Book of the Dead (26 page)

Again. The thing collapsed backwards on the stairs, the child landing heavily upon its chest. Kirsten’s body rode the ghoul’s in a gruesome parody of father-daughter play, as it slid slowly and erratically down the stairs, arms and legs akimbo.

Again the pistol sounded. Again and yet again. The body shuddered from the impact of the bullets. Then there was only the recurring click of the pistol’s hammer falling upon empty chambers. Two times. Five times. Seven.

The pistol fell to the floor, rapidly followed by the woman.

Dawson felt a scream beginning in his bowels, fighting, fluttering, ricocheting upwards in panicked flight, seeking an escape but unable to find one. He whimpered and tore his eyes away from the blood-mottled grotesquerie of flesh upon the stairs. He looked upon the woman lying at his feet.

The side of her face rested heavily upon the carpet. Her eyes were closed. Her limbs were sprawled haphazardly. He watched her back rise and fall erratically with the discordant rhythm of her breathing.

Then he uttered some pitiable, bizarre ululation and, with great heaving strides, rushed for the exit.

Outside he knelt in her garden vomiting, for what seemed a very long time. When he was empty, he spared one final glance toward the house before hurrying away.

[9]

Dawson panicked at the sound of the approaching car, but there was nowhere to hide. On his right was a rocky slope, too steep to climb swiftly. On his left a metal guardrail and a precipitous drop.

Whimpering, he pressed himself against the rocky slope and covered his eyes to avoid being seen.

The sound grew until it covered everything and enveloped him in fear. The fear blossomed, brightened into fireballs, at the sound of brakes. Then it vibrated, leapt, and danced, as he heard the car door open and shut.

“Nononononononono…” he believed that he was shouting, but the voice that emerged was weak and strained and sickly.

Then another voice spoke. Smooth and strong. Commanding, deep and gentle.

“No.” Dawson’s shout was, again, barely audible. It did nothing to stop that other voice. He felt rage against that voice, so cool, so firm, so unyieldingly soft.

It drew closer. Very near indeed.

Dawson’s hands scrambled frantically against the wall before him, came up with a fist-sized rock. He spun quickly, opening his eyes just as the rock left his hand, hurtling toward the source of the voice. His aim was very wide. The voice’s face smiled kindly.

“You’ll die. I’ll kill you.”

They were the first words Dawson had spoken, though he had been in the car for more than an hour. He had spent that time not looking at the man, staring instead out the window to his right, fighting off a sickening sense of
déjà vu
. He knew only that he didn’t want to remember. Not anything.

The man beside him recognized Dawson’s words as a potential crack in his effortful armor, but he prodded very gently. He knew very well what he was up against. What the two of them were up against. Calmly and unhurriedly, he posed his question.

“Now, why would you do that?”

Then he waited patiently through Dawson’s silence.

“I won’t
do
it. It will be done. Not by my hand but by my presence. I will bring it on, cause it. I will be responsible.”

“Try to tell me why you feel this way.”

For the first time since getting into the car Dawson turned to look at his companion. He was a broad-faced man with dark hair and several days’ worth of beard. Glasses would have looked at home on his face, but he wore none. They would have made him look more like a preacher, too. Hadn’t the man said he was a preacher, earlier in the ride, perhaps years ago? Well he looked the part, even without the glasses, despite the bright blue short-sleeved shirt and the casual work pants.

Dawson looked back out the window before responding.

“Everyone I know is dead. Everyone that I ever met, before or after. It doesn’t matter. I meet them, they die. I want to die instead, but I’m just a carrier. I’m immune. I can only watch the others.”

The man waited a moment, to be sure that Dawson was finished, then spoke again.

“You probably don’t want to hear me say that I’ve heard people say that before, or that it’s a common delusion these days and was never terribly uncommon. People felt that way even before… the change, or whatever you might want to call it. But whether you want to hear it or not, it’s true, and it’s exactly what you need to hear. It’s what you need to be thinking about right now. You are not alone.”

Dawson turned quickly to look at the man who also turned to meet his gaze. The crack in the armor was visibly wider.

“Tell me about it,” the preacher said, “tell me everything you can remember. Even the things that you’re trying so hard to forget.”

And after awhile, after a bit more gentle probing and respondent opening up, Dawson did just that.

*  *  *

“These are terribly trying times, friend.”

The car was parked behind an old mill, near a wide and glistening creek. The two men were sharing a cup of lukewarm coffee from a thermos that the preacher, whose name was Richard, had produced from beneath his seat. Richard handed the cup back to Dawson and went on.

“Oh, I know that just sounds like so much pious-preacher-happy-horseshit, the kind of platitudes I mouthed so often for people who only
thought
their world was falling apart, but you can’t deny that no one alive was ever prepared for what has happened to this world. We were unprepared physically, tactically and spiritually—for which I’ll accept my share of the blame, being in the profession as it were.”

Richard smiled and Dawson passed the cup back to him, pleased by the smile but unable to return it.

“But worst of all,” the smile went away, “we weren’t prepared psychologically. All of our carefully learned tactics and procedures for dealing with life in this world became useless to us. That was the most devastating thing. We lost our rules, our codes, our coping mechanisms. Since nothing was predictable anymore, there was nothing that we could believe in, so we lost our faith. In losing faith we lost both self-esteem and will.”

Dawson stared at his palms, lying open and upturned in his lap.

“I cannot share your faith, Richard. I cannot believe in your God. Love and mercy, they told me. He’d never have let this happen, no matter how fucking mysterious his ways.”

“I don’t blame you.”

Dawson looked up at his new friend, listening intently.

“I don’t buy the list of hocum anymore either. But that’s not the kind of faith I’m speaking about. And as for sharing, you don’t need the kind of faith that could ever possibly be shared. You need the kind that is yours alone. Something from within you, compounded of what you’ve been and seen through all your days.”

Richard took another drink from the cup, handed it to Dawson, then started the engine. They drove.

When night took full possession of the surrounding landscape, they were still driving, the car’s headlights pushing away the darkness in front of them. They had spent the bulk of the evening talking about the different kinds of faith that existed in the world. Even in a world such as theirs had become. They had discussed exhaustively the connection between faith and will, and between will and the ability to survive.

Richard claimed that while events had destroyed his faith in an omnipotent and merciful deity, they had reawakened and renewed his faith in his original purpose and his sense of mission.

“I came to the calling, or so I told myself at the time, to serve the people. To save them. A worthy mission. The only mission any servant of a kind, compassionate godhead should ever aspire to. But I think sometimes that God… no, not God, but the image of God and all the attached dogma, get in the way of such folk. It did in my case, anyway.

“Well, since the change, the deluge, whatever, I feel that my original purpose has been rekindled. Perhaps I’ve really focused on it for the first time ever. And now that purpose is my faith. My will. It is how I have learned to survive.”

Then he told Dawson about his new work. About how he had spent the past few weeks traveling as extensively as possible, trying to find survivors. Trying to help them in any way that he could. Mostly by talking to them about purpose and will. Trying to inspire them.

“So you see, I haven’t really changed jobs,” he had smiled, “just employers. I really don’t talk religion much anymore, not unless someone else has a need. I feel I’m doing more for folks now that I ever did before. And now’s just when they need it most. It’s a good feeling. Even makes this living hell worth living in.”

So, as darkness shrouded the low hills through which they passed, Richard tried to direct Dawson’s mind toward an acceptance of life, rather than death. Tried to find the carrot that Dawson might be persuaded to pursue.

Dawson found that he liked the man. He believed in Richard’s wisdom and wanted to please him. He wanted to hope. Wanted to hope out loud. But he was hesitant. Each time that he reached for that double-edged emotion, he drew back, remembering past hurts. He wasn’t sure if he was ready yet, or ever would be.

It was well into the night when he screwed up sufficient courage to make the plunge. He would hope, whether it was safe or not. He would live, no matter how desperately.

“I
do
have a goal,” he declared in a very firm voice.

Richard took his eyes from the road to smile encouragingly at his companion at the very same moment that the bullet smashed the windshield.

Dawson was thrown violently against the door as the car suddenly swerved. Then he was thrust backwards into his seat as Richard regained control and tromped on the gas.

Turning quickly to look behind, Dawson saw two figures emerge from the shadowy trees that lined the road. He saw two bright orange flashes as he heard two more shots ring out, but neither shot found its mark. Then the car swung around a curve, obscuring his view of their assailants, while preventing any further shots from threatening his and Richard’s escape.

“They wanted the car, didn’t they?” Dawson blurted out, inexplicably more excited than frightened by the narrowness of their escape.

He turned to congratulate his friend for his heady driving, but froze before he could speak again.

A dark stain, already large, was rapidly spreading across Richard’s chest.

“Oh God!” was the best that Dawson could manage.

Knuckles white, face pallid and rigid with pain, Richard maneuvered the car along the winding road at dangerous speeds for five more minutes. Dawson neglected the road entirely, felt no threat from speed or obstacle, and stared hard at the preacher’s face.

Richard brought the car to a complete stop before allowing himself to slump backwards in his seat. Even then he held his neck and head rigidly upright. His lips moved slowly, with precise determination.

“I am going to die, Dawson. But it is
not
your fault.

“In fact, you can save me, after a fashion. Do me one final favor.”

Dawson was never certain whether Richard smiled or winced then, before he continued in a more strained voice.

“No. Two.

“First: live. Determine now to live. Make my going worth that much. Take the car. Reach your goal. Don’t let them get it.”

Dawson nodded, though the preacher’s eyes were closed.

Then Richard’s eyes flew open as he searched for the door handle, opened the door, and let himself fall out onto the road.

Dawson lurched across the seat in a vain attempt to grab his friend and haul him back into the car.

Blood trickled from the corners of Richard’s mouth as he looked into Dawson’s eyes and shook his head. His breath came in gasps. When he spoke again, it was with a voice made half of gravel, and half of bubbling blood.

“Second favor… glove box… pistol…”

Dawson just stared.

“Get it!”

Richard began to cough, spraying blood on the open car door, his hands and clothes. Recovering somewhat he spoke again, his voice sounding worse by the moment.

“Shoot me… the head… don’t want to walk… like that.”

Dawson continued to stare.

“Put me out.”

Their eyes locked, and for a moment Dawson believed that he could do just as his friend had requested.

Then Richard’s eyes shut, with his last gurgling exhalation.

[10]

I am grateful that the last stages of my journey are lost to me, obscured by a fog of combined remorse and fear. Remorse at and fear of precisely what, I cannot say. I will not subject myself to so thorough an examination. At least not yet.

In more general terms I know that the remorse is caused by who and what I have proved myself to be. The fear by what I might discover if the fog dispersed and I was forced to confront the actions and scenes that I have so willfully forgotten. I am glad that I proved incapable of recording the events of that period here. If I had written, I would refuse to read it.

Hoagie tells me that none of it matters anyway. We drank the rum last night, and he said that nothing from the past, whether personal or collective, really matters anymore. Things are different. I am alive. I am here.

“You are a new being,” he told me, “just begun today. Just this instant. How can you judge yourself harshly, when you have done nothing in this new life? There is nothing to judge. How can you know your limitations, when you have yet to test them? You’ve got a clean slate. The learning process must begin again. You are who you are
right now
. You are, and can be, no one else. Make it be who you want it to be.”

I want to believe him.

This place is considerably different than it was. More permanent. Less nomadic. They have constructed shelters, which are crude and primitive, but far more substantial than anything that stood here in the past. They are no longer a transient tribe. Their primary means of transportation is lost to them. It is not that the trains no longer run, because they do, but now they are so rare and so well guarded that it is death to approach one. Only government trains. The soldiers’ orders are pretty clear.