A more elemental kind of man would just be trying to put the make on me, arguing that the human race is near extinction and let's make love while we can and think about the future instead of the self, babe.

Not Albert. Not Fly. In completely different ways, both these men were gentlemen. And Jill was a fine young lady. I could have done a lot worse in choosing companions for Armageddon.

"Albert, I won't lie to you again. I do have a hang- up about the Mormon Church; but it won't affect us. I respect you, um, in spite of it."

His voice was polite, if a little frosty: "Thank you. I won't pressure you about it."

Well, if I could tell Fly some of it, I didn't see why I couldn't talk to the big Mormon. Again the thought came to me that I could get more off my chest with this relative stranger. As close as I was to Fly, my platoon pal, there was a reticence with him I could never shake.

If I said to Fly that "there are some things you wouldn't understand," he'd stare at me with his what the h.e.l.l are you talking about expression and make me feel like a silly, emotional girl; he wouldn't do it deliberately, but the result would be the same.

The truth was there were certain things I didn't want to share with Fly. The reasons were emotional; and those were never good enough reasons for him.

"Albert," I said, feeling the shape of his name as I spoke it for the first time from a quiet place inside, "I want to tell you about my brother."

"I'll listen; but you don't have to if you don't-"

"He was never really what you'd call a real man; I mean, I don't think he would have made a good Marine. Had the bad luck to be really pretty . . . not like a guy; I mean a girly-man kind of pretty. You know, delicate features, pale skin, long, beautiful lashes like a girl."

"Big guy?"

"Yeah, right. When I was twenty, I outweighed him by ten pounds-I mean, five kilograms . . . gotta be military here."

"Ow. That can be rough."

"It got worse. A lot of the older guys in the theater-he did stage-crew stuff for the s.p.a.celings- they kind of came on to him. Real aggressive, gay stuff; sometimes the theater can get like that, and anybody who says it can't never did theater in L.A. or New York. I don't even know if they were serious, or of they just wanted to freak him; but Buddy-"

"Buddy?""Heh, blame him for that. He was named Ambrose, so he called himself Buddy. Buddy got real scared that he was, you know, gay. It wouldn't have mattered if he were; he would've said, 'Hey, like, that's it,' you know? But he wasn't. He wasn't really anything; so he totally bugged."

"I don't know what to say. I've never had that problem. I've always known I was a flaming hetero- s.e.xual."

"So he kept always trying to prove his manhood . . . you know, shoving little girls around, sticking his zinger in any doughnut hole he could find. He even once ..." I hesitated.

"With you?" asked Albert, suddenly too perspica- cious for words. d.a.m.n it.

"It was pathetic; really negative zone. I took him down so fast he cracked the sound barrier between vertical and horizontal. And it wasn't too long after that he fell in with a bad crowd and suddenly decided he would convert to Mormonism."

"What were you before that?"

"What do you expect? 'Sanders,' Episcopalian, as close to the Church of England as you can get in the U.S.".

"How long did he stay with us?"

"Eight months; he moved to SLC, moved back to Hollywood half a year later. I think he showed up at the Overland church a couple times, then found a new savior: a drug called tank. Ever hear about it?"

"Nope. 'Fraid I'm not up on the drug culture . . .

not from the using perspective. Your brother's prob- lems are his own making," said Albert. "Would you fee! the same way about the Catholics or Lutherans or Baptists, if he used them as a rest stop on the road to h.e.l.l?"

That made me smile. "Albert, I had no idea you were so eloquent! I admit I'm prejudiced; when I'm thinking about it, I'm p.i.s.sed at all organized religion; but only the Mormons cut into my guts like that. I think church enables aberrant behavior."

Albert laughed, and I had to admit I sounded pompous. "Temples too?" he asked.

"Oh, right," I said. This man had debated at some point in his life. "All religion, especially the ones that pretend not to be. They all say theirs is a way of life or an ethical system or a personal relationship with G.o.d-it's only the other guy who has a religion."

"Arlene, I'd like to ask a favor of you. Please don't tell Fly about our talk. I like things the way they are right now between all of us. I don't want to do anything to distract Taggart from doing the fine job he's doing."

"I keep confidences. You listened to my story, that's all."

He shifted his bulk against the wall so he could sit more comfortably. "You mentioned your brother getting involved with drugs. So did I, from the other side. I don't like to talk about being a Marine sniper; it's a private thing between me and the Lord. But one week, I was a.s.signed to kill a woman who wa.s.suspected of being the primary money launderer for the Abiera drug cartel in Colombia."

"No great loss," I said, far too quickly.

He moved closer, as if he thought the monsters might overhear and report his confessions to Satan Central. "Arlene, I said she was suspected, not proven."

"Oh," was all I could think to say. I said it with sincerity.

"I'd never killed a woman before. They call it termination, but it's killing. I don't make it easier by playing with words."

"There goes your career in the military," I said, liking him better all the time. "So you were to terminate this woman with extreme prejudice because she was a suspect."

He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. "Strong suspect. But I had a lot of problems with it. It went against my moral learning."

I was having an attack of sarcasm and couldn't keep it bottled up. I hit him with: "Killing all the suspects in the hope you get the target? The Church of Central Intelligence makes that a sacrament."

"No, I mean killing a woman. In the end I decided if I couldn't justify killing her, then how could I justify killing a guy who was supposed to be a renegade colonel from Stasi? I did him the month before."

"Now who's playing with words?"

"Killed him the month before. He was training Shining Path terrorists to be sent over to Kefiristan to help the Scythe. It came down to one thing: either I trusted my superiors knew what they were doing, or I didn't."

He wanted to be frank with me, but the words choked in his throat. I helped him along. "You killed her," I said.

"I killed her, yes. I still think she was guilty."

Suddenly, I chuckled. He looked at me as if I'd completely lost my mind. "No, no, Albert, it's not what you think. I'm laughing about all the trouble America went to trying to protect f.u.c.k-ups like my brother."

My use of the past tense brought both of us back to the immediate nightmare. "I think we're all sinners,"

he concluded. "We all deserve to die and be d.a.m.ned; we earned that fate when we disobeyed the Lord.

Which is why we need the Savior. I take responsibility for the blood on my hands, even if I let Him wash it clean. I don't blame the Church, the Marines, my parents, society, or anyone or anything else."

"We have a difference there, my friend," I told him.

"I blame G.o.d."

"Then you blame the nature of things."

"Yeah, I guess I do. 'The nature of things' is waiting for us beyond this alley with claws and horns, light- ning and brimstone. My only regret is that I won't meet G.o.d when I have a rocket launcher." I knew I was getting worked up and discussing religion; but I was talking to a human being, not the President of theTwelve.

And really, Arlene Sanders, are you sure you're not trying to wash away the blood on your hands, the blood of a whole compound of innocents who might die because of your stupid mistake, sending a radio mes- sage to co-opted Colonel Karapetian? I shuddered and shut off the thought.

"You can't blow up G.o.d, Arlene," he said in an annoyingly tolerant tone of voice. I expected my blasphemy would get more fire out of him.

I tried one last time, while I still had my mad on: "He made Himself flesh once, didn't He? If He'd do it again ..."

"I think you'd find the cross a heavier weapon to carry than a bazooka, Arlene. Somehow I don't see you nailing anyone to a cross."

I almost told him about the row of crucified h.e.l.l- princes the pumpkins had used to adorn Deimos and how I'd happily do the same; then I made myself shut up instead. I'd said enough. More than enough. The quiet, easy way he was dealing with my outburst told me that Albert was a man of faith so strong I couldn't crack it with a BFG. Besides, I had the feeling he would start praying for me if I didn't cool it.

"Thank you for telling me about Colombia," I said.

"There's no one I'd rather talk to than you, Arlene.

Now let's get back to work."

d.a.m.n if I wasn't becoming attracted to honest Albert. For the first time in weeks, I thought about Dodd, my-my guy, who was zombified; my lover whose body I put out of its misery.

A small glimmer of guilt tried to build up into a fire, but I doused it with anger. We all had our problems.

We were all human. I was sick and tired of thinking about all the things I did wrong or could have done better. Humanity was not a weakness; it was a strength, and our job was to win back our world, and d.a.m.n it, why did I hesitate to think "lover" when I thought about Willie? Was it because it had the word "love" in it?

Darling Dan's Supermarket was the next battlefield.

The zombies finished unloading the crates of whatev- er and drove off in the bread truck. Now the coast was clear.

"Come on," I said.

"Right behind you," he said.

19.

We slipped into the supermarket through the back delivery door and worked our way toward the front. Lights were flickering on and off with the same irritating strobe effect that Fly and I had to deal with on Deimos so friggin' often. Maybe these guys weren't sloppy, slovenly, indifferent creeps; maybe it was some kind of aesthetic statement. All I knew was flickering light gave me a headache and made me want to unload a clip at the first refugee from Halloween who happened across my path.

"Come on," said Albert, a few steps ahead of me now.

I loved symmetry as much as the next guy. "Rightbehind you," I quoted. It was the next best thing to dancing with him.

Inside the main part of the store, the fluorescent lights were on and burning steady. But the refrigera- tion was off, and there was a rotten smell of all kinds of produce, milk, and meat that had been let go before its time.

"Ew," said my Mormon buddy, and he hit the center of the bull's-eye. The meat smelled a lot worse than the bad vegetable matter. And oh, that fish!

If I hadn't been wide awake on adrenaline- compared to which caffeine is harmless kid stuff-I would never have believed what I saw next. Nothing on Phobos or Deimos had the feeling of a fever dream compared to the spectacle of...

"h.e.l.l in the aisles," breathed Albert.

The grocery store was as busy as a Sat.u.r.day after- noon in the good old world. Mom and Dad and the kids were there. Young lovers wandered the aisles.

Middle-cla.s.s guys with middle-sized guts in ugly T- shirts pushed shopping carts down the center aisle with no regard for who got in the way. Nothing had changed from the way it used to be ... except that everyone was dead.

Zombies on a shopping spree. Eyes never to blink again. Mouths never to form words, but to drool foul- smelling, viscous liquid worse than anything in an old wino's stomach. Hands reaching out to grab anything or anyone that fell in their path.

The sour lemon odor was so concentrated that I had trouble breathing and Albert's eyes were watering; my throat was filling with something unpleasant.

The nearest zombie to us had been a big man once, a football player would have been my guess. Thick blue lines stretched across his face; I couldn't tell if they were veins or grooves or painted on. Next to him stumbled the remains of a cheerleader whose long hair she'd probably taken good care of a long time ago in the world lost way, way back ... in the previous month. The zombie girl's hair looked like spiders had tangled themselves up in their own webs and died on her head.

These two were the best-looking zombie couple.

The nearest family was disgusting; especially the thirteen-year-old boy (what had been a thirteen-year- old boy). Part of his head was missing. It looked melted, as if a big wad of caramel had been left out in the sun and gone bad on one side.

A thin, bald man looked like a scarecrow with a laughing skull on top. His right cheek was missing and the few teeth that hadn't fallen out on that side made me think of kernels of uneaten corn or keys on an unpolished piano.

Two zombie Girl Scouts carried filthy boxes in their pale hands. One dropped a box and several fingers spilled out. A man dressed as an undertaker fell to his knees and shoveled the fingers into his mouth where they stuck out like pale worms. A dead priest groped at the attache case of a dead account executive over a pile of fish left to rot on the floor. The zombie odorwas so p.r.o.nounced that I could barely smell the week- old fish.

"Are you all right?" asked Albert. I nodded but didn't look at him. "You're staring at them."

Albert's words were like an echo from Fly. My old buddy always gave good advice, like not focusing on any details that wouldn't help the mission. But this was the first time I'd seen so many of these human caricatures this close when I wasn't engaged in taking them apart.

"I'm okay," I whispered, pulling Albert back in the shadows. "We're doing fine. The stink in here is so bad they couldn't smell out live humans to save their-"

"Lives," he finished my inappropriate image.

"Let's get the lemons and get out of here."

There's never any arguing with good sense. But as we took another look-see, the zombie density inside the store was worse than a minute ago. "Where the h.e.l.l are they all coming from?" I asked.

"Probably," Albert agreed.

The scene was becoming even more surreal. Zom- bies pushing baskets up and down the aisles, grabbing cans and boxes of junk food (which would take a lot more than the end of the world to go bad). Some of the zombies were engaged in what seemed to be purposeful activity, moving items from one shelf to another and then back again.

They didn't eat any of the groceries. They seemed caught up in the behavior of the past, as if the program had been so hard-wired into their skulls that not even losing their souls could erase the ritual of going to the grocery store.

And then suddenly the lights went out. Whatever had kept the generator going was defunct. "What do we do now?" asked Albert.

"Take advantage of the situation," I said. "This is fortuitous. We should have put the generator out ourselves. We can pa.s.s easier for zombies if they don't see us. They're too stupid to do anything about the dark."

If there is ever a Famous Last Words Award, I'm sure that I'll receive sufficient votes to make the final ballot. No sooner had I made my confident a.s.sess- ment than flickering, yellow light filled the store.

Dozens of candles were lit. I could imagine Fly saying, in his I-told-you-so tone of voice, "If they can still shoot their weapons, they can do a lot of other things."

It was bad enough when Fly was right so often in person. Now I was carrying him around in my head to tell me when I made a mistake!