Empire's End

Four / Dead Lizards with Bells on Their Feet

They were dangling by strings from the lowest branches of the trees surrounding the rock quarry. Adam peered into their lifeless dark eyes and saw his own soulless gaze, doll’s-eyes blinking curiously.

They were alarms to announce the presence of afterdead. Afterdead… he hadn’t called the rotters that since he’d shed his robes. It seemed so long ago. Strange, when he had existed for ages; as Death, every moment had been the same, and time without meaning. A thousand years or a day, it had mattered not to him. But now he marked hours, days, weeks. He rose with the sun and would observe the changing of the seasons. He bore scars on his hands and feet, and in his reflection he saw not a being frozen in time but a man living his life.

In his reflection, in the lizard’s eyes, he saw torchlight, and spun to meet the young woman climbing out from the sea of shadows that filled the quarry.

She stopped short, gaped at his face. “Is it you?” she asked, blue eyes shining. “Are you the angel?”

He frowned and took a step toward her. “I—”

THWACK! An arrow planted itself in the tree beside him. “Don’t move!” barked a man’s voice.

Another man, old and frail, stepped out from behind the girl with a bow pulled taut in trembling hands. “Do as the boy says, friend.”

“Are you alone?” A third voice called.

“Yes,” Adam replied.

“Are you Army?”

“No.”

“How could you be out here by yourself?” stammered the old man. “Better tell the truth before you get hurt!”

“It’s the angel,” the girl breathed. What did she mean by that?

Gravel crunched beneath boots as a man approached, a man with a hard face, shirtless body slick with sweat. He had a camouflage tee tied around his waist. Combat fatigues. Maybe Adam would have been better off saying he was Army.

The man saw Adam studying his clothing and grinned. “They’re stolen,” he said. “We used to raid Army camps back before the withdrawal. It’s a lot tougher finding something to eat these days, I’m sure you know that — but at least we’re warm.”

The man extended his hand. “I’m Thackeray,” he said. “You look like you’re an albino. Must be brutal for you out here.”

Adam nodded quickly, shaking the man’s hand. “Stand down!” Thackeray shouted over his shoulder.

“Come down into the crater. I don’t want our torches visible up here too long.” Thackeray patted Adam’s back and led him past the old man and girl; she looked woefully disappointed.

“Must’ve taken a lot out of you to get here,” Thackeray said. “How did you hear about us?”

“I didn’t — I was just passing through.”

“Now that I find hard to believe.” Thackeray smiled. “I know the welcome wagon was a little rough, but you’re in good hands now. Matter of fact, some people around here call me the boss. Not a title I much care for, but it seems to stick.”

He pointed toward the top of the quarry and the darkness beyond. “Tons of rotters in the cities around here. They tend not to wander off in our direction, though. If they ever thought to come a-hunting, we might be in trouble. But for now all we have to deal with is the occasional feral.”

The camp at the bottom of the crater was comprised mainly of Army tents. Small fires burned here and there, but nothing that would attract attention topside. In fact, even as he came down the slope of the quarry Adam hadn’t seen any light at all; the fires were each concealed behind boulders.

The people there were families of all ages, and mother and child alike tensed when they saw Adam; but relaxed when they saw Thackeray at his side.

A large rodent turned on a spit in front of Thackeray’s tent. “Hungry?” he asked. Adam shook his head.

“It’s been overcast the past week,” Thackeray remarked. “Guess it’s a lot harder for you when it isn’t.”

“Yes.” Adam sat on a rock beside the fire. Thackeray stabbed a fork into the rat. Blood ran, sizzling, into the flames.

“We always have to make sure they’re not undead before we eat ‘em,” Thackeray said. “What have you been living on?”

“Uh… mostly berries.” Adam silently begged for the questions to end. He tried to avoid badlanders, and had he not been mesmerized by the lizards with their tiny bells he would have turned and gone in the opposite direction. As much as he yearned for companionship—

(Lily)

He didn’t expect all people to be as accepting as the child had been. The man who’d helped to get Lily out of Jefferson Harbor, Voorhees — he had regarded the former Death with more than a bit of apprehension. But he’d been a good man. Adam had watched him for a long time to make sure of just that.

“You’re lost in thought,” Thackeray said. He chewed an ear off of the rat’s blackened head. “I don’t think you heard a word I just said.”

“I’m sorry. What was it?”

“I said the berries around here are deadly poisonous.”

“Oh.” Why was the man telling Adam that? He was forgetting his own lies.

“Let me try something,” Thackeray said through a mouthful of rat meat, and sank the fork’s tines into Adam’s shoulder.

They both stared down at the handle of the fork. It had gone clean through the new suit Adam had taken from one of the rotters back in town.

“This is where you would express some sort of discomfort,” Thackeray said.

Adam looked across the fire at him. Tentatively, he grasped the fork and pulled it free. “I… it didn’t…”

“I know who you are,” Thackeray said softly. “Josie was right. You’re the angel. The angel of death.”

He reached out and took the fork back. “Sorry for the whole ‘stabbing you’ thing. I’m a little eccentric, they say. Maybe that’s why I can sit across from you and keep a straight face. If the others knew…” He shrugged and took another bite of his dinner.

“How do you know of me?” Adam demanded.

“Most badlanders in these parts have heard of you. I mean, you’ve saved so many lives, cut the undead down right in front of them — did you really think no one would tell?”

“I’ve appeared to many in the past,” Adam said. “I didn’t think anyone would believe them.”

“Well, in a world where the dead walk, nothing seems impossible. I’ve heard old folk say they saw you killing rotters seventy, eighty years ago. Were you?”

“I have been hunting them since it began,” Adam said. “But things are different now. You have to understand — I’m no longer the Reaper.”

“I guess that explains the suit. Sorry for ruining your jacket, by the way.”

“It’s fine.”

“So what’s been strapped to your back all night?” Thackeray asked.

Removing his jacket, Adam loosed the ropes securing the scythe blade to his pale torso, and handed the weapon across the flames. “Jesus, that’s heavy,” Thackeray whispered. “So this is it.”

Adam nodded. “You don’t talk to a lot of people, do you?” Thackeray asked.

“I’ve not had much need to,” was the reply. “There was one, but…” His face brightened with hope. “Maybe you’ve heard of her. Maybe she told you her story. Her name is Lily.”

Thackeray shook his head. “Sorry friend.”

“I shouldn’t have thought so.”

“Where did you know her?”

“Somewhere far away. A man took her north. He said she’d be safe there.”

“Maybe he meant the Great Cities?”

“I don’t know them.”

“It’s the place where the government’s hoarded away all of our country’s resources.” Thackeray’s expression grew dark, angry. “It’s where they’ve consolidated America — leaving Americans like us here with nothing. And now all the troops are there too. They’re walling themselves up in there and going on as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist, as if the plague doesn’t exist. They’re wrapping themselves up in a blanket of ignorance and trying to sleep through the apocalypse. As for the rest of us — the people who choose to keep fighting for this land, the people who are actually living—we’re condemned along with our homes. But make no mistake, the Great Cities aren’t going to last. Unless something’s done, the bubble is going to burst, and then no one will have any resources to use against the undead.”

He spoke with a fervor that drew onlookers from the shadows. People murmured in agreement and clenched their fists as his voice rose. “Either we can watch the Great Cities fall to the rotters or we can do something ourselves, to give all of America a fighting chance!”

He lowered his head. “I’m sorry. The anger is always there — anger and helplessness. The outrage at what they’ve done! That’s what drives me.”

The people around them had begun to drift away. “I understand,” Adam said.

“Do you?”

“I feel the same way about the undead.” Taking the scythe from Thackeray, Adam added, “But not helpless.”

Thackeray nodded grimly. “There is still hope. We can still… but the rotters, some of them, are getting smarter. I suppose you’ve seen that too.”

“From time to time.” In his mind’s eye Adam saw the ones Lily’s mad brother had trained, like dogs. Only those dogs nearly behaved like living, breathing humans.

“The King of the Dead,” Thackeray whispered. “Is he real?”

“I don’t know of whom you’re speaking.”

“Oh. Never mind then.”

“They’re beasts. They have no king,” Adam told the man. “Whatever you’ve heard is likely just a story people tell.”

“What do you call yourself?”

“Adam.”

“Well, Adam, you were just a story people told, not long ago,” said Thackeray, and he disappeared into his tent.