Empire

12 Duel

Death sat on his steed outside the walls of the city. He sensed with every passing moment the birth of new afterdead; were he able to deal with them in his true element, all their flames would already be long extinguished. But he had to be here, in the living world, and bound by unnatural laws.

Throughout existence the Reaper had silently walked along an endless tunnel, its walls lined with candles, each tiny pinprick of light a soul. When a light died — sometimes when the candle was melted completely, other times when it had barely sprung to life — he marked another passing. Without question or emotion he walked the tunnel, he watched each flame dance and struggle and eventually join the shadows like all the others. There was no warmth from the fire, no texture to the cave floor — there was neither a sensation nor detail without purpose.

That was a long time ago. Time had held no meaning for Death there, but here in the living world every second was like an eternity. The insignificance of days, years and millennia had become startlingly relevant to the spectre.

He'd visited this world many times before — mostly in earlier times, when Man still communed with the other side. Though he had no name he had been given many by those who would presume to know him. Thanatos, Azrael, Yama. He was assigned genders. "He" only thought of himself as a male because that was the most popular conception. It seemed to hold more authority with the living, though females clearly held the key to life. They'd also dreamed up manners of appearance, clothing, and equipment — and when appropriate he did indeed present himself as a winged angel, or a skeleton in a tattered shroud. In many ways, Death realized, he had given himself over to the whims of Man's imagination. Perhaps it was because their ability to imagine fascinated him so.

When the outbreak occurred — when orange flames blinking out were suddenly replaced by undying blue ones — he had assumed a look that was an amalgamation of several mythologies for his journey to this world. Still, he didn't often allow the living to see him. The afterdead were another story. They saw him always. He had no influence over them — hadn't, at least, until he'd forged a scythe from their bones.

There was one crossing the badlands toward him now, a female with rail-thin legs and a lipless grin. He drew the blade of bone from his cloak.

She knew he was not meat; there was something intrinsic about his offensiveness, about the way her insides burned when she saw him. Patches of scalp dangling over her eyes transformed her face into a glaring, toothless jack-o'-lantern, and she quickened her staggering pace.

He dismounted and walked calmly toward her.

As he raised the scythe, she lurched forward and tore a bloodless gash in his chest.

Death stumbled back, the blade missing its mark, and he barely warded off her second attack. He brought the scythe's handle up against her knee. Bone blistered and fell apart; she clawed at his robes, the slightest touch opening fissures in his being. He swatted her to the ground.

The horse stamped its hooves in the dirt. Glancing back, the Reaper saw wounds like stripes opening along its flank to mirror his own. Sitting up suddenly, the she-zombie buried its fingers in his thigh, pulling out a handful of crumbling clay. Death retreated. She followed.

He feigned a stumble and threw the blade back, under his arm and through the cloak, into her sternum.

She stood impaled on the scythe, watching streams of black ichor wind down her shriveled breasts. Death smoothed the blemishes on his chalk-white body and jerked the blade free.

The she-zombie crumpled without a sound.

She had marred him; nothing that couldn't be restored now, but it was troubling nonetheless whenever he allowed one to get that close. "I still have much to learn," he told the horse, patting its wounds together. They passed through the gates back into the city.

Death rode along a residential street, its houses abandoned and looted, some of them burned-out shells. The steed took him from there into a cemetery. The uneven earth was dotted with burial vaults. For whatever reason — maybe none at all — they'd been looted too.

There were two men standing in the open door of a family vault with GREELEY chiseled into the stone over their heads. He walked the horse around the vault, listening as they spoke.

"I like this guy Shipley for the Midtown Rapist." The balding one said. The other one, standing in the bald man's shadow, picked lichen from the vault wall and replied, "I met a woman last night. Well, met…she was being attacked by her housemate. I shot him."

"I never saw a report." The bald man scolded. "What's the point?" The young one shot back. The bald man was ready with a retort. "If it weren't for reports still being filed in other cities, I wouldn't know that we had a serial rapist on our hands."

"I just don't see- "

"We continue doing things by the book. Mike, if there's no book, what is there? What authority do we have? Might as well throw out our shields too."

"All right, all right."

"Anyhow, what about this woman?"

"She was raped a few months back. Never reported it."

"Jesus, another one…"

Death's thoughts drifted. He could see both men's candles in his mind's eye; both were perilously small.