Zombies: The Recent Dead Part 17

"This is the Llys Helig stretch, isn't it?" My voice was steady, just. "We were talking about it, just before. What was it your dad used to say about this stretch?"

Danny was nodding before I'd finished. Clearly he'd been thinking along the same lines. "It was all along the banks here." He gestured out across the waves. "All the old fishermen; they said the sea was twitchy from here out to Puffin Island." Twitchy; that had been it. Strange word to use. "They said . . . they said it would spit out its drowned." He glanced back towards the wheelhouse unhappily.

"Yeah," I said, looking straight at Claire. I was going to tell her she was right, if I could find the bottle to come out with it, but in the end I just nodded. She didn't say anything; but she put a hand to my face and I held it, very tight.

"What are we gonna do-" began Danny, but then Jack shouted from down the engine hatch, "Oy! k.n.o.bber! Hand down here? Jesus . . . "

"Okay," I said, deciding I'd be the grown-up on this boat. "Look, whatever we do, we've got to get moving again. You go and get those diesels started up, Danny."

He was half-way over to the hatch before he remembered who was supposed to be playing captain. "What about you two? What are you going to do?"

"We're going to take care of the other thing," I said. In all my years on boats I'd never been seasick; but I came close to it then, thinking about what the two of us would have to do next.

Claire and I talked it over for five minutes or so. It wasn't that we disagreed on the crux of it-I think part of her had sensed the truth about Andy almost from the start, and I was all the way convinced by now-but she wasn't happy with what I proposed doing about it.

"It's murder," she said, and I said, "How can it be? He's dead already." Saying it like that was awful; as bad as touching him would have been, knowing what we knew now, as bad as the thought that what you'd touch was . . . not alive, not in any way that you could recognize. But something in her balked at doing the necessary thing. I tried to argue my case, to convince her, but the trouble was, what I wanted to do had nothing with reason or logic. It was as instinctive as treading in something and wiping your foot clean; as brushing a fly off your food.

But she knew that as well, every bit as much as I did. More so, because she'd been down in the cabin with him, had laid hands on his bare skin and felt . . . what she'd felt. I think those scruples we were both wrestling with were actually something more like nostalgia, a longing for the last few remnants of the everyday shape of things. Maybe in situations like that, you'll hang on to anything that says, this isn't happening, everything is perfectly normal, you can't seriously be going to do this . . .

But we were going to do it, because it had to be done. We couldn't have taken that back to harbor with us-we couldn't have walked him off the boat, taken him back to his dad in Conwy and said, look, here he is, here's your lad Andy back safe and sound. That would have been a hundred times crueler than what we were about to do now. So yes, I felt bad; but it was the lesser of two evils. I was completely sure of that, just as sure as I was that come the daylight, I would probably feel like the s.h.i.ttiest, most cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin in all creation. But it was hours yet till the daylight, and below decks we had a dead man who didn't know he was dead yet. So I went into the wheelhouse, stood at the top of the companionway and called "Andy?" The first time it got swallowed up in a sort of gag reflex; I gulped, and called out again, "Andy?"

No answer from below decks; just the slow pinging of the fish-finder. This was what I'd been afraid of. Gingerly, I grabbed the woodwork of the companionway hatch, and lowered myself into the s.p.a.ce below decks. I was ready to spring back if anything happened; what, I didn't know. But I knew that I didn't want to do this; didn't want to look now into the lantern light and see- He was sitting just as we'd left him. The jumper Claire had tried to put on him was ruched up around his chest; he had one arm still caught in the arm-hole, and I think it was that-something as ba.n.a.l and stupid as that-that finally convinced me, if I'd really needed convincing. A child could have poked his arm through that sleeve-would have done it, out of pure reflex; but Andy hadn't.

I stepped down, till there was just the table between us. "Andy?" I said again, and he looked up. I was already making to look away, but I couldn't help it, our eyes met. His eyes were so black, so empty; how could I have looked into them and thought him alive?

I'd meant to say something else, but what came out was, "You all right?" It was crazy enough on the face of it, but what would have been normal? He nodded; I could see him nodding, as I stared down at my feet. "Cold," he said; that was all. Then, out of nowhere, I found myself saying, "Come on: let's get your arm through there."

Considering what I had in mind, seemed like the height of hypocrisy; but I think it was a kinder instinct than I gave myself credit for at the time. Steeling myself, still not looking him straight in the face, I reached across and lifted the folding table up. I stretched out the wool of the jumper with one hand and slipped the other into the sleeve. Feeling around inside, my fingers touched his: he was making no attempt to reach through and hold on, which was probably just as well. Cold? More than cold; it was as if he'd never been warm, as if he'd lain on that ocean bed for as long as the sea had lain on the land. Fighting to keep my guts down, I dragged his arm through and let go the jumper. Released, his arm fell back down by his side; dead weight.

Doing that helped me with what came next, with the physical side of it at least. "Right," I said, in a ghastly pretence at practicality; "let's get you up on deck, shall we?" He looked up blankly. I had to look, had to make sure he was going to do it. Those eyes: I couldn't afford to look into them for too long. G.o.d knows what I would have seen in there; or what he might have seen in mine, perhaps. "Come on," I said, turned part-way away from him. "They're waiting for you up on deck."

In the end I had to help him to his feet. He was like a machine running down, almost; I hate to think what would have happened if we'd actually tried to take him back to dry land. Even through the layer of wool I could feel a dreadful pulpiness everywhere that wasn't bone. Again the gag came in my throat; I clamped my jaw shut and took him under one arm, and he came up unresisting, balanced precariously in his squelching shoes. A little puddle of rank seawater had collected around his feet. The smell-I was close enough to get the smell now, but I don't want to talk about it. I dream about it, sometimes, on bad sweating nights in the hot midsummer.

I motioned him ahead. Obediently, he stepped forward, and as he pa.s.sed me I saw the horrible indentation in the back of his skull. The hair which had covered it before had flattened now, and the concave dent was all too clearly visible. No one could have taken a wound like that and survived. Just before I looked away, the bile rising in my throat, I thought I saw something in there; something white and wriggling. I came very near to losing it entirely in that moment.

If he'd needed help getting up the companionway, I would've had to have called Danny through-there was no way I could have touched him, not after seeing that wound in the back of his head. As it was, he put one foot on the steps, then, after what seemed ages, the next, and trudged up into the wheelhouse. I tried to focus on the normal things: on the feel of the wooden rail as I stepped up behind him into the wheelhouse; on the bra.s.s plaque that said Katie Mae, there beside the wheel; on the ping of the fish-finder in the silence. As Andy paused, silhouetted against the dim starlight of outside, waiting for me to tell him what to do next, I took several deep breaths. "Now?" I said, and waited for Claire's voice.

"Now," she said, a small voice from out of the darkness, and I ran forwards with both arms straight out in front of me. Andy was in the act of turning round, and I just glimpsed his eyes; there was a greenish phosph.o.r.escence to them in the dark, and Claire said later that I screamed out loud as my hands made contact with his shoulder-blades.

He was standing in the wheelhouse doorway. Ahead of him was just the narrow stretch of deck that linked fore and aft, and then the low side of the boat. Claire was crouching beneath the level of the wheelhouse door; on my signal she'd straightened up on to her hands and knees as I came up on Andy from behind. My push sent him careening forwards; he flipped straight over Claire's upthrust back and out over the side of the boat. There was a solid, crunching impact as he hit the water; Claire was up off her knees and into my arms as the cold spray drenched the pair of us.

"What the f.u.c.k?" It was Jack. He was standing in the engine hatch; clearly he couldn't believe what he'd just seen. "You stupid b.l.o.o.d.y-what the f.u.c.k, man?" He clambered up through the hatch and started towards us. Claire tried to get in his way, but he pushed her angrily to one side; she went sprawling into the wheelhouse. Jack squared up to me, fists clenched: no matter how smoothly it had gone with Andy, I saw I was in for at least one fight that evening. He swung away, cursing, and dropped to his knees; I realized he was scrabbling around down in the gutters for the boat-hook he'd used earlier, so that he could fish Andy out of the water a second time.

I was backing round on to the foredeck, trying to think what to do, how to explain it to him, when several things happened more or less simultaneously.

The spotlight on top of the wheelhouse glowed dully for a moment, then blinked sharply back into life; it caught Jack in the act of rising from his knees, boathook in one hand, the other shielding his squinting eyes as the beam shone full into his face. Danny's voice rose above the engine sound: "Got you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Batteries up and running!" And in the wheelhouse, Claire was shouting: "Will? Will!"

Heedless of Jack, who by then was down on his knees plunging the boathook into the black water, I pushed past and into the wheelhouse. "What? What is it?"

Fist up to her mouth, Claire just stood there, unable to speak. Then she pointed at the console. The fish-finder was beeping still, more frequently than before, more insistently. I looked at the traces on screen and my mouth went dry.

Down underneath the Katie Mae, fathoms down in the dark and cold, big sluggish blips were rising; detaching themselves from the sea-bed, drifting up towards the surface. I didn't need Jack to interpret them for me this time; I recognized them all too well. Before, we'd thought they were seals. Now, we knew better.

" . . . Stay here," I managed to get out. Claire nodded, and I turned back to the doorway of the wheelhouse. There was Jack, bending over the side of the boat, his back to us. The stretch of water beyond him was brightly illuminated by our spotlight, still pointing where Claire had left it earlier. One look was all I needed. I grabbed Jack by the shoulder: he'd managed to hook a shapeless ma.s.s in the water, and was struggling to bring it in to the side of the boat. "Jack, Jack," I croaked in his ear; "wait, no, look out there . . . "

He pushed me away with a curse, went on trying to raise up the body in the water. I thumped his back, hard, and he swung round, ready to hit me. "f.u.c.king look," I hissed, and almost despite himself he turned round.

There they were, caught by the spotlight on the still surface; bodies, rising up out of the sea. Five or six just in that bright ellipse of light; how many others, out there in the dark where we couldn't see? I'd counted at least a dozen on the fish-finder; there might be more by now. A low, unspeakably nasty sound came back to us over the waves, somewhere between a hiss and a gurgle. At the same time a stink hit us from off the water, like nothing I'd smelled before nor want to ever again. Jack turned back to me, round-eyed, horrified; opened his mouth to say something. Then it happened.

A hand came up and grasped the boathook. It nearly pulled Jack in; quickly he steadied himself, clutching at me and letting go his grip on the wooden shaft. The thing that had grabbed it-the thing Jack had thought was Andy-disappeared under the waves again, taking the boathook down with it, then bobbed back up to the surface. Whatever it was, it had been down there far longer than Andy had. Most of what had once made it human was rotted away; what was left was vile beyond my capacity to describe. It rested there on the swell awhile, goggling up at us as we stood petrified on the deck. Then, without warning, it swung the boathook up out of the water.

The metal hook ripped a long hole in Jack's T-shirt. Within seconds, the whole of his chest was slick with blood. He staggered back, and the hook caught on the belt of his jeans. It nearly dragged him into the water, but I grabbed him just in time. He was screaming, wordlessly, incoherently. So was I; but I held on tight, arms round his body, feet braced against the scuppers, straining backwards with all my might.

I managed to call out Danny's name. I felt him grab on to me from behind and yelled as loudly as I could, "Pull!" We both strained away, and then all of a sudden the pressure was off and we all three of us went sprawling backwards, me on top of Danny, Jack across both of us. We disentangled ourselves, and Jack pulled clear the boathook from his belt. Before he flung the whole thing as far away as he could, we had just enough time to see the hand and lower part of an arm that still clung to the other end.

Meanwhile Danny had seen what was happening out on the water, the bodies coming to the surface all around. From the look on his face I knew he was going to lose it unless I did something drastic, so without thinking I spun him round and practically threw him into the wheelhouse. "Get us out of here," I told him, and turned back to where Jack was kneeling on the deck. There was blood all over him, and over me too where I'd held on to him: I knelt down alongside him to see how badly he was hurt, but he pushed me away. I knew it was because of what Claire and I had done to Andy, but there was no time for that now. I looked round for something I could use to defend the boat with, yelling over my shoulder, "Danny! Move it!"

A throaty grumble came from aft as the diesels turned over, choked momentarily, then caught. "Get us out," I shouted, as there came a clang from the foredeck. I clambered up around the wheelhouse, spinning the spotlight around to face for'ard as I went. There was the boathook that Jack had thrown away, snagged this time on the prow. Something was using it to clamber up and over the rail: without thinking I ran towards it and kicked out hard. My foot sank part-way into a soft crunching ma.s.s; the momentum almost sent me spinning over, but I managed to steady myself on the Samson post as the thing splashed backwards into the water. There was something on my foot, some reeking slimy filth or other-I was sc.r.a.ping it frenziedly against one of the cleats, trying to get the worst of it off, when I became aware of Danny hammering the gla.s.s windscreen of the wheelhouse.

He was yelling something about "haul it in": I didn't understand what he was saying at first, but then I realized. We were still riding at anchor; Danny had revved the engines to loosen the anchor from its lodgement on the sea-bed, but before we could open up the throttle and head for clear water it needed to be winched all the way back in.

I edged back round the side of the wheelhouse, with no time to stop for Claire as she pressed her face to the gla.s.s, her lips forming words I couldn't hear. Below me, down in the water, things were moving up against the side of the boat. We had to get clear.

The capstan was on the starboard side, by the door to the wheelhouse. I gave a tug at the anchor-rope: it wouldn't shift. "Again," I called up to Danny in the wheelhouse; he engaged reverse thrust again, and the rope creaked, then gave a little as the anchor cleared the sea-bed. I threw the switch that turned on the electric motor of the capstan, but just at that moment there came a vicious tug on the rope. Sparks flashed beneath the motor housing, and an acrid gout of smoke rose from the capstan-head; I tried it again, and again, but the motor had burned out. Frantically, I tried to use the hand-bars to winch up the anchor, but the whole thing seemed to be fused solid. "Jack," I shouted; he looked up from where he lay cradling his stomach, saw the problem, and struggled over to help.

Five fathoms, maybe six; that's thirty-six feet of rope first, then chain, and a heavy iron anchor at the end of it. It took Jack and I all the strength we could muster to raise it, arm over arm, winding the slack around the useless capstan-head. It wasn't the first time we'd had to haul up an anchor manually, but it seemed far heavier now than it ever had before, impossibly heavy, and when we'd got it almost all the way up, as far as the ten foot or so of chain before the anchor itself, I looked over the side to see if we were still snagged on anything.

Have patience with me now, because I have to tell this a certain way. In the village where I used to live as a child, near Diss in Norfolk, there was a pool out in the fields which was absolutely stiff with rudd, a freshwater fish related to the roach. We used to tie a piece of string around a fivepenny loaf and throw it in, and then we'd watch the water boil as we pulled on the string to bring the bread back up, the whole thing completely covered in a huge squirming feeding-cl.u.s.ter of rudd. That scene, that image, was what I thought of as I peered over the side of the Katie Mae and saw the anchor just below the surface.

Cl.u.s.tered round the anchor, hanging on to it in a crawling hideous ma.s.s, were maybe six or seven of the bodies; dragged up from the oozing deep, these, up from long years of slow decay down where the sun's warmth and light never penetrates, there on the chilly bottom. Green phosph.o.r.escent eyes stared back at me, and a billow of putrescence erupted in bubbles on to the surface. I dropped the anchor chain as if it had been electrified, and the gruesome ma.s.s sank back a foot or two into the water.

"Hang on!" Jack grabbed at the chain quickly before the lot went down again. "Keep it tight!" Out of his pocket he pulled a hunting-knife; I didn't get what he meant to do with it until he began to saw at the anchor-rope above the chain where it was wound round the capstan. Understanding at last, I pulled on the chain to keep the line taut. All the while, I was hearing things: sounds of splashing and gulping from over the side where the anchor was banging against the hull, and that awful gurgling hiss rising off the water again. Out of nowhere, words came into my head: the voices of all the drowned . . .

I didn't dare look down there; only when Jack sawed through the last strands of the rope and the freed chain rattled over the side did I risk one quick glance over, just in time to see the anchor with its cl.u.s.ter of bodies receding into the deep. Hands clutched vainly up towards the surface, and those greenish eyes blinked out into cold fathoms of blackness.

Sick to my stomach with fear and disgust, I turned away to where Jack was clambering to his feet. I tried to help him up, but he brushed my hand away and went foraging instead through the storage box where we'd formerly kept the anchor and its chain. He came up with an old length of chain about four feet long; he took a couple of turns around his fist, and swung the rest around. "You take the for'ard," he said, wincing as he held his wounded stomach; "I'll get the aft. Get something from in here-" he kicked the storage box-"and use the spotlight if you can, so's we can see what we're up against. Danny!" He roared the last word in the direction of the wheelhouse. "What's with the f.u.c.king hold-up? They're all around us, man: Will and me can't keep 'em off forever, you know!"

The boat was hardly moving in the water. From aft came the sound of spluttering, overstressed engines; Jack swore and looked at me narrowly. "You just keep your eyes peeled back here," was all he said; he tossed me the length of chain and stumbled off into the wheelhouse to get the Katie Mae moving again. Around us in the water, the shapes multiplied: there must have been twenty of them now, more maybe. Drawn by G.o.d knows what-the promise of dry land, perhaps, or some primal impulse more atavistic, more terrible than that-they were converging on the boat. And all I had was a four-foot length of chain to keep them off.

Maybe not all: suddenly there was the beam of the spotlight shining on to the aft deck, picking out the white painted railings, the glimmer of the sea beyond and below. I heard Claire's voice: "Over that way, Will;" the beam swung round, then steadied on a ghastly greenish arm slung over the port side.

I swung the chain at it. It cut a rent along the length of the arm, laid bare the glint of white bone, but the fingers didn't relinquish their grip. A head and shoulders hoisted up above the side of the boat. I gave it another swing of the chain, and this time the contact was good. It toppled upside-down, its head in the water, its feet caught up in the tyre buffers slung around the hull, and with a few more slashes I managed to dislodge it entirely. But by then Claire was screaming, "Behind you, behind you," and when I turned round another of the creatures was already halfway over the aft rail. Again I let fly, but not strongly or viciously enough. The chain only wrapped around its arm: it caught hold of the links, and began tugging me in towards it. Repulsed, I let go immediately; the thing teetered there a moment, then the engines kicked in at last. It was caught off balance and fell backwards: a horrible splintering noise and a shiver that went clean through the boat told me it had hit the propeller.

We began to pick up speed, pulling away from the writhing ma.s.s of bodies on the surface, but there were still a dozen or more of the things hanging on to the side of the boat, arms twined in the tyre buffers, hands clutching on to the railings, hammering at the clanging echoing hull. If we slowed down, they would try again to get up on board. We had to shift them somehow. I was leaning over the side, whacking away with a wrench from down the engine hatch, when Jack appeared at my side. The blood had dried black all down him, and he looked like he should have been in a hospital bed; instead, he was sloshing diesel oil from a big jerrycan over the side of the boat and on to the clinging bodies. "What you doing?" was all I could get out between panting.

"Kill or cure," he said grimly, edging all along the side of the boat emptying out the diesel on to the creatures that hung leechlike to the hull. In a minute he was back round to my other side. He dumped the jerrycan straight down onto the head of one of the things, sending it sinking beneath the waves, then reached in his pocket and brought out his cherished old bra.s.s Zippo with the engraved marijuana leaf. With just a trace of his usual flamboyance, he flicked open the top and ran the wheel quickly along the seam of his bloodied jeans, down, then up, like a gunslinger's quick-draw. The flint struck and the flame sparked bright, first time every time; Jack held it aloft for a second, then dropped it over the side.

I snapped my head back just in time, feeling my eyebrows singe and shrivel in the sudden blast of heat. Immediately, flames sprang up all along the waterline, lighting up the ocean all around us a vivid orange. For a little while we could see every detail of the things in the water; how they writhed and bubbled in the flame, how their mouths opened and closed, how they charred and blackened as the fire licked up the hull, blistering the paintwork, setting light to the tyre-buffers. I heard a hissing indrawn breath from Jack beside me, thought for a moment oh no, he's f.u.c.ked up, he's got it wrong with the diesel, the ship's going up, and then I saw where he was looking down in the water. One of the burning bodies was Andy's: arm upraised, face still recognizable amidst the flames, it slowly rolled off the side and was lost in our wake, along with the rest of the corpses of the drowned.

It was already brightening in the east as we brought the Katie Mae back into harbor. All her sides were scorched and black and battered, and we-her crew-were similarly scarred, though in ways less obvious and maybe less repairable with a sanding-off and a fresh lick of paint. Jack had refused our help with his stomach wound on the way back; he'd sat out on the aft deck hugged into a fetal tuck, not talking to anyone, not looking anywhere except backwards at our lengthening wake. Claire and I sat squeezed up on the wheelhouse bench behind Danny, who stood at the wheel staring for'ard all the way home to Beuno's Cove. We didn't try talking to each other; really, what was there to say?

When we came alongside, Jack scrambled up on to the quayside to tie us up. He stood looking back at the boat for a second, silhouetted above us in the predawn light, then without saying anything he turned away. I glanced back at Danny and saw he was crying. Perhaps I should have done something, I don't know what, but Claire took my hand and more or less dragged me up on to the quay. We left him there on the deck; I wanted to say, are you going to be okay, but perhaps Claire was right. It was the last time I ever set foot on the Katie Mae.

Back home Claire ran straight upstairs and turned the shower on. I went up after about twenty minutes and she was squatting in a corner of the stall with the hot water running cold, arms wound about her knees, sobbing uncontrollably. What could I do? I got in there and fetched her out, got her dry, got her warm; but I couldn't stop her shivering, not until she finally fell asleep on the bed, hours later, after we'd tried and failed to talk through the events of the night just gone. We tried several times again, in the days and weeks that followed, but it never came to anything; we felt the way murderers must feel, and so, I suppose, did Jack, because not long after he moved away, and no one ever saw him again, not Claire or me, not even Danny.

Back to that first morning, though, the morning after. I stayed with Claire for a while till I was sure she was properly asleep, then I eased off the bed and went downstairs. There was a book I'd borrowed from Danny's old man, a collection of maritime myths and legends of North Wales: I went through it and found the entry for Llys Helig. A curse had been laid on Helig's family and their lands, vengeance for old wrongs, a whispering voice coming out of nowhere heard all around the great halls and gardens of Llys Helig prophesying doom on his grandsons and great-grandsons, and one day the floodwaters came and washed over everything. And ever since, said the legend, the drowned have never rested easy in that stretch. As if. I preferred Danny's dad's unvarnished version myself: that the sea was just twitchy out there, no more, no less. Nothing you could explain away with spells and whispers and fairy tales, a condition no story would cover; just a state of things, something you knew about and left well alone, if you knew what was good for you.

But there was something else; something that had been at the back of my mind ever since I'd first heard those hisses and gurgles out on the waves. I didn't have nearly as many books then as I have now, but it still took me the best part of half an hour to lay my hands on it: Dylan Thomas' Selected Poems. And I read there the poem, the one I'd half-remembered: Under the mile off moon we trembled listening To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Upstairs Claire moaned a little in her sleep. I got up, climbed the creaky stairs as quietly as I could, and eased myself on to the bed beside her. The curtains were pulled to, and the little bedroom under the eaves was getting stuffy in the full heat of the day. The paperback was still in my other hand, finger marking my place, and I read from it again: We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

I shivered, and beside me Claire shivered too, as if in unconscious sympathy. The sun was hot and strong through the bright yellow curtains, but I felt as if I'd never be warm again.

About the Author.

Steve Duffy's stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Europe and North America. His third collection of short supernatural fiction, Tragic Life Stories (Ash-Tree Press), was launched in Brighton, England, at the World Horror Convention 2010; his fourth, The Moment of Panic is due to appear in 2011, and will include the International Horror Guild award-winning short story, "The Rag-and-Bone Men." Steve lives in North Wales. "Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed" was first published in 2007 in the Ash-Tree Press anthology At Ease With The Dead. It was nominated for that year's International Horror Guild Award for mid-length fiction, and seems to have tickled the fancy of quite a few readers and editors since then, which its author finds hugely gratifying. Thanks are due to Phil Wood, whose input into maritime goings-on was invaluable during the writing of the story, and whose friendship has been invaluable for much, much longer than that.

Story Notes.

And my thanks to Barbara Roden who reminded me of this chilling story from At Ease with the Dead: New Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre which she and her husband, Christopher edited a few years back.

Although we know the supernatural is at work here, I couldn't help but think about this story forensically, too, since some of our zombies display signs of being in the water longer than "Andy." Here are a few things I found out from Forensic Taphonomy: The Postmortem Fate of Human Remains, edited by by William D. Haglund and Marcella H. Sorg (CRC-Press, 1997): Bodies cool more rapidly in water than in air so decomposition, skeletonization, and disarticulation take longer; the colder the water, the slower the process. Thicker, nonorganic clothing can decelerate it somewhat, too, but marine scavengers chewing, biting, and tearing clothing can increase the surface area of the tissue resulting in faster microsavenger and bacterial activity. Crabs, by the way, like to attack facial flesh, eyes, and soft internal organs first. And wait till you get to the part about the role of sessile invertebrates . . .

The Great Wall: A Story from the Zombie War.

Max Brooks.

The following interview was conducted by the author as part of his official duties with the United Nations Commission for postwar data collection. Although excerpts have appeared in official UN reports, the interview in its entirety was omitted from Brook's personal publication, now ent.i.tled World War Z due to bureaucratic mismanagement by UN archivists. The following is a first-hand account of a survivor of the great crisis many now refer to simply as "The Zombie War."

The Great Wall: Section 3947-11, Shaanxi, China Liu Huafeng began her career as a sales girl at the Takashimaya department store in Taiyuan and now owns a small general store near the sight of its former location. This weekend, as with the first weekend of every month, is her reserve duty. Armed with a radio, a flare gun, binoculars, and a DaDao, a modernized version of the ancient Chinese broadsword, she patrols her five-kilometer stretch of the Great Wall with nothing but the "the wind and my memories" for company.

This section of the Wall, the section I worked on, stretches from Yulin to Shemnu. It had originally been built by the Xia Dynasty, constructed of compacted sand and reed-lined earth encased on both sides by a thick outer sh.e.l.l of fired mud brick. It never appeared on any tourist postcards. It could never have hoped to rival sections of the Ming-Era, iconic stone "dragon spine." It was dull and functional, and by the time we began the reconstruction, it had almost completely vanished.

Thousands years of erosion; storms and desertification, had taken a drastic toll. The effects of human "progress" had been equally destructive. Over the centuries, locals had used-looted-its bricks for building materials. Modern road construction had done its part, too, removing entire sections that interfered with "vital" overland traffic. And, of course, what nature and peacetime development had begun, the crisis, the infestation and the subsequent civil war finished within the course of several months. In some places, all that was left were crumbling hummocks of compact filler. In many places, there was nothing at all.

I didn't know about the new government's plan to restore the Great Wall for our national defense. At first, I didn't even know I was part of the effort. In those early days, there were so many different people, languages, local dialects that they could have been birdsong for all the sense it made to me. The night I arrived, all you could see were torches and headlights of a few broken-down cars. I had been walking for nine days by this point. I was tired, frightened. I didn't know what I had found at first, only that the scurrying shapes in front of me were human. I don't know how long I stood there, but someone on a work gang spotted me. He ran over and started to chatter excitedly. I tried to show him that I didn't understand. He became frustrated, pointing at what looked like a construction sight behind him, a ma.s.s of activity that stretched left and right out into the darkness. Again, I shook my head, gesturing to my ears and shrugging like a fool. He sighed angrily, then raised his hand toward me. I saw he was holding a brick. I thought he was going to hit me with so I started to back away. He then shoved the brick in my hands, motioned to the construction sight, and shoved me toward it.

I got within arm's length of the nearest worker before he s.n.a.t.c.hed the brick away. This man was from Taiyuan. I understood him clearly. "Well, what the f.u.c.k are you waiting for?" He snarled at me, "We need more! Go! Go!" And that is how I was "recruited" to work on the new Great Wall of China.

[She gestures to the uniform concrete edifice.]

It didn't look at all like this that first frantic spring. What you are seeing are the subsequent renovations and reinforcements that adhere to late and postwar standards. We didn't have anything close to these materials back then. Most of our surviving infrastructure was trapped on the wrong side of the wall.

On the south side?

Yes, on the side that used to be safe, on the side that the Wall . . . that every Wall, from the Xia to the Ming was originally built to protect. The walls used to be a border between the haves and have-nots, between southern prosperity and northern barbarism. Even in modern times, certainly in this part of the country, most of our arable land, as well as our factories, our roads, rail lines and airstrips, almost everything we needed to undertake such a monumental task, was on the wrong side.

I've heard that some industrial machinery was transported north during the evacuation.

Only what could be carried on foot, and only what was in immediate proximity to the construction sight. Nothing farther than, say, twenty kilometers, nothing beyond the immediate battle lines or the isolated zones deep in infested territory.

The most valuable resource we could take from the nearby towns were the materials used to construct the towns themselves: wood, metal, cinder blocks, bricks-some of the very same bricks that had originally been pilfered from the wall. All of it went into the mad patchwork, mixed in with what could be manufactured quickly on sight. We used timber from the Great Green Wall5 reforestation project, pieces of furniture and abandoned vehicles. Even the desert sand beneath our feet was mixed with rubble to form part of the core or else refined and heated for blocks of gla.s.s.

Gla.s.s?

Large, like so . . . [she draws an imaginary shape in the air, roughly twenty centimeters in length, width and depth]. An engineer from Shijiazhuang had the idea. Before the war, he had owned a gla.s.s factory, and he realized that since this province's most abundant resources are coal and sand, why not use them both? A ma.s.sive industry sprung up almost overnight, to manufacture thousands of these large, cloudy bricks. They were thick and heavy, impervious to a zombie's soft, naked fist. "Stronger than flesh" we used say, and, unfortunately for us, much sharper-sometimes the glazier's a.s.sistants would forget to sand down the edges before laying them out for transport.

[She pries her hand from the hilt of her sword. The fingers remain curled like a claw. A deep, white scar runs down the width of one palm.]

I didn't know to wrap my hands. It cut right through to the bone, severed the nerves. I don't know how I didn't die of infection; so many others did.

It was a brutal, frenzied existence. We knew that every day brought the southern hordes closer, and that any second we delayed might doom the entire effort. We slept if we did sleep, where we worked. We ate where we worked, p.i.s.sed and s.h.i.t right where we worked. Children-the Night Soil Cubs-would hurry by with a bucket, wait while we did our business or else collect our previously discarded filth. We worked like animals, lived like animals. In my dreams I see a thousand faces, the people I worked with but never knew. There wasn't time for social interaction. We spoke mainly in hand gestures and grunts. In my dreams I try to find the time to speak to those alongside me, ask their names, their stories. I have heard that dreams are only in black and white. Perhaps that is true, perhaps I only remember the colors later, the light fringes of a girl whose hair had once been dyed green, or the soiled pink woman's bathrobe wrapped around a frail old man in tattered silken pajamas. I see their faces almost every night, only the faces of the fallen.

So many died. Someone working at your side would sit down for a moment, just a second to catch their breath, and never rise again. We had what could be described as a medical detail, orderlies with stretchers. There was nothing they could really do except try to get them to the aid station. Most of the time they didn't make it. I carry their suffering, and my shame with me each and every day.

Your shame?

As they sat, or lay at your feet . . . you knew you couldn't stop what you were doing, not even for a little compa.s.sion, a few kind words, at least make them comfortable enough to wait for the medics. You knew the one thing they wanted, what we all wanted, was water. Water was precious in this part of the province, and almost all we had was used for mixing ingredients into mortar. We were given less than half a cup a day. I carried mine around my neck in a recycled plastic soda bottle. We were under strict orders not to share our ration with the sick and injured. We needed it to keep ourselves working. I understand the logic, but to see someone's broken body curled up amongst the tools and rubble, knowing that the only mercy under heaven was just a little sip of water . . .

I feel guilty every time I think about it, every time I quench my thirst, especially because when it came my time to die, I happened, by sheer chance, to be near the aid station. I was on gla.s.s detail, part of the long, human conveyor to and from the kilns. I had been on the project for just under two months; I was starving, feverish, I weighed less than the bricks hanging from either side of my pole. As I turned to pa.s.s the bricks, I stumbled, landing on my face, I felt my two front teeth crack and tasted the blood. I closed my eyes and thought, This is my time. I was ready. I wanted it to end. If the orderlies hadn't been pa.s.sing by, my wish would have been granted.

For three days, I lived in shame; resting, washing, drinking as much water as I wanted while others were suffering every second on the wall. The doctors told me that I should stay a few extra days, the bare minimum to allow my body to recuperate. I would have listened if I didn't hear the shouts from an orderly at the mouth of the cave, "Red Flare!" he was calling. "Red Flare!"

Green flares meant an active a.s.sault, red meant overwhelming numbers. Reds had been uncommon, up until that point. I had only seen one, and that was far in the distance near the northern edge of Shemnu. Now they were coming at least once a week. I raced out of the cave, ran all the way back to my section, just in time to see rotting hands and heads begin to poke their way above the unfinished ramparts.

[We halt. She looks down at the stones beneath out feet.]

Here, right here. They were forming a ramp, using their trodden comrades for elevation. The workers were fending them off with whatever they could, tools and bricks, even bare fists and feet. I grabbed a rammer, an implement used for compacting earth. The rammer is an immense, unruly device, a meter-long metal shaft with horizontal handlebars on one end and a large, cylindrical, supremely heavy stone on the other. The rammer was reserved only for the largest and strongest men in our work gang. I don't know how I managed to lift, aim, and bring it crashing down, over and over, on the heads and faces of the zombies below me . . .

The military was supposed to be protecting us from overrun attacks like these, but there just weren't enough soldiers left by that time.

[She takes me to the edge of the battlements and points to something roughly a kilometer south of us.]

There.

[In the distance, I can just make out a stone obelisk rising from an earthen mound.]