Chapter Nine

Lined up in rows the prisoners filed into the small amphitheater at the center of the refinery and plunked themselves down on the hard ground. The prisoners were seated in the round, leaving only a narrow aisle down to an impromptu stage. There were no seats or benches, just a conical depression with a wide metal drain in its center. An enamel bath tub stood near the drain, full of what looked like clean water, clearly part of the pageant about to unfurl. Would the Tsarevich come out and baptise each of them, maybe wash their feet?

Ayaan scanned the faces of her fellow captives, looking for something—not anger, no, it was the wrong time for that. She was looking for intelligence, resolve, will. She was looking for people who could help her escape. As she studied the middle-aged women and young boys and old men and veteran soldiers with poorly-treated wounds she found little to inspire her. Most of the gathered people looked a little scared, a lot confused, with maybe a trace of hope dashed in for measure.

It was that last, the hope, that made her despair. It looked like the others had been treated to the same act she got—the kindly guide leading them on a tour of what must look like a paradise on earth. To many of these people the idea of a safe place where the dead were kept at bay and where there was a little something to eat had long ago faded from possibility. They had been hiding, hiding for years in fallout shelters or hardened public buildings, eating when and what they could, resorting to whatever it took to stay alive—Ayaan knew that many of them could tell her what human flesh tasted like. They had been cold and hungry and alone for over a decade. When the Tsarevich’s troops dug them up out of their holes it must have felt like inevitable doom descending. What little fight or spark of anger left to them had been shaken out on the long, horrible journey in the cages. Now they were brought to this safe, clean place and told lies about apple trees. Their brains no longer knew how to process bullshit.

In other words the Tsarevich had them right where he wanted them. The show he provided was a master stroke and even Ayaan had to admit its brilliance.

There were no light displays, no music. Just a man shuffling down the aisle, his body wrapped in a shapeless burlap robe. He moved slowly, deliberately, and Ayaan wondered what was wrong with him. He took his time and showed no response to the inquisitive calls of the audience. When he reached the center and stepped onto the drain every eye was focused on him though no word had yet been spoken.

After a pregnant pause the man lifted shaking hands to his head and twitched back the cowl that had obscured his features. The audience screamed or gasped or recoiled in horror—it was a ghoul standing before them. The flesh of his face had been eaten away, either literally or just eroded by time. His eyeballs were huge and staring, his nose nothing more than a dark cavity in the middle of his head. His cracked yellow teeth curved into something approaching a smile. And then he began to cough. Long, painful paroxysms as air flooded into his motionless lungs. When it came back out of him it sounded like words.

This dead man could talk.

“My... name is... Kolya...” he creaked. His eyes rolled around the audience, trying to make eye contact. They were very blue. “Kolenka,” he stuttered out, “Kolenka Timofeovich Lavachenko. I was... mechanic for... agriculture implementation... in Ukraine farms... I repair and oil combines and, and tractors... now I serve him... in life eternal. Is real.”

A puppet. Ayaan knew that the dead man wasn’t speaking of his own volition, that the Tsarevich had to be somewhere nearby, controlling this corpse, pushing air down its throat, plucking its vocal cords like the strings of a guitar. Gary had done something similar years prior. He’d made a crowd of dead people speak with one voice, one outpouring of hatred. She frowned, thinking this was in very poor taste, and looked around the audience again.

They were enrapt. Leaning forward, propping their faces in their hands, their eyes were wide. Some of their mouths had fallen open.

“Soul is... still in body, after our death. Is remains. As you can... see.”

A woman wearing a headcloth and a peasant dress broke down in tears, the scant moisture running down the canyons of her wrinkled face. A boy near her covered his mouth with one hand and looked around. When his eyes met Ayaan’s she read there what was going on.

Hope. The bastard Tsarevich had given them all just a little bit of hope. Enough that they could let themselves believe. He was offering them a solution to the central problem of the age, and they, by the looks of them, were seriously considering buying in.

“I live... forever... I feel no pain. You see this, is real. You serve... him too and reward... is yours. For everlasting. You will see.” The dead man raised his bony arms to beckon to them, to beg them to come into the fold. To live forever with no pain.

“Blasphemy!”

Ayaan spun around and saw one of the prisoners had risen to his feet. A big Turkish man with a mole on his chin and a mustache so thick and bristly it looked like he’d glued horse hair to his face. He had a tiny book in his hand, a leather-bound book with gilt edges that had to be a Koran. “Blasphemy!” he shrieked again. He was speaking broken Russian, just like the animated corpse. “God made man in his image, this is to mock the Creator!”

A pair of living men carrying rifles came running down the aisle and grabbed at the Turk, hitting him savagely in the face. They couldn’t stop him from shouting even as they dragged him down toward the stage, toward the bath tub standing near the drain.

“‘Allah is the Guardian, and He gives life to the dead, and He has power over all things!’ Allah! Not this imposter wizard!”

He ducked under the arm of one of the guards, still shouting chapter and verse, and shoved the dead man across the stage. The ghoul didn’t even look confused, he just stood there with his arms out and open wide.

“Here, listen, all of you, to the word of the Prophet: ... Most certainly I will bid them so that they shall alter Allah's creation; and whoever takes the Shaitan for a guardian rather than Allah he indeed shall suffer a manifest loss!”

The guards seized the Turk again, each of them getting an arm and dragging them behind his back. The Koran fell to the drain, its pages askew. Without any preamble the guards frog-marched the Turk over to the bath tub and shoved his face down into the clear water.

Ayaan hugged herself. If she protested or rebelled now she knew she would simply join him down there where foaming water was already slopping into the drain. The Turk kicked wildly and fought his captors but he couldn’t breathe water like a fish. His spasmodic movements grew disorganized, then weak, then stopped altogether. Ayaan saw the efficiency in this method of execution. The Turk’s body was preserved largely intact with no bullet holes or broken bones. The guards released him once he stopped writhing and slowly, painfully, he got to his feet. His eyes were bloodshot and water streamed from his mustache, slicked it down across his mouth.

There was silence in the amphitheater as he looked down, studied his hands. As his body shuddered and water fell from him. He didn’t move for a very long time.

He stepped forward, clearly dead, and looked out across the crowd, making eye contact. He opened his mouth and vomited out a great quantity of water into the drain. Then, choking on the words just a little, he began to speak.

“I am called Emre Destan. I... was a baker... in Turkiye, in Tarsus. Now I... I serve the Tsarevich. I serve him in eternal life.”

Ayaan looked at the spectators again but to her surprise she saw there was no change. They still wanted to believe—they still did believe. The bath tub, the sudden execution, hadn’t changed their minds at all. Why would it? That was the way their world worked. But here there was more, a suggestion, a promise that they could live, that they could survive in their own bodies. That they could meet this new world in their old flesh and still be spared.

The first ghoul, the Ukrainian, smiled warmly for the audience. “Is real... you see,” he said again, and again.