Nightmare of the Dead: Rise of the Zombies (19 page)

Neasa's gaze once again found the woman sitting in her chair, the eyes still locked in place.

"You're wasting my time," she said. "You've got this grand plan to get noticed, but you had to get me involved. You should have killed me when you had the chance."

Saul nodded and spoke to himself. "I'll tell her now, but she should already know, I think. The conflagration of her entire being, the succulence of her fear that I can taste while sleeping. You will deny me these things after everything I've proven for your love. I'd hoped now you would see, once and for all, who is the most loyal to you. Loyalty is for dogs and soldiers. Maybe even husbands. I am none of those things."

He looked up at Neasa. "Mother wanted you to live. The entire design for the zombies was mostly her own, of course. Mother is a genius, but you already knew that. She wanted me to take it a step further and make you the very first immortal. She'd already given you treatments over the years, when you were a little girl, to make you immune to the recipe, but there are already some people who are not affected."

Neasa thought of young Bill Carter, the dead soldier on the train who tried to defend her.

Saul's demeanor was soured by his own thoughts; his brow creased and his lips curled to create the perfect mask of derision and dismay. "You were going to be immortal, but not I. No! I didn't win the war while we grew up together. I was supposed to have killed you then.
Per
hap
s
you remember, but it's no longer significant unless we count the worms who wallow in the dirt because
they might care
! The poor mice who still squeak and sing to glorify their mice dreams. Do animals dream? Do the zombies? All living things dream, but I don't know about dead things. But you see, I wanted to erase your memory and start over with you. I thought maybe we could be friends. You're always right, though. I should have killed you. I only brought you here because Mother wanted to see you one last time. I promised that your death would be nice and pretty. I was going to use you at Vicksburg, because the Collective wanted to give you another chance. My new and improved Transmortification was designed just for you! But I don't need you there. There will be zombies there, and they will be in Texas, and they will be in Washington too, soo
n enough."

She understood then, at last, that she was nothing more than a plaything, a creature used for her brother's whims. But it wasn't just him. There was the Collective and everything they stood for, and there was the woman in the corner, whose eyes never seemed to move.

It was Mother.

Was it always this way? When was she given a choice in the direction of her life? Was it the night she used the riding crop on Saul for the first time, and decided to take the conflict into her own hands? Was it the day the stranger came to her in the barn and sat down to smoke while talking to her about purpose and fate? She tried to change this course after spending time with Ambala. That woman confused Neasa's perception of reality and life, and her future had burst into flames in the Shenandoah Valley. She always had the ability and the power to change, but it was Ambala who showed her the way. And now, she was gone.

She could wallow in pity for the last remaining moments of her life—Saul certainly had a horrendous death planned for her. Or, she could be someone greater than she'd ever been, and fight for those very things that Ambala taught her, those concepts which seemed both foreign and weak, as if hope, love, self-sacrifice, mercy, and compassion belonged to the savage tribes that existed halfway across the world.

Neasa had been cutting away at her bonds with the knife, until her hands were finally free. She pretended to remain a captive while waiting for her opportunity. The only guns in the room belonged to Santiago, and they were holstered at his hips. The remaining weapons were a combination of rusty,
bloodstained
blades and hammers. 

"I'm doing you a favor," Saul said while handing a syringe to Santiago, who clasped it tightly within his fist and stared at it while the madman continued to ramble. "If you die here, in this chamber, nothing bad will happen. I will get to see you die, and so will Mother. But your blood is tainted. You see, I've tried to design Transmortification as a virus rather than a weapon that is dependent upon supply. Thus, if you perish, you may unleash a very fun and exciting plague upon the entire world! Of course, this is something the Collective does not know, or else they would just kill you, but I would never have had as much fun! I gave you another chance!"

There were no insults, no explosions of
anger that
could possibly reverse her brother's words. He had to be lying. Even if she died in a field by herself, whatever she carried within her wouldn't be able to reach civilization. She wasn't very well versed in alchemy or any form of mystical science, but she had to believe that her brother was simply torturing her.

Deep down, she knew it wasn't a lie. Wherever she died, the wind would carry her doom and breath down into the stomachs of women who read to their children by candlelight, and young men scarred by war laboring in the fields with their clothes drenched in sweat and the sun high and unmoving. Death would arrest the world and bring civilization to its knees.

She'd been a captive her entire life, and she couldn't even decide how she could die.

Saul clapped his hands. "The look on your face! Mother! Do you see?"

To lie down now and die. To accept defeat when there was still so much fight left within her. A walking plague carrier? She could doom the world with her death. Whatever war she'd been fighting against her brother, he played to win. But there still had to be a way. If there was a way to inflict this terror upon her, then there must be a cure, a way out.

The mad doctor positioned himself behind Mother's wheelchair and began to wheel her out. He brushed a lock of hair away from her face affectionately and kissed the top of her head.

Neasa thought she could hear Mother's voice across the spaces of time and memory.
One day, my daughter, rivers of blood and suffering will flow through the valleys and drain into the ocean, carrying the human detritus of dead and dying men, women and children, the maimed animals of misfortune and decrepitude. A sun shall rise upon the horizon and through the hills and between the trees and over the rocks the blood shall flow and the human race will scream and die as one, and we shall stand. We shall be.

Her eyes had been closed. She looked again upon the
frail, fat figure of the woman who'd engineered her inhuman disposition, the mind behind the killer, the puppeteer holding the taut strings of a gunslinger. The brother, Saul, wheeled the woman to the chamber's entrance and began to drive her upward and out.

If she followed him out without a weapon, McPhee and the others were still waiting outside. She needed guns, and she needed them now.

Santiago whispered, "This is our moment, now, at last. You will see the end of my path, and you will join me on the road to awe." He looked up at Neasa and said, "I want to feel every second of my death. I want to know that it's happening. Now, the student shall consume the teacher, once and for all."

The killer pushed the syringe directly into the tattoo of the stallion on the inside of his forearm. The veins and tendons along his neck exposed themselves, and he opened his mouth as if in the throes of sexual ecstasy. He threw his head back, and the hat fled from the top of his skull, revealing flattened curls of black hair. His entire body vibrated while his limbs twitched violently. His fingers clenched and unclenched.

"A more powerful version!" Saul announced above the dull roar that escaped from Santiago's throat. "I made it for you! We kept you alive because we wanted you to have it! He was immune to the gas, but not this!"

May 25th, 1863: A Taste for Heroism

She wasn't going to wait for anything to happen; she was a woman of action.

Neasa picked up a surgical saw and held the knife in the other hand. She backed up toward the wall and waited for her adversary to complete the transformation.

Burning flesh sloughed away, revealing bloody, sinewy muscle. Instead of screaming in pain as the others had done, Santiago stretched out his arms and watched the skin melt away into puddles at his feet. His clothes filled with blood as his body popped and bubbled.

"It is amazing!" Santiago gurgled and then lurched forward, expelling a stream of bloody vomit through his mouth. His entire body seemed to explode violently as chunks of things that couldn't be identified in the bloody muck pushed upward through his body and through his lips, which also joined the gory mess. As hair, ears, nose, eyelids, and identity slipped away into the sticky mess that had been his life, Santiago joined the ranks of the undead.

The living corpse returned to its feet and assumed mastery over its stance. It wavered for a moment and then stomped through the blood, its bulbous eyes intent upon Neasa.

She couldn't wait to fight it. All she had to do was let it get in close to her, and she could pull a revolver from one of the holsters. It could be done, and as soon as she made the move, Santiago would be out of her life. If she was fast enough, she could still make an attempt on Saul and end him before he could leave the camp. There was still hope. The plan gave her the sense of purpose she needed to combat the physical incarnation of doom and horror that roared as a foul gas was expelled through its mouth.

The creature wrenched one of the corpses from a table and held it aloft with one hand as if it were nothing more than a bag of weightless bone. It reared back and pitched the corpse against the wall in an attempt to hit Neasa, who ducked out of the way just in time. The body hit the wall with so much force that it exploded in a cloud of blood, bone, and organs. Neasa tried to shield herself, but blood and bone rained down upon her. A bone struck her in the back of the head, and all the strength in her body suddenly fled her as she collapsed forward into the ground.

Get up. Get up now, or all is lost.

Stars danced in front of her eyes. There was no time to think. She crawled forward on her hands and knees while attempting to regain strength enough to stand again. Another corpse was launched, and she was able to duck beneath one of the other tables as the bloody rain decorated the chamber.

Wiping blood from her eyes, her clothes dripped from the sticky, aged blood of a man who'd been dead for some time. She could smell the rot upon her own flesh, and it was all she could do to keep herself from retching; she could taste the cold, coppery blood upon her lips. She didn't know where Santiago was, and this sudden realization drove her to scramble as quickly as she could toward another wall. Even though she had to get close, she couldn't afford to let it take her by surprise.

Steadying herself against the wall, a cold, wet hand suddenly whirled her around. She was too late. Clawed hands ripped and tore at her clothes as she tried to slip away from its grasp. She slipped on blood and fell beneath the looming, walking corpse. It's full, bleeding weight fell upon her.

With its blood dripping into her eyes, she slashed wildly with the saw and knife. What could she hope to do with such weapons? She had to stick the blade between its eyes, or at least distract it, but she could feel the saw grate against bone, and when she tried to plunge the blade directly into flesh, there was nothing but air; she was able to turn her head and see the wide-open space were its stomach had been.

A powerful hand slapped her hard across her face. Her wrist was seized and the circulation to her fingers was cut off, and the knife slid from her fingers. The creature squeezed, and her wrist bent awkwardly to accompany the resounding snap. Pain flared up her arm, and she cried out with a curse.

Santiago's exposed, crooked teeth ground together while strings of flesh still clung to its smoldering, smoking skull. With its free hand, the corpse ripped away at her breeches and shirt, exposing the soft flesh of her thigh. She kicked and bucked to move the corpse upward slightly, because she could see the butt of the gun jutting out of the holster. She could grab it with her free hand, if only she could endure the pain in her wrist, and the dripping, viscous slime that once composed a violent outlaw.

It seemed to want to play with her. After letting her arms fall limply to the floor, it ripped away at the cloth around her shoulder to expose the scarred, wounded shoulder that had been damaged in the swamp. She bucked again, and the creature bounced forward slightly. The malicious tongue traced the edges of its greedy teeth. As if daggers had replaced its fingernails, the zombie slowly forced its nails into the old wound, drawing fresh blood and pain from the writhing woman.

The malevolent creature betrayed a hint of intent beyond the need to maim and cannibalize for the sake of fulfilling some primal design instilled upon it since it was born as a man. She had to be strong, now. There was too much at stake. She was afraid to fail, now, when death was imminent. If Saul was right, this would be the safest way for her to end, otherwise, the entire world would be afflicted with the same damnable curse.

She bucked her hips again. She squeezed her eyes shut and kicked. Just a little closer.

"Give me a kiss, Santiago!" she grunted. "I know you've always felt this way about me!"

The corpse opened its bloody mouth, and began to lower its face towards hers.