"Ma…?"
~ * ~
"Ma!"
Cleese bolted upright, panting. His heart thumped heavily in his chest and sweat shimmered in the half light across his brow. His head still reeled from the alcohol he’d drunk and his mouth tasted like someone had dumped an ashtray into it. He raised his hands to his face and rubbed them up and down.
A dream…
"Shii…" he hissed into the palms of his hands, "…it."
He parted his fingers and looked around the roof but saw nothing strange; Monk on his back, mouth open and his legs spread out, Weaver, a yard or so away, snoring and scratching at himself. Darkness lay over them all like a cape, but it was otherwise quiet.
He looked out over the compound and it, too, was as quiet as a church. The moon fell down on the grass and the blades reflected the light as silver. He stared out across the fields and saw the Holding Pen brooding in the distance. He couldn’t be exactly sure, but he thought he heard a far off moan drift across the compound.
Cleese lay back onto the roof and turned onto his side. Shifting around on the concrete, he tried to find a comfortable spot on the cold, hard surface. Finally, he pushed his back up against the retaining wall and settled in. A shiver abruptly ran down his spine and prompted him to take one more look around. Then, like a child with a favorite blanket, he tugged his jacket tighter around him and hugged it close. As his heart rate slowly returned to normal, Cleese closed his eyes against the encroaching shadows and, in time, fell back asleep.
The Cost of Killing
The repeated crunching of Cleese’s feet on the coarse red soil of the compound’s track was the only sound that broke the silence of the warm afternoon. His breath came in short rapid huffs which forced his tissues to fight one another for every molecule of oxygen. The metronome-like drumming reverberating up from his legs marked each step of his progress as he made his way around the flat oval track. He’d lost most of the feeling from the waist down four or five miles ago, his mind feeling a distinct separation from the rest of his body. His intellect floated like a balloon somewhere between a blissful, endorphin-infused reality and a torturous hell of physical agony. As he ran along, a song drifted into his consciousness and stuck there like mental gum. He wasn’t even sure what the name of it was, but the tune hammered in his brain and kept time with the pounding of his feet.
It was weird how things bubbled up in the consciousness when the body was running on fumes and it wanted to puke its guts up in the azaleas. He was just finishing up what he calculated to be his seventh mile and was feeling like powdered shit; completely drawn and drained. He silently wondered, when the time came, if his legs would obey him or keep on going and not allow him to stop. He would just continue to run around and around until his bones wore themselves down to bloody stubs.
God knew… He felt as if he’d been running in circles—both figuratively and literally—forever. Why should he stop now? As he looked down, he saw multiple sets of his own shoe prints pressed into the soft red clay. In his exhausted delirium, he thought of how he was chasing after himself; following his own tracks in the dirt. He half expected to look up and see his phantom figure running ahead of him at the furthest corner of the track.
Man, I’m getting fuckin’ delusional.
~ * ~
Alongside the benches which sat at one side of the track, a thin man with long strands of hair hanging in front of his face stood watching as Cleese sweated his way around the track for the umpteenth time. It was warm out again today, but that in no way deterred the man. He was grateful for a chance to be out in the fresh air, away from the smell of puke and bile and blood and festering gore. If only for an hour or so, he was happy to smell something—anything—other than death.
Adamson had been at the compound for longer than he cared to remember and was beginning to wonder if he’d ever get the stink off him. He’d had a bit of that dead smell back before the world went to shit and life got itself all twisted around, but this was different. This was a stench that had worked itself into the marrow of his bones, infected him to his very soul.
As he watched Cleese running, he remembered a time when he too ran; ran for everything he’d been worth. He’d run from his place of work—a place that was in and of itself a place of death—and, when his car died on him, he’d kept on running until he finally fell exhausted in a warehouse on the outskirts of town. He’d awoken surrounded by men with guns and had, for a moment, forgotten all about Mr. Robinson, Mrs. Jacob, Mrs. Devon, Mr. Lodene and the fat Mrs. Harvey. He’d opened his eyes and saw nothing except the endless abyss one can only see if one is looking deep inside the barrel of a locked and loaded gun.
Once the armed men figured out that he still possessed a heartbeat, they’d brought him to a bivouac and gotten him showered, fed and clothed in something more battle-ready than the soiled business suit in which they’d found him. Then, after a good (and safe) night’s rest and quick lesson in firearms later, he’d been out on the front line "droppin’ Zs"—the term the militia used for the killing of the reanimated dead.
As the weeks went by, and after a whole lot of practice, he’d gotten pretty good at it. His knowledge of anatomy told him exactly where to aim the rifle for maximum effect. It also helped him to judge at a distance how quickly the undead could move once they’d engaged them—the more progressed their state of decomposition was, the slower they were. As a result, he’d become known as The Dead Guy due to his almost encyclopedic knowledge of Them.
If they only knew…
Then one day, as he finished the clearing of a large office building, a savvy and persuasive man approached him accompanied by a huge bear of a man he’d called Jimbo. The guy had all the subtleness of a used car salesman and, after many drinks and a large steak dinner, talked some shit about these big plans he had. Adamson thought the guy was as crazy as a soup sandwich, but after a few more drinks he felt more than willing to entertain such madness. This guy, Weber, heard about Adamson’s unique body of knowledge from some of the men and wanted to brainstorm some ideas with him as to how to keep a large number of the undead. Like everything about him, all of this Weber fella’s ideas were big and just this side of crazy. Apparently, Weber had these plans and if Adamson could develop a way to do what he was asking, there could be some big money in it for everybody.
And boy, he wasn’t kidding…
Adamson’s mistake was that he didn’t read Weber’s fine print when he signed on. As promised, there was indeed money enough for everybody.
The problem was Adamson was nobody.
Flash forward to today and Weber is a multimillionaire living in a swanky high rise and Adamson a schmuck living in a hangar with a couple of hundred corpses. And when all was said and done, all Adamson had left was what he’d come with: a very specified body of knowledge and his commitment to giving the dead their respectful due. Yes, the idea of making some real money was important, but in the end it was always secondary to his reverence and protection of the dead.
As far as Adamson was concerned, the living were hypocrites and liars and they could go fuck themselves. With a deep, resigned breath he sighed and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. Almost as an afterthought, he wiped his hand off on the seat of his pants and continued watching Cleese as he made his way around the far end of the track.
~ * ~
Cleese powered into the home stretch and decided (based on the sun’s position in the sky) that it was getting late and he should probably call it quits. He was supposed to meet Monk to review more fight tapes and wanted to grab a quick shower before he caught up with him. He pushed himself to make his legs pump even harder as he approached the Start marker etched into the track. As he crossed the line and stumbled to a stop, his legs went rubbery and he almost thought that he was going to fall, but managed to maintain his balance.
He walked stiffly until able to catch his breath and then bent at the waist to stretch his already tightening hamstrings. They were still sore from the hack squats Monk insisted on him doing the day before. This running shit on top of that wasn’t doing him any favors. His muscles cried out in protest with every movement. Standing upright and walking slowly over to where he’d piled his gym bag and water bottle, his quadriceps and calves now added their voices to the polyphonic pain opera already in progress. He picked up his stuff and slung the bag’s strap over his shoulder. Walking off the track, he pulled the top off his water bottle and drank heartily. Once his thirst had been more or less sated, he opened his eyes and noticed someone standing up by the benches at the side of the track. As he came closer, he recognized the guy. He’d seen the dude at the Holding Pen when Monk had taken him there.
Adamson was his name or something like that.
The guy was lanky and had a distinctly unkempt look about him—as if he’d just said, "Fuck it!" and given up on personal hygiene. Cleese was no fashion plate himself—his taste in clothing leaned more toward boots, jeans, black t-shirts and, if the weather was less than perfect, a beat up old leather jacket—but he at least liked a good hosing off now and again. Adamson looked like he’d not seen a shower in quite a while. His clothes looked even worse.
Cleese wasn’t sure what the guy wanted, but it looked as if he was about to find out. As Cleese approached, Adamson straightened up and once again ran his fingers through that greasy hair of his. Cleese idly wondered where the guy got his hair care products. Union 76 was his first guess.
"Cleese," Adamson greeted him and reached out to shake hands.
Cleese grinned, bowed slightly and apologized, "Sorry, but I’m all sweaty. I don’t want to get you all slimy." Somewhere deep inside his brain, Cleese thought how ironic it was that here was a guy he didn’t want to come in physical contact with.
"Nice day," Adamson said, looking around.
"Yeah… Since coming here, I don’t get to see as much of the sun as I might once have. It’s good to get out into the fresh air once in a while."
Adamson smiled widely and said, "Preaching to the choir, Buddy. You’re preaching to the choir." He smiled and then the expression evaporated from his face like an ice cube on hot asphalt. "I wanted to talk to you, if you have a minute."
Cleese nodded and motioned for him to sit down. Cleese took a seat, his legs singing out in appreciation. As his ass hit the metal of the bench, Adamson came around and sat down near him. Immediately, Cleese caught a whiff of the same sour smell coming off of Adamson that he’d encountered when he went into the Holding Pen. It smelled like sour meat and week-old grease. It was the kind of smell that made the stomach churn and the bitter taste of bile come unbidden to the back of the throat. As subtly as he could, Cleese slid slightly further down the bench.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"Well," Adamson said and ran his hand through that hair once again, "I was looking over my log the other day. I keep pretty good notes on how many UDs come in, how many go out, and who it is that makes one change to the other."
Cleese nodded. Other than a few of the fighters he’d met, everyone he’d run into in this place seemed to have a pretty advanced case of OCD. It didn’t surprise him that the guy in charge of keeping track of The Dead could tell you the exact number of Them he had in his grisly inventory.
"Yeah, and…?"
Adamson stretched his legs out in front of him and scratched at some bit of slime embedded into the fabric of his pants.
"It got me curious… I noticed you’re doing more than your share of incapacitating my Stock."
Cleese nodded and said, "Ummm… sorry."
Adamson laughed and his tone brought a chill to even Cleese’s jaded senses.
"No… no. It’s not that. It just piqued my interest."
Cleese took another swig from his water hoping the liquid would cut the sour taste that was beginning to develop at the back of in his mouth.
"Anyway," Adamson continued, "like I said, it got me curious, so I dug out one of your training tapes."
Adamson turned and gave Cleese the eyeball.
"Impressive."
"Ah, shucks…" Cleese said with just a hint of irony. "‘tweren’t nothin’."
Again, Adamson laughed and the sight was like watching a corpse kiss your sister.
"Look, I’m not going to bullshit you…"
"Good. I hate being bullshitted."
"I’ve seen my fair share of fighters come through this place and not all of them left happy. Shit, most didn’t leave with a proper pulse."
Cleese nodded and figured he’d already heard what he was about to hear again. ‘This place is dangerous. This place will get you killed. Yadda yadda yadda…’ Not wanting to appear too rude, he figured he’d give this guy about five minutes and then use meeting Monk as an excuse to leave.
Adamson surprised him though by saying, "You’re a different kind of animal though. I’m guessing that you’ll do fine here. You’ll undoubtedly make yourself a shitload of money, but I don’t think you will make it outta here without some damage."
Cleese looked at him and grimly shook his head. "Well, that’s reassuring."
Adamson leaned forward just a bit, "Even if you are able to survive your time in the pit, the damage you need to worry about…" Adamson raised his right index finger and tapped it lightly against his temple. "…is mental. You need to figure out how to protect yourself against that."
Well, Cleese thought, here’s a new twist.
"Have you ever heard of someone named Martin Seligman?"
Cleese shook his head in the negative.
"He was this old school scientist who developed the concept of inoculation from stress by studying the learning in dogs. His experiments put dogs in cages that had an electric shock pass through the floor at random intervals."
"Fun guy…"
"Yeah, well… The dogs would jump, yelp and scratch at first as they tried to escape the shocks, but after a while they’d fall into a depressed, hopeless state of apathy and inactivity that Seligman termed ‘learned hopelessness.’"