Best New Zombie Tales Trilogy (94 page)

Holly stared in wonder, her mouth open and her voice dying to a rasp. The dead leaned toward her, their remaining teeth clacking uselessly as they ached for a meal. Holly shook her head violently, then looked to Toby with frantic eyes.

She looked back out at the living corpses that filled the pews. There were at least two-dozen, maybe three. How long had they been here? How long had Toby been keeping them, and why?

As if in answer, Toby slipped an arm around her shoulders.

“I know. It’s hard to understand. I get that; believe me. I wasn’t lying to you before, Sister Holly. I did live in Friendship. Lived there my whole life, as a matter of fact. Hell, I was there, sitting in my living room, when the first reports came over the tube.

“Like just about everybody, I guess, I watched the first week or so on television, wondering what to make of the whole thing. I mean, c’mon! Dead people were returning to life, eating the living people, and turning them into walking dead folk. That’s not something you see everyday!

“So, I sat there, and I watched, and I searched my mind for an answer. There had to be one out there, some way to make sense of all of it. I just had to sit and ruminate on it long enough. Sooner or later, it was going to dawn on me.

“Angels, Sister Holly! What else is going to make the dead rise from the grave? What else could possibly stop death in its very tracks and transform it into life? The angels have come down from heaven and taken root in the only form available to them, that of the dead and rotting.

“I realized they’re trying to tell us something, Sister Holly, something important. All we have to do as a species is prove ourselves worthy of God’s love. Once we’ve done that, the angels will deliver their message, and a new era of peace will greet the Earth!”

Holly let his words settle for a minute, then she replied, her eyes never leaving Toby’s. “You’re fucking crazy.”

His fist struck hard and fast, jolting her head back like a speedbag. She let out a single groan and tried to shake the cobwebs loose.

“You think I’m crazy? Who the fuck are you, Sister? Miserable little shit, got her whole town massacred and ran away from it! You aren’t holy, bitch; you’re a Goddamned heathen! You just want to feed off the Earth, suck it dry! I want to learn, Sister Holly! I want God to bestow his blessings onto me so that I can heal this sick world!”

“By killing these people? You killed them, didn’t you?”

He shook his head. “I did no such thing. I made vessels ready for the coming angels, and if I take good enough care of them––if I can prove myself worthy and ready––they’ll deliver God’s lesson.”

“Take care of them? Is that what lobbing their fucking arms off is for?”

He frowned. “I’m not a fucking retard.

“Truth of the matter is, The Lord works in mysterious ways. These angels, they’re one of those ways.” He walked down the center aisle, and the dead on either side snapped at him, their chains keeping them at bay.

He patted one on the shoulder, snatching his hand away when the zombie tried to bite him. “See? They kill us, but they want to save us. It’s all very Old Testament; I don’t expect you to understand.”

“So what do you expect me to do, Toby? You going to kill me, make me another member of your little flock?”

A hurt expression flashed across his face. He placed a hand to his heart, leaning back. “What? Why, no, Sister Holly! I have enough angels. Now, I just need to take care of them, bestow blessing unto them until they feel the desire to bestow their blessing unto me.”

The pressure suddenly eased, and Toby stepped away with a handful of her hair, the hair that she hadn’t even realized had been growing so long.

He stepped toward a zombie seated directly across from her in the first pew. It wore a filth-smeared suit that might have once been a lighter shade of blue.

“This used to be the preacher here,” Toby said. “I believe he told me his name was Michael, but I can’t be too sure. It was a pretty long time ago.”

He pulled a few strands of hair from the fistful he carried with him, dangled them over the dead man’s head. The former preacher leaned back, his jaw opening and closing, black tongue flopping out like a dying fish.

“That’s right, Padre. Little appetizer for ya.” Toby lowered the hair into the corpse’s mouth, and the preacher sucked it in like pasta, chewed it for a long moment.

Holly had to turn away when the creature swallowed.

She heard a crescendo of groans, heard Toby cheer the dead on as he fed them morsels of her hair. She tried to think. There had to be a way out of this, someway to break free. She pulled against her binds, but they held fast. The son of a bitch had tied her to a chair. She was his to play with until he felt differently.

She guessed that would be a long time coming.

She tried again, leaning forward as far as she could, opening her eyes to watch her captor as he fed his congregation. She eyed him so carefully that she almost didn’t notice the chair’s rear leg’s lift from the ground.

Her eyes widened. She could move! She watched Toby, making sure he wasn’t watching, and she checked her balance. She leaned forward, curling in half until the chair lifted completely off of the ground. She lowered it to the floor again, but continued to struggle. She had an idea, but she knew she would only have one chance, and that depended on catching the lunatic off guard.

She glanced at the dead folk in the pew in front of her, watching as the former preacher and three others chewed on her hair, an expression like ecstasy filling their faces. They looked so anxious, so hungry. She knew the next thing Toby carved off of her wouldn’t be hair, and she also knew she couldn’t let that happen.

He’d have to kill her first.

“All gone!” he said, his voice almost child-like.

You can do this, Holly,
she told herself.
You ran a town for almost a year. You can handle one religious psychopath.

“What happens now?” she asked, putting an extra hint of terror in her voice.

He smiled. “Oh, I think you know, Sister Holly.” He pointed the knife at her, twisting it in the air as he stepped closer. “I think you have a really good idea what I’m gonna do next.”

She screamed at the top of her lungs as she surged forward, lifting the chair behind her. She slammed her shoulder into Toby’s gut, and she almost smiled when she felt him double over, the air whooshing from his lungs. She kept pushing, pumping her legs across the carpet, until she hit something solid.

Toby flew off of her, landing on the preacher and the rest. He tried to scramble away, but it was too late. Their teeth had already clamped down on him. The dead holy man had him by the throat, and with a great wrenching movement, ripped the flesh and tendons and veins away, spraying the area with blood.

Toby’s scream died before it could even get started.

Holly staggered backward, then leapt into the air, leaning back. She landed with her full weight, and the chair cracked and splintered around her. She kept her eyes on Toby, watching the light drain from his eyes, as she struggled to her feet and managed to wrench her hands free of the rope coiled around her wrists.

“Is that the message you wanted?” she asked, but the only reply was the sound of teeth chewing meat.

Slowly, Holly walked down the center aisle, ignoring the dead as they leaned out, trying desperately to reach her with their jaws. She didn’t bother to stop and look for water. She would find a creek in the forest. Instead, she stepped across the church’s deserted lot and onto the country road beyond. She would walk until she found Route 62, and from there she’d make her way to the proving ground.

Maybe there she would find something worth believing in.

Those Below

JEREMY C. SHIPP

Say you’re lost in the hustle-bustle of the local farmer’s market in search of some shiny bibelot for your girlfriend, and you find your mother mouth-to-mouth with a man who isn’t your father. In fact, he’s nothing like your father. He’s skinny and shaggy and short. You tell yourself that if he at least looked like your father, you could stomach the scene. Deep down you know that’s not true.

And maybe that’s not how it happens. Maybe you track her down. Maybe you climb the fruitless mulberry in front of their house and that’s how you cut your leg. Maybe you bought yourself some night-vision goggles off of e-bay. Maybe you’re watching and waiting, and when you finally do see them together, in their bedroom, naked, you drop a bomb of vomit onto an unsuspecting yard gnome below.

You think, “Get your fucking hands off my mother.”

But she’s not your mother, is she? She used to be. Before she moved in here. Before she changed her name. Before the funeral. Say this was your mother, and this is your life. You’d be here too, like me. You’d hear about Porter from a friend of a friend, and you’d show up at his doorstep with a hundred bucks and a wrenching knot in your gut.

I follow him inside. My mind spins, but I still notice that his home is a shitty place. Every step and my feet crunch down on trash and squish on soggy carpet. Lines of duct tape patch a few holes in the wall, but most are left gaping. I stop breathing through my nose before I have time to identity the sour stench assaulting the air.

He takes me to an empty room. At this point, the walls are more hole than wall. Under more relaxed circumstances I would crack up over such irony as the tarp on the floor, but I’m more in the mood for weeping.

He runs his hand down his face. “Look, man. You can either do this or go home. But no one ever goes home, so just face the fucking music and get on with it.”

So I do. I start off by slapping him hard across the face, and go from there. Five minutes later, I’m not asking, “Is this hurting you?”

Five minutes later, I’m straddling his chest, smashing his mangled face in with my bloody fists, over and over and over. He’s shouting, “Stop it!” and I’m loving every second of it.

Hafwen’s nickname is Zippy. She likes to skip and sing about the dishes as she’s washing them, and write poetry with waterproof paper in the rain. She’ll call me up just to tell me that she’s discovered the name for those imprints left in the skin when you press it against a textured surface too long. A frittle.