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“Flop,” Ziggy mumbles. “I don’t feel so good.”
His husband is sat behind him in the saddle, arms wrapped around his waist and clutching at his shirt. Flop has felt Ziggy’s grip on him go from strong to weak in a matter of hours as they ride south. It worries him beyond words, feeling someone so capable becoming entirely dependent on him so quickly. Flop takes one hand off the reins and places it over Ziggy’s, and a shiver goes up his spine as he feels how cold his skin is.
“I know,” Flop says back to him, and he can’t help the waver that creeps into his voice. “Just hang on, darlin’. Not much further.”
Flop doesn’t know how much longer they have to ride, but he’s not about to tell Ziggy that. They’d crossed over the river into Mexico some time ago, but Flop doesn’t know where exactly they’re going, only who they need to find. If Ziggy had had noticed the change from forest to desert, he hadn’t mentioned it; that worried Flop even more.
Ziggy’s condition had deteriorated exponentially since the morning. It all seems a blur to Flop now; he remembers prying Lorenzo off of Ziggy, he remembers the wound on Ziggy’s forearm weeping blood (now wrapped, but Flop suspects it’ll have begun to fester), he remembers kicking Lorenzo so hard he heard a rib snap, and Lorenzo hadn’t so much as flinched. He remembers the raspy groans of the recently un-deceased, swarming on them like flies, and he remembers having only one thought as to who to go to now that the dead were no longer dead.
Flop screws his eyes shut and forces himself to breathe, grounding himself in the steady feeling of Beyoncé’s canter across the packed desert earth. Even thinking of him sent Flop into a panic. He squeezes Ziggy’s hand, more for his own sake than his husband’s, and Ziggy, despite his condition, gives a feeble squeeze back.
The sun’s just beginning to dip below the horizon now, bathing the desert in a shimmery golden light. It’d be beautiful if Flop wasn’t fraught with worry and carrying a dying man to Death himself. They’ve been riding nearly nonstop since before dawn, stopping once to draw water from the San Luis river bordering Mexico, and Flop hadn’t even wanted to bring Ziggy down from Beyoncé for fear that he might not be able to get up on the horse again. They’d almost stopped in Chuparosa for the same reason, before Flop had heard the ghastly moans echoing from the town from half a mile away and decided better of it.
He’s not even sure where Norman is, these days. He’d heard rumor of him going south, down past New Austin, and something in Flop’s gut tells him that’s the case. He doesn’t know what it is about their current heading, but it feels
right
, as right as anything can feel when the world’s been pushing its dead up from the ground.
Flop shivers despite the warm, dry air. He’s not even sure what his task is and it still feels impossible. He doesn’t know if finding Norman will even do anything. Hell, he might just make things worse. Nothing good has come from dealing with him yet, and Flop suspects that’s not going to change just because his domain has been tampered with.
Death was one of those things that Flop had long ago learned, as all people do, was something unmalleable. One of those things that happened and damnit, you just had to accept it and move on, because there was no bringing back someone six feet under. And as unsettling as Norman was, with his flat voice and lifeless eyes and rather snakelike disposition, it was hard for Flop to see him as evil so much as he was an arbiter of an inevitability. There was a strange kind of security in what Norman did–once you were dead, you were gone, and there was no changing that.
If anything unsettled him more than Norman, it was seeing the antithesis of Norman’s purpose. Things that were only half-dead, or maybe half-alive, stumbling clumsily in search of something to sink their teeth into. They’d passed a few undead stragglers thus far. Flop tells himself he shouldn’t bother with killing them (if they can even be “killed”, in the sense that they are somewhat alive), but really, he thinks he can’t bear to put a bullet through the skull of something that looks like a person, though their skin is cold and grey and tacky, half-dried blood drips from their teeth.
Flop shakes his head and continues to clutch Ziggy’s hand, which still feels cold and clammy. It’s something of a comfort, yes, but there’s something in the back of his mind telling him that soon, Ziggy might be in the same state, and he’s not sure what he’ll do then. He’s not sure what he can do, or what he’s willing to. He’s not leaving Ziggy, he knows that. He’ll be cold and dead in the ground before he does.
The feeling in Flop’s gut pulling him south tells him to go west. It’s strong, now; he hopes he’s not just going mad like the rest of the world seems to be.
⸻⸻
Three hours due west of Chuparosa, Flop finds him on the outskirts of Escalera.
The town is dead-quiet, absent even the unholy rasps of risen corpses that plagued every other town they’d passed on the way. There’s no animals, either; no coyotes barking, no bugs chirping. Not even the telltale squawk of crows. It feels unnatural, in the worst way.
The silence is unbecoming of Norman Bones. Flop knows he’s a quiet man, but Norman is quiet in the way the woods are quiet: accompanied by sounds so familiar and so unassuming they seem as though they’re not even present. This is something else entirely, and it’s present throughout the whole town. Flop’s never been to Escalera, but he knows it’s not supposed to be like this. Nowhere is.
“Mr. Dugong,” Norman rasps, dropping his cigarette and stamping it out. “I had something of a feeling you might find me.”
Flop, for once in his life, stays quiet as he hitches Beyoncé to an empty post. Ziggy’s gone from quiet to incoherent mumbling by now; he decides to leave him on Beyoncé, afraid of bringing him any closer to Norman. As Flop approaches him, he thinks he sees something flicker in those dead grey eyes.
“You’ve made quite the journey,” Norman observes dryly.
“Something’s gone wrong,” Flop begins, and he finds that already, his hands are clenched into fists and his voice is wavering, threatening to break. “Ain’t this your job? Making the dead stay dead?”
“Mm.” Norman looks contemplatively out over the horizon. Flop notices a crow, lying dead at his feet; he refrains from kicking it away in disgust. “I’ve not had to ensure they stay dead before.”
“Then make them.”
“Mr. Dugong,” Norman begins, calm enough that Flop might believe he was unbothered. “Some things are out of order.”
Ziggy’s mumbling has faded away. Flop strains to listen for any sign of his husband, and his blood runs cold when the only noise he hears is a ghoulish moan.
“I know these things are beyond your understanding,” Norman continues, and Flop decides to focus on his voice rather than face whatever might be behind him right now. “But you may still be of use in setting them right.”
“Just fix it,” Flop insists weakly. “This is your job. This is what you do. Fix it.”
“It’s not only mine, Flop. And it’s unbecoming of a man of your standing to ask a favor without offering anything in return.”
The moaning behind Flop remains the sole sound in the otherwise silent desert no matter how hard he tries to block it out. “Then take it. Take whatever you want. Fix it–fix him,” Flop begs. He doesn’t know when it happened, but he’s dropped to his knees, and tears are forming tracks in the thin layer of playa dust on his cheeks.
“That’s not very wise of you.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’ll have work to do.” Norman turns to him. If Flop looked him in the eye, he might see something resembling pity in his expression right now. “And you may not like what you have to give.”
“Just hurry up, won’t you?”
“Hm.” A crow hobbles weakly towards Flop before collapsing, dead. “If you insist.”
⸻⸻
Ziggy wakes up in Mexico, alone. As he rides north, he thinks that his situation must sound like the beginning of a bad joke.
He can’t wait to try to explain this to Flop when he gets home.