EYEHEARTZOMBIES

God be for us, Silas thought. The drizzle that had sputtered the fires all night long had finally turned to a steady rain that would mask their progress through the trees. Cypher had given him a good lead on their direction and distance before they had set out. Someone had awoken Jonas, who was bringing up the rear guard. It was a small party, just some ten men picking their way over ferns and around prickly pines. Blum, the rookie, was clutching his rifle with white-knuckled hands next to Silas. Pity they that be again’ us.

The “fence” was four miles outside of camp all around. An invisible perimeter guard made up, equally, of men with night-vision goggles and lifeless robotic sentries that Cypher and his fellow hackers had found or liberated from Republic storehouses. The ‘bots perched in trees and inside of shrubs. Cypher had retrofitted flexible tubes with cameras in the end to their sensors, so thin snakes lolled and coiled through the vegetation, watching the countryside for any movement larger than a hair or wolf.

The approaching group, probably just five or so scouts, was less than two miles from camp by now. The direction they seemed to be taking would have led them straight into Mile-High City. Would have if the Legion hadn’t been camped in their way. Silas strained his senses, eyes and ears burning for anything out of the ordinary. He could hear the rustle of wet cloth, the stamp of boots on leaves and mud, a slight jingle from a gun strap or a loose backpack. All coming from his men. The other group couldn’t possibly be far away now, though.

A branch snapped above head and fell crashing through thinner layers, finally rumbling to the ground. Silas heard Blum suck in air and he put a hand to the young soldier’s chest. A shape had jumped in the darkness and several curses had slipped into the night. Silas reached into the pack on his hip and pulled out a hand-sized tin. He hissed three times, two long with a short between, and he heard the men around him putting smoked goggles into place. A pulled pin and a toss into the woods was quickly followed by a glowing sun in the middle of the night.

The flash from the grenade revealed a group of soldiers reeling back, their hands over their faces trying to block the light, seemingly frozen in the middle of falling lines of rain. Silas started counting quickly before the light faded. He was sure of seven soldiers, but thought he might have missed one or two. He yanked his goggles down to hang around his neck when the flashbang had died to the power of half-moonlight.

Hefting his rifle, Silas let out a yell and charged through the woods towards the still-blinded group. He could just make out Blum beside him in the gloom. The rookie screamed a moment later, mustering his courage for the charge. The stunned soldiers weren’t so out of it that they didn’t notice an attack. They hauled their energy rifles and pistols out of where they had been stashed and started looking for a target.

Rain pattered off of the black body armor that Silas wore on his legs. His chest was bare, but painted with black tar, the white skin glowing slightly. The rest of his group was all in black or dark grey as well, helping them blend in with the forest they were now stampeding through. His finger squeezed in on the trigger and bullets flew ahead of him, seeking chinks in his enemy’s armor.

The camouflage only worked until the two groups slammed into each other. Silas saw Blum and Jonas both take down soldiers with the butts of their guns, slamming the stocks into their helmets with slick crunches. The two soldiers crumpled to the mossy ground and didn’t move except for effortless twitches. Blum went down with his, but Jonas kept his feet. Silas grinned as he bore down on his target, the one that had been in the front of the group. He wanted stripes tonight.

“Grrayh!” The scream was a predatory explosion and he was on his prey. Silas clawed at the soldier and knocked his gun to the ground. The Republican grunted and swung at Silas, catching him across the cheekbone. The night erupted into swelling stars and pain. The soldier swung again and took the air from Silas’ lungs.

Silas gasped and choked. The Light-spawned bastard had caught him by surprise. The son of a whore swung an elbow down into Silas’ back and a knee into his ribcage. Silas tumbled to the ground, a fresh bit of choking making his eyes tear up. The soldier fell on top of him, rolling him over and pinning his shoulders to the ground with his knees. Silas’ eyes stung from the rain falling through the trees.

“Sneak up on us, huh?” The voice came out flat and modulated through the soldier’s helmet. Unearthly. “We’ll show you what comes of devil worship and blindsiding the soldiers of God.” He reached behind his back and drew out a pistol. Silas saw the glow start when the soldier flicked a switch. The gun started to power up and Silas started to panic.

He couldn’t move his arms or shoulders, the bastard weighed too much. His hands skittered around on the forest floor, looking for something, anything. He briefly wondered if anyone was going to see him die. And wondered just where the Light they all were. His hands touched warm plastic and a grin broke his lips. The whine from the pistol was reaching it’s apex and he could see the fervent look in his captor’s eyes.

Aiming more with feel and prayer than anything else, Silas pointed the gun at the soldiers back and pulled the trigger. A crimson bolt shot past the soldier’s head and crashed into a tree overhead. The soldier jerked and was off-balance for a split second. Just long enough for Silas to rock with him and throw him to his hands and knees. And long enough to get out from under him. Silas grinned a vicious smile and reached behind his back.

The smoke-blackened blade slid sickly out of its sheath. The soldier pushed himself up to his feet just as Silas darted forward, knife held in front of him. It slid just as easily into the soldier’s stomach. He grunted. Blood slid out between his lips, coating the clear plexiglass on the front of his helmet. “God waits for you,” Silas whispered to him, the forest now silent again. “With the Devil waiting by his side.”

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There wasn’t any more talk after the storm that night. Jonas had stepped out of the tent and watched Joseph edge his way to the flaps. He stood safely inside the canvas wall that held in the light and his freedom. The dark of the night, even interrupted by bolts of lightning and the few burning fires in the camp was too oppressive and foreign to him still. Jonas saw him slowly extend a hand and touch the darkness outside of the glowing triangle coming from the held-open flaps. The hand, lily white and trembling, felt of this darkness, this erotic blasphemy, for the space of three seconds, maybe five, then quickly withdrew, falling to his side again to rest against his leg. The fingers and palm were welcomed back into the fold of the light, and the Light.

The lightning and thunder led the way into the camp and the deluge followed just minutes behind. Joseph waved at Jonas when the quick, heavy drops began to fall, and called something into a thunderclap. Jonas didn’t catch the words, but he didn’t care. The rain would come hard and quick in just a few moments and he didn’t want to be caught in it. He wondered for a second if the boy would turn rabbit and run, then remembered the trembling hand from a few seconds ago. This one is cemented to us ’til morning at least, he thought. He waved a hand in return and took off at a jog toward his own tent. The jog quickly became a run, the rain chasing him back to his cramped den.

Even at a run, he ended up soaked. He stripped down to his long cotton underwear and hung the dripping shirt and trousers over his small wood stove. The drips and drops turned to steam and soon the tent was as humid as any sauna. The rain outside just added to it and it soon felt like it was raining inside, too. Jonas sighed and lay down on his cot, his underwear and skin damp but warming in the steamy room. What was he going to do about this boy?

He couldn’t send him away — he was too useful for information at this point. Could he really risk taking him into his flock? Would the boy risk his life for the other men? That was all that Jonas asked from his men: to be ready to die for each other, if needs be. He wasn’t so sure this one could live up to that agreement. And could I stand to lose Silas — or Cypher — or any of the others that he had come to know and love in his years of soldiering and leadership — for this runaway, lost man-child from the Light?

It wasn’t a question he wanted to try and answer to himself tonight. Not with the roof pressing down on him like a soaked rag. He sat up on his cot and reached across the tent to where his footlocker was. He rustled around inside, not really looking at what his hand was brushing against and moving out of the way, until his fingers curled around a familiar slick shape of metal and glass.

He pulled the framed picture out of the footlocker and let the top fall back down with a clang of wood on wood. He had no idea who the people in the image were; he had found it in an abandoned house in Kansas City. It had been sitting on a mantle in the house in an area that had been called the “suburbs”. A man smiled at him from the colorful paper behind the slightly cracked glass pane. Next to the man was a woman — his wife? — and between them, two children, both girls. Even though the family was white, and he black, he always thought of them as himself and his own family. He had a wife that he hadn’t seen in five years back in Detroit. She was taking care of their daughters — two of them, just like the picture — as best she could. Her mother was helping, if the old woman hadn’t died yet, so he was sure she was getting by just fine; his wife was a stone, a sturdy tree. She provided stability, care, and, above all else, an unending supply of herself. He wondered how his girls were doing? If they remembered their father’s face?

Tears pooled in his eyes and slowly rolled down his sweaty face. He loved the Legion, he loved the army, but he loved his wife and children more. His tour would be up in another three years. Maybe then he could go home, get a normal job, and take care of his family. If he survived until then, that was. The battles since Kansas City — Tulsa and Amarillo — had been vicious. He had lost a lot of men, both good and bad, and had had several close calls with his own neck. That sword in Tulsa; the grenade and land mine in Amarillo. Too many, too close together. One more reason to hold on the boy, he thought. Keep him a guest and I have the Devil by the toe if a fight comes.

Jonas moved to put the picture back in the footlocker, then decided against it and set it down on the cracked paint of the locker, folding out the velvet stand with his large fingers. He turned back around and lay down in his cot again, knees pulled up in a fetal position; odd for such a large man, he figured, but the Devil take ‘em if anyone cared. He looked at the family in the picture, their smiles barely faded even though the picture could be decades old. The two girls watched over him as he drifted off to sleep, the rain still plopping down above his head. A few drops wormed through the tent canvas and streaked their way down the picture, tracing a wet finger around the faces preserved there.

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The light inside the tent made Jonas’ eyes water after the deepening darkness of the night outside. Must be done for the boy, he thought. Damned Lightspawn and their fear of the natural way. Eh, after the tales of the Dark Nights than his Gran had told him, he didn’t much fault them for it. Those were the nightmares and frights of children all through the Legion. Reason enough to stay inside, under the covers, with a lamp burning and a good book if you could. Pushing down an urge to look over his shoulder, to make sure no Dark Nights boogeyman was lurking behind him, Jonas stepped all the way into the tent. This one was taller than his own. He could stand up straight in it without his head brushing canvas. Two men sat at a small wooden table in the middle of the tent, flanking a much smaller man between them. That’ll be the boy, Jonas realized, still thinking of him as a child.

The tabletop was covered with candles, all burning brightly, spitting as they encountered unincorporated pockets of fat, adding a hissing sound to a room already filled with buzzing steam from a kettle on a small wood-burning stove in the back of the tent. The crackle of wood provided more than just noise and heat for the water; its molten glow added to the ambient light of the room, chasing persistent shadows out of the far back corners. An oil-burning lamp hung from the ceiling over the table, and two others sat on boxes near the front of the tent. The heat and the light were almost unbearable.

Jonas approached the table and cleared his throat. The young man looked up at him and his eyes widened. The boy had a small frame. His white skin seemed to grow paler, more translucent, as his green eyes widened at the sight of this gigantic black man standing before him. His mouth slowly opened an inch or two, and Jonas could hear the air pop and catch in his throat. “Don’t be worried, son, I’m no more trouble than the teddy bear you carried at your mother’s breast.” Jonas’ voice was low and deep. He hoped it would calm the boy.

The two guards both stood up and saluted Jonas. He returned it and they motioned to a fourth chair at the table. He pulled it out and sat down, his rear and back happy to be on something a little more firm than his canvas chair or sagging cot. He rested his elbows on the table and looked at the “spy”.

“So, I hear as you’ve been lost from the Light. That true?” The boy’s face quirked funny and he looked like he was about to cry. “What is it, boy? That not the true of the matter?” The boy still sat where he was, hands in his lap and his shoulders slumped. Either he was stupid or scared. Jonas’ voice took on a softer air. “Come on, son. We can’t help you if you don’t level with us. Where you kicked out? Did you do something wrong and get put out to be taken by the beasts?” He didn’t dare ask the question that was on all the minds of those in his camp that knew about the boy. Are you a spy? Did you come here to doom us? No, he didn’t dare ask that of this child before him.

The boy looked up, a slight fire in his eyes. Ah, some spirit after all, Jonas thought. The boy swallowed, then said, “No, I wasn’t kicked out. I’m not a criminal. I believe the Light as true as I follow the Light-Bringer.” His mouth closed with a slight snap and his eyes fell back to the flickering flames. “Could — could we get any more light in here. It’s still so dark.”

Jonas glanced at the two men, both wide-eyed with the idea of more light and more heat in this small space, especially with four bodies adding to the humidity. “Can you get by with how it is, son? I do believe we’d be might pressed to fit one more glowing lamp in this tent. Aside from the fact that I do believe we’d all pass right out from the heat and that wouldn’t get no talkin’ done, and that’s what we’re hear for.” The boy thought for a second, then nodded.

Lightning flashed outside, quickly followed by a clap of thunder. The boy jumped in his chair at the sound and shook for a few seconds. He’s never been out here before. Jonas realized just how scared the boy must be. He couldn’t imagine having to live in one of those Cities; it couldn’t be any better suddenly being outside of one. “It’s just thunder, it can’t hurt you.” That didn’t seem to help. Maybe get his mind off of where he is…or, rather, where he isn’t. “What’s your name, son?”

The boys eyes were still wide from the thunder, but his mouth seemed to work just fine. “By the grace of the Light, I’m Joseph DL429,” he said. DL429? What the hell was that? Jonas didn’t let his lack of understanding show, or did as best he could, at least.

“‘DL429,’ huh? How ’bout you tell us what that means?” He tried to smile and look as safe as he could, but he couldn’t read anything deeper than fear on the boy. The two guards both looked very interested in this bit of information, too. No one really knew much about the inner workings of the Cities, or even of the Republic as a whole. They kept people and secrets equally well.

“Well, the ‘DL’ is my job: Data Logistics. I make sure that news and other updates make sense. The government wants to make sure everyone understands everything. The only way people can be happy and productive is if they know and understand everything that goes on.”

“You make the news make sense, huh? OK, well, what’s the ‘429′ bit, then?” Jonas wasn’t sure he believed the “know and understand” bit, but maybe things were more transparent on the inside. He didn’t much care to find out firsthand, though.

“That’s where I live,” the boy continued. “I live on the fourth floor down, and the twenty-ninth ring out.”

“Can you draw, son? I’m not real good at coming up with these pictures in my head unless I see ‘em first hand or drawed out. Can you help me with that?” Jonas motioned to one of guards and the man got up and fetched a piece of yellowed paper and a thick, flat pencil from a small desk on the side of the room.

“I can try,” the boy said. He picked up the pencil and held it clenched in his fist like a dagger. He stabbed the tip down on the page and started to draw circles, each larger than the last. He drew thirty of them, total, then began to divide each into three sections. When he was finished, he put the pencil down on the table and stared at Jonas. “Does that help?”

Jonas slid the paper over to him and looked at it a bit more carefully. It was smudged in places from the boy’s hand and arm rubbing across the loose graphite, but he could get the idea of the ‘429′ location. “Why are the rings all divided? What does that mean, Joseph?”

The look on the boy’s face said only one thing: How do you not know this? He answered, though. “On most of the rings, the two large areas are dormitories. The smaller area is a public space, like for cafeterias or motion picture screens, or computers for playing games.” He waved his hands around to illustrate each concept, but the movements were lost on Jonas. So were many of the terms. Motion pictures? Computers playing games? He nodded, though, not wanting to appear stupid.

“And what about the other floors, Joseph? What’s on them?”

The boy looked confused for a second, then said, “I don’t know.”

“Why don’t you know? Haven’t you lived here all of your life?” The last question came out harder than Jonas had intended it, but it was out there already. He wished, not for the first time, that words came on strings that you could pull back into your mouth.

“I’ve never been on those floors,” the boy said. “I have no business there. And, yes, I have lived there all my life. Well, until yesterday, that is.” He dropped his gaze to the candles on the tabletop again and shuddered slightly.

“We won’t bring that up right yet, then, if it bothers you so.” He studied the boy over the flickering towers of wax and fire. He had dark hair to go with his green eyes. He was dressed in clothes from a Legion footlocker; his own had been too wet, muddy, and shredded to be worth anything as covering anymore. Jonas knew they had been taken to the camp doctor to be looked over and analyzed. There was absolutely nothing spectacular about the boy. Why would the Republic send him out? Maybe they didn’t, Jonas answered himself. He’d wait until the boy wanted to talk about it, though. No sense pressuring him and risking the chance of breaking him securing whether their future or their doom was in the mix.

“No, I don’t mind talking about it,” the boy said. His eyes had that fire in them again as he looked over the candles into Jonas’ eyes. “In fact, I want to.”

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