Zombies: The Recent Dead Part 40

I felt the ashes of the fire and they were still warm. I still had a chance, then. At least as long as the General Manager of the Home Depot didn't mind receiving my cargo slightly used.

It's not hard to find the villages of the wild folk on a calm day, even though they move from time to time, even though they are little more than tent towns and colorless and small. You look for smoke, is all, and it's something my grandfather taught me. You get to a high place, say the top of an old commercial building or you climb on top of a bent old power pylon and you look across the land. If you don't squint too hard you'll see them, the columns of smoke. Thin gray pencil lines rising in the air.

I tracked them down through a low defile that ran parallel to an old state highway. I moved quietly but I didn't waste time. I could hear them before long but I trailed behind, keeping my distance. I waited for them to camp and then I waited for the sun to sink over the hills. Only then did I move in.

There were maybe seventy of them, a fair-sized encampment and far more than I could take on with just my two arms. There were children with them, some as young as five. The wild folk have their babies in the woods and raise them where they can. Very few survive to p.u.b.erty. It's why they keep their women pregnant at all times, and why they're constantly looking for new breeding stock.

I saw them like pinkish ghosts in the falling light, their undyed clothing and their pale skin moving between the trees like inverted shadows. I saw their fires and their animal-hide tents stretched over battered old aluminum poles. I saw their pet slack.

Every band of wild folk has one. A dead man, usually an ancestor, who they keep and feed. Some are simple totems, rallying points for the tribe. Some are valued because they can do tricks. I watched this one work his single gimmick over and over. The wild folk would bring him sc.r.a.ps of paper, bits and ends they had found in the old houses. The slack had a plastic pen wired to his hand. A girl of maybe ten years would fill it with ink from time to time as the slack signed his name, over and over. Who could say what dim chunk of his rotting brain, what curl of gray matter was left to him, that let him do that. He looked quite happy to sign and sign away, his fleshless face turned upward in a pure and innocent smile, his tattered body jiggling with the joy of it.

Every time he finished a signature the wild folk would laugh and cheer. It was something of the old world, something they might remember doing themselves. It was a thing of power, every name an incantation. I don't suppose it matters why. It was a good trick, for a slack, and entertainment is what you make of it out on the road.

I gave them an hour of darkness-just long enough to have their dinner ready-and then I stepped out of the shadows and into the light. I made myself known with a loud, warbling screech and threw my lance down before me.

Every eye in the encampment turned my way. Every hand reached for a weapon. Yet my intentions could not be more clear. I had dealings with the wild folk before, many a time, whether or not I knew any of this band. Their lives are unlike the life of the Stores. They don't hold to so many rules. But they still have a few, and I knew them, and how to make them work for me.

"I want some dinner, and I want some information," I said. I held my arms outstretched the way a ghoul might. In this case I was showing them I was unarmed.

The leader of the band came to me then. He was nearly my age-ripe, for a wild man-and some kind of fungal infection lined his cheeks and forehead with angry ridges. Muscles crawled across his chest and shoulders like vines pulled taut. He wore drawstring pants and shoes of fine deer hide. The top of a human skull, sawed away just above the eye sockets, perched atop his unwashed hair.

"You come to join us, Roadie? You come to be a friend to the dead?" he asked. He didn't look happy but he didn't look like he wanted to kill me, either.

"Not hardly. I've come for dinner, like I said."

He nodded. He'd be willing to feed me, in exchange for my leaving them alone.

I went on. "And I've come to be told where the girl is. The girl with hair like gold and eyes like old gla.s.s bottles. I'll be taking her with me."

His eyes narrowed. He moved sideways, scuttling around me, looking me over. He wanted to know if I had any real weapons on me. Say a pistol, or even a zip gun. Say a knife in a hidden sheath. He glanced at the spring-lance at my feet but it was well out of my reach.

"Finder's, keepers," he said, finally, when he was sure I was defenseless. He had a hatchet in his own hand, a steel thing at least half made of rust. It wouldn't keep an edge any more but it would do just fine for bas.h.i.+ng in my face. "She's weak, but she can birth some babies for us. We won't be giving her up." He looked me up and down again but this time it was my b.r.e.a.s.t.s and my crotch he sized up. "Maybe you want to make a trade? Maybe you want to come be our babymaker?"

"Not hardly," I said again.

His brothers, his cousins, his uncles came out of the tents then or stepped up from their campfires or ghosted in out of the woods. They had spears and knives in their hands. Some of them wore leather thongs around their throats, tight as chokers, with finger bones dangling from them. That marked them as killers, as those who had fought before. They came close, close enough to strike me, but not close enough that I could touch them. They knew this kind of entertainment all too well. There was no chance of me taking them. I was a tough thing, all muscle and sinew, and stronger by far than any wild folk, fed up better on Store food, trained by hard life on the road. Against their leader, maybe, or maybe even him and his best two champions, maybe. But there were just too many of them.

"Roadies are too smart for this kind of aggro," the leader said. "Too smart to come in here and start something they can't finish." He was figuring out my game, and far too soon. "You playing at something, Roadie?"

I shrugged my shoulders elaborately. "You won't give her back, then. All right." I took my water bottle from my belt and showed it to him. He turned away and spat. He wouldn't drink my water. It might be poisoned.

I shrugged again. I had to draw this out a little longer. Slowly, as if to a.s.sure them of my good intentions, I unscrewed the cap from my water bottle. Slowly I lifted the bottle, as if to drink.

Then the wind changed and a familiar smell lit up my nose and I smiled. I turned over the bottle and rabbit's blood spilled out on the ground.

Behind me, come looming out of the shadows, the ghoul appeared, his broken mouth black and wide as a cave as if he would swallow the wild folk whole. I'd been teasing and taunting and coaxing him along all day and finally he had caught up. He smelled the blood and the hunger in him must have spiked. He came shambling for me-for the leader-for anything warm.

In the confusion I grabbed up my lance and slipped past their leader. I dodged around a cook fire and tore open the flap of the first tent I found. Inside a huddle of children looked up at me, terrified.

I'd brought death down on them, maybe. I didn't waste time on guilt. The next three tents I found were empty. Behind me the leader and his extended family were whooping with fear and running every way, their weapons up, their hands raised. The ghoul would lunge at one of them, then another. They would dance away from him, yelping like dogs. He stumbled like a drunkard from one body to the next.

I tripped over the slack in the middle of the encampment. He looked up at me and raised his pen hand, perhaps wanting another piece of paper. Endless copies of his signature littered the ground about his feet. My skin rumpled, my stomach flipped at the nearness of him, this harmless dead man. Reflexively I raised the spring-lance. But no. If I took the girl and ran this band of wild folk might forget me, after a time of seeking revenge. If I did in their pet slack, however, they would chase me like furies. I pushed past him and headed for the next tent.

Winona stepped out of it before I even arrived. Her hair hung loose around her face, piled in careless hummocks like the yellow gra.s.s revealed by the melting snows of spring. Her eyes saw me and I saw in them a hurt that went beyond blame. A hurt that needed healing of a kind I could not offer. She was stark naked, her little body smeared with dirt and ash and paint. I knew what that meant.

They had tied her feet and hands together with leather cord. She could shuffle forward but not walk with any speed. I didn't have the time to free her so I grabbed her up over my shoulder and I ran into the darkness, leaving the camp in chaos behind.

We hid in a tree, our exhausted bodies draped over the branches, and spent the night not sleeping, but listening for any sound, and smelling, our noses twitched, even as we dozed.

The next day I brought her back toward the Turnpike. We pa.s.sed through the overgrown asphalt of an old school parking lot, climbing over places where the pavement had cracked like the top of a loaf of bread. The brick building loomed over us in silent decay, its windows broken, its doors standing open to let us look in on empty rooms full of dirt and dead leaves.

"They kept a dead man among them," Winona said to me as we climbed an endless on-ramp to the Pike. "They kept him like a milking cow, like a treasure."

It was the first thing she'd said to me since I left her in the abandoned house. I considered what to say long and hard. "They are the friends of the dead. It's why you call them wild."

"This much I knew, yes. That when one of them dies, they are left uncleansed. No relative will strike the sacred blow."

Which is what they call it in the Stores. The Final Duty of Kins.h.i.+p. The Sacred Blow. Which amounts to taking a sledgehammer to the brains of your loved ones when they pa.s.s. It's a necessary thing. I did for my grandfather, didn't I? I'm no wild folk savage. Still. I never saw it like some holy thing, as Winona's people did. I saw it as a sadness, a sharp sadness on the world.

"They have avowed never to strike a dead thing. They make a pact with their ancestors, you see. They will not harm the dead, which is sin, and in exchange, the dead will let them survive."

"The dead know nothing of treaties and compacts," Winona said, a little of her old uppity pride glowing behind her eyes. I guess maybe she was going to be all right. "Such foolishness. Such evil."

Now a Roadie may never judge those she trades with. So I kept my peace.

The ghoul found us again the next evening, just as the sky started turning orange. Maybe he got a meal out of the wild folk. Maybe they outran him. It didn't matter. He had my smell in his dead nose and he couldn't not come for me. He was a thing of nature, as pure, if not as innocent, as the smile on the face of the paper-signing slack.

For days he tracked me. For days I tried to give him the slip. It was for naught. We were like two arrows launched in the air at the same target. At some point our paths would cross. Smart as I am, I decided I would choose when it might happen.

I smelled him and then I heard him. I readied myself for him. I put Winona in an old storm cellar and locked the door behind me. Then I walked out into the middle of a suburban street with my spring-lance loose in my hands. I spread my legs a little, kept my knees unlocked. I tried to sense where he was, what direction he might be coming from.

He surprised me, as they do. He came from behind and I barely had time to pivot on my left foot, my right foot high to kick out at him. I caught him in the stomach and knocked him backwards. It gave me a splinter of a moment to bring the lance around.

His hands came for me, his broken jaws, his whole body swimming through the air as time slowed to a near standstill. My eyes focused on his head until every little detail stood out. The dark veins beneath his cheek. The ragged hole in the side of his head where my spring-lance had caught him before, like a second, rotten ear.

His fingers caught at my belt, wove themselves through the cord to anchor himself to me. The next blow would tear my flesh open and make me bleed.

At least it might have, if I'd been a trace slower. I pressed the end of the coffee can against his forehead. It was a centered strike, a perfect placement. His own momentum pressed his face against my spring-loaded weapon. The coffee can slid backward and released the hidden latch. The spike jumped forward, its glinting point emerging from the back of his skull and catching the moonlight.

He fell on me, all spark of animation fleeing, and I might have been pinned by a collapsing chimney. His body sputtered out its last spastic movement and then stopped.

I rolled out from under him and lay looking up at purple clouds that stretched in thick bands across the whole of the sky. I waited a while, to catch my breath, before I stood again.

Atop three flagpoles in the Home Depot's parking lot long Mylar banners snapped in the air, welcoming us to our destination. At the loading dock a party of warriors in orange smocks waited to receive us. They wore circlets carved of rosewood on their temples and had gold and silver chains wrapping their forearms like vambraces. The General Manager himself stood silhouetted in the doorway, a fire behind him throwing long shadows down toward us. He was a gray-haired old man with a white scar running across the full length of his chest. He wore nothing but a pair of tight-fitting elastic shorts, black and satiny with gold piping. Beads and bones and jewels were woven in his long hair. He smiled to see Winona, and he gestured to her to come into his arms, to come to his bed, perhaps.

"He doesn't waste his time," I said. We were still out of earshot. I'd planned on giving the girl a final lecture in what a beastly little hards.h.i.+p she'd been. Instead I wondered if maybe I shouldn't turn around and get back on the road with her.

"It is a grand destiny, to make the heirs who will rid the world of the monsters," Winona announced. She looked a bit scared, but not of the bulge in the General Manager's underwear. Something else had her in its teeth.

She turned to look at me with those eyes the color of old gla.s.s 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 theNew 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 t.i.tular 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 a.s.sociates 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 a.s.sume 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.

Disarmed and Dangerous.

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. a.s.suming 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 h.e.l.l-or in my case, do a shuffling half-walk, half-run-away from the demon. But I had unfinished business with the d.a.m.ned 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 gla.s.s 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-a.s.suming 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, s.h.i.+rt 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 mult.i.tude of materials that a professional voodoo pract.i.tioner 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 st.i.tching 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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, a.s.suming 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 ba.s.s monotone in what I thought was a pa.s.sable imitation of the cyclops. " 'Pay me a hundred darkgems a week or you might end up taking a bath in Phlegethon.' "

Phlegethon is the river of green fire that surrounds Nekropolis and separates the city's five sections. It's a cold fire that burns the spirit instead of the flesh, but its waters are home to giant serpents called Lesk who are only too eager to use their sharp teeth to take care of what the flames can't.

Papa grinned. "I a.s.sume you were hired to encourage Troilus to pursue alternative methods of securing an income. Your employer anyone I know?"

"A vampire named Kyra who has a tattoo parlor on the other side of the Sprawl, not far from the Bridge of Forgotten Pleasures. She uses living ink, and the tattoos she creates move through their wearer's skin. It's a striking effect."

Papa nodded. "This is the first time I've heard her name, but I've seen her work before. So what did you do?"

"I decided on the subtle approach. I tracked down Troilus and told him that if he didn't stop threatening people, I'd poke his eye out."

Papa laughed. "Very subtle! Let me guess: in response, Troilus yanked your arm out of the socket."