Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (7 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 sash of the window he’d left open a crack had been lifted all the way up––Natalie had climbed through it as she had in the past. He considered closing it, but thought better of it when he got another whiff of Natalie.
She stood and moved close to him. “Kiss me, Frog Boy,” she said again, smiling. Her voice sounded like a boot being pulled out of thick mud.
The smell that came from her mouth was so sickening, Kirk gagged. He grabbed the can of potpourri air freshener and sprayed it around the room, then took the cell phone from the bedstand and punched in Randy’s number. As soon as Randy answered, he said, “I need you and Liz to get over here right away.”
“‘Sup?”
Kirk looked at Natalie. She stared at him with her head cocked to one side. Her whole body was a sickly blend of gray and yellow. Her skin was striated and scaly, breasts flat, nipples puckered. Her face was taut on her skull, sunken eyes bracketed by deep-set temples. She stared at him like a slow-witted child for a long moment, then sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, as if she were exhausted and bored.
“Natalie’s up, that’s what,” Kirk said. “Call Liz. Tell her to pick you up in her car.”
“Why can’t I use my mom’s car?”
Natalie got up, went to Kirk, and knelt before him. “Let’s do it here,” she said.
“I’ll tell you later,” Kirk said. “Tell Liz to bring some clothes, something old that she doesn’t care about. And some perfume, tell her to bring some strong perfume.”
Natalie pulled his boxer shorts down with one tug and closed her other hand, cold and lizard-like, over his penis.
“No!” Kirk shouted, jumping backward. He bent down and pulled up his boxers. “Stop that, Natalie, please. Sit down. Just sit down.”
She stood and went back to the bed, dropped onto the edge and stared at him.
“What’s going on over there?” Randy asked.
“She tried to… she wants to… just get over here, okay?”
“What are we going to do?”
“I’ll explain when you get here.” He cut the connection and put the phone back on the bedstand.
Natalie lay back and leaned on her elbows, spread her knees, and said, “Let’s do it here. It’ll be ex… ex…” She frowned a moment as she searched for the right word. “Exciting.” She pulled her dry, cracked, purple lips back in something that was supposed to be a smile. It looked, instead, like an expression of pain.
Between her legs, her vulva had turned a deep yellow and glistened with draining fluids. The smell that rose up from her vagina was rank.
Kirk had to turn away, unable to look at her anymore. He quickly put on jeans and a sweatshirt, socks and sneakers. Without looking directly at her, he said, “Natalie, you have to stay here, okay? Can you stay right here for a few minutes?”
“Kirk?” She said the name as if she’d never spoken it before and sounded scared and confused.
He turned to her as she sat up on the bed.
“I’m…” She cocked her head again and seemed to have difficulty finding the word. “Hungry. I’m hungry.”
“Just stay right here for a few minutes, okay? Don’t move.”
Kirk opened his bedroom door and poked his head out. He looked down the hall, listened for the sound of someone else in the house. He stepped out of the room, closed the door, and went down the hall to the living room.
“Kevin?” he called.
The house was silent. He went into the kitchen.
Apparently, his parents had decided to let him sleep instead of waking him for breakfast. His mother had left a note on the counter telling him Kevin was spending the day with Jake again. She wrote that he should not make plans for that night because Dad was bringing home a Christmas tree and they were going to decorate it.
Something rubbed up against Kirk’s ankle and scared him so badly, he cried out and tossed the note into the air. He looked down to see one of the ferrets slinking around his feet. Mom had gotten them almost a year ago, but Kirk had never gotten used to their presence in the house. They made him nervous. Although Mom could somehow tell Bud and Lou apart, they were identical to Kirk’s eyes. He nudged the ferret with his foot and said, “Go on, Bud. Or Lou.”
The ferret skittered out of the kitchen.
Kirk opened the refrigerator to find something for Natalie to eat. He quickly made her a sandwich of turkey cold cuts and lettuce and wrapped it in a paper towel. He went back up the hall and stood at his bedroom door for almost a full minute. He did not want to go back in his bedroom and see her again. The person––the
thing
––in his bedroom was not the Natalie he had lost. It was certainly not the Natalie he had
expected
Mrs. Kobylka’s spell to resurrect.
“Hungry,” Natalie said in the bedroom.
Kirk wondered if she knew he was standing outside the door. Was that possible?
He went into the bedroom and found her lying on her back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, hands flat on her flat belly.
“Hungry,” she said again, talking to herself. She wasn’t aware he had returned.
He kicked the bedroom door closed behind him. She sat up as he went to her and handed her the sandwich.
Natalie stared at it a moment before taking it. She held it to her nose, touched the crust of the bread to her tongue, then took a bite out of it. She chewed clumsily, sloppily, as if she weren’t sure what she was doing, and pieces of meat fell out of her mouth onto her thighs. She bent forward and spit the rest of it onto the floor and tossed the remainder of the sandwich aside. It landed on the corner of the bed.
“You’re not hungry anymore?” Kirk said.
Natalie stood and bits of turkey lunchmeat dropped from her thighs onto the floor. She stretched out her arms and stumbled toward him.
Kirk moved backward quickly, until his back was pressed against the door. She closed in and wrapped her arms around his neck. He shuddered at the sensation of her cold, scaly skin rubbing against him. Her face filled his field of vision and the closer she got, the more Natalie opened her mouth. The odor that came out of her brought tears to Kirk’s eyes and he pushed her away a second before her teeth clacked together. He reached behind him, grabbed the doorknob, opened the door and quickly backed out of the room. He pulled it closed and stood there clutching the doorknob with both hands.
He took a few deep breaths as his stomach roiled with nausea from her horrible smell. But it was her attempt to bite his face that made him realize what a horrible mistake he had made.
2.
The doorbell rang. Randy and Liz normally would walk in without ringing the bell or knocking when they knew Kirk was home alone, but Kirk’s parents always locked the door when they left in the morning, even if someone was still at home.
“Natalie, listen to me,” Kirk said to his bedroom door. “Stay in there and I’ll be back in a few minutes, okay?”
“Hungry,” she whimpered.
“Just stay there for a few minutes and I’ll be right back.” He hurried down the hall and opened the front door.
Liz had a satchel slung over her shoulder. She patted the satchel and said, “I assumed you wanted clothes for Nat, right?”
“Yes.”
“My mom refilled her Vicodin prescription this morning,” Randy said with a grin. “I brought two for each of us.”
Kirk closed the door and said, “Come into the kitchen, we can have Pop Tarts, or something.”
In the kitchen, Kirk took a package of Pop Tarts from the cupboard and dropped three of them into the giant toaster.
“Where is she?” Randy asked, looking all around with caution.
“In my bedroom. And she’s
hungry
.”
“Oh, fuck,” Randy said as he handed out the Vicodin. “Hungry for what?”
“Not for Louis Rich sliced roast turkey breast, I know that. She almost took a bite out of my face.”
“You were right, Liz,” Randy whispered. “She’s been reanimated. She’s a zombie. A flesh-eater.”
“Come on, Randy, could you cut that shit out,” Kirk said, but without anger.
“But that’s what we’re dealing with, right?” Randy said. “What if she’d bitten you? Is it contagious? In all the movies, if you get bitten by a zombie you turn into one. All I’m saying is, we should think about this shit and be prepared.”
“He’s right, Kirk,” Liz said. “We should be careful around her. A bite could be bad.”
As realization set in––Mrs. Kobylka had not given him Natalie, she had given him a reanimated corpse with a twist of cannibalism––Kirk was overcome by vertigo and swayed, grabbed the edge of the kitchen counter for anchor.
“Dude,” Randy said.
Liz said, “Are you okay, Kirk?”
“I’m just trying to wrap my brain around all this,” Kirk said. The dizziness passed.
The Pop Tarts popped up and startled them. Kirk opened the refrigerator and handed each of them a Mountain Dew, got one for himself. They drank the pills down with the soda, then ate the Pop Tarts as they talked.
“What are we going to do?” Kirk said. “Why did you want us to come in Liz’s car?”
“Because nobody else drives Liz’s car but Liz, so they won’t notice the smell.”
“The
smell?”
Liz said. “Hey,
I’ll
notice the smell.”
“We’ll roll down the windows, Liz. I don’t have anyone else to ask, or I would. My car’s totaled, remember?”
Liz thought about it a moment.
“I’ve got air freshener,” Kirk said.
Liz was reluctant. “All right. Where we gonna go?”
“To see Mrs. Kobylka.”
“
Again?”
Randy said.
“This isn’t what I asked for,” Kirk said.
“Are you sure, Kirk?” Liz said. “Think about it. That old lady might speak with an accent, but I bet she understands English just fine, and she’s probably going to hold you to whatever you said, word for word. What did you say to her?”
While Kirk tried to remember his words, Randy said, “You said you wanted her to bring Natalie back. That’s all you said.”
Kirk knew he was right. He had been no more specific than that. It hadn’t occurred to him that he needed to be––he thought bringing Natalie back would result in
bringing Natalie back
, not creating that hungry, smelly, decaying thing in his bedroom.
“You’re right,” Kirk said. “That’s all I said.”
Liz nodded. “She’ll probably remember that and throw it right in your face.”
“But there’s got to be some way of getting rid of… of…” Kirk couldn’t say her name, he could not say,
But there’s got to be some way of getting rid of Natalie
. He told himself that was okay, because it wasn’t Natalie they were dealing with. “… of getting rid of her.”
“She said there was no way to undo it,” Randy said. “Remember?”
“But there’s
got
to be,” Kirk said. “Some spell, some potion to make her… like she was before.”
“You mean, dead?” Randy said.
“Yeah.”
“She’s already dead, Kirk,” Randy said. “You need something that’ll get that through her fuckin’ skull.”
“Where is she?” Liz asked.
“In my bedroom,” Kirk said. “We should go get her dressed. But I’m warning you. She doesn’t look good. And the smell…” Kirk got an idea and turned to a tall, narrow cupboard next to the refrigerator. On the top shelf, Mom kept a variety of over-the-counter drugs: aspirin, cough syrup, ant-acids, Bactine, rubbing alcohol. He took down a blue jar of Vicks VapoRub and unscrewed the lid. He held the jar out to Randy and Liz. “They did this in
Silence of the Lambs
. Put a little under your nose. It’ll help with the smell.”
“Is it
that
bad?” Liz said.
“It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected,” Kirk said, “until she opened her mouth. And her legs. If you get too close… well, it’s pretty bad.”
They put a little of the strong-odored ointment just beneath their noses and Kirk replaced the jar in the cupboard. They left the kitchen and walked down the hall.
“She’s not all there,” Kirk said quietly. “She seems to have some memories, but… it’s not really Nat. She’s really just a––”
Even through the Vicks, Kirk smelled Natalie in the hall just a second before Liz screamed behind him.
3.
Kirk spun around and saw Liz standing at the bathroom door staring in with a hand over her mouth. He and Randy went to her and looked into the bathroom.
Natalie was lying in the bathtub, knees hiked up, feet resting on the edges of the tub. She held one of the limp ferrets in her hands and gnawed into its belly. Blood was smeared on her face and was matted in the animal’s fur. Natalie made small guttural sounds as she bit into the dead ferret, stopped to chew for a moment, then bit in again. A strand of intestine dangled from the ferret’s open abdomen.
Kirk, Randy, and Liz stood frozen just outside the bathroom doorway, their jaws slack. Natalie stopped eating and slowly turned her head toward them. A tuft of bloodied fur stuck out of the corner of her black-red mouth. When she spoke, her voice sounded like a clogged drain.