Empire (27 page)

    "I can take you out right now," shouted Voorhees, "without any suffering! You want to be a fucking martyr, that's all it is!"

    "My leg--" Duncan began. Voorhees slugged him in the stomach. Jenna threw herself on the cop's back. "Stop it! Don't!" Duncan gasped, pulling at her.

    "I'm trying to help you, Voorhees!" Palmer beat her fist against the wall. "I'm trying to help you do your damn job! You cannot save these people AND save Jefferson Harbor!!"

    "ALL RIGHT!!!" Dumping Jenna into Duncan's arms, Voorhees grabbed the shotgun leaning in the doorway nearest to him. The others froze, watched him pump it and dig shells from his coat pockets.

    "I'm taking you out there. Rear entrance on the first floor should be relatively clear. We've got to make it quick, and we need a distraction. O'Connell, check all these offices until you find Thom's stash of matches. We need fuel - Duncan, grab a box of paper from the copy room. Then you can help me break down some chairs."

    Voorhees turned to hand Palmer the shotgun, but she shook her head. "You'll need it more than I will."

    "Right." He tried to think of another order to bark, but there was a silence. He looked back at the reverend. "If I was the last one...but I'll never be the last one."

    "You're too good at your job." She replied.

    Twenty minutes later, a series of blazing torches flew off the roof of City Hall and landed out front in the middle of the plaza. The rotters searched the sky to see where they'd come from, then staggered toward the flames.

    The rear door flew open; a jawless zombie cocked its head at the sight. A shotgun blast sheared its torso off at the waist.

    Voorhees hustled Palmer out the door. Without a word, she ran for the street. The cop went to shut the door, but he saw something coming from the south. A man on a horse.

    As the horse neared the plaza, a rotter emerged from behind an overturned bus with a shovel in its hands. It cleaved right through the stallion's front legs as if they were clay. The man tumbled forward, and clinging to his back, Voorhees saw the little girl. He heard her scream. He ran.

    The rotter's detail came into view, and by God he recognized the son of a bitch. "GENE!!" Voorhees shouted. The garbage man turned and caught a blast right in the chest.

    The ferals were swarming around the City Hall building. Voorhees ran to the man and girl.

    The man looked up. Without reason Voorhees knew immediately who he was.

    "Take her," Death rasped. The cop grabbed the girl and slung her onto his back.

    "Hold onto my neck," he said to her, and loosed a hail of fire from the shotgun into the oncoming horde. They stumbled and spun and continued forward in a deranged dance. He sent the butt of the gun through a rotter's gnashing teeth and tore its throat open. The door he'd come through was wide open. If he could reach it before any of them saw...please...

    "I'M OVER HERE!!!"

    Holding a torch over her head, Palmer screamed at the top of her lungs. Another rotter ate shotgun and its cold brains showered over the rest. They abruptly changed course.

    Voorhees ran into the building and slammed the door, throwing every bolt and pushing a wall of furniture back into place. The girl hung on him like a corpse. He glanced over his shoulder at her just to be sure.

    Palmer's feet pounded the asphalt until she couldn't even feel them, just a vibration in her head, just the cold wind. She looked back and saw even the runners falling behind. She slowed her pace. "DON'T GIVE UP ON ME NOW, YOU ASSHOLES!!"

    Their stolen bodies writhed as they pushed onward, driven only by hunger, driven only to survive. They would never know why her death was so much more than that. In that moment, she found a God that she hadn't realized she'd lost.

    Then the ones up ahead grabbed her.

    One of them rolled back the cuff of its jacket and pointed a revolver into the horde.

    Addison's children.

    Palmer screamed as they carried her toward a pickup truck with a landscaper's faded logo stenciled on the side.

     She awoke in Hell.

    The room was so red, so deep red, so overpoweringly monochromatic that it struck Palmer's senses like a wave, all sight sound and feeling. Then the prickling of her flesh gave way to an oppressive heat. Sweat stung the corners of her eyes; she blinked through the pain and tried to discern shape or depth in the room.

    The heat faded. So did the light, and it was soon replaced by a soft glow from behind her. She tried to turn and couldn't. She was in a chair, and her arms and legs were bound.

    "I told them they might taste you later, if they behaved." A voice at her back said; it was malicious, but youthful. "I'm not entirely disappointed - they couldn't find Lily, but they did fetch one of the maggots that conspired to take her from me."

    The speaker stepped around the chair and pulled another from the shadows for himself. He turned it backwards and straddled the seat, resting his chin on the back of the chair. "What's your name?"

    "Reverend Palmer. What's yours?" She felt swelling in her mouth, where one of the rotters had cuffed her. The last thing she could remember was being thrown in the back of a truck. If they were Addison's "children" then this was Addison's house. But the man before her wasn't Addison...

    "My name? Don't have one," he replied with a glib smile. "Like the dark man. He has no name, does he?"

    "I don't know what you're talking about. Where am I?"

    "You helped the dark man take Lily, isn't that right? Or is it the other way around? Did you people summon him here?"

    She had no idea who this guy was, what he was talking about, nor his relation to Doctor Addison - but he looked like he was on edge. Scared, for himself or someone else. This "Lily" maybe. If she asked the right questions, she might be able to get some answers and even get these ropes loosened. "Where's Addison? Isn't this his house?"

    His face paled. "No more questions from you. I ask the questions!" He slammed his fist against his chair.

    "I'm just trying to understand why I'm tied up," she said firmly, "and why I'm in this house. You sound like you need someone's help. Maybe we can start over--"

    "I'm not untying you." He snapped. "Your mouth still works. I suggest you use it to tell me what I want to know, rather than trying to fuck with my head."

    "I don't want to make you tense." Palmer lowered her head. "Ask away. If I know anything, I'll tell you."

    "Where's Lily?"

    "I don't know who Lily is."

    The man rapped his knuckles on the back of his chair, humming discordantly. "What does she look like?" Palmer asked, then, "is she one of the rotters--"

    "She's NOT a rotter. And you KNOW it!!" He stood and cast the chair aside, leaning into the reverend's face. "If you think the dark man can protect you, you're wrong. I will tap into forces that..." Stepping back, he smiled again. It was worse than the first time. "You say you're a reverend?"

    "Yes I am."

    "So you must be praying with all your heart right now for God to come down from the clouds and save you. Are you?"

    "Should I be?" She retorted. Her boldness surprised him, but he seemed to enjoy it. His posture changed and he began to pace around her. "I don't pray to the Old Ones. They don't want lowly supplicants. Your god is a petulant child, so insecure...my tribute to the Old Ones is to realize my own greatness. You rummage through this ghost town, praying for enough to get you - little, pathetic you - through the next day. I look out there and see an empire for the taking.

    "Men can be the new gods, you know, we can take what is ours - we only need the will to do it! But no, not you. You can't. You'd rather die on your knees and awaken a zombie. I'll be your new god.

    "I think Addison knew that, in the back of his mind, but he was afraid. He wanted to give us as offerings to the Old Ones."

    Palmer studied the man's face as he spoke. So he was one of the children the doctor had adopted? What had really gone on in this house?

    "Addison," the man continued, "was too frightened to accept that what the Old Ones really want is for us to take for ourselves! The groveling supplicants with their pitiful offerings will become the walking dead! As they should! As YOU should!

    "But not Lily."

    The man opened a folding straight razor in his palm. "My name is Baron."

    Palmer strained against the ropes. "I don't know who Lily is, I don't know where she is!"

    "Then you're no good to me."

    "That's it then? You were so convinced that I had the answers you needed, and now you're just going to - to--"

    "Cut your throat? Mm-hmm." The razor danced in the light before her eyes. "I'll deal with the dark man himself if I have to. I'm not afraid."

    "Yes you are." Palmer spat. Baron held the blade a hair's breadth from her eyeball. She blinked rapidly, trying to hold her gaze steady. She thought she could feel the cold steel against her eyelashes. Her bladder failed her, and Baron laughed.

    "I think I'd like to show you something, Reverend..."

    Voorhees took Lily to the window at the end of the fourth-floor corridor. They watched the remaining undead shuffle about.

    "Her name's Lily. Lily, this is Jenna, and Mark, and Cheryl." Voorhees gestured to the people behind them. Lily didn't take her eyes away from the plaza. "Where is he?" She asked.

    "The...man you were with...he told me to take you. I didn't see what happened after that."

    "They got him." She breathed. "How can that even be?" She stared hard at the glass, at the tears forming in her reflection's eyes.

    Jenna touched the girl's shoulder. "Where are you from?"

    "I won't go back."

    "You don't have to. I promise." The girl turned and Jenna offered her a warm smile, something she hadn't thought herself capable of. "We won't make you go back."