Monster Island(39)

Since he’d eaten he was thinking more clearly. He’d shaken off the half-trance that had lain over him like a shroud ever since he recovered his strength at the bottom of the Virgin megastore and now he had time to ponder just where he was headed. Someone, some anonymous creature had come to him in his moment of greatest peril and taught him how to open himself, how to connect with the nervous systems of countless dead men. From that connection he had drawn the strength to keep himself animate even after being shot in the head. In exchange for this knowledge the unknown benefactor had summonedGary to his presence and without a thoughtGary had set off to comply. Now that he could think a little more clearly, however, he wondered what he was marching toward. It couldn’t be a living person-no one living could have access to the network of death,Gary was sure of it, and anyway why would anyone living want to help a monster likeGary to survive?

Yet if the benefactor was dead then what could he possibly want fromGary? Even if the other had somehow maintained his intellect asGary had, he would still share the biology and psychology of all the dead. The dead only had one desire, the need for sustenance. It seemed absurd butGary was convinced that he was walking to the place where he would be eaten. Fast food delivery, right to your door.

If it was true, if he had been spared only to be turned into a meal for some dead man even smarter than himself, Gary still couldn’t stop. He kept yanking his feet out of the mire and taking another step. Behind him Noseless and Faceless kept pace without a word of complaint or question.

Garyhad his own agenda. He wanted to find Ayaan again and show her exactly how he felt. She hadn't given him a f*cking chance. Still. He had to know, first. He had questions that needed answers. Revenge had to wait.

The sun had moved higher in the sky by the time they saw the first break in the monotony of mud and violated trees. The Zoo came up on their right, its buildings still standing though they were half buried in thick silt. Grateful for any break in the visual cipher of what the Park had becomeGary waved his companions on and hurried into the low maze of the Zoo’s sunken exhibits.

There were no animals in the cages, of course-the dead would have made short work of them. Here and there a scrap of fur had caught in the mesh of a habitat or the elaborate filigree on a wrought iron fence but that was all. Similarly the explanatory plaques and interactive displays were buried or carried away by some long past torrent of mud. Only the barriers remained visible, a collection of untenanted cages that cut the afternoon light into long strips.Gary lead his companions down long curving lanes between what had once been enclosures for baboons and red pandas and now were merely channels of mud.

Wanting to see something he brought them to a building ornamented with the sculpted heads of elephants and giraffes. Cheerfully whimsical in another day the reliefs had become hideous gargoyles now, emblems of bestial violence.Gary ignored the cold feeling the place gave him and touched the weathered brass hand pulls on the doors of the building.

The doors flew open with a force that knocked him back a dozen yards on his shoulder, his dry body gouging a great furrow in the mud. Noseless and Faceless turned to stare at him with a kind of dazed shock they might have seen mirrored in his own face. What could possibly have broken the stillness of the park so violently?

A naked dead man came stomping out of the Elephant House on calves like utility poles. He stood at least ten feet tall, a quaking mound of pallid flesh shot through with black veins. There was no muscle tone on the giant whatsoever, just great rolls of translucent flab and doughy meat. His hands were bloated and nearly useless, human-sized nails sunk deep into the tips of his swollen fingers. His human-sized head sat in the middle of the gelatinous mass of his body like an obscene barnacle.Gary had never seen anything like him before. He gave more than a passing second to the thought that this might be his benefactor, and his doom, but it couldn’t be so. When he plucked the strings of the net that tied together all dead men and women he felt no stirring of intelligence in this beast.

What he did see in his mind’s eye was horrible to look upon-dark energy, far more than seemed possible, a writhing, roiling storm cloud of it that blazed and radiated away from the giant in great gouts and yet never diminished in strength-a black star. There was hatred in there as well, raw red hatred for anyone who dared enter the precincts of the beast’s domain.

The creature beforeGary had not begun its existence at that size. He had been a big man in life but neither a body-builder or an athlete. He had merely been one of the first of the walking dead to find his way to the Zoo. He had fought off the weaker dead as they arrived, engaged in epic combats with the stronger ones but always he had prevailed. His current size was due simply to eating greater quantities of more robust meat than anyone else who tried to challenge him.