Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (71 page)

Harley raised his arm and smashed his gun into the back of Tompkins’ head. Tompkins crashed to the ground like a bag of wet cement.

Patrick had reached the edge of the woods, about five yards away now.

The child had been in the ground for several weeks and the decay was evident, even from this distance. Harley shook his head, ignoring the stench that assaulted him from ten feet away. Much of the flesh was missing from his son’s face, seemed to have melted away. Part from the car wreck, part from rotting in the ground, part, probably, from being a rotter. A sob tore out of Harley’s throat as the boy approached.

Tiny fingers clasping and unclasping, vacant eyes staring at Harley although Harley imagined the child didn’t know what he was seeing. The shredded remains of his tiny blue suit, hanging from and falling off the child’s body. Dark hair matted with dirt, alive with whatever maggoty insects had burrowed their way during his climb through the soil from his casket, and nested in with his baby’s body.

This was his boy. His child. His flesh and blood, the light of his life.

Patrick had come home.

He subdued the boy easily—his police training had taught him the proper method. Despite the child’s attempts to bite, to tear the flesh from his face, Harley had him under control. He carried Patrick into the basement and chained him in a corner of the room. Harley slumped onto the bottom step of the short stairwell and cried. How would he ever be able to make this right? How was he ever going to explain this to anyone?

“Jesus, Harley …” Tompkins stood at the top of the stairs, the gun that was aimed at Harley’s head slowly slipping in the cop’s fingers until the muzzle was aimed at the floor. His eyes weren’t on Harley, they were taking in everything else in the basement.

A few steps separated Harley and Tompkins, and Harley reached up and grabbed the officer’s leg, pulling him down the steps. Tompkins, his shock catching him completely off-guard, went flying headfirst into the center of the room.

He landed between several rotter children who wasted no time advancing on Tompkins. The rotters had moved quickly, tore out chunks of flesh, ripped off the top of the man’s scalp and dug out handfuls of brain. Within seconds the man was dead; he’d barely had time to start screaming.

“Oh, god,” Harley moaned, his breath hitching, his empty stomach dry heaving. This wasn’t supposed to happen, he never wanted anyone to get hurt. He was only trying to save the kids—this wasn’t supposed to happen! Slowly he turned and walked up the steps, not wanting to see what the children were doing to the poor man.

Harley stumbled into the kitchen and leaned against the fridge, bent in half, breathing deeply. The light specks had returned and he fought to keep from passing out.

“Yes,” he said, fighting tears so he could speak. “Yes he is. Come home, Sarah. I need you. I don’t know what to do.” His fingers clawed at the smooth surface of the wall phone.

“I’m on my way, Harley. We’ll figure this out.”

“Please hurry, Sarah,” he moaned, and slumped down the length of the wall and squatted on his haunches, the phone dangling from his fingers. He tilted his head forward and sobbed into his hands.

From the basement, the little boy’s cries sounded like he was calling for his daddy.

Reunion

JAMES NEWMAN

The dead pound at the lids of their coffins, scratch at the walls of their tombs.

It’s how I imagined Hell might sound, when I was a churchgoing man.

The cemetery covers three sprawling acres adjacent to my backyard. Their screams are muffled…yet there are
so many
of them, I’m often forced to wear earplugs if I want to sleep at night.

I wipe sweat from my wrinkled brow, and keep digging.

* * *

Those old drive-in flicks I used to drag Dorothea to when we were spring chickens, they got it wrong. It’s not like they all burst from their graves the moment “it” happened. Except for the cadavers that were lying in funeral homes or morgues,
most
of the dead are contained. How easy can it be for something that’s been decomposing for decades to escape from its coffin, much less swim through six feet of earth? Physically impossible, far as I can figure.

At least without help.

But here’s where the picture shows really screwed up: the cities aren’t overrun with packs of ravenous zombies constantly overtaking the living, playing tug-of-war with intestines, fighting over chunks of fresh brain.

In fact, you
can
walk among them, because they only come after you if they’re
hungry.

They’re not always hungry. Not
all
of them, every second of the day. They mostly just stumble around.

Mostly.

They only come after you if they haven’t eaten in a while.
That’s
when you gotta be careful.

* * *

Eleven months ago my wife of 60 years passed away. Cancer. I thought my world had ended the day Dorothea left me. Little did I know that when the End of the World finally did come, I would be with her again.

* * *

Their screams become more audible the deeper I dig. They drown out everything: the wind whispering through the trees on the far side of the cemetery; my own labored breathing.

They know I’m here, and they want me to let
them
out too.

Still…nothing from
her
. My darling is silent. But I know she is waiting for me.

Meanwhile, I try not to think about…
other
things. Like… what will happen when she starts to make the same sounds as the rest of them.

Gran’ma’s in the Bathroom (…and she’s not coming out)

KEN GOLDMAN

I loved my Gran’ma. No, that’s wrong. I mean I love her still. I figure you ought to know this before I tell you the rest, seeing as circumstances of her story may suggest otherwise. After all the mess that’s happened it’s important you understand my feelings about that woman before I start.

See, my dad, he died when I was really young. An explosion at the munitions plant took him before I could even talk, blew his guts six ways from Sunday, and for his funeral they had to stitch him together like some kind of torn up rag doll. There ain’t no military honors for a stateside soldier who dies like that, just in case you’re wondering. So Ma, she moved us off that Indian Town army base into the house we’re in now, and she thought maybe Gran’ma might help with raising me ’cause Dad was in the ground before I really got to know him. From what Ma tells me he weren’t never much help around the house anyways, but that’s a whole other story.

During my growing up years Gran’ma and me was best friends, and she acted a whole lot better towards me than any of the kids in this neighborhood, that’s damned certain. She wouldn’t like me swearing like that, though, so out of respect I won’t be doing much more of that here. ’Less I’m quoting Gram, of course. That old woman had a mouth on her could turn a sailor’s face crimson.

I can remember the fun we had, back when she was… well, when she was still with us. Like, there’d be times the two of us, we’d be sitting in the McDonald’s, and Gran’ma, she’d turn to me and say loud enough for somebody close by to hear, “Gilbert, is this some kind of bug in my burger?” And I’d look down at the slab of meat inside her bun pretending to see a bug that weren’t there. I’d scrunch up my face, then talk just as loud, “Hell, Gran’ma, I think that’s a cock’roach sharing your lunch, sure as I’m sitting here myself. You want me to squash it?” And she’d go “
Eeek! Eeeeek!
Damn,
oh damn!
A cock’roach, you say? Kill it! Kill that bastard now, Gilbert!” And I’d start poking her burger with my fork as if trying to spear the little sucker, while folks all around us would suddenly go searching like mad through their kids’ Happy Meals. And when we left that place it was all we two could do not to bust a gut laughing.

That’s the kind of woman my Gram was. She weren’t no stuffy old lady like you might think, though she weren’t no spring chicken neither, as I’ve heard people use the term. But that didn’t bother me not one bit. She was my favorite person in the whole world, and I didn’t mind that sometimes she took her teeth out at the dinner table or occasionally peed her pants.

Two weeks past my eleventh birthday was when it happened, and I remember the moment like it was yesterday. Ma turns to me and says, “Gilbert, go tell your Grandmother dinner’s on the table. She must be takin’ one of her afternoon naps again.” So I went up to her bedroom to get her, ’cept she weren’t in there, and I noticed the bathroom door was closed. Gram always acted modest like that, and though often forgetful she always kept that door shut when she sat inside her library doing her business. So I knocked, yelled “Gram, dinner’s ready!” Yelled again really loud ’count of her being hard of hearing, but there weren’t no answer. So I pushed the door open expecting to find her asleep on the john like sometimes I would find her at bedtime. Sure enough, there she was, just settin’ there on the pot like that statue in Lawrenceville Park of the man thinking ’bout the nature of the universe with his hand on his chin and all bent over. ’Cept Gran’ma’s arms, they was just laying there limp at her side, and her face looked like all the color had bled out of it. A long strip of toilet paper was clinging to her hand still attached to the roll, and I think that spooked me the most.

“Gran’ma?”

Nothing.

I didn’t feel much like coming closer while she was in that position, but I figured I had no choice. Touching her face I hoped maybe this was another Gran’ma joke she was pulling on me, that she would jump up and laugh, “Damn! I got you good this time, didn’t I, boy!” But something inside told me that weren’t about to happen, and the minute I touched her I knew it for sure. Her skin felt cold. Not icy cold like a dead fish ’cause she hadn’t been gone so very long, but not warm neither because Gran’ma was gone, all right. Even a kid who’s eleven recognizes ‘dead’ when he sees it, and I backed away not knowing what else to do ’cept stare at her just settin’ there on the can. I figured her heart must’ve just stopped, having itself a pretty good run all those years, and that if she had her preference how to leave this world, passing on while relieving herself was as good a choice as any. Still I had to sniff back some sudden tears.

After a couple minutes some clear thinking returned. I knew that telling Ma what had happened to Gram promised to be the most difficult task I’d ever have to pull off. So I went to my room, tugged the sheet from my bed, and threw it over Gram. I figured maybe that might make it a little easier for Ma when I told her. But I was wrong. Ma peeked under the sheet, reached to touch Gram’s face. Her flesh must’ve gone a lot colder than when I touched it, but Ma, she just stood there with her hand under that sheet, and for several minutes she said nothing at all, just stood there shaking her head at life’s casual unfairness. She pulled the bed sheet off as if she needed to take a longer look to be sure. Then she tore loose the toilet paper Gram held.

“She’s gone, Gilbert. Gran’ma’s gone.”

There in our bathroom my mother cried for hours before she could manage another word. I just sat on the side of the tub watching her, neither of us muttering not one syllable. I’m fairly certain there ain’t no words in any language to cover a sorrowful moment like that proper. But finally Ma did speak, and when she did it turned my blood cold as Gran’ma’s flesh.

“Dinner’s prob’ly ruined,” she said.

“I’m not hungry, Ma.”

“Gilbert, what are we going to do?” I think she wasn’t really talking to me so much as to herself. “I just can’t believe this is happenin’…”

“We’ll be okay, Ma. But now we have to call someone. The police, I guess. They’ll know what to do with Gram. I mean, we just can’t leave her like this. I’ll make the call now.” I got to my feet, headed for the bathroom door, but she stopped me.

“No, Gilbert. No, we’re not goin’ to do that.” I just looked at her, having not a clue what she meant. But she must’ve already had the idea all sorted out in her head. “You ’member what Reverend Whitecastle said in church ’bout a month ago?”

My remembering anything that man preached weren’t too likely since I doubt I ever stayed awake for more than a few minutes during any of the Reverend’s Sunday sermons. I shook my head.

I guess I ought to tell you here about Ma’s particular relationship with God and Jesus. I mean, since my dad passed it seems she’s taken Jesus to her bed just about every damned night. Sorry about the cuss word, Gran’ma, but it really fits here. See, sometimes she practically fills the house with candles so this place looks like some kind of amusement park spook ride, and late at night I hear her speaking to Jesus because Ma, she don’t even try to keep the volume down on her evening prayers.