David Dunwoody - Empire's End

Clarke turned to see Bradshaw lop her leg off at the knee.

Harmon’s blade had been a few inches from the afterdead in the chopper; she frowned as her balance shifted and the blade took its ear off. She kept going forward, into its back, and the two collapsed in a heap on the ground. It tried to roll over beneath her. She tried to get up. Couldn’t. Legs numb. She looked down and saw. Then came pain.

Clarke wasn’t sure what in Christ was happening until Bradshaw took her arm, the one that might have grabbed her gun had Clarke not slapped it away. And Whittaker, Whittaker was suddenly in the cockpit. The rotors began moving against the stars. Harmon screamed, writhing on top of the afterdead. Bradshaw peppered the ones on the perimeter with bullets. Clarke charged at him, not knowing what he should or could do, only feeling the certainty of the widowmaker in his right hand.

Bradshaw knew his captain was coming and met Clarke’s blade with one of his own. The other opened Clarke’s groin. The captain’s face flushed. He gaped at his friend. “You weren’t supposed to see,” Bradshaw said quietly, and shot him through the heart.

Harmon slung her remaining arm over the chopper’s landing gear. The thunderous din of the rotors almost drowned out the pain of teeth on her leg’s stump. More overpowering was her fear; fear of being left behind. They were lifting off now and her leg was tugged free of the afterdead’s mouth.

Bradshaw leaned out the side, steadying himself. He placed his pistol against her ear. “WHY,” she shrieked. He didn’t reply before firing, and by then it didn’t matter anyway.

The light and sound of the helicopter receded into the distance. Civilization left the Congo, reason left the Congo, and Clarke stirred at the footfalls of the surviving afterdead. They moved slowly toward him, eight left, although he couldn’t be sure of his count because his mind was screaming gibberish and images of Harmon’s dismemberment clouded every thought.

Struggling to his feet in a thick paste of dirt and blood, he trained his gun on the first comer’s kneecap. Wet copper filled his mouth; he choked, stumbled and missed the fucker by a good three feet. They shuffled onward. Feeling one at his back, he spun with the widowmaker at neck level. It bit into the afterdead’s jawbone; he wrenched the blade downward, took the head.

Sudden movement on the left. He fired twice. A startled corpse shook its pulped eyeballs from the sockets and staggered aside. Clarke’s legs buckled and he actually sagged against one of them. It embraced him hungrily. And now he wasn’t breathing right. Too much blood in his throat. Jamming his pistol into the hugger’s chin, he emptied the clip. No head left to deal with.

How many remained now — five? Three? How many were there to begin with? Another one caught his wrist. He lopped its hand and head off. They had all closed in around him, even the blind one. Good, he thought, ‘cause I can’t walk. Bracing himself on the sightless fiend, he decapped its neighbor. Then fingers from behind sank into the bloody ruin of his groin. Pain washed over him like rebirth, reaffirming everything alive in his body, and with endorphins spilling through his tired veins Clarke sawed into the horde.

It was seconds, maybe minutes later when he stopped, realizing he was chopping at the ground. The afterdead were all quartered and lying in their juices. So was he, he saw, tracing with bone-white fingers the flowering gash in his lap. And now he wasn’t breathing at all. Clarke accepted it. What else could he do?

A wet sound drew his attention to an armless torso lying nearby. The head was mostly intact, but its throat was cut from ear to ear, opening and closing along with its mouth. Smack, smack, smack went the ragged flesh. The thing wouldn’t accept death, even as it starved and fell apart here; instead it stared intently at the fresh meat scant inches away.

Clarke laughed and died.

A day later, he woke up.

“Are you hearing anything I’m saying?” Stoddard barked through his mask. Bradshaw realized he’d been staring blankly into a pile of entrails and blinked. “Nope, not a thing.”

“Where’s your mind at lately?” Stoddard asked. He steadied himself on his shovel, presumably was scrutinizing his friend’s face; Bradshaw couldn’t tell thanks to that bug-like filtration mask. Stoddard had never gotten used to the smell, the stench of rot that blanketed the streets and permeated this truck. He used to puke all the time but had started taking caffeine pills to suppress his appetite (along with excessive amounts of Dramamine), and no longer ate while on the job. The glassy visor of the mask hid his eyes. It was unnerving, and Bradshaw was reluctant to talk anything other than shop under such circumstances. He looked back down at the entrails.

They were standing knee-deep in guts in the rear of a refurbished dump truck. The gleaming casings of intestines quivered as they jostled along. Bradshaw worked his shovel beneath a pile of cadaverous tissue. “This whole mope thing,” Stoddard called, “it got anything to do with why you’re on slop duty?”

Jesus. Did he really not understand? Two soldiers had died on Bradshaw’s last field assignment. It only made sense that he’d be confined to the base for a while. Only made sense he wouldn’t want to talk about it. Furrowing his brow, he said, “I’m burned the fuck out. I was burned out before what happened in Congo… I wonder if that’s why we lost them.”

Stoddard shook his bug head emphatically. “If you hadn’t been there, no one would have come back. Remember that.” It was quite the opposite, actually, but Bradshaw just offered a thin smile. “Thanks, Joe.”

“I’m serious!” The truck turned off of the tree-lined access road onto a residential street: all duplexes in bland pastels, typical of a military base. Scooping some viscera into his shovel, Stoddard lobbed it over the side where it splattered in the well-manicured grass. “So much for making it into Better Homes and Gardens.” He cracked. The houses looked like shit close-up anyway: walls spattered with rust-colored stains, windows smeared with filthy fingerprints. It was no problem to treat the grass, but no one was going to stand out here cleaning windows. Especially when the afterdead just messed them all up again. Like little kids trashing their rooms, only instead of dirty underwear and spilled Kool-Aid, it was dried-out organs and lost limbs. And here they came; hearing the truck’s rumble, the afterdead staggered out of open front doors, past the skeletons of cars and plastic flowerbeds.

It was important to put on the appearance of a real base, just in case some foreign satellite was able to punch through the scrambled signals shielding the area. Offices, hangars, a commissary, a school, a clinic. Traffic lights and trash dumpsters and playgrounds with little shoeprints stamped into the sand. All a brilliant facade — but now was feeding time, and all semblance of normalcy vanished as dozens upon dozens of dead converged on the street.

Bradshaw joined Stoddard in hurling shovelfuls of gore out the back. Those afterdead who were quickest fell upon the first offerings in a defensive posture. The others continued to follow the truck. “It’s funny.” Stoddard observed. “The runners are always going to get the most meat, and the more they eat, the stronger they get.”

“It’s not funny, it’s Darwin.” Bradshaw ignored the putrid rot in his nostrils, ignored the stumbling parade reaching toward him. “Before long those runners are going to be too healthy. We’ll have to take them out.”

“I look forward to it.” Stoddard replied. He reached behind his back to pat the sheath where his widowmaker was stowed. “Have you seen Postman lately?” He tossed another wave of slop. It hit a woman head-on. She collapsed, and Stoddard’s hand flew to his mask in shock; after a second, he started to laugh. Several other afterdead knelt to pick the gore off of her thrashing body. “Kinky!”