Clarke fed, eating around the alcohol-soaked pieces.
Ryland’s office was located in a nondescript storage building. At least that’s how it appeared on the outside. Inside was one of the most heavily fortified and upscale structures on the base. Passing through its weathered metal door, the young man who had an appointment was surprised to find himself in what looked like an office lobby. The soldier at the metal detector waved him forward. “Cervantes?”
Nodding, the olive-skinned man stepped through the security checkpoint. The soldier spent several silent minutes reviewing Cervantes’ paperwork; he didn’t scrutinize the forms, just stared at them. Stalling. Finally, another soldier entered the lobby from the back with an automatic swinging brazenly in his right hand. “Go with him,” the first soldier muttered, and handed over the papers.
They moved briskly down a quiet corridor, where the soldier rapped on the door marked ADMINISTRATIVE LIAISON. A murmur from inside, then Cervantes entered the office alone.
“I apologize for the cloak-and-dagger bullshit,” was the first thing Nathan Ryland said. Blowing the steam off a cup of coffee, he motioned to a chair on the other side of his desk. He was a stout man in a crisp suit, its soft colors masking the pallor of his tired flesh. “Whenever I bring an appointee onto the base, the brass are especially skeptical. Even the fact that you’re military doesn’t help. They consider you to be my man, cut from the same cloth as me. Just the same,” Ryland smiled, “once you’re out there among the rotters, you make fast friends.”
Ryland liked to read people by making them nervous. Cervantes knew that the moment he came in. The nonchalant gestures, the thin-lipped smile. Eyes like cold marble, though. This little back-and-forth that Ryland did with newcomers, it was just pretext, the sort of behavior expected from men in black. For all this, Cervantes only went into the man’s consciousness for a fraction of a second, and even then, barely dipped his toes in the water. But Ryland knew.
“So, Cervantes, tell me about myself.” He folded his meaty hands on the desk. “Why did I appoint you to this post?”
“You believe I can use my telepathy with the afterdead.”
“We discussed that at Fort Leavenworth. Tell me something that I haven’t said.”
“I prefer not to dig that deep into someone else’s head. Sir.”
“That must take remarkable discipline.” Ryland replied. “Most with your ability don’t make it half as far as you did. I understand that refining one’s own subconscious can be… distressing?” Cervantes only nodded.
“Now then, speak from your own intuition. What do you think you can do here?”
“I know there’s little sense in reading their thought processes — they seek only self-preservation. There’s no motive or intent that isn’t visible on the surface. There’s no community dynamic. They barely acknowledge one another. But they acknowledge the living.”
“And you’ve been able to affect the perception of others so that they don’t see you. Creating a perpetual blind spot.”
“Yes — but only for myself, and only against minds of limited function,” Cervantes replied.
Ryland nodded along. “That’s all we need. See, there are certain areas of the base that are inaccessible, places with high concentrations of afterdead. I’d like to get into these areas and see what they’re doing without disrupting them. Commander St. John doesn’t agree — but I usually get the last word when it comes to government property.”
“You mean the base?”
“I mean the zombies.”
Ryland tapped his keyboard for a few minutes. “We have a soldier named Grimm who’s been living out in the field, in one of the houses in those mock-up suburbs. He’s been sending back a lot of interesting observations about the dead around there. At least he was. It’s been two days since we heard from him. Some grunts drove by the house and didn’t see anything, but the congestion was too great to risk getting out of the truck.”
“You don’t think he’s dead?” Cervantes asked.
Ryland shook his head. “And even if he was, we’d have to verify it and pull out the remains. What I need you to do is get into that house without disturbing the dead. Can you?”
That had been the question. Cervantes still wasn’t entirely sure of the answer, even as he was jostled along in a Humvee on the base’s quiet streets. The descending sun turned the afterdead up ahead into opaque silhouettes. The driver, a Corporal Bradshaw, slowed the Hummer to a stop. “I see a couple dozen at least,” he muttered. “That’s Grimm’s house on the right-hand corner. I have to let you out here.”
Cervantes nodded. For some reason, he expected a few personal words of encouragement, maybe a clap on the back… nothing. Bradshaw dropped into reverse and looked at him. Cervantes got out.
He slipped a pair of headphones over his ears, fingering the Walkman in his jacket pocket. White noise crept into his ears, and he cleared his mind, watching the afterdead shuffle about in the street. He reached out to them. Their minds were like hollowed-out gourds, with only tendrils of primitive activity, each easy to manipulate. The hunger was extraordinary. For a moment, Cervantes felt saliva building in his mouth; he shook the hunger off and dug into the subconscious of each rotter in his view. Already shambling towards him was a male in a butcher’s apron. Underneath was a simple boiler suit, but the apron — caked with solid layers of gore, heavy on the afterdead’s shoulders — gave him character. Yet inside each unique mind Cervantes felt the same emptiness. He blotted himself out of their sight, their smell, their hearing. The Butcher stopped in his approach. After a moment, he reversed direction, returning to the horde.
The duplex in which Sergeant Grimm made his home was noticeably different from the rest. The sod had been pulled up and replaced with a generous layer of loam. In the moist clay were planted several large flowers. Each blossom had thick, flesh-toned petals surrounding its red stigma. Cervantes briefly had the impression in his mind of a woman’s flayed sex spread before him; then he was assailed by the smell. Jesus! Worse than that of the rotters at his back was the noxious odor from the plants. He recognized them now as stapelia gigantea, carrion flowers — the odor lured foul insects to ensure pollination. Maybe, he thought, it kept the zombies from smelling Grimm, too.
He tried the front door. Locked. A newly installed lock, at that. Eyeing the undead, Cervantes rapped sharply. “Sergeant!” A couple of them turned at the sound, but were unable to pinpoint its source. They trod aimlessly through the loam. He knocked again, harder. He could try and reach out to Grimm, but it might mean giving himself away outside. Not worth it, he decided, and headed around back. There was a window slightly ajar; easing it upward, he hoisted himself into a hallway. The air in the house was moist, earthy. Cervantes traced his fingertips along the wall, and they came away stained with mold. He advanced, and almost as soon as reached the end of the hall the smell of feces struck his nostrils.
“Never could get the plumbing working,” a voice said from a dark corner, as if reading his mind. “Want a drink?” Cervantes’ eyes adjusted to the lack of light. The man slouched against the wall was haggard, unshaven, malnourished. His uniform was draped over bony shoulders like a tablecloth. Didn’t they feed him…?
Grimm pushed a box of wine from between his legs. “I don’t know you,” he croaked.
“I’m the new guy.” Cervantes lowered himself to eye level with the man. They had feared for Grimm’s safety, but it appeared that his sanity had wasted away long before the flesh. Grimm used his thumb to wipe out the contents of a plastic cup and tilted the box’s spigot over it.