Mark Rogers - The Dead

Max glanced back. Even as he looked, he saw a flurry of shadowy motion in front of the corpses-it was hard to tell in the darkness, but it seemed as though two or three people had been flushed out, and the dead were running them swiftly to earth.

Suddenly the sounds of another pursuit broke out closer to hand; Max looked around to see several women, limned by the parking lot lights, dashing alongside a soot-splotched bungalow to the east. He and the others threw themselves flat in a small crater-like depression in a field of fallen bricks.

He raised his head slightly, just over the lip of the depression, watching as a group of corpses dashed after the women, caught two, and dragged them back toward the parking lot. The third woman vanished in darkness, three of the pursuers hard behind her.

Hope you make it, lady , Max thought. All the same, I’m glad it’s you and not me .

Dennis crawled up beside him.

“What do you think?” Dennis whispered.

“That we should thank God for all those other survivors out there,” Max answered.

And ask His forgiveness for thanking him.

The group sat tight for some time.

“I’m going to take a look,” Max told Dennis.

“At what?”

“The lot.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I want to see how many of them are over there. We might have to circle back west after all. I won’t be long. Stay put here.”

Silently Max crawled out of the depression and across the bricks; snaking over frost-stiffened grass, he made his way slowly up onto the slope of scorched wood that blocked his view. Reaching the top, he peered out over the parking-lot. A low involuntary gasp passed his lips.

Except for lanes obviously intended for vehicles (there were several vans being unloaded even now), the lot was almost completely covered with bodies. Thousands of them. Every once in a while one would rise stiffly to its feet-whereupon several of the dozens of walking dead patrolling the lot would converge and escort it toward the band shell on the far side of the lot. From the arch of the band shell a dozen or more bodies swung head-down in the wind, lifeless and contorted.

Max scanned the stage with his binoculars. On it stood two corpses in state trooper uniforms. One was a squat simian figure, the other a giant, taller by at least a head. On either side of them stood inverted crosses.

The newly-risen dead were brought before the troopers, forced to kneel in front of the stage. Then they were beckoned onto the platform one at a time by the giant. There the summoned corpse would kneel once more; the giant would place its hand on the bowed head, as if in some sort of benediction; the kneeling corpse would go back down, another would be summoned. The corpses that had been blessed would then join a large group, some fifty or sixty strong, that had gathered at the western end of the lot.

Into the midst of this, two pickup-trucks drove, pulling up near the band shell. Gangs of corpses set immediately to unloading them. One truck was full of inanimate bodies, the other with live people, who were led onto the grass beside the stage and forced to the ground.

The troopers came down from the stage. The giant kneeled next to one of the living, plucked a gag from the man’s mouth. A wail of utter despair reached Max’s ears. The giant reached down into the earth, apparently grabbing a handful; then it silenced the man’s cry by thrusting the dirt into the gaping mouth. The man bucked and struggled, but the corpse holding him kept him pinned to the earth.

Max crept back to his companions.

“What are they doing over there?” Father Chuck whispered.

“Piling up bodies,” Max answered. “And delivering prisoners. I think I’ve seen their leader, too. He’s wearing a state trooper’s outfit. Must be six foot ten.” He paused. “Those women we saw must’ve made a break from the lot-”

Sounds of movement came from the rubble off to the east and Max and Dennis looked over the rim of the depression. Three corpses had the woman who’d evaded capture. Max thought he could hear her whimpering faintly.

“Thorough bastards, aren’t they?” Dennis asked.

Daybreak found them in a concrete-walled auto repair shop, completely intact, on the southern edge of town. Dennis and Father Chuck had taken the first watch, the priest looking out through the windows of the sliding bay door, Dennis stationed by a glass door at the other end of the building. The women and Jamie MacAleer were already asleep in the office, where they’d found a gas heater. Max had started it up with some difficulty, then joined Dennis at his post.

Max viewed the blackened landscape outside. There was much less drifting smoke than the day before; there was also less light. The diseased sun had just risen and, though the dark patches didn’t seem to have spread, the glowing orb appeared even paler than yesterday.

Max saw no figures moving in the desolation, or even in the distance. He wondered where the dead had gone.

The southern part of town had been full of them during the dark hours of the morning. After managing to slip by the parking lot, the group had spent the next seven frantic hours covering one mile, scrambling in and out of refuge, barely avoiding one patrol after another. It had reminded Max of accounts of the last few Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, trying to elude capture after the rebellion was crushed, scrabbling and crawling through the rubble, never far from some searching Nazi platoon.

“Why are we still alive?” Dennis asked.

“The Grace of God,” said Mr. MacAleer.

“You think He’s showing us mercy?” Dennis asked. “Maybe He’s enjoying roasting us over a slow fire.”

“Cheerful thought,” Max said. “But I don’t believe it. A being like that wouldn’t be God.”

“What about all that stuff you said to Father Chuck? About God not being a tame lion?”

“There’s a big difference between that and God being a sadistic maniac. I believe He loves us. That the greatest gift He could give us is existence, and that He’ll permit us to suffer rather than taking it away. I think He still even loves Satan Himself.” Max laughed. “Though I can’t think why. But nobody put me in charge, did they? And it’s just as well.”

“But should I still be afraid of Him?” Dennis asked.

“Hell yeah. What could be scarier than something like that? What do the angels always say when they appear in the Bible? Fear not. Precisely because they’re terrifying. And they’re just reflections of Him.”

“ Was that Him in the dream?”

“Of course it was,” said MacAleer.

“Sure was scary enough, wasn’t He?” Max said.

Dennis said nothing for a time. “What was the verdict in your dream, Max?”

“I didn’t hear it,” Max said. “I woke up.”

“Mine was guilty,” Dennis said. “Mine and Camille’s.”

“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything,” Max said, without much conviction.

“You know better than that,” MacAleer answered.

“Do I?”

“I do,” Dennis said. “I’m sure of it. God’s going to make me pay for what I’ve done.”

“Not if you throw yourself on his Mercy,” MacAleer said.

“How do I do that?” Dennis asked.

“Confess you’re a sinner. Admit to yourself that you can’t achieve salvation without acknowledging the sacrifice Christ made for you.”

“Considering the kind of life I’ve led,” Dennis said, “I don’t think anything so easy could work.”

“That’s because you don’t know the power of the Lord Jesus.”

“And you do?” Max asked.

“Yes,” MacAleer replied.

“You’ve acknowledged Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” Max asked.