The world went away.
Darger, meanwhile, had rented a megatherium, complete with howdah and zombie mahout, and ridden it to the endless rows of zombie barns, pens, and feeding sheds at the edge of town. There, Master Bones showed him the chest-high troughs that were filled with swill every morning and evening, and the rows of tin spoons the sad creatures used to feed themselves. “When each of my pretties has fed, the spoon is set aside to be washed and sterilized before it is used again,” Master Bones said. “Every precaution is taken to ensure they do not pass diseases from one to another.”
“Commendably humane, sir. To say nothing of its being good business practice.”
“You understand me well.” They passed outside, where a pair of zombies, one male and the other female, both in exceptional condition and perfectly matched in height and color of hair and skin, waited with umbrellas. As they strolled to the pens, the two walked a pace behind them, shading them from the sun. “Tell me, Mr. Darger. What do you suppose the ratio of zombies to citizens is in New Orleans?”
Darger considered. “About even?”
“There are six zombies for every fully functioning human in the city. It seems a smaller number since most are employed as field hands and the like and so are rarely seen in the streets. But I could flood the city with them, should I wish.”
“Why on earth should you?”
Rather than answer the question, Master Bones said, “You have something I want.”
“I fancy I know what it is. But I assure you that no amount of money could buy from me what is by definition a greater amount of money. So we have nothing to discuss.”
“Oh, I believe that we do.” Master Bones indicated the nearest of the pens, in which stood a bull of prodigious size and obvious strength. It was darkly colored with pale laddering along its spine, and its horns were long and sharp. “This is a Eurasian aurochs, the ancestor of our modern domestic cattle. It went extinct in seventeenth-century Poland and was resurrected less than a hundred years ago. Because of its ferocity, it is impractical as a meat animal, but I keep a small breeding herd for export to the Republic of Baja and other Mexican states where bullfighting remains popular. Bastardo here is a particularly bellicose example of his kind.
“Now consider the contents of the adjoining pen.” The pen was over-crammed with zombie laborers and reeked to high heaven. The zombies stood motionless, staring at nothing. “They don’t look very strong, do they? Individually, they’re not. But there is strength in numbers.” Going to the fence, Master Bones slapped a zombie on the shoulder and said, “Open the gate between your pen and the next.”
Then, when the gate was opened, Master Bones made his hands into a megaphone and shouted, “Everyone! Kill the aurochs. Now.”
With neither enthusiasm nor reluctance, the human contents of one pen flowed into the next, converging upon the great beast. With an angry bellow, Bastardo trampled several under its hooves. The others kept coming. His head dipped to impale a body on its horns, then rose to fling a slash of red and a freshly made corpse in the air. Still the zombies kept coming.
That strong head fell and rose, again and again. More bodies flew. But now there were zombies clinging to the bull’s back and flanks and legs, hindering its movements. A note of fear entered the beast’s great voice. By now, there were bodies heaped on top of bodies on top of his, enough that his legs buckled under their weight. Fists hammered at his sides and hands wrenched at his horns. He struggled upward, almost rose, and then fell beneath the crushing sea of bodies.
Master Bones began giggling when the aurochs went down for the first time. His mirth grew greater and his eyes filled with tears of laughter and once or twice he snorted, so tremendous was his amusement at the spectacle.
A high-pitched squeal of pain went up from the aurochs … and then all was silence, save for the sound of fists pounding upon the beast’s carcass.
Wiping his tears away on his sleeve, Master Bones raised his voice again: “Very good. Well done. Thank you. Stop. Return to your pen. Yes, that’s right.” He turned his back on the bloodied carcass and the several bodies of zombies that lay motionless on the dirt, and said to Darger, “I believe in being direct. Give me the money and the girl by this time tomorrow or you and your partner will be as extinct as the aurochs ever was. There is no power as terrifying as that of a mob—and I control the greatest mob there ever was.”
“Sir!” Darger said. “The necessary equipment has not yet arrived from the Socialist Utopia of Minneapolis! There is no way I can …”
“Then I’ll give you four days to think it over.” A leering smile split the zombie master’s pasty face. “While you’re deciding, I will leave you with these two zombies to use as you wish. They will do anything you tell them to. They are capable of following quite complex orders, though they do not consciously understand them.” To the zombies, he said, “You have heard this man’s voice. Obey him. But if he tries to leave New Orleans, kill him. Will you do that?”
“If he leaves … kill … him.”
“Yasss.”
Something was wrong.
Something was wrong, but Surplus could not put his finger on exactly what it was. He couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts were all in a jumble and he could not find words with which to order them. It was as if he had forgotten how to think. Meanwhile, his body moved without his particularly willing it to do so. It did not occur to him that it should behave otherwise. Still, he knew that something was wrong.
The sun set, the sun rose. It made no difference to him.
His body labored systematically, cutting sugarcane with a machete. This work it performed without his involvement, steadily and continuously. Blisters arose on the pads of his paws, swelled, and popped. He did not care. Someone had told him to work and so he had and so he would until the time came to stop. All the world was a fog to him, but his arms knew to swing and his legs to carry him forward to the next plant.
Nevertheless, the sensation of wrongness endured. Surplus felt stunned, the way an ox that had just been poleaxed might feel, or the sole survivor of some overwhelming catastrophe. Something terrible had happened, and it was imperative that he do something about it.
If only he knew what.
A trumpet sounded in the distance, and without fuss all about him the other laborers ceased their work. As did he. Without hurry he joined their chill company in the slow trek back to the feeding sheds.
Perhaps he slept, perhaps he did not. Morning came and Surplus was jostled to the feeding trough where he swallowed ten spoonsful of swill, as a zombie overseer directed him. Along with many others, he was given a machete and walked to the fields. There he was put to work again.
Hours passed.
There was a clop-clopping of hooves and the creaking of wagon wheels, and a buckboard drawn by a brace of pygmy mastodons pulled up alongside Surplus. He kept working. Somebody leaped down from the wagon and wrested the machete from his hand. “Open your mouth,” a voice said.
He had been told by … somebody … not to obey the orders of any strangers. But this voice sounded familiar, though he could not have said why. Slowly his mouth opened. Something was placed within it. “Now shut and swallow.”
His mouth did so.
His vision swam and he almost fell. Deep, deep within his mind, a spark of light blossomed. It was a glowing ember amid the ashes of a dead fire. But it grew and brightened, larger and more, until it felt like the sun rising within him. The external world came into focus, and with it the awareness that he, Surplus, had an identity distinct from the rest of existence. He realized first that his throat itched and the inside of his mouth was as parched and dry as the Sahara. Then that somebody he knew stood before him. Finally, that this person was his friend and colleague Aubrey Darger.