Central Park had become a shambles. A sea of mud broken here and there by a pool of stagnant water slick with the rainbow sheen of chemical pollution. Shards of bone, inedible even by the loose standards of the undead had gathered in these ditch-like depressions in the earth. No grass anywhere - the dead would have devoured it by the handful. Countless broken and sagging trees raised dark supplicant limbs to an overcast sky, pulpy and white where the bark had been gnawed right off the wood. Without the root systems of living plants to hold it together the very earth under Central Park had rebelled, surging forward as mud every time it rained. The broad traverses had turned to rivers full of murky, billowing water. The fences that had divided the park into discrete zones of leisure had been overcome by the sweeping power of the water and mud and now lay twisted like long lines of barbed wire rusting in the sun. Here and there there a streetlamp poked out of the dirt at a skewed angle like the gravestones in an old abandoned cemetery. The paved or graveled paths that had once woven in and out of pleasant glades had disappeared completely. A tidal wave of mud that had swept out into Sixth Avenue. It had clotted in the gutters and left broad streaks of brown in elaborately ramified fan shapes down the street, carrying away cars to smash them up against buildings a block away in clumps of filthy broken metal and shivered glass.
Gary lead Noseless and Faceless into the Park's brown expanse and felt his feet sinking a full inch down into the soft soil. Within minutes of clambering through the forest of dead trees Gary felt completely lost. Through the denuded branches he could see the tall buildings of the city around him in every direction but north, the rude geometry of the empty city like abstract mountain ranges pinning him in. He felt alone but not unwatched - the mysterious benefactor waited for him somewhere beyond the next hummock of earth.
Since he'd eaten he was thinking more clearly. He'd shaken off the half-trance that had lain over him like a shroud ever since he recovered his strength at the bottom of the Virgin megastore and now he had time to ponder just where he was headed. Someone, some anonymous creature had come to him in his moment of greatest peril and taught him how to open himself, how to connect with the nervous systems of countless dead men. From that connection he had drawn the strength to keep himself animate even after being shot in the head. In exchange for this knowledge the unknown benefactor had summoned Gary to his presence and without a thought Gary had set off to comply. Now that he could think a little more clearly, however, he wondered what he was marching toward. It couldn't be a living person - no one living could have access to the network of death, Gary was sure of it, and anyway why would anyone living want to help a monster like Gary to survive?
Yet if the benefactor was dead then what could he possibly want from Gary? Even if the other had somehow maintained his intellect as Gary had, he would still share the biology and psychology of all the dead. The dead only had one desire, the need for sustenance. It seemed absurd but Gary was convinced that he was walking to the place where he would be eaten. Fast food delivery, right to your door.
If it was true, if he had been spared only to be turned into a meal for some dead man even smarter than himself, Gary still couldn't stop. He kept yanking his feet out of the mire and taking another step. Behind him Noseless and Faceless kept pace without a word of complaint or question.
Gary had his own agenda. He wanted to find Ayaan again and show her exactly how he felt. She hadn't given him a fucking chance. Still. He had to know, first. He had questions that needed answers. Revenge had to wait.
The sun had moved higher in the sky by the time they saw the first break in the monotony of mud and violated trees. The Zoo came up on their right, its buildings still standing though they were half buried in thick silt. Grateful for any break in the visual cipher of what the Park had become Gary waved his companions on and hurried into the low maze of the Zoo's sunken exhibits.
There were no animals in the cages, of course - the dead would have made short work of them. Here and there a scrap of fur had caught in the mesh of a habitat or the elaborate filigree on a wrought iron fence but that was all. Similarly the explanatory plaques and interactive displays were buried or carried away by some long past torrent of mud. Only the barriers remained visible, a collection of untenanted cages that cut the afternoon light into long strips. Gary lead his companions down long curving lanes between what had once been enclosures for baboons and red pandas and now were merely channels of mud.
Wanting to see something he brought them to a building ornamented with the sculpted heads of elephants and giraffes. Cheerfully whimsical in another day the reliefs had become hideous gargoyles now, emblems of bestial violence. Gary ignored the cold feeling the place gave him and touched the weathered brass hand pulls on the doors of the building.
The doors flew open with a force that knocked him back a dozen yards on his shoulder, his dry body gouging a great furrow in the mud. Noseless and Faceless turned to stare at him with a kind of dazed shock they might have seen mirrored in his own face. What could possibly have broken the stillness of the park so violently?
A naked dead man came stomping out of the Elephant House on calves like utility poles. He stood at least ten feet tall, a quaking mound of pallid flesh shot through with black veins. There was no muscle tone on the giant whatsoever, just great rolls of translucent flab and doughy meat. His hands were bloated and nearly useless, human-sized nails sunk deep into the tips of his swollen fingers. His human-sized head sat in the middle of the gelatinous mass of his body like an obscene barnacle. Gary had never seen anything like him before. He gave more than a passing second to the thought that this might be his benefactor, and his doom, but it couldn't be so. When he plucked the strings of the net that tied together all dead men and women he felt no stirring of intelligence in this beast.
What he did see in his mind's eye was horrible to look upon - dark energy, far more than seemed possible, a writhing, roiling storm cloud of it that blazed and radiated away from the giant in great gouts and yet never diminished in strength - a black star. There was hatred in there as well, raw red hatred for anyone who dared enter the precincts of the beast's domain.
The creature before Gary had not begun its existence at that size. He had been a big man in life but neither a body-builder or an athlete. He had merely been one of the first of the walking dead to find his way to the Zoo. He had fought off the weaker dead as they arrived, engaged in epic combats with the stronger ones but always he had prevailed. His current size was due simply to eating greater quantities of more robust meat than anyone else who tried to challenge him.
There were no more elephants in the Elephant House, Gary realized, nor any giraffes, or hippopotami or rhinos or bears. He was looking at what was left of them.
The giant stamped toward Faceless and Gary sent her an urgent command to fall back. She couldn't move quickly enough and the giant slapped her to the side. Noseless tried to get around behind the thing and the giant kicked out with one leg, throwing him into a brick wall with a meaty thud. The creature wanted Gary next and would brook no delays. It would tear him apart, Gary knew - not for food, since the dead never ate the dead - but for the sheer insult of invading the giant's space.
Gary could hardly stand up to the giant physically. Instead he raised his hands before him and stroked the threads that connected the two of them in some etheric space. It hurt to touch the frenzied energy of the giant but Gary reached out and pulled hard, drawing deep until he began to siphon that mad heat away from the beast.
The giant couldn't possibly understand what was happening but he felt it and it must have hurt like hell. He sucked a deep lungful of air, struggling against massive fat deposits to get the oxygen in and then blasted it out in a wail like an air horn. Gary covered his ears, severing his connection to the giant in the process and for a moment the world was silent again. Then the giant turned to the side and started climbing up over a high fence, digging his fingers deep into the metal lattice, pulling himself away from Gary as fast as he could.
Gary felt like slapping his hands together in self-congratulation as the giant hurried off into the muddy forest outside the Zoo. He nearly did - until the benefactor spoke to him, the words conveyed directly into his still-tender brain:
Amaideach stocach! the benefactor howled. The words meant nothing to Gary but they cut through him like a sword of fire. You let it get away! the Benefactor went on, this time in English. It was too much, this communication: it felt like the words were tearing through Gary's mind, as dangerous as bullets. He tumbled to the ground, his body convulsing wildly in the throes of a massive seizure.
When he was able to rise to his feet again he collected Noseless and Faceless (looking a little ragged after the fight with the giant but still mobile) and returned to his uptown course. He had to find his benefactor. He had to know what kind of power could hurt him so badly from such a distance.