22 Demonstrations

Five days. That's how long we were supposed to wait for the nordic duo, Jaida and Alfred, to catch up to us in Castle Valley. We left signs, that only Sojourners could read, carved into trees and fence posts where we entered so they could find us, and planted a few nonsensical ones to mislead any enemies. Twice a day Hector at odd hours, Hector would take a horse up Round Mountain, and returned later with no news. Green River wasn't responding. Sojourner radio was off the air.

At night we listened to Sundown Review, amused and appalled in turns. Mary Petts rescued some children, and they all set out for New Kingdom together. The news announcer crowed about taking Green River, adding one hundred and one citizens and valuable farmland to New Kingdom. There was a riveting account of a soccer match that ended in a victory for Loveland Loverboys. Women of childbearing age were reminded to service one man per day, unless they were pregnant, menstruating, or had already given birth to four children. The women's guardians, every woman was required to have a male guardian or one would be appointed by Ludovic's people, were reminded of their responsibility to ensure they became pregnant. A small symphony played something expansive and grand, reminiscent of Copeland but new. Twelve men were executed for "actions against the kingdom" and, in an act of magnanimity, their families were allowed to live as wards of the state. There was a comedic skit, then an announcement that two hundred settlers were needed in Grand Junction come spring. Volunteers were preferred, but the kingdom would pick people if there were too few.

Drama.

Conquest.

Sports.

Rape.

Music.

Executions.

Jokes.

Resettlement.

Every broadcast mixed violence with the everyday, until violence was mundane.

Hector returned form his trips to Round more and more nervous every time, and he fidgeted at night. We were all eager to leave but he seemed to have the worst of it, always looking to the southeast. We all worried about the kingdom finding us, but if they came from the direction of the La Sal mountains then we would be cut off from our hoped-for escape.

New Kingdom seemed to be focused on areas north of Moab, so we hoped to outrun their expansion by riding south. We would climb the La Sal range using back roads, keep heading south through the town of La Sal, then Monticello, and so on. We would release the horses as soon as we had faster transportation, then keep running south and look for the Cañaros or an allied settlement. We could trade information and zombie-fighting tools for supplies, and continue our quest to rejoin the Sojourners. The wilderness and the zombies were obstacles we could handle, but our plan assumed we were near the south end of New Kingdom's influence, and that their border was porous enough to slip through on horseback.

The night of the fifth day came, and we prepared to depart without the Eklunds. We didn't know their fates but the odds were they had died in that firefight on the bridges of Moab. We had used our days to prepare as well as we could. There wasn't a drop of gas left in the valley that we could find, nor were there any electric vehicles. We would have to rely on our horses, who had enjoyed a fine rest grazing in the former owner's acreage. Our gear was packed, and we had bagged some game to keep up our supplies. The plan was for Hector to take first watch, me the second, and we would leave while it was still dark.

Like might nights, Sandy and I slept in a double bag. Unusually, her hand found its way into mine. We pulled each other close enough for our noses to touch.

"I miss Rachel," she whispered, "and all of them. And I feel bad about the Eklunds. I've never missed anyone before. I didn't know it could hurt." The small fire we kept lit wavered in her eyes. "Don't let go of me, E. Don't trade me away, or leave me behind. Please. I don't think I could take it."

"I won't abandon you," I told her truthfully, "and I would never trade you for anything." I left my assumption unspoken, the idea she would be the one to leave me behind. She had no real need of me any more, I thought, because she had learned to shoot, read, garden, and build zombie control devices. She didn't know yet that her rescuing prince was just a convenient frog, like every other frog, and would eventually disappoint. I could "keep" her but I couldn't keep her safe. I could "own" her only to keep her from a worse fate. Still, my answer seemed to calm her and soon the two of us were asleep.

❖ ❖ ❖

The first warning I had that something was wrong was the horses. They were restless, neighing and galloping around their enclosure. I noted the fire was dead, and Hector was inside instead of sitting out on the porch. I felt like I had just gotten my sleeping bag warm.

"Don't worry," Hector said, "it's just coyotes or something."

"I'm going to check," I told him. I got up to put on my boots, and that's when Hector tasered me.

If you've never been hit with a taser or a stun gun, I can't say I recommend it unless you're truly dedicated to novelty. It's a full body experience. Your every nerve is on fire and every muscle contracts painfully. Imagine a charley horse you can't seem to stop, hitting every part of your body. You can't think of anything but the pain: not why your friend is betraying you, nor who he would even betray you to, nor what was about to happen to the girl you rescued if you snuff it at the hands of the little shit you used to tutor in math. I did have the presence of mind to curse Zombie Jesus and his eternal fucking hunger for whatever was happening to me, internally at least, and externally as a series of shouts and grunts.

After the electricity stopped, it still wasn't over. The spasms kept coming for a while, and blocked out everything else.

"… you'll see," Hector was telling me as my brain started to function again, "you'll be great there. They're going to take good care of you. We'll be part of something great."

"Hungry Fucking Jesus," I said, for about the hundredth time, my mouth apparently running without much brain behind it. I noticed there were other people in the room, people I didn't know. I was handcuffed, hands in front of me, sitting in a chair. People in fatigues were handling our gear, taking away all the packs. They even rolled up our sleeping bags and carted them off.

I finally stopped swearing when my head cleared enough to ask a cogent question. "What did you do, Hector?"

"I called the kingdom, they're bringing us in."

I looked at Sandy, who was similarly cuffed and seated, her small frame made smaller by the men around her, eyeing her, touching her hair. One of the soldiers, the one fingering her hair, was saying, "who's going to get this one? She's not the sergeant's type."

"She's too fine for you," said another, to rough laughter, "one of the greenies will get her. Count on it."

"Hey! Don't touch her," I told the men around Sandy, reckless from pain and disorientation, "she's mine." I remembered they had serious hang-ups, plural, about women needing someone to be in charge of them. Dan and his crew had deserted New Kingdom because the new rules meant they couldn't just take any woman they felt like raping. Jules had left because he couldn't be part of a society that forced women into sex slavery in the name of motherhood. If I staked my claim quickly and firmly, they might respect it.

A chestnut-skinned older man in fatigues pulled up a chair and sat across from me, his hair close-cropped, mostly gray. He wore the three upward chevrons of a sergeant. "Nobody's going to touch your girl without your permission." The words sounded like they were meant for me, but they were directed at the soldiers around Sandy. They backed off, clearing a couple feet of space between them and her.

"My name is Sergeant Alvarez, of the New Kingdom Army." He paused, to wait for me to introduce myself.

Alvarez knew, as well as I did, the math in that situation wasn't hard. I wasn't some random settler they happened upon: they had gone out of their way to capture me because they wanted me. They had the arms to force me to stay, and they could take Sandy if they wanted to. But, my willing cooperation would be more beneficial, or at least easier on everyone, than coercing my every move.

Resistance was futile. Negotiation might be possible.

"People just call me E," I told Alvarez. "So, you've got us. What's the plan now?"

"Now we take you and your friends to the palace, to meet King Ludovic. Don't give us any trouble and we won't have to hurt anyone." He rose, and gestured at his men to bring us.

"Two things, before we leave," I said, stalling him. He looked surprised, but he stopped to listen. "First, either bring the horses or set them free. Don't leave them penned up. Second, Hector is no friend of mine. I don't care what happens to him."

The horses were loyal, and they deserved a honest chance at survival. Hector, on the other hand, wasn't and didn't and if they shot him on the spot I wouldn't have cared.

It didn't take long to realized what had happened to Hector. It was those broadcasts, and the segments extolling the power and glory of New Kingdom, filling his head with national "greatness." Young men were susceptible to those ideas, even more so than most men, and he had used his unsupervised trips up Round Mountain to contact New Kingdom and talk to them. I didn't know what they promised him, and I didn't much care, but I knew he wasn't on our team. We had lost the Eklunds, and we had lost Hector. Now it was just Sandy and me.

We were transported east, into the Rocky Mountains, in a convoy of three hatchbacks. The first leg, from Castle Valley to Moab, moved along carefully through the back roads over La Sal Mountain, but once we hit Moab we ran at astonishing speed. The kingdom monopolized all of the free-standing solar charging stations it could find, and used them to maintain relays of electric vehicles for going up and down the mountain. Coming down was mostly a free ride, since any electric car worth its pre-apocalypse price tag would gain energy during its mostly downhill trek from Estes Park to a place like Grand Junction or, on the other side of the Continental Divide, Loveland, Fort Collins, or Denver. After weeks of routing around damaged roads, scouting ahead, and plodding cross country by horseback, the sudden car trip from Castle Valley to Estes Park felt like a day-long rocket ride. There were no road blocks, no bandits, no detours, and no delays. It was like Before, when a whim and a free morning were enough to take you to your favorite fishing spot and back home again.

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We stopped only once, to change vehicles. The soldiers moved our bags while Sandy and I were allowed a few minutes to stretch our legs before we were stuffed into the back seat of a Lexus for the last part of the climb. I was puzzled at first because the cars we left behind weren't that low on power, but I would soon learn that the king only wanted "nice" things around his palace. Lexus and BMW were in, Nissan was out. I think the actual car specs mattered less than the somewhat arbitrary standards themselves. Power liked to exert itself, had to exert itself, or else it would diminish.

All the way up the Rockies, soldiers kept eyeing Sandy. The driver kept glancing at her in the rear-view mirror and Alvarez, riding shotgun, turned around and gave her the most thorough appraisal I had ever seen. It wasn't a lustful look, more like an evaluation. She was a commodity, and he was sizing up her worth. Sandy avoided looking at him but nestled close.

"Is there a problem?" While I looked the offending soldier in the eye, I had to remind myself that I had killed better men than him. I could not afford to falter there. He was just another danger best kept at bay by sheer nerve. Like hiding in a zombie horde.

The sergeant finally stopped eyeballing her and looked at me instead. "If you want to keep your girl, put a baby in her quick. His Radiance expects his people to multiply."

"You mean, King Ludovic?"

"This week it's 'His Radiance', if you're going to talk about him. Or 'Your Radiance' when you're talking to him. You want to get your head blown off, try calling him something else."

"So, it changes every week?" I asked. "Is there a memo that goes around?"

"It changes when His Radiance says it does." The sergeant faced front, and didn't talk to us again until the trip was over.

February is a cold season in the Rockies, and the roads were kept just clear enough for two sedans to pass each other. I was used to changes in elevation but Estes park was higher than I had been in many years

We entered Estes from the southern road. The outer parts of the town were deserted but multiple neighborhoods could be identified near the palace, marked out in fences around clusters of houses or individual hotels. Here and there, smoke rose from chimneys and people moved around in the snow, some to shovel the white stuff away from doorways, while others crossed between fenced-in zones one skis or snowshoes, usually lugging a backpack. I noticed that very few roads were cleared of snow, the principle example being the road we were using which led right up to the palace.

Ludovic's "palace" was a grand looking hotel situated with its back to the rocky mountains, and its front toward the rest of Estes Park. It was three stories of white edifice topped with a red roof and gold cupola. He couldn't have picked a more iconic site if he tried. Maybe you've seen an old horror movie called The Shining, or better yet you've read the book, and remember the fictional Overlook hotel. The Stanley Hotel was Stephen King's inspiration, and it was the location where the television miniseries was filmed. It might sound like a quaint detail to your generation, but to mine and Ludovic's it loomed large. The place burned down in the movie's sequel but the real hotel was still standing, and that's where Ludovic set up his court. It was certainly grand enough.

Our gear stayed in the cars while we got marched into palace. When I close my eyes now and try to picture it, I can hardly remember what the inside of the palace was like. I have an impression of a plush lobby, airy meeting rooms, and of a lot of people (mostly women) who were busy cleaning all the time. What I see most clearly is the grand portico, a row of New Kingdom flags flying, and beneath them the doors open to welcome us. To the left and right of the portico the palace's wings stretched forward to catch us in case we tried to run. In only a day we had come too far into the kingdom's embrace to easily leave again. I remember it was cold in most of the common areas, less cold than the outside but you had to keep most of your layers on while indoors. Even the palace had to work on a power budget.

After the checking in and the patting down and the waiting and then more waiting and another pat down, we were admitted to a sunny room that had once played host to fancy brunches and wedding receptions and all manner of occasions. When I was there it had a tense atmosphere, the kind you had at family thanksgiving dinners where everyone was tiptoeing around The Worst Uncle and trying not to set him off on whatever personal, poisonous tirade he was known for. The man himself sat with his back to the grand window, cold light blazing off the snowy landscape. I would learn later that he had forbidden people from setting foot on that stretch of land, simply so his backdrop would be pristine.

There were two kinds of people in attendance. The first were functionaries who scurried around, most of them with their heads down, carrying papers or other things that Ludovic might need. The ones who dared face him were the ones he bothered to talk to, while those not favored with his attention did their best to avoid it.

The other people in his audience chamber were his royal guard. Some wore fatigues, some wore the green pants and khaki shirts of the old US Army, and a few even wore suits. But they all, every last one of them, wore motorcycle helmets with tinted visors closed shut. There was some attempt at uniformity here. Most of the helmets were painted over with green, with a few white and blue helmets that I thought must indicate rank or special duties. By wearing long sleeves and gloves, they made it hard to know anything about them, like age or even what race they were. You could identify them by the decals they stuck to sides of their helmets. Anime characters, fantastic beasts, stars and lightning bolts, anything really. You could only refer to them as "Bubbles", or "Smokey the Bear", "Tristar". You couldn't even be sure that today's "Road Runner" wasn't yesterday's "Wolverine".

They were the "greenies", so called because most of their helmets were green.

On the surface it was a cheap bit of theatrics. Putting all his best henchmen into faceless uniforms and giving them guns made them feel like more of a threat. I was more worried about the psychology of the outfits. The distinction between an 'us' and a 'them', the distance afforded by their visors, was stark enough to make violence easy for the greenies. In time a person would come to see the non-helmeted as less than fully human. For a certain kind of person, the process wouldn't take very long at all. The sadistic and psychopathic would naturally gravitate to the job.

I would come to understand later, much later, that a great many people liked living in the New Kingdom for the relative stability it afforded but did their best to stay away from Estes Park. They fed Ludovic, by sending him food and salvage and girls, in the hope he would stay in his high palace and not come down to where they were and bother them. I won't say life in New Kingdom appealed to me, given the personal costs, but I could see the attraction for others. Not that Ludovic ever gave anyone the choice. If he could reach you, then you belonged to him.

You might be thinking right now, "what about Ludovic? What was he like?" I've told you once already he wasn't at all like the portraits we have of him, at least not while I knew him. He was tall, and blond, with starling blue eyes, wore a suit coat of royal blue, and had gold embroidery decorating his cuffs and lapels. If I left my description of him at that then you might think he was very much like his portraits. But, his eyes were set in a petty, piggish face above lips locked in a constant pout. His jowls had begun to sag. His middle had sagged a long time ago and his arms had grown weak. He was not the man who had led thousands of survivors out of New Jersey; he was what that man became, once he had everything he had wanted and then discovered he wanted more.

Sergeant Alvarez saluted his king and more or less shouted, "We have captured the Engineer, your radiance!"

I stood next to the sergeant, Sandy and Hector behind me, and tried not to quail in the sight of Ludovic or his green-helmeted minions. I had been told to be silent until spoken to, do nothing unnecessary, and that's what I did. When he looked at me I looked right back, with the hope I would not fall to the level of those who looked down in his presence and feared to raise their heads. He was hard to see through the reflected sunlight, more silhouette than man, but I felt his eyes on me, on all of us, and the wanting behind his gaze. He had gone to some lengths to find us and acquire us.

"Who are those others with him?"

"His guard and his woman, your radiance."

The king waved around a tablet, one of our Good Book devices we had been giving out like candy on Halloween. At least one of our dead-drop caches had been picked up by New Kingdom, which meant their scouts had spent some time west of the Colorado.

"She must be the one with the pretty hands," said Ludovic, "the one from the pictures. She must be good with her hands." There was a chorus of nasty guffaws from the room.

The kind turned his attention fully on me. "Does this stuff work, Engineer? Can you control zombies with this stuff?"

I wondered, briefly, why he hadn't just told someone to try and build the devices. Somewhere among his several thousand citizens he must have one or two capable of making things. Instead, he had set out to capture me personally.

I was surrounded by unknown forces, captured, and didn't know what the future held for myself or Sandy. But the one thing I was certain of was that our tools to manage zombies functioned like they were supposed to. "It all works, Your Radiance."

"Prove it to me."

❖ ❖ ❖

Migrating a king's court to another location is no small matter. It took a good half an hour to get Ludovic, his guards, some attendants, soldiers, ourselves, and a selection of our gear down the road to a place where they kept a large number of zombies. There were over a hundred by my count, surrounded by a six gauge chain link fence, with hefty posts sunk deep into concrete. There was a gate in the zombie pen, but the mechanism was too complicated for the residents to figure out on their own. A long ramp led up to the top of the pen on one side, with a platform for throwing in new residents. The entire pen was wrapped in black vinyl to about chest height, and covered in a black tarp except for the area nearest the ramp. On a sunny day, like that day, the inside of the pen would be several degrees warmer than the outside, warm enough to keep the zombies mobile.

There was a lot of stirring about as our group of humans came near enough to be identified as food. Soon there were zombie faces pressed up against the fence line, their shriveled fingers clutched the wire as if they could scale the barrier between us and them. We had our gear in hand, a cold and impatient audience, and lots of zombie.

Under normal circumstance I would have given a speech at this point. I would have told them about our new understanding of the zombie organism, its senses, and other things we had learned along the way before using one of our devices. But Ludovic wanted to be shown, not told. So I led Hector and Sandy up the ramp and stood at the edge of the platform where, or so I had heard on the radio, they sometimes dumped living people as a public execution.

I had Sandy toss me a static generator, the kind we built from small walkie-talkies, and turned it on to full power. Immediately, the zombies near us began to wander away.

"Hold this tight, okay?" I gave the little black box to Hector to hold. "Better to use both hands, just in case." Those were the first words I had spoken to him since our capture. We had ridden up in separate vehicles, and I had ignored his existence the rest of the time.

Obligingly, he took it and held it tight. "Why? What are we doing?" He looked relieved that I was speaking to him.

"It's a demonstration," I said. Then I shoved him with both hands, hard, right off the platform and into the zombie pen. The look on his face, the wide-eyed uncomprehending shock, fell further and further away from me until he landed with on his back in the cold slush and had the wind knocked out of him. I needed that demo to succeed, but there was a part of me that wanted the device to fail, wanted him to die in there. He had fed us to the kingdom, and he deserved to be eaten in return. For a full minute he lay there, struggling to get some breath back, while the zombies edged farther and farther away.

Turned on full power as it was, the static generator would last maybe ten minutes. That was plenty of time for him to get his breath back, struggle to his feet, and push his way through to the gate. It had to be done slowly: if you touch a zombified human then not even the static generator will hide you. You had to walk forward a bit, let the zombies wander away from you, and advance again. By the time Hector was half-way across the pen, Ludovic's entire court stood amazed.

"That's the static generator," I shouted at them. "It's low power, and it can hide you as long as you aren't careless. But," I held up a finger, "there is something better!" I stood to one side, still high up on the platform, and let Sandy advance to the edge where everyone could see her. She had the latest model of sleep ray at her hip: a meter long PVC pipe with thin metal rods sticking out of it at carefully measured intervals. It was attached to a pack of cells salvaged from electric vehicles. The humming from the device was probably inaudible to them, but I loved that sound. Sandy pushed the contact switch down and swept the antenna slowly across the zombie pen. They all went down, in a wave, until none were left standing. The court applauded with enthusiasm.

The demo was a success. On the other hand, Hector was able to open the gate and leave the death pen without injury. His kicked-puppy expression was the height of hypocrisy and, by the time we returned to the palace, I was sick of looking at him.