Updike pressed the broad heel of his left hand to his left eye. Immediately following his speech, a hot stiletto of pain had begun slowly inserting itself through the pupil, driving toward his brain. For the better part of an hour it probed and pried-digging for the center of his being. Before it found its mark, he was able to pass it off as the result of too many days of travel and stress. Since the Angelic argument had ended so long ago, he seldom got headaches, and was unconcerned about this one, until an hour had passed and the burning needle sunk home. The pain came on him like a possession-memories disappeared, sensation blurred, numbed and winked out. He started a desperate search for painkillers.
Luckily, the army counted a division of the living among their number, so the dead medics had added various analgesics to their kits.
The bulk of the meds resembled hardware supplies. Treating injuries of the dead was relatively simple. A broken bone was glued and screw-nailed back together, a chest wound required some fiberglass and resin. But the alienation felt by the dead was not exclusively theirs. For years, disaffected living converts had joined the cause. Good intentions, sympathy for the dead and their care may have provoked many of the living to join. But word of the Apocalypse held incendiary meaning to some. Many wanted to join the ranks of the dead for the final battle-literally.
Sparks flared across his vision in the offending eye when he pushed against it. The technique caused a minor cessation of the pain, and created a synaptic disorientation that took his mind off of the worst of it. The painkillers he’d taken had done little for his discomfort.
Stoneworthy could tell that something was wrong, but he respectfully accepted Updike’s assurances that the minor annoyance would soon pass. So the dead minister spent his time moving among the troops, spreading the word, keeping the faith firm. The difficulty of their goal could not diminish its glory. Updike had walked with him for the first four hours of the march, but the pain had forced him to climb into one of the dozens of jeeps that his forces had acquired.
The army consisted of infantry, for the most part and was spread out over several miles. They had managed to find, and scrounge a large number of trucks and other off road vehicles to carry supplies and armament. Many of the antiques predated the Change, but were constructed before the computer age and so could be fixed with wrenches and solder. He had discussed the difficulties of moving such a large force on foot, but his military commanders were not concerned. Their pragmatism said that the availability of fuel would have been a problem-so eliminate the dependence before it begins. As it was, with the four hundred or so trucks and vehicles, they would have enough difficulty.
Moving an army of some 150,000 on transports would consume the available supply of fuel in a day. Fuel became scarcer with every mile you traveled from the City of Light. Besides, they joked, his army was dead on their feet already, and wouldn’t be tired out by the march. Updike had been around the military mind enough to know its inner workings. Such black humor was a way of making sane men accept insane things.
He had climbed into the jeep that carried General Bolton. The soldier claimed he had been killed during the dead uprising of ‘11. His battalion then was sent in by the failing U.S. government to quiet a loosely organized rebellion of the dead. Some four thousand of them had run amok in Old Chicago after the local city council had erected its umpteenth “dead only” sign. Like many among the living in those days, Bolton had underestimated the strength and determination of the walking corpses.
Bolton had laughed. “Jesus did we get it bad. Turns out that dead men do dry out, yes. Given time. But not all dead men come apart easy. See, it was still the early days and lots we didn’t know. If a dead man soaks himself in oil or some other preservative, well, his skin and muscle turns as tough as rawhide. And are they strong! My group ran into about fifty of these chaps in a blind alley. They butchered us. I must have been in Blacktime when the truck ran over me.”
Despite his constant exposure to the dead, Updike’s first meeting with the dead general was distracting. Most of the man’s hair was gone and the skull was crisscrossed with rawhide stitches, reminding the preacher of a baseball. His entire skeleton was severely damaged because his face turned on a left incline of some forty-five degrees and his right shoulder and arm was eight inches lower than the left.
“I don’t hold a grudge though,” General Bolton had said swelling with pride. “It was the same guys who cut me up that put me back together.”
The General rode in the back of the jeep beside Updike, studying a laminated topographical map. Occasionally he would grumble to himself and jot a note in a pad. Bolton smelled of shoe polish. Many of the dead soldiers drank it, claiming it had revivifying properties. Updike suspected it just kept the body tissues from drying out. Bolton’s lips and teeth were black because of the habit.
The preacher pressed on his throbbing eye-sparks flew across his memory. With his free hand he dropped two tablets in his mouth and swallowed them with a drink from his canteen. He retreated from his headache into the past twenty-four hours. It was a whirlwind of activity: packing up, preparing the long march, planning the route, and assigning officers. With food and water required for only a small percentage of the force, the army was able to get underway without delay. Always Updike was impressed by Stoneworthy. The dead minister was charged with the light of Heaven, never pausing, moving tirelessly among the dead army encouraging and helping.
He was a great support after Updike’s call to Mayor Barnstable. The preacher had pressed the mayor for compliance. He was committed to razing the City, but he was still a man of God and feared the death his army would cause if the City ignored the Divine edict.
Barnstable had said, “Captain Updike. A warrant has been issued for your arrest. The City of Light does not negotiate with terrorists. I am authorized to tell you that any action by your followers, overt or otherwise would be considered an act of war. The Westprime Defense Forces are on high alert and await orders. You have twenty-four hours to turn yourself in to Central Authority.”
Updike had reached out to his first recovery for support. Updike loved Oliver Purdue deeply, and had come to respect him like no other. Like many of the dead, Oliver had looked into his former life and found the doors closed. But instead of sinking into despair, Purdue had determined to make his death a new beginning. He didn’t speak about his past and Updike didn’t press him. The result was that Oliver was a mystery. Updike had often mused that were he not crazy, he would find the dead man’s dark eyes a terrifying thing to look upon. Instead, Oliver’s charity and compassion buoyed him up.
Updike remembered passing through a small town late that morning. It was deserted as most were. The preacher gave the order to call a halt a mile past the town in a small forest of dead maples. Stoneworthy had approached him with obvious reluctance in his thin-legged stride, and asked why they wouldn’t stop in the town. It had started raining, and many buildings there were sound enough to provide protection from the elements.
“My friend,” Updike had said. “Did you see the arena as we passed? It is a structure of steel and aluminum. The type of building designed by the soulless architects at the end of the Millennium before the Change.”
“Yes,” Stoneworthy had said. “Between that, and others I saw, we could easily take shelter as we rest. There are the living troops to think about, and some of our people need to apply oils and treatments to their bodies.”
“I know,” Updike had sighed. “But there is a greater erosion that I fear those buildings will bring, far worse than any rain. It is an erosion that our cause cannot afford.
“Passing through the town was bad enough. Just passing through I’m sure has taken a toll. I would have avoided it all together, except that the farmland around it has turned to swamp in the decades of rain. What do you think we will find if we make our camp in the arena, or in the city hall?” Stoneworthy had shrugged, his face a mask of perplexity. “We will find remains. Not of the town’s inhabitants, not bodies no. Those would have risen and walked away or been dragged off by animals. No. We would have found the remains of a world that is gone.
“Imagine the foyer of the arena. Would there not be pictures of hockey players and of figure skaters? And would they not be the fresh sweet faces of children? There would be trophies, and plaques and awards-with names engraved, names of teams and of children, and long ago dates: Fastest Sprinter, 1988.” Updike watched Stoneworthy’s face smooth over with understanding. “I would not wish this army to see that. I would not want their purpose darkened with loss or revenge. We must have an army of righteousness to serve our God-to serve His Apocalypse. We cannot have an army of despair.”
The jeep took a sudden lunge and jerk to the left, jarring Updike out of his reverie by banging his head against the roll bar. Pain lit fire in his mind, but the painkillers must have been working for it quickly dulled. He hoped he had been entirely truthful with the minister. Updike had given him the logical, tactical argument, but he wondered if he truly doubted the faith of his troops so much. These people had handled more than that. They had died and returned to an existence of numbness. And still they had faith.
The gray noon sky lit up on the southern horizon like a sunrise.
“Jumping Jesus!” Bolton shrieked, moving stiffly forward in his seat. “Driver, get Lorenzo on the radio. Try to raise Carstairs.” General Lorenzo was leading the southernmost contingent of the army of dead. Carstairs led the southwestern arm. The driver fumbled with the jeep’s handset. He shouted a few things into it, turned the knobs-twisted dials-static and electric noise.
“Sorry, General! Interference.”
Updike knew that things had just taken a drastic turn but the pain in his head kept him from realizing its full impact. He retreated from the ache by thinking back to the town they had passed. He remembered seeing something in the coarse tangle of grasses by the faded remnants of a picket fence. Lying on its back-bleached corpse white by eternal rain and time, a chubby little arm and shoulder, beside it the round and pitted head of a plastic doll.