Dream Park

THE LAUGHING DEAD

Myers watched over their shoulders as the Lopezes worked.

Mitsuko Lopez was talking steadily into her mike. One of the screens showed troops forming up near shore: eight dark men and women horribly mutilated by makeup, all listening to her instruc­tions in their earphones.

Richard Lopez nodded, nodded, interrupted rarely, while his fingers and feet raced over the controls. Hologram figures danced in response on a second screen, lurching among the dunes and into the trees; vanishing there, to reappear at the shore and begin their march again. They were horrible, these ghosts: long dead and half disintegrated. Some giggled uncontrollably and twitched like mari­onettes. Richard's lips pursed; his fingers blurred, and Myers watched a long-dead zombie being dismembered by an unseen sword. Richard nodded to himself.

'The woman who's missing a leg and an arm,' Ms. Metesky

whispered in Myers's ear. 'That's Gloria Washington. She got caught in the Antarctica Ciudad collapse and lost both limbs to frostbite. She took off her prostheses for the show, of course. She loved the idea, but I'll never understand where Chi-chi got the nerve to ask her.'

Myers said, 'Looks like your husband is getting ready to kill them all off.'

Lopez heard and answered. 'Henderson should have kept some of the anti-fire.'

'Why are some of the actors giggling like that?'

'Kuru.' Suddenly Richard's fingers were flying again.

Kuru didn't tell Myers anything. He nudged. 'You can justify it, of course...

Richard laughed.

Now holograms and fleshly actors marched together, the actors trying to match the lurching walk of Richard's constructs. Richard Lopez turned for an instant. 'Myers, it's there for justification. Shows I did my homework. Have you heard of kuru? The laughing sickness?'

'Look it up. You get it by eating infected human brain tissue. It causes convulsions and an exhausting, hysterical laughter. The Fore used to get it. Some of our zombies obviously died of it.'

Myers's stomach lurched. 'It's real?'

'Quite real. Or used to be. The Fore haven't eaten human meat since the last century... as far as anyone knows. That area's mostly a tourist trap these days. But about half the women used to die of kuru, and a fifth of the general populace. The fighting men got the best parts of the missionaries, leaving the brains and, ah, chitlins for those with less status... women, children, the old ones...' Richard let it trail off. On another screen, Henderson was leading his Gaming party down out of the burned area.

Owen Braddon, at the tail, suddenly turned and bounded back uphill. He scooped up a blackened skull and jogged to rejoin the party. The Lopezes turned to each other, grinned, nodded.

Myers was minded to ask; but Richard was talking again. 'Can you imagine how long they must have been eating each other if a disease evolved to take advantage of it? It's extinct now. We think.'

Griffin watched every bush, every tree, waiting for death. It was

going to be bad. Already he could hear the murmur of surf. They must be close, dangerously close.

'Penny,' Acacia said, and her voice scrambled his thoughts. He knew only that he spun half around, his hands strangling the rifle stock, aiming the gun at Acacia. Momentarily he felt foolish. Then he saw the fatigue in her face, and knew she understood.

The Garners behind him had no spring left in their step. He could see their fierce determination, but no sign of confidence any­where.

'What next? What the hell is he going to hit us with next?'

'That's the way to get killed,' Acacia said soberly. 'There's no ‘he' to hit us with anything. Stop trying to play it, and live it.' She was exasperated. 'Gary, you drive me crazy. One half of you is just dying to jump in head-first, and the other half stands back dunking toes. If you could just stop wondering, weighing, plan­ning...'

He managed to find a genuine laugh. 'You're a fine one to talk. We play Twenty Questions every time we say Hello.'

'Touché. Maybe neither of us has been very real.' Something went out of her voice as she looked up at him. 'What if it had been for real, Gary?'

'If what had been real? This?'

'Us.' There was no overt movement, but suddenly she was closer to him. Not touching, not even looking at him now, but there, and the air was charged.

'We're a little deep in the bullshit to try to sort this out now. Maybe we'll still think it's worth talking about after this is over.'

Her eyes probed the bushes too pointedly, and he felt the warmth in the air go away. 'Maybe.'

Somebody giggled, far ahead.

'What's funny?' he wondered. But Acacia had frozen. The gig­gle came again... hey, that wasn't a Gamer. It wasn't close enough, and besides that, it was wrong. It was strained, broken, like the helpless, painful laughter of someone forceably tickled, tickled until the humor was gone, until the nerves beg for release. It made him cringe just to hear it, and it grew steadily louder.

Chester snapped commands. 'Oliver! To the rear. Non-fighters to the center of the column. It's coming, so get ready.'

They moved forward, slowly.

Alex heard shuffling footsteps. They came in odd rhythm with

the laughter. A pained chuckle, then a dragging step. A hiccough of bizarre mirth, and another plodding thump.

And the first one appeared. He stood five and a half feet tall, dressed in brown rags. He laughed, and a hideous grin split the blackened face, and the whole body shuddered. In his right hand he carried a machete.

Mary-em measured him. 'He's mine.' She broke away from the line and walked warily toward him, her blade well in front of her.

Griffin could see her opponent more clearly now. Like the na­tive Alex had ambushed earlier, he showed dark skin and eyes with epicanthic folds. Sure enough, the Japanese invaders must have mated with the native Fore; and the resulting race would have hybrid vigor on their side. As if Chester didn't have enough trouble.

As Mary-em drew close, the man stopped and seemed truly to see her for the first time. He blinked slowly, with gummy lids, and Alex saw how filthy he was. Dirt crusted his face and hands, and the earth looked damp where it clung.

Unbidden, the logical allusion sprang to Alex's mind: '... like he just stepped out of a grave...'

And that was when the odor hit. Neutral scent was Alex's first panicked reaction, almost immediately squelched. This smell was far from neutral.

Once, years before, Alex had bought an old-fashioned fly trap, the kind that catches them in water. One warm July he had forgot­ten to clean it out for a week, and thousands of ffies had fer­mented in the