Gary marched into the compound at Central Park like a returning hero. He felt like he should be wearing a cape. Behind him Noseless and Faceless kept easy pace with his stride.
The work on Mael's broch was coming along well. Two triangular support vanes rose a dozen yards in the air while one curtain wall was already higher than Gary's head. The undead workers on the scaffolding looked unsteady at best but they lifted and carried their building materials as if they were precious relics and they placed the bricks so closely together Gary would have had a hard time getting a piece of paper between them. Groups of dead men sat in pits around the construction site, scraping the old mortar free of the bricks with their fingernails. Some used their teeth.
Other work parties erected the scaffolding, lattices of metal pipes torn off the facades of New York's buildings. There had never been a shortage of the stuff. The ladders and platforms thrown up by the dead were rickety and precarious and accidents were common - in the short time Gary had spent on the building site he had more than once heard the sudden crump of an undead body falling thirty feet to the mud. Their bones often shattered and their limbs useless these victims would be put to work wherever it was possible - if they could still walk they could drag sledges full of bricks, while if they could still use their arms they would be put in the cleaning pits to scrape mortar.
Those few sorry wretches who were effectively paralyzed in accidents were still useful to Mael as taibhsear, or seers - in the most literal sense. Hoisted up and tied to the rising walls of the broch their eyes scanned the Park for their master. Eyeless himself he depended on these assistants, without whom he would be blind. Dead men climbed up on ladders to feed bits of meat to these lookouts, keeping them fresh.
The Druid sat on a mound of piled rocks at the very center of the compound. His honor guard of mummies stood arrayed behind him, slumped against one another, clutching at their amulets and heart scarabs like a court of mentally deficient wizards. In front of Mael spread out on the ground lay a folding gas station map of the city with tokens marking the location of all known survivors. One of the mummies knelt over the map as Gary approached, removing tokens for the three locations he'd raided during the night.
Leaning forward on his sword the color of verdigris Mael shooed the mummy away and raised his head to greet his champion.
My gowlach curaidh returns! You're looking hale, lad. The Great Work must agree with you.
"I have a right to exist," Gary demurred. "Which means I have to feed."
Aye, and you've done well. The Druid's head slumped against his chest. Maybe too well. Did you have to be so vicious with the wee bairns?
Gary could only shrug. "You said yourself that we're evil, and that we need to act like it. I was just following my orders." Gary squatted down and studied the map. There were plenty of survivors left - hundreds. He could keep this up for months and not run out of food. Any compassion or sympathy he might have once had for the living was draining out of him, perhaps as a result of being shot at every time he met them or maybe he really was becoming the creature of absolutes Mael had asked him to be. "This is what I am, right? A monster. Don't criticize me for being good at it."
Mael studied him for a long moment before agreeing. Aye. Forgive an old wizard for his sentimental maundering. I've another task for you, lad, one I imagine you'll take to. It's a big job and it'll take a thoughtful man to pull it off.
Gary nodded. He was ready, whatever it might be. Mael had promised him that he would feel at peace once he had accepted the role fate had cast him for and as usual the Druid was right. He felt strong, so much stronger than when he had crawled out of the basement of the Virgin megastore with a hole in his head. Even stronger than when he'd first awoken in a bathtub full of ice.
A dead woman in a stained pair of jeans and a low-cut halter top that showed off her withered blue breasts stumbled forward, nearly stepping on the map. She would have been pretty, once, a Latina with a massive mane of curling hair. Now her face showed blossoming sores and clouded eyes. She looked at Gary and then at Mael and finally let her gaze drift out of focus. Not particularly strange behavior for a walking corpse but to Gary she seemed more dazed than she should be. As if she'd been drugged or put into a trance.
You'll need more than your usual retinue for this job. You need to learn to read the eididh, and how to lead troops into battle. This one has knowledge I want to impart in her head, if you can get to it.
Gary licked his lips, more than a little excited. Mael had powers beyond his own, far beyond, but so far the Druid had been stingy with teaching his attack dog any new tricks. "How do I..." he asked, but he knew what the answer would be.
Open yourself, as I've told you before.
Gary nodded and reached out to grab the dead woman by the back of the neck. He tried to do what he'd done before - stroking the network of death, just as he had when he took control of his companions, just as when he had summoned the crowd that devoured the survivor Paul. He pushed until his brain was throbbing and white daggers of light leaked in around the corners of his vision but only succeeded in gaining her attention. She stared at him wide-eyed, as if fascinated by the dead veins in his cheeks.
You can do better than that, man, Mael mocked. It's not something you see or hear or taste - forget those things and try again!
A little annoyed Gary tried again - and only managed to develop a buzzing in his ears. He could feel the dead blood quivering in his head and he thought for sure he would give himself an aneurysm but then, finally, something snapped and roiling shadows blossomed in his mind, streaks of darkness, of dark death energy that resolved into rays, into threads. Strands of a web that linked him to everyone around him - the dead woman, Mael, the seers hanging from the walls. He could sense Faceless and Noseless behind him.
Then he saw the back of his own head.
He was looking through the eyes of his minions, seeing what they saw - even as he continued to be able to use his own eyes. He turned to look at the Latina and felt the connection that bound them together, the unity of death. He could feel thoughts and memories bubbling around her - information she herself could not access any more because her brain had suffocated when she died.
His hadn't. He saw at once what Mael had wanted him to find. Something she'd seen while scavenging for food, something important. A street - a square - a doorway, a steel gate. Human hands, living hands clutching the bars. White noise hissed and crackled around him, he tasted metal in his mouth but he fought it back. More living humans, more on top of more of them - hundreds. He saw their eyes peering out of darkness, their frightened eyes. Hundreds?
Hundreds. Their bright energy seared him. He wanted to take it from them.
When he returned to himself he was down on all fours and a long string of shiny drool ran from his lower lip to the mud below. "Now?" he asked.
Aye.
Gary pointed and dead workmen came down from their ladders to gather before him. He reached out with his mind and summoned others - an army of them - from as far away as the Reservoir. It was easy when he had the knack down. He didn't need to give them detailed instructions as he had with Faceless and Noseless. He didn't need to micromanage. He simply told them what he wanted and they did it without question. It felt good. It felt amazing. He called on more of them, as many as he could reach.
Leave me a few to put a roof over my head, eh, lad?
Gary nodded but he was too busy assembling his army to pay much attention to the Druid. "So many of them," he said, unsure if he was referring to the living or the dead.
