Episode 47: Screaming Masses

Zach found himself waking up from a strangely lucid dream-the strange part was not the lucidity, as he was used to that-to a shrill, ear shattering sound. It took him a bleary-eyed moment to deduce that it was a scream. It took him a more awake moment to realize that the reason that it surrounded him was that everyone in his vicinity was screaming. It took him a much more armed moment to realize that he too was emitting the sound. He struggled against himself to silence the scream, and when he did was struck by a memory of a penguin being assaulted by something silvery, and then everything falling apart...

* * *

Laban had been lying awake all night, until he finally fell into a restless sleep populated by penguins and a strange feeling of revelation. That was about an hour before the screaming began. When Laban managed to quiet his rapid yelps, he took stock of the room.

Everyone was screaming; Disciple Dohntkallmeethat’s screams were the worst and Hanh was a close second. Scratch that, the man with the sword thought to himself, Ujer isn’t screaming. She’s as alert as me. Laban, normally, would have sighed in exasperation at this new development. Instead, he looked around in a daze. He knew that they were screaming for something, the same thing. All he could remember was something black and white being attacked by a snake, and then everything fell apart in the worst way possible…

* * *

Joan did not scream with those surrounding her. She had not been asleep when the screaming had stopped, and as such she had no memory of the penguin and the snake. She stood up and surveyed the room. Everyone else screamed

For the first time in her life, Joan Riese was frustrated.

* * *

Sunny lifted himself off the ground, his terrible inverted smirk reasserting itself over the momentary expression of sheer bliss that had taken control on his face at the moment of his awakening. He remembered clearly, becoming a snake, and snapping the neck of a small black and white flightless bird. It felt good

“I hate,” he whispered grimly and hopefully. He ran off into the light of the morning and killed the first living thing he saw.

* * *

“What the fuck?” Zach screamed as soon as he was done trying to piece together his dream. His coherent scream quieted some of the others, all of whom had still been wailing. The refugees in the television station who had stopped screaming slowly began to turn towards Zach. He looked out over them and spoke again. “What the fuck?”

“What the fuck!” some of them echoed reverentially. Zach blinked out over them and gripped his sword. When he raised it, all screaming finally ceased. Zach raised an eyebrow-several of the refugees raised their eyebrows in response-and sighed.

“What just happened?” Zach asked unto them. There was a pause.

“We know not, o great one!” someone called out. “What must we do to earn the knowledge?”

“Yes!” another voice cried out. “Tell us what we must do!” Murmurs and echoes of agreement ran through those gazing at Zach. Zach stared across them some more.

“Oh, Christ!” The crowd turned to look at each other, mystified by their leader’s words. “You people… I’m n…” Zach grunted. “I’m outta here.” He pulled his katana to his side and began to move to the hole in the wall barricaded with a small car and a pickup truck. Before he was far, he gave Kevin’s body a quick kick, just to make sure it wasn’t moving. As he advanced the hole in the wall, the crowd parted to allow him through. All eyes were fixed on him except for the two pairs owned by Charrone Portinari and Chaz Raymond.

Chaz and Charrone were looking around amongst their fellow refugees, wondering at this foolishness that even Tyree would find embarrassing. At least, both of them had thought that he would; he had been the first person to echo “what the fuck” to the new leader, and had not even paused to look at his old friends.

“Charrone,” said Chaz, “I think that the world is falling apart.” She turned and looked into his eyes, some clichéd imagery passing through both of their minds in unison.

“Then the best thing we can do is fall apart with it.” She snatched his hand and held it tightly in her own. He thought that she was warm; she thought that he was warm. They turned to watch the crowd.

Zach reached the hole in the wall and, before pressing onwards, turned to look at his followers with bemused disdain. He shrugged to himself before leaning against the dual-vehicle blockade and pushing both objects out of the way. He raised his hand to his eyes to shield them from the harsh light of morning. The refugees in the television station crowded behind him to be the first to stand with their new leader. Zach’s eyes quickly readjusted and he stepped out.

* * *

Ujer ran to Laban’s table. He stood confidently on the table he had been sleeping on, but when he turned to look at her his eyes betrayed his panic. Ujer tried to smile up at him, but it did not work.

“What do we do?” she yelled to him, barely audible despite their close proximity. Laban ran his lips through the phrase and then nodded.

“We get everyone to stop screaming.”

“Then what do we do?”

“We find that out later.” Laban dropped the sword onto the table and jumped down to Disciple Dohntkallmeethat and began to shake him. His screams would not quiet and his eyes would not settle. They caught Laban’s for a moment and held a terror that Laban recognized but could not define. Ujer scuttled to Hanh and leaned down close to his face. His scream was pushing forth a burst of breath which made her eyes water. She told him this and the scream faltered a little. She smirked grimly and began trying to make him laugh.

Disciple Dohntkallmeethat stopped screaming for a moment and sharply drew in a breath. Laban was already smiling at him when the scream returned to full power. Laban groaned and slapped him, which did not affect Disciple Dohntkallmeethat in the slightest. Laban stood and rushed to another screaming man, who was quieted more quickly. When he did quiet down, he began to speak rapidly and madly.

“He has been killed, the lord of all fantasy, the greatest dreamer, the Eternal Sleeper! We must never return to his realm! We will be destroyed!” cried out the man. His lips were trembling and his eyes were darting.

“Oookay…” Laban began to stand up, but the man’s eyes locked onto his own. They carried atop the terror that all the eyes bore a madness which froze Laban instantly. The man reached up and gripped Laban’s shoulders and pulled himself up.

“The next men to sleep will be destroyed! Death is a preferable fate to such a terror! This happened last-long before humans lived! The great ones could not… Oh, god! I must escape before I dream!” The man shut his eyes and began muttering something. Laban, blind to the man’s eyes, finally pushed him away.

“Look, man,” Laban muttered. “We can’t be worried about these things while…” The man’s mutterings grew to a monstrous utterance, reaching frequencies somewhere between those that Laban could identify. The eyes of all those who had regained control of their motor skills spun to watch the man. His eyes had burst open and were bursting with green and blue light. His mouth began opening wider and wider and soon was not moving at all, though the sound still came from it. White light erupted, pulsing in time with the chant. It reached a crescendo, and the man exploded in blue, green, and white light.

Half a minute later Laban’s eyes were the first to readjust from the blinding light. He gaped at the empty and charred spot where the man had stood. All screaming in the room had stopped, but the room was filled with a low rumble of confusion. Laban searched it; Ujer had Hanh propped on her shoulder and was blinking to readjust.

“Goddamn,” Laban cried out. Disciple Dohntkallmeethat lay on the ground, his eyes staring upwards. His breathing was shallow and his eyes were empty. Laban was most frightened by the fact that the poor kid was obviously not asleep.

* * *

Joan sat in the middle of the floor, her eyes shut, her hands pressed against her ears, and Excalibur limp in her lap. She bit her lip, trying to drown out the screams. She had been trained to deal with screams of all kinds. She was used to ignoring the pained screams of targets, of families, of children. She was used to silencing screams of terror, of horror, of uncomprehending pain. She had no idea how to deal with these screams.

Lucy and Steve were the first in the house to regain command of themselves. Steve jumped to the nearest person and began trying to calm them down. Lucy looked to Joan and frowned. Now, lies would have to be told to keep Joan in the messianic role that she needed to have to keep this army together. Lucy grunted and rushed to the next nearest screamer.

Within ten minutes, Lucy and Steve had hushed all thirty survivors. Each of them asked why their heroine was sitting in the middle of the room looking so troubled; those who asked Steve simply got a shrug while those who asked Lucy were told that

“She is consulting higher powers to determine what has happened.” Some of them would ask why she looked so pained. Lucy would respond “The higher realms are frightening places; she does this so that you and I will never have to visit them.” This invariably silenced the inquisitor, who would nod knowingly. They would then turn to look at Joan.

When everyone was silenced, Lucy approached their heroine, and bent down over her.

“They’re done screaming,” Lucy hissed into her ear. “You want to keep control of them, you have to do exactly what I say. And you do want to keep control of them. One person against those things is doomed. Now, be confident as you stand, and answer my questions cryptically.” Joan loosened the death grip that her eyelids on her eyeballs, though they remained shut. She pulled her hands down from her ears slowly and silently took Excalibur in hand. She stood without a twitch and when she was standing upright, she opened her eyes. The crowd sighed and Steve watched them. He watched Lucy as she stepped back and brought her voice to a boom.

“Mighty one, what have you learned in the higher realms?”

Joan frowned grimly at her, and then frowned grimly at the rest of her followers. “I have learned,” she said silently in a quiet but strong tone, “nothing of what has occurred. But I have learned what must occur. To survive, we must band together-we must form an army!” Joan’s voice had risen to a crescendo. Lucy’s eyes spread wide, and a smile crept onto her face for no more than a moment. It disappeared as she turned to the crowd.

“We must form an army!” Lucy boomed against them.

“There are weapons in the basement,” said Joan. “Each of you, take one!” The army, after a moment of milling about unsurely, scurried down to the basement. Only Steve, Lucy, and Joan remained in the room. Joan and Steve both looked at Lucy.

“Who are you?” Joan asked. Lucy and Steve smiled together.

“I am a psychiatrist and a sociologist. My husband is a soldier and my favorite book is The Art of War.” Steve chuckled gently. Joan lifted Excalibur and turned its hilt towards Lucy. Lucy laughed, and waved her hands.

“You have to be King Arthur,” Steve interjected when he saw Joan’s confusion. “My wife is merely Merlin.”

* * *

Zach surveyed the damage outside of the news station. Several of the surrounding houses had been burned to the ground or had simply collapsed. Those that still stood generally had all their windows smashed open. Some of the windows had been boarded up. Most of the doors swung in the morning’s gentle breeze. Some doors had been torn off their hinges and lay in yards and on porches. Some were simply gone. At least one could be seen nailed across the door of the neighboring house. The other buildings nearby had been ransacked. Their were interesting looking holes and collapses in many of the walls, each of which had a story that Zach did not care about in the slightest. All of the glass windows and walls had been smashed. The Burger King across the street now looked like a very large bus stop, as it had only one major wall and an entirely undamaged ceiling. Zach took a step forward and heard a motion behind him. He turned, katana at the ready, frozen halfway in a swing to the head of whatever was creeping up behind him.

A whole lot of people were flooding out of the building behind him. They looked around, some of them gazing at the cleansed world in awe. Zach blinked again.

“What the fuck are you people doing?” he screeched.

“We are following you master!” a voice-Tyree’s-called out. Zach narrowed his eyes, pondered at them for a moment, and then shrugged his shoulders.

“No skin off my ass if you wanna follow me. Just stay out of my way.” They all nodded in unison. He began to turn around, but then decided better. “It’s probably safer in there.” They shook their heads, and someone called out something encouraging that Zach missed. “Alright, whatever. Just don’t tell me you’re hungry. And try to get something to kill with; I don’t want to have to take care of every fucking thing.” They nodded in unison. Zach cocked his eyes at them and glared for a moment before turning. He looked around him once more, and then began walking East.

“To Moda Garden,” He muttered to himself. A few minutes later, a clatterous crash erupted from some distance behind him. He turned to look at it, over the heads of fifty followers (and Charrone and Chaz who, despite their skepticism, had decided that it was at least safest to follow someone with a weapon who had not expressed a desire to kill them) and saw that the tall news station building they had just left was no longer in the skyline. He shrugged.

“Guess it wasn’t safer,” he said loudly. After about ten minutes of walking eastward, they had only encountered a single “live” zombie which Zach had decapitated without hesitation, generating a tremendous rallying cry. Zach had a feeling it was going to get worse, and was suddenly glad to be leading an army.

* * *

The residents of the school gym were circled around the body of Disciple Dohntkallmeethat. Laban, Hanh and Ujer were at the center of the circle, leaning over him together. He was still breathing, and he seemed to be awake in every respect except for the fact that he would not move or respond to anything. Hanh’s eyes were still darting around rapidly, looking for something about which he was sure of nothing besides its desire to destroy everything. Laban and Ujer were focused on Disciple Dohntkallmeethat. The others were looking at him nervously, but their eyes kept straying to the charred point where the man had vanished. Laban finally moved.

“Does anyone know his name?” he asked loudly. Everyone shook their heads absently and then returned to their strolling gazes. Laban sighed. “I was calling him Disciple Dohntkallmeethat. Now that he’s… like this… it seems disrespectful. So, let’s just call him D, okay?” Some of the crowd nodded absently again, and Ujer put her hand on his shoulder. He sighed again. “D is for a lot of things,” he muttered. Ujer patted him, and then had her hand brushed aside by him standing.

“Hanh. You and this guy,” he pointed to the nicest looking member of the crowd, “pick D up and carry him.”

“Carry him where?” Hanh asked reverentially with a newfound stutter.

“With us,” Laban said. “We’re moving out.”

“Where are we going?” asked Ujer. Laban turned to smile at her.

“To cleanse the earth with a righteous army.” He reached down and grabbed the Sword of Laban. “It might not wake D up, but it can’t hurt.”

* * *

Joan Riese stood on the second step of the staircase that led to the second floor of the mysterious house that she had liberated last night, holding Excalibur before her in her best attempt at a valiant pose. On her left, and one step down, Steve stood with his arms folded behind his back, his torso thrust forward, and his eyes staring forward without wavering. Lucy stood to Joan’s right, one step lower. Her face was unreadable, but an unskilled face-reader would have seen faith in her eyes. A particularly skilled psychologist and actor would have seen this layer and the deeper one, itching for power. There was no one of any such skill in the ranks ahead of them.

The thirty stood in six columns, each five deep, doing their best to mimic Steve’s pose. Even the younger, rebellious ones did not refuse to fall in. Each of them held a weapon from the basement-most of them swords, but at least one mace was held, as well as a flail. One person held a crossbow and another held a short bow. Each had awkwardly affixed a quiver to their backs. There had been no guns in the basement.

The house, Joan knew, had been built primarily as an inconspicuous armory for her when she needed to complete an objective without using modern weaponry. On occasion, her masters rented it out to their own employers when they needed to keep hostages or their enemies somewhere for a time. Some of the upper rooms had once contained modern armaments, but Joan had ascertained that all of those had been removed sometime before all this had happened. She had told all of this to Lucy and Steve while the thirty were below getting weapons, after Lucy had explained to the other two what had to be done. They had filed it away for later consideration, because the army was beginning to come back upstairs.. After the first of the thirty had returned, Lucy had gone downstairs and within moments returned with a sword so short that it could almost be considered a long dagger. Steve still held the last modern weapon in the house, the shotgun that he had used to rescue those few of them who had survived. During the night, he had gone back upstairs to gather the rest of the shells in the building. While he had waited for his wife and the rest of the army to return, he had gone outside into the eerily silent morning and gathered those that the dead boy had left behind. When he had returned, he had immediately taken his place at Joan’s left hand.

“You,” Joan announced in her most authoritative voice, which just managed to be authoritative enough to convince the thirty, “are going to save the world. I am only the leader; you are the true heroes.” Lucy and Steve nodded to them. “We will be an army, an army to scourge this planet of that which will destroy it! When the world is safe, we will be honored as heroes, as kings and queens, perhaps even as gods! But we are not gods!” her voice was carried to a passion unfamiliar to her by the words. “We are simply humans. We are heroes! Follow me, and you shall have all the power a human can have, in this world and the next!” A cry rose up from the thirty, which shook the house. Lucy allowed a smile to dance across her face. “Let us advance, and slay the demons who do not belong here! The dead shall lie on the ground once more!”

Steve called out something unintelligible, and the six columns turned towards the door in one fluid motion. Joan stepped down the two stairs and advanced around the columns to the three person deep door. Lucy and Steve walked directly behind her, and when she reached the door they stepped forward to throw it open. The three of them advanced through it, followed soon by three of the columns and then the next three. When they were all outside, Joan, Lucy, and Steve turned once more to inspect the troops. They finished arranging themselves back into the six columns. Joan looked to Steve, who looked to Lucy. Lucy nodded, then Steve nodded, and finally Joan turned to the troops and nodded.

“We march!” she boomed. She turned once more and marched towards the center of Moda Garden.