"Anyway, I finally come back down to civilization and the worst of it is pretty much over. The Army is mopping s.h.i.t up and, by this time, they'd already dropped the hammer on places like New York and L.A. But now... But now, both the docks and the refinery are locked up tight and it's not looking like they're opening back up any time soon. So, I'm pretty s.h.i.t outta luck job-wise and, you know, Daddy's gotta eat. I bounce around for a while doing what I can to make ends meet, but it's all goin' nowhere fast."

"I hear ya, Buddy," Cleese responded knowingly.

"A short time later, I'm in a bar in Southern California near Camp Pendleton and I hear these jarheads-real Marine-type bada.s.ses-talking about this League forming. They're saying how it's cake money, but the risks are inordinately high. I eavesdrop a little and, after buying them a few rounds, I find out where this s.h.i.t's all getting organized. So, I went out there and met up with Weber and his crew and the rest, as they say, is history."

Monk turned, looked at Cleese and said, "I guess you could say that I-much like you-had an apt.i.tude for this s.h.i.t."

"Which brings us to the now. So, what brought this all on?" Cleese asked as he looked at the bottle of alcohol and raised his eyebrows.

"This?" Monk said while he feigned indignation. "Oh, we're having ourselves a li'l sell-ee-bray-shun."

"And me without my party hat. What is it that we're celebrating, if I might ask?"

"Well, with Lenik and Cartwright now on the D.L.-The Dead List-management has decided to move up our time table."

"Oh?" Cleese leaned forward, his interest now piqued.

"Ay-yup. Looks like you're gonna see rotation sooner than any of us thought."

"When, pray tell?"

"Two weeks."

"Two weeks!?!" Cleese exclaimed, now more than slightly annoyed. "Am I the only one who remembers the Cherry who's trained with unharnessed UDs but once?"

"Oh, they remember all right. In fact, they consider it to be a little bit of a perk. Corporate's been watching your training tapes and they think that you're ready. They're already running ads for the event everywhere: television, radio, even the Internet. Breaking Cherry has always been a fan favorite, you know that."

Cleese leaned back against the short wall. His brain now spun from a combination of the alcohol and the knowledge of what lay ahead.

"What about you?" Cleese asked.

"Me? I'm being cut... Well, 'retired,' actually."

Monk grabbed the bottle from Cleese's hand and drank deeply.

"No f.u.c.kin' way." Cleese said astonished. Monk was the best there was. Why would they want to retire him? It just didn't make any sense.

"Ay-yup. First, I'll do a short hitch in the UFL, but you know as well as I do that that league is strictly 'bush.' It's just a convenient way for them to ease me out of the public's eye. It lets me pa.s.s from 'Hey, there's Monk!' straight to 'Whatever happened to that one fella... That whaziz name?' in a matter of a few, short months."

Monk snapped his fingers loudly and took another long pull on the bottle.

"It's not like I didn't know though," he continued, almost to himself, "I'd agreed to it before you even got picked up. You were to be my last recruit. My legacy." He raised the bottle as if in toast.

Cleese stared at his mentor for a long time as they sat together in the moonlight. Secretly, he was d.a.m.n disappointed. He'd always known that Monk would someday move on. He just didn't think it would be this soon.

"Besides, I'm getting too old for this s.h.i.t. And what with Cartwright buying it today..."

Monk wiped at his nose with the back of his wrist.

"f.u.c.k, man. Cartwright and I signed on at about the same time, Cleese. The man had family."

Cleese stared at the toes of his boots and said nothing.

"You heard about Michaels, yes?"

"No, but I know I haven't seen him around lately."

"Well, after that little dance you two did in the gym, they'd almost let him go, but then thought better of it," Monk said and scratched at his thigh.

"And..."

"As it turned out, your thumpin' must've f.u.c.ked with his confidence a bit because people say he went at his training even harder than before; taking stupid risks."

Cleese looked Monk in the eye.

"Aaaand..."

"Well, he went and got himself bit during training shortly thereafter."

"No s.h.i.t," Cleese said as he leaned back to sigh. It sucked that the guy got himself hosed like that, but getting bitten was a risk they'd all a.s.sumed from the get-go. The fact that that fat f.u.c.k had pushed the wrong set of b.u.t.tons and gotten himself knocked around a little and then not been able to handle the a.s.s-whuppin' was not something Cleese felt he should take responsibility for. It's just how things went sometimes.

Monk stared off into s.p.a.ce for a moment and went back to what he was saying; Michaels' death serving as only an unfortunate blip on his personal radar.

"It's better that I go, anyhow. I need to learn what it means to live again. I need to surround myself with a bit of Life while I still have some of it left in me."

He looked off into the night, not wanting Cleese to see his eyes as they gla.s.sed over with moisture.

"I've been around Death for far too long," he continued after a moment, "I'll do my hitch in the UFL and then I'm f.u.c.kin' out, Baby. I just want to spend the last years of my life in some place normal, where dead is dead."

He paused, as if deep in thought.

"The dead should stay dead, doncha think?" he whispered to the night.

Cleese nodded silently in the darkness.

Monk lay back, relaxing, and continued to stare up into the stars. After a moment, he looked over at Cleese and smiled. "Did I ever tell you that I got me a little girl?"

"No, you didn't."

"Aileen is her name, only she's not such a little girl anymore."

His eyes took on a far-off, dreamy aspect that could be seen despite the gloom.

"She has this nice, little farm back in Iowa with her husband. At least I think it's Iowa... maybe it's Ohio or Idaho... d.a.m.n places all sound the same. Anyway, I've never seen the grandkids and she says that I should come visit... maybe think about coming to live."

"s.h.i.t..." Cleese said, took the bottle back, and tipped it up. "You? A G.o.dd.a.m.n farmer?"

Both men laughed out loud. The sound of their laughter was healing and, given the gravity of the past conversation, much needed by them both.

"Closest you ever gotten to farming, Old Man, is the produce section of the grocery store and you know it."

"Hey, I could learn. Watch this," he said and raised his head slightly. 'E-I-E-I-O, motherf.u.c.ker.'"

Cleese took back the bottle and chuckled into it. As he did so, he looked up. The stars above twinkled in the night's sky with their eternal indifference. He drank languorously, the liquor burning its way down his throat in a good way. His stomach groaned briefly and then battened down its hatches for what was sure to be stormy weather ahead.

As he set the bottle down, he noticed Monk had drifted off to sleep; a deep rumbling came from his chest as he began to snore. Cleese quietly looked over at two of the few men on the planet that he'd ever considered to be his friends and smiled. Weaver and Monk lay drunk and slumbering on the roof of their place and Cleese decided that, for now, that was just fine. He'd watch over them, finish what was left of this bottle, and keep them both safe from harm up here in this spot that somehow seemed above all the stench, away from all the blood-and all that death seemed like nothing more than a story they'd all heard one time long ago.

He settled in, got himself comfortable, and lifted the bottle for another drink.

"A farmer..." Cleese said, the words sounding hollow within the emptiness of the bottle. "Shee-it."

Consanguinity The ground burned hot beneath Cleese's boots. The sand had soaked up enough heat from the overhead lights to make the Pit's floor a griddle. Humidity drenched everything in a thin layer of moisture and it pulled what little oxygen there was from the air and made it difficult to breathe. Cleese stood-baking beneath the scorching lights-and watched as the UD before him aimlessly wandered around the vastness of the pit.

The thing hadn't caught his scent as of yet, but it would and when it did, it would come clawing its way after him with teeth grinding and eyes bugging out maniacally. Infectious saliva would be slithering down its chin in long, ropey loops like malignant taffy.

This one had been a woman once; kind of short and matronly. Her back was stooped and her gait was doddering, but her eyes dripped murder and her teeth gnashed together in long, expectant strokes. She walked, swaying, past Cleese and he denied the impulse to reach out and touch her. He wanted to extend this moment, to savor it.

Momentarily, he thought this was what a predator felt like as it eyed unsuspecting prey.

The woman swung around slowly, her arms swaying like a chimp. As she stumbled past, she caught a hint of Cleese's scent on the wind. Her nose managed to snag just a ribbon of his odor and her senses honed in on him like a viper. She turned and stared darkly across the sand. Shadows hung over her sallow face, obscuring any facial features, however, her eyes burned from behind her messy, oily hair.

"HAAA-aaa..." she hissed, her breath poisoning the air as soon as it touched it. She reached out for him, slowly, as if the act caused her great pain. Her hands opened and closed, wanting to touch, wanting to hold, wanting to tear. She'd locked onto his scent now and was coming; coming fast. Her feet were tripped up sporadically by the unleveled surface of the sand, but her speed steadily increased as she lurched wildly across the pit.

Cleese dropped down into a Muay Thai crouch; chin down against his chest, hands open and loose. He rose up onto the b.a.l.l.s of his feet and bobbed toward her. His mind instinctively clicked over to pure instinct, and having done so, it never once looked back. A right side kick knocked the dead air from the woman's lifeless lungs. A left upward hook yielded some broken ribs. The spinning right back fist loosened her jaw. An overhand left elbow erased her nose. The woman dropped to her knees and vomited blood and spoiled meat onto the sand.

Sh-tinkt!

The spike was out before he even realized; the metal shimmering in the floodlights. The weapon glowed brightly as if it possessed great power within its metal. Telepathically, the gauntlet sang to him its songs of glory, of fortune, of fame. It was an oracle that radiated Truth and offered up glorious images of his future. It was, it seemed, the very Hand of G.o.d. An instrument of great wrath, it was Excalibur in the hands of a vengeful psychopath.

He reached out and twisted his fingers into the woman's graying hair and roughly cranked her head back. She looked up at him, her eyes sinister and br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a foul corruption. Her mouth drew open and a blackened tongue emerged over the fencing of her ruined bridgework. Cleese slid the point of the spike into the opening of the woman's ear and steadily pushed.

An inch.

The sound of the crowd above The Pit pounded deep within his chest.

Two.

The woman stiffened against his legs, briefly grabbing a fistful of his pant leg and squeezing. Her back arched and contorted, then went slack. Her features slowly collapsed into an almost peaceful repose.

Three inches.

Four.

The UD's eyes suddenly slid open, like dingy yellow roll-up shades. As her after-life winked out into an unending emptiness, her gaze tore through Cleese's murderous rage. It was like an arrow shot through a rice paper screen. He locked his eyes onto hers and slowly-painfully-he recognized certain contours of her face: her soft eyes, her slightly upturned nose, her kind lips. As she lay there on her knees in the sand, she slowly returned to being just an old woman; hair twisted back, brain now impaled. Recognition took hold and Cleese's mind made its own horrifying connections.

"Ma...?"

"Ma!"

Cleese bolted upright, panting. His heart thumped heavily in his chest and sweat shimmered in the half light across his brow. His head still reeled from the alcohol he'd drunk and his mouth tasted like someone had dumped an ashtray into it. He raised his hands to his face and rubbed them up and down.

A dream...

"Shii..." he hissed into the palms of his hands, "...it."

He parted his fingers and looked around the roof but saw nothing strange; Monk on his back, mouth open and his legs spread out, Weaver, a yard or so away, snoring and scratching at himself. Darkness lay over them all like a cape, but it was otherwise quiet.

He looked out over the compound and it, too, was as quiet as a church. The moon fell down on the gra.s.s and the blades reflected the light as silver. He stared out across the fields and saw the Holding Pen brooding in the distance. He couldn't be exactly sure, but he thought he heard a far off moan drift across the compound.

Cleese lay back onto the roof and turned onto his side. Shifting around on the concrete, he tried to find a comfortable spot on the cold, hard surface. Finally, he pushed his back up against the retaining wall and settled in. A shiver abruptly ran down his spine and prompted him to take one more look around. Then, like a child with a favorite blanket, he tugged his jacket tighter around him and hugged it close. As his heart rate slowly returned to normal, Cleese closed his eyes against the encroaching shadows and, in time, fell back asleep.

The Cost of Killing The repeated crunching of Cleese's feet on the coa.r.s.e red soil of the compound's track was the only sound that broke the silence of the warm afternoon. His breath came in short rapid huffs which forced his tissues to fight one another for every molecule of oxygen. The metronome-like drumming reverberating up from his legs marked each step of his progress as he made his way around the flat oval track. He'd lost most of the feeling from the waist down four or five miles ago, his mind feeling a distinct separation from the rest of his body. His intellect floated like a balloon somewhere between a blissful, endorphin-infused reality and a torturous h.e.l.l of physical agony. As he ran along, a song drifted into his consciousness and stuck there like mental gum. He wasn't even sure what the name of it was, but the tune hammered in his brain and kept time with the pounding of his feet.

It was weird how things bubbled up in the consciousness when the body was running on fumes and it wanted to puke its guts up in the azaleas. He was just finishing up what he calculated to be his seventh mile and was feeling like powdered s.h.i.t; completely drawn and drained. He silently wondered, when the time came, if his legs would obey him or keep on going and not allow him to stop. He would just continue to run around and around until his bones wore themselves down to b.l.o.o.d.y stubs.

G.o.d knew... He felt as if he'd been running in circles-both figuratively and literally-forever. Why should he stop now? As he looked down, he saw multiple sets of his own shoe prints pressed into the soft red clay. In his exhausted delirium, he thought of how he was chasing after himself; following his own tracks in the dirt. He half expected to look up and see his phantom figure running ahead of him at the furthest corner of the track.

Man, I'm getting f.u.c.kin' delusional.

Alongside the benches which sat at one side of the track, a thin man with long strands of hair hanging in front of his face stood watching as Cleese sweated his way around the track for the umpteenth time. It was warm out again today, but that in no way deterred the man. He was grateful for a chance to be out in the fresh air, away from the smell of puke and bile and blood and festering gore. If only for an hour or so, he was happy to smell something-anything-other than death.

Adamson had been at the compound for longer than he cared to remember and was beginning to wonder if he'd ever get the stink off him. He'd had a bit of that dead smell back before the world went to s.h.i.t and life got itself all twisted around, but this was different. This was a stench that had worked itself into the marrow of his bones, infected him to his very soul.

As he watched Cleese running, he remembered a time when he too ran; ran for everything he'd been worth. He'd run from his place of work-a place that was in and of itself a place of death-and, when his car died on him, he'd kept on running until he finally fell exhausted in a warehouse on the outskirts of town. He'd awoken surrounded by men with guns and had, for a moment, forgotten all about Mr. Robinson, Mrs. Jacob, Mrs. Devon, Mr. Lodene and the fat Mrs. Harvey. He'd opened his eyes and saw nothing except the endless abyss one can only see if one is looking deep inside the barrel of a locked and loaded gun.

Once the armed men figured out that he still possessed a heartbeat, they'd brought him to a bivouac and gotten him showered, fed and clothed in something more battle-ready than the soiled business suit in which they'd found him. Then, after a good (and safe) night's rest and quick lesson in firearms later, he'd been out on the front line "droppin' Zs"-the term the militia used for the killing of the reanimated dead.

As the weeks went by, and after a whole lot of practice, he'd gotten pretty good at it. His knowledge of anatomy told him exactly where to aim the rifle for maximum effect. It also helped him to judge at a distance how quickly the undead could move once they'd engaged them-the more progressed their state of decomposition was, the slower they were. As a result, he'd become known as The Dead Guy due to his almost encyclopedic knowledge of Them.

If they only knew...

Then one day, as he finished the clearing of a large office building, a savvy and persuasive man approached him accompanied by a huge bear of a man he'd called Jimbo. The guy had all the subtleness of a used car salesman and, after many drinks and a large steak dinner, talked some s.h.i.t about these big plans he had. Adamson thought the guy was as crazy as a soup sandwich, but after a few more drinks he felt more than willing to entertain such madness. This guy, Weber, heard about Adamson's unique body of knowledge from some of the men and wanted to brainstorm some ideas with him as to how to keep a large number of the undead. Like everything about him, all of this Weber fella's ideas were big and just this side of crazy. Apparently, Weber had these plans and if Adamson could develop a way to do what he was asking, there could be some big money in it for everybody.

And boy, he wasn't kidding...

Adamson's mistake was that he didn't read Weber's fine print when he signed on. As promised, there was indeed money enough for everybody.

The problem was Adamson was n.o.body.

Flash forward to today and Weber is a multimillionaire living in a sw.a.n.ky high rise and Adamson a schmuck living in a hangar with a couple of hundred corpses. And when all was said and done, all Adamson had left was what he'd come with: a very specified body of knowledge and his commitment to giving the dead their respectful due. Yes, the idea of making some real money was important, but in the end it was always secondary to his reverence and protection of the dead.

As far as Adamson was concerned, the living were hypocrites and liars and they could go f.u.c.k themselves. With a deep, resigned breath he sighed and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. Almost as an afterthought, he wiped his hand off on the seat of his pants and continued watching Cleese as he made his way around the far end of the track.