Buried.2015.03.04 Read online

  "You a Mormon?" he said.

  Mo wagged his head back and forth. "Half. My mother was. It was she who gave me my name."

  "So…." Buck struggled to process the information. "A Mormon Māori in Idaho who owns an underground survival shelter? Wasn't New Zealand isolated enough?"

  Mo opened his mouth and laughed. He had teeth that were a bit yellow, like he had spent years drinking coffee or smoking. Or just had bad teeth. The discoloration didn't inhibit his mirth, though: the laugh was deep and loud and long.

  "You have said it better than most, my friend." He finished peeling off his camouflage. Beneath it he wore only a white t-shirt and a pair of novelty boxer shorts – white with bright red lipstick marks all over them. He showed no embarrassment at his dress, or even seemed to notice what he was wearing.

  Unlike the movie stars, the people who frequented gyms in every city, and every other slave to fashion whom Christopher had seen wearing "tribal" tattoos in recent years, the Māori's arms were bare of ornamentation. But gray lines that matched those on his face reached out from under his boxers, making their way almost to Mo's knees. Christopher wondered how high they went. Wondered if the old man's groin was marked up as well.

  Mo went to one of the cabinets and opened it. Removed a large box marked with a red cross. He opened it and revealed the most prodigious and well-stocked first aid kit Christopher had ever seen. He removed several gauze pads.

  Buck moved forward. "Let me."

  "I am able, friend."

  "Don't be an idiot."

  Mo grinned like Buck had just said something singularly hilarious, then took the first aid kit to the table and sat down. Buck touched Hope's forehead. The little girl was still sitting motionless, and Buck paused a moment, too. For some reason he looked more like father than friend to the little girl.

  And for some reason Christopher felt a chill roll over him.

  Then Buck went to Mo. He rifled through the first aid kit, pulling out more gauze and some antibiotic cream before sitting on one of the other chairs.

  "That must hurt like a bitch," he said.

  "It does not tickle," Mo agreed. "But I believe the bullets went through, and no bones broke. It was a lucky wound."

  Buck snorted. He took some scissors out of the kit and cut Mo's shirt away, tossing the bloody mess behind him.

  Beneath the shirt was a gorefest. Blood streamed in a continuous river from two dark holes in the man's shoulder. It was enough that it almost distracted from the tattoos that covered Mo's chest, stomach, and back. Almost. The same curls and ridges, etched directly into the skin, made him into a full-body mask. Christopher couldn't imagine going through something like that for anything, let alone for a simple cultural gesture. But then, it was partially thanks to that toughness that they were all here.

  Buck hissed at the wounds – or maybe at the sight of the tattoos. Then he stood and looked over the top of Mo's shoulder.

  "Looks about the same back here." He shook his head and started to open the gauze and tear long strips of medical tape.

  "Shouldn't he have stitches?" said Christopher. He felt like an idiot when he said it, wished he could yank the words back and swallow them.

  Buck snorted. "Sure. We'll just take him to St. Al's and ask the zombie doctors to patch him up." He turned his head for a moment. "You know how to stitch people?"

  Christopher shook his head. He felt like the village idiot on a bad day.

  "Me either," said Buck. "You?" he said to Mo.

  The Māori shook his head. "Alas, I do not. But if I may suggest…?"

  "I'm open to whatever," said Buck.

  "There are feminine hygiene products in the kit," said Mo.

  "You just get your period?" said Buck.

  Christopher saw where the hunter was going. "Tampons?" he said.

  Mo nodded. Christopher felt a bit less like a moron. He darted forward, found them. He grabbed four. "Move, Clucky," he said.

  Buck growled. "Don't call me that."

  "You're lucky I don't call you something else that rhymes with 'Buck.' Move."

  Buck did. Christopher sat opposite Mo. "You ready for this?" Mo nodded. His face was impassive under the tattoos. "You get those in New Zealand?" said Christopher. Talking more to calm himself than his patient. He suspected Mo wouldn't need calming no matter what: permanent serenity, whether at church or facing a tsunami composed of rabid bears that shot lasers out of their faces.

  Mo nodded again as Christopher realized he was about to kill Mo with infection. He found some alcohol pads and scrubbed the dirt off his hands as well as he could, then found a pair of latex gloves in the first aid kit and snapped them over the grungy mess he had created. "What brings you to Idaho?"

  Idiot question. Might as well ask if he's going to the movies this weekend. Who cares?

  Who cares about anything?

  A sudden wave of sadness crashed over him. He saw her –

  (little girl little bracelet I gave her sawing through thick metal with a face turned into a buzzsaw then a face turned into nothing when I swung the axe)

  – and almost stopped moving. Only Mo's voice drew him back to reality.

  "My mother died. She was of this place and wished to be buried with her people."

  "Sorry." Christopher slathered antibiotic cream over Mo's wounds, front and back. He put so much on that it looked eerily like the yellow junk the zombies barfed up and secreted from their wounds, the waxy goo they seemed to both build with and that somehow healed them of what should be deadly injuries.

  "Do not be," said Mo. He didn't even wince as Christopher worked. "It was some time ago. I fell in love with this place. It is different from the land of my birth, but it became my home."

  Christopher unwrapped one of the tampons. He looked at it in confusion.

  "What?" said Buck.

  "I have no idea how to use these things," said Christopher.

  "A problem," said Mo. "Especially since I believe I am about to pass out."

  9

  The words scared Christopher, which was a surprise considering he'd known the tattooed man for only a few minutes. At first he thought the idea of being stuck down here would be terrifying, but the place suddenly seemed like a rare refuge in a fatal world. Mo was their protector and host, perhaps the only thing that stood between the group and the danger outside the shelter.

  And here he was: an idiot male who didn't know how to work a tampon. He knew what he had to do with it, but not how to do it. The workings of the thing were as foreign to him, as suddenly complex-seeming, as the inner mechanisms of a supercomputer.

  He was on the verge of panicking. His hand started to shake.

  "What's going on?" Buck said.

  "I would appreciate it if you hurried," said Mo. He started to weave in his seat. Gripped the table with a hand that was normally walnut brown but now turned ash gray at the fingertips and knuckles.

  A hand lay across Christopher's own shaking one. Smaller. Stable.

  Maggie.

  She didn't speak. Just took the tampon from his hand. Looked at him. Waited.

  Christopher felt the fear fall from him, fall out of him. For more than one reason. Ken's wife still looked borderline shell-shocked. Still on the verge of a collapse. But she had moved of her own accord. She had rejoined them and was prepared to do what needed to be done.

  "I want to use them on the wounds," Christopher told her.

  "Really?" said Buck. "Yuck, are you serious?"

  Maggie was already moving as Christopher rounded on his most irritating – and in this underground hospital at the edge of the world, perhaps best – friend. "You know what these things do?" he demanded. "They suck up blood like nobody's business. So unless you know how to perform emergency surgery…." He turned back to look at Maggie. "But I don't really know how to get the stuff out of the… thing…." Maggie put on a pair of gloves, then placed the end of tampon tube against the first bullet hole, one of the ones on the front of the Māori's
shoulder. The face under the tattoos grew a bit paler, but the man made not a sound.

  Maggie pushed something on the back of the tube, then pulled the tube away. A flattened chunk of cotton was now stuck in the gore, string trailing away from it. "Cool," he said. Then turned to Buck and assumed his best professor impression. "And the string," he continued as he slapped a trio of gauze patches over the string, then secured them with enough medical tape to hold a Sherman tank in place, "makes 'em easy to pull off later."

  He could practically hear Buck's jaw bouncing off the floor tiles and couldn't help but grin. When life was grim, the little pleasures ballooned in importance. Buck's raw stupefaction felt like a trip to Disneyland in that moment: a magic kingdom in a doomed world.

  "Your friend," said Mo, grimacing as Maggie inserted the next tampon, then moved to his back, a third and fourth gripped in her hand, "is a bit high-strung."

  Christopher snorted. "High-strung is an understatement. Buck makes bomb disposal workers look like Tahitian hula dancers."

  "Tahiti is lovely this time of year. But no vacation is a likely to happen in these times, I think," said Mo.

  Christopher nodded. A sobering thought.

  Mo grunted again. Maggie finished. Her hands were covered in blood. She still had Lizzy strapped to her back, Christopher realized. He also saw that the two-year-old was blinking blearily. Looking around like she didn't know where she was, what was happening.

  Christopher felt a flutter of fear. Sometimes the toddler was a toddler. Other times she seemed intent on helping the things that had followed the group, the things that had destroyed – replaced – humanity. Like she was a defector or a traitor in their midst.

  What would she be this time?

  A thud drew his attention away from the little girl.

  Mo had finally passed out.

  10

  What now?

  No one responded, and it took Christopher a moment to realize he hadn't actually spoken. Another moment in which he wondered if he was starting the long downhill slide into Crazyland, with a short layover in Coocooville.

  He had known quite a few nuts in his life. You didn't grow up as the son of a career politician without seeing a psycho or three. The idea of joining their ranks didn't appeal to him.

  Before he could actually give voice to his words, Buck stole the chance from him. "What now?"

  Christopher didn't know what bugged him more – that the big man had said it before he could, or that he had said the same words he had wanted to. Was Christopher destined to grow up that way? A high-voiced balding guy with a perma-scowl and mommy issues? Not that he didn't have his own mommy – and daddy – issues. But they were his, dammit. He didn't want to have Buck's, too.

  "We have to go back," whispered Maggie. She moved back to the couch.

  Buck rolled his eyes. "He'll be waiting for that," he said. "Aaron's bound to be looking for us around here. We go back to Ken and we're going to get killed."

  "We have to go back," was all she said. She wasn't looking at anyone, and Christopher wondered if she was even speaking to them. If she had retreated to whatever place it was that offered her some comfort or safety in the dark moments when she found herself without a husband she loved and a man who had rescued her and her children.

  And from what? What did Ken do all this for?

  A good question. When they'd found Maggie and the little girls, they'd been on one of the top floors of a high rise, surrounded by zombies and cocooned in some sort of webbing. Not dead, but asleep. Drugged somehow.

  What had happened to them?

  Buck had been there, too. But he had acted normal this whole time.

  (other than that touch that strange touch to Hope just now so is something happening to Buck too or is it just my imagination and exhaustion and fear?)

  And Maggie had seemed just as normal.

  It was only the girls, Lizzy and Hope, who had shown some effect from the ordeal.

  Perhaps Derek, their older brother, might have joined his sisters in their trek toward the alien place they were closing in on. No one would ever know, he supposed: Derek had been Changed saving his mother. Had fallen from a tower and come back a zombie.

  And not just a zombie, but some kind of leader, a thing that the others deferred to. Dorcas, another one of their group who had lost herself, lost her humanity when bitten while defending them all, had come back at his side. Changed and willing to kill at his command. Her and the huge, half-white, half-charred and blacked zombie that had Changed Derek.

  All bowing to the child. A tiny emperor wielding some strange power over them.

  What does it mean?

  "Where are we?"

  Lizzy hadn't made a sound yet, though she continued to look around with an utterly befuddled expression. So the high, clear voice wasn't hers.

  No, it was Hope. She was finally sitting up from her recumbent position on the couch. Looking around in a panic, then calming down a bit when she saw her mother, then returning to panic when she saw Maggie's blank expression.

  She turned wide eyes on Christopher. They were the eyes of a child, no trace of that alien presence that caused so much terror when it appeared. But he found no comfort in them. No comfort because he didn't know how to answer her next words.

  "What happened to Mommy? And where's Daddy?"

  11

  Screaming.

  That was what happened when you told a seven-year-old her daddy was dead.

  Not that Christopher told her. Not that Buck told her.

  Maggie was the one who said it.

  "What happened to Daddy? Where's Daddy? Someone tell me where's Daddy?"

  "He's dead."

  Just like that. Maggie said it without even looking at her daughter. She sounded like a robot.

  Christopher was still standing by Mo, wondering if the guy was going to die, right there on the poker table. Buck stood a few feet away, looking utterly lost when Maggie said that, and Hope just started screaming.

  But it was a comforting scream. As bad as it was, as terrible as it was to hear the grief-torn shrieks of a little girl, the sound shattering as it slammed into the pipe-walls of the shelter, it was still a good scream. Because it was the normal scream of a little girl. Not the chittering, gasping scream of a thing calling to other things. Not the laughing shout of something that none of them could understand, but that they all feared.

  It was simply a little girl who didn't really understand what Mommy had said. Whose world was not big enough to encompass life without Daddy.

  Christopher understood that. He had been sent to his first boarding school when he was barely older than Hope. Brought back for a month or two, then off to another one. Never time to really catch his breath, to get his feet solidly under him.

  And, at first, so hard to understand where his parents were. Why they weren't in his life anymore. He was the one who was traveling, but it seemed like they were the ones who had left.

  He had gradually come to understand that he had been shipped off because he didn't fit their lifestyle. He was a political necessity – politicians with families were more likely to get elected than those without – but a personal inconvenience.

  He didn't know who was better off in the final analysis: a boy who grew up with parents, but rarely saw them and knew they hated him; or a girl who lost a father early, but would have only good memories of him and his love. He thought he would rather have had the latter than the former.

  Hope was still screaming.

  Maggie didn't look at her. Just stared at nothing. And now the toddler on Maggie's back started to scream as well. Another sign of normalcy, the two-year-old picking up on her sister's fear and grief and mirroring it with her own voice.

  Christopher still didn't know what to do.

  He knelt down in front of Hope. Put a hand on her arm. "Your father was a very brave man, sweetie," he said. "He –"

  Hope shook his hand off, thrashing him away so hard and fast it was an act of
violence. "No!" she screamed. "NO NO NO NO!"

  A hand wrapped around Christopher's shoulder, then yanked him backward. He went down on his butt before sliding a good four feet on the tile floor.

  "That's not how you talk to a kid, idiot," murmured Buck as Christopher slid by. Then the big man knelt where Christopher had been. He held his arms out and engulfed the little girl in a bear hug that buried her cries in his chest.

  "I'm here," he whispered. He stroked her hair. "We're all here for you."

  "Where's Daddy?" came Hope's muffled voice.

  Sally roused himself from his resting spot. He curled his tail around Lizzy's feet. The two-year-old responded to the touch, her own screams lowering in pitch and volume.

  "He saved us, baby girl," Buck said to Hope.

  "Daddy saved us, Clucky?"

  "He's a hero, Chicken."

  Hope kept crying.

  Lizzy kept crying.

  Maggie stared ahead, but one arm reached into Buck's embrace. Pulled out her daughter. The three girls – Maggie, Hope, Lizzy – tightened into a knot.

  Buck didn't let go. Now holding all three of them.

  And suddenly Christopher was there as well. He didn't remember getting to his feet. Didn't remember putting his arm around them all. But there he was.

  He felt something tickle his legs. Sally wrapped himself around their feet. His tail still twined around Lizzy's ankle.

  The members of their group who were still alive held onto one another. They always would. Because they were all they had.

  Hopefully that was all they would need.

  12

  They held each other for a time that seemed outside the passage of minutes or hours or days. A time that Christopher would never be able to measure, but that he would look back on as long as he lived. All the bad and good mixed into a single inseparable mass.

  So much of life consists of little boxes. Presents given under trees, at birthdays, for anniversaries. Discrete moments in time given by gods either kind or cruel, depending on what they held within.