Cahill changed his rig so he could lower the bait. The third guy was almost Cahill’s undoing. Cahill let him wander for two days in the early autumn chill before appearing and offering to help. This guy, a black city kid from Nashville who for some reason wouldn’t say his name, evidently didn’t like the scaffolding outside. He wouldn’t take any of Cahill’s whiskey, and as when Cahill pretended to sleep, the guy made the first move. Cahill was lucky not to get killed, managing again to brain the guy with his pipe.
But it was worth it, because when he suspended the guy and lit the fire, one of the four zombies that showed up was the skinny guy who’d killed Riley back the day the air strike had wiped out the camp.
He was white-eyed like the other zombies, but still recognizable. It made Cahill feel even more that the toothy blonde might be out there, unlikely as that actually was. Cahill watched for a couple of hours before he lowered Nashville. The semiconscious Nashville started thrashing and making weird coughing choking noises as soon as Cahill pulled on the rope, but the zombies were oblivious. Cahill was gratified to see that once the semiconscious Nashville got about so his shoes were about four feet above the ground, three of four zombies around the fire (the ones for whom the fire was not between them and Nashville) turned as one and swarmed up the chair.
He was a little nervous that they would look up—he had a whole plan for how he would get out of the building—but he didn’t have to use it.
The three zombies ate, indifferent to each other and the fourth zombie, and then stood.
Cahill entertained himself with thoughts of the toothy blonde and then dozed. The air was crisp, but Cahill was warm in an overcoat. The fire smelled good. He was going to have to think about how he was going to get through the winter without a fire—unless he could figure out a way to keep a fire going well above the street and above zombie attention but right now things were going okay.
He opened his eyes and saw one of the zombies bob its head.
He’d never seen that before. Jesus, did that mean it was aware? That it might come upstairs? He had his length of pipe in one hand and a Molotov in the other. The zombies were all still. A long five minutes later, the zombie did it again, a quick, birdlike head bob. Then, bob-bob, twice more, and on the second bob, the other two that had fed did it too. They were still standing there, faces turned just slightly different directions as if they were unaware of each other, but he had seen it.
Bob-bob-bob. They all three did it. All at the same time.
Every couple of minutes they’d do it again. It was—communal. Animal-like. They did it for a couple of hours and then they stopped. The one on the other side of the fire never did it at all. The fire burned low enough that the fourth one came over and worked on the remnants of the corpse and the first three just stood there.
Cahill didn’t know what the fuck they were doing, but it made him strangely happy.
When they came to evacuate him, Cahill thought at first it was another air strike operation—a mopping up. He’d been sick for a few days, throwing up, something he ate, he figured. He was scavenging in a looted drug store, hoping for something to take—although everything was gone or ruined—when he heard the patrol coming. They weren’t loud, but in the silent city noise was exaggerated. He had looked out of the shop, seen the patrol of soldiers and tried to hide in the dark ruins of the pharmacy.
“Come on out,” the patrol leader said. “We’re here to get you out of this place.”
Bullshit, Cahill thought. He stayed put.
“I don’t want to smoke you out, and I don’t want to send guys in there after you,” the patrol leader said. “I’ve got tear gas but I really don’t want to use it.”
Cahill weighed his options. He was fucked either way. He tried to go out the back of the pharmacy, but they had already sent someone around and he was met by two scared nineteen-year-olds with guns. He figured the writing was on the wall and put his hands up.
But the weird twist was that they
were
evacuating him. There’d been some big government scandal. The Supreme Court had closed the reserves, the president had been impeached, elections were coming. He wouldn’t find that out for days. What he found out right then was that they hustled him back to the gate and he walked out past rows of soldiers into a wall of noise and light. Television cameras showed him lost and blinking in the glare.
“What’s your name?”
“Gerrold Cahill,” he said.
“Hey Gerrold! Look over here!” a hundred voices called.
It was overwhelming. They all called out at the same time, and it was mostly just noise to him, but if he could understand a question, he tried to answer it. “How’s it feel to be out of there?”
“Loud,” he said. “And bright.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Take a hot shower and eat some hot food.”
There was a row of sawhorses and the cameras and lights were all behind them. A guy with corporal’s stripes was trying to urge him towards a trailer, but Cahill was like someone knocked down by a wave who tries to get to their feet only to be knocked down again.
“Where are you from?” Tell us what it was like!”
“What was it like?” Cahill said. Dumbshit question. What was he supposed to say to that? But his response had had the marvelous effect of quieting them for a moment, which allowed him to maybe get his bearings a little. “It wasn’t so bad.”
The barrage started again but he picked out “Were you alone?”
“Except for the zombies.”
They liked that and the surge was almost animalistic. Had he seen zombies? How had he survived? He shrugged and grinned.
“Are you glad to be going back to prison?”
He had an answer for that, one he didn’t even know was in him. He would repeat it in the interview he gave to
The Today Show
and again in the interview for
20/20.
“Cleveland was better than prison,” he said. “No alliances, no gangs, just zombies.”
Someone called, “Are you glad they’re going to eradicate the zombies?”
“They’re going to what?” he asked.
The barrage started again, but he said, “What are they going to do to the zombies?”
“They’re going to eradicate them, like they did everywhere else.”
“Why?” he asked.
This puzzled the mob. “Don’t you think they should be?”
He shook his head. “Gerrold! Why not?”
Why not indeed? “Because,” he said, slowly, and the silence came down, except for the clicking of cameras and the hum of the news vans idling, “because they’re just . . . like animals. They’re just doing what’s in their nature to be doing.” He shrugged.
Then the barrage started again.
Gerrold! Gerrold! Do you think people are evil?
But by then he was on his way to a military trailer, an examination by an army doctor, a cup of hot coffee and a meal and a long hot shower.
Behind him the city was dark. At the moment, it felt cold behind him, but safe, too, in its quiet. He didn’t really want to go back there. Not yet. He wished he’d had time to set them one last fire before he’d left.
Alex Dally MacFarlane
Letter (clay tablet) found in the property of Kaššaya, daughter of King Nabu-kudurri-usur, in Uruk. Cuneiform inscription dating to the neo-Assyrian Empire:
To the king, my lord: your servant Nabu’a. May Nabu and Marduk bless the king, my lord! On the 7th of Kislev a fox entered the Inner City, and fell into a well in the garden of Aššur. It was hauled up and killed.
Later annotation on the letter of Nabu’a in Aramaic, using ink:
What omen is this? What did Nabu’a prevent? It is a time of terrible plague in Babylon. With your wisdom, perhaps this tablet will help to explain one of the omens presaging the events here: the dead fox seen walking into the temple of Marduk.
Letter (clay tablet) found in the property of Kaššaya:
Innin-Etirat to Kaššaya, my sister, may Anu keep you well in this time of plague! May the plague that afflicts us in Babylon never reach the great city of Uruk!
I send this letter with four tablets that have been brought from the ruins of Nineveh in the north. Everyone in Babylon with the wisdom to understand these tablets—the omens and the measures taken as a result of them—is dead. They are dead, but they walk, they eat the flesh of living people, who then sicken and die and walk through the city, spreading the illness further. Before this terrible plague, there were four omens here in Babylon: the right-hand quadrant of the sun darkened without the moon passing across it, the king dreamed of a dead woman with teeth as sharp as knives, a dead fox was seen walking into the temple of Marduk, bones fell from the noon sky like rain.
Kaššaya, my sister, if you or your scholars can interpret the past omens described in the tablets and whether they relate to our omens, then you will know what measures to take to prevent this plague from reaching Uruk.
I have sent this letter and these tablets with a soldier I know well. I will remain within Babylon, unless the palace becomes unsafe.
Letter (clay tablet) found in the property of Kaššaya, either an archival copy or the unsent original:
Kaššaya to Innin-Etirat, my sister, may Anu keep you safe! May Nabu and Marduk keep Nabu-kudurri-usur, the king, our father, safe! May the great city of Babylon be unharmed by this calamity! Your letter arrived with only one tablet, carried by a woman fleeing Babylon, who tells me that she found your soldier dying on the road. I have given her food. I have ensured that she is watched for signs of this sickness.
You write: “the right-hand quadrant of the sun darkened without the moon passing across it, the King dreamed of a dead woman with teeth as sharp as knives.” I too have dreamed this. I too have witnessed this brief darkening of the sun.
I have been to every temple to report the news you have sent me. Offerings are being made to every god in my name and the king’s name. The signs of plague are being watched for in Uruk.
Innin-Etirat, my sister, may you remain safe in the palace of Babylon!
Tablet found in the Eanna temple in Uruk:
Eight minas and five shekels of blue-colored wool for an ullakku garment, the property of Innin-Etirat, the king’s daughter, brought to Eanna by Innin-Etirat herself on the day she arrived in Uruk, after the outbreak of the plague. Month Šabatu, 7th day, 33rd year of Nabu-kudurri-usur, King of Babylon.
A story passed orally among the women of Uruk (now in southern Iraq) and surviving to this day in several variants (including a Safavid Dynasty manuscript, the only written variant), from which this original has been tentatively constructed:
Long ago there was a terrible plague in the city of Uruk. Can you imagine! The dead in the streets of Uruk, attacking those who still lived. Feasting on those who were too slow. Even the animals could get this sickness: dead dogs and foxes ran through the city, biting the legs of the living. No offering to the gods could end this plague. No medicine could cure it.
All of Uruk’s men were given bows and swords to fight the dead, but even this was not enough. Many were bitten. Many found that the dead would not die again no matter how many arrows sank into their chests—even the headless would still stumble, even the teeth would still try to bite them from the ground!
At this time lived three women, daughters of the king, called Kaššaya, Innin-Etirat, and Ba’u-Asitu, who all owned land in Uruk.
It is said of Kaššaya that she was wise, of Innin-Etirat that she was determined, of Ba’u-Asitu that she was bold.
During the time of the plague, each of the daughters gathered all of the women and children working for her into her main property, each well provisioned with water and grain and dates, and built sturdy defences. There they planned to wait until the plague passed, as all terrible illnesses eventually do. They sought to keep everyone from dwelling on the horrors beyond their walls: Kaššaya organized storytelling competitions, Innin-Etirat led the women and children in song, Ba’u-Asitu invented a new dance every morning.
It was Ba’u-Asitu who noticed three foxes below the walls of her home.
A dead fox, its legs shattered, unable to walk but biting out at anything that passed. Two living foxes pinned it down and ate the remnants of its flesh. You wince, but such is the nature of foxes.
Ba’u-Asitu observed that when the living foxes had torn the flesh from the dead fox, it stopped trying to bite. It lay still, a skeleton, truly dead.
Being bold, she darted from the security of her walls with two other women and with great care and stealth took one of the walking dead men from outside. They covered his head with thick cloth so that he could not bite, and secured the door once they brought him inside. Then with tools they stripped the rotting flesh from him.
The bared skeleton of the man stopped moving. The teeth lay in their sockets like needles in a pouch: sharp but unused.
Ba’u-Asitu sent letters to her sisters, to the temples and to the leaders of the soldiers, telling them of this discovery. Letters were also sent to Babylon and the other cities. From then on, the living were able to fight the dead, although it was not easy and many more died.
The flesh of the dead was immediately burnt. The stench filled the city for weeks. The bones were buried far from the cities, in tracts of desert where none lingered long. The teeth were not touched with bare hands.
Eventually the plague passed, as all terrible illnesses do.
In one oral version of this tale, Ba’u-Asitu becomes so famed for her skill at stripping the flesh from the dead that she is known as Ba’u-Asitu the Fox-Woman: an immortal figure who still hunts under an occluded moon with an army of foxes. Screams in the night are attributed to her work. The plague has never spread far again.
Letter (clay tablet) found in the property of Kaššaya:
To Kaššaya, my lady, and Innin-Etirat, my lady: your servant Šamaš-ereš. May Anu and Ishtar keep you both well!
You write: “No one in Uruk or Babylon can say whether the omens we saw before the plague have appeared before. Is there anything in the ruined cities of the north that will help us understand these omens and how to respond to them?”