Mark Rogers - The Dead

He looked up at the figure seated on the throne. As brightly as the throne glowed, its occupant outshone it; Gary squinted, shading his eyes. It was intensely painful to gaze into that torrent of light, but he looked long enough to make out the figure’s shape.

One like a son of man, he thought, pulling his gaze away, wincing. His fright mounted ferociously. He knew now what was happening, where he was.

And he was in the very first rank before the throne. He had been surrounded by the dead before, but nothing now stood between him and judgment. No bail, no appeals…

He’s got the goods on you, he told himself. You threw your life away. Thirty-two years wasted, worse than wasted. He has you cold…

The being on the throne glowed brighter for an instant. Still wincing, Gary saw many of the dead step forward, as though they had been summoned.

The light flared again. When it faded, the skeletons were clothed in flesh, he was sure of it, even though they vanished before he had barely more than a glimpse. Their lives and humanity had been restored. They had been found innocent.

Another flash. The remaining dead in the front rank advanced. But at the next flare, they dropped to their knees, still bare of flesh. They began to scream, and Gary knew that sound, though the last time he’d only heard it ripping from a single throat, as his father punched his way out of his heavy bronze prison…

Some of the skeletons fell to fighting one another. Others raked the earth with their clawlike fingers or rose shrieking, shaking bony fists at the judge on the throne.

Sweeping their burning swords, the lion-headed creatures came forward, and the skeletons fled wailing, forcing their way into the dead multitude. One came hurtling straight at Gary, silhouetted against the glow of the throne, light pouring through its ribs. But at the last instant it veered off to the right, and Gary felt a great coldness sweep by him.

He looked back up at the judge.

Yet another flare; this time he heard the summons. His name had been called, not Gary Holland , but his true name, the one that defined and compelled. He had never heard it before, yet he recognized it instantly, feeling its terrible power. Shaking his head, he struggled to resist, to remain in place, but his flesh wouldn’t obey him. The innermost logic of his being had been mastered.

One step, and the compulsion faded. The point had been made. He’d come to a pass where his choice was irrelevant. He riveted his eyes on the ground, trying to ignore what was happening to him, to deny his awful guilt. As the judge began to speak, Gary clapped his hands over his ears, but the words still penetrated, awesome in their authority:

“You have been weighed in the balance and found-”

A titanic hollow rumbling blotted out the voice. The ground trembled, shaking Gary off his feet. The light from the throne vanished. Darkness descended once more.

But the murk was warm now. The wind was gone.

Gary felt the reassuring softness of quilt against skin. He was safe in bed.

He sat up, laughed as he realized it had all been a dream. None of it had happened… except of course for the earthquake.

The bed was shaking, travelling slowly across the hardwood floor like a bum piece on one of those old vibrating football games; a powerful rumbling was coming from under the house, as though a subway train were passing beneath. Venetian blinds chattered. Window-curtains swayed back and forth. Things skittered and danced on the dresser; a small mirror banged onto its face. Over on a chair, the lid of Gary’s suitcase thumped shut.

Gary turned toward Linda. She was awake too.

“It really is an earthquake,” she said.

Gary listened to the walls creak and moan. Were they about to collapse? How long would the quake last?

“Maybe we’d better get outside,” Linda said.

“Yeah,” Gary replied, and flung the covers over the foot of the bed.

But with amazing abruptness, the quake stopped; to Gary it felt uncannily as if a huge hand had closed about the house. The rattle of the blinds softened to a faint buzz, before fading altogether. Gary stood slowly, listening, looking warily about. Only the curtains were still moving, brushing drily against the window-sill.

“They don’t have earthquakes in New Jersey,” Linda said.

Gary laughed. “Nope.”

“Maybe I’m still asleep… I was dreaming about an earthquake.”

“Me too,” Gary said.

“Worst nightmare I’ve had in a long time,” Linda continued. “Like I was at the Last Judgment, or something.”

That brought Gary up short. “Last Judgment?”

“Okay, maybe I have been watching the 700 Club too much…”

He turned toward her. “And you were just about to hear the verdict?”

“When I woke?”

“Yes.”

“Oh God,” she said. “How did you know?”

“I had the same dream,” he answered.

It was a long time before they got back to sleep.

Gary woke seconds before the alarm rang at eight. When the bell started, Linda mumbled something about sleeping some more, shut the alarm off, rolled over, and drifted away again-if indeed she’d ever really awakened to begin with.

Gary could hardly blame her. Neither of them had gotten much (or good) shuteye after the quake. He would’ve joined her, except that he could never sleep later than eight, no matter how tired he was.

The alarm was for Linda, of course. She’d said she really intended to get up early. She had lesson-plans she wanted to deal with. But sleeping past eight was no achievement for her. Gary rose, put on his bathrobe, and went out into the kitchen. He expected find his mother puttering around, but she was nowhere to be seen. Normally, their internal clocks were perfectly in sync; even so, he didn’t give too much thought to her absence. Losing her husband of thirty-five years was a pretty strong inducement to oversleep.

What the Hell is she going to do with herself? He wondered.

He heard the TV down in the rec room. That would be Max; Mom never did anything recreational in the rec room. There was a big steel door set in the west wall, and on the other side was the fallout shelter. Mom had never been averse to the idea of the shelter, but the possibility that it might ever have to be used terrified her. Max wasn’t so queasy. He had a poster of an H-bomb explosion on the wall of his office down in Maryland; “A little memento mori ” he’d explained to Gary with a grin.

Rattled by the shootdown of KAL 007, Dad had wanted to move the family to somewhere off in the boonies, but Mom had put her foot down, and the shelter was their compromise-he’d started building it in ‘84. Working on it in his spare time, even after things changed in Russia, (“You never can tell,” he said) he’d drawn on material and equipment from his construction business, sometimes bringing employees home to help him. He’d made alterations and improvements as survivalist theories went in and out of fashion; even though Gary had never followed the literature, he guessed the shelter must be pretty much state of the art, well-stocked with supplies, ammo, and guns. His father had even, quite illegally, converted two Heckler and Koch assault-rifles to full auto. Gary considered it all crazy bullshit-although, if truth be told, he had jumped at a chance to go out to the piney woods in Jackson Township and spray junk cars full of holes with those guns.

Man , Gary thought, making himself a sandwich, that was an afternoon . Chugging beers with Dad and Max, emptying clip after clip, he’d almost found himself looking forward to end of the world.

He took his first bite.