Empire

27 Interview

Four.

Only four had come back. They were all disoriented, stained with soot and blood, and Sawbones was not among them.

Tetch made them wait on the porch while he spread plastic across the foyer, then he brought his siblings in and locked up behind them. Aidan hadn't returned either; without him, there was little hope of getting specifics on what had happened. "Stay on the plastic." Tetch muttered. He nudged Prudence, whose eyes refused to meet his, and leaned in close. "How many of them were there?"

She studied the grime at her feet, the blistering on her burnt flesh. Standing on her toe, Tetch lifted her chin with his hand. "Use your fingers. How many?"

She raised an index finger and averted her gaze.

"No. No." Tetch stepped back and glanced at the others, only to have each one look away. "Not just one. I want to know how many there were to begin with, how many of them did this to you! Bailey! How many?"

The rotter shifted his weight from one foot to the other; he wasn't ashamed, he simply had nothing to offer. Tetch grabbed him by the hair and shook him around. "Tell me! TELL ME!!"

Bailey raised one finger.

Tetch snapped it in his fist. The afterdead stood motionless.

"I sent all of you and only four came back! Why are you telling me this? Didn't you see any of them? Gerald!" Tetch backhanded the next in line. "Look at me!"

Gerald's glassy stare penetrated his brother. "Now," Tetch breathed, pulling a fountain pen from his jacket, "take this and write on your hand. You know numbers, don't you? Tell me how many people you saw, and if you put a 'one' down so help me…"

The rotter grasped the pen awkwardly and held it over his open palm. He wrote nothing.

"Gerald?"

Tetch's eyes widened as the pen, unused, was handed back to him.

He brought the pen up to stab it into Gerald's unblinking eye.

"Please don't!"

Tetch whirled to see Lily at the top of the stairs. "Go to your room!" He commanded. "What happened?" She shot back. He hurled the pen at her and missed by a mile. "GO TO YOUR ROOM!!"

Something struck him then. He thought back to when he'd caught Lily by the fence, how there had seemed to be a shadow in the swamp that fled from view when he came outside. He remembered that she'd said something the night before about a man with black eyes.

Tetch started up the stairs, and Lily backed away from him. "Don't be afraid of me," he said softly. "I take care of you. I love you. Don't you love me?"

She nodded. It was a quick, insincere gesture. Tetch lowered himself to her height and gave her a pleading look. "Lily, someone hurt your brothers and sisters. I think the others…they're dead. Really dead. Who were you talking to earlier?"

The girl turned on her heel and tried to bolt; he caught her arm and shoved her across the landing into the wall. Tetch pinned her there. She screamed, but he held fast. "Who are you screaming for, Lily? Who's out there that you trust more than me? Who do you love more than me? Don't say nobody, or you're a LIAR, Lily, and lying makes you an ugly little child and no one loves you then!"

"No!" She struggled against him until her face was bright red. "You're the liar!"

"I've never EVER lied to you!" Spittle struck her cheek and Tetch raised his cuff to wipe it away. She flinched, going limp against him. His body's reaction was quite the opposite.

"I've never lied to you." He repeated. She kept her eyes shut tight, face turned away. He pulled her into an embrace. "Lily…"

"You've never lied to me."

"But you don't really believe that."

"Yes I do." Like the others, she wouldn't look at him, but she said in a tiny voice, "I was just scared."

He kissed her on the cheek and gave her a bit of room to breathe. "It was the man with the black eyes, wasn't it? He came back."

She gave a reluctant nod in reply. Tetch whispered "Good," and kissed her mouth, tasting her breath, his hands trembling against the small of her back. "What's his name, Lily?"

"He doesn't have one."

Tetch's grip relaxed completely. Opening her eyes, Lily backed away from his pale face, his slack arms. He didn't even look at her.

She went back to her bedroom.

Outside the burning shelter, under a dark sky, a pile of crumbled and mutilated remains lay in the folds of a black cloak. There was a sound like dead leaves rustling and Death reconstituted himself.

He sat in the street for a long time, his steed pacing around him, and he thought. These undead hadn't been like any others. They'd been taught to behave and interact in some semblance of mortality. They were the ones from the swamp.

The Reaper spent some time looking through the clothes of the corpses around him, then got back on his horse. The living from the shelter were still nearby, and some of them would be dead very soon. Though he couldn't prevent that, couldn't add a single precious second to their flickering candles — he could at least see that none of them were added to the ranks of the afterdead…

Tetch lay on the floor outside Lily's door, ear pressed to the wood, until her breathing became deep and even. Then he returned to the foyer. The others were still standing there.

"Go out to the shed," he told Gerald, "and bring the crate inside. Be careful with it — Simeon, you help him."

He dismissed Prudence and Bailey as well, then went to the window and peered through the curtain into the blackness of the swamp.

"Can you hear me out there?" He whispered. "I know who you are."

There was a little story a bum had told him once when he was a boy, one that he had never forgotten. Pressing his face to the cold glass, Tetch spoke.

"I am the king of the dead."