Empire's End

Prologue / Ladies and Gentleman, Children of All Ages

“It doesn’t hurt?” Christmas asked. It was the answer that most disturbed him.

Luis shook his head, cracking a smile that split the great wound beneath his empty eye socket. Fissures opened in the sinew over his cheekbone and bled, yet he never lost his grin. Despite the mutilation, Luis had insisted on applying his makeup. His remaining flesh was painted bone-white, his lips black; a corpse clown. A velvety top hat sat at a jaunty angle on his head, baring part of his ragged scalp.

Christmas helped Luis button his jacket. It was difficult for the performer to do so himself, what with his missing fingers. Turning to peer through the tent flap, Christmas said, “Full house.” Luis snapped up his cane and used his teeth to tug at the gloves on his hands, half of their fingers empty and dangling.

“Of course,” he replied, his voice a hoarse croak. It amazed Christmas that, when standing before an audience, Luis was still able to command the room, bringing the crowd to an awed silence so that they could hear him speak. He was a mere shadow of the man he’d once been; as his body wasted away, he’d given himself over completely to the performance, withdrawing from the others, withdrawing from Christmas, his mind gradually slipping away as he became one with his circus persona.

“I’ll announce you,” Christmas said. Luis nodded, and Christmas stepped through the flap, raising his arms into the air as he strode toward the center ring.

“Your attention please!” he shouted. The audience immediately sat up and stared at him, jittery with anticipation.

“It’s time for the man of the hour! The dancer among the dead! The King himself — Eviscerato!!”

Christmas gestured toward the tent flap. He waited. They waited. All was silent.

Then it began.

He started out juggling heads in Mexico City. Standing brazenly in the middle of the street, the twenty-year-old Luis heaved severed skulls into the air, bystanders gasping as the heads’ rolling orbs and gnashing teeth plummeted toward Luis’ open, fleshy hands. He’d deftly catch each one by its hair, swinging it back up, smiling at his audience. He never looked at the heads. He never looked for the police. The police, in fact, often stopped to watch the show, sometimes handing Luis food vouchers and patting his shoulder. It was the same for them as it was for everyone else: Luis’ illegal performance stirred their spirits more than did any singer or puppeteer. He braved the reality they were living in, unlike the government, which hid within the city walls and pretended that the world had not changed in a hundred years.

A hundred years since the plague had struck — early in the twenty-first century, a virus had erupted in the southern U.S. and hitched a ride with fleeing immigrants into Mexico. A virus that, some believed, was supernatural in nature. They called it the Lord’s judgment. They called it Man’s sin. They called it the end.

Yet a century later, Man was still here. But running, and hiding, while the undead roamed free.

Luis didn’t believe in running or hiding. He juggled. He danced. He captivated his audiences. Then he’d met Christmas, an American, and together they’d conceived the idea of a traveling show.

There was no money to be made. The occasional food vouchers, perhaps, but mostly they dealt in bartered goods — and they set their sights on los Estados Unidos. For there, many cities still stood, protected by the military. And in the badlands, the fallen states, stubborn people still lived amidst the packs of ravenous dead.

In those people Luis saw the spirit he himself possessed, and indeed, the badlanders received him with great enthusiasm. Word spread quickly of Eviscerato and his caravan of performers. Word especially spread of the animals used in the act. The dead ones.

The U.S. strictly enforced a law that prohibited making any sort of profit off of human rotters. Animals were another story, and so Christmas and Luis set about gathering a host of creatures from the badlands: wolves, horses, even bears. The shambling beasts were netted and dragged back to the camp, to be placed in hastily erected cages. Then, before a packed house, Luis danced among the creatures, taunting them, stabbing at them, riding their backs and severing their noses and plucking out their eyes while cheers shook the tent.

The dead animals generally posed little threat. They fed only on their own kind — a common trait among each infected species — and were sluggish in defending themselves. Besides, not even a live bear could win against a chainsaw. It was Christmas who came up with the notion of sewing a midget performer inside the bear’s gut, then slicing the animal open so that the midget somersaulted through a hail of blood into the center ring. It became one of their most popular acts.

The dead animals generally posed little threat. But, as Christmas warned time and time again, there was always a risk.

It was a risk that Luis did not fear.

So, one night, when he’d stumbled and a ragged wolf had clamped down on his arm, flaying it to the bone, the great Eviscerato had done nothing to fight it off. Instead, he rose and swung the animal through the air on his arm, playing to the shrieking audience, whose horrified cries turned into applause as he knelt and bit into the wolf’s hide, tearing loose a rotten strip of meat and spitting it onto the ground.

“You’re infected,” Christmas whispered after the show, kneading his hands and pacing in circles. An outsider might have thought that the circus manager was fretting over the loss of his biggest act, but Luis knew that he was mourning the inevitable demise of his friend.

“It might be weeks. Months,” Luis said in an attempt at being reassuring.

Christmas shook his head. “Days. Maybe hours, Luis! You can never tell with the plague!”

“My spirit is strong,” Luis said firmly. “It only depends on the strength of one’s soul, and I know I—”

“You always wanted this, didn’t you?” Christmas snapped. “You always dreamed of becoming one of them. You think there’s some mystery there that must be solved, some goddamned revelation to be had. There isn’t! You’re going to die, and the virus is going to take over and you’ll be no more.”

“I’ve seen rotters who remember,” Luis protested, clenching his fists. “I’ve seen them try to drive rusted-out cars. I’ve seen them use axes. I’ve seen them try to swim in the Pacific — even though they didn’t need to keep themselves afloat, they tried. They try!”

“Memory and spirit are two different things.” Christmas slouched on a wooden stool and looked toward a distant fire, where the others were roasting a freshly killed deer. “You, the Luis I know, will die.”

“But you’ll live on,” Luis replied. “And you’ll have everything you need. Because my new act is going to sweep across this country like the plague itself.”

“New act?” Christmas looked warily at him.

“We’ll have to restrict ourselves to the badlands,” Luis went on, as if he already had the entire plan mapped out. And he did. “We won’t be able to perform in the cities, but that’s just as well. People there still trade money like it has value. You and the others will be able to retire after I’m gone, living off your reputation alone — I promise.”

“What is this act?” Christmas said. “Are you talking about parading your undead body around the ring?”

“No, no. I told you, I still have plenty of time left. I haven’t died yet, John.”

“What,” Christmas repeated, fear creeping into his voice, “is this act?”

“Rotters.

Human ones.”

Luis was right.

The show was a runaway success.

Christmas could only cover his eyes in horror as Luis danced among a group of chained undead, passing within inches of their jaws and hands, laughing all the while — and then giving himself to them. Letting them bite his shoulders, his arms. And he bit them back. The audience always reacted to that. They saw it as a last act of defiance against the plague. Eviscerato became a hero.

Before Luis’ performance, there were others. Spinner, the tightrope walker, would traverse a taut rope suspended over a cage full of hungry dead. The mute Fire Juggler would hurl his torches toward the tent ceiling while the Strongman, with his massive hammer, crushed the legs and bodies and heads of attacking rotters.

Christmas appointed Nickel to be the zombie handler. It wasn’t common to refer to the undead as “zombies”, but Luis felt it spiced up the show. When it was time, Nickel would slip a noose over the neck of each rotter and lead it to its place in the act. Chained to a rolling platform for Eviscerato, or caged beneath the tightrope, or trussed and blindfolded to be released into the Strongman’s playground.

The rotters were easy to find in the badlands. Ferals usually hung around ghost towns. They often gathered in packs, following one another as if someone had a clue as to where the meat was. They were usually underfed and in bad shape. Simple to catch.

It seemed all too easy, all too convenient, that these aberrations of nature now provided the means for John Christmas and his employees to live. It sickened him how they had shattered their values and cut out their souls in order to fit the undead into their wretched existence.

Spinner fell from his tightrope into a pit of rotters. Nickel was savagely bitten. The Strongman lost his footing one evening and was trampled before the others could clear the undead away; his eyes and mouth filled with tainted blood, he’d stalked without a word from the tent and never spoke again.

And Luis…

Luis only smiled.

“Your attention please! It’s time for the man of the hour! The dancer among the dead! The King himself — Eviscerato!!”

Christmas gestured toward the tent flap. He waited. They waited. All was silent.

Then Eviscerato leapt into the tent, throwing his arms in the air, eliciting a deafening roar from the crowd. He danced toward the center ring, waving gaily.

“My dear, dear friends!” He cried, still smiling, blood dripping from his chin. “Tonight I have such a special treat for you.”

As the performer gave his spiel, Christmas glanced outside the flap. He saw the Strongman there, waiting, but oddly postured in the shadows, his great hammer dragging in the earth behind him.

Nickel was closer. The light revealed his face.

He stepped into the tent and pulled the flap down, and he was dead and Christmas saw it and the audience saw it, then the canvas began to blacken as the tent was set aflame and the Strongman stormed into the seats for his meat.

And Eviscerato danced, and danced, and danced. Through the fire and the smoke and the blood he performed, in his mindless, gleeful reverie; he danced until all the colors swirled together and swam, together, in chaos.