Zombies - Encounters with the Hungry Dead Part 56

Today we breasted a high hill and in the distance saw a thin plume of smoke rising toward the heavens. A tell-tale sign of a battle waged against the dead. Kenji-Tango, myself, and another named Tamakura ran toward the sight at full gait. The other ronin, my father included, kept formation behind us.

Kenji-Tango and I reached the seven-foot brick barricade that circled a village encampment. Kenji-Tango lifted me upon his shoulders so that I might have a look. I was shocked by what I beheld.

Men on horseback rode around the village. These riders were backed up in triplicate by footsoldiers. All were armed. Some carried quarterstaff and sword, while others rode with la.s.so and pike. Every member of this group wore slick leather armor and a metal helm crested with the aubergine feathers of the starling. What was most startling about this batallion of skilled warriors was what they were doing to the living men and women of this simple village.

In the matter of a few seconds, I saw a brigand on horseback ride in pursuit of a man and woman fleeing through the rice paddies. The man was la.s.soed around the neck and dragged over the furrows in the ground until he moved no longer. I glanced at a woman, no older than fifteen, being raped by a gang of three men in full body armor. I saw man and woman alike joined by manacles, cuffed to their necks, pushed into a line of slaves who were being marched from the village. As I heard the straining voice of Kenji-Tango ask, "What do you see?" my blood boiled over. I could watch no longer.

I jumped over the wall, unsheathed my bitter-edged sword, and ran toward the maurauding band. Hearing my cry of battle a footsoldier turned, only to find himself cleaved into two sloppy parts, the upper half of his body staring from the ground at his still standing lower half. I ran with quick strides, my blade bloodied and singing in the rush of wind. The soldiers who were forcing themselves upon the young girl had a sudden urge to reach for their heads, only to find them missing. A second later, their ears heard the rhythmic drumbeat of three heads. .h.i.tting the ground-the last sound they ever heard.

I ran straight into the heart of the brigand pack, cold fury coursing through my veins. How could men do this to one another when they had a common enemy to fight? The only answer I was given to my question was a fount of brigand's red blood hotly spraying my body. I had been cleansed.

Suddenly, a la.s.so fell around my neck. I tried to force it back over my head, but the knot had drawn tight. I saw a horse start to ride away, and the rope had lost all its slackness. Just as I was about to be dragged off into the paddies to have my bones and spirit broken, a sword severed the rope. I turned and saw my savior. Kenji-Tango stood there, aping the ugly face of the brigand who just about took my life.

The brigand on horseback turned around to face us, not pleased with his unflattering portrayal. He hefted a large pike that had been strapped to the horse's saddle and began riding toward my friend. Kenji-Tango and I both scattered in opposite directions, making hard targets, but when I looked back, I saw that he had lost his footing in the wet earth, and was face-down in the mud.

I ran as fast as I could across the slippery ground, and when I saw that I would not reach the charging steed with my sludge enc.u.mbered footsteps, I lunged through the air and hurled my sword javelin-style. Despite the balance and sharpness of my blade, it flew low and missed the brigand. Not forsaking me entirely, though, my sword embedded itself deep within the horseflesh, causing the rider to be thrown. The man landed inches from Kenji-Tango's now upright body. He slew the wretch easily.

By now, the other ronin had arrived. A true battle was underway, samurai against trained killers. In the distance I heard a shrill yell, the sound of a sparrow chick crying when threatened by a tree snake. I looked about and discovered the source of the commotion. Off to the right, deep in the rice paddies, a girl child was hiding behind a well, pursued by a man astride a sorrel mare. Again, I asked myself, what kind of man, in armor and on horseback, would pursue a frightened child?

I ran, splas.h.i.+ng across the rain-flooded paddies, trying to reach the child. Her pursuer turned and charged at me, his lance pointed forward to impale. I faked going to the left and then threw my body to the right, narrowly avoiding the six-foot lance aimed between my eyes. By the time that the horseman turned his steed, I had reached the child. I had expected her to hide, thinking me another brigand, but she ran forth from behind the stone well and jumped into the cradle of my left arm. I held her. The horseman charged. When the brigand neared within twenty feet, I faked a dodge to the left and again threw myself to the right.

White hot pain shot from just below my right shoulder into every part of my body, and then the wind was forced from me as if I had fallen from the farthest star all the way down onto the hard rocks of China. When the chaos stopped, I opened my eyes. The horseman, a huge and muscled Chinese b.a.s.t.a.r.d, was laughing at me. From just below my right shoulder, the brigand's lance protruded. It was speckled with blood and bits of tattered flesh. Sickened, and on the verge of pa.s.sing out, I looked over my right shoulder. This produced a gale of laughter from the ma.s.sive Chinaman. I had been impaled straight through by the brigand's lance, and then jammed into the stony side of the well. Things did not look good.

I tried to move, to stab the man with my sword, but the giant pushed on the lance with his strong arms, forcing me back against the well. I grimaced, and I think I pa.s.sed out for a moment.

"This will wake you," roared the Chinaman, as he lifted me with the lance and positioned me above the mouth of the well. My brain itched furiously with rage. I threw the little girl clear of the mouth of the well, and saw her running off as I swung my sword against the lance. The lance shattered, and I began to fall, grabbing onto the portion of the lance that the Chinaman was holding. The lanyard that tied the lance to his hands during battle now was dragging him with me down the long and narrow throat of the well. My laughter echoed toward the belly of the stone well while my companion was struck dumb with surprise.

We landed amidst a mighty splas.h.i.+ng of fetid water at the bottom of the well. By the overpowering stench of feces and urine, I knew instantly that the well was not constructed for drinking water. It was where the chamber pots were emptied.

The great brigand brought himself to his feet, the awful muck being only thigh deep, before I could even begin to get my footing. He pounded my face with a meaty fist and then held me underneath the surface to drown. I tried to overpower him with strength, only to find all of mine gone. I tried to find my sword, but it had vanished into the depths of the cesspool. I tried to play dead, only to find out that he knew better. He was a man experienced in killing. I didn't know how many tens of seconds had gone by, but my lungs were nearly filled to drowning with black, putrid water. I could feel the giant shake with laughter every time he saw me convulsively swallow the foamy liquid. As I was beginning to lose consciousness, I used this successfully to my advantage.

I opened my mouth wide, until I thought it might unhinge, and pretended to swallow the filthy brew. Then I did my best imitation of Kenji-Tango mimicking Madame Mutsu eating something foul. That did it. The brigand doubled-over in laughter, and my hand shot out of the water, two extended fingers finding his eyes. This sufferance, taught by Abbot Yamato, is known as Spider's Fangs. The Chinaman fell back clutching his blood-slicked face, as I stood, taking in air thick with flies. After I coughed heartily, I went over and broke his neck. His heavy body sunk quickly to the bottom of the well.

I tried to scale the wall to reach the land above, but every time I thought I had a good hold, I slipped back down on lichen that beslimed my route. When I was not quite ten feet up, there was a great stirring in the water. I glanced back to see the giant brigand, now zaambi, sniff the air and walk toward me. I saw that his eyes were pulpy and the biting flies at the bottom of the well were ma.s.sed around the gore, burrowing for the rich meat. I turned and began to climb faster. When I had neared within two feet of the top, my left hand gave way, and I held on by fingertips. Not strong enough to continue climbing, not willing to fall back into the well, I cried for help.

After a moment, someone heard my call. There was a great amount of noise at the top of the well. When I thought I could hold on no longer, a seeking arm clothed in ronin kimono reached down to a.s.sist me. I grasped the arm and tried to climb to the surface. When I pulled, the face of the owner hove into view. It was Tamakura. He had been cleaved straight down the center with what looked like a large halberd. He hissed the hungry cry of the zaambi, but the torn bits of muscle that affixed his arm to his body ripped loudly. I fell toward the giant zaambi roaring at the bottom of the well, the arm of Tamakura still jerking in my hands.

I landed again in the scrofulous mess, but this time I landed on my feet. Flies were upon me in an instant, probing my wound. Two, I think, went up my nose quicker than I could smash them. The zaambi approached me, hand outstretched. I grabbed his arm with my right hand and shattered the elbow joint with a blow from my left. Tamakura bellowed at the top, and I could feel reverberations at the bottom. The giant zaambi still moved forward. I sidestepped his lunge, and holding him up against the stone wall, broke his spine in as many as six different places with a maneuver known as Picking Apples.

This did not seem to affect the zaambi. He rolled over and, with much of the strength he had had while amongst the living, pressed me up against the stone wall. I was immobilized by his bulk. His fingers dug into my wound, sc.r.a.ping out muscle and yellowy tissues. He brought a handful from the hole in my chest and smeared the soggy pulp into his mouth. He chewed, and I swear to Amida that he smiled. His hand thrust back into my wound, quick with longing. I struggled, but was absolutely trapped. He ate another handful of my body, and deciding that grabbing it was too slow, leaned his head toward my chest, jaws snapping their need.

Just as the beast was to devour me, a sharp tugging clamped around my outstretched hand. It was a la.s.so.

"Pull!" I shouted in a shamefully high voice, and was lifted with the speed of a falcon toward the top. When I reached the edge, I crawled from the well to be greeted by father on horseback. This explained the speed of my ascent. Before I could find voice for my thanks, Father was riding back toward the village with the body of Tamakura. Taking him to the fire.

After the brigands had been either killed or captured, the zaambi that were following us slain, and the villagers released from their enslavement, the members of the Holy Ancestor Patrol were invited to feast with the warrior leaders of the village encampment. Old Man Yayoi refused to sit near me, complaining that I smelled. The Chinese village generals, two men known as Yang Hsien and Tsing Chan, told how it was no longer possible for the living to survive among the dead. The victory of the zaambi was a.s.sured in the coming year, as their numbers measured in the hundreds attacking the village every single day. A silence fell over us all.

Outside the generals' quarters, a brigand prisoner known as Whining Wu spoke up.

"I know how you might defeat the dead," he said in the direction of the room. "We were heading there when we saw your village. Our leader, who is now at the bottom of your well, said that we must take your people as slaves for farming and breeding. I would be happy to trade this information for my life."

"Do not listen to him," advised Tsing Chan. "He is just trying to save his filthy hide."

"I am sure your opinion of his hide is correct," flattered Abbot Yamato, "but what can it hurt to hear him out? We should turn away no options in such desperate straits."

"Very well, master," said Whining Wu to Abbot Yamato.

3: IN WHICH I BECOME.

YEAR OF OUR SORROWS 110.

Outside of the burial chamber I can hear the moans and scratchings of the dead. There must be over a thousand of them milling about both overhead and at the stone entrance to the chamber; soon, although the zaambi are not bright, they will overpower the strength of stone with sheer quant.i.ty and our present location will become an inescapable trap. No one knows when this will happen, we only know that it will. This is truly our last chance. If we fall, all of the survivors of Honchu and the two hundred or so Chinese who have joined us will fall as well. By now Ayako has probably delivered our child into the world.

Is it a boy? We were going to name it Akira if it was, my father's name. How many days will Akira live if I fail now?

Seven of us, Honda, Kenji-Tango, Abbot Yamato, my father, our Chinese compatriots Yang Hsien and Tsing Chan, and myself, made it across the Yellow River Valley into Lin-t'ung county. We started as a party of twenty well-armed men leaving our loved ones in Tsing Chan's protected compound, and ended up in this chamber barely alive, three of us badly wounded and surrounded by a sea of zaambi. We were not even able to burn or behead our fallen brothers and they are probably zaambi now, their souls in torment. This has weighed heavily on us all. Father looks very old now, but he continues as he always does, gripping his blade and blood dripping from his hands. We were lucky to get here, however, no matter the cost, if Whining Wu's information was correct.

They stood at all sides of us, the warriors. Some with sword and others bearing spears, men on horseback and men bearing packs, six thousand terracotta statues in a series of chambers over a mile long, standing at attention as they had done for probably 2,500 years. It is the quietest army on earth, the eternal retinue of Chinese Emperor Ch'in s.h.i.+h Huang Ti, and we walked among its precise rows by torchlight in underground chamber after chamber. I had never before witnessed an eerier sight, I who had spent my life staring grim death down. We were all affected by the unholy silence, the smiles of these clay men as tall as ourselves holding actual weapons. I had the horrible feeling that we were walking into a trap. No man had yet entered the emperor's actual burial chamber, Yang Hsien told us back at the compound, and none knew what wonders or terrors lay within. There was a legend that Ch'in s.h.i.+h Huang Ti, builder of the Great Wall of China, knew all of the secrets of the supernatural, and it is this slim hope we were traveling on. This was the secret Wu had for us. We had nothing else.

Abbot Yamato had lost three fingers from his right hand but he marched on regardless. Kenji-Tango had probably broken one of his arms and yet he propped up his father, Honda, as we made our way to the emperor's chamber; Honda was only semi-conscious and babbled in a mystic delirium talking alternately to his dead wife Soo and to Amida-Buddha. As Kenji-Tango answered the old man, playing all of the roles his father's fevered brain could summon, I was prouder of my friend than I can say. Kisai is my true brother but Kenji-Tango and I were more than that-we were one and the same. If he was wounded I would bleed. It was good that he was there, even if this was to be the end.

At the end of the final chamber of warriors we came to the place no man was said to have entered, but immediately found this to be untrue. Before us were a pair of doors large enough for a mammoth of old to have pa.s.sed through, and inset in the larger door, a smaller, open one. Within the stone portal there was an iron gate blocking the path, and underneath it, the skeletal remains of a man who had attempted to enter the tomb, his skull on the floor of the next chamber. The back of his s.h.i.+rt was inscribed in a strange language I and the rest of the party were unfamiliar with. It read: K. Koepfii. National Geographic.

Yang Hsien groaned in defeat, but I saw telltale orange marks in the gate and proceeded to give it a hard shove, toppling the rusty edifice to the chamber floor, raising a cloud of powdery dust about our heads. I was thus the first man in 2,500 years to enter the emperor's tomb alive. All I could tell at first was that it was vast, and that the floor was of green marble, the like of which I had never seen. I stepped ahead into the unknown darkness, expecting to fall at any moment into a pit filled with spikes or to have a large stone descend from above and crush me, but nothing of this sort happened. My footsteps, and those of the group behind me, echoed loudly and gave rise to the thought that maybe the zaambi had broken through the outer door. I shook these thoughts from my head, my grip on my sword iron-tight. There it was before me. The burial monument of the emperor.

The coffer was surprisingly small for such a large room. I believed, at a single look, that it was composed entirely of gold with a jade lid. Standing directly before the tomb was the largest statue we had seen yet, at least seven feet tall and in full battle armor, a gigantic scimitar hanging from his hand to the chamber floor. His face was terrifying, a snarl of fanged teeth and a blaze of ruby eyes, a muscled body that seemed primed to explode from sheer animal tension. Next to this t.i.tan was a teakwood box on a silver stand, an inscription in Chinese etched onto the box's surface.

Yang Hsien cried out and opened it before any of us could think. I ducked as I heard the sound, and a moment later I saw Yang Hsien fall to the ground, a crossbow bolt buried between his blood-spattered eyes. Tsing Chan, after a moment's hesitation, beheaded his friend to be sure he wouldn't rise as zaambi.

"What did the inscription read?" asked Abbot Yamato, out of breath.

"It read: For those who seek enlightenment. Death is supposed to be very enlightening, I'd warrant," said Tsing Chan. "I wouldn't open the emperor's coffin unless you wish the same fate as poor Yang," he added, bitterly.

I heard a rustling and turned to see my father wrench the breastplate off the great statue before the tomb. A sealed cylinder fell to the floor, and rolled to my feet. Chan s.n.a.t.c.hed it up, and broke the iron seal by smas.h.i.+ng the cylinder hard against the floor. A brown roll of parchment slid out, and he feverishly began to read. He laughed loudly to himself, but would not share his findings with us until he had finished reading. He was not laughing anymore.

"This is the finest tea you have ever served me, Soo," said Honda from further back in the darkness. "Amida-Buddha will be pleased with its high quality. Why do you frown so?"

"I am afraid that my tea will not be up to the standards of the G.o.ds," said Kenji-Tango softly. I looked away.

"Speak to us," said my father to Tsing Chan. Chan stood, his face gone quite pale.

"It is too horrible," Tsing faltered. I placed the edge of my blade at his sweaty throat.

"Speak," I said. My father did not move to stop me.

"Ch'in s.h.i.+h Huang Ti did not intend to lay in his coffin this long, I believe," started Chan. "The great warrior that stands before him was supposed to house his spirit and lead his immortal troops into world conquest, but some brave soul must have made sure the transfer never took place. What this scroll explains is the process of that supernatural transfer."

"This is exactly what we seek," cried the Abbot, excitement giving his old frame energy. "If we may raise these statues to do our bidding we will have an army like the world has never seen! The zaambi shall trouble us no more!"

"What is required for the transfer," asked my father, practical as always. Chan took a long breath.

"One of us must take his own beating heart from his chest and place it in the chest of the great warrior. As you see, there is a spot set aside for that."

We all looked at the hollow chest of the ferocious statue. There, in the center, was an obsidian stone, hollowed to fit the placement of a human heart.

"I vote the honor to Akira," said the Abbot, in all respect. "He is the most n.o.ble man I have ever known, and the finest warrior, if there is anyone who can close the Gate of h.e.l.l, it is he."

"I second," I cried, followed by Kenji-Tango. My father smiled wearily in recognition of our great respect for him, and then shook his head no.

"To my great shame, I cannot do this," said my father. "This life is hateful to me; I cannot bear the thought of immortality, even at the cost of the entire world. Honda is as fine a man as I, and he is near death. Perhaps in this manner he may be saved."

"The person who wishes the transfer must do this to himself," said Tsing Chan sadly. "Honda would be unable to do this in his present state. For myself, I do not possess the courage. I am wretched in your brave company."

We all started as a great vibration ran through the chamber. Fresh air followed the sound shortly.

"The beasts have burst open the doors," I said, tearing my kimono from my shoulders and baring my chest. "I must do what I can. There is no time left." Kenji-Tango cried out his despair.

"I shall do it," he said, but I cut him off.

"Your father and the rest need you. I will be back to fight by your side shortly," I said, trying to be comforting. My heart was racing and I felt sick, but I couldn't falter. Not now. He clasped my hands tightly.

"You will always be my greatest friend, Kenji-Tango. Protect my father and Ayako and my child." Kenji-Tango stepped aside, tears in his eyes, for my father to hand me his long bladed knife. His hands shook as they handed me the weapon. His dark eyes burned into mine, sending me his courage by sheer force of will.

"I will await you, my son. There is work to do." He turned away. I could hear the many footsteps of the zaambi as they poured into the first chamber of warriors, and the crash of terra-cotta as it shattered on the floor. The moans of the dead magnified around us in the echoing emperor's chamber, a miasma of hunger and death. I could hear the Abbot praying to Amida-Buddha for my soul.

I placed the tip of my father's knife directly underneath my ribcage. Taking a shuddering breath I cut deeply, pulling the blade sharply to the left. The pain was indescribable. I looked up as if to beseech the G.o.ds to cease my agony and beheld the ruby eyes of the statue beginning to glow with a b.l.o.o.d.y fire. My gaze was drawn in inexorably, as though by control of another force. I felt my hand reach inside the wound I had made and thrust up amongst my body's heat to grip upon the pumping heart and wrench it forcibly from its mooring. I watched with dimming vision as I staggered upwards to place my convulsing offering into its obsidian home. A surge of black electricity rippled through my body, tearing it asunder in its force. My soul screamed...

And I opened my eyes. The darkness was as nothing to me. I could see very clearly the pathetic zaambi stumbling towards the source of their hunger; I could see through the fallen door well into the landscape outside a mile away. I stepped forward with a roar of triumph, crus.h.i.+ng the bones of my previous body into red powder. I felt my new teeth drawing blood from my shredded lips, and laughed as the gore dripped from my monstrous mouth. I was so very strong. Memory flooded into my consciousness and I barked out a single word that bellowed through the chambers like a fire through parchment. Through sheer force of my will I demanded the warriors to rise before their new lord.

The tomb shook as the warriors, as one body, took up their defensive positions. Dust and pieces of masonry fell about us, but I was singularly unconcerned. I strode forward at ten times my normal speed and reached the forefront of the vermin in no time at all. I grabbed two zaambi without breaking stride and propelled them into each other with such violence that they simply exploded. I gave my second command, that of battle, and my warriors moved behind me in a wave of cutting blades and stabbing spears, decimating the zaambi force within the chamber in moments. I bent over the nearest beast and wrenched its head from its rotting shoulders using my teeth, flinging it aside with a laugh. Revered Dead, indeed. Insects.

Much later, after I loosed my army in the surrounding countryside, I returned to the emperor's chamber to find my father dead by his own hand.

"The knife was not dry from your blood before he committed seppuku," Kenji-Tango informed me, staring at the floor where his own father lay babbling. Was it out of respect for the dead he wouldn't look at me or was it out of fear and disgust at my new body? I thought about this for a moment but I felt entirely too fine to mourn. A n.o.ble thought had occurred to me, and I addressed the men before me knowing that my army heard my every thought and would obey.

"After we have cleared this place of filth and provided for the safety of our families I shall take my army back across the sea to Nippon to free her from her dishonorable masters. Nippon shall once again be our home. After this, is there anything that dare stand in our way? We shall be as G.o.ds on this earth, and after we have conquered all things on the face of the earth we shall follow the very demons through the Gate of h.e.l.l itself and I personally shall eat the heart of the Prince of Demons! As my father said to me, there is much work to do. Go to it, my men! Banzai!"

4: IN WHICH I.

YEAR OF OUR SORROWS 364.

Many times now have I attempted to pull my loathsome heart from my chest, but whatever supernatural power imbued me with this life does not see fit to take it away from me. I have found the most consolation to my soul here in the Forbidden City, my troops ma.s.sed before me in the Great Courtyard, but that consolation is little. I have seen all parts of the world, the great empty towers of America and the silent Egyptian pyramids, and I have led my warriors all places with me. We have killed all dead things, but not before all living things perished in the battle. I cannot be everywhere at once, and in our absence the dead have had the last laugh on me. They are centuries gone now, my family and countrymen, all humanity.

In time I will have read every book ever written in every language; I will have seen every film and examined closely all artwork. I will know every single grain of this benighted earth. I am master of all that I survey, and what I survey is desolation itself. I have eaten the heart of the Prince of Demons and have found it to be my own. There is a thought that repeats itself in my mind derived from the Old Testament creation myth.

It rolls around the interior of my skull like a pebble spiraling down an endless well.

If I am G.o.d, where is my Seventh Day? When do I, Tos.h.i.+ro Hiraoka, get my rest?

31/ Douglas E. Winter The.

Zombies Of Madison County.

Jesus raised the dead...

but who will raise the living?

Pearls Before Swine.

THE END.

There are songs that come weighted with debt from the stormclouds of a hundred smokestacks, from the grey ashes of a thousand lives, a million deaths. This is the last of them. On another long morning after the dead began to walk, I'm at my desk, staring into the wide blank screen of my computer, waiting for the words that never come, the telephone that never rings.

Nothing but the ma.n.u.script is left. The world outside is gone, at least the world as I knew it, and in its place the New Age. Inside there is nothing more to say. Only the ma.n.u.script remains, a shuffled stack of pages, for the most part typed, but by its midpoint nicked and scratched with ink and at last given over entirely to handwriting. A story; perhaps a fable. Whether a book of lies, or of revelations, it is the final missive from Madison County.

Its writer has extracted a solemn promise: If I decide not to publish his ma.n.u.script, I must agree to tell in my own words what happened in Madison County, Illinois, in the late summer of this year-what, for all I know, is happening there still. As usual, his ambition and conceit are intense, his compulsion to tell a story so demanding as to try to make that story mine.

Still, with the ma.n.u.script complete, the puzzle parts in place, I read his story through to the end. At times I stop, put the pages aside and wish them away. But I cannot help myself; I read, and read again. As I read, I begin to see the images, black type on white paper blurring, finally swallowed up in a wash of gray. To see the images is to know the truth of words. And I begin to hear those words, rising like smoke off these brittle pages. The story whispers to me. At times it shouts; at other times it cries. Sometime just after midnight, I know that there is no alternative but to try to publish the story-if anyone is left alive, or cares, to read it-though its telling may seal my fate as surely as it sealed that of Douglas Winter.

In a world where death is life, and life, in all its forms, seems nothing more than a rehearsal for death, I could feel the hunger created by this story, the need to know its truth or deception. I believed then that, in a world where movies have become reality, where the dead walk and eat the living, there was still a place for fiction. I believe even more strongly now that I was wrong. But I had read his story, and I needed to know if it was truly a story, or something more. And the knowing could bring me to one place, and one place only.

Journeying to Madison County through these pages-and now, as I must, by wing or wheel or foot-I felt that, in many ways, I had become Douglas Winter. Finding the way into his essence is something of a challenge. His story provides few certainties, and a handful of vague clues from which only the most cautious of deductions may follow. He is an enigmatic person. At times he seems mysterious yet mundane, for in the days before the dead, he was one of those Was.h.i.+ngton lawyers, walking and talking through corridors and courthouses, aloof in Armani suits, fast cars, fast tracks. At other times he seems ethereal, perhaps even imaginary. He was not simply a lawyer but a writer, lost so deeply in himself that he would fall into the well of the subconscious and emerge with a story, a book-not about the law, but about horror. In his legal work he sought, no doubt, to be a consummate professional; probably he worked too hard at it, worsening his own wounds in seeking cures for others. Since he saw the world through different eyes, in time he inevitably would count himself one of the hunted, not the hunters. Given the law's implacable need for order, consider the agony of his vision, which saw that very likely there was none. Consider his plight, in the darkest hours of the night, awake, watching, waiting for the answer to come.

Too many questions remain without answer, and they, too, draw me onward, a wary moth to the flame of Madison County. I have been unable to determine what became of anything else Winter wrote there, which, as his story suggests, may have included other stories, perhaps in the hundreds of pages. The best guess-and this would be consistent with what I know of him-is that he destroyed it all before vanis.h.i.+ng into the midnight existence that tells us nothing and everything. For, having reached this story's end, I know nothing more of Douglas Winter than is written here, nothing at all about his life, if indeed there is one, after the zombies of Madison County.

His story has revised the very way that I read, I write, I think-and, most of all, reminded me of how we lived for so very long in a fragile kind of light, that light known as faith. For some people, there was faith in G.o.d or some other spiritual source of goodness, but for most of us, there was simple faith in a neighbor, a friend, a lover, a parent, the proverbial fellow man. We slept our peaceful nights in a darkness that was incomplete, pierced and illuminated by the s.h.i.+ning stars of our faith: holes in the floor of Heaven. Coming to know Stacie Allen and Douglas Winter as I have in reading, and now writing, this story, I think that we were lucky, far more lucky than we knew. When the dead finally rose to teach us, it was too late for us to learn.