Book of the Dead: A Zombie Anthology (3 page)

He took the clothes to the fire.

“No! Don’t!”

He smiled and dropped them onto the flames. “You won’t need them. You’l be staying right here. Here in the mess hal .”

Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled.

“That’s my friend. We’ve got an arrangement. I leave a meal for him and his forest friends, and they do the cleanup for me. None of this ‘shal ow grave’ nonsense. I just leave you here, tomorrow you’l be gone. They’l come like the good, hungry troops they are, and leave the area neat and tidy for next time. No fuss, no bother. And you, sweet thing, wil be spared the embarrassment of returning to campus bare-ass.”

Squatting beside the fire, he opened the toolbox. He took out pliers and a screwdriver. He set the pliers on the flat top of a rock. He picked up the screwdriver. Its shank was black even before he held it over the fire. Jean saw the flames curl around it.

“No!” she cried out, “Please!”

“No! Please!” he mimicked. Smiling, he rol ed the screwdriver in his hand. “Think it’s done yet?”

He shook his head. “Give it a few more minutes. No need to rush. Are you savoring the anticipation?”

“You bastard!”

“Is that any way to talk?”

“HELP!” she shouted. “HELP! PLEASE, HELP ME!”

“Nobody’s going to hear you but the coyotes.”

“
You can’t do this!
”

“Sure, I can. Done it plenty of times before.”

“Please! I’l do anything!”

“I know just what you’l do. Scream, twitch, cry, kick, beg, drool… bleed. Not necessarily in that order, of course.”

He stood up. Pliers in one hand, screwdriver in the other, he walked slowly toward Jean. Wisps of pale smoke rose off the shank of the screwdriver.

He stopped in front of her. “Now where oh where shal we begin? So many choice areas to choose from.” He raised the screwdriver toward her left eye. Jean jerked her head aside. The tip moved closer. She shut her eye. Felt heat against its lid. But the heat faded. “No. I’l save that for later. After al , half the fun for
you
wil be watching.”

She shrieked and flinched rigid as something seared her bel y.

The Reaper laughed.

She looked down. He had simply touched her with the nose of the pliers.

“Power of suggestion,” he said. “Now, let’s see how you like some
real
pain.”

Slowly he moved the screwdriver toward her left breast. Jean tried to jerk away, but the handcuffs stopped her. She kicked out. He twisted away. As the edge of her shoe glanced off his hip, he stroked her thigh with the screwdriver. She squealed.

He grinned. “Don’t do that again, honey, or I might get mean.”

Sobbing, she watched him inch the screwdriver toward her breast again. “No. Don’t. Pleeease.”

A rock struck the side of the Reaper’s head. It knocked his head sideways, bounced off, scraped Jean’s armpit, and fel . He stood there for a moment, then dropped to his knees and slumped forward, face pressing against Jean’s groin. She twisted away, and he flopped beside her.

She gazed down at him, hardly able to believe he was actual y sprawled there. Maybe she’d passed out and this was no more than a wild fantasy. She was dreaming and pretty soon she would come to with a burst of pain and…

No, she thought. It can’t be a dream. Please.

A dim corner of her mind whispered,
I knew I’d get out of this
.

She looked for the rock thrower.

And spotted a dim shape standing beside a tree on the far side of the clearing.

“You got him!” she shouted. “Thank God, you got him! Great throw!”

The shape didn’t move, didn’t cal back to her.

It turned away.

“No!” Jean cried out. “Don’t leave! He’l come to and kil me! Please! I’m cuffed here! He’s got the key in his pocket. You’ve gotta unlock the cuffs for me. Please!”

The figure, as indistinct in the darkness as the bushes and trees near its sides, turned again and stepped forward. It limped toward the glow of the fire. From the shape, Jean guessed that her savior was a woman.

Others began to appear across the clearing.

One stepped out from behind a tree. Another rose behind a clump of bushes. Jean glimpsed movement over to the right, looked and saw a fourth woman. She heard a growl behind her, twisted around, and gasped at the sight of someone crawling toward her. Toward the Reaper, she hoped. The top of this one’s head was black and hairless in the shimmering firelight. As if she’d been scalped? The flesh had been stripped from one side of her back, and Jean glimpsed pale curving ribs before she whirled away.

Now there were
five
in front of her, closing in and near enough to the fire so she could see them clearly.

She stared at them.

And disconnected again.

Came out of herself, became an observer.

The rock thrower had a black pit where her left eye should’ve been. The girl cuffed beneath the tree was amazed that a one-eyed girl had been able to throw a rock with such fine aim.

It was even more amazing, since she was obviously dead. Ropes of guts hung from her bel y, swaying between her legs like an Indian’s loincloth. Little but bone remained of her right leg below the knee—the work of the Reaper’s woodland troops?

How can she walk?

That’s a good one, the girl thought.

How can
any
of them walk?

One, who must’ve been up here
a very long time
, was managing to shamble along just fine, though both her legs were little more than bare bones. The troops had real y feasted on her.

One arm was missing entirely. The other arm was bone, and gone from the elbow down. Where she stil had flesh, it looked black and lumpy. Some of her torso was intact, but mostly hol owed out. The right-hand side of her rib cage had been broken open. The ribs on the left were stil there, and a shriveled lung was visible through the bars. Her face had no eyes, no nose, no lips.

She looked as if she might be grinning.

The girl beneath the tree grinned back at her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

Of course not, dope. How can she see?

How can she walk?

One of the others stil had eyes. They were wide open and glazed. She had a very peculiar stare.

No eyelids, that’s the trouble. The Reaper must’ve cut them off. Her breasts, too. Round, pulpy black disks on her chest where they should’ve been. Except for a huge gap in her right flank, she didn’t look as if she’d been maimed by the troops. She stil had most of her skin. But it looked shiny and slick with a coating of white slime.

The girl beside her didn’t seem to have any skin at al . Had she been peeled? She was black al over except for the whites of her eyes and teeth—and hundreds of white things as if she had been showered with rice. But the rice moved. The rice was alive. Maggots.

The last of the five girls approaching from the front was also black. She didn’t look peeled, she looked burnt. Her body was a crust of char, cracked and leaking fluids that shimmered in the firelight. She bore only a rough resemblance to a human being. She might have been shaped out of mud by a dim-witted child who gave her no fingers or toes or breasts, who couldn’t manage a nose or ears, and poked fingers into the mud to make her eyes. Her crust made papery, crackling sounds as she shuffled past the fire, and pieces flaked off.

A motley crew, thought the girl cuffed to the limb.

She wondered if any of them would have enough sense to find the key and unlock the handcuffs.

She doubted it.

In fact, they didn’t seem to be aware of her presence at al . They were limping and hobbling straight toward the Reaper.

Whose shriek now shattered whatever fragile force had al owed Jean to stay outside the cuffed stranger. She tried to keep her distance. Couldn’t. Was sucked back inside the naked, suspended girl. Felt a sudden rush of horror and revulsion… and hope.

Whatever else they might be, they were the victims of the Reaper.

Payback time.

He was stil shrieking, and Jean looked down at him. He was on his hands and knees. The scalped girl, also on her knees and facing him, had his head caught between her hands. She was biting the top of his head. Jean heard a wet ripping sound as the girl tore off a patch of hair and flesh.

He flopped and skidded backward, dragged by the rock thrower and the one with the slimy skin.

Each had him by a foot. The scalped girl started to crawl after him, then grunted and stopped and tried to pick up the pliers. Her right hand had no fingers. She pawed at the pliers, whimpering with frustration, then sighed when she succeeded in picking up the tool using the thumb and two remaining fingers of her other hand. Quickly, she crawled along trying to catch up to her prize. She scurried past Jean. One of her buttocks was gone, eaten away to the bone.

She gained on the screaming Reaper, reached out and clamped the pliers to the ridge of his ear and ripped out a chunk.

Halfway between Jean and the fire, the girls released his feet.

Al six went at him.

He bucked and twisted and writhed, but they turned him onto his back. While some held him down, others tore at his clothes. Others tore at
him
. The scalped one took the pliers to his right eyelid and tore it off. The burnt one snatched up a hand and opened her lipless black mouth and began to chew his fingers off. While this went on, the armless girl capered like a madcap skeleton, her trapped lung bouncing inside her ribcage.

Soon the Reaper’s shirt was in shreds. His pants and boxer shorts were bunched around his cowboy boots. The scalped girl had ripped his other eyelid off, and now was stretching his upper lip as he squealed. The rock thrower, kneeling beside him, clawed at his bel y as if trying to get to his guts. Slime-skin bit off one of his nipples, chewed it, and swal owed. The girl who must’ve been skinned alive knelt beside his head, scraping maggots off her bel y and stuffing them by the handful into his mouth. No longer shrieking, he choked and wheezed.

The dancing skeleton dropped to her bare kneecaps, bent over him, and clamped her teeth on his penis. She pul ed, stretching it, gnawing. He stopped choking and let out a shril scream that felt like ice picks sliding into Jean’s ears.

The scalped girl tore his lip off. She gave the pliers a snap, and watched the lip fly.

Jean watched it too. Then felt its soft plop against her thigh. It stuck to her skin like a leech. She gagged. She stomped her foot on the ground, trying to shake it off. It kept clinging.

It’s just a lip, she thought.

And then she was throwing up. She leaned forward as far as she could, trying not to vomit on herself. A smal part of her mind was amused. She’d been looking at hideous, mutilated corpses, such horrors as she had never seen before, not even in her nightmares. And she had watched the corpses do unspeakable things to the Reaper. With al that, she hadn’t tossed her cookies.

A lip sticks to my leg, and I’m barfing my guts out.

At least she was missing herself. Most of it was hitting the ground in front of her shoes, though a little was splashing up and spraying her shins.

Final y the heaving subsided. She gasped for air and blinked tears out of her eyes.

And saw the scalped girl staring at her.

The others kept working on the Reaper. He wasn’t screaming anymore, just gasping and whimpering.

The scalped girl stabbed the pliers down. They crashed through the Reaper’s upper teeth. She rammed them deep into his mouth and partway down his throat, left them there, and started to crawl toward Jean.

“Get
him
,” she whispered. “
He’s
the one.”

Then Jean thought, maybe she wants to help me.

“Would you get the key? For the handcuffs? It’s in his pants pocket.”

The girl didn’t seem to hear. She stopped at the puddle of vomit and lowered her face into it.

Jean heard lapping sounds, and gagged. The girl raised her head, stared up at Jean, licked her dripping lips, then crawled forward.

“No. Get back.”

Opened her mouth wide.

Christ!

Jean smashed her knee up into the girl’s forehead. The head snapped back. The girl tumbled away.

A chil spread through Jean. Her skin prickled with goosebumps. Her heart began to slam.

It won’t stop with him.

I’m next!

The scalped girl, whose torso was an empty husk, rol ed over and started to push herself up.

Jean leaped.

She caught the tree limb with both hands, kicked toward the trunk but couldn’t come close to reaching it. Her body swept down and backward. As she started forward again, she pumped her legs high.

She swung.

She kicked and swung, making herself a pendulum that strained higher with each sweep.

Her legs hooked over the barkless, dead limb.

She drew herself up against its underside and hugged it.

Twisting her head sideways, she saw the scalped girl crawling toward her again.

Jean had never seen her stand.

If she can’t stand up, I’m okay.

But the
others
could stand.

They were stil busy with the Reaper. Digging into him. Biting. Ripping off flesh with their teeth.

He choked around the pliers and made high squeaky noises. As Jean watched, the charred girl crouched over the fire and put both hands into the flames. When she straightened up, she had a blazing stick trapped between the fingerless flaps of her hands. She lumbered back to the group, crouched, and set the Reaper’s pants on fire.

The pants, pul ed down until they were stopped by his boot tops, wrapped him just below the knees.

In seconds they were ablaze.

The Reaper started screaming again. He squirmed and kicked. Jean was surprised he had that much life left in him.

The key, she thought.

I’l have to go through the ashes.

If I live that long
.

Jean began to shinny out along the limb. It scraped her thighs and arms, but she kept moving, kept inching her way along. The limb sagged slightly. It groaned. She scooted farther, farther.