The Dead

And God?”

“But who’s doing the torturing besides God?” Steve asked.

“Maybe Legion. LEGION RULES it said.”

“Linda,” Gary broke in, “I wish I had a buck for every conclusion you’ve jumped to in the past couple of days,”

Steve nudged him. “Where would you spend ‘em?”

“Steve,” Sally said, “I don’t want to stay here. That stink…”

“I have smelled better,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Gary added. “Maybe we could find someplace el-” He broke off, suddenly aware of a ragged chugging from outside the church.

“I’ll take a look,” he said, and went to the door, to peer cautiously through the archway.

Down the street crawled a smoking U-Haul truck. Passing the church, it pulled into the parking lot, vanishing from Gary’s sight behind the corner of the building. The engine cut off, but not before dieseling thumpingly for a few seconds.

Gary’s first thought was to summon the others and take off, keeping the church between them and the dead. But just to make sure, he looked back down the street; some distance away, on the north side of the road, a stand of skeletal trees was alive with striding shadows. Emerging from the seared wood, the corpses began to gather silently on the roadway, scores of them, marshaled by a gigantic figure.

Steve came up. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Gary motioned him to look for himself.

“Shit,” Steve said. “How the hell can we get out of here? Maybe the windows-”

“No,” Gary said. “That truck parked in the lot next to us…”

“What about slipping out the back?”

“There’s a big open field back there. The ones on the road would spot us.”

“Time to hide,” Steve said.

Gary nodded.

Collecting Linda and Sally, they moved to the back of the church. Finding a door that led to a stairwell, they went down into a musty stone cellar, partially filled with folded chairs and tables.

Gary went to a window. The curtains were open partway, but he didn’t look out through the gap, going instead to one side of the casement and slowly pushing the fabric there an inch or two aside.

Outside, five corpses were unloading bodies from the back of the truck. Others held a gagged man and woman, both very much alive.

“Steve,” Gary hissed, “watch the ones on the road.”

Steve positioned himself at a window opposite Gary’s. “They’re just standing there,” he whispered.

Gary looked back at the truck. The dead had a dozen inert bodies laid out on the grass before long. A bloated cadaver in a business suit walked up and down, inspecting the bodies, a roll of barbed wire over one arm. It bent beside two, apparently whispering in their ears. Then it signaled its assistants, and the pair was dragged aside and propped up against the truck.

The prisoners were brought forward, shaking their heads madly, struggling with their captors. But their efforts were futile. Using the barbed wire, the bloated corpse and the others fastened them to the bodies that had been selected, then knocked them to the ground atop the still-motionless cadavers.

“Steve,” Gary whispered. “What’s happening over there?”

“Nothing-wait. They’re coming up the road. Must be fifty of them.”

Gary looked back through his window. Eyes wide, demented with fright, the man and woman wrestled and fought, seemingly oblivious to the barbs digging into their flesh. The living dead hunkered down nearby, relishing their panicked exertions, grinning, gloating.

“The ones on the road,” Steve called softly. “They’re passing the church now…”

Moments later, the corpses on Gary’s side looked up from their prisoners. Rising to their feet shrieking, they turned to flee-an instant before a mob of dead, led by the giant, overran them and flung them to the ground.

“Steve?” Gary whispered, “is it clear over there? Can we get out?”

“No,” Steve answered. “A bunch stopped on the road. They’d spot us.”

“Shit,” Gary said.

Outside, the corpses that had been thrown to the grass were bound with chains; then the giant, a pale, fiercely-grinning lich in a state trooper’s uniform, doused them with gas from a Jerri can.

Not really a trooper at all, Gary thought. Yet what then was he? Had Buddy meant the giant?

The trooper flicked lit matches onto the corpses he’d splashed, torching one after another. Gary wondered what they were being punished for-conducting their own executions, or trying to gather their own army?

He looked back at the people who had been tied to the bodies. The corpse beneath the woman had revived, broken the wires binding it; it had one hand locked in her hair, holding her head still as it licked her face, apparently trying to worm its tongue between her eyelids. Its other hand was on her neck, pumping slowly, clenching and unclenching as if to prolong her strangulation.

The corpse beneath the man hadn’t awakened. Staring blankly, its intended victim seemed to have lost his mind. Foamy drool hung from his mouth, dropping onto the corpse. His legs flopped languidly, as if in slow motion-

Out of the corner of his eye, Gary noticed a figure making for his window.

The giant.

Gary thought of crouching-but if he suddenly let go of the curtain, it would move. There was a chance he’d been spotted already-but they were finished anyway then.

“Steve!” he called. “Get down!”

As the trooper drew nearer, Gary gradually let the fabric slip from under his hand. Stiff and thick, it barely stirred. The crack closed a scant half inch.

He crouched and glanced across the basement. Steve was nowhere to be seen-Gary guessed he was hiding behind that stack of folding-tables.

Gary looked to his left; there were Sally and Linda, kneeling on the linoleum floor. Gary flattened himself against the wall, holding his breath, gripping his H &K.

A shadow from the window fell across the floor in front of him, a bulky figure bending down. Gary could feel a coldness at the back of his neck; whether it was just fear, or the corpse’s frigid presence radiating through the stone, he didn’t know.

The shadow moved, the cold going with it. Gary followed it with his eyes as it passed window after window to the right. For a moment it disappeared. Gary started to relax, to straighten, thinking he might look outside again.

Suddenly the shadow was at his window once more. The cold returned, spattered over him like a blast of sleet. He slid downward, pulse thudding in his temples, heart throbbing.

The shadow remained there for what seemed an eternity. The head moved slowly, side to side. The cold intensified steadily. Gary’s jaw began to tremble.

He heard tapping against the window above; then came an uncanny sensation of something brushing across his mind.

Are you there? whispered a voice in his head. Gary, are you there?

He fought an insane urge to answer the question, to end the suspense, to whirl and cut loose with his gun, to stop the cat and mouse and go down fighting, to let them have him once and for all…

The shadow vanished. The cold dissipated.

He can’t have you yet, Gary told himself. Where that certainty came from, he didn’t know-but he was just as inexplicably certain that that didn’t matter. Somehow, even though the thing had used his name, it hadn’t known he was there.

He took several deep breaths, pressed a hand to his aching temple. Gradually he rose. The gap between curtain and casement was still open; he chanced a look.

There were no corpses nearby now. They were watching the burning bodies, or the last feeble throes of the