Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (6 page)
Read Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy Online
Authors: James Roy Daley
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Anthologies & Literary Collections, #General, #Genre Fiction, #Horror, #Anthologies, #Short Stories
The doorbell rang again.
“Hang on,” Kirk whispered. He waited and listened. Thirty seconds passed, then he heard a car door close in front of the house. An engine started. A moment later, he heard the car drive away. “Okay, she’s gone.”
“Look, Kirk,” Luanne said, “I’m not sure I believe you. But what
ever
happened last night… when that cop finally catches up with you, and she
will
, you can’t tell her I let you in. You have to say you found the back door unlocked, because if my dad finds out––”
“Don’t worry, Luanne, you’re safe. I promise. I’ll take the blame. But they’re going to need strong evidence against me, because I plan to lie my ass off. I was with friends all evening, and then I came home.”
“So… Natalie’s there?”
“Not with me at the moment, no.”
“And she’s… alive?”
“She walked out of there with me last night, Luanne. But now she’s––well, she’s not moving.”
“Rigor mortis.”
“Yeah. But she makes sounds.”
“Jesus, Kirk, what have you done?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”
Once off the phone, Kirk quickly dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt. His parents were at work––Dad at the agency in nearby Redding, Mom at a stationary store she managed there in Anderson––and his eleven-year-old brother Kevin was spending the day at Uncle Matt’s and Aunt Kathy’s house with their cousin Jake. That left the house to Kirk for the day––Kirk and his mother’s ferrets, Bud and Lou.
In the pool-house, Natalie was still seated stiffly on the toilet, wrapped in the afghan and sheet. Her mouth was still pulled back in a rictus grin. The smell was a bit stronger than it had been the night before, but it still wasn’t too bad. He made a mental note to spray the pool-house with an air freshener.
“Nat, can you hear me?” he said.
She made a small grunting sound.
All he could do was wait.
2.
Officer Pam McCready of the Anderson Police Department was built like a fire hydrant with short auburn hair and large tortoiseshell-framed glasses that kept sliding down her small round nose. “You don’t know anything about this, Kirk?” she said.
Dad and Mom and Kevin stared at him, waiting for a response.
Mom had been cooking dinner and Dad and Kevin had been watching television when McCready came to the door. Kirk had been in his bedroom wondering what he was going to do once Natalie started moving around. Kevin had come to his bedroom and said, “There’s a cop at the door wants to talk to you.” The walk from his bedroom had been a long one as he tried to relax his face and reveal nothing.
Kirk’s heart pounded in his ears as he said, “No, I don’t. When did it happen?”
“Late last night,” McCready said.
“You mean, somebody just broke in and… took her?” Kirk said.
McCready shook her head. “They didn’t break in, but yes, someone took her.”
Mom was so upset by the news that tears sprang to her eyes and she sniffled. Dad frowned silently at Kirk.
“Where were you last night?” McCready asked.
“I was out with a couple friends. We drove around awhile and talked. Then I came home.”
“I was up when he got here,” Dad said. “A little before midnight, I think it was.”
“Where did you and your friends go, Kirk?” she asked.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Nowhere, really. We drove around, is all. We talked, listened to music. We didn’t really want to go anywhere. We were pretty upset.”
“Where exactly did you drive?” McCready said.
“Where? Exactly? Um, well, we drove all over the place. Into Redding and all over town, then, uh… Palo Cedro, we drove out to Palo Cedro. And then we came back into Anderson on Deschutes.”
“You didn’t stop anywhere?”
“No. Oh, wait.” After they left the hospital, they had stopped at an AM/PM minimart so Randy could take a leak and Liz could buy a soda. Kirk told McCready about the stop.
“You were still in Redding at that point?”
“Yes.”
“At what time did you stop at the minimart?”
“It was a bad night, Officer McCready. Natalie had just died. I’m not sure what time it was. Maybe nine o’clock, nine-thirty. Maybe closer to ten. I’m not sure.”
“I understand. After that, you just drove around for a couple hours?”
Kirk nodded. “Till almost midnight, when Randy dropped me off at my place.”
“Who’s car were you in?”
“Randy’s mother’s car, Randy was driving.”
“After you were dropped off, where did they go?”
Kirk shrugged. “As far as I know, they went home.”
“I’d like to talk to both of them,” she said.
He gave her their names and addresses and she wrote them down in a small notebook.
McCready nodded. “Okay. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your eyes and ears open, Kirk. If you hear anything about this, if you suspect anyone––” She took a small card from her shirt pocket and handed it to him. “––you’ll call me, won’t you?”
Kirk took the card and nodded. “Sure.”
After McCready left, Kirk headed back to his bedroom, but Dad caught up with him in the hall.
“Kirk,” he said, “I’m going to ask you again. Did you do something foolish last night?”
“I… I don’t know what you mean by foolish.”
“You don’t know
anything
about what happened to Natalie’s body?”
Kirk’s brain clenched as he tried to keep his face neutral. “No, I don’t know anything about it.”
Dad stared at him for a long time, frowning, then nodded once and patted his shoulder. His face relaxed and he smiled a little. “Okay. If you say so. Do you have plans tonight?”
“No. I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed early, maybe read a little.”
“Well, don’t skip dinner.”
In his bedroom, Kirk called Randy on his cell phone. They’d spoken briefly that afternoon––Randy had wanted to come over, but Kirk had said he wanted to be alone. Now he told Randy about Officer McCready.
“Why the fuck’s she wanna to talk to
me
?” he said, his voice becoming high and squeaky.
“Because you were with me last night,” Kirk said. “And because you were a friend of Nat’s. That makes us suspects.”
“I’m a
suspect
?”
“Just calm down. Get out of the house if you don’t want to see her, but make sure you call Liz and warn her. We’ve got to get our stories straight. After we stopped at the AM/PM, we went out driving, nothing else, we just drove around. You drove us to––are you listening? This is important. You drove us to Redding and we drove around there for a while, then we went to Palo Cedro, and then––”
“Palo
Cedro
? You said we drove out to Palo
Cedro
? You think she’ll buy it? Even people who
live
in Palo Cedro don’t drive through it after six o’clock at night.”
“It was the first thing that popped into my head. We drove around in Redding, then drove out to Palo Cedro, then came back to Anderson on Deschutes. Got that?”
“I got it, I got it.”
“As soon as we hang up, call Liz and tell her, okay?”
“Yeah. Then can I come over to your house?”
“Not tonight. But plan on coming over early tomorrow. I’m going to need help.”
“Help doing what?”
“Deciding what to do with Natalie.”
3.
After dinner, Kirk went to his room and tried to do some homework. He couldn’t concentrate, so he played a computer game for a while. All he could think about was Natalie sitting alone out in the pool-house.
There was a knock at the door and Mom came in. He was seated at his desk and she went to him, hugged him. She was plump, with short, curly blonde hair, and she smelled of the stew they’d had for dinner.
“Oh, Kirk, baby, I’m
so
sorry,” she said. “Who would
do
such a horrible thing?”
It took him a moment to realize she was still talking about the disappearance of Natalie’s body.
“Can I get you anything, sweetheart?” she said.
“No, I’m fine, Mom.”
“If there’s anything you need, or if you want to talk, you know I’m always here for you. I just don’t understand how someone could
do
such a thing. Can you imagine why someone would
do
such a thing?”
Kirk imagined Mom coming across Natalie in the pool-house and it gave him a chill. She would probably have to be hospitalized.
She finally left, and he went on with his game for awhile, then stretched out on his bed. Time crawled along.
He waited until he heard his parents close their bedroom door and the house became silent. He went down the hall to the bathroom and took from a shelf an aerosol can of pot-pourri-scented air-freshener. Back in his bedroom, he turned off the light. He stuffed a couple pillows under his blankets just in case someone decided to look in on him. He took a penlight from the drawer of his bedstand and climbed out his window.
The night was damp and still and cold. The rain had stopped, but clouds blocked out the light of the moon and stars. Kirk moved silently across the back yard, around the covered pool, and went into the pool-house.
The odor had grown stronger, but thanks to the cold weather, it was not as bad as Kirk had feared. He relied on his penlight instead of turning on the lights inside the pool-house.
Natalie had not moved from her place on the toilet, but as soon as he entered the bathroom, she made a quiet, high-pitched sound and moved slightly beneath the sheet and afghan. Her eyes moved a little, but a milky film had developed over them and they seemed to have sunk deeper into their sockets. He put the can of air freshener on the counter beside the sink and closed his hand on her upper arm beneath the blanket, tried to move it. It was still stiff, but there was a little more give than before.
“Nat, can you understand me?”
She made a noise that sounded like, “Uh-huh,” but he wasn’t sure. Once she was able to move around, would she be able to walk and talk? Would she be anything like the Natalie he knew? And what was he going to do with her?
It had seemed like such a good idea to go to Mrs. Kobylka and ask her to help him. But he hadn’t thought it through––he hadn’t even thought it
halfway
through.
Natalie struggled as if her body were bound. Her cheeks were hollow and her cheekbones stood out against her grayish-yellow skin.
“I’ll come back a little later, okay?” he said. “I promise, I’ll be back in a little while.”
Before leaving, he sprayed the air freshener all around inside the pool-house.
Back in the house, he put the can of air freshener on his bedstand, then stripped down to his boxers and got into bed. He did not expect to sleep, though––he had too much on his mind, too much to think about. But he’d slept little the night before, and it wasn’t long before he drifted off into a deep sleep.
4.
In his dream, Kirk was with Natalie. They were nowhere in particular. All that mattered was that they were together. They were lying down, Kirk on his back, Natalie on her side next to him, and they were kissing. She was naked and he stroked her silky skin. Her long black hair draped down and tickled his face as she threw a leg over him and straddled his hips. He moved his hands over her breasts, squeezed them, took one in his mouth. It was one of those dreams that was so vivid and immediate that he had no clue he was dreaming. He was lost in her, consumed by her––and then there was a terrible smell, the kind of smell that conjured images of dead and rotting animals on the roadside and squirming maggots. It filled his nostrils, his throat, and became bigger than the dream itself, until––
—Kirk woke up coughing. There was a weight on top of him. When he opened his eyes to the gray light of morning, he thought for a moment he was still dreaming.
Natalie was on top of him, naked and grinning, her dead eyes just inches above his face. Her puckered breasts dangled flatly from her chest. When she spoke, the odor from her mouth was vile. She said, “Kiss me, Frog Boy.
- FOUR -
1.
Kirk’s erection had slipped out of his boxers and was pressed hard against something ice-cold and sticky-moist. The erection wilted immediately as Kirk struggled to get her off him. He closed his hands on her upper arms and was repulsed by what he felt––cold skin that was dry and scaly, reptilian in texture. Natalie’s thighs clutched him with surprising strength, but he rolled her off and fell out of bed. He hit the floor with a thud and sprang to his feet, hoping no one else in the house had heard the sound of his fall.
As Natalie sat up on the edge of the bed, Kirk stood still a moment and listened for the sound of someone coming toward his room. He heard nothing. The clock on his bedstand read 8:57––his parents had already left for the day. He wondered if Kevin was home, or if he was spending the day with Jake again.