Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology (25 page)

We buried Hoagie this morning.

At his wake I broke my fast.

I understand, now, what he was trying to tel me about choices, but for me it is not continuing
life that seems so important. It is the chance to refuse to rise again, after my inevitable death.

That is my determination.

My choice.

I am wil ing to make the necessary compromise.

The stew gagged me, though the meat was made as inconspicuous as possible. Harrison tel s
me that that is a common first reaction. He also says that the stew is less strong when fresh.

I am getting better at prayer.

It occurs to me that word of this possible cure must get out. Perhaps, with this information as
a starting point, some vaccine might be distil ed or manufactured.

But how to get the word out? To whom? Who is left to utilize or broadcast this information?

Government trains stil run, so some portion of the government must remain, at least,
semifunctional. Clearly the military stil exists, but what else?

The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta should have been a priority, but were they quick
enough to save it? If not, some other facility? If so, where?

I wil not leave here on a wild-goose chase, not knowing where to go, or what my chances of
getting there might be.

If there is any chance at al , it is the trains themselves. The men on the trains, or certainly their
superiors, would know what options were available. They can best get this information to a
place where it might do some good.

I wil give them the entire journal. As much of my story as I have down, to convince them of
my earnestness. To show them some portion of what I have been through.

I have need of it no more.

I am becoming whole again.

My mind is clear.

[Transcriber’s note:

This final portion is written in a hand sufficiently distinct from the rest of the text, as to al ow no doubt of separate authorship. -K.H.]

They shot him dead.

He made the mistake of cal in out to them guys bout what he got and how important it was for
them to take it. Tried to run right up long side that train and hand it right up to them.

They shot him dead at twenty yards.

I was watchin.

Its to bad to cause I liked him. Never even got to tel him I was sorry bout hittin him that time.

So I picked the watch I thought hed come up on.

I was right.

So ether hes wrong bout that immuzation stuff he was talkin bout, or he didnt eat with us long
enuff.

Im glad if he had to come up he come up on my shift tho. Someway its easier when you liked a
guy. You dont want no body else puttin him back down. You want to do it yourself.

Got to talk to him that way to. Got to say my sorrys. Told him Id rite his obit here and get his
goddam book on the next train thru some goddam way.

You get a funny feelin like that. That somthin in the guy can stil here you. Like maybe itl help
some-ways.

Il be more earful than him tho. Il toss it on the train from cover somewhere.

Aint gonna let them shoot me dead.

Not whiles I got a choice.

1. The Good Parts BY LES DANIELS

In life, he had been huge but hardly menacing; his four hundred and eighty-three pounds had been al fat and no muscle. It had actual y been hard for him to move.

But now it was hard for almost everyone to move. Their muscles, their tendons, their bones, al were soft as slime, soft as rot, soft as his.

But he was bigger.

Instead of hunting with the pack he hunted behind it, waiting til they brought a victim down and only then moving in to help with the kil . The others in the pack never seemed to notice what he did, never fought against him as he shouldered them aside with his bloated bulk. They only had eyes for the meat, and they fel where they were pushed when he leaned down into the crimson trough and went for the good parts.

If there was any thought at al left in his jel ied brain, it would have been expressed in those three words: the good parts.

He had always liked the good parts, even when he was alive. He had liked them in his books and he had read them over and over again, marking the margins in red so they would be easier to find next time. And he had liked them in his movies. Actual y he never went to the movies (the seats were too smal ), but that didn’t matter since he had his VCR. He could sit in the dark and watch the good parts over and over again. Forward and back, forward and back. In and out. Up and down. And while he watched, he ate.

He had books like
High School Gym Orgy
and
Hitchhiking Harlots
, he had films like
Romancing
the Bone
and
Debbie Does Dal as
, and he had magazines like
Eager Beavers
and
Hot to Trot
. In a way the magazines were the best: if he found one with the right kind of pictures, there was nothing in it but good parts.

But al that had been back in the days before civilization had col apsed, before the dead had risen to devour the living. Now he was even better off. Once he had only stared at the good parts and stuffed himself, but now he had achieved his destiny. He was eating the good parts.

He didn’t realize how safe he was; he didn’t understand that being big and slow kept him out of the firefights til they were over and the living ones were down. The good parts were hard to reach, but that was lucky too: the quickest hunters were stil pul ing at extremities, arms and legs and heads, when he lumbered up and bul dozed his way toward the good parts. Sometimes he had to settle for a breast or a buttock, but most of the time he got what he real y wanted. His favorite food tasted like a fish and cheese casserole basted with piss: no one had time to take a bath.

His yel ow teeth were matted with pubic hair and mucous membrane; he never brushed.

He might have been a sexist when he was alive, but al that was behind him now. Anybody’s good parts were his meat.

He was a virgin.

There wasn’t much to do but eat and look for more to eat. One day he lurched into the Naughty Nite Bookstore, and he almost remembered it. A few of the usual crowd were there, bumping into the wal s and moaning with dismay because no food was in the place. They left, but he lingered. He picked up a magazine cal ed
Bal in’
. He couldn’t read the title, but he could see the pictures, and he was stil looking at them when he walked out of the store and found himself in a smal apartment in the back. The couch looked cozy. He sat down on it for a few minutes to look at his magazine, and then went out to look for food, but later he came back again. He had to go somewhere.

He had a home.

Once in a while some of his friends fol owed him home (they had to go somewhere too), but after mil ing around for a few minutes they decided that nothing was happening there and went away. Nobody understood him.

A meat shortage developed. Sometimes it hardly seemed worth getting up. He had quite a col ection of magazines after a few months, and he was losing his teeth. Some of his fingers fel off.

Stil , a guy’s gotta eat, so sometimes he would haul himself up and look for lunch. Everyone he saw on the street looked sad. The city echoed with their howls. Some tried munching on each other, but the meat was rotten and the trend never caught on.

One day a female fol owed him home. He might have looked like he knew something, and he certainly looked wel fed. In fact, he was a mountain of maggots, and he let her eat some. It was better than nothing.

Her clothes had rotted clean away, and he noticed that he could see her good parts. She looked like a picture in a magazine. Wel , close enough. Some instincts never die.

He had an inspiration, and then he had a wife.

She didn’t seem to mind. When he pul ed away from her, vaguely confused, he left his penis inside of her. He never real y missed it. It was too far gone to eat in any case.

After that they hunted together. The pickings were slim. Once he got a few bites out of a leg, which wasn’t what he felt like having that night, but it was better than nothing. He didn’t notice that she was getting fatter even though they hardly ever ate.

One day she took him to the Stop ‘n’ Shop, a place she knew almost as wel as he knew the Naughty Nite Bookstore. She showed him how a can opener worked. He wasn’t real y interested, and he didn’t care much for the food, but she was wolfing it down as if it stil was hot and fresh.

Of course he didn’t know that he would be a father soon.

After al , who knew what a zombie could do?

The human scientists who studied them had other things to think about than the possibility of zombie sex. The zombies seemed to be too busy working on oral gratification for anyone to worry about their genitals. Nobody had their minds in the gutter anymore; they had their bodies there instead.

But the female was pregnant. She was expecting. She was what used to be cal ed ful of life. And you know it could have happened, because it did.

The female began making regular trips to the Stop ‘n’ Shop, coming back home with al the cans that she could carry. He didn’t get the point, but he began to go along to help her. It was something to do.

Their friends thought they were crazy.

Actual y, they didn’t see that much of their friends anymore. A lot of them were fal ing apart, especial y the skinny ones. Decay was in the air. Parts of bodies lay in the streets. Some were moving and some were not. Being fat became suddenly fashionable: it made it easier to stay in one piece. Bulk was beautiful.

When the day final y came, the birth was unorthodox. The baby simply crawled out through its mother’s bloated bel y, and after that the female had trouble getting around. In fact, she came apart at the waist, and she would have died if she had been alive. He propped her top half up in a closet and gave it food from time to time, but it lost interest and disintegrated.

The child was a girl, and it was human.

When he first realized that, he almost took a big bite out of her, but suddenly he noticed that something was wrong. Her good parts weren’t real y good enough to eat yet. She wasn’t ripe.

It was tempting, no doubt of that, but for al he knew this was the last fresh food that he would ever see. He wanted to wait. He wanted to care for her. He wanted the perfect banquet for his last meal. Not only would she be riper, but she’d be bigger, too. He might even invite some people over for a party.

They didn’t wait for invitations. Only a few days later, while he was stuffing some concentrated chicken noodle soup into his daughter’s little pink mouth with some of his stumps, he heard the old gang shuffling through the bookstore, their voices rising in a ravenous chorale. It was just like them to spoil his surprise.

He was protective of his only child, and he was stil the biggest man in town. He shut the door that led into their little home and leaned his massive bulk against it. Of course the zombies tried to break it down, but most of them broke up instead. Their arms and legs snapped like spaghetti strands. Some of them crawled away as best they could, and some of them didn’t even bother, but none of them got in. They just rotted and liquified and merged with the floorboards of the Naughty Nite Bookstore.

The little girl was fine. She grew stronger as the days and weeks and months sped past, and it was just as wel she did, because her father was growing steadily weaker. Pages fel from the calendar, and pieces fel from him. He was stil waiting, but the truth was that he had waited for too long. Now she was the one who opened up the cans and gave the food to him. His teeth were gone, and in fact there wasn’t much left of his mouth, but she cheerful y packed what she could into his dripping, reeking, gaping maw. He couldn’t move. He was trapped on the couch, a festering mountain of pus, and after dinner she would climb into his lap and turn the pages of his favorite magazines so they could enjoy them together. She liked the funny pictures, and they were pink the way she was.

Daddy was gray and green.

We can’t go on like this, he would have said, but he couldn’t speak, and he couldn’t think much either. Of course that was nothing new, but he sensed dimly that things were getting out of hand when she perched on his knee one night and sank into it up to her armpits. She laughed and clapped her hands at Daddy’s little joke, and in response he gave a sort of sigh, but that was about it.

The next morning, when she woke up, Daddy had soaked through the couch and spil ed onto the carpet. At first she thought he might be kidding, but a few days later she decided she would have to face the facts. She’d been wondering about him for some time, but now there could be no doubt in her mind.

Daddy was history.

She stuck around for a while just to make sure, noticed that her supply of food was running low, cried for a few minutes, and then toddled toward the door. Armed only with her can opener, she went forth naked into the world.

There were some bones and puddles lying around, but nothing moved. She would survive, and perhaps she would find others like her, new humans born of dead desire. They might be living near a porn store, where only the wil was wanted. There might even be, in time, an outbreak of new life.

She had seen her father’s books, and she knew what to do with the good parts.

1. Less Than Zombie By Douglas E. Winter

People are afraid to live on the streets of Los Angeles. This is the last thing I say before I get back into the car. I don’t know why I keep saying this thing. It’s something I started and now I can’t stop. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m no longer eighteen and the summer is gone and it’s raining and the windshield wipers go back and forth, back and forth, and that Skip and DJ and Deb wil soon be sitting with me again. Not the blood that splattered the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of hot and tight, as I stood in the al ey and watched. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp sweater I wear, a sweater that had looked fresh and clean last night.