Deadcore: 4 Hardcore Zombie Novellas Part 16

Turns out our name was perfect. Everyone knows camels are full of water.

"I believe it," a dripping, sputtering Bobby says from the soup. "Even crime scene investigators are confused between a dead man's and a dead monkey's blood. At least for a day. You ever watch them scratch their heads bald when there's a murder at a zoo? We're all brothers ..."

The three of us are back outside and rounding the shed when a Bobby's head opens up like a Thanksgiving turkey and a gunshot echo swirls around the sky. I fall backwards, then look over to see Cigarette Zombie stumbling with the rifle rocking on her small shoulder, broken gla.s.ses back but askew on a broken nose. She's talking to herself and seems to be finishing a debate with someone from earlier in the night, probably with one of those Super Bowl fans that sometimes wandered over from a neighboring motel, The Whole Year Inn (third to last in the phone book), a joint that was under attack daily instead of just on weekends.

"... something about those girls in jerseys disgusts me ... I mean, I'm all for subverting gender norms but ... I just don't buy that she actually liked football ... maybe should have called them 'The Stealers' instead of, huh ... no, really, that's what spell checker wants to do with the name of that team every time you type it ..."

Then she flicks the cigarette to ignite the fake cardboard gas pump, sorta the climax to our show when it goes right. The Bobby that remains can't help but smile, and I wonder if he started that argument when he was wearing his helmet. No one is sure which Bobby is left standing or even where their Army or Navy T-shirts have gone. These things don't matter anymore. Never did. However, I do recognize this grin as likely belonging to Cloverfield, a.k.a. Bobby B, since this zombie apparently has the b.a.l.l.s to bust out the forbidden Steelers' number 22, black home jersey of cornerback William Gay and official NFL gear. I couldn't tell he was wearing it down in the bas.e.m.e.nt.

It was a very pa.s.sive-aggressive engagement present from his best friend years ago, Bobby Z, who brought with it the unspoken dare that even the most rabid football fan might not have the guts to wear a "Gay" jersey in public. But whichever Bobby this is that's smiling at us, I think it's telling that he waited until the end of the world to finally put on this uniform.

I reach out with my good hand to see if Cigarette Zombie will accept it. Once, she showed me her chapped, flaking fingers and told me about a problem that followed her all her life, not just since she'd been dead. She said that her knuckles started to crack and bleed in kindergarten, and that her mom made her wear oven mitts filled with Vaseline to school sometimes. Before the gla.s.ses, luckily. "It's a good thing kids aren't cruel or anything," she had scoffed.

I try to move slowly towards her, but I'm sure, to the untrained eye, it must seem like the desperate lurch of a monstrosity, arms out, fingers flexing as it growls, "Remember the mittens?" I ask her as she prepares to run. "Where are you going? I know how you feel! Trying to build a house of cards, you must have crushed everything you loved!"

"I wish," she laughs, finally recognizing me after all, right before she falls. It's the first time she has ever laughed, I swear. If I told you she did before this, I was lying.

The Last Bobby is carrying the radio. It still holds a charge. There's nothing but static popping the speakers, and I think of Sour Towel Zombie overa.n.a.lyzing his thirteenth favorite zombie movie, The Beyond. In that film, it was a static from some giant red radio that first called the ants. Then the monsters. Then us.

"Brains!" someone screams in the distance.

"Wrong movie, c.o.c.ksucker!" the Last Bobby screams back.

There's no denying that we all miss him. We're sounding just like him. Yeah, we'll miss him right up until he stands back up.

One time when I was a boy, I brought a record to Show And Tell, an authentic vinyl 45, and I played Sweet's song "Fox on the Run" in its entirety for a roomful of 3rd graders. Watching their eyes when the guitars kicked in made this the single most triumphant moment of my life. Then the next kid unveiled a toy shark based on the movie Jaws where you stacked body parts in its rubber-band hinged lower jaw and gently tried to pull them off until it snapped up and bit your hand. As we gathered around to play with it, they'd already forgotten about my song. And so did I. But later, I knew exactly why they ignored me that day. It was because they wanted to be scared, not sing. That's why we always keep the radio between stations.

I turn up the static as loud as it goes, our dog whistle to call everyone together for the last scene.

The sun is coming up, and The Executioner and the Four Hats is being acted out by whoever's left. We are seven zombies now, unrecognizable from each other in voice and appearance, with no discerning characteristics, except maybe for the cowboy hat that's still being pa.s.sed around when someone falls.

Now there's five. Whoops, back to six. Nope, back to five.

I think it's Cop Zombie who is now getting his dome unceremoniously bashed into Brunswick stew when he turns his back on us one too many times. "Friendly fire," they call this. We're gonna have to change his name to Fratricide Zombie, if and when he rea.s.sembles the purple puzzle that is his skull. Cop Zombies get it worst every time.

Speaking of puzzles, now that we have the perfect number, I set it up as accurately as I can remember. I drag a corpse in the closet, another corpse onto the floor in front of that one, and two more corpses into kitchen chairs to be securely strapped, hair affectionately ruffled if they got any left.

I hold the rifle to it's stone-cold forehead and whisper that it has ten seconds to live unless it can tell me whether it's alive or not. Someone behind me protests that we never found a way to make this game actually work. So I explain, mostly to myself, that the solution is written on our faces. I tap the words I've scrawled in blood, soot, and magic marker above the eyes of these three bodies to ill.u.s.trate my point: "Zombie," "Not Zombie," and "Propeller."

But with everyone dead, there's no answer to my question, of course. But this has happened before, and we've always played through it. The dead can talk about movies, sign waivers, do their taxes, take smoke breaks, even need gla.s.ses to glare at you sometimes. But sometimes you have to move their hand for them, you know?

See that? Watch me do it. Oh, yeah, remember how I said we were all unrecognizable? That's true. Except for the smell.

I make Sour Towel Zombie wave goodbye to the body hog-tied in front of him, then I click the gun against his ear. He doesn't blink. I study his fingers. Dry as bone. That's because they are bone.

I put the gun to another head and ask it the million-dollar question.

"Are you alive or dead?"

But I know I won't get an answer. Remember in art cla.s.s when they taught you that a person's eyes are exactly halfway up, right down the equator of the face? Not high on the forehead like you'd expect? This helps us understand exactly how much of a head can be missing on a zombie before it can't work any more. If you see that half's gone, so is the part of the brain behind the eyes that keeps s.h.i.t moving.

So I can tell already, even from behind, that I'm not getting an answer. Half is bad. Half is over. Half is halfway home. And when it comes to the brain, if you loose that much, your cup is always half empty. We'll need to put the "Zombie Help Wanted!" sign back in the window.

I eat some cold barbecue chicken, a.k.a. "hand in a baseball glove." This is a detail that was never accurate in the movies either.

We eat anything we can, even each other.

I turn Sour Towel Zombie's head toward me and tell him that the only time I agreed with him without question is when he declared the best zombie movie ending of all time as the finale of Dellamorte Dellamore. At the end of that film, the camera pulls back, and it turns out that the hero and his idiot manservant were just tiny sculptures in a snow globe all along. It wasn't the image of the heroes as toys and the giant plastic snowflakes coating their heads so much as the tiny piece of broken highway rising at their feet and the edge of the cliff that dropped off into the dark. This ending always made perfect sense to me, and I never considered it a cheat, like the bulls.h.i.t equivalent of it all being a dream or something. My dad disagreed though, before he died for the last time, ejecting the movie immediately after that coda and breaking the videotape across his knee. And his knee off with it.

We climb onto the roof. Tonight, there are two of us still able to walk. In the distance, the fields are full of stick figures marching across the pumpkin orange horizon. They're a couple miles away yet, but they're moving so slow, just like they're supposed to. It'll take them the rest of the day to get here.

But these zombies aren't playing the game. They don't seem to have any respect, or love, for their predicament. I can tell by their gait. It's too slow. I can tell by those heads that hang lower than they need to.

They want to pretend they're us playing the game, which isn't the same thing at all, I swear.

I just don't understand them. This lack of love for the genre. It's like Romero's last zombie pumping invisible gas for invisible cars. Why did it bother? I'll tell you why.

Because this place really was a good idea, even before s.h.i.t went down. Ask anybody. Then move their mouth to answer you.

I hear wood crack and pop. Splinters. A zombie's worst enemy. Looking over the edge, I watch a dog walk through our house, straight through the wall under me as if it's made of smoke. A dog. Not a zombie's worst enemy, but certainly not our best friend.

It exits the other side, crashing through another wall weakened by a decade of pounding, moaning, and the weight of slumped, tired shoulders. The entire west side of the house explodes all around the dog's path, filling the sunshine with dust and drywall snow. We can't rebuild that.

You ever leave a snow globe in the sun by accident? The water turns to p.i.s.s. But it's a beautiful color really, especially when the sky overflows with it.

But the dog could give a f.u.c.k about these things. It just shakes the shards and nails off its back without missing a step or slowing down.

A shadow will sit down next to me, and I will block the sunrise with my good hand to see. I won't know who it is, but I will decide it's her this time.

Even at the end of everything again, both together on the roof like we're supposed to be, I will clear my throat to ask her a question.

"Let's just wait and see what happens," she will tell me.

I will sigh and take this to mean that, apparently, another dead man with a better character trait than my nervous cough could be shuffling down the hill any second.

"Let's take things slow," she will say.

"Any slower and we'll stop," I will laugh, helping her move her jaw on the word "slow," so I know she means it. I will move in close to her lips and remember her telling me about a game called Zombie Kisses she played back in school. It was just like Spin The Bottle except when she was slouching in that circle, she was hiding an ice cube under her tongue.

Back on the field, I won't be able to tell if they're moving anymore. The sun even moves faster than us these days, so they may not be here for days. Plenty of time to clean up, maybe play another game before the world ends again.

Then everyone will be coming out of the house, cheering and applause if they're able, squinting up high to see who won, not even bothering to gather up any parts of themselves that they will lose again and again. Then they will start to walk in a circle if they can, talking about movies, hands and heads be d.a.m.ned. I will turn to her.

I bite.

NIGHT OF THE JIKININKI.

By Edward M. Erdelac.

Edward M. Erdelac was born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, and lives in the Los Angeles area with his family. He is an award winning screenwriter, an independent filmmaker, and sometime contributor to Star Wars canon. Author of the Merkabah Rider series, his weird westerns have seen print on both sides of the pond, but he's way pleased for the opportunity to take a left turn and give rein to his rabid admiration for old school chanbara movies, Romero, and the great Kazuo Koike here.

In the 11th month of the second year of genbun (1737), a comet was observed in the western sky ...

-from The Annals of the Emperors of j.a.pan, Isaac t.i.tsingh.

The first time k.u.mada Sadahiko ever cut off a man's head was when he was twelve years old. His father took him to the execution ground at Kozukaparra and commanded him to behead four condemned men, one after the other. His skinny arms had shaken so badly at first he had feared he would not sever the neck, or else that he would send the head spiraling into the lap of the observing official. His father's long hours of instruction had pulled him through though, and he had delivered a nearly perfect dakikubi cut, leaving the head dangling by the requisite sc.r.a.p of flesh. The shock of the strike traveling up his arms had driven all hesitancy from him forever and enamored him to the art of decapitation.

Even the commissioner of swords had remarked at his skill, so remarkable in a beginner.

"He will be sought after as a kaishaku," the commissioner predicted, and it was so.

Over the years he acted as second in eleven state sanctioned suicides, performing the traditional decapitation, including that of his own father, ordered by the bakufu government to cut his stomach open after han investigators discovered he had committed serious bookkeeping infractions.

"Do not think I ask this of you because you are a model samurai," his father had told him the day he received the order. "I do it because I know you will perform the duty flawlessly and I will not linger; because I am a coward and a failure as a samurai and a father. You are a butchering fiend, Sadahiko-a blood splashed dog. You would lap at the stumps of your victims if it were permitted. I have raised a monster. And the time for monsters is ending."

It was true that Sadahiko loved killing and cutting more than anything. He thrilled to see a blade slice flesh and bone, to hear the singular sound of a sword parting a head from its shoulders, to see that head bounce upon the breast and hang as the body stiffened a second before tumbling forward to spill into the blood pit. A decapitation gave him the same sort of satisfaction as the shodo brush strokes gave a master calligrapher. He had come into some renown as a suemono-shi, an itinerant sword tester whose services were much requested. His customers held him up against even the shogun's own Yamada testers.

Cutting the bodies of executed criminals thrilled him too. A body could be essentially mutilated under the eyes of an appreciative audience, all in the name of gauging the edge and durability of a blade. The office suited him. He took supreme enjoyment in his work.

It was what had brought him here to the f.u.kuyama han prison on this chill morning, to test a sword for Lord Abe.

He watched the two eta corpse handlers set down the stretcher bearing the naked cadaver of a man. They removed the staring head from where it rested in the crook of its own arm. They lifted the body and lay it across the waiting sand mound, arranging it on its back between up thrust stalks of bamboo. This criminal had been beheaded early this morning by the prison's executioner. Sadahiko regretted not having arrived soon enough to volunteer for the duty himself.

Lord Abe sat on the examiner's mat in a handsome kimono bearing the oak leaf badges of his clan. He was flanked by the consultant inspector, the sword appraiser, and the young prison warden. The sandy execution ground was white with snow. Sadahiko stood out like a dark stain in his black clothes.

One of the a.s.sistants removed a bright sword from a long, lacquered box and presented it to him. It was of Kanen.o.bu make. Very fine, though not so fine to him as his own blade, Tasogare.

He placed the cold steel to his forehead and snapped its naked tang into a plain wooden handle he kept for that purpose. Shrugging out of his haori jacket, he touched the back of the sword to the dead man's chest, just under the breastbone (a suritsuke cut through the middle of the torso had been requested) and touched the sand and snow covered ground with his left hand, saluting Lord Abe.

Lord Abe nodded his a.s.sent to proceed.

Sadahiko rose to his feet. Grasping the sword in both hands, he planted his feet and drew it back behind his head, so that the flat nearly touched his posterior. He stared down at the headless body, focusing on the pale torso, already bisecting it with his eyes. Bodies retained fat in the winter, so the cut would not be easy. He contracted his hard muscles, and when all was in readiness, he dropped to a crouch, flinging the blade down before him with all the momentum of his body and a loud kiai yell.

The corpse collapsed inward at the torso like a broken board as the sword cut it in two. There was a satisfying 'whack' as the blade split the spine and buried itself a few inches into the sand below.

Sadahiko stifled a smile and withdrew the blade, wiping the blood from it and handing it to an a.s.sistant.

"A very fine sword," he said. "My compliments."

The corpse handlers each took a half of the body and hauled it to the litter where its head had waited impa.s.sively throughout the demonstration.

The officials moved forward and inspected the bloodstained mound while the a.s.sistant measured the depth of the cut.

"Very impressive, k.u.mada," Lord Abe said. "It's always a pleasure to see you work."

Sadahiko bowed low.

"You do me honor, Lord."

The a.s.sistant handed him a scroll and ink and he stooped to write his official report of the sword, which an engraver would later emblazon on its nakago.

"I should think that was a difficult stroke," said the prison warden, obviously excited. "But you made it look easy."

"It's fairly easy," said Sadahiko off handedly.

"What's the most difficult cut to make? I've heard to sever the breastbone itself takes a lot of power."

"Yes," said Sadahiko, signing and dating his report and returning it to the a.s.sistant. "But to bisect a corpse at the waist is the most difficult."

"Have you ever cut a man down in a fight, k.u.mada-sama?"

It was an impetuous question, and Lord Abe smirked. His expression said the warden was young and could be forgiven, but Sadahiko did not smile. The question stabbed him as surely as a spear point. For all his lauded skill, he had never cut a man standing in a life and death situation. The knowledge of it nagged him. There had never been an opportunity, he told himself. This was a peaceful time and except for the occasional drunken brawl or peasant uprising, there were no duels to be fought, no battles in which to test himself. He knew the whispers too-that his profession, for all its artistry, was not honorable. Some said the suemono-shi had only come about because the n.o.bles themselves looked down on the practice of cutting corpses and hired men like him to do their testing as a rich man might hire the services of an eta butcher to slaughter an ox for his dinner.

"With his skill, you can be a.s.sured a man like k.u.mada has seen his fare share of fights, warden," said Lord Abe, deflecting the warden's query.

"Of course," said the warden, sensing his mistake. He nodded to Sadahiko. "If I've offended you, I'm sorry."

"There was no offense," Sadahiko a.s.sured him tersely.

"Please, if you will, have tea with me at my residence," the warden offered. "Have you eaten?"

"Thank you, but I have another client coming here tomorrow and the road from Fuch has left me tired."

Lord Abe cleared his throat.