He’d spent so much time trying just to survive. He’d made himself a dead freak because it seemed like the only way forward. He’d tried to befriend Dekalb to get himself out of a bad situation. Yet what was he existing for? Simply keeping on had seemed like a good enough motivation before but now-if he did nothing with this second chance he’d been given, had he deserved it in the first place?
He didn’t believe any of this crap about judgment and retribution. But maybe there were other reasons for signing on. Revenge, for one. Destroying all humans included killing Ayaan, and Dekalb too. The fuckers hadn’t listened to him-they’d just shot him like a dog, not even giving him a chance.
Then there was the hunger in Gary’s belly, a wild animal in there kicking at the walls in thwarted need.
Working for Mael he’d get plenty of fresh meat.
“How are you going to start?” Gary asked, timidly.
Mael stood framed by the open doors of the Met, the sunlight streaming around his leathery flesh.I’ve begun already, he said, and stepped out into the day. Gary followed and found uncountable eyes staring right at him.
The entirety of Fifth Avenue was clogged with the dead. Their bodies filled the space like a forest of human limbs. In clothes dulled of color by dirt and time, with hair torn or matted or falling out they became a single entity, a featureless mass. White, black, Latino, male, female, decrepit skeletons and freshly slaughtered corpses. Thousands of them. Slaver dripped from their sagging jaws. Their yellow eyes turned in terrifying concert to look upon the Druid. They awaited his command. Mael had assembled an army-he must have been calling them the whole time Gary was asking his questions and miring himself in moral dilemmas.
Gary had never imagined so many of them together in one place-it seemed impossible, as if the world couldn’t support so much weight. Their silence made them sphinxes, unknowable, implacable. No force could stand against them.
For the first time Gary wondered if Mael could actually pull it off. There were so many more dead people than living ones. The few survivors had stayed alive by out-thinking their opponents but if the undead were organized-if one person could lead them, well…
Mael raised the sword and pointed and the dead surged as a mob up and down the street, splitting as they streamed around the sides of the museum and into Central Park. The sound of their feet pounding the flagstones was like a war drum beating out a savage tattoo. Mael and the mummies fell in behind the throng and Gary caught up with them as they passed a statuary group of three bears modelled in bronze. Gary had seen the sculpture before but had always thought it had something to do with a children’s story. It looked like a totem now, an emblem of a conquering force.
For good or for evil, Gary, I do what I am meant for. It doesn’t matter what we choose. It simply matters what weare.
Though Mael stood only a few feet away Gary was surprised by the sudden entrance of the thoughts into his mind. In the rhythm of the marching dead he expected all words to be swallowed up.
Instead they seemed to echo. For good or for evil: two sides of the same duty. I used to fight to save lives, Gary had told the survivor Paul. Now I take them away.
The mud of the park boiled under the tramping feet of the dead, jumping up in great clods that Gary had to stumble through. They came to a great open space devoid of trees-it must have been the Great Lawn, once-and the dead spread out, forming a wide circular clearing in their midst, an open patch where Mael stood with the mummies. The Druid turned around a few times and finally scratched a mark in the soil with his sword. He gestured at the dead all around him and they went into action. From a distance Gary heard a great rumbling crash and a column of dust rose above the branches of the denuded trees to the south. A bomb must have gone off or a gas main exploded or-Gary had no idea what it was.
“What’s happening?” Gary asked.