Park pulled the trigger at the same moment she did. The report of her pistol drowned out the soft pinging that his round made as it drilled a neat hole through her pickup"s gas tank. The dead man"s skull smacked against the pavement, and the woman lowered her gun. She didn"t notice the gas pooling beneath her truck.
Park sneaked back to his car and got in. He waited, watching as the woman took down several more of the moaning dead who strayed too close. Later her companion emerged, pushing a loaded shopping cart. The woman hurriedly tossed its contents into the bed of her truck while the man dashed to the store again. This was repeated several times. The commotion attracted an ever-growing audience of moaners, which the woman eyed nervously.
Finally the man and woman leapt into their vehicle and peeled out. The pickup careened across the parking lot, and the dead men who staggered into its path were hurled aside or crushed beneath its tires.
Park donned his black ski mask, pulled his goggles down over his eyes, and started his car. He tailed the pickup along the highway, keeping his distance. When the truck rolled to a stop, he pulled over too and got out.
The man and woman fled from their vehicle and into a nearby field, which was crawling with the dead. Park followed them through the gra.s.s and into the woods. He watched through his scope as the pair expended the last of their ammo and tossed away their guns, and then they stood back to back and drew machetes against the cl.u.s.ters of moaners who continued to stumble from the trees all around.
Park approached, using his rifle to pick off the nearby dead men. One shot to each head, cleanly destroying each brain-what was left of them.
He pointed his rifle at the living man and shouted, "Drop it."
The man shouted back, "Who are you? What do you want?"
Park shifted his aim to the woman and said, "Now. I only need one of you alive."
"Wait!" the man said. "d.a.m.n it." He tossed his machete into the brush. "There. Okay?"
"And you," Park told the woman. She hesitated, then flung her weapon away as well.
Park said, "Turn around. Kneel. Hands on your heads."
They complied. Park strode forward and handcuffed them both. "Up," he said. "Move."
The pair stood, and marched. The woman glanced back at Park.
"Eyes front," he ordered.
She gasped. "Oh my G.o.d." To the man she hissed frantically, "He"s one of them! The ones that can talk."
The man turned to stare too, his face full of terror.
"Eyes front!" Park shouted.
The man and woman looked away. After a minute, the woman said quietly, "Are you going to eat us?"
"I don"t intend to," Park said.
"So why do you want us?" she asked.
"It"s not me that wants you," Park answered.
"Who does then?" the man demanded.
For a long moment Park said nothing. Then he removed his goggles, exposing dark sockets and two huge eyeb.a.l.l.s threaded with veins. He yanked off his ski mask, revealing a gaping nose cavity, bone-white forehead and cheeks-a horrific skull-visage.
"You"ll see," he said.
As dusk fell Park drove down a long straight road that pa.s.sed between rows of corn. In the fields, dead men with skull faces wielded scythes against the stalks.
"Crops," said the man in the back seat. "Those are crops."
Beside him the woman said, "What do the dead need with food?"
"To feed the living," Park answered.
For the first time her voice held a trace of hope. "So we"ll be kept alive?"
"Some are, it would seem," Park said.
And Mei? he wondered. He just didn"t know.
In front of his car loomed the necropolis, its walls clumsy constructions of stone, twenty feet high. Crews of skull-faced men listlessly piled on more rocks.
The woman watched this, her jaw slack. She murmured, "What happened to your faces?"
Park glanced at her in the rearview mirror. The car bounced over a pothole, and the mirror trembled as he answered, "Faces are vanity. The dead are beyond such things."
He pulled to a stop before a gap in the stone wall. The dirty yellow side of a school bus blocked his way. He rolled down his window.
From the shadows emerged one of the dead, a guard. This one did have a face-nose and cheeks and forehead-though the flesh was green and mottled. A rifle hung from his shoulder. He shined a flashlight at Park, then at the captives.
"For the Commander," Park said.
The guard waved at someone in the bus, the vehicle rumbled forward out of the way, and Park drove on through.
The woman said, "That one had a face."
"That one is weak," Park snapped. "Still enamored with the trappings of life. And so here he is, far from the Commander"s favor."
Park drove down a narrow causeway bordered on both sides by chain-link fences. Every few minutes he pa.s.sed a tall steel pole upon which was mounted a loudspeaker. Beyond the fences, scores of moaners wandered aimlessly in the light of the setting sun. The man and woman lapsed again into silence. Plainly they could see that this army of corpses presented a formidable obstacle to either escape or rescue.
Park remembered the first time he"d come here, almost three months ago, pursuing a trail of clues. Upon beholding the necropolis his first thought had been: The city that never sleeps.
He pa.s.sed through another gate and into a large courtyard. "End of the line," he said as he opened the door and got out.
A group of uniformed dead men with rifles and skull-faces ambled toward him. Their sergeant said, "You again. Park, isn"t it? What"ve you got?"
"Two," Park replied. "Man and woman."
The sergeant nodded to his soldiers, who yanked open the car doors and seized the prisoners. As the pair was led away, the sergeant said to Park, "All right. Come on."
Park was escorted across the yard. From a loudspeaker mounted on a nearby pole came the recorded voice of the Commander: "Once you were lost," said the voice, "but now you"ve found peace. Once you were afflicted by the ills of the flesh. The hot sun made you sweat, and the icy wind made you shiver. You sickened and fell and were buried in muck. You were slaves to the most vile l.u.s.ts, and you gorged yourselves on sugar and grease. But now, now you are strong, and the only hunger you feel is the hunger for victory, the hunger to destroy our enemies, to bend them to the true path by the power of your righteous hands and teeth. Once you were vain, preoccupied by the shape of your nose, the shape of your cheeks. You gazed into the mirror and felt shame. Shame is for the living. Let them keep their shame. We are beyond them, above them. Your face is a symbol of bondage to a fallen world, a reminder of all that you once were and now rightfully despise. Take up your knife now and carve away your face. Embrace the future. Embrace death."
Park was taken to a nearby building and led to a room piled high with ammo clips and small arms-the currency of the dead. He filled a duffel. As he made his way back to his car, another skull-faced man came hurrying over and called out, "Hey. Hey you."
Park looked up.
The man gestured for him to follow and announced, "The Commander wants to meet you."
This is what Park had been waiting for. He dumped the duffel in the trunk of his car, then followed the man to an armored truck. They drove together toward the palace. The building had been a prison once, but now hordes of dead laborers had transformed it into a crude and sinister fortress.
The truck arrived at the palace, then stopped in a dim alley. Park got out and was led inside. He surrendered his handcuffs to an armed guard, walked through a metal detector, then retrieved them.
He was shown to a large chamber. Against the far wall stood two throne-like wooden chairs, in one of which sat a slender skull-faced young man who held an automatic rifle across his lap. Beside him sat a skull-faced girl with long auburn hair. She wore an elegant white gown, and Park imagined that she must have been very beautiful once. The man in the chair wore a military uniform, as did the row of a dozen skull-faced men who stood flanking him.
Park stepped into the center of the room.
"Welcome," said the man in the chair. "I am the Commander. This is my wife." He gestured to the girl beside him. "And my generals." He waved at the a.s.sembled dead. "And you are Park."
"Sir," Park said.
"You"re quickly becoming our favorite supplier."
Park was silent.
The Commander leaned forward and regarded him. "Tell me, Park. How did you die?"
Park hesitated a moment, then said, "Friendly fire. When my base was overrun."
And he"d been d.a.m.n lucky in that. Those who died after being bitten by the dead always came back as moaners, as the rest of his company had.
The Commander said, "You were a soldier?"
"Scout sniper, sir."
The Commander nodded. "Good." He added wryly, "I like the look of you, Park. You remind me of myself."
"Thank you, sir."
"But tell me," the Commander went on. "Why do you keep bringing us the living? I"m grateful, but you can"t still need the reward. You must have plenty of guns by now."
"I want to do more," Park said. "Help you. Convert the living. End the war."
The Commander settled back in his chair. "Yes," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps you can help us. We"ll discuss it after dinner."
Dinner. The word filled Park with dread. Fortunately he had no face to give him away.
She reminded him of his grandmother. A woman in her seventies, naked, gagged, and tied to a steel platter. When she was placed on the table, and saw a dozen skull-faces with all their eyeb.a.l.l.s staring down at her, she began to bray into her gag and thrash against her bonds.
The Commander, who now wore his rifle strapped to his shoulder, said to Park, "Guests first."
Park leaned over the woman, who whimpered and tried to squirm away. He wanted to tell her: I"m sorry. I have no choice.
He bit into her arm, tore. The woman screamed. Park straightened and began to chew. No flavor at all. The dead couldn"t taste, though he did feel a diminishment of the perpetual hunger that the dead bore for the living.
The Commander turned to the skull-faced girl and said, "Now you, my dear." She began to feed. Soon the others joined in.
When it was over, Park looked up and noticed that the living man and woman he"d just brought in were now present. They stood in the corner, naked and trembling, held up by dead men who clutched them by the arms.
What now? Park wondered.
The old woman was moving again, moaning. The Commander ordered her released. He murmured, "We eat of this flesh, and proclaim death." To the woman he added, "Rise now in glory. Go."
There wasn"t much left of her, really. A crimson skeleton festooned with gobbets. The thing that had once been a woman dragged itself off the table and lurched as best it could toward the exit.
"Now," the Commander said. "We have a bit of after-dinner entertainment. Some fresh material." He waved at Park. "Thanks to our friend here."
Park followed as the captives were dragged out the door, down a long corridor, and into another chamber. This room was smaller, with chairs lined up along one wall, all of them facing a king-sized bed. The man and woman were brought to the bed and dumped upon it, where they sat dazed. The seats filled with spectators. The skull-faced girl sat beside the Commander, who a.s.sumed the centermost chair.
The Commander pointed at the living man and said, "You. Take her. Now." The generals watched, silent but rapt.
The man stood, made a fist. "f.u.c.k you, freak." Behind him the woman sat pale and stricken.
The Commander shrugged. "Maybe you"re not in the mood. We have something for that." He turned to the door and called, "The aphrodisiac, please."
For almost a minute nothing happened. Then from the corridor came a terrible groaning. The sound grew louder, closer. The woman on the bed wrinkled her nose and whispered, "No." A dark form appeared in the doorway.
It was one of the ones who had been buried in the ground before coming back. They always returned as moaners too, and had always rotted terribly.
The man and woman scrambled away, onto the floor.
Around its neck the moaner wore a steel collar, which was attached to a chain held by a skull-faced guard. The moaner shrieked, and slavered, and swiped at the air with clawlike fingers. It lunged at the living, and its handler, just barely able to keep it under control, was half-dragged along behind it. With each charge, the creature came closer to the man and woman, who cowered on the floor in the corner, the man kicking feebly in the direction of the monster.
When the thing was just a few feet away the man shrieked, "All right! All right! Get it off me!"
The Commander lifted a hand, and the moaner was hauled back.
The man and woman trooped grimly to the bed. The woman was young, maybe twenty. Mei"s age, Park thought. Had Mei gone through this? No. Don"t think about it.
The woman lay down on the bed and the man climbed awkwardly on top of her. The Commander stared. He reached over, took the hand of the skull-faced girl, and held it. For a long time the living man nuzzled the woman, pawed her, rubbed against her, but he was too frightened, and couldn"t become aroused.
Finally the Commander called out, "Enough!"
The figures on the bed froze.
The Commander stood. "This grows tedious. Another night, perhaps?" The pair on the bed pulled away from each other and watched anxiously. The Commander said to them, "Don"t worry. There"ll be other chances. Next time will be better." To the generals he instructed, "Take them away. Put them with the rest."
The rest? Park thought.