Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (60 page)

Just like her death, the city has something to give her. One rippling afternoon, as she huddles in the shade of a jeans boutique, she encounters a male seco. He wears a farmer’s shirt so faded and soiled its original color is anyone’s guess. His eyeballs are raisins, shriveled back in their sockets. But beggars can’t be choosers, and aren’t they here because at the onset of the drought they were beggars?

She feels his arm. It’s dry and wrinkled like jerky. Back in her water-fat days, she saw the secos as less than animals. Like the dying they had no strength, no words; they pawed at her latches with the husks of their hands. She shivered and hid, not comprehending that they meant her no harm. Now it’s obvious. They came for the air conditioning in her house. They came for the steam in her shower, for the water beads evaporating in the tub of her sink. The man takes her hand in his. Neither of them speak.

This drought is never going to end. It will sweep over the earth, sucking the rivers dry, and what it takes it will make into more of itself. Wherever the secos go, they’ll carry the drought with them.

She helps her companion to his feet. He touches her back as she crawls.

There’s nowhere to go but north.

Viva Las Vegas

THOMAS S. ROCHE

I cruise the blackened city in the primer-gray Caddy, all-steel construction carving a path of blood and bone as I search the faces of the living dead. I stalk the streets like nightmares on a pale horse with a 390 pre-smog, radials and a big ugly hood ornament of a woodpecker or something, the air conditioning on high and the Beretta across my lap. I drive the Strip with its shattered neon lights and fragments of plate glass windows, silver dollars and poker chips and hundred-dollar bills forming drifts like the desert sands across Las Vegas Boulevard. I look into the desperate eyes of the rotting, watching them claw at the windows of the Caddy, and I put my shades on.

Emily is nowhere in sight.

But I hold on to the faith that’s kept me on the highway since I started. It’s a small burning coal at the pit of my stomach that tells me one day very, very soon I’m going to have my Emily back and then not even Manny Pearlman can take her away again. Off in the distance, I hear the howl of a dog.

I park the Caddy in the parking lot of a Mister Doggy and light an unfiltered Black Lung. I sit there, smoking, and thinking about the way Emily’s eyes are going to light up when she sees me. It’s been a long time coming––pedal-to-the-metal in the Caddy, burning up the road to this place, and every time I look into the face of Death he is a brainless zomboid drooling green muck on his shirt. Every time I get cornered and try to speak words of wisdom to the great unwashed (which has gotten particularly unwashed of late), I find myself face to face with a greater kind of pinhead––the occupant of a brave new and even stupider TV nation looking for a rather unwilling TV dinner, namely, me. Every time I point nine millimeters of death at the brain of the New Regular Joe, his jaws just clack and his hands claw to get a grip on my arm and peel off a succulent morsel.

But none of that matters worth rat-shit. I know, know in my heart, in my soul, that when I finally find Emily I’m gonna take her in my arms and she’s gonna see me, recognize me, remember everything we had together. That’s when her eyes’ll brighten and I’ll see those beautiful shining tears of hers. At long last I’ll have my Emily back from the hands of Death.

All at once I see them, two dead hippies, one short and one tall, wearing tie-dye shirts with skull logos. They have just walked up to the Caddy’s side windows like they’re trying to sell me some weed with a couple of Louisville Sluggers. No time to get the car in gear. I open the door fast so the short guy takes the bottom edge in the knee; the bat goes flying. I lean out of the car just enough to point the Beretta at his head; the gun barks and brains spray over the second hippy as he comes at me.

I see tie-dye and Jerry Bear on the guy’s shirt: Forever Dead. Christ, could I make this shit up?

I fire again but miss the second hippy’s head and the bat comes down on me once, twice. I see stars and tumble back into the Caddy. He starts climbing in, his jaws already working, his hands grabbing for me. I’ve still got the Black Lung in my mouth and I quickly put it out in the hippie’s eye. Not that it hurts the bastard, but it seems to slow him down just a hair. That gives me the chance I need to get the Beretta in his mouth and spray his brains all over the inside of the Caddy’s door. The first bullet takes the guy out something fierce, but you know how it is with those goddamn Berettas, once you get started it’s hard to stop, so next thing I know the clip is empty and hot cartridges are rattling around the inside of the Caddy like pinballs in the Hot Rod Derby machine down at the Boardwalk in Santa Monica. The guy’s head isn’t just blown open but gone, which is maybe how I like it. The Beretta makes a hollow click over and over again as I pull the trigger. Then with a “Yech” I kick the headless body out into the Mister Doggy parking lot, slam the door, and get the car in gear.

Wetwork never used to be this wet.

Both hippies crunch under my radials as I swing a tight turn out of the parking lot. I barely miss the giant dog with the obscene wiener, which used to flash neon-red like a goddamn blood sausage. The back end of the Caddy scrapes loud as I crank another turn and get going onto Tropicana, flooring it. Cruising in the fast lane, I shake out another cigarette and get it into my mouth with trembling hands. It doesn’t do much to kill the smell of the guy’s rotting insides drizzling down the inside of the Caddy’s door.

I curse, telling myself not to daydream like that.

“Easy,” I whisper around the butt of the Black Lung. “It’s a war for the future, don’t ever forget that. She’s out there and it’s your job to take her away from them.” Nowadays, sometimes talking to yourself is the only way to stay sane. If you can even use that word any longer.

I stop in the middle of the street to reload the Beretta and move the pump-action Remington .410 to the front seat. I check the weight of the two .32s in my jacket pocket. Can’t be too careful.

* * *

There. Under the burned-out neon palm tree…

I spot her in the shadows of a shambling horde on the corner of Paradise. There’s got to be thirty, maybe forty of them, wandering with arms outstretched, uttering the faintly whining battle-cry of the eternally hungry. I take it slow, creeping forward until the horde, as one, sees me, and––as one––turns toward me.

The 390 roars like a demon. I’m halfway to sixty when I get there. I see her face and I know I’m cutting it close, maybe too close, but it’s the only way to be sure. I hit the brakes at the last possible second, yank the wheel to the left, slam into the mass of rotting flesh and splatter bodies over the front end of the Caddy. She’s there––arms out, clawing at the Caddy, only a foot away. I could have nailed her but I missed her, just. The bodies under the wheels are pulped, but heads and arms are still writhing, groping for me. Jaws clack and goo-choked pieholes make wet sounds. I open the driver’s side door and slam it into the press of bodies; then I’ve got the Remington out and I’m standing there, surrounded by them, pulling the trigger as fast as I can, pumping the action until there’s gore everyfuckingwhere and the spent shells rain down on me like a plague of locusts. Then it’s out with the Beretta. I’ve got a path cleared in five shots; heads crack open all around me. I jump on the hood of the Caddy and take out the two on either side of her; then she’s clawing at me and trying to get her teeth latched onto my arm. But it’s her; it’s my Emily. I almost lose it, almost can’t hit her as hard as I need to. I get her in a headlock and all she tries to do is snap her teeth down on my flesh, but she misses and I get her onto the pavement with my knee in her back. I have to blow away three more of them with the Beretta while I’m holding Emily down––not the easiest task in the world––and then I see a group of them crawling over the Caddy. The Beretta makes hollow clicks in my hand. I barely manage to drop it and get the first .32 out before this rotting guy missing one arm comes down on me––lucky shot, one bullet right into the mouth, upward angle. Under me Emily is writhing and shrieking, clawing for me, trying to close her mouth on my thigh. I empty the .32 and pick Emily up in a bastardized Full Nelson, swinging her like a pair of num-chucks, knocking a couple of the rotting bastards down.

“I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry––” I mutter as I get the trunk open.

Emily claws at my face, her jaw working, her throat uttering an inhuman shriek. Then I slam her into the trunk just as a priest gets his arms around my throat and tries to drag my face into his wide-open mouth. Crap…there’s a church just across the street; I’m a Catholic, I hate this shit. Screaming, I try to swing him around and get him down on the pavement so I can slam the trunk closed, but Father Zombie’s teeth are shutting hard an inch from my nose and I know he’ll fucking bite it off if he gets half a goddamn chance. His mouth is oozing green puss from sores and infections and I’m about to puke from the smell. Ten or twelve more of them are closing in, they’ll be here in a few seconds. Holding the priest against the tail fin of the Caddy I hammer down with my knee as he gropes for me, I feel the tail fin piercing his back, maybe severing his spine, but they don’t feel pain like the living, which maybe is something to look forward to since my throat is hurting something awful just now. I push the friendly Monsignor harder down on the tail fin but he won’t let go of me. I manage to get the second .32 out as I pull him up off the Caddy’s tail fin, but I can’t bring the gun into line with his face. The Caddy’s trunk goes slick with blood and oozing grey-green rot. I put two bullets in his stomach but all it does is send little sprays of blood out his mouth and over my face. And he’s still groping and biting at me. Now the other group of them are all around me and I know they’re gonna drag me into their midst any second. I come down hard on top of the priest, wedging my knee into his groin, then his chest; then I stand up with my foot on his throat. I point the .32 at his quickly-working mouth and sneer down at him.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” I say, and put two in his head.

By then they’re all around me: a postal clerk, two cops, a showgirl, a bus driver, two strippers, four or five card dealers, a lounge singer, half-a-dozen cocktail waitresses, ten or twelve guys in Hawaiian shirts…Jesus, here come the nuns. A longhair Jimmy Buffet type swings his Strat like a club; I should have brought the chainsaw. The .32’s almost empty. As I turn I see that Emily has gotten out of the trunk and is crawling over the bumper holding my tire iron.

“Sorry, baby, I’m sorry,” I tell her as I take the tire iron away. Then I hit her hard in the chest, pushing her back into the trunk as three more of the fuckers come up behind me. Emily totters and falls. I slam the lid down. A butcher has his arms around my leg and is going for it like it’s a turkey leg. I bring the tire iron down three times as a rotting traffic cop goes for my waist. I put the last .32 slug in the oinker’s head and hammer the butcher till he lets go.

They’re all over the car, and in it. There’s a lady construction worker searching the back seat for consumables.

Oh no they don’t. Not now that I’ve got her. No.

I jump into the car and slam the door on the hand of a blue-skinned cocktail waitress. There are four of them inside now, coming to get me. No time to reload the Remington. I go at it with the tire iron, aiming for their heads, taking their claws and scratches across my face and arms as I beat them until their skulls crack open. Then I pop the box of shotgun shells as they lay there whining and clawing for me. I load the Remington as I hear the glass shatter.

They’re covering the Caddy now. They’ve picked up garbage and rocks and are battering the remaining windows, trying to get in. The back window cracks and a bald cashier forces his head through, congealed blood oozing onto the upholstery and the lady construction worker.

I push broken limbs and smashed heads out of the way as I try to put the Caddy in gear, sobbing like I have never done. This is not happening. The Caddy sticks in ‘Park.’

The cashier is forcing his shredded body through the window, scrabbling towards me amid the shattered writhing corpses in the back seat. That’s when I hear the sound he’s making.

The Caddy is covered with the groping corpses of the living dead, hammering at the car windows. The Caddy’s windows are a spiderweb of bloody nightmares, and I’m caught.

And mama spider’s coming for me, whispering “Meat.”

There are so many squirming bodies crawling over the car that they blot out the sun. It’s pitch black inside the Caddy, black as the grave except for a few sunlight streamers shining through somebody’s putrefied guts.

I pull the shift and the tranny grinds and screams; the car pops into drive and lurches forward. I floor the accelerator and the 390 roars with the sound of terrible authority. I hear the crunching of bones underneath the car as the radials grind through the mass of flesh. I can’t see a fucking thing, so I slam on the brakes and the sun comes tearing through as bodies go flying. Many of them are still hanging on, though. A nurse, garbed in filthy whites, is impaled on the hood ornament, squirming and groping for me. I hit the gas again and grind more of them under the tires. Now I can see, I’m pointed right for a wall of metal garbage cans. I slam into them at full speed and hear the headlights shatter. The windows are almost all cracks and darkened with the viscous fluids of the undead. The windshield disintegrates around me as the nurse goes rolling over the roof of the car, wailing. The lady construction worker and the others are writhing and spewing in the back seat, and there’s that…thing…in the front seat making wet noises.