Order of the Dead (44 page)

23

“Rosemary,” Senna whispered.

She didn’t reply.

“Rosemary,” Senna whispered again,
more insistently, “look at me.”

The truck smelled of fear-sweat and
blood. It was dark, save for one too-bright light in the center of the hallway
outside the holding cell. It was hanging on its cord from the ceiling, swinging
rhythmically in time with the storm.

Rosemary raised her head slowly, and a
sliver of harsh light fell upon her red eyes and tear-streaked face. There was
dried blood at the corner of her mouth. She had the look of a girl who was
lost, and who knew all the trails of breadcrumbs were devoured by the virus,
all the ways home removed from the possible…eaten up.

The rain began to beat harder on the
roof, the sounds reverberating through the metal above them and carrying down
the walls. The light flickered and its swinging grew faster, more desperate.

“They’re not going to come for us, are
they?” Rosemary said. Tears stood in her eyes, pressing. “No one is. It
wouldn’t be the right thing for the town. It would put too many at risk.”

Senna looked at Rosemary. She could
see the girl was on the verge of tears. She was herself, but she was keeping
them bottled away, at least for now. “We’re going to find a way out of here,”
Senna said. “We’re going to escape and find a way back.”

Rosemary looked down.

“Rosemary,” Senna said, “listen to me.
I need your help. If we work together, we could do it. We could find a way out.
Will you help me Rosemary? Will you please?”

“There’s no way out of here, Senna,”
Rosemary said, with something akin to vitriol in her voice. “We’re going to
die.”

Senna opened her mouth to speak but
the words wouldn’t come. It was hard to hear something like that from Rosemary,
not only because she was a child Senna loved like a daughter, but because Senna
knew that Rosemary was right.

The men who’d captured them—it was a
cult, really—were experienced in this sort of thing. They’d done it before, and
they would likely do it again. She knew that she’d grown soft in New Crozet,
but even so, her capture had been executed expertly.

“See,” Rosemary said, “you know it’s
true.”

Senna was about to say something, to
contradict Rosemary somehow, when the door to the room opened.

Brother Acrisius entered, his manner
that of a serpent whose belly was bloated with paralyzed prey. He was moving
slowly, as if dragging himself through sludge, his body bent to one side, and
one foot dragging along the floor. His helper, Saul, was with him, following
close behind.

“Get up,” Acrisius said. “Now.”

Reluctantly, Senna and Rosemary stood.
Senna took Rosemary’s hand and held it tight, intending to keep it firmly in
her own. Brother Saul opened the cell and hauled them out of it. He put bags
over their heads, and then began to pull them apart.

Their hands clung together a moment
longer, the fingers interlaced and desperate to stay knitted, and then were unclasped.
A moment later, the New Crozet prisoners were stumbling through darkness, the
sound of Rosemary’s wheezing all that Senna could hear.

24

Brother Mardu had never been so attracted to anyone before.
Ever in his
life.

The peasant woman from the settlements
was radiant. In fact, he found the concept of radiance inadequate to describe
her appeal.

There was a glow to her that was
ethereal, alien-like, and it was shining through her bruised skin and the
expression of contempt on her face. She wasn’t beautiful, at least not in the
conventional sense, but she had an aura of power, a feminine energy that was
like a vortex pulling him toward her.

And as if that weren’t enough to draw
him in, the virus was pushing him toward her with more force than he’d felt
from it in years. There was something very special about this woman. Something
he and the virus both needed to take and exploit and own.

He kept staring, unable to take his
eyes from her. She was sheer charisma, like a lamb with flesh tender and
succulent enough to lead the most hardened of vegetarians astray.

And maybe, just maybe, she was the
perfect piece of meat to help him regain his footing, a steak-shaped stepping
stone, moist, but with just enough firmness to get him up. If she was on his
side, the Order would return to nest under his wing like an errant gosling that
had realized the folly of its ways.

They couldn’t survive without him,
they’d only forgotten that, of course, and needed to be reminded. The fact was,
they
wouldn’t
survive without heirs.

They’d all die out if the asexuality
and homosexuality that was running amok in the Order remained unchecked. The
homosexuals he didn’t care about, they could do as they pleased, but the ones
who showed no interest in sex at all, in reproducing and continuing the clan,
what the hell was wrong with them?

Of course, he knew what it was, having
just recently found himself freed of all things mojo, whether
leadership-related, sexual, philosophical or otherwise. It was a sort of
depression that had taken hold of them, and whether it had its origins in a
deficiency that was nutritional, spiritual, mental, or of some other origin, he
didn’t know, but he’d work to bulldoze the problem from each front until it was
a pile of concentrated rubbish that could be flushed down the toilet with that
blue effluent of porta-potties that they’d recently had the good fortune to
acquire. It helped the smell, though it didn’t eliminate it entirely.

There was something else that could be
fixed, and that was something this woman could help with. The Order’s trucks
had fallen into a state of disrepair, that, frankly, Brother Mardu should’ve
done something about long ago. It all added up, and it was all adding up all
the time, and the shit was covering up what had been his own charisma.

It was time to flush the Order’s
system, and then start anew, and perhaps—he looked at her and tried to muster
some carnal desire in himself to take her and have his way with her, but it
wasn’t there, and this riled him—put a child into this beautiful creature. If
he could only get himself to do that, she’d come around, he was suddenly sure
of it, and his disposition turned on a dime.

Confidence beat its wings against the
inside of his sternum as if it were a bird trying to get out. His lean stomach
sucked itself in and he straightened into an expansive pose that was almost
regal, near the one he’d used to sport all the time, in the days of his
greatest strength.

25

“Welcome to the house of the Order,” Brother Mardu said, his voice booming with
authority and bolstered by a slight echo, “to
my
house. You’ll be guests
here indefinitely, until the purposes of the virus, whatever they may be with
respect to you, are served.”

Mardu was reclining on a leather
chaise that took up the far end of his room. His was the largest room among the
Order’s members, close to two hundred square feet, and it was his alone.

Senna and Rosemary were standing in
front of him. Their hands were tied behind their backs. Rosemary’s head was
bowed. Senna’s eyes were locked on the leader of the Order, who was finding it
difficult to keep eye contact with her.

Brother Acrisius was standing near the
entrance of the room, behind Senna and Rosemary. Rain was pounding on the roof,
the force of the impact causing the suspended fluorescent lights to sway in
their mounts.

Mardu twisted his torso, looking away
from Senna again and cracking his back, grimacing as he did so. The shifting of
his weight strained the deepening cracks in the leather of the chaise, drawing
them out to their full lengths just shy of their breaking points.

He turned to Acrisius. “Why don’t you
go play with Saul for a while? I bet he’s lonely.” In fact, he was.

Brother Acrisius winced. He’d been
watching the child Rosemary and wondering at the litheness with which she moved,
and what that meant about how she’d taste. “Of course.” He slunk out.

“You can sit if you like,” Brother
Mardu said, gesturing to the floor in front of him, which was covered by a
threadbare rug, in an unpleasant shade of fusty purple. Its surface was
populated by dark stains, some of which were notably crusty. A corner, the one
closest to the door, was torn up pretty good, and had a chewed appearance. He
waited, but they didn’t sit. He shrugged.

“You’re a spotter,” he said. “I can
tell that just by looking at you.”

Everyone who’d survived the outbreak,
even the overly self-critical Alan, had a little bit of spotter in them. Had
they not, they wouldn’t have made it. It was this universal importance of the
skill of spotting that enabled everyone to appreciate Senna’s gift for it.

Because while a good number of
survivors were passable at it, she had it down to an art, and, essentially,
that was what it was, an art. Others could try their hand at it, but compared
to her, they all looked like fakers, their spotting a sham. The same could not
be said about Brother Mardu, however.

Senna made no reply. Instead, she
glanced at Rosemary to reassure herself that the girl was breathing. She was,
though she’d struggled some when they were being moved with the bags over their
heads. When the bags had been removed, the girl’s breathing had gotten more or
less under control.

Brother Mardu went on, unperturbed by
the silence. “You’re not any old spotter, either. You’re really something, one
of a kind. I can tell by the way you hold yourself, the way you move, the way
you breathe.” He was silent for a few moments, drifting in his thoughts.

Senna was surveying the room with her
peripheral vision, trying to look like she was paying attention while actually
searching for something that could help them escape.

Brother Mardu smiled and nodded. “It’s
okay, you don’t have to say it. I know it’s true.”

Rosemary was beginning to wheeze.
Mardu looked at her, shook his head in a way that was almost apologetic, and
said, “We don’t have anything for that.”

Senna wondered if he was trying to make
an offer. He wanted something from them, that much was obvious, otherwise he
wouldn’t have brought them in for a private meeting. She could guess what it
was, but…perhaps she couldn’t, if what he’d just done to Jack was any
indication, he was utterly insane, and that made him unpredictable.

And she’d have to work with that. If
there was a way to negotiate with him, offering him the information she’d
gleaned during her time with the rec-crews, which couldn’t be worth much now, or
offering herself in exchange for the safe passage of the children back to New
Crozet, something, she’d try. If it turned out to be pointless, so be it.

“You’re from the north, aren’t you?”
Senna said.

Brother Mardu nodded, the hint of a
smile pulling at his lips.

“New York?”

“Yes.”

It wasn’t just the accent that had
given it away, but something else. Senna wasn’t sure what it was, and Mardu
didn’t ask, but it was probably something in his manner that she’d keyed in on,
like he was the last of a tribe and knew it, so he wore that status like a
proud badge on his chest.

“How did you survive?” she asked. She
wanted to get him talking, but a part of her was extremely curious. So few from
New York had lived through the outbreak, almost no one, in fact.

Brother Mardu grinned, and his face
grew dark. “I had help,
protection.
”

“Do you remember what happened to the
children there?”

He shrugged. “The same thing that
happened to them everywhere else.”

“Didn’t you ever wish you could help
them, and by doing so, leave something behind, of yourself?” She said this in
the hope of stirring empathy in him. A low percentage play, she knew.

Mardu read this in a different way
than she’d intended, and he found himself incredibly turned on. He decided he
could play along for a while. Let her have her foreplay, if that’s what this
was. “Help them how? The virus took them. And now we’re helping it take more.
We give the virus what it needs, and that’s for the greater good, so that we
can all be better off. We’re bringing the Equilibrium, after all.”

Senna didn’t know what tack to take
now. It didn’t help that the drugs were making her mind a fucking ball of yarn
that unwound and rewound at intervals, like it was rolling back and forth over
the same length of string.

Mardu was staring at her, and she had
nothing. She had to think of something, offer him
something.

Rosemary spoke up. “You worship the
virus?” the girl asked. Her breathing was ragged and hitched at times, but her
lungs were working right enough to keep her standing. There were drying tear trails
on her cheeks, and she was swaying slightly, but otherwise seemed okay,
considering the circumstances.

Mardu nodded and spread his hands
palms-up in a gesture that said, ‘Of course. What else is there?’

He said, “Worshipping the virus is worshipping
reality. We work for it, and it gives us a place to live.”

“But,” Rosemary said, her breath catching
violently, “it’s a disease.”

The founder of the Order grinned.
“What is?”

“The virus.”

“Is the virus the disease, or are
people? And is there a difference?”

Rosemary peered at him for a moment,
put her head down, and made no reply.

The virus was playing a staccato drum
beat in Mardu’s head. He needed this woman. He needed her. They needed her. He
had to have her.

Inspiration struck him. He said,
“We’re both Orders of the Dead. We choose the virus, and you choose what’s left
of people. You’ve picked the wrong horse, even though it probably looked like
the right one at the time, but now you’ve got that rare chance to come over to
the winning side, a once-in-a-lifetime shot at the big-time, at the real thing.
Your
Order of the Dead is a
mistake.
But that’s not your fault.
Not everyone can hear the virus, not everyone can see what it’s doing, or ever
hope to understand it.”

Senna stared at him, wordless.

Virus damn it all how much he needed
her! She could bring them all out of this blighted stagnation. And he had to
have her—the defiance in her eyes, he needed to
own
that. The virus
commanded it. His entire being thirsted for it.

Suddenly he wanted to tell her about
his brilliance in taking down the internet—the Order had once had some talented
geeks in its number, who were now in the virus’s number—but he resisted. The
urge to brag was weakness, and the act was weaker still.

Some things were need-to-know only,
and she didn’t yet need to know. Maybe if she was in his bed one day, her
security clearance would allow it, and then he’d be telling her not to impress
her, but to share of himself.

Then he landed on his next move, and
it was coming out of his mouth, his voice calm. It felt like playing a trump
card and that felt fucking great.

“Your townspeople were made cannibals
today,” he said, “and they loved it.”