Order of the Dead (42 page)

17

Alan climbed the rest of the way up the ladder and onto the platform, the
structure shaking appreciably in the wind. Livid with self-hatred, he wanted to
scream for allowing this to happen, for letting himself be trapped.

But he didn’t, because screaming would
only make it worse. It would incense the zombies further, and draw more to him.

After getting his bearings and getting
himself under control not very much at all, he sat down. He knew where he was
relative to New Crozet—about three quarters of a mile from the outer gate. In
the distance he’d covered, there’d been no sign of the Tackers.

He was determined to catch up with
them…
somehow.

And when he did he was going to do
more than just put the fear of God in their hearts. Said hearts were coming the
fuck out of their chests.

Judging from how only the one zombie
had shown up at the gate the other night when he was out with Senna and
Rosemary, there might be a campsite nearby, which had drawn the zombies to it
and away from New Crozet.

But perhaps the Tack Truck itself was
the extent of the Tackers’ lot, and it had simply arrived in advance of the
market. If he couldn’t find them, or if he couldn’t catch up to them, then he
would follow their trail until the zombies took him.

The platform was twenty feet tall, and
the relative lack of foliage at this time of year allowed Alan to see some way
in the direction the truck had gone. The view was disheartening, offering no
sign of the truck or a campsite.

Tree branches swayed noisily around
him, as if to say, ‘I told you so.’

The platform’s shaking grew more
violent, like a dial on an amplifier being turned up slowly, and Alan thought of
what would happen if one of the beams succumbed to the storm. He saw himself
falling and breaking his legs and an arm, or if he was lucky, his back. At
least then he wouldn’t feel it when they tore him apart.

It could be a slow turn, a
painfully
slow one. If he took a long time to become one of them, he might suffer for
quite a while as they tore at him with their teeth, claws, and broken bony
protrusions, which were the virus’s specialty. If he didn’t break his back, or
broke it so that he only lost the use of the lower half of his body, he could
try to run or crawl away on his hands and knees while they worked to convince
him to join their cause.

There was no point in fighting or
trying to escape after they bit him, but he knew that he’d do it anyway. It was
hardwired into him, as it was into Senna, and most of those who were still
alive so many years after the outbreak.

He looked down the ladder hole and saw
that some cardinals had joined the flesh-seeking party, and good for them. They
were the good ol’ Virginia state birds, after all. He’d always loved the
cardinals, and now there were two tattered and very dirty red balls, the
current excuse for the same, flitting about at the base of the tower, what luck.

They were Virginia cardinals, alright,
what little was left of them, and he wondered at the red still in their coats.

Small miracles, right? Thank God in
heaven for that. Or was it the virus that was seated in heaven now? Never mind,
that was for Brother Mardu to worry about.

Perhaps these birds had been dormant
longer than most, and had suffered the least damage by virtue of their
isolation. It could be very quiet indeed in the sticks of the Virgin Queen State.

Alan craned his neck for a better view
and found that if he watched long enough and squinted in just the right way,
and, most importantly, squeezed all thought from his mind, it almost looked like
the animals, or rather the tattered and broken rag dolls that were vaguely
animal-shaped, were playing.

The game was capture the flag—he was
the flag—and the opposite team had encountered an obstacle that it couldn’t
surmount, at least not yet, but they were working at it in their dogged way.

What kind of flag was he, and how
would he flap on his way down? How would his fabric sprawl out on the ground,
and would it still ripple, and, if so, for how long?

Hadn’t the world seen enough of him
already? Wasn’t it sick of him by now?

Why not just end it quickly?

No, the more he looked down, the more
certain he was that he wouldn’t die on impact if he fell. That was too much to
wish for, and anyway, he deserved the pain. He’d earned it.

It would be his punishment for failing
to realize what was happening sooner. If he hadn’t been stumbling around the
market like some damned fool, maybe he could’ve saved them…saved
all
of
them, not just Senna, but the children too. He loved them all, even though the
only loss he could feel right now was the loss of...
her.

If he did fall, he’d drag himself with
what parts of his body still worked in the direction the truck had gone, toward
the only thing in the world he cared about, until he could drag no farther.

18

The wind tore through the tree tops, shaking free withering leaves from molting
branches. A gust carried a beautiful assortment of leaves to Alan, littering
the floor of the platform and lending it a colorful but painfully thin mat.

The tops of the trees around him were
shaking in erratic spurts of violence, as if they were trying to refrain from
expressing the storm’s temper but could find no position to take that would
allow the currents of air to flow through and around them without getting all
riled up. The patches of forceful trembling were like warnings, each bringing
with it a new layer of leafy mat for the platform, while also blowing out much
of the previous collection.

Alan grasped the underside of the
ladder hole with both hands, bracing himself against the blustering gales.
Assuming that steeled position, which he knew to be effective from experience, afforded
him no measure of ease. Instead, his breathing only grew more ragged.

He was cold, enraged, panicked, and
desperate to get back on the trail. He felt as if the world was trying to shake
him from his mission, and in a way it was. The zombies were attacking from
below, the wind from the flank, and the storm from above. And the
fucking
cannibals,
they’d come with their Trojan horse and stolen his very life.

Was all of this some kind of warning?
Was he being told to turn back, to give up on her? On them? On himself and his
beliefs?

I won’t be shaken, he thought. I’m
going to find her. No matter what I’m going to find her.

He glanced at the roof over his head,
held there by toothpick-like projections from the platform floor. The whole
structure might as well have been pasted together by children with their
Elmer’s Glue, considering how rare it was to see a platform with its roof still
attached. Had they even used Elmer’s Glue?

What the fuck had they been thinking?
Probably that no one would live long enough for any of it to matter, that’s
what, and the longer they stayed out there doing a right job of it, the less
likely they were ever to return to wherever it was they’d come from.

Joke’s on them, Alan thought bitterly.

He knew that most of them, in fact,
hadn’t returned. They should have at least finished their jobs, and taken some
pride in doing them well.

He’d never thought he’d get off the
rec-crew alive, either, but that hadn’t stopped him from putting his all into
the thankless, and frankly pointless task that he’d been allotted by the fading
U.S. government. He’d left eventually, that was true, but he’d done his time.

He thought on this for a moment. Had
he really put in enough though?

Who the fuck are you to judge, Alan?
he admonished himself. For all you know they didn’t even have glue to work
with, much less power tools or nails long enough or strong enough or any at all
for that matter.

The roof creaked mightily on its
supports, straining against the hurried and slipshod nail work that had held it
in place for years, but had never had to contend with a storm like this. Well
now it did have to, and who knew how many more storms it would withstand,
assuming it made it through this one?

An image of Russ Trippett’s face
entered Alan’s mind like an air bubble rising to the surface of a stagnating pond,
except the bubble didn’t pop when it found its way to the top, but only swam on
top of the water, back and forth, back and forth, as if it intended to bob
there forever.

Usually he winced when he remembered
Russ, but not this time. There were too many other things on his mind for that,
to be precise, mostly Senna. The children were there too, and more clearly than
they’d been when he’d stormed out of New Crozet to rescue the woman he loved,
but they continued to float at the outskirts of his goal, ancillary things that
were outside the lines.

He knew that objectively, they were
more important than she was. They mattered more to the survival of the human
race, which, if he had to admit it, and at the moment he did, was as unlikely
as…as…he couldn’t think of anything to compare it to right now, but it sufficed
to call it by its name: an improbability, and a grave one, which by the looks
of it, was becoming...

The meanderings of his addled mind
were cut short by a tearing sound that announced itself above the nonstop drum
solo of rain, which was gaining strength beat by beat by beat. It was the
world’s snare drum, but what was the rallying cry? Or was it a demoralizing
tactic, or a curfew, or a parley? No, it certainly wasn’t a parley.

Suddenly, the unseen conductor gave
his cue and the roof was wrenched free of its supports, taking an impressive
handful of bent nails with it. Sheets of rain covered Alan, who was already
drenched from his trek to the platform. As the entire structure shook with
vicious force, he hung on.

19

The roof didn’t go far. The wind, as it turned out, had bitten off a smidge
more than it could chew. Well, more than a smidge if we’re being honest about
it, and after carrying the top of the safety platform past a cluster of trees
only yards from Alan’s perch, dropped the roof from its maw.

Thank you very much, thought the
displeased roof, being that it had wanted to move toward the drummer boy of
rain, the eye of the storm, and the wind had taken it in quite the opposite
direction, thank you very much for nothing. It dropped to the forest floor in a
rigmarole of soaked and splintering wood.

It had taken with it one of the wind’s
looser teeth, and that would have to be triumph enough for today. Framed by the
noises of the war that the sky was currently waging against everything beneath
it, the crash was insignificant, and managed to distract the zombies who were
nipping at Alan’s heels—only figuratively, because they were still confined to
the ground under the platform—for only a moment. They were ingeniously designed
things, more keyed in to the sounds of the living than those made by inanimate
objects.

The storm center was drawing closer on
its alternating pitter-patter and pour feet.

Closer it came, and stronger it flowed
out of the air, hurtling itself with ever increasing speed and determination at
all that was below it. It saw Alan, as the rain sees all that is worth
covering, and its patience flagged.

At the water’s beck and call, the wind
turned on its heels and circled about once more, pushing the clouds toward the
platform and the New Crozet citizen who was trapped there for the time being,
and, perhaps, he’d be there forever, after being struck by lightning or having
a heart attack or doing himself in with his own gun. But of course that
wouldn’t be the case, because the platform wouldn’t stand for all of time.

It would come apart under its own
weight sooner or later, and Alan’s corpse would settle to the ground in a
jarring rattle of bones, and there he would remain, blanketed by rain and taken
back by the elements until, after a great many years, there would be no
evidence that he’d existed in the first place. Now
that
was something to
look forward to.

To say the least, Alan wasn’t feeling
optimistic at the moment, although the storm itself was a blessing because it
allowed for thunder and lightning, which could create enough noise to draw the
zombies away and give Alan time to climb down and escape. He’d seen lightning
earlier, when in pursuit of the Tack Truck, or at least he thought he had, so
where was it now? Why wasn’t there more?

As if it had heard his thoughts, the
sky allowed one gangly lightning bolt to cross it, lighting up the night, and affording
Alan a glimpse of the clouds’ breadth. His mouth fell open slightly as he took
in the sight framed in the electricity’s afterglow. This was going to be a real
rager of a storm, more so than it already was. A real motherfucking doozy.

This wasn’t his first platform pony
ride, not by a long shot, but in a storm like this…hell, he wasn’t sure he’d
ever seen the approach of a storm like this. As for pony rides, he’d never
actually ridden a real pony, although he’d been on the occasional horse tour or
three, and he hadn’t much liked the feeling of sitting on a horse. But that was
then, before the outbreak, and he’d literally jump at the chance to ride a
horse or a pony now, so long as the equine friend kind enough to lend its back was
alive and not a rotten string-puppet of the virus, bone shards poking out in all
directions to make mounting said beast an exercise in self-flagellation.

Years ago, after Senna and Alan had
become a part of New Crozet, they’d left town to escort Russ Trippett, New
Crozet’s electrician at the time, to make some minor fixes and updates to the
grid about two miles outside the perimeter. They’d fixed the lines and changed
out some old sections and were on their way back when Russ Trippett tripped—the
pun could’ve been funny under other circumstances, but given how events played
out, it wasn’t—and the zombies had heard the noise it made and came to get the
tripped Trippett, and there had been too many to confront.

They’d been forced to run, and,
following protocol, they went straight for the nearest platform, helped Russ
up, and then followed, the virus nipping at their heels. It had happened in the
winter, and there was a slick coat of ice on the ladder rungs. From above them,
Russ slipped and fell.

Senna and Alan each grabbed at him on
his way down, but they couldn’t stop him. Down he went, to the capture-the-flag-playing
zombies below. And they bit the fucking flag.