Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (20 page)

“No. Nothing wrong,” he mutters and wrenches himself away from the table.

He shuffles into the dark living room, propelled forth by his wife’s exasperated sigh, and thumbs on the television. The white noise fills his head like angry wasps.

With trembling hands he slides open the cabinet beneath the television and squints to make out the titles of the videos stacked atop one another in uneven piles. At last he finds the one he’s looking for and, trying his best to ignore the gruesome pictures on the cover, shoves the tape into the gaping maw of the VCR.

Swallowing dryly, he clicks the button on the remote and eases himself into a recliner. His bones feel like kindling as he struggles to get comfortable.

On the screen, in gloomy black and white, he watches a black car winding its way toward a graveyard and wonders if that’s really where he should be. A graveyard.

He shudders, his chest tightening at the thought of that black car waiting outside his house in the morning like a patient vulture.

They’re coming to get you Barb’raaaaaa.

He switches off the television and sighs, coughs, hacks up bits of brown papery matter. Winces at the sight of them coiled atop his bandaged hand.

He forces himself to swallow a knot of fear.

They can’t hurt me, can they? I’m dead.

The thought offers him little comfort as he sits there alone, cloaked in shadow.

* * *

Dawn creeps silently through the world and Sam jerks himself from non-sleep with a stifled cry. The room glows with hazy orange light that might, under any other circumstances have seemed warm, comforting, but now looks like the reflected light of a funeral pyre.

Damn Wilder
, he thinks miserably,
I should stay with Linda. God knows she’s a tyrant at the best of times but… I still love her!
This rare admission makes him sure he has felt his rotten heart kick but it might have been nothing more than a memory.

He slowly, carefully gets to his feet to a chorus of snaps and cracks and walks stiff-legged into the kitchen. Thankfully, Linda is still sleeping. He remembers hearing her come home, the feel of her lips brushing against the taut dead skin on his forehead. Rather than wake him, she opted to leave him sleep in the living room and now he aches for her for the first time in years. The ache becomes an almost physical pain, sparking doubts in his mind about the validity of Wilder’s claims. If he can feel sorrow, loss, love… doesn’t that make him alive?

No. He looks at his bandaged hand, the discoloration on the gauze. He thinks about his severed fingers, discarded like nail clippings with not an ounce of pain. His nerves are dead, of that there can be no doubt and soon he will shed his skin like a snake, sloughing off his identity to become nothing more than a cadaver exposed for all the world to see and study. The thought frightens him. Just how long will he remain aware of what they are doing to him? Once his eyes shrivel in their sockets and he can see no more, how long will his emotions, his loneliness take to die? If he has to lie on a cold table knowing what they are doing to him despite being spared the sensations that come with their needles and hooks, he does not want to be capable of thought.

Will they take care of that too?

I can’t do this.

And yet he knows he has to. There are no other options available for him now that he knows the truth. All he can do is accept his fate as it has been written and go blindly into the jaws of science. He can only hope that when he finally abandons this crumbling vessel that sags on his bones like an over-worn suit, something infinitely better awaits him on the other side of somewhere.

He trudges up the stairs, head low, spine crackling and makes his way toward the bedroom.

Easing open the door, he looks at Linda; her hands curled slightly as if to maintain their grasp on sleep, graying hair splayed out around her head in a steel corona, chest rising and falling…

Breathing.

Sam puts a frail hand over his own mouth and exhales. Perhaps a slight chill brushes his scabrous palm but nothing more. He swallows. “Linda… ”

* * *

The car is waiting just as Wilder promised; a swollen cockroach nestled against the curb with black eyes for windows that stare vapidly back at Sam as he descends the steps of his home with deliberate slowness. He is appalled at the lack of mobility that has suddenly overtaken his joints and muscles, almost as if rigor mortis has been waiting for just this moment to take hold of him.

It hurts, but only his pride.

The car window hums down and he looks up to see a familiar face smiling out at him. “Good morning Mr. Bradley!”

Sam nods and forces his leg down the last step. With a sigh of relief that emerges more like a croak, he approaches the car in a stoop, like a man balancing a stack of fine china on his head.

“You’re looking splendid!” Wilder proclaims and Sam summons the memory of a smile. “Thank you. I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

Wilder purses his lips. “Well I think we both know why my presence is necessary, don’t we?” His eyes drop to the fresh bloodstains on Sam’s hands.

The driver door clicks open and Sam is surprised to see a chauffeur coming around to his side of the car. With a polite nod, the young man opens the door for him. Wilder scoots over in his seat to make room. “Hop in!”

Sam’s bones click like castanets as he maneuvers himself into the vehicle. Once he is as comfortable as he can get, he looks at Wilder. “I couldn’t do it you know. I couldn’t do it alone.”

Wilder smiles. “I know. You’d be surprised how often that happens. That’s why it was important that I be here. After all,” he says with a wink. “I’m the man who breaks the bad news.”

Immunity

JEFF STRAND

Believe me, I howled when that corpse––putrid meat dangling from its bones––sunk its teeth into the underside of my right arm. I won’t say the pain was indescribable, since there are plenty of good descriptive words: excruciating, agonizing, unbearable, and so on. I’d seen friends, family, and strangers get bit, and even while they shrieked I’d never imagined it could hurt this much.

I pulled my arm away, leaving a strip of flesh in the zombie’s jaws, and cried out for help. Not that it was necessary; my traveling companion Allen was right there. He shot the zombie in the head and it dropped. Then he looked at me sadly. “You know what has to be done.”

No. No way. I’d been on the other side many times, but I wasn’t going to let Allen murder me. I could fight off the infection. I knew I could. So before he had a chance to get over his moment of melancholy, I dove at him, tackled him to the ground and pulled the gun out of his hand. Then I blew his brains out.

Heh. You didn’t often see zombies shooting humans in the head.

Stop that
. I wasn’t a zombie. I’d never be a zombie. The others were weak. They succumbed to the infection because they believed what everybody said––you can’t fight it. Well, I could fight it. I’d fight it and be stronger for the experience. I’d be an inspiration to The Bitten. A hero.

* * *

Not dead yet, so that was a promising sign. I’d been bit twelve hours ago, according to my watch, and I was the furthest thing from a shambling, mindless creature. The average time from bite to death? Two hours. But not me. Still alive and kicking, thank you very much. I was awesome.

* * *

Twenty-four hours. I didn’t sleep during that time because that might’ve allowed the infection to overpower me, but I felt fine. My arm didn’t even hurt.

I was immune.

Immune!

I was the key to humanity’s survival! Whether it was something in my blood or my brain or whatever, I possessed the ability to withstand a bite from one of those things and not become one myself.

I needed to find people. There were scientists studying what was happening, and I could be the link to a cure. The zombies would eventually lose their spot at the top of the food chain, and life would return to normal. They’d build statues in my honor. Write songs. Name cathedrals.

I slowly walked through the forest, feeling pretty darn legendary.

* * *

The little girl screamed when she saw me. So did her mother.

I tried to tell her that I was okay, that I was immune, that I was humanity’s savior, but my voice didn’t work––it was merely a soft groan.

I wanted to weep as I fed upon the little girl’s flesh, but there were no tears, just hunger.

In the Land of the Blind

ROBERT SWARTWOOD

Like everyone else he knew, Steven’s heart did not beat. Instead it lay dead in his chest, as docile as his brain and his lungs and his soul. So when he first heard the faint beating sound coming from outside his bedroom window, he didn’t know what to think.

He considered telling his parents. He’d been hearing the beating for almost a week now. Somewhere in the trees and bushes beyond their backyard. Its continuous thump-thumping sounded not outside of his head, but rather in.

If Jimmy couldn’t hear the beating, Steven knew his parents wouldn’t either. They’d just stare down at him with dead eyes and say,
Oh Steven, don’t make things up. You know what will happen if you do.

He knew. It dealt with something only the zombies had, something called imagination. It was dangerous and evil and those who had it were hunted down and put out of their misery.

But one night the beating became too much for Steven. He snuck outside with a shovel––why the shovel, he didn’t know, except that he would need it––and followed the sound until he came to a spot beneath a willow tree. He placed his hand on the dirt where the thump-thumping was the loudest and felt the earth vibrating. He began to dig.

An hour later, his body wearing down, the shovel clinked against something solid. He glanced up and noticed an owl watching him from one of the willow tree’s branches. It stared back at him with lifeless eyes.

What Steven pulled from the earth was a strange rock. It was shaped like a perfect cube, five inches wide, five inches long, and five inches thick. Something inside the rock pulsed, causing it to shake in his hands.

A voice behind him asked, “Do you know what’s inside?”

The rock fell to the ground. Steven, his small hands shaking, quickly turned.

The thing standing there was a crime against nature. Menacingly tall, its hair dark, its eyes full of life, it was one of the zombies he’d learned to fear. A thing that shouldn’t exist. A thing that had imagination, a soul, life.

“Don’t be afraid.” The zombie’s voice carried none of the roughness that Steven was accustomed to hearing. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Steven opened his mouth but could not speak.

The zombie smiled. “Though even if I were to hurt you, you wouldn’t actually
feel
anything.”

The owl in the trees hooted twice, flew away.

“That was meant as a joke,” the zombie said, his smile fading. “A poor joke, I know, but a joke nonetheless. Please, say something. I’m risking my life talking to you, the least you could do is say hello.”

Steven didn’t want to say hello. He wanted to run away. But he knew that if he did the zombie would chase after him and tear him apart limb by limb, so he stayed motionless.

The zombie said, “You’re about ten years old, aren’t you.”

Steven nodded.

“You came out here because you heard it calling you.” The zombie motioned with his head at the rock cube on the ground just behind Steven. “Am I right?”

The zombie sighed. “I don’t even know what I want anymore. A long time ago I used to think it was possible for the living and the dead to exist side by side. But now…” He shrugged. “Now this is the land of the dead, and it will always be the land of the dead.”

Steven took another step back, the heel of his sneaker bumping the rock. He looked down at it, looked back up at the zombie. Hesitantly he asked, “What’s inside there?”

“What do you think? It’s your heart.”

“My… heart? But that can’t be. My heart”––he pointed at his chest––”is right here.”

“Okay,” the zombie said, smiling again, “it’s not really your heart. But inside that cube is life. The thing that will make you just like me.”

“I don’t want to be just like you. You… you… you’re a monster. You don’t deserve to exist.”

“You really have no idea, do you? Say, how many colors are there?”

Steven hesitated again, looking every which way, wishing his parents were here with him right now, wishing Hunters would come to his rescue.

“Colors?” he said. “There are… three. Black, white, and gray.”

The smile had faded completely from the zombie’s face, his expression now somber. “I really do pity your kind. You miss out on all the little things. Like actually feeling the sun when it’s shining down on you. Or the wind against your face. Smelling the honeysuckles in the spring and tasting even a pinch of sugar.” The zombie shook his head. “Do you realize the rest of the earth hasn’t moved on? It’s just mankind and all the animals. You’ve all moved on, decayed, become what you are. You’ve all become blind, and those like me, the living, are one-eyed men. We’re kings.”