Chapter Five

In the dark Sarah lay in bed and tried not to look across the room. Not more than four feet away, sitting in a chair because he did not sleep, was a corpse. A walking corpse, a hungry, dead, ex-human being with broken nails and ruptured skin and a face stretched as tight as a mask across his skull. The feeling had started to slide over her like a cold wet blanket at dinner the night before. He had sat apart. He had put people off their food. She had realized, while she gnawed on a stalk of celery, that he disgusted her, too. That this particular corpse was her father made less difference than she might have hoped. He was dreadful in appearance. Lesions filed every crease of his skin. Fluid had pooled in one half of his body and left dark patterns of bruising down one arm, one cheek. His eyes had sunk into his skull, his nose had shrunk down to little more than a scrap of leather. Even just by moonlight it was hard to look at him and not feel her skin crawl.

Dekalb stood up against the light coming in the window. He tapped at Gary’s skull with a finger no thicker than a pencil. In silhouette he looked terribly thin. More like a stick figure than a man. The terror drained out of her, little by little. It was her father, she told herself, it was the man who used to hug her and feed her pieces of carrot out of a plastic bag and who would carry her canteen for her when it got too heavy.

It was also a dead thing, a withered, sad thing. Just like Jackie had been, the little boy she had helped bury.

Too many thoughts. She rolled over and pretended to be sleeping.

Sarah wondered if everyone went through this. At a certain age did everyone look at their father, that being who had once been so tall and strong, and see just a frail old man? Of course very few people would ever see their fathers like this.

Too many thoughts. She couldn’t sleep. She took Gary’s tooth from her back pocket and looked across the room at the crab-legged thing on top of the dresser. The skull had a full set of teeth, both top and bottom. The tooth in her hand was an incisor but he wasn’t missing any. He must have regrown the tooth the mummy had pulled out of his head. Instead of shuddering at the thought she curled her hand around the tooth and made contact.

Why, look who’s dropped by for another chat. The skullbug didn’t move or react in any way. It looked preternaturally like a sleeping cat basking in a ray of moonlight. In her head Gary sounded a lot more excited.

“Let’s get one thing clear,” Sarah told him, the words staying in her throat so her father wouldn't hear. “If you try any of that paralysis bullshit again I will personally take you out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and drop you in. Dad might subconsciously heal you but I don’t think he can teach you how to swim.”

I can’t tell you how scared I am.

Sarah glared at the skull. “I already have the boat.”

And I have something you need, or we wouldn’t be talking. You can threaten me all you like, Sarah, but you can’t do anything about it.

He was baiting her. He wanted her to get angry. He wanted her to kick him or throw him against the wall or say something cruel. Why? Maybe even that level of human contact would be something he wanted. Or maybe he just enjoyed winding her up.

She didn't have the energy to try to figure it out.

“It’s about Mael Mag Och. The guy I thought was called Jack.”

Ah. The old bastard. Yes, I knew him well. Did you want just general information or did you have a specific question?

“Why did he lie to me?” she demanded. She had tried to find out for herself, earlier, by going to the horse's mouth. Time and again she had grasped the hilt of the green sword. Mael Mag Och never answered. When she’d asked her father about that he’d said the old Celt must be screening his calls. Then Dekalb had been forced to explain to her what that meant. “He won’t talk to me now. For years though he came to me. He taught me things, gave me advice. Why? Why was it so important that I think he was Jack?”

He probably chose Jack’s name as someone you would have heard of, somebody you could be expected to trust, Gary told her. His voice was surprisingly soft and kindly. He was never the kind of person who could tell you simple facts. He came on like a nice guy and frankly, I still believe he has a good heart. But he has some pretty crazy ideas about who we are and why the world had to end. If he doesn’t want to talk to you then count yourself lucky.

“I guess he fooled you, too, huh?” Sarah asked.

For a while. Then I ate his brain. Of course, that says more about me than him.

Sarah shook with horror.

He’s insane. I can tell you that much for free, short cake. He told me once his god sent him back from death so that he could oversee the extinction of the human race. He didn't strike me as the kind who would give up on a commandment from a god.

Chills ran down Sarah's back. Extinction...? Was that what he wanted? Why had he helped her, then? What kind of game was he playing behind her back? It had to be something else.

Whatever he asks you, whatever he asks from you. Don’t give it to him.

“Thanks for the advice.” Sarah put the tooth back in her pocket and rolled over again. She could hear her father moving around on the hardwood floor. He didn’t sound like a human being. His footsteps weren’t loud or strong enough.

Too many thoughts.

In the morning white sunlight marched up the sheets and eventually hit her in the face. Sarah wrinkled her nose but eventually she had to give in. She sat up in bed and saw her father sitting in the chair across the room. He had a book in his hands.

“There was a time when I was too weak even to read,” he told her, his mouth curved into something wistful, something approaching a smile but never quite reaching it. He was so much less horrible, less, well, disgusting when he talked. He had her father’s voice and that made all the difference. Grateful, she sat up and listened attentively. “That was before I figured out I could take energy from the ghouls like a sort of vampire. I’ve had a hard time of it, kiddo.”

“I’m... sorry, Dad,” she said, and put her feet down on the floor. Her shoes were lined up next to the bed, in case she had to get up for an emergency in the middle of the night. Ayaan had taught her that, not her father. She slipped into them effortlessly.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of what you’ve accomplished. It’s not easy moving around the world these days, I should know. I came to New York back when all the ghouls were still here. I’m a little peeved with Ayaan. She said she would take care of you.”

Sarah looked down at the floor. Her head was too fuzzy to process much. “Actually, that’s kind of something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” She stood up and shivered. Her sweatshirt was in the laundry, leaving her with just a tank top. It was cold in the bed room—no central heating anymore. Wrapping her arms around her she tried to look him in the eye, like an adult. “She’s... dead. She got captured by the Tsarevich and... I’ve been following her, trying to save her but I waited too long, I could have, I could have stopped it, somehow, if I had taken the fight to them, if I hadn’t been so cautious but now she’s undead and. And. And. I have to sanitize her now. I have to save her from being one of those... things.” She stopped herself. She had been about to say that she needed to save Ayaan from being a lich. He might take that the wrong way.

He stared at her unblinking. She couldn’t remember if he still had eyelids or not.

“Okay, that came out all wrong. Can I start again?” she asked.

“No need,” he told her. His head tilted backward and his eyes clouded over and she wondered if he was having the ghoulish equivalent of a stroke. Then he went to the dresser and touched the green sword. “So you were trying to rescue Ayaan. I see. It didn’t work out. You can’t blame yourself for that. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It’s... not?” Sarah asked. She wondered what that he could know that she didn’t.

“Ayaan was a devout Moslem. She hated the idea of ever becoming ritually unclean,” Dekalb said, fiddling with the sword. He was too weak to actually pick it up and brandish it. “But she was also fiercely practical. I don’t think she would like the idea of anyone going out of their way to mop up after her. Especially not if it meant putting you in danger.”

That didn’t matter, Sarah thought. It wasn’t a question of what anybody wanted. It was a question of duty. She went to say it out loud... and couldn’t.

She left him, claiming she was going to eat breakfast with the survivors. The little house that Marisol had sorted out for the three of them (herself, Dekalb and Gary) was on the north side of Nolan Park, well away from the Victorian houses where the survivors lived. It was easy to slip away with no one seeing her. She remembered the time she’d slipped away from the camp in Egypt, scurrying over the wire. Funny that after so much time she was running away for exactly the same reason.

She went to the gardens and found a slack right away. Any of them would do. This one had been a woman and she still had breasts like empty winesacks that dangled down every time she bent over to pull up a weed. Her hair was cut with precision, perhaps done right before her death—though it badly needed to be washed Sarah could still see where it was supposed to flare out in a bob.

There was nothing in her eyes. Nothing at all. Sarah knew that look. She knew that when most people died it was their personality and their memories that went first. Everything that made them human beings. When oxygen stopped flowing in the brain the fine tracery of personhood just melted away, like frost on a window pane when the sun comes up. Now there was nobody home in this shell. It smiled at her with cracked lips, but only because it had been programmed to do so.

It was what she needed. She lifted up the noose in one hand and the fur armband in the other. There had to be a reason why the Tsarevich had sent half an army to retrieve them. “Mael Mag Och,” she said, staring into the slack’s eyes. “Mael Mag Och, please. Please, come forward and... and make yourself known.” She sighed. She had no idea how to do this. In the past he’d always come to her.

“Mael Mag Och... Jack... please. I need to talk to you. I need advice so badly and there’s nobody else. Please. I need you. I need you. I miss you so much.”

She kept at it for far too long before she finally had to admit defeat. Maybe it was her inability to concentrate. She had heard that about magic, that you had to clear your mind before it could work, that you had to approach it from a position of serenity.

She had too many thoughts in her head for that.