NO FLESH SHALL BE SPARED.

By Thom Carnell.

"Death closes all; But something 'ere the end, Some work of n.o.ble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with G.o.ds."

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses.

"When the dead walk, Senores...

We must stop the killing...

Or lose the war."

Dawn of The Dead.

Motherhood.

Before...

Cigarette smoke swirled in the bright beams of light pouring in through the windows of Kathy Mae Gilbert's trailer home. The smoke danced like willowy strands of ether within the pillars of luminosity that stabbed their way through her thin, Kmart curtains. Inside the trailer, the air was a dank, cough-inducing fog bank that never seemed to go away, satisfied just to hang in the air and whirl over the faded velveteen couch. Next to the sofa, a worn, faux-leather La-Z-Boy roosted, the sheen of its fake hide rubbed off in the spots where it came in repeated contact with human skin. The furniture sat like squatters in front of an old, wood-veneered Motorola television set. Against one wall, half a dozen boxes from a move made six months ago waited to be unpacked. The place was a s.h.i.t-hole, but for Kathy Mae it was home, a squalid fortress of solitude to come to and rest her bones after working double shifts at the Hog & Dog diner and do exactly what she was doing now: sit and smoke and pretend for a moment that her life had gone a different way.

Kathy Mae had been a smoker since she was twelve and never once did she consider quitting. Her Daddy taught her to smoke when she was little. It had been one of his parlor tricks when guests came over to drink beer and work on cars. "Watch my li'l girl... she's so d.a.m.n growed up... she even smokes!" But even before that, she'd always thought smoking was cool. People in the movies smoked and they looked cool. Daddy smoked and he was also cool. These days though, Daddy was also dead and buried. Throat and lung cancer claimed him several years ago. Kathy Mae could still remember seeing him sitting on the porch of his house, smoking through the tracheotomy tube in his neck.

Before she knew it, nicotine had its hooks into her and she was fully addicted by the time she hit high school. Her smoking was like a lethal legacy handed down, just one of many bad habits given to her by her parents. h.e.l.l, she'd even smoked, despite her doctor's warnings, through the entire length of her pregnancy. And why the h.e.l.l not? She never wanted kids and would have been all too happy to have left her womb a barren landscape. Unfortunately, Billy Ray Beaumont saw to it that was not to be.

Billy Ray had sweet-talked Kathy Mae at the Leslie County Swap Meet and wined and dined her on a spectacular buffet of frozen pizza rolls and Mad Dog 22. Theirs was a union made in hillbilly heaven, but from the start it had been destined for failure.

One dark and stormy night, when he informed her that he'd forgotten to bring a condom (a "jimmy," he'd called it), she was just liquored up enough to say "What the f.u.c.k." Billy Ray didn't have it in him to drive straight, what were the odds that he could shoot straight?

Pretty good from the sound of the screaming brat in the other room.

"OK, you little s.h.i.t dispenser!" she shouted. "I'm comin.'"

She stalked into the other room and lifted the screaming baby by one arm out of the laundry basket where he, more often than not, spent the day sleeping and crying and swimming in his own s.h.i.t. The baby wailed loudly and kicked its legs in the air, to little effect. The child, Johnny Garth Beaumont by name, had been brought into the world with a criminally low birth weight a little over a year ago and he'd gained precious little in the way of body ma.s.s. The little s.h.i.t had been colicky for the last week or so and Kathy Mae's nerves now bore the stretch marks of his foul mood.

"Jeezus H... Will you shut the f.u.c.k up!?!" Kathy Mae screeched into the baby's wailing face.

Johnny continued to blubber loudly and flail his spindly limbs.

Kathy Mae slapped him twice sharply across the back of his legs and tucked him into the crook of her left arm. She unb.u.t.toned the front of her grease-stained waitress uniform and hauled one of her pale b.r.e.a.s.t.s out from the sweat-sodden depths. Roughly, she pushed the nipple into the baby's mouth, hoping he'd nurse or, at the very least, quiet down. Either one would have been just fine for her. She looked down, annoyed, and sighed in frustration when he didn't. Johnny didn't seem to want her nip, he just continued kicking and crying like a banshee. His lone tooth, sticking up from his gum-line like a headstone, glimmered dully in the dim light.

"f.u.c.king kid..." she said. "I cain't give you what you want to make you stop cryin' if'n you don't tell me what it is you f.u.c.kin' want!" The last word sounded like the desperate cry of someone at the end of her rope.

Johnny spit the anemic areola from his mouth, threw his head back, and let out another ear-splitting wail. The baby's eyes were full of tears, the corners caked with a gummy sludge. A high fever raged like a fire within his little brain and nothing Kathy Mae did or could do would stop it. The baby had lain for far too long in the cold trailer; his body rife with a combination of the flu, colic, and rampant malnutrition. Kathy Mae's breast milk was pitifully inept at providing the nutrients he needed in order to fight off the host of viruses that now coursed through his system. All his mother's body was able to give to him was a lethal mixture of nicotine, alcohol, and cheap diner food with just a splash of methamphetamine.

"Gawd d.a.m.n ya, ya ankle biter, eat will ya!?"

Kathy Mae propped up the child's head and pressed his face against her breast with all her might, thinking that she could make the baby eat with a combination of brute force and strong will.

The child managed to pull back from her far enough to catch a quick breath and let out another wail of pain and frustration. Kathy Mae took the sides of his head in her hand and pressed his face back to the meat of her breast.

Johnny's mouth and nose were smothered by the drawn flesh that surrounded the fatty tissue of Kathy Mae's breast. He tried in vain to move his head in order to pull some air through his turned-up nose, but Kathy Mae's grip was too strong and his underdeveloped muscles were far too weak. His little hands beat against her chest futilely. Saliva coated both the nipple in his mouth and his face, but still Kathy Mae pressed on.

"Eat will ya, G.o.dd.a.m.nit? Eat!"

Johnny's lungs screamed out for oxygen, but his mother, either in apathy or anger, ignored his plight. His tiny fists beat with less and less force against her bony chest, his strength draining from him like water through a colander. The smell of tobacco and speed sweat was the last thing to flit through his diminishing senses before Johnny Garth Beaumont died in his mother's indifferent arms.

After a few minutes, Kathy Mae drew the baby from her breast and roughly wiped his mouth of spent lactate with the back of her hand.

"You done?" she asked, not registering in the spa.r.s.e light the child's slightly blue tinge. "You just lay here for a minute and I'll change ya just as soon as you s.h.i.t that out."

She laid Johnny down on the tattered, yellow sofa and went off to fetch herself another cigarette.

An hour or so later, Kathy Mae had d.a.m.n near forgotten about Little Johnny and his crying. He'd been so quiet since she'd fed him last that it was almost like he wasn't even on the planet. She figured that, by now, it had to be just about time to change him.

"A G.o.dd.a.m.n cow on a milking machine, that's all I am to you," she said as she walked over to the couch. She plopped herself down on the sofa, puffs of dust springing up into the air.

Johnny lay where she'd left him and, thank the lord, he seemed to be sleeping peacefully for once. She picked him up brusquely, his body limp in her hands. She slid him like a football into the crook of her arm and checked the back of his diaper. Finding it empty, she once again pulled her t.i.t from her uniform. As she did so, she felt the child stir slightly in her arms.

"Now you take this with no more of your G.o.dd.a.m.n complainin'," she said, pressing her breast to his cobalt-tinged lips. She slid her nipple into the baby's slack mouth and sat back into the well-worn arms of the couch. The baby roused a little and his mouth began the gentle sucking sensation that told her he was feeding.

"You must be feeling better, ya brat. You're eatin' again."

Johnny awoke with little knowledge of his brief life or of his reprehensible death just a short time prior. All his brain knew was that the initial confusing whirlwind of sensations-the lights, the sounds, the tantalizing smells-had finally started to settle down. Slowly, they'd begun to focus in on just one: hunger. As he nursed, the hot fluid coursing over his tongue became distasteful; milky and acidic to his palate. It was a sour and nauseating excuse for a meal. And while Johnny had never gotten a chance to learn what life had in store for him, he had learned in his short stay on the planet that his mother's breast could yield something that almost resembled nourishment. Now, death showed him a new purpose for her breast. Instinctively, he clamped his mouth down harder, nipping at the soft flesh with his tooth, and sucked harder.

Kathy Mae sat dozing on the couch, her cigarette burned down to a cylinder of ash in her hand. Far off in her senses, she could still feel the baby nursing. He'd been at it for what seemed like an awfully long time. He would need to stop soon, she thought, since she was starting to feel a little woozy. She glanced up at the clock over the stove and realized that she'd been sitting there sleepy-eyed for almost half an hour. Her head felt light to her somehow and the floor seemed uneven beneath her feet. Her sight made the angles of the room seem... off. Her perception waffled like an image in a fun house mirror.

She tried to pull the baby away from her breast, but surprisingly, he wouldn't let go. From the way he was holding on, he must have been hungrier than she'd first thought. Pulling gently, she attempted to dislodge Johnny from her chest, but he had latched on too tightly. She tried again, harder this time, only his little hands kept pulling himself closer.

"Well, you've managed to mess up my only clean uniform, Johnny Boy. Good G.o.d, it feels all wet," she said. "I'm going ta have to go change now before my next shift at the diner!"

She reached up and forcibly dislodged Johnny's mouth from her nipple. Her hand came away wet and coated in a dark, viscous fluid. She looked down at the baby and saw his mouth straining to get back to his nursing. His eyes were closed. His mouth remained pursed and sucking at the air.

"G.o.ddam, Boy! What the f.u.c.k? Did you bite me, ya little b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

Johnny looked up to meet his mother's gaze. His eyes were unfocused and still gooey from his infection. His pupils were now clouded and opaque.

Kathy Mae's mouth dropped open as her child pushed toward her and latched back onto the place where her areola had once been. Blood flowed out of the side of his tiny mouth as he abruptly bit into her flesh in earnest. Pain screamed through Kathy Mae's drug-addled senses and instinct commanded her to push him away. She tried to get a decent grip on him, but his new-found vigor confounded her. He chewed and tore at her breast, insistently demanding the only sustenance his newly reawakened system could now tolerate.

Kathy Mae stood up and pulled the child forcibly away from her chest. In disgust, she held him at arm's length. With all of the wriggling and kicking, he jerked out of her grip and dropped like a stone to the ground. With an audible grunting sound, what little air that was held captive in Johnny's dead lungs came out in a rush. Kathy Mae tried to get to her feet, but her legs went all rubbery from the loss of blood. She stumbled and collapsed in a heap next to the couch. She tried to crawl away from her child, but her coordination was off and her limbs felt weak.

Pressing her back against the sofa, she looked across the floor and saw Little Johnny dragging himself rapidly toward her across the beer-stained rug. His mouth was still working busily and the pupils of his eyes shone creamy white. His expression seemed filled with a hunger that was like something she'd never seen before. As his cold, little hands grasped at her ankle and he began pulling himself up her leg, Kathy Mae drew a stuttering breath and started to scream.

Exordium The landing gear of the UH-60M Blackhawk helicopter touched down on the helipad, its hydraulics hissing like venomous snakes under the weight of the aircraft. The t.i.tanium and fibergla.s.s composite four-blade rotor began to whine down as power was cut to the T700-GE-701D engine. Almost immediately after the three wheels touched the paved ground, a clacking sound came from one of the copter's side doors and it slid open on oiled rails. Two men jumped down heavily to the pavement- their boots making an empty and hollow sound- with their AR-15 rifles not drawn, but at the ready.

A quick survey of the landing s.p.a.ce and one of the security men nodded back toward the darkness within the helicopter. From inside the cramped compartment, a man in an impeccably cut silk suit climbed out of the helicopter and out onto the tarmac. He surveyed the area, breathing deeply of the early morning's cool air.

The man, one James Masterson by name, wore the officious bearing and no-nonsense demeanor of someone who was born to lead and had spent a lifetime doing so. His manner was one that demanded respect and was, more often than not, granted it. Short dark hair crowned his head and gave him a distinct military look. His dark eyes gleamed from over an aquiline nose, intellect cataloging minutiae, silently gathering details that- in another place and at another time- could spell the difference between life and death.

"Sir," said one of the armed men, "the area is secure."

"Good job, Son," said Masterson as he absentmindedly brushed his seams straight. "Thank you."

His baritone voice splintered slightly from lack of use, many hours having pa.s.sed since he'd last spoken to another human being. It had been a long flight from what still pa.s.sed for San Francisco and, in spite of his best efforts to the contrary, Masterson felt tired and more than a little cranky. The search for this new man had been long and arduous, but after having seen some of the footage of him at work, both Masterson and The League felt it would all soon be worth it-well worth it.

At least that was the hope...

The man now sitting in the shadows of the copter's interior was as close to a natural fighter as Masterson had ever seen. His intuition was good, even if raw and untrained. His body was not large, but it was firmly put together: hard muscle mixed with a brain that could react, truth be told, even more effectively than Masterson's own. All of this was impressive, in spite of the fact that up until now the man had been working on instinct, a big set of b.a.l.l.s, and pure dumb-f.u.c.k luck.

Thinking back to the tapes he'd seen on the guy, it was no wonder that The League had ordered Masterson to personally escort him back to this facility. It wasn't exactly irregular for them to send someone with Masterson's pedigree out into the field to do something as simple as a retrieval, especially when there was so much money potentially riding on this dude's a.s.s. Better to protect their investment out of the gate with a trained and armed chaperone than lose it due to some bad planning.

Masterson turned at the hip and looked back into the inky black of the copter.

"Cleese..." he said into the darkness, "Follow me."

From within the shadows of the copter, a figure pulled itself from the blackness and moved slowly toward the door. Anyone could see that this was a man who radiated an innate sense of power with limbs that were both lithe and supple. His movements, although controlled, crackled with an energy that betrayed abilities learned in the blistering heat of battle. His build was forged in the Real World, not in some gym somewhere hefting weights. The man gave off the impression of a big, lethal cat that had been caught dozing. It was plain from his demeanor and body language that if something was to rile his a.s.s up, there would surely be h.e.l.l to pay.

Cleese's face came almost reluctantly into the light. His features were lined, hard-edged, and dominated by a pair of cold eyes that burned with an icy-blue fire. His mouth was little more than a cruel slash that tore angrily across the lower part of his face. His gaze was one that gave no bulls.h.i.t and expected none in return. This was a face that had gotten him out of a lot of bad s.h.i.t in the past, but then again, had gotten him into a lot of it as well.

He stepped out of the Blackhawk, his long black hair whipping about his face, strands riding the air being moved by the still-spinning rotors overhead. He looked around suspiciously-taking in the expanse of the compound spread out before him at a glance-and raised his eyebrows. The place he'd been brought to was an odd cl.u.s.ter of modern buildings set amidst large expanses of gra.s.s, all plunked down right here in the middle of no-f.u.c.king-where. The compound was made up of no more than a handful of what looked like semi-permanent structures and then nothing for miles. It was as if whatever it was that they were doing out here-when they did it-they didn't want much of an audience.

Masterson marched across the helipad, never looking back to see if Cleese was following. He simply walked, trusting that his every order, his every command, would be followed to the letter. His silhouette grew smaller until it finally turned and descended a flight of unseen stairs at the far end of the helipad.

Cleese looked at the soldier nearest him and c.o.c.ked an eyebrow.

"Nice guy..." and he nodded in Masterson's direction.

"Your gear will be delivered to your quarters a-sap, Sir," said the soldier in a flat monotone. His gaze remained fixed and pointed straight ahead. He was a young kid of about twenty-five who looked as if he'd once called someplace like Kansas home. Cleese looked into the man's eyes, which were set back in deep, cavernous sockets. They were rimmed in redness and puffy from lack of sleep.

Cleese smiled to himself. He glanced over to the other soldier who could have been the first one's brother and saw the same weariness in his gaze. He looked back and forth between the two men. They both stared silently straight ahead and waited for him to comply with Masterson's orders.

As he always did when confronted by a new and potentially dangerous situation, Cleese a.s.sessed the myriad of possible outcomes should things turn ugly and he need to clock both of these b.i.t.c.hes and head the f.u.c.k on out of here. He considered their guns, his inability to fly a helicopter and G.o.d only knew what else might lie beyond the walls of this place, and decided against it.

"Sir," reminded the first soldier as he almost imperceptibly jerked the gun barrel in the direction of the stairwell where Masterson had gone. "Mr. Masterson will be waiting. You'll need to follow the stairs down, head through the door. Mr. Masterson will be waiting for you in The Press Hall which is down the long corridor and to the right."

Cleese ran a hand through his hair and chuckled as he slowly crossed the helipad. A few scant hours ago, he was asleep and dreaming in his bed. Then, a knock on the door later and he was being escorted onto the Blackhawk only to now find himself here. It was turning into quite a night. He couldn't wait to hear what this Masterson fella had in store for him now that they'd arrived here in this Disneyland of the d.a.m.ned.

Still chuckling softly, Cleese strode across the asphalt and toward the stairway.

s.p.a.ce Station #5.

Back when the p.o.o.p hit the prop, things had been rumbling along pretty well for most of the world's population despite the usual moguls and pitfalls that always had a way of cropping up. Life, as they say, could oftentimes get in the way of Living. Economies see-sawed, despots rose and fell, morality shifted along its slippery slope toward inevitable oblivion, but in the end it was pretty much status quo.

In the spirit of global unity, several of the more affluent nations of the world came together under NASA's banner, and after several years of development set up an orbiting research station. It floated serenely in s.p.a.ce and real strides in medical and technological science were made. Brave new strains of substances were generated up there in the cold, vacuum of s.p.a.ce that never could have been created here on Earth. We were all, as a planet, beginning to understand that the world was indeed a small place and, like it or not, we'd better all start getting along.

Sure, there were isolated instances back on terra firma in which dictators would venture outside their country's borders, but they were put down in short order like rabid dogs. A seemingly real and lasting peace was catching and spreading like a gra.s.s fire across the planet and, finally, everything seemed to be on track for ol' Mother Earth.

As so often happens, just when things seemed to be going their best, it all went to s.h.i.t. A group of scientists in the U.K. discovered that the s.p.a.ce station's...o...b..t had begun to decay-microscopically at first-but within a week or two, it was a given that the whole shebang was going to come down out of the sky and fall onto all of our heads. The scientists and astronauts who'd inhabited the station only had enough time to grab their Buck Rogers suits and beat feet onto the shuttles hastily sent to retrieve them before it did just that.

When the station entered the atmosphere, its collapse and incineration was a light show like no other. Giant pieces came apart from the main hull like wings pulled from an overcooked chicken. Huge, multi-colored streaks ran like a street hooker's eye-makeup across the dark of the sky. Everyone came out to watch. It was like the Fourth of July, the Macy's Day Parade, and Christmas all rolled into one big burning ball of rapidly descending metal.

It wasn't until later, when the government asked what had gone wrong, that people questioned what exactly it was that was being done in that circling laboratory in the sky. Finally, CNN ran an interview with a rogue scientist (his face obscured for his protection by computer-generated pixelization) whose conscience outweighed his sense of national obligation, and he admitted that there were indeed some very nasty bugs being brewed up there. He went on further to insinuate thatmaybea fiery combining of them probably wouldn't be in the planet's best interest.

But several days went by and nothing happened. After a week or two, we all thought that whatever danger there might have been had pa.s.sed us by. It was that error in judgment that brought due a bill for which we would all be made to pay.

It was only when the first of the dead opened their eyes in, of all places, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that it was apparent how right that scrambled-pixel-faced scientist guy had been. Within hours, we had ourselves a nice little End-of-Times caliber catastrophe brewing. The contagion (if that was what it could be called) splashed across the face of the planet. Due to some of our antiquated views on death and dying, we'd gotten ourselves right f.u.c.ked pretty quickly.

First, morgues and mortuaries started reporting cases of flat-line misdiagnoses. Then, hospitals were flooded with random biting and clawing attacks. The medical community was initially indignant, saying that these reports were unlikely especially considering the number and how spread out they were. The Center for Disease Control finally decided that the disaster could only be the result of either a series of chemical spills, bio-terrorism, or something heretofore unknown biologically.

And in a roundabout way, they were right on that last bit.

Soon enough, all protests and hypotheses were drowned out by the sheer number of police reports that came flooding in. There were just too many instances to be ignored, let alone enough time to try to explain them all away. When the dead finally got up from their beds and shuffled out from their tombs to roam the streets by the tens of thousands, the C.D.C. had fallen ominously silent.

So when it could do nothing else, the networks reluctantly began reporting the truth of what was happening and the news wasn't good. It was with sad and unbelieving faces that the anchors told us what we all already knew...

The Dead were returning to life and eating the Living.

The Gullfire's Waiting.

After entering through a pair of double doors at the bottom of the helipad's stairway, Cleese walked down the long corridor in front of him and followed it through a maze of very corporate-looking pa.s.sageways. From what he could tell, the place was made up of offices and conference rooms mostly, but since the majority of the doors in the building were locked, it was hard to tell what else was housed there.

After a bit of searching and finally following the guard's instructions, he discovered a set of doors with a sign reading Press Hall above them. Inside, he found Masterson seated behind a long table in what looked like a lecture hall. The auditorium was laid out with long rows of theater seats each with desktops that could be folded up or down depending on the needs of whoever sat there. The desks were set in a large semi-circle, which surrounded on three sides the podium at the furthest part of the room. From the looks of things, this was where The League held their news conferences. Across both the walls and ceiling, squares of acoustic tile ran in a grid-like pattern; each tile dampening any sound within the room. As a result, even the door shutting behind him sounded muted and hollow.

Along the far wall was a set of blackboards, each on rails allowing them to slide back and forth, one behind the other. The lectern stood at the center of the stage; a microphone jutted up phallically from the middle of the podium. Masterson sat patiently at a table just to the right. His fingers were tented and his eyes closed as if he were trying to s.n.a.t.c.h up any bit of rest he could.

Cleese had heard of the technique before from men in the military. They called it "Alpha Napping" and it was a way to rest the mind (since brainwaves changed to restful Alpha Waves when the eyes were closed) when full blown sleep was a luxury the soldier couldn't afford. Cleese figured that the military must have been where Masterson had learned it. The guy had a look about him that said he'd spent some time in Uncle Sam's service. He noted the tidbit of information and catalogued it for later consideration.

Upon hearing Cleese enter, Masterson slowly raised his head and opened his eyes.

"Sit down," Masterson ordered and nodded toward a desk at the front of the room.

"Nice place..." he said looking around, but not moving.

"Sit down, Cleese. I won't say it again."

Behind him, Cleese noticed that the two security men from the helicopter had appeared at the exit. They dutifully closed the doors behind them and stood by at attention. Their rifles, cradled in their arms like sleeping children, spoke volumes as to the reason for their presence in the room.

Cleese smiled and shrugged, then walked down the center aisle a few rows. Choosing a seat midway down the gallery, he sat down heavily, just within earshot of Masterson. His choice of seating would, at the very least, mean that his disagreeable host would have to raise his voice in order to be heard.

Pity.