But mostly what he saw was the dead, in silhouette: a dozen shapes caught in the headlight glare, suddenly undecided as to which way to turn.

He held up the axe, saw the light reflect off it.

At that, he heard yelling, excited: a living sound, so different from the low moan of the dead. The firing stopped, and the engine-sound amped.

They had spotted him.

Good.

Behind him, the three advancing dead made sounds of desire. He paused, turned round, a.s.sessed the distance. The middle-aged woman was closest by far. The businessmen lagged by several feet. A narcotized panic, a galvanizing calm swept through him, bought him a moment of strange equilibrium. The boy slipped the cigarette twixt his teeth, chomped it, brought both hands to the axe handle. Feeling muy macho in the moment of the swing.

The woman could have been his mum, but it wasn't. Fair enough. The sound her head made as it detached was twig-like, dry and over fast.

It felt good, but then he turned, and saw that not everyone had veered toward the light.

The boy was not a fighter. He had not survived by strength. He did not win. He got away. There was a world of difference. By rooftop, by shortcut, by hidey-hole, yes. By cunning. By stealth.

There were twenty of them now.

It had been a long time since he'd been face-to-face with the living dead in waking life. A survival imperative. Keep out of their way. You forgot just how awful it f.u.c.king was, until you found yourself back there again. The up-close stench of it. The nightmare of their faces. The absurdity of the socially-prescribed uniforms that still pointlessly draped their frames. The singular abhorrence of rotting flesh. The total indignity of it all. The gag reflex which was perfectly natural, but also your absolute worst enemy. Unless you counted empathy, which was even worse.

Because this was the joke G.o.d had played. They used to be you. And you might still become them. They were mirrors that threw yourself right back at you: swaddling your hope in maggots, your dreams in a shambling infinitude of blankness.

They were everything that you never wanted to be.

And now there were easily thirty.

The truck was still roughly a block away, but closing fast. He ran toward it, feet clomping on pavement, axe raised, eyes calculating distance and proximity of the dead. They were mostly spread out, and he tried to remind himself that they went down pretty easily.

But now the first one was upon him, and he knocked it aside, but it clawed at him; and the moment its nails raked across his jacket, he remembered how easily he could die. The next one wore a butcher's ap.r.o.n, but the meat from its torn-open face could easily account for all the bloodstains across it. He sidestepped the grasping hands, veered dangerously near to a hospital midwife who once had been comely, but whose bulging gray breast implants now protruded like balloons from the rot of her bosom. He used the head of the axe to knock her over, and she fell, just as another pair of desiccated dandies stepped forward, b.u.t.tressed by five behind.

The guns resumed firing, on semi-automatic.

Projectile brain gobbets struck the boy in the face as the row of five jittered and fell. He screamed, and a bullet wisked right past his ear as he veered sharply to the left. His axe came up, down, imbedded in a green-black face and stuck, crushed skull gripping at the blade like forceps. The f.u.c.ker on the right made a move for him. He let go of the handle and screamed again, suddenly grappling with the dead.

His hands came down on corduroyed shoulders and squished there, old meat sickly giving way. Then all he could see was the zombie's face: green sc.u.m-slick teeth, yellow eyes rolled back.

That head exploded, inches from the boy's own; faintly, from a distance, he heard the high yip of the marksman's boisterous delight.

The body fell, and the Buzz took over, rendering everything in slo-mo. The multiple muzzle-flashes. The spastic collapses of the smithereening dead. The truck, as it screeched to a shuddering halt. The door, flying open.

The fat man, moving into the light.

There was one zombie left: its legs blown off, dragging itself forward with its spindly arms, toward him. The boy just stared at it, numb into weightless. The fat man approached on the zombie's absent heels. The expression on the dead thing's face was exactly the same as it would have been if it were still walking around.

Nothing could distract it from its hunger for him.

The boy stared into the dead thing's eyes; and all at once, the static roared. He felt it at the core of him, a subsonic resonant crackle and boom. Tor the first time, he felt he heard something within it.

Tor the first time, he almost understood.

The fat man had a very large revolver. He took a long time brandishing it, waiting until he was directly upon the crawling dead before aiming and firing. The crawling stopped. The silence was huge.

"b.l.o.o.d.y papist," said the fat man, and spat on the corpse.

The boy just stared, enveloped by the silence.

Then the world went blacker than the night, and he fell.

III.

What followed was a blur punctuated by moments: the interior of the truck, which was leather and softness; the words poor boy and he's doubtless in shock; the occasional tac of weapons fire; the howl of the dead outside as majestic gates parted before him.

And then he was up, being ushered down corridors stately and chill: a labyrinthine sequence over which the fat man presided, as if he'd done it many times before. Another man, whose name was Lewis, helped the boy along, essentially walking him toward wherever they were going.

And then there was a room too right to articulate, as if all the world's treasures had been secreted here: glimmers of gold and gem, sumptuous fabric, exquisite sculpture, high art, and sacred iconography ama.s.sed in unbelievable scale and scope.

It was hard, at this point, to disbelieve that this was just some heavenly dream. Or perhaps, in fact, that he had died, and this was the literal Heaven.

But then he was ushered into the bath. A cathedral for bathing. An altar for the act. And as Lewis undressed him, there was no missing the look in the fat man's eyes.

If this was Heaven, then G.o.d sucked c.o.c.k.

Alright, then, the boy thought. He was back in the world he knew, and the politics of flesh.

The boy watched the bathtub fill, felt a bit of himself creep back. He looked first at Lewis, who fell back, impa.s.sive. Then he met the fat man's gaze. Giving nothing up himself. As if the shock had never left.

The fat man gave it all away. His nakedness thrummed at the impact of that gaze. He checked himself out. He was nothing if not trim. There were bruises and zits, but that was to be expected.

This was going to work out just fine.

After the exquisite bath came bed: solo at first, and then with the fat man. All told, it went quite well. There was no getting around the simple solace of human contact, and the flavor of man bore no small satisfaction. He had long waxed nostalgic on the virtues of come; and when it came, he swallowed large. He felt it was the least he could do.

Of course, then it was his turn; and discharging was no problem at all. The fat man was both ardent and tender. In pig heaven, he was.

After that came dreamless sleep.

And when he awoke, still deeply buzzed, the fat man was dressing. Not in last night's streetwear, either. These were lavish, luxuriant flowing vestments: outrageously pompous, to be sure, but totally in keeping with the lush, archaic splendour of it all.

Watching-feigning sleep, with mute and slowly-mounting awe-he realized that he had spent the night with no less than Bishop Hallam, the head of the Church of England.

Which placed him squarely behind the gates of f.u.c.kingham Palace itself.

IV.

It was a given, if you'd spent any time on the street at all, that you resented the t.i.ts off the Royal Family. Never more so than now. No matter what horror was being foisted upon you, day after day, in this New h.e.l.l on Earth, you could rest a.s.sured that the Queen and her kin were doing just as fine as could be.

If, say, for example, you awoke on a given Sunday to find that your lover had died; and that, because you knew he was dying, you had strapped him to the cleanest mattress you could find, in some s.h.i.thole flat in the middle of h.e.l.l, then slept beside him, offering him all the scant comfort you had.

And say that you awoke to a growl and sudden motion, the bed shuddering beneath and especially beside you; and you knew he was dead because now he was back; and you, careless with love and compa.s.sion, had fallen asleep with your head on his shoulder.

Say, then, that you looked in his eyes, backing up just in time, backing up because you had to; and say that your heart broke in that moment. Say that your beautiful friend and lover-who had moved you to tears, o.r.g.a.s.ms, laughter-was gone, but that all of his flesh and his bone remained. And say that said flesh and bone tried to devour you now: not with love, but with hunger alone...

Well, you could a.s.sume that the Queen was just dandy: sipping tea and nibbling bisquits.

And say that you had made a deal with your wounded love, in your final days together. Say that you had promised to take care of it. To make sure that he wandered the earth no longer.

And say that you began to cry, when you found that the moment was finally upon you; and you found that your tears meant nothing to him now, no, and never again and say that the sound alerted the dead, who broke down the door and set upon you...

Well, at least you knew that the Queen was safe, and snuggly-warm, within Buckingham Palace.

And, just to bring an end to this, say that you managed to crush your loved one's skull, watching his fine body's final twitching as you rose, faced the dead, then took off up the stairs. Not knowing if they were waiting up there, too. Not knowing if it mattered. Not caring if you knew...

Well, guaranteed, filet mignon was waiting for the Queen. (Boiled, no doubt. She was, after all, British.) This was all, of course, just hypothetical. It had only happened to him once. And he had no idea if the Queen's chronology had been in step with his own travails.

But he knew, as he rose-his host at last gone-that some issues were arising within him. Little matters of cla.s.s, of justice and vengeance.

Or maybe just making the best of it. He was, after all, no longer outside.

And much remained to be seen.

There was a note at the foot of the bed. It read: Dear boy, I thank G.o.d that I found you last night. Lord only knows how much you must have suffered. I trust you will unburden to me, in the day's to come.

I have important business, in the service of the Queen. I hope that you will excuse me. When the day is done, I will return.

Until then, feel free to explore my quarters. There is much beauty here. Food is on the table by the windows. Please help yourself.

Unfortunately, as for now, I must restrict you to my quarters. Strict protocols govern our comings and goings. When the time comes, if it is your desire, you will be issued a uniform and duties that allow you greater access to the larger realm. All this I will explain in full.

Until then, please enjoy.

This was followed by a scribble far less legible than the text.

The boy got up blearily, looked around. It was indeed a fabulous place. It looked like they'd looted every church of note in Europe, so that even the least of the artifacts were splendid by any ordinary standard.

It was all G.o.d, G.o.d, and G.o.d some more, but there were a number of interesting spins. Aside from the hundred thousand Jesii, there were Jeho-van constructs aplenty. Jehovah the Creator. Jehovah the destroyer Jehovah the Omniscient. Jehovah the Just Barely There. Not to mention innumerable pagan doodads, more than sufficient to fill in all of the metaphysical blanks.

When that got boring, there was beef and cheese and bread so fresh it was free of mold.

And then there was the view.

From the windows, all of London spread out before him; and for the first time, he got a handle on the regal perspective. Looking down, of course.

There were the sculpted grounds below. Then the guards. Then the fences. And only then came the walking dead: hundreds and hundreds of them, pressed together, as if waiting for Elton John to do a benefit concert. Dead Aid, they would doubtless call it. And it would be sold out.

The boy was horrified, looking down. There were so many of them. Were they always there? Was this like a mecca?

Of course it was. There were living here, right out in the open and everything. Flaunting what they had. Virtually daring the dead to take it.

"Filthy peasants," he heard himself mutter, and felt the black oil of history move through his veins.

Suddenly, the Buzz welled up, and he could no longer eat, no longer look out the window. Vertigo smacked him a dizzying whack, strange voices hissing gibberish in the back of his skull. The sandwich he had made dropped from his hand, squished into the carpet beneath his feet as he staggered back and away, groping for balance, his palms at last landing heavily on the st.u.r.dy oak of the bishop's writing desk.

He steadied himself there, eyes snapped shut, and let the world stop spinning.

When he looked back clown, the jewel-encrusted cover of a leather-bound book glimmered up at him, fired by the morning sun. Oh my, he thought, and flipped it open, revealing page after page of the bishop's tidy handwriting.

A journal? Most likely. Left out? Indeed!

And oh, what secrets it might reveal!

The boy flipped to the first page and proceeded to read.

Understand this, my dears: beauty has always been my downfall, a long slow shipwreck on the siren's rock. Would that I could resist the call, but I have always felt too long at sea. Adrift in this bloated, ridiculous body. Riding the black tide, alone.

At least the bishop had no illusions about himself. The boy skimmed a little, then flipped toward the back.

And so it began, my sweets: the search for the new Vrincess. Vrince Randolph would have his bride, and the bloodline would continue. No detail was to be overlooked, no option ignored. Of the two hundred plus servants alive and working in the Val-ace, all were informed of the quest, and all were put on active duty. An army of cars were sent out blazing in every direction. The shortwave radios were scanned and searched twenty-four hours a day. Randolph even launched his beloved pigeons.

if there was a surviving female member of any of the Royal Families, Queen Florence would make sure she was found.

The madness here has steepened precipitously, as evidenced by this morning's episode, which I will attempt to describe in all of its lunatic detail.

I was walking in the garden with the Queen and Queen Mother as they busily planned the wedding. I had been brought in to consult. Florence read aloud from a crabbed list of worthies who simply must attend; and in all cases, the intended quest was dead.

From the Queen Mother'? "Oh, bother" was the general response.

It was then that we came across the body... or, rather, the remnants thereof.

The base of the rib cage was wedged tight against the bars: the legs long since snapped off and dragged to zombie gourmand heaven, the pelvis shattered and likewise gone, along with the base of the spine. The one-limbed torso had fallen back to describe one-quarter of the Crucifixion. But there was no flesh on the face, nor organ to speak of within the fractured ribs.

Even the scalp was gone, eliminating the possibility of identification through hairstyle. But gauging from the shredded garb, it was clearly a male member of our servant staff; and based on the positioning of the body, I could envision all too clearly what must have transpired.

"Suicide" I muttered, tasting bile on the word.

The Queen cast a shocked gaze in my direction, as though such a thought were inconceivable. But I, alas, understood all too well why a soul would want out of this place.

I imagined the poor man, lurking unseen by the vast liquor cache, drinking himself wretched in the wee hours of the morning. Imagined the moans of the walking dead as they echoed and droned inside his head. Trapped like a rat was how he felt, hopeless and lonely and sick to death of life. So, at long last, he half-snuck and half-staggered out into the moonlit garden, most likely with bottle in hand.

And there were the dead, with their arms outstretched; wanting him, needing him, calling him home.

How long did he stand there, thinking it over, weighing the moment in his mind? Did he race straight into their starving embrace, h.e.l.lbent kamikaze without a cause? Or did he linger for hours there, weaving, cursing, taunting the dead with the last of his spark? Bid he, indeed, launch himself willfully into the fence? Or did he stumble, perhaps, coming a little too close to those grasping hands in a final burst of ersatz courage and drunken devil-may-care?