Chapter Four

The helicopter set down in the middle of the camp near Port Said, five kilometers away from where Ayaan had died. Osman put it down gently between its twin and the third, smaller aircraft that had broken down a year before and was kept now only for spare parts. Sarah took the rifles from the women who’d made it out and checked their safeties, then loaded them back into the weapons rack. As the official mascot of Ayaan’s squad it fell on her to do all the heavy lifting, even though she lacked the muscle mass of the soldiers. It was also her job to clean the blood out of the cargo bay with a hose and a pump with a foot pedal but she couldn’t even fathom how she would do that. She couldn’t begin to think of what she was going to do next. She jumped down from the helicopter’s deck and felt the hard heavy lump of her weapon in her pocket. She took out the flat Makarov PM and released the magazine from the grip and let the slide move forward until it locked in the open position. Checking to make sure there was no round in the chamber she put the magazine in one pocket and the pistol in the other. She did all this without the slightest thought, just as she’d done it hundreds of times before. Ayaan had taught her to practice, to do it fast, to do it the same way every time. Ayaan...

Sarah had no idea what to do next.

Ayaan was gone. Dead—Ayaan was dead. She might be wandering out in the desert that very moment, mindless, hungry, unfeeling. Or maybe the fast ghouls had devoured her entirely. Dead. Either way... either way there was no one left to tell her what to do. She couldn’t remember another time like that. If she thought back far enough she could remember her father’s shirt, the smell of his sweat as he held her against his chest. She could remember him running, moving, she could remember her mother not being with them anymore.

After that every memory she had revolved around Ayaan. She ran her hands over her cropped hair, scratched at her scalp with her nails. She didn’t know what to do.

“Hey, help me with this,” Osman said.

She wheeled around and saw him crouched down by the ruined fuel pod on the side of the aircraft. He looked up at her with an expression of such concern and compassion that she wondered if it was actually pity that he felt. Her cheeks burned and she moved quickly to help him disassemble the pod, unbolting it from the airframe with a socket wrench. She caught the webbing between her thumb and index finger in the rough metal and pain lanced up her arm. It cleared her mind out in a hurry.

“I’m hungry, do you want something? I have a can of stewed tomatoes I’ve been saving for a rainy day.” Osman didn’t look at her this time, which was almost worse. “Listen, little girl, we’re alive, and that counts for something, that’s an achievement in a world like this.” His arm slipped around her shoulders and she started to shove him away, then relented. After a moment she turned into him, pressed her body against his in an actual embrace. Osman had been in her life as long as she could remember. If Ayaan had been like a big sister to her, Osman had been her uncle. It was good to smell the kif smoke that cured his frayed jacket, good to feel his body heat. “We’ll get by,” he told her, “just as we always have. God and his Prophet must not want us so badly if he let us live this long, right?”

She nodded and broke away from him. He went to get his tomatoes but as it worked out she didn’t have a chance to share in his feast. An eight year old boy dressed in a pair of shorts and flip-flops came running in, out of breath, to tell her Fathia wanted her up at the perimeter wire. She went right away.

The boy lead her through the open-air souk of the encampment, a close space of stalls lined with broken cinderblocks where the elderly sorted through cans looking for signs of botulism or corruption. Alma, one of the women from Ayaan’s unit, was washing her face in a pan full of sandy water from the communal well as Sarah hurried by. She looked up and then looked away again as if to pretend she hadn’t seen Sarah at all.

There was no time to figure out what that meant. Sarah hurried down a long “street” lined on both sides with semi-permanent tent homes. At the far end she found Fathia under a moth-eaten awning, leaning over a map of the surrounding territory. Other soldiers lay on the ground nearby in the shade of the palisade wall, trying to get some rest.

The boy who had brought Sarah to the new commander crawled under the map table and dug his fingers into the loose dirt. His eyes were very moist—had he been crying?

“I’m in command now, of course. I have some work to do before I can take the girls out again, though. I’ve got to rebuild the unit with half the soldiers I used to have,” Fathia said, as if she wanted Sarah’s input. Sarah knew she did not. “That’s alright, we’ll be faster. Smarter. I can’t see a use for you in that structure so I’m restricting you to camp duties,” Fathia said, rinsing her mouth out with non-potable water and spitting on the ground. “I hope that will be acceptable.”

She shoved her hands in her pockets. “Actually… Ayaan always felt I should be out in the field, that that was where my talent was really useful.” Sarah’s stomach rumbled with a bad presentiment. If she couldn’t go out with the soldiers, her usefulness to Fathia would be distinctly curtailed. In the Egyptian encampment one rule had always held: the most useful people ate first. Those who couldn’t do anything valuable, those who were seen as dead weight, went hungry.

She looked again at the boy under the table. She could count his ribs, but his belly stuck out like a swollen gourd. Had he been crying? It could help with the pangs of hunger. She remembered how it helped. He would have earned a bite of jelly, maybe, for running Fathia's message. He probably begged for the chance.

Fathia clucked her tongue and Sarah looked back at the soldier hurriedly, embarrassed she had broken eye contact even for a moment. “Hmm. Yes, Ayaan did say that. Of course,” Fathia said, “Ayaan is no longer here to make those kind of decisions. I hope you won’t have trouble accepting my orders. I know that obedience isn’t your strength.”

The only thing worse than being dead weight was being insubordinate. “No, ma’am, that’ll be no problem. You’re the boss.”

“I suppose I am,” Fathia said, looking up in mock surprise. “Well, let’s put your… talent to some real use. I need warm bodies to stand extra watch tonight. That mixed group of dead and living we saw could be here as early as midnight. Let’s put those magic eyes to use.”

It meant staying up all night, mercilessly pinching her legs every time she started to nod off. It meant being up in the wind and the sand and spitting out dust for days afterward. She didn’t complain. It meant she wouldn’t be dead weight, at least not for that day.

If she didn’t get to sleep that night at least she wasn’t alone. As the sun sank over the western desert the camp was lit up with oil lamps and sporadic electric lights. The fuel for both was precious and it was never burnt just because someone had trouble sleeping. Both helicopters were kept on stand-by, Osman and the other pilots being allowed to sleep in their cockpits, while armed soldiers patrolled the streets of the encampment looking for anything out of order. They shouted gossip back and forth—nothings, empty statements, assurances that all was as it should be. The need for that affirmation hung in the air like a seagull flying into a breeze.

The camp wanted to know what happened next. Even those who could no longer lift a rifle or thrust a bayonet had to know, had to get the news. Were they all about to die? Would they be overrun that night? For twelve years each of them had somehow managed to stay alive while the darkness crowded with monsters waiting to take them apart. They had survived even when they knew that so many others had died, they had survived. They could only wait and ask themselves if this was the night that changed. Up in her observation post, a bare platform of wooden planking high in a dead palm tree, Sarah could only watch the horizon and wonder herself. Always before when she’d stood watch up in the air like that she’d felt pretty safe. The dead didn’t climb trees and the occasional ghoul who tried to attack the camp would never get through the palisade of barbed wire. Now they were facing living opponents armed with rifles, however. She was a sitting duck up there, only the dark color of her hooded sweatshirt protecting her from snipers. Maybe that was why Fathia wanted her up there. She knew that Fathia didn’t trust her because of her ability to see the energy of the dead. She knew the soldiers spoke about her behind her back, talked about how spooky she was. Now that Ayaan wasn’t around to protect her did they want to put her in harm’s way, did they want to kill her off?

The thought kept her alert most of the night, though she never saw any sign of the marching army. She got to the point of expecting them, of hoping they would come just to end her watch. They didn’t come. The encampment must not have been their target. Just before dawn she dozed a little, her eyelids fluttering up and down, her chin jerking spasmodically every time she nearly but not quite fell asleep. Nothing had happened. Nothing was going to happen.

In that half-awake state her esoteric senses were at their strongest. She dreamed of the dark flicker of energy beyond the wire before she saw it. When she saw it adrenaline blasted through her veins and she nearly fell out of her perch.

It wasn’t an army. It was just one ghoul. Still, she reached for the whistle around her neck. The slaughter on the dunes had started with just one ghoul attacking her. Maybe there were more nearby. Maybe hundreds of them. She couldn’t feel them, couldn’t sense their energy, but—

The single ghoul below her came to a lurching stop and looked up, right at her. It raised one hand to its mouth, placed a rotting finger against its lips. Asking her for silence. Then, with its other hand, it beckoned to her. Slowly, it turned around and headed back out into the darkness.

Shit, Sarah thought.

She had been summoned. She couldn’t imagine worse timing.