran out of supplies, when troops stopped patrolling their perimeters, then they blamed the Senate. The Senate told survivors to migrate away from the oceans, to consolidate aid and resources; men like Moorecourt put their lives on the line on these goodwill missions. Still this stubborn distrust. And now, two broken toes, a concussion and this goddamn wall.

    He looked back down the road; the wreck was a blot on the horizon. He should have gotten into the Hummer and grabbed a gun. Too tired to go back, though. Too risky. The badlands were crawling with hungry undead.

    "Oh, Jesus." Turning northeast, he saw two shapes moving through blighted grass. Their stiff movements and emaciated bodies gave them away immediately as dead. God willing, their eyes had shriveled and fallen out of their heads, and they weren't really ambling straight toward him.

    Or maybe they were.

    Using the wall for support, he limped along as quickly as he could. He thought about Atherton, whom he'd seen gasping for breath in the middle of the road, and whispered a silent prayer that the undead would catch his scent. Maybe they'd even eat the fresh corpses in the vehicles. Moorecourt's sister and her husband remained in the towncar. Why Amanda had insisted on coming along, he didn't know. Husband Doug had represented the P.O. Union and was supposed to talk to local law enforcement about withdrawing. But Amanda loathed politics almost as much as she loathed Moorecourt...

    "It's going to play real well with the Harbor residents when you show up escorted by soldiers." She'd said, sitting directly across from Moorecourt, the sun bringing out deep, cruel lines in her smirking countenance.

    Moorecourt massaged his hand and smiled thinly in return. "It'll serve as a reminder of the security they're losing if they stay out here. Believe it or not, I did think this through."

    Doug, as usual, was reticent while the siblings sparred. He buried his face in some paperwork, thumbing through the same pages again and again. Moorecourt stared at him until he turned to look out the window. Doug was a strong lobbyist; he fought tirelessly for the rights of others. It seemed, however, that he left in himself no fire to defend his own interests. Over the course of the car trip he'd slowly shrank into his corner, hunched over like a child begging to wake up somewhere else. Boyishly handsome, his behavior only made him more enticing to the senator.

    (Did she know?)

    Moorecourt applied skin cream to his hand, frowning at veins visible through papery flesh. Amanda pursed her lips and started to coo something witty. He didn't hear it, because the sun outside seemed suddenly to roll violently across the sky, and Atherton cried out from the front seat, and metal groaned before Moorecourt's head cracked against the bulletproof window.

    When he'd awakened, he was lying on the ceiling of the towncar. Amanda was still looking at him. Her neck was bent obscenely so that her cheek was crushed against a breast, and her eyes were red with blood. Doug was beside Moorecourt. His chest rose and fell slightly, though the expression on his face was frozen. Moorecourt, without thinking, reached out to touch it. He tried to say something and couldn't. Doug stopped breathing.

    The senator was now limping along the north wall of the Harbor, glancing over his shoulder to see the two undead in slow but relentless pursuit. They were starving, desperate, and wouldn't give up until they fell completely apart; just like the survivors inside these walls.

    He breathlessly turned a corner and found that the west wall wasn't like the others. There might be an opening! Moorecourt tore at the fencing and felt it giving. His hands were red and raw. He screamed and pulled with his entire body. The fence snapped free, hitting his face and knocking him to the ground. Wetness spread quickly from the cuts in his skin. He didn't care. Through the fence and into the city.

    He was greeted by what appeared to be a cluster of storage units. The size of garages, most of them were wide open and empty. To his right, past a weathered wooden fence, was a foul-smelling swamp. He weaved through the units and ignored the ache in his lungs. At least he still had a good heart. Moorecourt had always kept himself in shape. At first it was for his constituents, but once it became clear that his post was probably a lifelong one he did it for himself. Boys could barely resist his status; his lean physique more often than not closed the deal. And of course the other senators knew. No one tried anymore to conceal habits that, for previous generations, spelled political suicide. For any Americans who still paid attention to the government, the Senate was their only hope. They were more than politicians now - a woman in Chicago told him that she prayed to the Senate.

    There was no President of the United States. After the Secret Service was forced to dismember the last Commander-in-Chief on his desk in the Oval Office, the romantic notion of one man's will leading a people lost its luster.

    How long had Moorecourt been running since the accident? An hour? Two? The sun was no help at guessing the time. He couldn't stand to look up at it. Moorecourt paused in the doorway of a storage unit and felt the stiffness in his neck. He couldn't move it at all.

    The swamp had ended, giving way to several large buildings. Warehouses? Surely a place to hide, maybe a radio. He pulled himself over the creaking wooden fence and tried not to land on his wounded foot.

    BAM! Something struck the other side of the fence. Moorecourt staggered back, seeing the yellowed eyeball of an undead staring through a knothole. His pursuers had caught up with him. They beat their open hands against the wood, gaping mouths never making a sound. The old fence shook precariously. Moorecourt ran.

    Faded letters on the largest warehouse read KAGEN'S OF LOUISIANA, a grocery. Moorecourt collided with the nearest entrance and was thrown back onto the sidewalk. Locked? WHY? Was there still food kept inside? He couldn't imagine. Moorecourt slammed his fists against the door. "Anyone inside LET ME IN!!" A block behind him, a section of wooden fence collapsed and the two zombies staggered through.

    A loud crack tore through the air. The senator looked back to see a chunk of skull and hair flying away from one zombie's head. Thank God! Moorecourt peered around the corner of the warehouse to see where his rescuer was- -

    Another shot buzzed past his ear. He fell to the pavement again. "I'M NOT ONE OF THEM!!"

    The undead were still coming. Moorecourt searched for another entrance to the warehouse. Another door, slightly ajar, reluctantly gave way under his weight. He fell into the building and kicked the door shut with his good foot.

    He was on his back in an enormous room with floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with boxes. Using a shelf for support, he made his way down an aisle, reading the contents of the boxes. Soup, ramen, seasoning, powdered milk, all non-perishables. Just add water. He was shocked to see so much still here, then he nudged one of the boxes and realized that it was empty.