Mark Rogers - The Dead

“Max!” MacAleer cried. “Help me!”

Max’s first impulse was to try. Then Legion stepped aside.

The opening behind the giant was packed almost solid with bodies. The wriggling, twitching mass emerged into the junction like something forced from a meat grinder, a river of flesh churned through biting wheels and yet still horribly alive. Sheathing his machete, Max turned and dived into the nearest pipe.

“Max!” MacAleer wailed. “Max, don’t leave me!”

Max paused.

But to go back was to die. Legion was more than a match for him, and then there were all the rest…He couldn’t lay life and soul on the line.

“Max! For the love of Christ, help me!”

Max heard scrabbling in the pipe behind him. Purely on reflex, he started forward again. The light from the junction faded. He was soon deep into darkness.

“Oh God, Max!”

Max fought the urge to stop, told himself there was nothing he could do. He doubted he could even turn around in the tube.

And he wasn’t about to risk death and damnation for MacAleer. Not for that Bible-thumping hypocrite. He pressed farther and farther into the gloom, his pursuers hard behind…

“ Max !” MacAleer cried.

“Yeah, Max!” Legion boomed. “Get back here and lay down your life, you good Christian man!” Peals of laughter thundered up the pipe.

Max pushed on. The concrete wore his palms raw; the knees of his trousers quickly gave way. He could feel the fabric beginning to stick to his skin, gluey with blood.

A hand locked on his boot. Jerking his foot free, he battled desperately to increase his speed, driving himself to the aching limit.

Somehow he managed to widen his lead. The sounds of pursuit grew fainter behind him. Despite his furious efforts, it seemed too easy, but he was not about to question it.

Brushing the wall on the right, he felt an opening and crawled into it. He went some distance before reaching a dead end. The passage had been sealed off with what felt like a brick wall.

Behind him, his pursuers approached the mouth of the side passage; he lay still, trying to hold his breath. If they came in after him, he was finished…

But they never even paused by the opening, as far as he could tell. The racket passed by, diminished swiftly.

He remained where he was, trying to catch his breath, wondering when the corpses would realize their mistake and come back. He had, in any case, already decided on his next course of action. He’d head back toward the main junction. Maybe it was empty now.

Once he got some of his wind back, he began to retreat along the cul-de-sac. He covered perhaps half the distance to the adjoining passage.

Then felt a soft touch on his right side.

He stopped, stifling a cry. He reached out, searching the wall of the passage with his fingers.

There was no opening. It had only been his imagina-

Another touch, this time on the left. He thrust himself up on one elbow, striking his head against the ceiling. And as he sank down once more, he felt cold fingertips brush his scalp.

From above.

“What do you think, Max?” came Legion’s voice, from up by the brick wall. “Is it really me? Or is it just in your mind? “

Max heard a low rustling in front of him, some kind of complicated movement on the concrete. He thought instantly of a hand walking on its fingers. Then a frigid palm caressed his cheek.

“I’m not sure myself,” Legion continued. “Out of my element here. Then again, things don’t make too much sense in this little world of yours. One of the reasons my colleagues and I despise it so. Inferior order of creation. Can’t accommodate enough of the Logos…”

Max crawled frenziedly backward.

“Hard to see why He even bothered instantiating it,” Legion went on. “But there’s no arguing with Him. Practically thinks He’s You Know Who.

“Making His piggies squeal is a kick, though. We may be pure spirit, but intellect does have its satisfactions. You merely feel your torments. We know them. We can search every cranny of you for juice with that wonderful light He made us of. Almost heaven! No wonder we invented pain!”

Max reached the adjoining tunnel.

“Max!” Legion laughed, voice fading with a hint of static. “Where are you going? I thought you were interested in philosophy…”

Max made for the main junction. Hearing nothing behind him now, he began to wonder if Legion had really been there at all. Perhaps he was just losing his mind. Maybe he’d started hallucinating back at his father’s graveside, and had never stopped…

Finally he saw light up ahead. He came out into the junction.

There were no corpses. MacAleer was gone. Max looked up at the manhole. Should he risk it?

A shadow drifted across the wall beneath the aperture.

So much for that , Max thought. It’s the tunnels or nothing.

He looked over at the main. He squinted, trying to see into the opening. It stared back, dark and inscrutable. What did it hold? He moved cautiously toward it, wondering if he should try one of the other passages.

Something rattled inside. He stopped.

Slowly, as if roused by his approach, a bizarre shape slunk out of the main.

Max struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. A dog? Yes, it was doglike. But there was no fur, no skin of any kind, only a complex haphazard surface of points and ridges and plates… The thing had a crudely mechanical took, like some kind of automaton thrown together from blackened refuse.

A second dragged itself from a smaller pipe on the right, and clattered to its feet. Together they advanced, each step accompanied by myriad clicks and rubbing sounds. Max began to make out animal skulls peering blindly from the creatures’ shoulders and backs. Lengths of spinal column snaked in and out between jumbled shoulder blades and hips and ribs…

A touch on his shoulder. Max whirled with a scream, whipping out his machete.

There stood Legion, before the passage Max had just emerged from. Had the giant been following him all along? Legion nodded contemptuously at Max’s blade.

“When are you going to give up on that thing?” he asked.

Max took a backward step. There was movement behind him; he turned in time to see the bone creatures charging, one already in the air, leaping at his throat. He slashed, sending the monstrosity’s composite jaw flying from its head before the creature slammed into him, knocking him over, landing on his chest.

Max found himself looking up at Legion.

Sounding exactly like Max’s father, the mimicry horrible beyond belief, Legion said:

“Beddy-bye, Max.”

Max sobbed with shock at the knife-twisting hatefulness of it.

“Drink a water?” Legion asked, and brought his foot down on Max’s forehead, bashing his skull back against the concrete, blasting his consciousness away.

After a long flight through the lightless pipes, Father Chuck, Camille and Dennis found their progress blocked by a vertical grate of thick steel bars. Beyond was a narrow sandy beach fronting the bay. The sun descended slowly into view beneath the rim of the pipe, looking little weaker than it had the day before. The cancerous spots hadn’t spread.

Dennis tried to open the grate, saw that it was anchored in place with huge rivets. He set his back against the side of the pipe. The passage was a good deal wider than the other conduits their escape had taken them through. Heart still pounding, scraped hands smarting, he turned to look at his wife.

“Can we rest here?” she asked feebly.

He nodded. “No choice.”

For a time they said nothing, panting.

“What about Max?” Camille asked at last. “And MacAleer? “