Order of the Dead (26 page)

68

Brother Acrisius snarled at the light creeping into the room. Fucking audacity
of the stuff. He was grimacing as best he could, but only half of his face was
wearing the expression well, while the rest of it, the paralyzed part,
contorted only slightly out of its usual freeze.

He propped himself up on one elbow,
putting a painful squeeze on one of the active pustules on the elbow’s point,
which was one of the larger of his body’s boils, a real fucking gift from the
gods as far as painful expulsions went. His back was aching something terrible,
the half of it that he could feel, anyway.

It was probably a worry ache, he knew,
and if it was, it was justified, because he had a good deal to be worried
about. A
great
deal, in fact.

Reaching for the curtains, he pushed
himself up farther. He flicked them open a crack, knowing he had to do it to
get himself up and at ’em—it was high time for getting up and at ’em and there
was much at ’em for him to get at today—and he not only groaned at the new
brightness, but got the paralyzed half of his face moving more than usual. It was
going for contempt now, more than just irritation, but only half of the
pustule-ridden facial skin took on the angry frown the right way, and the rest
was pulled along for only some of the ride.

That was alright, though, because it
made Brother Acrisius look not only angry, but downright malevolent, like
someone you didn’t want to bump into in a dark alley, or anywhere, really. It
wasn’t the state of his body, which was wretched, but the dark glimmer of his
eyes that seemed to hint at an unspeakable wickedness. His eyes were a dead
giveaway, in fact, because what was in his heart, in his mind, and, at the
moment, in his pocket too, really was appalling, and his blue, yellow-flecked
eyes spoke of it quite plainly.

He’d once been an investment banker
with Goldman Sachs, back when there were people who ‘investment-banked’ and
companies like Goldman. He’d turned thirty-two the year of the stroke.

That year his bonus was $246,500,
which was decently above average, but well within mortal range, and far less
than what he thought he deserved. He’d cared about his job and money quite a
lot, enough to make himself sick over his position and the perceived lack of
green it was bringing in. And the heart problems that made the stroke go round had
their modest beginnings in the stressful pursuit of the green stuff that made
the world turn—or so he’d thought at the time.

I-banking was different now. He was
still a market maker, out of necessity more than anything else, because no one
else was qualified to do it, but now he was also a high net worth individual
himself, perhaps even
ultra-
high net worth, when he dared think about
it. Of course the stocks and bonds and currencies he owned weren’t quite the ones
you’d think of, but times had changed, and the world was different now.

Other than the mattress, a light, and
an old suitcase that served both as storage space and a bed table, the room was
bare.

Acrisius moved to get up, and, as
always since his stroke, the right side of his body went, and the left side
followed, ponderously, moving like a snarl of unripe but very well-wrinkled
squash, the frozen side of his face wearing a permanent scowl.

The mattress underneath him was bare
and stained with large spots of yellow, resembling sickly, overgrown amoebae, and
smeared in places with brown. The springs squeaked a half-hearted protest as he
cajoled his body into action.

The mattress’s edges were discolored
and frayed, and a spring, brown with rust, stuck out at a corner. He edged his working
foot toward the spring until his toes were touching the bare, rusted metal, caressing
its familiar roughness.

The idea that this behavior might be
rewarded with tetanus never entered his mind. He had no fear of tetanus, or of
any disease, including that brought by the virus, if that was even a disease at
all.

Perhaps it was better described as a
transcendental state, permanent and remarkable. Who knew what the zombies felt after
the virus took them? It could be unparalleled bliss, or nothing at all.

Brother Acrisius didn’t dwell on these
details much. If you asked him, it was a waste of time to suppose things that
couldn’t be proven, or to look for unfindable cures and immunities. He wasn’t
afraid of the virus, anyway, even though he acknowledged its power. Fatalistic
as he was, he knew that what would be would be. Life had already proven that
much, and, he was sure, would continue to do so.

He rose and stretched, rising onto the
ball of his good foot and raising one arm over his head. He’d learned with time
to hobble without crutches, and he could stand in one place just fine so long
as he wasn’t holding anything heavy.

Then he yawned and took a deep breath.
The air in his room was rank, which was unsurprising given the small space and
Brother Acrisius’s aversion to bathing.

The walls were unpainted, lightweight
steel, the same stuff that was the framework of all the Order’s trucks. It made
for good shelter from the elements, and was suitably austere for Acrisius’s
taste.

He dug his hand into his pocket and
withdrew a tattered, green pouch that was decorated with only the tiniest
specks of mold, just a spore here and there. He sometimes tried to recall where
he’d gotten it, but couldn’t. From the possessions of one of the Order’s dearly
converted, he suspected, one of the converted from the early years. There’d
been many more then.

Memory was becoming a more challenging
thing these days, especially when it came to summoning up the events that had
taken place in those first three years after he found a new life within the
Order. It was as if there were a cloud over part of his mind, enshrouding the
memories of that time. He was sure there was a way to remember, and the easiest
way would have been to ask the brothers and sisters who’d taken him in and who
were there with him through those years, but he didn’t want to ask.

Most of the ones who’d been there then
were dead now, and he was on the outs with the handful who were left. And
anyway, he felt strongly about not asking. If the memories were to be recalled,
he’d long ago decided, they’d be recalled without anyone’s help.

“The virus has provided for me
before,” he whispered, “and it’ll provide for me again.”

He loosened and undid the drawstring
of the pouch and opened it. From the pouch he pulled a piece of dried muscle
meat. Jerky.

Anticipatory saliva was already
pooling under his tongue. The smell, salty and pungent, reached him as he
brought the stringy muscle tissue toward his mouth. He could already taste the
sublime flavor.

He put his hand back in the pouch and
stroked the coarse, striated, and pitted pieces of flesh that he treasured.
Then he brought his hand up to his face and ran his fingers over his skin. The texture
was remarkably similar.

His complexion had been…uncooperative,
for as long as he could remember. Severe blemishes had taken root in him in his
pre-teens and had refused to let up since, growing only more dogged in their
efforts to split and boil his skin.

After the outbreak, the skin afflictions
had become an unyielding churn of pustules and boils that were regularly infected,
emitting pale fluid at times and a mixture of yellow and green pus at others.
He didn’t care about his appearance or what it meant about his health. Belong
to the virus now as he did, imperfections of the flesh were wholly irrelevant. The
parallel between his skin and the jerky was a source of minor amusement,
nothing more.

Acrisius left his room and walked down
a dank and narrow hallway that was patched with mold to the lavatory, which
smelled appreciably worse than his room. Because each emptying of human waste
from the trucks brought with it the risk of zombies getting in, it was done
rarely.

Instead, disinfecting and deodorizing
solutions were used, but these were in short supply and carefully rationed so
that the smell never improved to a level that wouldn’t make a person gag. He was
used to this, however, and, breathing normally, he positioned himself over the
toilet and began to relieve himself while chewing the jerky. His stream of
urine broke the surface of the tranquil waste in the container under the
toilet, and the smell of sewage rose up toward him with new vigor. He shrugged,
which was a half-shrug in his semi-paralyzed state, and bit harder at the
jerky.

As his stream was diminishing, he felt
a burning sensation deep in his urethra. That wasn’t unfamiliar either. He
watched the tip of his penis until the expected happened: urine spotted with
blood trickled out. A mild grunt of displeasure passed over his bottom lip,
then plunged into the toilet with the grace of a saliva string.

Whether the pain meant a kidney or
bladder stone, an infection, or internal bleeding caused by something else, he
didn’t know. It didn’t matter, anyway, because there was nothing that could be
done about it. The Order’s antibiotics were in short supply, and they weren’t
to be used for maladies such as this, which weren’t clearly life-threatening.
The bleeding came and went as it pleased, and, in this instance, didn’t even
last for half the pissing session.

He finished up in the bathroom without
washing and returned to his room, trying to massage away the burning feeling in
his penis by moving two fingers in a circular motion under his scrotum. This
brought some mild relief, and the pain began to ebb.

69

Sitting down on the mattress, Brother Acrisius opened his hand-copied edition
of Brother Mardu’s book, entitled,
The Book of the Order of the Dead.
Farting loudly while his uncooperative leg twitched to the toot, he turned to a
page at random and selected a passage, which he then whispered to himself.

Alone, it lacks that stuff, that biology, the
machinery
that it needs to
be one of the living. It takes hosts out of their own lives, and
thereby
gains
a foothold that is above that of its previous
un-alive
existence,
and in doing so it becomes
un-dead.
From
un-alive
to
un-dead.
By doing this, the virus necessarily pushes
down
on the host with its
feet
that it uses for climbing up to the
un-dead
place
,
and so they go
down—whether they be people or animals—the
rungs of the ladder
until
they are
submerged
in the
putrefying
pool of
un-alive.
That
is a place of complete
power exchange.
The hosts have
given
themselves fully to the virus, and they have been pushed down into a wonderful
place where they no longer need to worry or think or eat. They can relax in
utter
subservience.
The virus
thrills
in
un-death,
because it is in
that state that it changes the world,
terraforms
the planet like a
visiting
alien god.
It
transforms
the world into the landscape
that it desires. It is our great
conqueror,
and we
submit.
We
must
submit, because who are we to stand in the way after the whole world has bowed
down to this great
god?
It is nothing short of a god,
our
god,
the
only
god. It has done more to the world, and more for us, than any
force in all of history. And it wants more. It is
always
hunting for
more,
giving life to its wants and needs through its control of the
un-alive.
They are the great god’s pawns that move about the world, existing only to
serve, and
we,
we
are lords among these pawns, and it is our
fortunate
role to help these pawns do their godly work. We are humble servants,
fortunate,
humble servants. And for as long as we help our
god
to express itself
more fully, to
fulfill
its wants and
wishes,
whatever they may
be, we will always have a place as kings of this world, all of the spoils not
taken by the virus will be ours, and we will do whatever we please and be free,
so long as we
satisfy
its needs, so long as we
open
ourselves to
it completely, and let it take everything it wants of us.

The terraforming verse made Brother
Acrisius quiver with relish. It was as good as chewing the salty, forbidden jerky,
which if any of the other brothers and sisters had tasted, they would’ve known
its source on the first squirt-drawing chew of it, because the jerky the Order
made didn’t come close.

Within the Order, Acrisius’s secret
was known only to Mardu and one other. It was a bargaining point that Acrisius
had won, and one that he would keep as long as Mardu needed him as badly as he
did. Perhaps Mardu’s conceding that point had been the last straw, the one that
broke the zombie camel’s back and sent the Order spiraling far out of favor
with the virus, but there’d been no way out of making that compromise.

It was a game of give and take, made that
way by necessity. The Order had to give some of what properly belonged to the
virus, so they could get some more Sultan, which they would then use to replace
what had been taken from the virus,
and more.

Couldn’t it see that? It would be made
whole, and then some. For now, that was Brother Mardu’s problem, and his to
bear alone.

Acrisius was the one with the
contacts. He made the exchanges, so why shouldn’t he get a kickback or two,
a
bonus?
That was all part of the give and take game, and Mardu got it,
knowing when to look away.

For others in the Order, the
punishment for being discovered eating a jerky like this would be a fate worse
than death, as that is what the virus prescribed in its private chats with
Brother Mardu. Someone who had the misfortune of not being Acrisius, if caught
chewing the stuff, might be flayed and dismembered alive, or perhaps more
creatively, put to the intestinal crank, or maybe all of that rolled into one.
They wouldn’t be given to the virus, however, because their misdeeds would’ve
made them tainted, unclean, not good enough to be taken by their god.

Being that all meat came from the same
animal these days, the difference in Acrisius’s stash was a matter of vintage.
Saul also knew the secret of the jerky, and now, when Brother Acrisius thought
of Saul,
his
Saul, he was filled with yearning. He hadn’t enjoyed Saul
in three nights, and he wanted him now, but this wasn’t the time.

The virus had to be appeased first,
and then there’d be time for nocturnal delights. Meditating on that, Acrisius
bit his lip until he tasted blood, then took a long piece of jerky and stuffed
it in his mouth. He bit down and pulled, trying to tease out a stringy part,
and ended up dislodging the roots of one of his teeth.

Wincing at the pain, he kept pulling
and chewing. Saliva mixed with blood squirted from his mouth once, then calmed
itself and went placidly about the task of seeping out past his tongue and
teeth to color the corners of his scabbed lips.

The squirt of Acrisius’s vital red
stuff, the piss from his mouth, had landed on the passage he’d been reading in
Mardu’s holy book. It was soaking in over the word ‘satisfy.’

Taking that as a sign of well-earned
delights with Brother Saul that were in his future, he sighed contentedly, and
for a moment he felt his belly fill with the twinges of a child-like glee. Yes,
he would be extremely
satisfied soon.

Groaning with lascivious delight, he went
on chewing the tangy meat and thinking of Saul while a hand crept closer to the
uninspiring swell at his crotch, which was the best he could manage these days.
But that was okay, because in his mouth was a taste of heaven, the end product
of plucking a cherub from his cloud perch and flaying and gutting and fileting said
plump, flying youngster, and then letting the sun and salt do the rest.