chance.” He pushed aside his discomfort and doubt for a moment to look around. A soldier was there. “Where’s Bolton?”
The man’s face had been torn by a piece of flying debris. His lower jaw showed bony white.
“He ran along the convoy!” He struggled to push his face back together. “To lead an attack!”
“Oh God!” Updike’s face was gray.
“Captain? You must not doubt. As you told me about this war, the realities are extreme.” Stoneworthy ducked. New snapping, popping sounds rose up from the line of trees. He wanted to look, but his stomach twisted at the notion. “You cannot doubt yourself now.”
He took a quick glance-snapped his head up and over the side of the ditch. In the distance, he saw a long line of dead soldiers moving slowly, methodically toward the line of trees. Their guns were popping now-throwing plumes of smoke at the forest. Angry lead tore at the cover of leaves. A long line of flame lashed out from a copse of cedar and splashed across a section of the advancing force. Soldiers danced like burning puppets.
“You cannot doubt this.” Stoneworthy pressed his dead lips close to Updike’s ear. This is what we came to do. “We must not let anything stand in the way of the Lord!” He clambered to his knees. “By the hand of God are we commanded, and by His word we shall not fail!” Stoneworthy gained his feet. Further down the line another truck burst into flames. He saw that the dead soldiers had risen. Bullets whizzed among them, mangled, dismembered, but they were thousands, many thousands. And bullets no longer wounded, no longer killed.
Stoneworthy raised his arms to the Army of the Dead. “My brothers and sisters.” He pointed toward the line of trees. “There lies the path of Righteousness.” It was two hundred yards to the trees. Stoneworthy marched, and as he marched forty thousand marched with him. The air hissed and buzzed with bullets, a long section of the trees were already a flaming ruin. But they marched. The Army of the Dead was too large to fill so small a section of highway, and as he moved forward, Stoneworthy saw the dead following-hurrying down the road to join in the battle. They limped, scurried and ran.
“For God!” Stoneworthy bellowed. “For God!”
A dead soldier beside him was torn in two by a large round. Stoneworthy was gratified to see the gory remains of the man following, crawling, inching his way toward the battle. “For God!” Stoneworthy ran thirty yards and paused at the remains of another soldier. His body was a cruel twist of ripped tissue and exposed ganglion, but his eyes moved. They looked at the Reverend and over to a rifle gripped in a severed hand in the grass.
“Peace brother.” Stoneworthy whispered.
Picking up the rifle, he fired a shot into the air. “Now, my brothers and sisters!” Those near him smiled and raised their weapons. Even as he spoke an enemy bullet tore the arm off a woman. She picked up her weapon with the other. “Destroy the moneylenders! For God!”
Another howl went up through the army, an echo of the despairing sound of the day before but somehow the opposite. Instead of isolation and pain, it rang with solidarity and vengeance. Holding his own weapon high, Stoneworthy charged with his soldiers into the murderous hailstorm of bullets.
PART THREE
61 – Nursie
“It’s for Nursie,” Dawn whispered, showing Meg the blank slip of paper with a shrug. They sat side by side on Meg’s bed. The other forever children were milling in groups playing games or off by themselves reading ridiculous children’s books or napping.
“It’s for Nursie,” Meg looked at the paper but wouldn’t touch it. She glanced at the clock over the door. “That note means she’ll be coming…”
“Is she a nurse?” Dawn patted her friend’s shoulder.
“Sort of.” Meg looked back, fear in her eyes. The forever girl shook her head. “She’s like the Principal: different inside.”
“What do you mean?” Dawn whispered.
“Nothing,” Meg said soberly. “She gives checkups and takes temperatures.”
Suddenly the speaker over the door buzzed.
“And so…” said a voice over the loud speaker. It was female by gravelly and huge. “All being dem slechte kinderen for slaap.” The loud speaker let out an electronic shriek and was silent. “Naptime!”
All of the kids ran to their beds.
“It’s her.” Meg pushed Dawn toward her bed and started smoothing out her own covers and sheets. “Do the same!” she cried, and then sat on the edge of the mattress with ankles crossed and hands folded in her lap.
Dawn saw that all the kids were doing the same, straightening their beds and sitting as Meg had done. The dead childcare workers scurried to take up their positions in chairs along the walls.
The dormitory’s double doors banged, and then jiggled on their hinges. Then a massive woman pushed the doors wide, took a step forward and stopped. Her body was so heavy and wide that it wedged firmly into place in the doorframe. The woman frowned bashfully and then set two large hands to either side of the doorframe. She kicked once, twice and heaved herself into the room.
Dawn had never seen a grownup that big before. She even looked taller than Arthur at the Nurserywood and he was a giant.
Nursie wore a huge white uniform-skirt and nurse’s hat. Her wide, fat legs were covered in tight white silk and looked like fat uncooked sausages. Her feet were big and chubby, stuffed into rubber-soled shoes. The buttons running up the front of her dress were close to popping.
“Nightynacht,” she sang in a voice like a female foghorn. She paused inside the door, with palms pressed together, fingers pointed downward, and elbows out with all of her weight on one foot. “Dem good children!”
Nursie had a mop of bleached hair that hung down over her collar in fuzzy strands. This cut across her brow under a red-trimmed nurse’s hat, and over deep-set eyes. Her face was like an ogre’s: splayed nostrils, heavy cheekbones and lopsided chin. Thick rouge festered under her cavernous eye sockets. The eyeliner shone metallic blue in the shadow, and bounced a hint of glimmer on the dark eyes. Her lips were cucumber-sized and stood out from her powdered face like welts. Many layers of gloss traveled two inches past the edges of her lips. The red on her powdered skin looked like blood. Large yellow teeth gnashed in her wide mouth.
“Sugar plums and feen and rest,” she croaked. Nursie clasped her hands under her chin and stepped farther into the room, breath rumbling in her chest. “Sogni dolci.”
The woman then bent over the closest bed and ran a long-fingered hand over the child sitting there. She smiled and chirped something, and patted the little head before moving to the next child. Nursie’s movements were very feminine despite her massive shape. The whole while, Dawn noticed Nursie’s eye kept wandering to her.
When the woman got to Dawn’s bed, she stopped. A large smile spread over the masculine features, and a gleam appeared in her eyes.
Dawn held up the Doctor’s slip.
Nursie peered at it and then gave a massive shake of her head. She drew a foot-long flat box out of a large pocket on the front of her dress. She set it on the bed and flipped it open. There was a white dress, leotards, shoes and veil inside.
“You no need nursing, no,” said Nursie, her enormous lips blurred with lurid red lipstick. “De Prime he say you special girl.” The woman looked Dawn over. She shook her massive head and a light shower of powder rained down. Her carefully waxed eyebrows lurched out of sight under the dirty blonde bang.
“No, little chienne.” Nursie laid a thick-nailed hand on Dawn’s head and ruffled the curly hair. “De Doctor hem say no. Hem say, this one, I no touch…” Nursie brought her face in close. Her sour damp breath made the forever
