Конрад Уильямс - Decay Inevitable

Two deaths, then, that could have gone one way but found another. And Emma, whose murder ought to have been foreseen. Pardoe, the bastard, should have paid out his story just as all that bad rope had been. They should have been warned. Sean wondered how his own end would come. He was tired of the body count and the unnecessary killing. He wouldn’t mind making a little peace with someone, anyone, for a change.

He returned to the barn and gently lifted Emma in his arms and walked around the building to the front of the house. He placed her in the back of the cab, securing her in the seat with the seatbelts. When he turned to get in the driver’s seat, Will was standing three feet away from him, smelling him on the air like a cat at dinner time. Only it wasn’t Will. It was too crude an approximation. Sean felt a flare of anger when he thought of how easily she hoped to fool him. She noticed the reticence in the way he appraised her. Slowly, Will sank from her true face as it emerged.

“I couldn’t take him in,” she said, almost apologetically, her voice coming as easily as if they had been chatting for an hour. “Vernon. I couldn’t take any part of him in. Too dry. No moisture in him at all. He was like something you’d use to start a fire. He’s still out there in the field. Mummified.”

“That’s time for you,” Sean said, carefully. Her eyes were dark and lovely and too intensely fixed upon his own for his liking. She was deeply, horribly beautiful. He was scared to look away and scared to maintain eye contact.

He said, “Your leg, it got better.”

Her hand brushed against her thigh. “Yes,” she said. “It’s a little difficult for me to concentrate sometimes. There’s so much here to distract me.”

“I know how you feel.”

Cheke moved around the bumper of the cab, six feet away from him now. “I’d like to know how you feel,” she said. “I’ve dreamed about you. I never had dreams before, before I came here.” She frowned. “At least, I don’t think I did. I can’t remember. But I dream now. Vivid dreams of you and me. All the different ways it could be.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes. Do you find me attractive, Sean?”

“It’s hard to find somebody attractive when they’ve been spending such a long time trying to get you killed.”

Amusement played on Cheke’s lips for a second as she tried to gauge whether he was toying with her or not. “We’ve moved on from that,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I know what pain is. I wouldn’t want any of that for you.” She took another step closer. “I don’t have anything left to do and there’s nobody left to do it for.”

“Then you’re free.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be free. Maybe you’re the genie who rubbed my lamp for me. I’m indebted to you.”

Sean’s fingers on the keys twisted clockwise a fraction. “Really, you don’t have to. I did nothing.”

“You were the catalyst.” Her lips were carmine and soft. He could see every wrinkle and flaw in the flesh. It was good that she had flaws, this creature who had seemed so perfect. It was good, promising even, that she allowed them to show. “You were the reason they brought me here.”

“Then you have a job to finish.”

“It’s over,” she said. “Gleave promised me that he would help me change enough to be like him, like you. All of you.”

She was within touching distance, if he wanted it. Sean’s fingers loosened then recircled around the butt of the revolver. He said, “You look fine to me. Keep that look. It suits you.”

Cheke spread her arms and looked down at her body. “You think so? This is me, well, most of it. Plus a few modifications.”

“It looks good on you.”

“It would look good on you too,” she said.

“I’m not your type.”

“What is my type?”

Sean said, casually, “Dead.”

She bowed her lips in mock disappointment. “That can be arranged.”

“You’re kidding, of course.”

Now Cheke smiled and Sean was overwhelmed, shocked by the depth of her mouth, the animal slant to it. Her teeth were packed in rows inside it, like a shark’s. “Of course,” she said.

“Then I can go. You won’t mind if I go.”

“A hug, first, to see you off. It’s only fair.”

Sean went immediately to her and drew her into the circle of his arms. He felt her ripple against him, every sensory pimple and pad snuffling into his secret smells. A slight burning, in his gut.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t help it.”

He shot her twice through the heart. She buckled under him and staggered back, scooping up the fluid that was lost to the explosions. She was trying to breathe, but her lung had collapsed; Sean could see it, a deflated, frothy balloon of blood. Will’s face returned, a surprised oval that couldn’t quite complete itself: his mouth belonged to someone else, someone of a different caste that Sean didn’t recognise. While she was trying to rein in the loops and lassos that her body had become, Sean bent and picked up her heart, which was slowly, clumsily rolling back to the magnet of her body. He flung it into the fire.

She made an O of her mouth and blew a gust of air from it, as if she had been lightly punched in the stomach. She looked surprised, as if she had never believed that she could be disposed of so simply, so swiftly. She said, “When we are married—” Then she fell back onto the frozen soil and began to drain into it. Bitterly, he went to watch until there was just a dark outline of her shape discernible in the white.

He went back to the cab, tossed the gun onto the dashboard, and started the engine. Then he turned it off, got into the back with Emma, and held her until her solid, cold flesh began to warm and he could almost believe she might turn in his arms and say hello.

YEAR ZERO.

The quiet houses were rebelling. People did not want to die in their beds. They came onto the streets with weapons that could do no harm and fought until the breath was squeezed from their bodies. Large men with powerful muscles folded under the thin men. Everybody folded under the thin men. They were irresistible. In seconds, the ranks of the thin men were bolstered by those that had just been dispatched. Enemy to ally in the beat of a heart, or lack of one.

Will moved on the periphery of the crowd, powerless to prevent the slaughter. He could feel de Fleche in him; he presumed they all did, gathering strength and pace. Rediscovering his appetite for a land he had not seen for twenty years. Tired of death’s environs, he wanted to branch out and have some influence over the living as well as the dead. He was ready to return, Will could feel it. And when he did, all would be lost. Architects made designs and he knew that de Fleche had been busy. He caught a glimpse of some of these blueprints when his eye, jaundiced by the street battles and the insensate dropping of bodies, turned away to look at the sky. He caught sight of vast machines of torture to process the living, of awful dark houses where the doors and the windows were ceaselessly motile to prevent any escape while the minions within went about their business of dismemberment and witchcraft. He understood de Fleche’s motives for the grand plan that he wanted to put into place – revenge fed his ambitions – but he did not know who the targets were. Nobody was to be spared in his search, however. It was this indiscrimination that cut Will to the quick.

“Are you hungry? Jesus, I am absolutely starving .” The man with the itchy scalp and the fidgeting hands had not left him alone. Will couldn’t see how his hunger had prevailed, not after the terrible feast he had gorged upon. The man sucked juices from his fingers and smacked his lips. “I could eat that again,” he said. “So hungry. My stomach thinks my throat’s cut.”