Monster Island(54)

Noseless appeared through the gloom just to Gary’s right. The dead man looked more at home under the water than he had on land, a white pulpy thing with floating hair and billowed-out clothes. Silver bubbles leaked from his shirt. Gary watched with approval as his companion grabbed a fish out of the dark water and sank his teeth deep into its flank. Clouds of blood blossomed around him, temporarily hiding Noseless from view.

The dead man was coming along nicely. After the day’s bounty the walking corpse who had once been unable to feed himself was now acting of his own volition again. Faceless was making slower progress but at least she had managed to clean herself of the insect fauna that had been nesting in her collarbones.

They had all fed well under Mael’s scheme. Gary had found he had a real talent for killing. He exulted in it.

Their first mission had been an elderly woman cowering in a brownstone up in Harlem. She had sequestered herself on the second floor, filling up the stairs with broken furniture and bundles of old magazines tied up in twine. The hard part had been climbing over all that refuse. When they reached the top they found her in her bathroom, crouching behind a wicker hamper. Gary had expected moral qualms to rear themselves as she pleaded for her life but in fact she had trembled so badly that she couldn’t speak. There had been no difficulty at all as Gary moved in for the kill, no hesitation on his part, just cold mechanics until the hunger had taken over and he could not have resisted if he tried.

They had moved on when it was done, stopping at the 125th street train station. The terminal and its elevated platforms had been deserted but next door sat a building that had been deserted since as long as Gary could remember, the burnt-out shell of a red brick office building ornamented with elaborate coats of arms and a banner offering used laptop computers for sale. From the platforms he could see sunlight leaking through the buildings gaping windows and trees growing from the spars of the broken roof. He could also see a twisting curl of white smoke coming from the top of the building-smoke that disappeared almost as soon as Gary spotted it. Someone up there had a fire going and must have quickly extinguished it.

The building’s street level entrances had been barricaded for decades but the three of them made short work of the plywood covering a low window, their shoulders smashing into the obstruction in concerted force. Inside triangular patches of light showed through from the sky three stories above. The interior of the building had imploded leaving a three-dimensional maze of collapsed lathing and dangling floor beams. They climbed upward, ever upward, moving from plank to plank with their hands. Whoever had taken refuge on the roof could have thrown down debris or shot them from above at any time but as they reached the top floor they met with no resistance whatsoever.

Someone had thoughtfully left a stepladder under the hole in the roof. They climbed up through torn tarpaper and emerged into the bright light of day. Gary saw a makeshift lean-to mounted on the last stable corner of the roof. The embers of a campfire burned nearby, complete with a spitted rat waiting to be roasted. He heard something crumble and the patter of stone chips hitting the street below and turned to see a living man perched on the edge of the room, one step away from oblivion. He looked like one of the homeless, his face smudged with dirt, his clothes colorless and torn.

Gary took a step in the man’s direction and he leapt. Better that, he must have thought, than what Gary intended for him. From his perspective that was probably accurate thinking. Noseless and Faceless had scampered back down to the street to get to him before he could rise again. Gary took his time. It wasn’t meat he wanted anymore, it was the life force, the golden energy of the living that could make him strong.

Four hours later he stood on the bottom of the Hudson with his hands on the anchor chain of the sailboat. He wouldn’t let these survivors get away, he promised himself. He began to climb, hand over hand, his minions following. When his head burst through the surface once more he reached up and dragged himself onto the wooden deck of the boat, water streaming from him in gouts. He rose to his feet and felt himself swaying as the current rocked the vessel. A cabin sat in the middle of the deck, its hatch recessed into the wood. That was their destination. Before Gary could cross half the distance to the door, however, it opened and a living human leaned out. He held what looked like a toy pistol in his hand, bright orange with a barrel wide enough to shoot golf balls.

The gun made a loud fizzling noise and smoke leapt across the deck. Faceless looked down at her stomach where a dull metal cylinder hissed and spat. With a burst of red light like a firework it exploded, knocking her backward into the water.