For her.

For them.

He leaned in, lowering his lips to hers, and once more felt the heart stopping spark of intimacy. He drank deeply from her mouth and savored the taste of her essence. With a full heart, he drew her body still closer to his own. Primal stirrings took hold and they gave themselves over to their rapture.

Afterward, Cleese lay in the dark as Chikara slept beside him. And in that cold silence, he began planning what he was going to do next.

... and to who.

Dead Rising The UD opened its eyes and stared into the surrounding blackness of the Holding Pen. Its eyelids, still painted with the viscous fluid of corruption, were gooey and stuck together as if covered in paste. A thick, gummy liquid coated the lashes and made them difficult to open. Blinking, it rolled its eyes and looked around. The orbs grated in their sockets, feeling like they were martini olives dropped onto beach sand.

The thing had awoken lying on the ground, coiled in a fetal position. Its clothing, spattered with a kaleidoscopic array of mud, blood, bile and excrement, clung to its flesh like a moist second skin. Body torn and twisted, the thing returned to consciousness with no recollection of who it had been or from where it had come.

It only knew that it lived.

Raising its head from the soft, pliant ground, pain roughly wrapped its unforgiving arms about its torso and swept it into an embrace that was bereft of any solace, devoid of any peace. A raw agony twisted like a blade deep in its guts and blood pulsed like syrup within its necrotic veins. Its limbs felt stiff and its muscles were as taut as harp strings.

Overhead, fixtures suspended by cables from the ceiling cast columns of dull yellow light; pools of illumination splashed across the wet, uneven ground. The soft glow was quickly swallowed up by the icy black. Steam rose from the expansive enclosure and swirled lazily in the air only to evaporate into puffs of nothingness. A low moaning droned in a despondent chorus and imbued the Pen with a palpable sense of foreboding. Dreadful things were afoot in this profanatory place. It was as if even G.o.d himself had turned His eye away from it in disgust.

Circling about in the emptiness, other things such as itself walked. The things shambled back and forth, in and out of the spa.r.s.e light, moving like schizophrenics in ever widening circles. Having lost their chance at salvation, their overriding instinct now was to hunt.

To hunt and to consume.

To find and to eat.

A woman clad in a blood-sodden medical scrub blouse stumbled drunkenly into one of the circles of light. Naked from the waist down, deep gashes had been torn into the meat of her legs. Nodules of bright, yellow fat erupted from deep within the gashes. Spaghetti-like blood vessels bobbed and dribbled globs of coagulated plasma within the folds of the lacerations. Bite marks, red and inflamed, were evident in the meaty folds of her l.a.b.i.a.

A man stepped into view-dressed in a flight suit and covered with a black, inky substance-and clumsily b.u.mped into the woman. His lower jaw was missing, the skin beneath his eye torn roughly away. As he turned in the light, a limbless sleeve swayed from the motion.

The two beings moved about one another in a macabre two-step, neither of them seeming to be aware of the other. Each existed in their own world, a solitary realm of famine and horror, of fatality and need. Behind them, a dark ma.s.s of putrefied humanity undulated like a heavy velvet curtain.

The newly awakened thing on the ground rolled over and onto its stomach. It felt acidic bile rise in its throat. The taste was sharp and sour on its tongue. Drool slithered from between its lips in glistening strands and pooled in the dirt. The creature pushed against the soil; urine and feces soaked mud pulsed up from between its fingers. Muscles groaned out painfully and fought back as weight was put upon them. Tendons cried out like abandoned children. Cartilage grated as bone slid against bone. Pain unspooled throughout every fiber of the thing's tortured being as if it were a murderous snake.

As the corpse finally got to its feet, it teetered like a toddler taking its first steps. Its center of balance shifted and settled only to shift once more. The ground itself seemed to heave and gimbal just to spite it. The shifting perception did its best to thwart any feeble attempts at locomotion. It lifted a leg arthritically and did its best to walk. Almost as soon as the foot left the ground, gravity pulled mightily against the thing's bulk and nearly toppled its delicate balance. After a bit of trial and error, the thing discovered that short, shuffling steps were all it could manage.

For now.

The dead man raised his head and tried to vocalize its frustration. For reasons it couldn't understand, a distant memory of speech seemed like a natural thing for it to try and do. Only a hoa.r.s.e, croaking sound tumbled from its lips. The tone was brittle and laced in a vivid torment. Memories flitted across its fractured perception, but the images were hazy and scattered; random sensations culled from a life long gone and now half forgotten. The recollections brought nothing but more confusion and consternation. Nothing, it seemed, could calm the soul-crushing bewilderment of being unexpectedly brought back to consciousness. Any attempt at understanding was met with a slicing blade-on-bone distress.

The thing slowly ran its mud covered hands over its trunk. Its fingers traced their way up its once muscular chest as if in search of something; something of great importance. It was a sensation experienced through a numbed and inadequate anatomy. Deadened fingertips moved in spasmodic motions and stuttered their way up to the cords of the thing's neck. There, b.e.s.t.i.a.l bites dug savagely into the flesh of his throat. Long, raking furrows tore deep and were then pulled backward across the shoulder and down the back. As the dead man raised his hand to his face, deep crimson painted his palm and digits.

A deep and unabiding hunger once again twisted tightly in his stomach, calling him to a dark and single-minded purpose. The thing shut its eyes and tried to comprehend what it was that it was feeling. This onslaught of sensation was insistent and refused to be denied, much less ignored. Only one thought stood paramount: hunger. The need spoke to him as a conspirator might and told him how complicity could make all of this pain and confusion go away. It spoke of its plan and a way to get back a share of the peace that had been denied by death. It whispered of a possible respite from this world of torment.

Meat...

Meat held the answer...

The tearing of it...

The biting of it...

The oh so sweet taste of it.

The creature continued to hold its hands in front of its face. Beyond its gnarled fingers, reanimated bodies swayed and stumbled about in a dance of the living dead. The beast looked down in disgust and his dull, listless eyes caught a glimpse of his reflection in a puddle of urine on the ground. It was an utterly altered and decimated countenance that stared back from the depths of the dark pool. The skin of his face draped from his bones like a flag on a windless day. The flesh was drawn and tired looking; its skin leeched of its hue and the complexion as bloodless as a lizard's underbelly.

Realization of what it now was, what it had become, carved its way roughly through the haze, through the hunger, and through the pain. The epiphany pummeled its rudimentary sense of reason with a truth that was undeniable. A minute sense of what it had once been took hold and its impaired brain aggressively chewed over this new reality. A long feared consequence of its Past had become its horrifying Present. The once unthinkable had indeed come to pa.s.s.

Feeling an overwhelming sense of shame, the thing that had once been a man ran its hands over his face, coating the sallow flesh with mud and gore. Moaning plaintively, it raked its fingers through its sweat-soaked, salt-and-pepper hair. Slowly, it raised its face toward the light and cried out in an inconsolable wail of mourning.

Connubiality Cleese stood alone on the roof of The Chest and somberly looked out over the darkness blanketing the compound. The night had grown cold around him but it retained its calm and quiet ambience. The stars spread out across the night sky like a comforting quilt. Sporadic clouds hung like cotton b.a.l.l.s against the clear, dark sky. He took in a deep lungful of air and breathed it out in plumes of cottony vapor. With each breath he infused his lungs with frigid air; the brittle oxygen helped clear his head and allowed him to think.

He lifted the fragrant Macanudo, which barely smoldered in his fist, to his lips and rolled the soft tobacco around on the tip of his tongue. He pulled a matchstick from his front left pants pocket and struck it sharply against the stucco of the retaining wall. The match flared with a soft and somehow rea.s.suring hissing sound. He brought the fire to the end of the cigar in order to relight it and its brilliance dimmed as he drew the hearty smoke through its bitten-off end.

"This is for you, Monk," he said under his breath so that only the stars could hear him, "wherever you are, you grumpy old b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

He took another long pull on it, rolling the smoke across his palette where it felt silky and warm on his tongue.

"I was hoping I'd find you here," a familiar voice came drifting in from across the vast emptiness of the roof.

Cleese looked across the flatness of the roof, over the ventilation ducts and idle air conditioning unit. At the place where he'd left the ladder propped, he saw a large shadow of a man coming over the retaining wall like a hippo over a yard fence.

Weaver.

"Cleese..." greeted the baritone voice once he'd gotten closer. "Jesus... that ladder gets higher and harder to get up every G.o.dd.a.m.n day."

"Is it that it gets higher or you're getting older?"

"A little bit of both, Son..." Weaver said chuckling. "A little bit of both."

"I didn't know whether you'd make it tonight. I mean, I figured seeing as it is Friday after all. I was just coming up here to burn a Mac in Monk's honor."

"h.e.l.l, Son, I was coming along to do that very same thing." He pulled a cigar of his own out of his breast pocket with a sly grin and a flourish.

Cleese handed over another stick match from his pocket and returned the smile. Weaver took it from him with a nod of grat.i.tude and raked it against the stucco. Soon, his cigar was burning as brightly as Cleese's.

"I was beginning to worry that this tradition of ours was going to fall by the wayside now that Monk's moved on," Weaver said as he sat his big a.s.s against the short wall. He adjusted himself and then spit a bit of tobacco over the side of the building. "He and I spent far too many nights up here and I was a little sad when I thought we might not get to do it again."

Cleese nodded and said, "Tell you what, Old Man... I'll take his place up here with you for as long as I'm around if it would make you feel any better."

"It would indeed. It would indeed. And I'd be d.a.m.n glad to have ya, Son."

Cleese looked over at Weaver and grinned.

"I didn't know if you'd be here or not, but just in case you were, I brought you something," Cleese said as he reached into the shadows at his feet. He pulled a slender bottle into the moonlight, hefted it in his hand once, and then handed it over.

"Saaaay, now we're talking!" Weaver exclaimed, turning the bottle over in the half light so that he could read the label. "Glenmorangie... eighteen year old, single malt Scotch." Weaver laughed and shook his head. "People will say we're in love."

"If they do," Cleese responded with a wry grin, "then you're The b.i.t.c.h."

The men laughed and eased themselves down into a comfortable sitting position; backs pressed against the stucco. They sat, both looking up into the sky as Weaver pulled the lead foil from around the bottle's neck. With a squeak, he tugged the cork out and set it to his side. He lifted the bottle to his lips and opened his mouth. The rich, brown liquid poured over his tongue with a hearty "glug-glug" sound.

"Aaaaaaah..." he sighed after he'd swallowed. He handed it over to Cleese, his face reddening in the dim light. "That's mother's milk right there, Buddy. f.u.c.kin' A!"

"Glad you like it. I was meaning to give one of these to Monk before he left, but what with Corporate moving ahead everybody's plans and everything getting so crazy, I was never able to get around to it."

"Are you saying you have another one of these bottles lying around?" Weaver said, c.o.c.king an eyebrow inquisitively.

"Yeah, I do. I'll bring it next time, you f.u.c.kin' lush."

"Ahem..." he said and he gave a little bow, "I prefer the term connoisseur,"

"Whatever you want to call it, Pal. Your liver is just as screwed."

"Prolly true..." Weaver took the bottle back and raised it in toast. "To Monk then..." He took a large slug of the stuff and then handed the bottle back to Cleese.

Cleese accepted it and raised the bottle in kind.

"To Monk."

The two men sat, their conversation falling into a comfortable silence, pa.s.sing the bottle back and forth between them for some time. Neither saying a word nor feeling the need to. It was enough that they were together, hanging out and drinking themselves into a state of forgetfulness. It was a well deserved respite from all that they'd been through in the last few weeks. With Monk gone, Weaver and Cleese had become closer, like acquaintances drawn together by the absence of a mutual friend. Their interaction could still be awkward at times, but Cleese was content in the knowledge that their friendship would find its own path in its own time. Soon enough, things would fall into their own rhythm and things would grow to be more natural between them.

After a few minutes pa.s.sed and they'd both begun to feel the first wave of their buzz, Weaver looked over slyly and nudged Cleese's elbow with his own. His expression was comically conspiratorial. His thick eyebrows arched and a mischievously insinuating grin spread across his face.

"I notice you and the filly spending more and more time together now that Monk's gone AWOL." The caterpillars that pa.s.sed for Weaver's eyebrows danced up and down on his forehead. "What's doin' there?" he asked.

"You know... I'm not sure," Cleese responded honestly. Feeling slightly embarra.s.sed, he scratched himself behind the ear. "She's not like any woman I've ever known before. I mean, she's strong, capable, smart... She doesn't expect anything from me and asks for even less." He trailed off and shrugged. "I'm just enjoying her company is all and I plan on taking it as it comes, to spend time as time is spent, y'know?"

Weaver nodded in the darkness. "I do indeed. She's a nice girl... good in The Pit, too."

Another pause settled in and the two men sat quietly smoking and absorbing the stillness of the night. Cleese was encouraged by Weaver's acceptance of his blossoming relationship with Chikara. It felt a lot like having a dad approve of the girl you were dating.

"So," Weaver said, handing the bottle over, "you hear anything from Monk?"

"Nope. You?"

"Not as of yet. I'm thinking he'll wait until he finishes up his. .h.i.tch in the UFL. You know, wait 'til he gets to his daughter's place and he has something to report other than how jacked up that dog and pony show is."

Cleese nodded almost imperceptibly in the moonlight.

"He wasn't exactly happy with the way things finally went down, you know," Weaver said, shaking his head in disgust. "He told me that he wanted to make sure you were going to be ok before kicking you out of his nest."

"He was mothering me."

"Well, the hardest thing for a parent to do is to take their hand off the back of the bike. I doubt he had any desire to see you get your a.s.s ripped apart in front of him." Weaver looked Cleese in the eye. "He liked you, cared for you like a son."

"I hate to admit it," Cleese said over the lip of the bottle, "but I'm gonna miss that son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h. He beat my a.s.s-and I cursed him-more times than I'd like to admit, but he was also more help to me than I could've ever told him." He took another long draw of the Scotch. "He kept me alive in this d.a.m.ned place."

Now it was Weaver's turn to nod. Monk had dragged his meat out of the grease more times than he could recall as well. They'd befriended one another in the early days of The League and both considered themselves to have a deep and abiding affection. He felt a pang of remorse when he thought of how he might not ever see his friend again.

Cleese handed the bottle back to Weaver and they were both once again left to drift on the stream of their own thoughts. There was no pressure to fill the void with unnecessary chatter or small talk. It was enough that they could sit and smoke and drink in silence.

And so they did.

Finally, Cleese, coming back to the here-and-now, broke the stillness.

"So, how long are you gonna stick around here? I mean, you ain't getting any younger."

"Hey, you can go f.u.c.k right the h.e.l.l off, Pal. I plan on doing this s.h.i.t for another ten years at least," Weaver said laughing. As his chuckling fell under his breath, he said, "Some people's f.u.c.kin' children..."

"Hey, no offense meant."

"None taken, ya p.r.i.c.k."

Cleese smiled and reached over for the bottle.

"No, seriously, don't you have plans for your Golden Years?"

"Listen, Cool Breeze, I'm not even pushing sixty. I ain't got no retirement plans just yet. My job here is something I do without much thought and I'm really f.u.c.kin' good at it."

"Agreed, but don't you have family? I mean, back out in The World?"

Weaver got suddenly quiet, almost sullen, and looked away. A dark cloud pa.s.sed over his expression and his mood darkened. After a minute, he took the bottle back.

"I did... once," and he lifted the bottle and drank. "Same old story, y'know?"

"Sorry," Cleese said meekly. "I didn't mean to dredge up any bad memories."

"No, it's ok," Weaver said and lightly touched Cleese on the arm with the lip of the bottle. "See, back in the day, I used to work in, of all things, the electronics industry. Did that s.h.i.t for years. I kept track of thousands of parts at a semiconductor manufacturing plant. I did what they called 'destructive a.n.a.lysis.'"

"Sounds fitting."

"Yeah, well... it was all pretty meaningless, but I had me a wife, a home and a good life goin'. The old American Dream, y'know?"

Weaver's gazed drifted off as he began wandering the meadows of his memory.

"It's funny how things can change, eh?"

Cleese nodded silently and settled back, not wanting to get in the way of whatever it was Weaver had to say.

"Anyway, one day, I'm on my way home, drivin', y'know? And-bam-I hit this ma.s.sive gridlock on the freeway. Ain't a car moving for s.h.i.t. People are cussin'. People are honkin'. Then, in the next car over, a radio starts blarin' on about how there are people goin' crazy: ma.s.s murder, cannibalism, all kinds of craziness. s.h.i.t, you know how it was...

"At the time, the news guys were all talking about everything from Venus probes to some kind of infection, like a virus. Whatever it was and wherever it came from, it was makin' people to go crazy."

Cleese again nodded remembering that day all too well.

"Honestly, I figured it was all one of them War of the Worlds-type things. You know, complete and utter bulls.h.i.t. Anyway, I'm sitting in my car for quite a while, waiting for the gridlock to break. All I wanna do is get home and get back to my life, but as time goes on, I start getting more and more nervous. Not really sure why, but this anxious feeling starts skittering up my spine. So, I pull to the side of the road and drive up onto the shoulder, thinking I can circ.u.mvent this s.h.i.t by doing some off-roading and get my a.s.s home faster. I go four-wheeling through the toolies and get to the next exit. I bounce up and over the curb and come screaming down the embankment."

Weaver had a faraway look in his eyes as he continued. From the look on his face, it was like he was back there, seeing it all play like a movie across his mind's eye.