Zombies: The Recent Dead Part 48

"Well, that's okay. I'll stop by later," Charley said. She smiled at him and for a moment he was standing in that city where no one ever figured out how to put out that fire, and all the dead dogs howled again, and scratched at the smeary windows. "For a Mountain Dew. So you can think about it for a while."

She reached out and took Eric's hand in her hand. "Your hands are cold," she said. Her hands were hot. "You should go back inside."

Rengi begenmiyorum.

I don't like the color.

It was already 4 am and there still wasn't any sign of Charley when Batu came out of the back room. He was rubbing his eyes. The black pajamas were gone. Now Batu was wearing pajama bottoms with foxes running across a field towards a tree with a circle of foxes sitting on their haunches around it. The outstretched tails of the running foxes were fat as zeppelins, with commas of flame hovering over them. Each little flame had a Hindenburg inside it, with a second littler flame above it, and so on. Some fires you just can't put out.

The pajama top was a color that Eric could not name. Dreary, creeping shapes lay upon it. Eric had read Lovecraft. He felt queasy when he looked at the pajama top.

"I just had the best dream," Batu said.

"You've been asleep for almost six hours," Eric said. When Charley came, he would go with her. He would stay with Batu. Batu needed him. He would go with Charley. He would go and come back. He wouldn't ever come back. He would send Batu postcards with bears on them. "So what was all that about? With the zombies."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Batu said. He took an apple from the fruit display and polished it on his non-Euclidean pajama top. The apple took on a horrid, whispery sheen. "Has Charley come by?"

"Yeah," Eric said. He and Charley would go to Las Vegas. They would buy Batu gold lame pajamas. "I think you're right. I think she's about to leave town."

"Well, she can't!" Batu said. "That's not the plan. Here, I tell you what we'll do. You go outside and wait for her. Make sure she doesn't get away."

"She's not wanted by the police, Batu," Eric said. "She doesn't belong to us. She can leave town if she wants to."

"And you're okay with that?" Batu said. He yawned ferociously, and yawned again, and stretched, so that the pajama top heaved up in an eldritch manner. Eric closed his eyes.

"Not really," Eric said. He had already picked out a toothbrush, some toothpaste, and some novelty teeth, left over from Halloween, which he could give to Charley, maybe. "Are you okay? Are you going to fall asleep again? Can I ask you some questions?"

"What kind of questions?" Batu said, lowering his eyelids in a way that seemed both sleepy and cunning.

"Questions about our mission," Eric said. "About the All-Night and what we're doing here next to the Ausible Chasm. I need to understand what just happened with the zombies and the pajamas, and whether or not what happened is part of the plan, and whether or not the plan belongs to us, or whether the plan was planned by someone else, and we're just somebody else's big experiment in retail. Are we brand-new, or are we just the same old thing?"

"This isn't a good time for questions," Batu said. "In all the time that we've worked here, have I lied to you? Have I led you astray?"

"Well," Eric said. "That's what I need to know."

"Perhaps I haven't told you everything," Batu said. "But that's part of the plan. When I said that we were going to make everything new again, that we were going to reinvent retail, I was telling the truth. The plan is still the plan, and you are still part of that plan, and so is Charley."

"What about the pajamas?" Eric said. "What about the Canadians and the maple syrup and the people who come in to buy Mountain Dew?"

"You need to know this?" Batu said.

"Yes," Eric said. "Absolutely."

"Okay, then. My pajamas are experimental CIA pajamas," Batu said. "Like batteries. You've been charging them for me when you sleep. That's all I can say right now. Forget about the Canadians. These pajamas the zombies just gave me-do you have any idea what this means?"

Eric shook his head no.

Batu said, "Never mind. Do you know what we need now?"

"What do we need?" Eric said.

"We need you to go outside and wait for Charley," Batu said. "We don't have time for this. It's getting early. Charley gets off work any time now."

"Explain all of that again," Eric said. "What you just said. Explain the plan to me one more time."

"Look," Batu said. "Listen. Everybody is alive at first, right?"

"Right," Eric said.

"And everybody dies," Batu said. "Right?"

"Right," Eric said. A car drove by, but it still wasn't Charley.

"So everybody starts here," Batu said. "Not here, in the All-Night, but somewhere here, where we are. Where we live now. Where we live is here. The world. Right?"

"Right," Eric said. "Okay."

"And where we go is there," Batu said, flicking a finger towards the road. "Out there, down into the Ausible Chasm. Everybody goes there. And here we are, here, the All-Night, which is on the way to there."

"Right," Eric said.

"So it's like the Canadians," Batu said. "People are going someplace, and if they need something, they can stop here, to get it. But we need to know what they need. This is a whole new unexplored demographic. So they stuck the All-Night right here, lit it up like a Christmas tree, and waited to see who stopped in and what they bought. I shouldn't be telling you this. This is all need-to-know information only."

"You mean the All-Night or the CIA or whoever needs us to figure out how to sell things to zombies," Eric said.

"Forget about the CIA," Batu said. "Now will you go outside?"

"But is it our plan? Or are we just following someone else's plan?"

"Why does that matter to you?" Batu said. He put his hands on his head and tugged at his hair until it stood straight up, but Eric refused to be intimidated.

"I thought we were on a mission," Eric said, "to help mankind. Womankind too. Like the Starship Enterprise. But how are we helping anybody? What's new-style retail about this?"

"Eric," Batu said. "Did you see those pajamas? Look. On second thought, forget about the pajamas. You never saw them. Like I said, this is bigger than the All-Night. There are bigger fish that are fishing, if you know what I mean."

"No," Eric said. "I don't."

"Excellent," Batu said. His experimental CIA pajama top writhed and boiled. "Your job is to be helpful and polite. Be patient. Be careful. Wait for the zombies to make the next move. I send off some faxes. Meanwhile, we still need Charley. Charley is a natural-born saleswoman. She's been selling death for years. And she's got a real gift for languages-she'll be speaking zombie in no time. Think what kind of work she could do here! Go outside. When she drives by, you flag her down. Talk to her. Explain why she needs to come live here. But whatever you do, don't get in the car with her. That car is full of ghosts. The wrong kind of ghosts. The kind who are never going to understand the least little thing about meaningful transactions."

"I know," Eric said. "I could smell them."

"So are we clear on all this?" Batu said. "Or maybe you think I'm still lying to you?"

"I don't think you'd lie to me, exactly," Eric said. He put on his jacket.

"You better put on a hat too," Batu said. "It's cold out there. You know you're like a son to me, which is why I tell you to put on your hat. And if I lied to you, it would be for your own good, because I love you like a son. One day, Eric, all of this will be yours. Just trust me and do what I tell you. Trust the plan."

Eric said nothing. Batu patted him on the shoulder, pulled an All-Night shirt over his pajama top, and grabbed a banana and a Snapple. He settled in behind the counter. His hair was still standing straight up, but at 4 am, who was going to complain? Not Eric, not the zombies. Eric put on his hat, gave a little wave to Batu, which was either, Glad we cleared all that up at last, or else, So long!, he wasn't sure which, and walked out of the All-Night. This is the last time, he thought, I will ever walk through this door. He didn't know how he felt about that.

Eric stood outside in the parking lot for a long time. Out in the bushes, on the other side of the road, he could hear the zombies hunting for the things that were valuable to other zombies.

Some woman, a real person, but not Charley, drove into the parking lot. She went inside, and Eric thought he knew what Batu would say to her when she went to the counter. Batu would explain when she tried to make her purchase that he didn't want money. That wasn't what retail was really about. What Batu would want to know was what this woman really wanted. It was that simple, that complicated. Batu might try to recruit this woman, if she didn't seem litigious, and maybe that was a good thing. Maybe the All-Night really did need women.

Eric walked backwards, away and then even farther away from the All-Night. The farther he got, the more beautiful he saw it all was-it was all lit up like the moon. Was this what the zombies saw? What Charley saw, when she drove by? He couldn't imagine how anyone could leave it behind and never come back.

Maybe Batu had a pair of pajamas in his collection with All-Night Convenience Stores and light spilling out; the Ausible Chasm; a road with zombies, and Charleys in Chevys, a different dog hanging out of every pa.s.senger window, driving down that road. Down on one leg of those pajamas, down the road a long ways, there would be bears dressed up in ice; Canadians; CIA operatives and tabloid reporters and All-Night executives. Las Vegas showgirls. G-men and bee men in trench coats. His mother's car, always getting farther and farther away. He wondered if zombies wore zombie pajamas, or if they'd just invented them for Batu. He tried to picture Charley wearing silk pajamas and a flannel bathrobe, but she didn't look comfortable in them. She still looked miserable and angry and hopeless, much older than Eric had ever realized.

He jumped up and down in the parking lot, trying to keep warm. The woman, when she came out of the store, gave him a funny look. He couldn't see Batu behind the counter. Maybe he'd fallen asleep again, or maybe he was sending off more faxes. But Eric didn't go back inside the store. He was afraid of Batu's pajamas.

He was afraid of Batu.

He stayed outside, waiting for Charley.

But a few hours later, when Charley drove by-he was standing on the curb, keeping an eye out for her, she wasn't going to just slip away, he was determined to see her, not to miss her, to make sure that she saw him, to make her take him with her, wherever she was going-there was a Labrador in the pa.s.senger seat. The backseat of her car was full of dogs, real dogs and ghost dogs, and all of the dogs poking their doggy noses out of the windows at him. There wouldn't have been room for him, even if he'd been able to make her stop. But he ran out in the road anyway, like a d.a.m.n dog, chasing after her car for as long as he could.

About the Author.

Kelly Link (kellylink.net) is the author of three collections of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. Link and her family live in Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press (smallbeerpress.com), and play ping-pong. In 1996 they started the occasional zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (smallbeerpress.com/lcrw).

Story Notes.

"The Hortlak," according to critic Laura Miller, is like "a Raymond Carver story on mescaline." Can't say I disagree, but Link's story also reminds me of a surrealistic take on Dennis Etchison's cla.s.sic story "The Late Shift."

As for the zombies, they are somewhat mysterious, but seem benign-but they do force unwanted pajamas on Batu.

The Turkish word "hortlak" is usually translated as "ghost," "spook" (I don't think they mean the CIA type, but Link might), "ghoul" (which I mentioned in connection with David Wellington's story), or "revenant."

Although it has been used in various ways in literature (and elsewhere) a revenant (revenant means "returning" in French) was originally a corporeal ghost or someone returned from the dead to terrorize the living, usually for a specific reason or to seek revenge. Eric Draven in James...o...b..rr's The Crow, for instance, might be considered a revenant.

Dead to the World.

Gary McMahon.

I stand at the topmost window of our fortified house, looking out at the dead. They are clearly defined in the moonlight; clumsy figures draped in rags and peeling tatters of skin. They are the first ones I have seen in quite some time, but their appearance was always inevitable.

They will never leave us alone.

We have been in the old farmhouse for two weeks, now-enough time for Coral to have recovered from the badly twisted ankle she sustained when we were running from an infested warehouse district, and to finish what little food we found in the place when we arrived.

Coral is downstairs now, packing. We travel light; everything we once owned has now been abandoned, other than crucial items like water bottles, a tin opener, knives and the gun.

I watch the dead as they stumble around amongst the trees, sniffing us out. It was quiet here when we first arrived, with no traces of anyone in the immediate vicinity, but now they have discovered us. I wonder if they can smell our living flesh, or perhaps the blood in our veins? They must have developed some kind of hunting instinct over the past ten years since the term "dead" began to mean something different from simply an end to walking about. They always find us, no matter how far and how fast we run.

We were both active political campaigners back then, before things changed. We attended rallies and marches for world peace and hunger; worked with charities to help Third World countries with ma.s.sive debts, unstable regimes, and little hope of helping themselves. In short, and to borrow a phrase from an old song, we cared a lot.

That term, the Third World, has been outdated since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s. During that unique state of drama and conflict after World War II, when it seemed that the opposing blocs of the Soviets and the Western World were destined to blow us all to h.e.l.l, the Third World countries watched and starved and wondered just who might help them.

Now, I know what that really means-to watch helplessly as forces beyond your control reshape and destroy everything you have ever known and believed in.

I think of all this now, as I watch the scattered dead walk through the darkened tree line and approach the fence that borders the farmhouse property. It occurs to me that what we have now is a kind of Fourth World-a group of (dead) people aligned with no political viewpoint or ideology, and whose needs have been honed down to the basic drive to feed. To feed on the rest of us . . . to feed on the living.

I turn away from the window-from the moonlight and the dark ground and the stumbling, staggering corpses-and walk out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind me as I head for the stairs. I am afraid to make a sound. The next sound I hear might be that of my own mind snapping.

"Have you checked all the rooms up there?" Coral looks up from fastening the rucksacks as I enter the downstairs living room. Her face is too pale, too thin. We haven't eaten in three days and her hunger has now become a visible thing, a terrifying luminescence that shines from beneath her sallow skin.

I nod. "There's nothing left up there. We have everything. Where's the gun? I saw a few of them out there, coming out of the woods."

She points towards the corner of the room, where the rifle is propped up against cushions on a dusty armchair. We do not have much ammunition left, and I doubt that we will be lucky enough to stumble on any before what we do have runs out completely. This is rural England not downtown Los Angeles. The best we can hope for is to find some old farmer's shotgun in another of the abandoned properties we continually hop between like frogs on lily pads.

I cross the room and pick up the rifle. Ten years ago I had never held a gun, would not have known how to fire one. These days I am an efficient marksman. I have to be, to save on bullets. "Won't be long," I say, leaving the room and going back up the stairs.

Back at the window I see that the dead have already come closer to the fence. One of them is even attempting to climb, but having only one arm seems a hindrance to his progress. There are four of them in total-the one trying to climb over the fence and three others who stand watching him, their bodies limp and ragged.

I raise the rifle and take aim, enjoying its heft at my shoulder. The sight line is perfect; an unrestricted view from the high window. I caress the trigger, waiting until the right moment, when my heart seems to stop beating for a second to allow me to take the shot. I pull the trigger. The tallest one-who is wearing some kind of dark overalls-twitches backwards as the side of his head explodes in a shock of dark matter. He takes three tiny backward steps before hitting the ground.

The other two do not even glance in his direction. I take them down with a shot each, heads going up like watermelons stuffed with cherry bombs.

Then I shoot the one on the fence. He hangs there, trapped in the razor wire, what is left of his brains leaking out of the large wound in what remains of his forehead.

I pull the gun back inside and secure the window, pulling the shutters tight and testing that they are solid. Then I go back downstairs to my wife.

Coral is sitting in the same dusty armchair where previously she'd put the gun. She is weeping quietly, her narrow shoulders. .h.i.tching. "We can't keep doing this," she says, between almost silent sobs. "We can't go on."

I go to her but am unable to offer the comfort she needs. We are beyond all that-the world has gone past such small intimacies, tiny shows of affection. Instead I kneel down in front of her, placing my hands on her thighs. "We have to go on. There's nothing else to do. We've run out of food here, now. The choice is simple-we either stay here and die, or we move and put off dying for a few more weeks or months."

The silence in the room feels like an invasion of some kind: it robs us of our ability to communicate at any effective level. We have become strangers, travelling companions, little more than a couple of empty sh.e.l.ls shuffling along in search of something that no longer exists.

"I miss the baby," she says, finally looking me in the eye. Her cheeks are wet. Her lips quiver. She has not mentioned the baby since she miscarried, and I was forced to lay the squawking undead thing to rest. I had hoped that she might have pushed all thoughts of the baby-no name, just "the baby"-from her mind to focus on the immediate business of survival. But no, if I am honest I have known all along that she could never forget what happened. I have watched her mind slowly crumple, like a deflating balloon, for months now, since it happened.

"We . . . we can't talk about that. Things are different now. There was no baby." I stand up and back away, appalled by my own lack of humanity, my utter inability to even discuss that terrible evening. "I'll get the other water bottles."

I leave her there in the darkness, clasping at her face with hands that have become talons. In the kitchen I pick up the two plastic bottles of well water and stuff them into the third small rucksack. Then I walk back through the house to the living room, where Coral is now standing in the shadows by the big boarded-up window, staring at the drapes.

"We need to go now," I say, not without compa.s.sion.

She turns to face me. Her tears have all dried up. She walks to my side, her face taut and filled with hate. We walk together to the front door, where I tug loose the timbers and open the door. I go first, scanning the area outside, and Coral follows me in silence, her eyes burning holes into my back.