My world was a few score houses and a scrap of planted field. Beyond that lay only the forest-the place where the nasties roamed in the night. We had none of your technological advances but we knew things you’ve forgotten. Aye, true things-valuable things. We knew our place in the landscape. We knew what it meant to be part of something larger than ourselves.
When I woke here I was blind. Parts of me were missing. I didn’t understand the language of my captors nor why they would shut me up in a tiny glass coffin. I only knew my sacrifice had failed-they don’t work, you know, if you survive. It took me months before I opened myself to theeididh and finally understood. I had served one purpose in life. I would serve another in death.
I had become the nasty in the night.
Which brings us up to date, my boy, and to the time when I turn things around and ask you a question. I’ve work to do and you’d be a great help.
“Work? What kind?”
Ah, well. I’m going to butcher all the survivors.The Druid’s voice had taken on a melancholy weariness Gary could barely stand to have echoing in his head. This was not a task that he wanted, definitely not anything he’d asked for. It was a duty. Gary got all that from the Druid’s tone of voice.I spoke to you about judgment, well. I am the instrument of that judgment. I’m here to make it happen.
“Jesus. You’re talking about genocide.”
He shrugged.I’m talking about what we are. I’m talking about why we were brought back with brains in our head-to finish what’s begun. Now, lad.
Are you in or out?
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Twelve
Jack, the ex-military survivor with the blank nametag lead us down a long hallway lit only sporadically by light streaming down from gratings set into the ceiling. On the other side of those grates were thousands of undead and the light in the tunnel constantly changed as they wandered the sidewalks above us, their shadows occluding the sun. For someone who lived here, like Jack, the walk might not have been so unnerving. After a minute of it there was icy sweat pooling in the small of my back. I felt a little better about it whenever Ayaan would spot a dead man walking overhead and lift her rifle in a spasmodic reflex. Once one of the dead dropped to the ground and stared in at us through the grating, his fingernails scratching at the metal. I could feel the wiry tension in Ayaan’s body even though I was standing three feet away. It was all she could do not to fire off a shot, even though it would most likely ricochet off the grate and hit one of us.
We were rats in a cage. The dead had us trapped.
Finally just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore the hallway ended in a wide aperture. Beyond was open space and some light. As we came around the corner I could hardly believe my eyes. The concourse of the subway station looked almost the same as I remembered it-almost. The white pillars made of girders were there, still holding up the low ceiling. The walls were still lined with advertising posters behind thin plastic scratched with endless graffiti.
There were still too many people in the low space but they weren’t moving. Normally this station would have been crowded with great surging tides of humanity moving from one platform to another. Now the people sat on the floor in groups of five or six on a blanket or lounged against the walls, refusing to meet our gaze. Their clothes were brilliantly colored or expertly cut or lined with thousands of dollars worth of fur but their faces were sunken and pale. Their eyes showed nothing but the exhausted boredom that comes from living in fear. I’d seen that look everywhere in Africa.
I looked up at the ceiling and saw something surprising. “You have electricity,” I said. A few scattered fluorescent tubes sputtered up there. Most were dark or the fixtures were bare but enough light was generated to see our surroundings. “I thought the power was out.”
“There’s a hydrogen fuel cell system. It got put in after the blackout in 2003, when people got stuck down here in the dark. It was only meant for emergency use but we’ve nursed it along.”
“How long have you been down here?” I asked. It had not occurred to me before. “Since the evacuation?”