David Dunwoody - Empire's End

“You don’t think he’s dead?” Cervantes asked.

Ryland shook his head. “And even if he was, we’d have to verify it and pull out the remains. What I need you to do is get into that house without disturbing the dead. Can you?”

That had been the question. Cervantes still wasn’t entirely sure of the answer, even as he was jostled along in a Humvee on the base’s quiet streets. The descending sun turned the afterdead up ahead into opaque silhouettes. The driver, a Corporal Bradshaw, slowed the Hummer to a stop. “I see a couple dozen at least,” he muttered. “That’s Grimm’s house on the right-hand corner. I have to let you out here.”

Cervantes nodded. For some reason, he expected a few personal words of encouragement, maybe a clap on the back… nothing. Bradshaw dropped into reverse and looked at him. Cervantes got out.

He slipped a pair of headphones over his ears, fingering the Walkman in his jacket pocket. White noise crept into his ears, and he cleared his mind, watching the afterdead shuffle about in the street. He reached out to them. Their minds were like hollowed-out gourds, with only tendrils of primitive activity, each easy to manipulate. The hunger was extraordinary. For a moment, Cervantes felt saliva building in his mouth; he shook the hunger off and dug into the subconscious of each rotter in his view. Already shambling towards him was a male in a butcher’s apron. Underneath was a simple boiler suit, but the apron — caked with solid layers of gore, heavy on the afterdead’s shoulders — gave him character. Yet inside each unique mind Cervantes felt the same emptiness. He blotted himself out of their sight, their smell, their hearing. The Butcher stopped in his approach. After a moment, he reversed direction, returning to the horde.

The duplex in which Sergeant Grimm made his home was noticeably different from the rest. The sod had been pulled up and replaced with a generous layer of loam. In the moist clay were planted several large flowers. Each blossom had thick, flesh-toned petals surrounding its red stigma. Cervantes briefly had the impression in his mind of a woman’s flayed sex spread before him; then he was assailed by the smell. Jesus! Worse than that of the rotters at his back was the noxious odor from the plants. He recognized them now as stapelia gigantea , carrion flowers — the odor lured foul insects to ensure pollination. Maybe, he thought, it kept the zombies from smelling Grimm, too.

He tried the front door. Locked. A newly installed lock, at that. Eyeing the undead, Cervantes rapped sharply. “Sergeant!” A couple of them turned at the sound, but were unable to pinpoint its source. They trod aimlessly through the loam. He knocked again, harder. He could try and reach out to Grimm, but it might mean giving himself away outside. Not worth it, he decided, and headed around back. There was a window slightly ajar; easing it upward, he hoisted himself into a hallway. The air in the house was moist, earthy. Cervantes traced his fingertips along the wall, and they came away stained with mold. He advanced, and almost as soon as reached the end of the hall the smell of feces struck his nostrils.

“Never could get the plumbing working,” a voice said from a dark corner, as if reading his mind. “Want a drink?” Cervantes’ eyes adjusted to the lack of light. The man slouched against the wall was haggard, unshaven, malnourished. His uniform was draped over bony shoulders like a tablecloth. Didn’t they feed him…?

Grimm pushed a box of wine from between his legs. “I don’t know you,” he croaked.

“I’m the new guy.” Cervantes lowered himself to eye level with the man. They had feared for Grimm’s safety, but it appeared that his sanity had wasted away long before the flesh. Grimm used his thumb to wipe out the contents of a plastic cup and tilted the box’s spigot over it.

“Tell them I’m fine. I really am. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, but I am. I like it here.”

“What do you like about it?” Cervantes asked. He began probing Grimm’s mind. It was an incoherent ruin in there, akin to an attic overtaken by cobwebs. Nightmare images of the undead hordes flashed before him. Bloody meat, grasping fingers. Lips smacking.

Grimm laughed boisterously. “I like the quiet.”

“Why did you stop communicating with the base?”

“Radio’s busted.” Grimm gestured in no particular direction and took a gulp of his cheap wine. “I dropped it outside. They just walked all over it, the pissers. I contemplated smoke signals.” Cervantes pushed deeper… Grimm was hiding something within the rotted walls of that attic. Behind a door in this house. He saw the radio, not dropped but hurled to the street. He saw Grimm greedily scooping meat from the street into his arms, stealing it from the afterdead.

“Sergeant, you know you’ve worried a lot of people. Surely you would have made some effort to contact them if this was all an accident.”

Grimm’s crusty eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me? You don’t know what it’s like out here, bud. You don’t KNOW. You’re on the outside looking in. I sleep with the dead. I—” Grimm stopped himself suddenly. Cervantes tore through the attic wall and saw the horror.

“Oh my god.” He was on his feet, moving back down the hall.

Grimm leapt up, spilling the box, and cried “NO! Nooooooooo…” Glancing back, Cervantes saw the other soldier wringing his hands like a child who knew his number was up. He pushed open the last door on the left.

It was impossible to tell she was undead, save for the blood caked around her mouth and on her nightgown. She was very healthy, lovely even. Of course she was — Grimm brought meat home for her. Only her wrists and ankles, where she was bound to the bed, showed signs of damage: flesh had been sloughed from bone, most likely in her struggling. Her eyes lit on Cervantes and she began to twist and lurch.

Between her bruised thighs… Cervantes saw carrion flowers and vomited.

“No, no, no.” Grimm paced in the doorway, beating his head with his fists. “It’s not… you don’t KNOW!!”

I don’t want to , Cervantes thought, shaking the stolen memories from his head. He felt Grimm’s hands on his shoulders, pleading, trembling with sobs, then he was thrown violently into the hallway, and Grimm locked himself in the room with a howl. “Sergeant!” Cervantes shouted, his head ringing from the fall. And now he could hear them: outside, pawing at the doors, the windows… he rushed down the hall to slam shut the window through which he’d come. Just as it came down a gnarled hand shot through. An eyeless face smacked against the glass, spraying pus like a sponge. He’d lost contact with them, and now they were being drawn to the tumult inside. Cervantes looked back at the locked door.

Inside, Grimm knelt beside the female and pulled a jackknife from his boot. “Ryland put me out here, he made me stay out here,” he called, sawing through the afterdead’s restraints, “because I KNOW. I know what he did and what he’s going to do. Ryland’s the bad one, not me! Not—”

Cervantes shut his eyes tight and willed away Grimm’s screams, the snapping of bone and the voracious roars of his former lover.

“Clarke, Harmon, lost in Congo. Grimm, committed suicide right here on the base.” Commander St. John rattled the death list off as if he was reading sports scores. His team had lost.

Behind his great desk, littered with medals and keepsakes from his years in the battlefield, the old hawk loomed like an angry father, white hair meticulously-groomed over steely gray eyes. Those eyes were locked onto Nathan Ryland. He glared silently, expecting something.