They walked together in silence until they’d reached the outskirts of the compound’s buildings. Abruptly, she stopped and reached out to lightly tug at the bottom hem of his shirt. Almost as suddenly as she’d done it, she pulled her hand away. A wave of embarrassment washed over her face as if her body had betrayed her and done something she’d not meant it to. Her gesture was something from another time and another place. It was like a distant echo from when she’d been another person. It reminded her of how long she’d kept that person locked away from the world. For some time now, she’d not allowed herself to feel like a woman. Doing so had proven itself to be far too dangerous here. Cleese, though, was able to let her be who she was and not make her feel like that was to her detriment.
She silently feared the repercussions should she let the Woman influence the Warrior.
"I have enjoyed finally meeting you, Cleese."
Cleese smiled broadly and ran his hand through his hair. The motion was something he’d tried to control for a long time. It was his "tell." And what it told was that he was interested or embarrassed. For some reason, none of that mattered to him now.
"Believe me… the pleasure was all mine."
The two of them stood looking at each other, each silently not wanting or knowing how to disengage.
"Come by before you turn in for the night," she said, breaking the awkward silence. "I will give you that tea."
"Yeah, thanks," he said and his hand once again ran through his hair. "I’d appreciate that."
And without another word, the two fighters walked off toward the center of the compound; each of them lost in the whirlwind of their own thoughts.
Last Rites
As the moon slowly rose to its apex over the relative quiet of the compound, the temperature within the Holding Pen had begun to slack off and the heat of the day finally started to dissipate. Shadows, a constant commodity in this forsaken place, covered the ground as heavy and thick as spilled oil. The incessant gloom arrested the sparse illumination and gave the space a muted tone, making it seem even more menacing that it already was. The darkness was just something you got used to if you spent enough time tucked away here. It was something that usually happened shortly after you got used to the never-ending moaning of the dead.
Getting used to the smell…
Well, that took a whole lot longer.
Adamson no longer noticed any of it. He’d been looking after and caring for the dead for so long that the gloom and the smell had become integrated into the fabric of who he was. As for the sound, where others heard the horrifying cacophony of death and fear, he heard a mournful aria of loss. To his ears, the dead were not calling out in warning, but rather they cried out to the dark for some kind of understanding, a desperate plea for compassion made to a god who no longer listened, much less cared.
He’d cared about them before their resurrection and he continued to care now.
It was who he was.
Watching over The Dead was a business and it was one that Adamson knew well. The containment and control of the reanimated dead was something he understood down deep in his bones. His ability to feel compassion for them—even when no one else here did—was what made him so good. In more ways than one, he felt as if he knew the dead (and liked them) a hell of a lot better than he did the living.
Adamson walked around the large pen where the hundreds of UDs were stored. The sound of their movement was a constant thing, a steady and unvarying tone which was heard as the dead milled about in their never-ending search for food.
While the building was large, most of its floor space was taken up by the cattle pen-like enclosure. The air was kept cool by large refrigeration units housed on the roof of the building. Their use was nothing more than a token gesture to try and slow the inherent decomposition of the dead, but it did little good. Time would have its way and there was little anyone could do to slow it. Like fragile flowers, the dead too would wilt and fall into corruption and decay. It was another one of those immutable laws of nature; an edict that offered neither appeal nor demurral.
Seven foot high walls made of chain link and corrugated metal formed the large rectangle of the Pen, the enclosure which housed the League’s most important—and dangerous—resource. At each corner stood a guard tower, giving the place a concentration camp-like appearance. Sitting high in the towers overlooking the meandering dead, guards manned large caliber United States Air Force issue GAU-2/A miniguns. An electrically powered Gatling gun capable of delivering over three thousand 7.62mm rounds per minute, it could reduce a crowd of UDs (or people for that matter) to mashed potatoes in seconds. Adamson considered the guns his fail safe. If his herd were to ever break out of their enclosure, the mounted artillery (as well as a few more portable XM214 Microguns) would stop that shit before it ever got too out of hand.
Adamson approached the furthest guard tower and, laying his hand on the railing to guide him, walked up the gangway to where the guard stood watch. As the clock rapidly approached midnight, it was almost time for a change of the guard shifts. As part of his unending job description, he made it a point to dismiss and greet each and every one of the guards at the beginning and end of their shifts. While it seemed like a formality, the ritual served a couple of purposes. One—it made each man feel connected to the whole, made him feel as if his oftentimes boring work was appreciated. Two—it was a chance for Adamson to look each guard in the eye and silently assess him for cracks in his veneer. The job these men were being asked to perform was both exceedingly boring and exceptionally dangerous. It was boring in that they ended up watching over an area where literally nothing happened… until the time came when something happened and life got real hazardous, real fast. The gig went from mind-numbing boredom to critical mass like that.
It was not a job many could perform. A lot of men were lazy and undisciplined— a dangerous combination that meant death for them and potentially everyone else. If that happened, it was a situation where the Watcher could potentially become the Watchee. Even though The Dead seemed dim-witted, they were forever vigilant having all the time in the world to watch and wait and scheme. Death was a finality that no longer mattered in their world. It was a concern that had been quite unceremoniously wiped from the table.
Now all they had was time; time and their ever-present hunger.
As he stepped into the relative cool of the tower, Adamson saw the guard on duty turn to greet him. Miller was the guy’s name and he was a trusted employee who’d managed to adapt to the job’s requirements and make it work. A kid in his late twenties with short-cropped hair and a reddish complexion, he had this open-eyed gaze like he was in constant amazement at what Life had to show him. Adamson liked the dude and considered him to be someone he could trust.
"Miller," Adamson said in lieu of a more formal greeting. "How’re things?"
Miller smiled that dopey smile of his beneath a set of standard issue night vision goggles. Realizing they were there, he reached up and pulled them off. Once they were clear of his face, he set the bulky headpiece into the frame mounted on the wall to the right of the minigun.
"Everything’s a-ok here. The dumbfucks are doing what the dumbfucks do best," Miller said. Even though Adamson disliked the term "dumbfucks," he knew that there were worse euphemisms used by the guards for the UDs. He also understood that the use of those types of things were coping mechanisms which were necessary for the men to distance themselves from the reality of their occupation.
"Next shift is gearing up now," Adamson explained, "your relief should be along in a second."
Adamson stepped up beside Miller and looked out over his pen.
Spread out before his eyes was an undulating sea of dark motion made up of hundreds of roaming bodies. There were eddies and slipstreams within the mass as the crowd aimlessly moved about inside the enclosed corral. It was a tide of the undead that, at one time, would have meant certain death for anyone unlucky enough to come up against it. Now it was just an ocean of reanimated meat. A low chorus of moaning acted as white noise and seemed to come and go like the soft crashing of waves against the shore.
As Adamson looked out over the darkened corral, it never ceased to astound him how many there were or how tenuous the balance of power remained.
"In so many ways, these are my children," he said softly. "They’re all I have left…"
"Excuse me, Sir?" Miller asked.
Adamson was shaken out of his reverie and looked up as if embarrassed. He quickly shook it off and returned to business.
"Nothing… anything going on that you think I should know?"
"Well, I wasn’t going to mention it, but…" Miller said and looked back out over the heaving crowd.
Adamson turned and looked at him sternly.
"If there is something going on that I need to know, Miller, I need to know it. Out with it, please…"
Miller took a quick, almost nervous look around the small space within the guard tower and lifted his gaze to Adamson’s. He looked like a kid who was about to tattle on a sibling.
"Well, the priest has been coming around a lot lately and doing his thing near the pens."
"Handel?"
Miller nodded and stared down at his feet. "He comes in like this, usually late at night, and hangs around toward the back of the building in the walkway there. Some of the guys are saying they hear him," and he raised his obviously concerned eyes to meet Adamson’s, "talking to the UDs."
Adamson knew the man well. He’d come to the League a few years ago after having spent his life as a priest in some place Adamson couldn’t remember. There were rumors of him having gotten into some kind of trouble with the diocese for reasons no one ever talked about. He’d come onboard as a Psych Counselor and was supposed to help the fighters come to terms with the reality of what they were being asked to do here, but he still carried himself like a priest. He was a guy who looked a lot older than his already advanced years, but that wasn’t too terribly abnormal. After everything that had happened in the world, who didn’t have a few extra wrinkles and grey hair?
Adamson took a moment to look deep into Miller’s eyes, plumbing the man’s depths for any hint of malevolence or manipulation. Finding none, he turned and directed his gaze toward the back of the building. Beyond the undulating crowd and the ever-present fencing, he could just make out some movement deep within the veil of the shadows.
"Ok," he said with a sigh, "I’ll check it out." He patted Miller reassuringly on the shoulder.
Miller nodded and stepped up to retake his position on the minigun. Slowly, as if deep in thought and already feeling bad about reporting the priest’s activity to management, he lifted the night vision goggles from their stand and pulled them on.
Adamson took a couple of steps toward the walkway and stopped.
"Miller…" he said paternally, "you shouldn’t feel guilty about telling me when something’s happening that’s out of the ordinary. If someone is fuckin’ up he puts all of us in danger."
Miller nodded and smiled with relief.
"We clear on that?"
"Yes, Sir. Clear as crystal."
Then, it was Adamson’s turn to nod and he turned and walked back down the walkway and into the gloom.
~ * ~
Father Handel stood with his small briefcase in hand in the shadows behind the Main Pen and carefully looked between the slats into the dimly lit expanse of the enclosure. Dark figures swayed in the half-light, rocking back and forth, moving from side to side. As always, the acrid odor of death was pervasive in this place, but every so often an extraordinary wave of putrescence would waft between the corrugated lengths of metal and assault his senses anew. This was an odor he’d come to know well ever since the dead had risen. God knew, he’d lived with it long enough at St. Joseph’s. It had become inextricably linked to what he considered his mission.
As he gazed into the undulating crowd, the face of a child pressed itself up against the chain link. It was a small boy, no more than nine or ten, who stared out at him with an unnerving mixture of open-mouthed wonder and abject hunger. His face was an utter mess. Long raking slashes tore down his right cheek, the white of his skull visible through the coarse separations of his anatomy. Coagulated blood was splashed and caked across what was left of his ruined features.
"Dear God," Handel softly whispered, "so many of Your children. So many… and so lost."
He pulled himself away from the boy’s unwavering gaze and with renewed vigor got back to the bit of business which brought him here. He set his valise on the ground and carefully opened it.
"O Lord," he intoned in a hushed voice, "who has said, ‘My yoke is sweet and my burden light,’ grant that I may so carry it as to merit Thy grace."
The priest removed from the case what looked like a thick crimson scarf. The material was deeply colored and had a cross embroidered in gold thread at each end. Holding it aloft, he kissed each end where the cross was stitched and held it to his forehead.
"Protect me, O Lord, so I may resist the assaults of the devil and cleanse my heart with the Blood of the Lamb so that I may be deserving of your eternal reward."
He laid the scarf around his neck so that it draped down his chest. Softly, he whispered, "Restore to me, O Lord, the state of immortality which I lost through the sin of my first parents and, although unworthy to approach Thy Sacred Mysteries, may I deserve nevertheless eternal joy."
He then withdrew a small bottle filled with Holy Water and held it gingerly in his hand.
Now, more or less prepared for the ritual to come, he turned his back to the pen and carefully ran his hand along the wall, searching for the small nail he’d placed there on a previous visit. Finding it with his fingertips, he reached into his case once more and pulled from it a silver crucifix. He kissed the figure on the cruciform and gently hung it from the nail.