Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies (13 page)

Bannan shivered. "You going to feed me, or am I supposed to rot in here? You're not doing me any favors. Give me my guns and let me go."

Ambala arched an eyebrow. "This is from the woman who wanted to be saved. Have you recovered your memory? You are the same. You cannot be trusted."

"What difference does it make to you? You're loving every second of this. Maybe I shouldn't have begged. You should have left me in the swamp."

Ambala nodded. "Yes. This is the woman I know. I didn't want to trust or believe you, but maybe I never recovered from our time together. I've learned that hatred and love are very much the same thing."

Bannan chuckled softly. "You brought me here because you want me to apologize. What did I ever see in you? You're weak." She briefly recalled the dream with the shadowed figure of her mysterious mother. "I don't know who I was, but I've been able to figure out
what
I was. You're a little emotional. Maybe I should have given you a puppy to keep you company?"

"Your words can still cut. You're right, of course. A long time ago, I chose to be human. I chose life and emotion, passion and desire. Even now, you have this…power over me. I don't want this. Not anymore."

"You want me to remember. You're hopeful that I will change. Something was left unfinished between us, and you think I betrayed you. Maybe you were just dishonest with yourself the whole time."

"Don't like this feeling? Trapped in a cage, with nowhere to go. There is nothing to look forward to, besides the next meal. You're at the mercy of others to tell you how you should live out your days. My mother had her identity stripped from her. They broke her down and destroyed who she was. They took her from her home and…"

"Spare me the comparison to slavery. I'm sure you've told me your sad story before. I don't need my memory to know how this ends. Your mother was raped by white men and so you were born. You've dedicated your life to hatred and vengeance. Good for you. Whatever made us allies in the past had to be for some mutual benefit, and I was probably finished with you or just got sick of you. Can’t you see why? Are you going to kill every white man alive when you should be thanking them for making you?"

Ambala spilled the contents of the cup into the dirt. "I like it better when you beg. The fever will return soon. Enjoy your time here among the living."

Bannan sat beneath the bars and listened to the wind. Her shoulder continued to ache, and with the restless creatures below her roaming listlessly between the walls of their own prison, she welcomed the renewal of her dream-state. There was more life to live through the eyes of an empty past than the prison of the present.

Bouts of laughter and shouting. The rising smoke lifting and dissipating, swirling and twisting into an ether of nothing. The smell of decay…

(The little girl was eight years old, and she stood in the barn outside of Napoleon's stable. Shards of sunlight speckled the barn's pristine floorboards. Napoleon neighed while the girl swept loose hay out of the barn and into the field. She enjoyed working in the heat among the horses, especially when Napoleon was near. Her older brother couldn't stand any type of labor, instead preferring time with dusty old books in the library beneath their familial mansion.

She would be allowed to saddle Napoleon and ride him as soon as the barn was completely swept. Mother's steed, a powerful
,
black
,
Arabic horse, was absent from his stable
,
Mother had taken Faris on a trip with some of her friends, and nobody could say when she would return. Chores needed to be done, and she would always obey Mother's wishes. The servants inside the home acted as Mother's own personal network of spies, although they were expendable; they often disappeared without a trace. Abigail, an orphan girl, was the more recent house servant, and she'd managed to last three months.

"You are your mother's daughter," a rough, male voice said.

Her heart fluttering in her chest, she turned around and saw the man who'd snuck into the barn. A complete stranger with the dark features of a young Spaniard, he looked every part a dangerous, untrustworthy rogue with a face that was peppered with spots of black stubble beneath a crop of curly, wild black hair. He put his thumbs behind his suspenders and took a step forward, while the girl took a step backward.

"I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to see you. Give me that, at least."

His clothes were stained with dust and grime. He carried a sack over his shoulder, and two belts crossed over his waist, with a holstered revolver at each hip.

She didn't know what to say. Who was this man who could pretend to know her? He was somehow familiar, but she was sure she couldn't trust him.

"I'm going to sit down," he announced and pulled a wooden crate full of horse feed across the floorboards. He sat down and looked at the girl for a long time with a pair of colorless eyes. His elbows rested on his thighs while he clasped all of his fingers together in front of him into one fist.

"I'm going to roll a smoke, you want one?"

The little girl shook her head slowly. What did this man want with her?

"You should have a seat," he motioned for her to sit on the floorboards. "Your mother won't be back for a while, so it's just us. I'm not going to hurt you."

"You said that already," she replied without blinking.

"Ha! Yeah, so I did." He began to rummage around through his belongings for the tobacco. "You ever have a Turkish cigar? They're a favorite of mine. Your mother used to hate it when I smoked those."

The little girl continued to watch his movements.

"You're smart to think I'm dangerous," he put a cigarette between his lips.

"Who are you?" she finally asked.

"Your mother and I go back a ways," he dismissed the question with a wave of his hand.

She could easily see a tattoo of the black stallion on his forearm, the same brand that Mother bore.

He caught her staring at his arm. "Yeah, I'm one of them. Don't suppose she's told you anything yet, has she?"

While he lit his cigarette, she thought carefully about her words. What would Mother think if she saw them talking? This man seemed to have fallen out of favor, or else he wouldn’t have waited to show up when Mother wasn't around. The conversation with the stranger seemed forbidden, and she worried about the wrathful vengeance she would earn by displeasing Mother.

"You need to leave," she dared. "She'll be back soon."

"Don't think so, little darling. I rode a great distance to see you and your brother, though I've heard enough about him to think twice on it. She knows I'm around, you see. I'm sure she talks about me a lot, but I got my reasons for staying away. I wanted to tell you that you're a killer, like me, like your Mother. You don't know it yet, and she ain't told you, but that's what you are. I've killed many men. It's easy, you see. In this world, you're either a killer, or you're a victim. Most people in this world are victims. 'Course, there's ways to kill people that don't involve them actually dying."

"I don't want you to be here, right now. I want to go inside."

"You're afraid. You shouldn't be afraid of another killer. Fear isn't for you. You're different than the other kids. This is something you already know."

A cloud of smoke from the cigarette obscured his dark face. Napoleon neighed.

"Will you hurt Mother?" she felt compelled to ask.

"Ha! I've done enough damage, I think. I need you to remember that once in a while, you'll have second thoughts. You'll wonder if you should do it. You might think about innocence or maybe you'll have to murder a child and you don't know if you have the courage to do it…you must know that innocence does not exist. It's an illusion, nothing more. A child might grow to become a thief or a swindler. The child might become a wealthy landowner, but to become wealthy, they'll have to crush the weak underfoot. There is murder everywhere, little darling, and don't you ever forget it."

"My father is dead," the girl said.

Smoke rendered his face invisible, yet his voice reaffirmed his existence. "Yes. Your father is dead.")

The agonizing screams of men whose lives are about to end painfully jarred Neasa from her dream-state. Too weak to sit up, she inched her way toward the edge, where she could look into the pit.

Standing around to witness the spectacle was a group of several dark-fleshed men with their hands resting on the butts of rifles. They glanced up at Neasa only briefly, for their attention was drawn to the suffering men below them.

Neasa wiped sweat from her feverish eyes. Smoke through the trees, the smell of human feces,
and the
blur of thick, speedy flies.

They were Confederate white men who begged while clawing at the dirt walls. The two creatures watched their prey with their muscles flexing over bone.

"I'm sorry!" one of the men declared. "I never owned a slave! Please!"

Neasa thought it an odd defense for a man who was about to die. Why not confess some mortal sin, or share a secret gleaned from the universe of life-encompassing terror? The man may not have owned a slave, but did he ever own a person? Could a person be owned if they’ve been stripped or denied the concept of self?

One of the creatures bit right into the man's face, and a geyser of gore sprayed across the pit's walls. The other man sank into the dirt while his shivering hands covered his face against the descending shadow of doom that fell upon him. The sun's light through the tops of the trees spread the creature's presence upon the ground among the gathering pools of blood that gushed out of the first man.

"How do you like feeling powerless?" a mercenary asked.

"You get what you deserve, boy! The devil's coming for you and all your kind!"

"All whites going to die just like you. Your white God ain't gonna help you, now!"

Neasa didn't want to close her eyes. She might once again be transported to another time and place that would fill her head with mystery. Her entire body ached, yet she thought of Bill Carter, the dead man on the train. Did he ever own another man? Did his father purchase slaves like a man might buy cattle or pigs from the market?

The stranger in the barn had spoken about innocence
and t
he mirage of peace and tranquility that somehow defines whether a man is deserving of death. The man in the barn might have said that all men are deserving of death, because
its
reality can occur at any given moment. Time is not at the mercy of mortality.

Smoke in the barn, obscuring the stranger's visage. Is that what death looks like?

The second man screamed, and Neasa buried her face in the cool, moist dirt. An insect landed on her cheek and wandered the contours of her face.

"You will end this way."

Ambala, the jailer. Sit up now and look upon her face.

The prisoner croaked a series of words, though nobody could hear them while two men gurgled and choked on their own blood. The watching crowd clapped.

"I was always a killer," she tried to say.

"Drink this," Ambala demanded. "The pain will not subside. The pain will awaken you, and bring you back to me."

"I dreamt that I was a child who dreamt of being free from fear," Neasa imagined the words, though may not have said them.

"Open your eyes. I have seen your horrors. Open this soul to me. Give me your breath again, so that you might be, once again."

She'd been made for murder. Her life was nothing more than the design of a whimsical, torturous woman who'd pitted her against her brother in a game of violence and torture. There was a time when she'd been a little girl shivering beneath her blanket, waiting for the pain to rain upon her once again.

"Free will!" she screamed and tried to sit up. Her eyes nearly opened. She hit her head against the iron bars above her, and sank back into the dirt.  

  A million voices, both familiar and strange, echoed throughout the winding tunnels of her confused mind. Above the din, she thought she could hear the two creatures in the pit roar like savage jungle cats.

She could feel her body being lifted by a pair of strong hands. A boiling liquid was poured down her parched throat, and she immediately gagged. The stream of lava poured out of her mouth and through her nostrils. Coughing, she landed on her knees, and the hands lifted her again.

"Drink!"

Neasa opened her eyes.

("This valley is the key," Ambala said while dealing a hand of poker.

The saloon was filled with the slanderous voices of drunken Union soldiers, who swooned in their seats and decried the generals who led their friends to slaughter. One name was commonly cursed among them: Stonewall Jackson.

"I don't care," Neasa shrugged. "If I were you, I'd worry about all the stares you're getting. It's not every day that an armed Negro woman sits down in a saloon to play cards with another armed woman."

"Jealous?" Ambala asked while both women picked up their cards.

"They don't want to fuck you, they want to kill you."

"Harsh language from a lady. Besides, these men are fighting for freedom."