Monster Island(59)

Open yourself, as I’ve told you before.

Gary nodded and reached out to grab the dead woman by the back of the neck. He tried to do what he’d done before-stroking the network of death, just as he had when he took control of his companions, just as when he had summoned the crowd that devoured the survivor Paul. He pushed until his brain was throbbing and white daggers of light leaked in around the corners of his vision but only succeeded in gaining her attention. She stared at him wide-eyed, as if fascinated by the dead veins in his cheeks.

You can do better than that, man,Mael mocked.It’s not something you see or hear or taste-forget those things and try again!

A little annoyed Gary tried again-and only managed to develop a buzzing in his ears. He could feel the dead blood quivering in his head and he thought for sure he would give himself an aneurysm but then, finally, something snapped and roiling shadows blossomed in his mind, streaks of darkness, of dark death energy that resolved into rays, into threads. Strands of a web that linked him to everyone around him-the dead woman, Mael, the seers hanging from the walls. He could sense Faceless and Noseless behind him.

Then he saw the back of his own head.

He was looking through the eyes of his minions, seeing what they saw-even as he continued to be able to use his own eyes. He turned to look at the Latina and felt the connection that bound them together, the unity of death. He could feel thoughts and memories bubbling around her-information she herself could not access any more because her brain had suffocated when she died.

His hadn’t. He saw at once what Mael had wanted him to find. Something she’d seen while scavenging for food, something important. A street-a square-a doorway, a steel gate. Human hands, living hands clutching the bars. White noise hissed and crackled around him, he tasted metal in his mouth but he fought it back. More living humans, more on top of more of them-hundreds. He saw their eyes peering out of darkness, their frightened eyes. Hundreds?

Hundreds. Their bright energy seared him. He wanted to take it from them.

When he returned to himself he was down on all fours and a long string of shiny drool ran from his lower lip to the mud below. “Now?” he asked.

Aye.

Gary pointed and dead workmen came down from their ladders to gather before him. He reached out with his mind and summoned others-an army of them-from as far away as the Reservoir. It was easy when he had the knack down. He didn’t need to give them detailed instructions as he had with Faceless and Noseless. He didn’t need to micromanage. He simply told them what he wanted and they did it without question. It felt good. It felt amazing. He called on more of them, as many as he could reach.

Leave me a few to put a roof over my head, eh, lad?

Gary nodded but he was too busy assembling his army to pay much attention to the Druid. “So many of them,” he said, unsure if he was referring to the living or the dead.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Eighteen


Jack handed me a cell phone that looked like something from the early nineties. A real brick-two inches thick with rubberized grips on the sides. The antenna was almost bigger than the phone itself, eight inches long and as thick as my index finger. “Motorola 9505,” I said, trying to impress him. “Sweet.” Most cell phones would be useless in New York-the towers that dotted the city’s rooftops were unpowered now-but this beast could tap into the Iridium satellite network. It would work anywhere on earth as long as it had a charge. The UN used Iridiums but only sparingly, handing them out to field operatives like they were Faberge eggs. In America they were standard issue for military units, and in fact Jack had retrieved them from an abandoned National Guard checkpoint a few blocks away.

Two more phones sat in a multi-unit charger which had been built to hold six. The rest had gone out with scavenging parties and had never returned. I made a quick call to Osman, letting him know we were still alive.

“That is too bad, Dekalb,” he said, the signal degraded through the thick ceiling of the station but still audible. “If you were dead I could go home.”

I rang off to save the phone’s charge.

“Next stop is the armory,” Jack said. He unlocked the door of the station’s 24 hour token both. Behind the bulletproof glass sat rack after rack of long-barreled rifles, some of them still in their boxes. Too bad they were just toys. Paintball rifles, bee bee guns, pellet shooters guaranteed not to penetrate human skin. “There are more toy stores in New York than gun shops,” Jack explained. It didn’t sound like an apology. “We took what we could get. They’re useful as distraction weapons. You hit a corpse with one of these and he’ll feel it. He’ll come looking for you, which gives your partner enough time to take him down.”