Empire (24 page)

    "Well, candles and matches, obviously." Thom was pacing around the others. It made Lauren uneasy, and she sat down on the floor. "Lots of paper. Pencils too, plenty of stationery in general. Weapons - well, there are scissors and letter openers, things like that. The guards took all the guns when they deserted us. They left even before the Army did, but the mayor refused to leave."

    "Yeah, then he threw himself off the roof." Muttered Voorhees.

    "That was a terrible day." Thom nodded solemnly to the others, as if he weren't the only one that cared. "His secretary died that morning. I think they were in love. He told me he was going to do it, too - 'the only place where the dead no longer outnumber us', he said, 'is on the other side'. It was a sad moment, but as far as last words go...I'm going to include that in the afterword of the book, I think."

    "There are runners down there." Cheryl said. She pressed her face to the glass. "Stand back," ordered Voorhees, but Thom laughed idly. "They can't see us up here, especially on this side of the building with the way the light hits it. Besides the barricades here are better than the PD's - no offense Officer. Oh God, I can smell rot coming up through the vents. I'm going crack a few windows, all right? Nothing they'll notice down there." Without waiting for an answer, he left.

    "He's more than just a little mad." Palmer thought aloud.

    A lot of the running dead were poorly coordinated, stumbling about, some of them moving sideways like crabs. Their muscular constitution gave them an edge over the walkers, and getting to the meat first kept them healthy, kept them fast, superior to the other rotters - but their faces remained dull and lifeless. There was no primal aggression, no snarling or baring of teeth. They were just as blank and silent as the rest. To be chased down by them was...Cheryl saw her brother's face, covered in bloody bites, telling her to go, to leave him with the runners.

    "I'm sorry," she whispered.

    Runners clambered over the backs of slower zombies and into the PD. Palmer took Cheryl away from the window.

    Lauren covered her nose and mouth with her left and left the hallway. The odor of decay in the stairwell was even worse. She could see a door standing open on the next landing. That must have been where Thom had gone. She wanted to offer him some help with the windows, but she couldn't bear to see any bodies.

    Do it, Lauren, she told herself, snap out of this. She began descending the stairs.

    Thom emerged from the doorway with a severed hand in his mouth. He glanced up at her and stopped.

    The hand had been removed with surgical precision, and bites were already missing from it. Thom's lips were dark red.

    He said something through a mouthful of meat. Lauren screamed and turned to run.

    He caught her ankle and hurled her down the stairs. The hand fell on her face, and she screamed louder. "No, no!" He cried. "It's not what you think - BE QUIET!!!"

    A long pair of scissors plunged into her abdomen. Her scream bubbled away.

    Voorhees ran into the stairwell and saw Thom trying to pull the scissors free. "She fell! She fell!" The man was yelling, stringy bits of muscle falling from his mouth.

    Voorhees didn't think. He only saw what he saw, and reacted.

    The shotgun blast tore Thom's arm off and peppered his chest, his shirt opening up and flesh splitting. Flying into the wall, Thom sank wordlessly.

    Voorhees dropped the shotgun and ran to Lauren. She was in the grip of abject horror and crippling pain, blood pooling rapidly around the scissors. The cop pressed his hands over the wound, around the blades.

    Jenna shrieked from the top of the stairs. She grabbed the shotgun. Mark wrested it away.

    "I'm not, I'm not a zombie." Thom whispered. "I didn't even kill them. I just needed to EAT." The blood pulsing from the stump of his arm diminished. His face was bone-white, and he shook as he spoke. "I told him, the mayor, I told him it wasn't her anymore, it was just meat. I told him we could eat her together and the rotters would never have her. He'd see her on the other side..."

    Thom shrugged and died.

    "She's still alive. Help me." Voorhees kept one hand on the wound and slipped the other beneath Lauren. "HELP ME."

    Jenna came down and blinked her tears back to look into Lauren's eyes. "You'll be okay. She'll be okay, won't she?"

    Voorhees said nothing.

    Outside, the faintest of screams had caught the attention of a few rotters. They looked around hungrily. Others were exiting the PD, having found no sustenance; one of them gestured toward the street with a moan. The others in the plaza shuffled to follow its gaze.

    A man on a horse was galloping toward them. A scythe glistening with rain swept over his head, and they realized that, in fact, he was no man just before he cut them all in half.

    Baron Tetch caught a snarl of fencing around his pickaxe and tore it down with a roar.

    At the swamp's edge, he and his remaining afterdead had nearly opened up all of the west wall's vulnerable areas, the places where there was no concrete; the ferals would soon be entering the city from all sides. Addison's explosives, old as they were, had been even more effective than Tetch had anticipated. The doctor's journals suggested he'd collected the dynamite in hopes of loosing more energy from within the ground. Everything to Addison had been a surgical procedure, hadn't it? Flaying away flesh and earth in search of answers. All his tools could never have found the knowledge that Tetch now possessed.

    Simeon was helping him in this area. He saw the rotter eyeing his flesh with furtive glimpses. "Are you hungry?" He asked. Simeon nodded.

    Tetch held out his hand.

    Simeon stared, confused, though he was gnashing his teeth behind closed lips. Hesitantly he reached out, took hold of the hand, and opened his mouth.

    Tetch jerked it away and slapped him across the face with resonating force. Simeon staggered back and fell over the fencing.

    "Without me, you never eat again. Do you understand? You don't know how to hunt, and even if I taught you, you'd forget. No, I bring you the meat! Without me, you'll simply waste away. Is that what you want? Or are you patient?"

    Simeon understood maybe half of the words, but he got the message, and nodded. He could wait to eat.

    Tetch was still hoping that Sawbones would come back with something for the others - he was tougher than any of them were, and maybe he'd stayed back to field-dress his victims - but as the storm abated and the sun began to descend, hope faded with the light.

    He wasn't concerned at all about the survivors' presence in the city (not anymore), but he was preoccupied with thoughts of Lily's dark man. He had strong suspicions as to who the spectre was, or at least what it represented - but its motives were unclear. Perhaps it had targeted Lily because it could exert no influence over Tetch.

    "Simeon," he said suddenly, "go back to the house and check on your sister."

    The rotter licked his lips. Tetch threw down the pickaxe. "Never mind! I'll have Prudence do it."

    Back at the manor, Lily sat alone in the foyer. She stared at the door. It was locked, as they all were, but she knew how to get out. It was just a matter of having the courage. She'd believed that she did, but here she was, sitting and staring.

    She wished the man in black would come back and take her, but he didn't seem to want her. No one wanted her - not her parents, not Daddy Addison, not the man in black, no one but Baron. And Baron...he had taken notice of the fact that she was growing up. He kept telling her that she was becoming a woman, and the way he said "woman" made her uneasy. There was something about the word when it came from his mouth, as if to Tetch it were a key that opened the door to a very bad place.

    The doorknob rattled. She ran to the staircase and knelt behind the bannister.

    Prudence entered, a husk of a woman with spindly legs that looked as if they could barely carry her along, thin as her frame was. Her face was sunken and empty, searching the foyer, the rotter waiting expectantly for Lily to emerge from a room or come down the stairs.

    The girl stepped slowly into view. Prudence's head on its twig-like neck turned in the shadows and settled on her. The afterdead didn't move. "Here I am," Lily said uneasily. Prudence had a large house key in her fingers. It pointed accusingly at Lily, who had been thinking of running...still was...

    She ran. She ran at the towering zombie whose weight was probably equal to her own, and hit its body with a thud, and there was no resistance. Prudence slumped to the floor with a papery sound. Lily stumbled over her and out the door.

    It was hard to see and she braced herself for the grasping hands of the others, of Baron, but she heard nothing - no one else was there! Lily ran for the gates, praying Prudence had left them open.

    She had.

    The child ran free into the swamp.

    As the sun's light bled from the clouds and sank into darkness, her feet plunged through lush grass, soft earth. She scraped her palms pulling herself along on gnarled trees and stubbed her toes on huge roots jutting from the mud. She didn't care. Exhilaration overtook Lily and she ran even faster.

    Soft glows began to emanate from the trees - clusters of fireflies, some of which lit into the air and whispered past her face. There were so many! She'd never seen such a thing. A few stars became visible overhead, and though the sky was smoky, she could see tree branches threaded through one another and birds scuttling through them. The swamp seemed so alive, in stark contrast to the house and its inhabitants.

    A bird landed on the grass before her with a soft slap. She stopped in her tracks and peered down at it, able to discern its pointed beak and glittering eyes. Lily knelt. "Are you all right?" She rolled down one of her leggings and pulled out a cigarette lighter she'd concealed there. It had been Daddy's (she'd taken it from the study), and sometimes she'd use it to navigate the corridors of the house in the dead of night. Now she could see a bird up close for the first time, one that wouldn't take off and leave her trapped inside the gates. Lily thumbed the flint and a small flame sprang up.

    The bird's breast was wet. Touching it, her fingertips came away red. "Oh, no--"

    Several other birds flew toward her, squawking dully. Their wings beat at her face and she fell back with a cry. They descended voraciously on the fallen one.

    "No! Stop it!" Lily swatted at them, losing the lighter. She felt through the grass for it, wincing as she heard the weak cries of the victim.