The interior was almost bare. There had been feeble attempts to decorate: a generic print of an elk in the woods hung on the wall. The leather couch had two end tables covered in magazines. Clarke pushed aside the top magazine, a year-old issue of Newsweek. The one below it, and all the ones below that, were porn.
As expected, Whittaker had an impressive gun collection in the bedroom. Some of them were modified arms from the base, illegal to have in the home. Clarke opened the glass doors of the gun case and began pulling weapons out, setting them on the bed for further scrutiny. Opening the closet, he kicked aside a few pairs of jeans lying on the floor and found Whittaker’s Army fatigues neatly folded. Knowing Whittaker’s fondness for his days in combat, he wasn’t surprised to see the uniform in pristine condition. It would be a bit loose on Clarke’s frame but that didn’t matter. He pulled it on over his soiled clothes.
There was a pickup truck in the garage, and for that Clarke also had a key. He pulled out with a satchel of weapons beside him in the passenger seat. A memory was stirred in the recesses of his mind… nearly a decade before, when he’d been a young officer and had just been brought onto the afterdead project.
The first corpse that the government had resurrected was an unpleasant character named Louis Brownlee. In life he had been locked away in a federal prison for fatally shooting two DEA agents during a bust. Small-time hood made notorious by capping a couple of undercover agents. A chain smoker, cancer had claimed him early during his double-life sentence. Brownlee’s body had quietly been shipped to the Louisiana base and seeded in the swamp. The URC infused his tissue, and a group of soldiers watched in horror as he rose from the muck and fixed yellow eyes on their warm living flesh.
The military were eager to explore the possible applications of the undead. Could Brownlee be made to obey the living? Could he fight? Could he infect? Clarke sat in smoky rooms, with celebrated generals and Defense Department officials yelling at each other, as the afterdead began to appear less and less useful. Finally, Brownlee was placed under restraints and brought into one of the meetings. The officials stared blankly at him. He returned the look. A colonel named Richard St. John took a long drag off his cigarette and met the creature’s gaze without fear. Brownlee’s withered lips opened and closed, a weak sound emanating from his throat. “What is it saying? What does it want?” A man asked. Standing up, St. John approached Brownlee. “His file said he was a smoker.” And he placed his cigarette in the zombie’s mouth.
The stiff, pained stature of the afterdead relaxed. Brownlee leaned his head back and exhaled. He was still addicted.
Not long after that, Clarke and a small team were flown to a facility in Puerto Rico, Brownlee brought along in chains. The secret prison there housed a few terrorism suspects, and these prisoners were strong. They didn’t talk under burning lights, they didn’t weep in the face of brutal torture or even sexual humiliation. A religious fervor possessed them and made them more than men, at least in their own minds.
Clarke wheeled Brownlee into an interrogation room on a dolly. An Arab, sitting in a lone chair, narrowed his eyes.
The CIA interrogator was leaning against the rear wall. He spoke in English. “Salim, this gentleman is here to make sure you answer my questions.” Clarke released the straps holding Brownlee down, and the afterdead stepped into the middle of the room. Clarke stood away from him and held up a carton of cigarettes. “Play nice, Brownlee.”
The next hour was a nightmare. Clarke fought to stand still and watch, his knees knocking. Even the interrogator was shaken by the end of it; he could barely issue the order for Brownlee to finally kill Salim. Together they rushed from the room and let the zombie feed in peace. And on closed-circuit monitors in another room, the remaining prisoners watched in terror. They were much more compliant after that.
Brownlee’s addiction to nicotine seemed to be the only leverage that his handlers had. After devouring a captor, he would sit on the floor in a pool of gore and light cig after cig, staining them red with his fingers and lips. He allowed himself to be chained and flown around the world, always with Clarke holding a fresh carton before him. Over time, they noticed that he seemed to become healthier if he ate frequently. His eyes almost began to look human again. Unnerved, they cut back his food supply.
Brownlee’s last assignment took him to Arlington, Virginia, and the interrogation of a CIA officer accused of selling intelligence. Clarke tapped Brownlee’s chest with a carton. “You know what to do.” Brownlee nodded slowly and entered the room where the officer was waiting. They gave him twenty minutes, then went in.
He was only supposed to have bitten off a few fingers, eaten them in front of the subject and sat quietly. But the subject was headless, all four walls covered in her blood. Brownlee tugged strings of muscle from the stump of her neck and stuffed them into his mouth. Clarke drew on him. “Get away from her,” he snapped, trying to mask his fear. Brownlee looked up at him, reached out a crimson claw for the pack of cigs. “Smoke?”
Clarke dropped his gun and pissed himself. Other team members swept past him to lash chains around the afterdead, who sat calmly, his eyes never leaving Clarke’s. They brought him to his feet and pushed him toward the door. His rancid breath was hot on Clarke’s face as he said “I’m a good dog,” in his guttural monotone.
He was never seen again after that. The government discontinued that particular program.
Clarke thought about the role he’d played before his murder. He had been a good dog too. So had Whittaker and Bradshaw. Now it was time to learn who their master was.
5 / The Man Comes Around
He lay quietly and stared upward into nothingness. His legs jostled a bit, as did his sidearms. In his mind he saw a rough schematic of Fort Armstrong’s layout. He’d been on the road for several hours now, not breathing, not smelling the faint decay of his skin nor the freshness of Whittaker’s borrowed fatigues. A bit of plastic was pulled tight across the tip of his nose; he was wrapped in a transparent body bag inside a steel coffin, and the only little bit of light afforded him was from the fracture he’d made in the lid’s lock sometime during the journey.
It was ice cold. Hours had gone by, how many he couldn’t say. He didn’t daydream, nor did look ahead to the tasks that awaited him. This was the idle mind of a dead man.
Most questions had been answered. Ahead was only the goal of self-preservation, self-preservation assured by the execution of his executioner. The endgame lay with he who had turned Whittaker and Bradshaw against him. Clarke still had some of Whittaker’s gristle in his molars. He didn’t wonder what Bradshaw would taste like (right turn, slowing down — Armstrong’s west security gate), nor did he yearn for the man’s dark meat. There would be no particular satisfaction in killing Bradshaw, the one who had slit open his satchel and spilled his manhood onto the dirt. Bradshaw had also shot him through the heart, whispering some apologetic sentiment that Clarke couldn’t recall. He couldn’t recall the words, but was keenly aware of the bullet’s location in his meat. It festered there and corrupted the other meat around it, though Clarke had no use for that anyway (truck coming to a stop — coffins jostling slightly).
There was talk outside. Clarke wondered if he might be recognized; not that they bothered to identify each corpse that came into Armstrong, but he was a former team member. Shouldn’t he have a nice little plot in Arlington, they’d ask? Or maybe it’s better this way, they might say, that he takes his secret knowledge back to its secret grave.