C
HAPTER
23
The black shirts handed Sylvia and Avery off to a third man already in the bed of the pickup. He was carrying a pistol and made them sit with their backs against the cab. The third guard looked exhausted, but right away Sylvia sensed a nervous tension coming off him, like an animal waiting for a hunter to pass it by. He went down on one knee, the pistol resting across his thigh. Sylvia noticed he tried to stay as close as possible to the middle of the bed. Though there were wooden railings extending upward from the sides of the pickup’s bed, and a protective layer of chicken wire strung over the wooden rails, this man didn’t seem to trust it. He watched the zombie crowd pressing up against the truck out of his peripheral vision, and it occurred to Sylvia that he was probably as scared as she was.
The other two black shirts, the ones who had taken them prisoner on the platform, climbed over the cab and dropped down into the bed. They slapped the roof of the cab and the vehicle slowly reversed, knocking down zombies as it cleared the bay and emerged into a steady rain that had turned the landscape a watercolor smear of gray and green and ochre.
Sylvia looked up at the sky, blinking the rain from her eyes even as she savored the taste of it on her lips. It was cool, and her lips were cracked and dry. It felt good.
The soothing coolness of it gave her an idea. She looked at the guard directly in front of her, the one with the pistol. “Why do you serve him?” she said.
He looked at her dully, not answering.
She looked at the other two. “Why do any of you serve him?”
“Shut up, lady,” said one of the guards, an older, battle-scarred man leaning against the railing. He refused to look at her.
“Sylvia, what are you doing?” said Avery.
Sylvia flashed an
It’s okay; I’ve got this under control
smile.
She turned to the first guard, the scared one with the handgun. He was staring at her from under the brim of a cowboy hat. She could hear the rain striking the brim, like finger taps on a sheet of cardboard. His mouth was set in a deep frown. But there was something sad in those heavily lidded brown eyes of his, something tragic, and she thought:
His spirit’s broken. That man is soul-sick and rotting inside, and he doesn’t have the guts to admit it to himself.
“I don’t see how any of you can do it.”
“Lady,” the older guard said, “I’m warning you: You know what’s good for you you’ll shut your mouth.”
“Sylvia, please . . .” Avery said.
But Sylvia pressed on. “Is it so horrible in your world, so empty, that this is what you’re willing to call your life? I’ve seen the fakers trying to pass for zombies, and you’re just like them, except that the fakers don’t pretend they’re still human.”
“That does it,” the guard said.
He grabbed her by her hair and threw her facedown in a pile of old oily rags.
“Sylvia!” Avery shouted.
“No!” Sylvia answered, turning her head enough to see Avery trembling against the far side of the truck, a guard holding her down. “No, baby, it’s okay.”
“Like hell it is,” the guard on top of her said. Rainwater channeled off the brim of his hat and fell into the pile of rags next to her face. “You want to know why we work for him? Do you? Well, you’re about to find out.”
A few moments later the truck trundled to a stop. The women were pulled to their feet and pushed out the back of the truck. Sylvia took a look around and gasped. There were zombies everywhere, hundreds of them standing absolutely still in the falling rain. The smell of rot and mud caused her to gag, but despite the retching noises she made, not a one of them moved. They stared out toward the verge of the river, where a metal platform two stories high stood facing the hotel. Beyond the platform, floating just offshore, were dozens of boats. Black shirts stood on the decks, watching in silence.
I’m going to die here, she thought. Right here. This is the end. But with the same mental breath she thought: No! I can’t let the fear show. Not in front of Avery.
But it was hard. She was so scared.
She looked at Avery to see how she was holding up. Avery’s behavior since losing Niki in St. Louis had been troubling her—troubling her a lot. She’d become so quiet, a lot like she’d been all those years ago, when a much younger Niki Booth had led her into the compound and stood watch over her like a mama bear does her cub, nearly ripping the hands off anyone who tried to touch her, even though it had been obvious they needed help. The two girls had been nearly feral, though Niki had come around soon enough. Even thrived. But Avery had taken a lot longer. Reaching her had been hard. Even as a kid she’d been scary-smart when it came to maps and knowing the lay of the land. So much so that for a while Sylvia thought she might be autistic. Eventually, though, she came out of her shell, and Sylvia was able to see the bright, kind, fragile young girl that a blighted world had nearly destroyed. She blossomed.
But then, when they lost Niki back at St. Louis, it had done something to her. It caused her to rewrap herself in the same protective shroud of silence and despair she’d worn after her father died, and throughout those early years at Union Field. Thinking of the child Avery had been nearly overwhelmed Sylvia’s resolve and she could feel a sob rising in her chest. She forced it down as best she could, for Avery’s sake.
Those were her thoughts as the old guard stepped around the side of the truck and out of sight and the rain continued to fall in her face.
His radio crackled.
“He’s coming,” said a man’s voice. “Bring them up.”
“You want us to bring the truck?” said the old guard at Sylvia’s right, the one with the scarred face.
A pause, and then the radio crackled to life again.
“He says no. Walk ’em up.”
Sylvia heard the man mutter a curse under his breath, but when he looked back toward her and Avery he was all business again.
“Alright, we’re walking ’em up. Let’s move it.”
Rough hands grabbed Sylvia. Next to her, she heard Avery let out a yelp. The mother instinct rose up in Sylvia then and she started to thrash.
“Damn it,” the old guard said, grunting as he struggled to regain control.
A ripple of interest spread outward through the zombies standing around them, but they held their positions. Sylvia could see their dead eyes following her as she struggled with the man. She could see their hands wanting to come up, their mouths working slowly in involuntary chewing motions.
“Let her go,” Sylvia demanded.
The man threw her against the truck and she hit the back of her head against the wooden extension on top of the bed. For a moment her vision turned purple and her legs buckled, but the man grabbed her arms again and wouldn’t let her sink to the ground.
He put his face close to hers, his breath hot and smelling of stale tobacco and meat. The urge to gag nearly overwhelmed her again, but she fought it down.
“Please don’t hurt the girl,” Sylvia said.
Her voice was a whisper, spoken through sobs.
The man locked eyes on hers, his stare narrowing in menace.
“Please, she’s just a child. You know what they’ll do to her. She’s too young to suffer like that, to become one of those things.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. The silence went on and on, so long that she actually let the thought enter her mind that she had reached him and that the shred of humanity that must surely remain within him had been stirred to pity.
But instead he said, “Too young don’t make any difference anymore, lady. The world’s too far gone for that.”
He peeled her off the truck and shoved her toward the river.
She staggered through the motionless crowd of zombies in a haze. This close, she could hear the faint, rhythmic moaning the zombies made under their breath, almost like religious zealots murmuring their prayers. It raised gooseflesh on her arms, despite the oppressive heat.
She slipped trying to step up the curb from the parking lot to the grass, sending another restless wave through the nearby zombies. The old guard stepped up behind her then and his grip on her arm was surprisingly gentle as he helped her back up.
“I’m sorry for this,” he said. “I had a kid about her age, long time ago.”
She looked back at him in surprise. His face was a hard mask without a trace of pity or compassion. Sylvia opened her mouth to speak, but he nodded for her to turn and face the platform.
She did.
Something was happening up there. She couldn’t see what, not at first, but there was an agitation spreading through the zombie crowd. They remained standing in their spots, though now they were shifting from one foot to the other, low moans rising here and there throughout the crowd.
And then she saw him, the Red Man. He limped up the grass toward the raised metal platform and slowly climbed the switchback staircase to the top level. The red paint all over his body looked dark as rust in the morning light. The river behind him seemed to boil. The smell of heated vegetation and mud mixed with the rotting bodies, and everywhere she looked she saw water running down ruined, blistered faces. Uneven moans rose from the crowd, and it occurred to her then that this was some kind of hell. It had to be. Nothing like this could exist in a sane world.
One of the Red Man’s guards slogged his way through the mud over to her captor, rainwater dripping off the bill of his cap as he met the older man’s gaze.
“He wants ’em up there, with him.”
“I’m not walking ’em up there,” Sylvia’s guard said.
The other guard, a much younger man, but nonetheless the one in charge, said, “Yeah, I don’t want to, either.” He looked up at the platform, then back at the guard and shrugged. “Fuck ’em, they can walk up on their own. He wants all of us on the boats.”
“Right now?”
“He ever give you an order you could wait on if you want to?”
“ No.”
“Then get ’em up there.”
The older man nodded, then turned to Sylvia. “Alright, you and the girl get up there.”
“No way,” Sylvia answered.
“You need to move it.”
“We’re not moving. I heard you. You’re scared to death of him, aren’t you? Admit it. You’re so terrified you’re willing to do things that make no sense. Don’t you understand there’s a better way? You can fight. Isn’t that better? Isn’t that what you would want your kid to see? It can’t be this.”
He leaned in close, and once again she could smell the stale tobacco on his breath. “Lady, you and the girl need to get your ass up there. Right now.”
“We won’t,” she said. She raised her chin high. “You’ll have to carry me up.”
“Lady, you’ll go.”
“I tell you I won’t.”
“That little girl behind you, the fat one? If you don’t go, I’ll cut her.”
He looked down. She followed his gaze to where his hand was fingering the hilt of a small utility knife.
“Climb those stairs,” he said.
“You bastard.”
He didn’t respond.
Sylvia turned around and took Avery’s hand. The fear in Avery’s eyes broke her heart all over again. “Come on, baby. Let’s go up. We’ll be together the whole time. I promise you that.”
Together, they climbed the stairs.
The Red Man watched them climb the last few steps, his eyes never leaving Sylvia’s, his lips parting slightly, exposing teeth the color of dingy bathroom tile. Rainwater ran down his bald head and dripped from his nose, his chin, his ears. The water looked red next to his skin, like blood.
“Where do you want us to stand?” Sylvia said with a forced calm she most certainly did not feel.
The Red Man’s parted lips melted into a frown.
He motioned with a nod toward the space behind him.
Sylvia took Avery’s hand and together they walked to the back of the platform, nearest the river. She could hear the rain beating down on the water out there, an ominous sound.
When she finally found the courage to turn around she couldn’t stop the gasp that came out of her. So many zombies. Not hundreds, but thousands. The rain fell on them and they didn’t move. They stood absorbed, staring in complete devotion to the crazy man painted all in red above them. Something Ben Richardson had said came back to her then, his description of Jasper Sewell, the deranged preacher of the Grasslands Death Cult, the way he had held sway over his church.
This is a cult, she thought. A death cult in its purest, most vile form.
And that man, that Red Man, is their god.
Almost in answer to her thought, he whirled toward her.
“Where is Niki Booth?” he said.
She shook her head.
“My patience is at an end,” he said. “You’re going to tell me.”
“Go to hell.”
He nodded slowly. “Perhaps.” He glanced over at Avery, who had pressed as far as possible into the corner of the platform. The Red Man smiled, then glanced back at Sylvia. “You’re going to tell me what I want to know,” he said.