Zombies: The Recent Dead (63 page)

She turned to look at me with those eyes the color of old glass bottles. “He’ll know,” she said. “He’ll know I’m not intact.” Her voice was very small.

I stared at her. I stared and stared. I didn’t like her. I never would. But I knew what they would do to her if they found out she’d been had by the wild folk. It was none of her fault but that wouldn’t enter their calculations. They would be Full Up, if they found out.

We were women, both of us. Women of the world now. I sighed and took my water bottle from my pack. It was gummy inside with rabbit’s blood. I filled it a little way up with good water and swirled it around, then pushed it into the girl’s hand.

I hissed instructions at her. “You ask him to undress in private, and maybe he’ll let you. You make it sound like you’re shy, like you’re just a little girl. Some men like that. When he’s gone, you spill this out on the sheets and lie in it.” I stared right into her eyes, for the last time. “Do it right, do it secretive and he’ll never know.”

She held my gaze and she nodded and then she looked away. Step by step she walked away from me, and toward her destiny.

The people of Home Depot owed me dinner at the very least but I didn’t bother taking it. I was back in Dead Man’s Land before I knew it, and glad to be there.

About the Author

David Wellington
is the author of seven novels. His zombie novels
Monster Island, Monster Nation,
and
Monster Planet
(Thunder’s Mouth Press) form a complete trilogy. He has also written a series of vampire novels including (so far)
Thirteen Bullets, Ninety-Nine Coffins, Vampire Zero,
and
Twenty-Three Hours.
He began a werewolf series (with Three Rivers Press), starting with
Frostbite
(2009) and continuing with
Overwinter
(2010). Wellington began his publishing career by serializing his horror fiction online, posting short chapters of a novel three times a week on a friend’s blog. Response to the project was so great that in 2004 Thunder’s Mouth Press contracted to publish
Monster Island
and its sequels in print. His novels have been featured in
Rue Morgue, Fangoria,
and the
New York Times.
For more information please visit www.davidwellington.net.

Story Notes

Post-apocalyptic fiction often posits humanity returning to a primal society. That often bodes poorly for most female characters, but Wellington balances the powerless “girl as commodity” image nicely with a strong woman “Roadie” who negotiates a life for herself by strength, cunning, and a distrust of the living as well as the dead.

In “Dead Man’s Land,” Wellington also applies the world “ghoul” to the walking dead—which gives me a chance to mention something about ghouls.

In the original
Night of the Living Dead
, the titular creatures are never referred to as zombies, but they are called ghouls as part of a news report on television. Others have used “ghoul” and “zombie” interchangeably as well, but the two are not traditionally synonymous.

Ahmed K. Al-Rawi (“The Arabic Ghoul and its Western Transformation”
Folklore
, Vol. 120, Issue 3. December 2009) describes the original idea of a ghoul as:

. . . a kind of devilish genie . . . part of beliefs held by Arabs long before the advent of Islam and was a perceived reality for most people living in Arabia . . . Throughout different historical and religious periods, the character of the ghoul remained the same, being represented as an ugly human-like monster that dwelt in the desert and secluded locations, in order to delude travellers by lighting a fire and thus leading them astray. In some cases, this creature was said to have killed travellers. However, when Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights into French in the eighteenth century, some features were added to the ghoul in order to intensify its fearful characteristics. For example, Galland emphasised that the ghoul used to dig graves and eat corpses if it needed food, an idea that was never mentioned in any of the Arabic sources. Accordingly, numerous English writers followed Galland’s description and further fantasised in their works about the viciousness of this creature.

The “further fantasizing” resulted in several variants from human grave robbers to humans who are morbidly fascinated with death or the dead to supernatural creatures that lurk in graveyards to feed on or defile mortal remains. Occasionally, ghouls appear in horror literature as beings who devour the living. Modern variants include humans who come back from the dead but do not eat human flesh and are distinct creatures unlike any form of zombie. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s legendary vampire Saint-Germain has a ghoul servant, Roger. Roger is an undead immortal who prefers his meat raw, but otherwise appears to be human.

Brian McNaughton, in his 1997 collection
The Throne of Bones
, created a unique world of ghoulery. His creatures shared many traits one usually associates with vampires, but they also ate humans. If these ghouls managed to devour enough of a victim’s brain, they acquired his or her memories and could even assume the physical appearance of whomever they digested.

Ghouls seem, no matter the variety, seem to me to be a different breed of beastie than the zombie.

Tim Waggoner

Gleaming steel talons came streaking toward my face, and though my reflexes aren’t what they used to be, I managed to dodge to the right in time to keep from losing anything more than my left ear. I wasn’t particularly concerned. An ear’s not all that important, and I could always get it reattached later. Assuming that the demon on the other end of those talons didn’t turn me into shredded zombie flakes first.

The steel talons—possibly a surgical augmentation since the rest of the creature appeared organic—sank into the alley wall, neatly pinning my ear to the brick in the process. The alley walls were covered with leech-vine, but luckily for the demon, its talons had sunk into a patch of brick where the vine was thin. Even luckier, the inorganic substance of its talons didn’t prod the vine into attacking. The demon grunted in frustration and the scale-covered muscles on its arm tightened as it fought to pull its hand free. This would have been an excellent time for me to turn and run like hell—or in my case, do a shuffling half-walk, half-run—away from the demon. But I had unfinished business with the damned thing. Besides, it had my ear.

A variety of specialized weaponry comes in handy in my line of work, and I reached into the outer pocket of my suit jacket and withdrew one of my most useful tools.

With a final yank the demon managed to pull its hand loose, and it turned to face me, shark teeth bared in a savage snarl, my bloodless ear still stuck to one of its talons. When it saw the weapon I held aimed at the corrugated hide directly between its eyes, the snarl became a chuckle.

“A squirt gun?” Its voice sounded like ground glass being shaken in a coffee can. “Are you insane?
Real
bullets wouldn’t do much more than tickle me!”

“I know.” I tightened my finger on the plastic trigger and began pumping streams of holy water into the demon’s face.

The creature howled in pain as its facial scales began to sizzle and smoke. The demon threw up its hands to protect itself, the motion dislodging my ear and sending it flying. I didn’t see where it landed; I was a bit busy. I’d look for it later—assuming I survived. I kept firing, if that’s the right term to use when your ammo is liquid, hoping to at least disable the demon, if not kill it. Unfortunately, the demon had other ideas.

Bellowing in agony, eyes squeezed shut and weeping blood, the creature lashed out and fastened its thick fingers around the wrist of my gun hand. Before I could react, the demon yanked, and my right arm came out of the socket as easily as a greasy wing parting from an overcooked chicken. I had only a single thought.

Not again!

“I have to warn you, Matt. This isn’t the prettiest work I’ve ever done. I’m a houngan, not a surgeon.”

“Don’t worry about it. I got over being vain about my appearance about the same time I stopped breathing. Look at it this way: you have an important advantage over a medical doctor. You don’t have to worry about your patient dying if you screw up.”

It was late afternoon, and my confrontation with the demon lay several hours in the future. I was sitting on a stool in Papa Chatha’s workshop, shirt off, holding my right arm in place with my left hand while Papa, seated next to me, played seamstress. His brow was furrowed in concentration, and small beads of sweat had gathered on the mahogany skin of his smoothly shaven head. His white pullover shirt and pants were splotched with stains that looked too much like blood. None of if was mine, though. I hadn’t bled for a long time. One of the advantages to being a zombie.

Another benefit was that I felt no pain as Papa sank the bone needle into the gray-tinged flesh of my shoulder. I could feel pressure as the pointed tip emerged from the ragged skin of my left arm, felt the tug as Papa pulled the thread through, but that was all. I looked away, but not because I found it uncomfortable to watch someone reattaching a limb that had once been part of my body. I’ve gotten banged up quite a few times since I came to Nekropolis, and Papa’s usually the one who gets stuck trying to put the pieces back together. I didn’t want to watch because seeing Papa at work reminded me that not only couldn’t I experience pain, I couldn’t experience pleasure, either. Not physically, at any rate.

I scanned the shelves in Papa’s workroom, taking in the multitude of materials that a professional voodoo practitioner needs to perform his art: wax-sealed vials filled with ground herbs and dried chemicals, jars containing desiccated bits of animals—rooster claws, lizard tails, raven wings—books and scrolls piled on tabletops next to rattles and tambourines of various sizes, along with pouches of tobacco, chocolate bars, and bottles of rum. Papa said he used the latter three substances to make offerings to the Loa, the voodoo spirits, and while I had no reason to doubt him, over the years I’ve noticed that he tends to run out of rum before anything else.

“There.” Papa broke off the thread with his ivory-white teeth then tied the end into a knot. I turned back and examined the result. The stitching looked tight enough, but the pattern was uneven, to put it kindly. Papa hadn’t been kidding about the aesthetic qualities of his sewing. You’d think a guy who makes as many voodoo dolls as he does would be a better seamstress.

“Give it a try,” Papa said.

I made a fist with my right hand and flexed the arm. It moved stiffly, but that had nothing to do with Papa’s repair job and everything to do with the fact that I was dead.

I lowered my arm. “Feels good. Thanks.” I rose from the stool and went over to the chair where I’d draped my shirt, suit jacket, and tie. Most zombies wear whatever rags they died in, but I’m not your run-of-the-mill walking dead man. I’m still self-aware and possess free will. Before I came to this dimension, back when I was alive, I worked as a homicide detective in Cleveland. I wore a suit on the job then, and I still wear one now. Makes me feel more human, I guess.

Papa continued sitting on his stool while I got dressed. “Sorry I couldn’t do more for the skin, but the spells I used to fuse the bone and muscle back together should last for about a month before they need to be reapplied,” he said. “That is, assuming you don’t irritate any more cyclops.” He frowned. “Cyclopses? Cyclopsi?” He shrugged. “Whatever.”

I finished with my tie and slid on my jacket. “You know Troilus. Always trying one scam or another to make easy money. This time it was a protection racket.” I lowered my voice to a bass monotone in what I thought was a passable imitation of the cyclops. “ ‘Pay me a hundred darkgems a week or you might end up taking a bath in Phlegethon.’ ”