each day.
Some dead left to reclaim their old lives and as time progressed terrible stories of rejection trickled back. Updike’s force multiplied. With Oliver as his right hand man, he worked his way across the state, and soon began sending exhumation forces ahead into neighboring states. Soon others, many living, took up the cause.
The exhumed were a dedicated and grateful workforce, who existed on olive oil and little else. They could eat, though there were no digestive processes. Some of the exhumed were too frail to work or were dismembered. But these pitched in as they could with anything from accounting to raising funds.
That was all so long ago, and his mission had seen him build an army of workers that grew with each dig. He felt great pity for those that rose without body or head, or who had been killed by massive trauma, yet still retained some awareness. In those cases he offered a choice. They could try to make the best of it or they could be destroyed utterly by fire. Updike was surprised by the number that chose a living death. The dead had lost their faith in death.
In some cases the dismembered could be stitched and glued back together, and the reattached parts would function without much difficulty. Why? Updike soon stopped asking why. He knew only that the world was a changed place, and so long as there were needy dead people he would do what he could for them.
He soon ran into trouble with the Authorities. In those days, governments and their functioning bodies were in transition, and so he didn’t worry overmuch about red tape. But, he did have to account for dismembered body parts, and brainless dead. These, the Authorities suggested, should be relocated to special Internment Facilities. Updike suggested mass cremation, since even dismembered parts were reanimated, but the Authorities balked at such a final solution.
And with the extinction of earth’s bacteria that fed on dead flesh, the problem grew to ghastly proportions. The Internment Facilities were soon crawling with dead bodies and twitching body parts. Sadly, there were many such facilities operating by the time the problem was recognized. The end result was that the living shunned the countryside. The idea of camping and having your tent knocked over by a headless corpse was too much for most.
Optimistically, Updike reassured himself that the wilderness had been forsaken anyway. God’s word giving man dominion over the animals had been revoked. The first days were horrible. Animals both domesticated and wild attacked their former masters. Pets were caged or destroyed. Others were released or escaped. Farming became very dangerous.
As he worked, Updike watched the evolution of a terrified culture. There were power struggles just short of civil war, and realignment of alliances, often times with the public wondering who was in charge. The living were barricading themselves in walled cities. The dead within were treated sympathetically at first but were finally restricted to special areas.
By the time Authority evolved into the interconnected world giant it now was, it was too late to stop Updike or his followers. When they turned to him the preacher was the leader of a vast army. Digs had already been started under his direction on the other continents. Updike said they would carry on with their mission, but an Angel warned him.
“Disperse,” it said, and he immediately saw the truth. Such a massive army of dead would terrify the living into action. “Accidents” had already happened with Authority Regulators destroying the dead.
Updike broke his army into smaller groups. These moved to towns and villages that had been abandoned by the living. He continued, taking his movement down into Mexico and South America.
His mission unfolded over decades. The first step was the gathering of his force. Whispered among the leaders of the dead were promises of a new world unfolding for all. Updike awaited a sign.
He was in Peru when it came. The preacher was experimenting with a new technique for softening the ancient bodies of dead Incas.
The Angels whispered three words: It is time. Soon after Updike received an invitation to a conference in The City of Light. He was invited to talk about his work. The theme was The Rebirth of the Earth Religions and the Death of Science.
Updike boarded the plane. That was the way the Lord worked. There were no coincidences.
35 – Guardian
The Creature told him to keep grownups away from the Nightcare, and that’s what he did. The little boy with the lethal fist left Liz and the others to do their wah-wah-wah, sorry Creature-boss but we lost the Squeaker. What’s her name, the real-kid-kid, was too stupid to listen to us fighters and run so the Toffers got her.
Conan flexed his shoulders. They were still tight from all the fighting, and there were little prickly burns on his cheeks where the Toffers’ boom-bomb sent off its sparks and got into his helmet. That threw him off, like it did all the fighters-and there were little green lights in front of their eyes “like fairies” the girls said-and that let the Toffers get away.
Conan and Big Henry did their best to keep up to them and the Sheps but they moved fast once they all peeled their skins. Even Conan couldn’t keep up, and he was the fastest fighter in the Nightcare. So they hurried back and did their reporting and boohooing but he couldn’t stand it so off he went just so. Got some grub and a bit of whisky on his stings and then ran and ran for the edge of it all.
He didn’t wait around while the others did their head scratching and wondering and sniffling. Conan didn’t have patience for that kind of yak yak and standing around not-yakking just made his head think over the olden days. And thinking of that just made him want to go out in the tunnels and make chili sauce out of grownups. All those bad guys walking around asking for trouble, and keeping boys in cages and doing the Devil work on them.
The thought alone had him swinging his die-flower around, scratching it on the stones in the tunnel. The fist-kill was an idea he got from some old crazy movie about another evil grownup who got burned up and killed but came back in dreams to hunt the forever teens while they were fuckity-fucking, as Big Henry called it. But he had a glove on his hand full of knives and Conan liked the idea so much he made one. He didn’t have a name for it yet, and everybody called it something different. But there was a wooden grip he held onto inside a hockey glove, and the whole thing was wired, and taped and screw-nailed together.
There were five sharp blades now, from eight to twelve inches long. There used to be six but that was too many for the size of his fist and the length of his arm. He’d almost cut off his nuts with the downswing one time so he had to trim the lethal blossom.
But he liked taking the slash-fingers and chopping them around in a grownup’s belly, or running them up his legs into the crotch where all the bad business they did on Conan came from. That was real fine and joyful cause they screamed and screamed like the other boys screamed in the Bad house long ago. Conan didn’t scream then. He hadn’t said a word since they first got him and fucked him up.
But seeing the Toffers trying to hurt forever kids just got Conan’s blood up and he’d already run to the edge of the tunnels where he had hidey places, and flop-joints for snoozing and spent the last two nights keeping a ear open for a tap-tap code from the Nightcare or the big-step of a grownup blundering close.
That morning he got lucky and did some wicked cut-work on a bad guy who was walking around below ground with his pecker out pissing. He wouldn’t have that trouble no more. Conan danced in on him before he blinked his eyes, and he slashed his guts until the spaghetti came pouring out. Then he stepped in while the gray- hair was crying and gathering his guts into his lap, and did a few wicked thrusts into the nuts until there was only blood pouring out around hamburger.
Conan froze when he heard a sound. It was a light thrumming noise like a big boot moving quietly over the metal-grated walkways that ran the length of this section of tunnel. Like someone was trying to be funny or sneaky like but made a mistake.
And Conan was moving. His light running shoes barely touched the grating underfoot as he flickered through the darkness. There were always background sounds to hide the little things, but Conan prided himself on being quieter still.
His senses were on high alert, all radar and magnifying glasses, because where he was, many miles in from the fight with that drunk guy, was too close to the Nightcare to allow any monkey business. He thought it might be
