Zombies: The Recent Dead Part 27

Vanessa Billings became Billy Morrison's main squeeze, and what with Vance and Donna's hangers-on, they had enough to form a new kind of gang. In the next few days, they would start breaking windows and setting fires.

Over at Callahan's, Craignotti continued to find fresh meat for the digging crew as the original members dropped out. Miguel Ayala had lasted three days before he claimed to have snagged a better job. Big Boyd Cooper stuck-he was a rationalist at heart, not predisposed to superst.i.tious fears or anything else in the path of Getting the Job Done. Jacky Tynan had apparently taken sick.

Joe had packed his saddlebags and gunned his panhead straight out of town, without calling Doug, or anyone.

In the Gudgell household, every day, a pattern commenced. In the morning, Conroy Gudgell would horsewhip his treacherous wife's naked a.s.s, and in the evening, Ellen Gudgell would murder her husband, again and again, over and over. The blood drenching the inside of their house was not ectoplasm. It continued to accrete, layer upon layer, as one day pa.s.sed into another.

In the middle of the night, Doug felt askew on the inside, and made the mistake of taking his own temperature with a thermometer.

Eighty-seven-point-five degrees.

"Yeah, you'll run a little cold," said Mich.e.l.le, from behind him. "I'm sorry about that. It's sort of a downside. Or maybe you caught something. Do you feel sick?"

"No, I-" Doug faltered. "I just feel s.h.a.gged. Weak."

"You're not a weak man.'

"Stop it." He turned, confrontational. He did not want to do anything to alienate her. But. "This is serious. What if I start losing core heat? Four or five degrees is all it takes, then I'm as dead as a Healthy Choice entree. What the h.e.l.l is happening, Mich.e.l.le? What haven't you told me?"

"I don't know," she said. Her eyes brightened with tears. "I'm not sure. I didn't come back with a G.o.dd.a.m.ned manual. I'm afraid that if I go ahead and do the next thing, the thing I feel I'm supposed to do . . . that I'll lose you."

Panic cinched his heart. "What's the next thing?"

"I was avoiding it. I was afraid to bring it up. Maybe I was enjoying this too much, what we have right now, in this isolated bubble of time."

He held her. She wanted to reject simple comfort, but succ.u.mbed. "Just . . . tell me. Say it, whatever it is. Then it's out in the world and we can deal with it."

"It's about Roch.e.l.le."

Doug nodded, having prepared for this one. "You miss her. I know. But we can't do anything about it. There'd be no way to explain it."

"I want her back." Mich.e.l.le's head was down, the tears coursing freely now.

"I know, baby, I know . . . I miss her, too. I wanted you guys to move in with me. Both of you. From here we could move anywhere, so long as it's out of this deathtrap of a town. Neither of us likes it here very much. I figured, in the course of time-"

She slumped on the bed, hands worrying each other atop her bare legs. "It was my dream, through all those hours, days, that things had happened differently, and we had hooked up, and we all got to escape. It would be great if you were just a means to an end; you know-just another male guy-person, to manipulate. Great if I didn't care about you; great if I didn't actually love you."

"I had to explain your death to Roch.e.l.le. There's no going back from that one. Look at it this way: she's with your mother, and she seemed like a nice lady."

When her gaze came up to meet his, her eyes were livid. "You don't know anything," she said, the words constricted and bitter. "Sweet, kindly old Grandma Farrier? She's a f.u.c.king s.a.d.i.s.t who has probably shot p.o.r.nos with Roch.e.l.le by now."

"What?!" Doug's jaw unhinged.

"She is one sick piece of s.h.i.t, and her mission was always to get Roch.e.l.le away from me, into her clutches. I ran away from home as soon as I could. And when I had Roch.e.l.le, I swore that b.i.t.c.h would never get her claws on my daughter. And you just . . . handed her over."

"Now, wait a minute, Mich.e.l.le She overrode him. "No-it's not your fault. She always presented one face to the world. Her fake face. Her human masque. Inside the family with the doors closed, it was different. You saw the masque. You dealt with the masque. So did Roch.e.l.le. Until Grandma could actually strap the collar on, she had to play it sneaky. Her real face is from a monster who needed to be inside a grave decades ago. I should know-she broke me in with a heated gla.s.s d.i.l.d.o when I was nine."

"Holy s.h.i.t. Mich.e.l.le, why didn't you tell me this before?"

"Which 'before'? Before now? Or before I died? Doug, I died not knowing you were as good as you are. I thought I could never make love to anybody, ever again. I concentrated on moving from place to place to keep Roch.e.l.le off the radar."

Doug toweled his hands, which were awash in nervous perspiration, yet irritatingly cold. Almost insensate. He needed to a.s.suage her terror, to fix the problem, however improbable; like Boyd Cooper, to Get the Job Done. "Okay. Fine. I'll just go get her back. We'll figure something out."

"I can't ask you to do that."

"Better yet, how about we both go get her? Seeing you ought to make Grandma's brain hit the floor."

"That's the problem, Doug. It's been the problem all along. I can't leave here. None of us can. If we do . . . if any of us goes outside of Triple Pines . . . "

"You don't mean 'us' as in you-and-me. You're talking about us as in the former occupants of Hollymount Cemetery, right?"

She nodded, more tears spilling. "I need you to f.u.c.k me. And I need you to love me. And I was hoping that you could love me enough so that I didn't have to force you to take my place in that hole in the ground, like all the rest of the G.o.dd.a.m.ned losers and dim bulbs and fly-over people in Triple Pines. I want you to go to San Francisco, and get my daughter back. But if you stay here if you go away and come back here-eventually I'll use you up anyway. I've been taking your heat, Doug, a degree at a time. And eventually you would die, and then resurrect, and then you would be stuck here too. An outsider, stuck here. And no matter what anyone's good intentions are, it would also happen to Roch.e.l.le. I can't kill my little girl. And I can't hurt you any more. It's killing me, but-what a joke-I can't die." She looked up, her face a raw, aching map of despair. "You see?"

Mich.e.l.le had not, been a local, either. But she had died here, and become a permanent resident in the Triple Pines boneyard. The population of the town was slowly shifting balance. The dead of Triple Pines were pushing out the living, seeking that stasis of small town stability where once again, everyone would be the same. What happened in Triple Pines had to stay in Triple Pines, and the Marlboro Reservoir was no boon to the community. It was going to service coastal cities; Doug knew this in his gut, now. In all ways, for all concerned, Triple Pines was the perfect place for this kind of thing to transpire, because the outside world would never notice, or never care.

With one grating exception. Which suggested one frightening solution.

Time to get out. Time to bail, now.

"Don't you see?" she said. "If you don't get out now, you'll never get out. Get out, Doug. Kiss me one last time and get out. Try to think of me fondly."

His heart smashed to pieces and burned to ashes, he kissed her. Her tears lingered on his lips, the utterly real taste of her. Without a word further, he made sure he had his wallet, got in his car, and drove. He could be in San Francisco in six hours, flat-out.

He could retrieve Roch.e.l.le, kidnap her if that was what was required. He could bring her back here to die, and be reunited with her mother. Then he could die, too. But at least he would be with them, in the end. Or he could put it behind him, and just keep on driving.

The further he got from Triple Pines, the warmer he felt.

About the Author.

David J. Schow first wrote about zombies of a sort in the short story "Bunny Didn't Tell Us" in 1979 (not published until 1985). Then Book of the Dead shambled along and he became the only contributor with two stories in Volume One: the notorious "Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy" and the opening story, "Blossom," written under the pseudonym "Chan McConnell." Chan reappeared in Volume Two with "DON't WALK," making Schow the only writer with three stories in the duology. Then Chan got gruesomely killed as part of the story "Dying Words," the whole Schow/McConnell chronology being explicated in the milestone collection Zombie Jam (2005), ill.u.s.trated by zombie-meister Bernie Wrightson. With some bemus.e.m.e.nt, Schow watched as his tales of resurrected walkers-first called "geeks" in "Jerry's Kids," by the way-got strip-mined for a.s.sorted comic books and movie remakes. Under the present-day zombie boom, most of Schow's tales have been scooped up for reissue in a number of phonebook-sized anthologies about the living dead. He may yet have the last word. Until then he remains active in film/TV (most recent movie: The Hills Run Red [2009]) and publishing (with Internecine, a suspense novel;Hunt Among The Killers of Men, a pulp novel; and The Art of Drew Struzan, all 2010).

Story Notes.

As for commenting on "Obsequy," I'd like to quote some correspondence from Mr. Schow: First we all said zombies would replace vampires in popular ma.s.s consciousness (ahead of our time as always). Now that it's happened, it seems like extreme overkill (if only they had listened to us earlier). While "Obsequy" self-consciously defies the trope of brain-gobbling, slavering reanimates, I think it still counts, or at least might be a tea break amidst the expected carnage.

One reason for all the current popularity of post-zombie-apocalypse fiction, I think, is that players need no special qualifications to partic.i.p.ate. As long as you're alive, even a mook with a shotgun counts as human. It's also a kind of Wild West frontier wish-fulfillment (now we can kill anybody we want, but make sure you put them down permanently). A lot of people idealize this scenario as a terrific idea, a sort of post-apocalypse theme park in which they can now run amuck, unrestrained by the former niceties of society. The irony is that those who feel this would amount to some sort of big Doomsday rave would probably be the first victims of a world much harsher than their killing-spree dreams.

In a world that has marginalized, unmanned, and dis-employed most people, suddenly anybody who can draw a breath is special . . . for many, for the first time.

Oh yeah, I've mentioned the terms ghoul and revenant-both used in this story, elsewhere in story notes (for David Wellington and Kelly Link's stories, respectively). I think the undead in this story come close to the original meaning of revenant.

Deadman's Road.

Joe R. Lansdale.

The evening sun had rolled down and blown out in a b.l.o.o.d.y wad, and the white, full moon had rolled up like an enormous ball of tightly wrapped twine. As he rode, the Reverend Jebidiah Rains watched it glow above the tall pines. All about it stars were sprinkled white-hot in the dead-black heavens.

The trail he rode on was a thin one, and the trees on either side of it crept toward the path as if they might block the way, and close up behind him. The weary horse on which he was riding moved forward with its head down, and Jebidiah, too weak to fight it, let his mount droop and take its lead. Jebidiah was too tired to know much at that moment, but he knew one thing. He was a man of the Lord and he hated G.o.d, hated the sonofab.i.t.c.h with all his heart.

And he knew G.o.d knew and didn't care, because he knew Jebidiah was his messenger. Not one of the New Testament, but one of the Old Testament, harsh and mean and certain, vengeful and without compromise; a man who would have shot a leg out from under Moses and spat in the face of the Holy Ghost and scalped him, tossing his celestial hair to the wild four winds.

It was not a legacy Jebidiah would have preferred, being the bad man messenger of G.o.d, but it was his, and he had earned it through sin, and no matter how hard he tried to lay it down and leave it be, he could not. He knew that to give in and abandon his G.o.d-given curse, was to burn in h.e.l.l forever, and to continue was to do as the Lord prescribed, no matter what his feelings toward his mean master might be. His Lord was not a forgiving Lord, nor was he one who cared for your love. All he cared for was obedience, servitude and humiliation. It was why G.o.d had invented the human race. Amus.e.m.e.nt.

As he thought on these matters, the trail turned and widened, and off to one side, amongst tree stumps, was a fairly large clearing, and in its center was a small log house, and out to the side a somewhat larger log barn. In the curtained window of the cabin was a light that burned orange behind the flour-sack curtains. Jebidiah, feeling tired and hungry and thirsty and weary of soul, made for it.

Stopping a short distance from the cabin, Jebidiah leaned forward on his horse and called out, "h.e.l.lo, the cabin."

He waited for a time, called again, and was halfway through calling when the door opened, and a man about five-foot-two with a large droopy hat, holding a rifle, stuck himself part of the way out of the cabin, said, "Who is it calling? You got a voice like a bullfrog."

"Reverend Jebidiah Rains."

"You ain't come to preach none, have you?"

"No, sir. I find it does no good. I'm here to beg for a place in your barn, a night under its roof. Something for my horse, something for myself if it's available. Most anything, as long as water is involved."

"Well," said the man, "this seems to be the gathering place tonight. Done got two others, and we just sat a.s.ses down to eat. I got enough you want it, some hot beans and some old bread."

"I would be most obliged, sir," Jebidiah said.

"Oblige all you want. In the meantime, climb down from that nag, put it in the barn and come in and chow. They call me Old Timer, but I ain't that old. It's cause most of my teeth are gone and I'm crippled in a foot a horse stepped on. There's a lantern just inside the barn door. Light that up, and put it out when you finish, come on back to the house."

When Jebidiah finished grooming and feeding his horse with grain in the barn, watering him, he came into the cabin, made a show of pushing his long black coat back so that it revealed his ivory-handled .44 cartridge-converted revolvers. They were set so that they leaned forward in their holsters, strapped close to the hips, not draped low like punks wore them. Jebidiah liked to wear them close to the natural swing of his hands. When he pulled them it was a movement quick as the flick of a hummingbird's wings, the hammers clicking from the c.o.c.k of his thumb, the guns barking, spewing lead with amazing accuracy. He had practiced enough to drive a cork into a bottle at about a hundred paces, and he could do it in bad light. He chose to reveal his guns that way to show he was ready for any attempted ambush. He reached up and pushed his wide-brimmed black hat back on his head, showing black hair gone gray-tipped. He thought having his hat tipped made him look casual. It did not. His eyes always seemed aflame in an angry face.

Inside, the cabin was bright with kerosene lamplight, and the kerosene smelled, and there were curls of black smoke twisting about, mixing with gray smoke from the pipe of Old Timer, and the cigarette of a young man with a badge pinned to his shirt. Beside him, sitting on a chopping log by the fireplace, which was too hot for the time of year, but was being used to heat up a pot of beans, was a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and a face that looked like it attracted thrown objects. He had his hat pushed up a bit, and a shock of wheat-colored, sweaty hair hung on his forehead. There was a cigarette in is mouth, half of it ash. He twisted on the chopping log, and Jebidiah saw that his hands were manacled together.

"I heard you say you was a preacher," said the manacled man, as he tossed the last of his smoke into the fireplace. "This here sure ain't G.o.d's country."

"Worse thing is," said Jebidiah, "it's exactly G.o.d's country."

The manacled man gave out with a snort, and grinned.

"Preacher," said the younger man, "my name is Jim Taylor. I'm a deputy for Sheriff Spradley, out of Nacogdoches. I'm taking this man there for a trial, and most likely a hanging. He killed a fella for a rifle and a horse. I see you tote guns, old style guns, but good ones. Way you tote them, I'm suspecting you know how to use them."

"I've been known to hit what I aim at," Jebidiah said, and sat in a rickety chair at an equally rickety table. Old Timer put some tin plates on the table, scratched his a.s.s with a long wooden spoon, then grabbed a rag and used it as a potholder, lifted the hot bean pot to the table. He popped the lid of the pot, used the a.s.s-scratching spoon to scoop a heap of beans onto plates. He brought over some wooden cups and poured them full from a pitcher of water.

"Thing is," the deputy said, "I could use some help. I don't know I can get back safe with this fella, havin' not slept good in a day or two. Was wondering, you and Old Timer here could watch my back till morning? Wouldn't even mind if you rode along with me tomorrow, as sort of a backup. I could use a gun hand. Sheriff might even give you a dollar for it."

Old Timer, as if this conversation had not been going on, brought over a bowl with some moldy biscuits in it, placed them on the table. "Made them a week ago. They've gotten a bit ripe, but you can scratch around the mold. I'll warn you though, they're tough enough you could toss one hard and kill a chicken on the run. So mind your teeth."

"That how you lost yours, Old Timer?" the manacled man said.

"Probably part of them," Old Timer said.

"What you say, preacher?" the deputy said. "You let me get some sleep?"

"My problem lies in the fact that I need sleep," Jebidiah said. "I've been busy, and I'm what could be referred to as tuckered."

"Guess I'm the only one that feels spry," said the manacled man.

"No," said, Old Timer. "I feel right fresh myself."

"Then it's you and me, Old Timer," the manacled man said, and grinned, as if this meant something.

"You give me cause, fella, I'll blow a hole in you and tell G.o.d you got in a nest of termites."

The manacled man gave his snort of a laugh again. He seemed to be having a good old time.

"Me and Old Timer can work shifts," Jebidiah said. "That okay with you, Old Timer?"

"Peachy," Old Timer said, and took another plate from the table and filled it with beans. He gave this one to the manacled man, who said, lifting his bound hands to take it, "What do I eat it with?"

"Your mouth. Ain't got no extra spoons. And I ain't giving you a knife."

The manacled man thought on this for a moment, grinned, lifted the plate and put his face close to the edge of it, sort of poured the beans toward his mouth. He lowered the plate and chewed. "Reckon they taste scorched with or without a spoon."

Jebidiah reached inside his coat, took out and opened up a pocket knife, used it to spear one of the biscuits, and to sc.r.a.pe the beans toward him.

"You come to the table, young fella," Old Timer said to the deputy. "I'll get my shotgun, he makes a move that ain't eatin', I'll blast him and the beans inside him into that fireplace there."

Old Timer sat with a double-barrel shotgun resting on his leg, pointed in the general direction of the manacled man. The deputy told all that his prisoner had done while he ate. Murdered women and children, shot a dog and a horse, and just for the h.e.l.l of it, shot a cat off a fence, and set fire to an outhouse with a woman in it. He had also raped women, stuck a stick up a sheriff's a.s.s, and killed him, and most likely shot other animals that might have been some good to somebody. Overall, he was tough on human beings, and equally as tough on livestock.

"I never did like animals," the manacled man said. "Carry fleas. And that woman in the outhouse stunk to high heaven. She ought to eat better. She needed burning."

"Shut up," the deputy said. "This fella," and he nodded toward the prisoner, "his name is Bill Barrett, and he's the worst of the worst. Thing is, well, I'm not just tired, I'm a little wounded. He and I had a tussle. I hadn't surprised him, wouldn't be here today. I got a bullet graze in my hip. We had quite a dust up. I finally got him down by putting a gun barrel to his noggin' half a dozen times or so. I'm not hurt so bad, but I lost blood for a couple days. Weakened me. You'd ride along with me Reverend, I'd appreciate it."

"I'll consider it," Jebidiah said. "But I'm about my business."

"Who you gonna preach to along here, 'sides us?" the deputy said.

"Don't even think about it," Old Timer said. "Just thinking about that Jesus foolishness makes my a.s.s tired. Preaching makes me want to kill the preacher and cut my own throat. Being at a preachin' is like being tied down in a nest red bitin' ants."

"At this point in my life," Jebidiah said. "I agree."

There was a moment of silence in response to Jebidiah, then the deputy turned his attention to Old Timer. "What's the fastest route to Nacogdoches?"

"Well now," Old Timer said, "you can keep going like you been going, following the road out front. And in time you'll run into a road, say thirty miles from here, and it goes left. That should take you right near Nacogdoches, which is another ten miles, though you'll have to make a turn somewhere up in there near the end of the trip. Ain't exactly sure where unless I'm looking at it. Whole trip, traveling at an even pace ought to take you two day."