Dogwood tumbled to the concrete and linoleum-tile of the corridor through thick smoke as the door opened, half-naked and wheezing, grabbing my leg.

"They tried to kill me, Horse!" he coughed. "Locked me in and left me to burn!"

"No more of that 'Horse' garbage, understand?" I hissed in his ear before straightening to proclaim, "This man is ill and my responsibility-"

But my words were interrupted as the Minister coughed till he was sick on my foot.

"Look," a haggard youth said, unshaven and reeking of The Fear. "We don't care about whatever line of bulls.h.i.t you're trying to spin. It doesn't matter. And just trust me when I say you'll fight with all the rest of us when the time comes."

I nodded busily, grinning in what I hoped was a manner that spoke of agreement and total comprehension: "Indeed! Fighters, us. Stern repose. All that stuff."

It seemed that we'd been less clever than I'd thought, but they really believed something terrible was coming. It seemed best to trust them on this, and just focus on getting the h.e.l.l out of Dodge before it arrived. The Minister caught my attention again with another coughing fit, making me pull my foot out of range. His eyes rolled pink like an agitated lab-mouse, wearing nothing but boots and jeans, both legs torn raggedly so that one ended above the knee and the other courted indecency.

"Where are your clothes, Minister?"

"Burned 'em. Had to start somewhere."

Of course he had, but it couldn't be helped. Definitely time to be moving on, away from this foreign place and its aura of doom.

Wait, where are we, I thought?

The Minister and I staggered from the concreted area of our incarceration-gray, gla.s.s and steel-only to find ourselves on the third story of an incomprehensible madhouse, when we could see the ground. Vast walls and fences surrounded an area of something akin to four blocks, teeming with shanty structures and fetid ma.s.ses of humanity. Buildings, clearly pre-existing the Reanimates or whatever these guys called zombies, hauled themselves up out of the complicated ma.s.s below. Few people were left at ground level, seeming to prefer to get as high as they possibly could.

What kind of lunacy was this?

Why were they all trying to get off the ground? It looked safe. Or were they looking out over the walls, and if that was the case, why were they freaking out so much?

The furled edges of a conclusion touched my mind, but I will admit that Dogwood got there before I did and saved us the trip upstairs to investigate.

"They've got zombies. A scorching case."

Of course. All of Chantal's weird behavior and the incomprehensible drug-theft treachery could fit if these misguided cretins were from the past, and simply hadn't noticed that pattern. Morons.

This was something out of Mad Max. Razor-wire and gun-emplacements at the top of the wall, never mind that the repet.i.tive noise would bring them in like nothing else. Well, excepting the smell of legion overheated unwashed humans, or maybe concentrated brain-radiation, or whatever it was they homed in on.

In any case, this place was sun-ripened spam in a can.

It was time to run away.

"You're right, Minister! My G.o.d, these people are going to get us both killed!"

"Bad scene, man," he grated on a smoke roughened throat. "Irresponsible."

"Indeed! We need to get to the ground and get out before the zombies arrive."

"What if they're at the gates already?" he clutched my arm. "We might smell of food!"

A chill went through me, reminding me of how physically dissolute and watery I felt, sapped of Power and Resilience. A conundrum.

"These people will stockpile gear, Minister. For one thing, they'll have ours. That should be enough to get free of this place. We must find it!"

The two of us slinked and reeled down sets of stairs to reach the ground, pa.s.sing or jumping barriers across the stairs when we found them. We were straight-sober for the first time in living memory and the experience was ghastly, stripping away all the filters sane humans need to function and setting us loose like panicky rats under snake-eyes. There was nothing on these levels but shoddy hotel-sized units turned apartment shanty-towns. Not what we needed. I remember peering over banisters and scanning around for a structure that would predate the Big Zs. It'd be run down and blocky. Utilitarian. Just scream "police."

In the end, the Minister found it by falling down the stairs. He came to rest and, when the swearing died down, reported that there were low windows at the street, containing a six inch view of what looked like cells. And the Minister knew cells.

Breaking into police stations turned out to be surprisingly easy when all the police are AWOL for fear of flesh-rending horrors. I was bent on getting the lock picked or finding something to chisel the hinges when the Minister kicked in one of the ground windows and climbed inside.

"Minister!" I said, scrambling down to the window. "We want to avoid jail cells, and you don't like them. Been very clear on that in the past . . . "

"Door's open, Horse . . . " came the m.u.f.fled response.

I dislike crawling over even the most tidily broken gla.s.s, but truly these were Desperate Times. Dogwood was missing, as happened frequently in times of stress and confusion, but would not stray far. I could hear him scuffling around somewhere beyond the cells, which were indeed open.

I called, "Find anything?"

"Cops stop filing when the world starts to end. Guess it's been ending here for a while."

The man can be a poet when he wants, when the demons aren't soiling that part of his mind, or riding him around the city like a radioactive jet-propelled scooter bent on ma.s.s destruction.

The real question was, where would they have put our stuff? Or failing that, where would they have been keeping other people's stuff, which we could then get into and abscond with? The search took some time, from memory, leading two increasingly desperate men-both of whom were in the early depths of different flavored DTs as the sedation wore off-through a plethora of pathologically dull police rooms. By a process of elimination we found an evidence lock-up, and it was there that the dark G.o.ds smiled upon us with their blackened grimy teeth and decided we'd suffered enough. If the cops had still been in a filing mood we might never have found it, but getting into all the lockers and drawers meant that we located bags that looked suspiciously like our supplies. The Minister was even reunited with his fractal-blade, still rusty with monster juice or-in retrospect-soldier blood. He returned it to its thong, and to the gap it left in the tan around his neck. All of the Safety Drugs were there, tagged and dated in little plastic bags.

And then we noticed all the other stuff in the locker. In little plastic bags. And in the lockers next to ours.

They say when it rains it pours, and howling crackbaby CHRIST but it was beautiful. My mouth went dry as the Minister began to laugh a low, dirty chuckle.

It was more than we could carry by a significant margin, such riches that to take all of it would have been lamentable greed. The Minister and I were and are pillars of the global community and would not dream of it.

"We have to try some of this . . . " the Minister said.

"Indeed! It's medicinal! Choose your weapons and see what you can find by way of a wheel-barrow or box mover, something wheeled." I grabbed a decent chunk of acid and some speed. "Take what you want, Minister; we're making up for lost time and need to be safely wasted by the time the zombies get in."

He rooted in the bins and suddenly looked up. "They'll be agitated when they arrive. Won't matter if we're wasted so long as we're moving!"

A relevant, alarming point. "True. Drugs, a barrow and a stolen car, Minister. We have our mission."

We didn't find anything so useful as a wheeled box conveyance, but I did find some decent back-packs and a roll of carpet from the adjoining office, which I figured might be useful for getting over any barbed wire. However, in the time it took me to return, the Minister had chosen to plunge us forward once again into Interesting Times.

Different shades of upholstery fabric crawled detectably up each arm and stained his torso, with a third mounting one leg. His eyes were intense and manic, shining with an unwholesome inner light.

I shudder thinking about it, even now. Little will make a grown man more foolhardy, unstable and depraved than mixed, conflicting Tweed. And from the way the cloth pattern stain was spreading, all were unusually high doses.

The plan had changed, although the overall mission remained the same: complete all objectives before Minister Dogwood became a portal for horror and bad confusion to enter this benighted world.

How long could I keep control of my own demons, I wondered? The gust-front of the acid was curling through my brain like a serpent returning to a comfortable lair, and pretty soon it was going to take the wheel.

Here I was, responsible for Minister Dogwood, currently the human equivalent of a dirty suitcase-nuke with a low timer and nothing but red wires. The two of us trying to get out of an armed compound before an unspecified number of the undead-an unknown distance away-broke inside, and all before the acid-snake took me for a joyride.

It is challenges which make us grow.

A susurrus of voices and the sharp taps of gunfire carried in the air when we managed to get out of the police station. The cell windows were much too high to escape from the inside, so we had to use the door. Far above, I could see the arms and gestures of the milling throngs as they surveyed their impending doom arriving on implacable rotting legs. No idea how long we had, so safest to a.s.sume not much time at all and then work from there.

"Minister," I declared, trying to keep him focused. "Look for vehicles."

I was aware myself of the incipient dust melting into an iridescent sheen and climbing slowly up our legs.

Dogwood's gaze was fixed on the balconies above, apparently on a once-fat woman with sagging bundles of flesh holding onto a malnourished Pomeranian.

"Dogsa darkmeat, yeh?"

Sinking feeling, or was that the melting dirt? Our downward spiral begun so soon? Had to keep him focused, and that would be increasingly difficult.

"No good, Dogwood. Too many bones."

"Can't trust the bones, no."

"Cars, Minister! Focus."

We were attracting attention and shouts from the people above, but that wasn't the real concern. I had to think. Cars would be outside the camp to give them s.p.a.ce and since zombies wouldn't damage them, so we had to seek a way out of these hideous walls. The Minister was following me and I wasn't worried about anyone here interfering with him. Mostly naked except for lopsided torn pants, clashing upholstery patterns crawling under his skin and mixing in his torso, brightly maniacal eyes and a fixed grin . . . He was obviously far too crazy a person to mess with. The Tweed patterns were a biological warning to predators, part of how the world declares Do Not Disturb. He was like some feral fusion-powered couch-based Frankenstein lurching around this little settlement in defiance of G.o.d's laws, and daring polite society to form a mob. Fortunately, polite society had bigger concerns.

Our wanderings lead us to a change from concrete to hurricane fencing, beyond which the horizon could be seen behind indistinct humanoid figures in the distance. Progress at last! I climbed up enough to throw our carpet over the sharp wire, then hurled the gear bags I was carrying over the fence to the other side. I hoped the Minister would follow my lead, but I was beset by traitorous whispers. Setting him loose here would be like throwing a sack of weasels into a kindergarten; it would definitely afford time for my own escape, but I couldn't do that! He was my Minister, and the crazy b.a.s.t.a.r.d for all his faults didn't deserve that. And these poor misguided swine didn't deserve him, not in this state.

I climbed the fence, the wire under my hands throbbing with a giant, slow heartbeat and singing in a phantom wind. I was aware of hostile attention from the crowds above and hurried, aiming to cajole Dogwood across once I was on the other side. As I reached the dirt I saw him throw his arms wide and look up at the crowds before booming, "Don't worry, citizens! We're not the undead!"

Thank you, Minister. I remember thinking. Succinctly put.

"Come on, throw me the gear and climb over," I yelled. I could see Chantal moving our way through a growing crowd daring the balconies of the lower levels, but ignored her. Dogwood, however, was confused by my interruption.

"What? Why are we leaving? Have you caved in to these people?"

"Over the fence, you animal! We don't have time for games!"

Dogwood glared intensely and began to climb, still carrying all his bags. He fought his way up to the carpet, his underskin patterns growing out behind him as membranous fabric wings while my pulse roared and sang in my ears.

Hold it together, I thought. Maintain! I thought.

Lose control now and the two of you will be lost in the storm.

When the Minister came down, the carpet came with him. Shrieking, he rolled in its embrace, punching and biting. I hauled it away and Dogwood looked up at me with huge, mad eyes.

I dragged him bodily away from the fence and looked for vehicles. As I did, the community's situation became clearer. They were in a box-canyon, so the gunshot echoes would summon zombies for miles. The initial forerunners of the undead horde dropped like ripe rupturing fruit as they reached the range of the guns, but that was a finite solution at best-particularly given their thickening crowds. Despite the pace they were being cut down, the mob was still making visible if very slow progress towards the walls. And then they'd start to climb each other.

The two of us had seen this before.

Well, not with the whole Mad Max walls and gun-emplacement thing, but otherwise we'd seen it.

The car-pool was dusty and some of the vehicles looked dilapidated, but that'd never stopped us before. I unleashed the Minister and directed him to the nearest jeep. He was always better with hotwiring than me, even while chemically unbalanced.

I watched the man plunge beneath the dashboard and rip into the wires there with a high, tearing scream of laughter. Perhaps, I thought, this time he was too far gone. Yet this was negative thinking and of no purpose. The jeep had some big water tanks strapped to the side which sounded full, and a pile of silver-wrapped food packs in the back. Food and water would be useful if we wanted not to have to drink our p.i.s.s before we reached civilization.

Never fun.

The engine turned over with a zapping scream, matched with a cry from Dogwood, who began punching the dashboard and swearing. He seemed to have the situation in hand, and my attention was drawn back to the walls of the bleak settlement that was doing everything wrong.

Poor, misguided, uncomprehending wretches. Trapped in a new world they didn't understand, and much of which wanted to consume their living flesh. A very bad scene today, fear in the air, yet another apocalypse the Minister and I had to witness. The acid hummed, spat and whispered that perhaps this was no accident. Were we the karmically-invested sin eaters of an entire way of life?

Troubling thought, but I doubted it. We didn't really know these people, not even Chantal.

Chantal.

My eyes narrowed as a conclusion formed, even if I wasn't completely conscious of it at the time. Chantal was a crystalline example of this community. Misguided, unheeding, desperately human, and seeking a means to continue that state. She had a face, particularly in comparison to everyone else the Minister and I had dealt with here, all of whom realistically had been total d.i.c.ks.

She had a face and a name even if we didn't know her, and she deserved another chance. By extension, so did the rest of them.

I clambered around to the back of the jeep and rooted around for tools, spooking the Minister. He brandished a pair of pliers at me from the floor and weaved dangerous, eerie patterns in the air with the shining points, like a crab signaling territory over lake mud.

These people were organized. There were two sorts of tire-iron, and right where they should be, rather than under the seats or taped to the bodywork. I grabbed the longer one that was unimpeded by a cross-piece, and set out at an angle that would bring me towards the thickening tide of zombies while keeping me visible to the watchers above.

The chattering of the idiot guns was still keeping them far enough back that it was a long walk in the afternoon sun, any moment expecting a stray round. The acid wave hit and broke over me en route, melting the ground into a thick stodgy soup and staining the sky with strobing neon torment. An endless staticky hiss filled the world, like a bad recording of surf on a stony eternal sh.o.r.e. The zombies seemed to join the soup, reminding me of the ghastly visions which beset me when Chantal lead us into that trap.

For a moment I contemplated going back and ceasing my rebellion against The Fear, soured by memory of that betrayal. But no! I would be holy Teflon to that ugliness, and refuse to soften my resolve.

The lecherous, biting gunfire laughter stopped altogether as I neared and singled out one particular zombie, which at least suggested they'd noticed me and cared. I was touched. Then they started up again, to chew away at the fringes some distance from me.

I focused on my target as the viscous world lurched, bubbled and sang.

You can't trust the dead. For every staggering Romero-brand which saps your caution, you'll find another one fresh enough to run screaming or throw something. Or one dried by desert winds into staggering carnivorous cordwood, seemingly harmless till they get close enough to release the crossbow tension in twisted tendons like steel cables and rip you in half. And then occasionally you find a zombie with activated Augments and implants. If you're wary you have a very bad day. If you're not wary you probably don't get a chance to have a bad day.

Even if you're ripped or Twisted, there are few guarantees. Not when you're up close and personal, and particularly not when they can smell flesh on the wind.

The one I'd singled out was dry and old, but lively enough. His stiffened leathery skin-all in patches-creased into a frown as he neared me, aware I was there but not what I was. I steeled myself and held out an arm before the creature, watching its rotting nostrils flex in and out, wuffling around and searching for this weird thing I was. Those horrible nostrils! They unfurled slowly like miniature elephant trunks on the hunt, or seemed to, sparking thrills of nauseous horror. I didn't move except to turn back to the walls and balconies where binoculars winked.

Backing a safe distance away from the hideous, duel-elephant thing, I pointed and roared, "See? No bitey!"

At the noise, all the zombies recalibrated to me, until the settlement fired again and refocused them on the walls. With luck, the villagers finally noticed that part of the pattern. I moved back to the zombie I'd initially targeted and smacked it in the skull with the tire-iron till it stopped moving. The body smelled like opening a bag of jerky which has started to turn-dry, salty and corrupt. It took me back to that G.o.d-awful bar in Terra Haute, with gleaming soiled gems of teeth and enamel fragments in the urinal, but I forced the memory down and decided to drive the point home to these people. After all, they were woefully behind the times.

I spent five or ten minutes running through this forest of corpses and played the Minister's games. I pushed them over like tipping humanoid cows, danced around before them, safe in their confusion, and even tied one's shoelaces together to leave it stumbling and crawling. Nothing without risk, but I was high on superiority.

Puffed by my Heroic Exertions, I moved back toward the settlement to see results. People with rifles were watching me, one with binoculars. Chantal was also in evidence with that group. As I watched, one of the armed figures turned to the man with the binoculars and spoke.

Instantly, I knew what was said, like a voice from over my shoulder stating in a reasonable tone, "Maybe we should shoot him?"

Paranoia gripped me in a cold, th.o.r.n.y fist. A finger lanced out at Chantal.

"Her!" I screamed. It took a second or two for the sound to hit the balconies. "Indeed! She's seen it! Ask her!"

Already she was engaged in conversation with Official Looking People, perhaps to deny knowing me. It was hard to say. But it can be very hard to stop talking when acid is at the wheel, words tumbling out despite my terror that I was only making things worse.

"The police station! Full of glorious drugs to keep you safe! More than you need! And stop shooting at them!"