Zombies: The Recent Dead Part 50

The dog whimpered as Walter shifted his fingers to surround its neck and cradle its head in his hands. Its bright eyes pleaded and teased, but Walter had learned that the promise of satiation there was pointless. He slowly tightened his grip anyway, and the animal split in two, its head popping off to drop at his feet. He held the oozing neck up to his lips, and drank.

The blood was warm. The blood was salty.

The blood was useless.

His hunger still raged, his needs unsatisfied. What he required could only be provided by the blood of human, and not animal, intelligence. He let the dog fall, where it was immediately forgotten. There had to be something more still left on the face of the Earth. He moved on, clumsy but determined, his hunger once more an all-consuming creature. It wasn't that he needed that flesh to live. Its presence in his leaky stomach was never what powered him. The strength of his desire was unrelated to any practical end.

He hungered, and so he needed to hunt. That was what he did. That was what he was.

He returned to endless days and nights spent walking the length and breadth of his island, but his prowling proved useless. Though he sniffed out the useless life of other dogs, and rats, and the last few surviving animals who had somehow not yet starved to death unfed at the zoo, nothing human called to him. The city was empty.

One day, much later, he paused in the harbor, and looked west toward the rest of his country, a nation that he had never seen in life. He listened for the call of something faint and distant, waited as the evidence of his senses washed over him. In an earlier time, he would have closed his eyes to focus, but his eyes no longer had lids to close.

The static of the city's life, quivering nearby, no longer rose up to distract him. There was no close cacophony m.u.f.fling him from the rest of the continent, just a few remaining notes vibrating out from points west. He began to walk toward them, pulled by the memory of flesh.

He dragged his creaking body along the sh.o.r.eline until he came to a bridge, and then he crossed it, picking his way past snapped cables, overturned cars, and rifts through which could be seen the raging river below. He had no map, and needed none, any more than a baby needed a map to her mother's breast, or a flower needed a map to the sun.

Concrete canyons gave way to ones born of rock, and time pa.s.sed, light and dark dancing to change places as they had since the beginning of time, though he did not number the days they marked. The count did not matter. What mattered was that the sounds he heard, the stray pulsings in the distance, increased in volume as he moved.

His trek was not an easy one. He was used to concrete jungles, not the forest primeval, and yet that is where he was forced to travel, for life, if it wanted to stay alive, stayed far from highways as well. As he slipped on wet leaves and tumbled over fallen logs, he could feel an occasional beacon of information snuffed out, as another life was silenced, another slab of meat digested. Walter was not the only one on the prowl, and somehow he knew that if he did not hurry, the hunt would soon be over for him forever. As weeks pa.s.sed, he could hear what had once been a constant chorus diminish into a plaintive solo. As Walter could pick out no other competing chorus, perhaps it was the final solo.

Its pull grew yet stronger, and as the flames of its sensations flickered higher, rubbing his desire raw, he moved even more quickly, stumbling lamely through a hilly forest.

Until one stumble became more than just a stumble. His ankle caught on an exposed root, and he then felt himself falling. He fell against what appeared to be a carpet of leaves, which exploded and scattered when he hit them, allowing him to fall some more.

From the bottom of a well twice his height, he looked up to a small patch of sky, and saw the first face in an eternity that was, amazingly, not like looking in a mirror. The flesh of the man's face was pink and red, and as he breathed, puffs of steam came from his lips.

Then those lips, surrounded by a beard, moved, and a rough voice, grown unused to forming the sounds of human speech, said wearily, "h.e.l.lo."

Walter had not heard another's voice in a long while, and that last time it had been molded in a scream.

Seeing the man up there, looking smug and seeming to feel himself safe, filled Walter with rage-the first time in ages anything but pure hunger filled him. He slammed his fists wildly against the muddy walls of his hole, unconsciously seeking a handhold that could bring him to the waiting feast above, but there was nothing he could grasp. As he struggled to beat out grips with which to climb, his flesh grew flayed against sharp stones and splintered roots, yet he did not tire. He would have gone on forever like that, a furious engine of need, had not the man above begun dropping further words to him down below. They were not frightened words or angry words or begging words, the only sort that Walter was lately used to hearing, so their tone confused him. He wasn't sure what kind of words they were, and so he paused in his fury to listen.

"I've been waiting for you," said the man, his head and shoulders taunting Walter in the slice of sky above. "We have a lot to talk about, you and I. Well . . . actually . . . I have a lot to talk about. All you have to do is listen. Which is good, because I have learned from others of your kind that all you are capable of doing is listening, and barely that."

The man extended his arm over the hole. He rolled up his left sleeve, and then used his right hand to remove a large knife from a scabbard strapped to one thigh.

"This should help you to listen," he said.

Walter could understand none of the words. But even he understood what happened next. The blade sliced the flesh of the man's inner forearm, and bright blood flowed across his skin, spilled into the crook of his elbow, and then dripped in freefall. At the bottom of the pit, Walter tilted his head back like a man celebrating a spring rain, the stiff muscles in his neck creaking from the effort. He caught the short stream of drops on the back of his shredded throat.

"That's all I can spare you for now," the man said, pressing gauze against his voluntary wound and rolling his sleeve back down. "But then, you don't like to hear that, do you?"

Walter had no idea what he liked or didn't like to hear. All he knew was the hunger. That brief taste had caused it to surge, multiplying the pain and power of his desire. He roared, flailing wildly at the walls of his prison.

"If you can only shut up," said the man, "you'll get more. We need to come to an agreement, and then, only then, there'll be more. Can you understand that?"

Walter responded by throwing himself against the earthen walls of his narrow prison, but his response gained him nothing. As he battered his fists against the side of the pit, three of his fingers snapped off and dropped to the uneven floor. As he struggled more franticly, those body parts were ground beneath his feet like fat worms.

"This isn't going to work," muttered the man above, who began to weep. "I must have gone mad."

He crumpled back out of Walter's field of vision. Though he could still sense the br.i.m.m.i.n.g bag of meat above, its disappearance from his line of sight lowered Walter's rage, and he subsided slightly. His hunger still overwhelmed him, but he was no longer overtaken by the mindless urge to flail. He howled without ceasing at the changing clouds above, at the sun, and at the moon, until his captor reappeared, suddenly to him, and sat on the lip of the hole. The man let his feet dangle over the edge. Walter leapt as high as his dusty muscles would let him, and tried to s.n.a.t.c.h the man's heels, but he could not reach them. He tried once again, still falling short. The man snorted. Or laughed. Or cried. Walter couldn't quite tell which.

"You can't kill me," the man said, peering down through his knees. "Well, you can, but you shouldn't. Because once you kill me, it might be all over. Can you understand that? It's been years since I saw another human being. Do you realize that? I may be it."

Walter growled in response, and continued to batter against the sides of his prison.

"d.a.m.n," moaned the man. "What do I have to do to get your attention?"

Walter saw him bring out the knife again. The man looked at the line on his arm which had now become a long, thin scab, and then down below, where Walter's shed fingers were being crushed. The man shook his head, and then pulled his upper body back so that all Walter could see were dangling feet.

"This time," the man said, "I've got to do whatever it takes."

Then Walter heard a dull thud, one accompanied by a sharp intake of breath and a visible jerking of the man's legs. When the man leaned forward again, a handkerchief was wrapped around one hand. He used his good hand to dangle a b.l.o.o.d.y finger out over the pit.

"Listen to me now," the man said. Walter, frozen, stared at the offered digit. "I may be your last meal for the rest of your eternal life. I may be the last human left on earth. Try to get that through your undead head."

Then the man let the finger drop.

Walter leapt and caught it in midair. He had it in his mouth before his feet hit the ground. He chewed so fiercely that he ate his lips away, and many of his teeth popped from their sockets. If the man were continuing to speak, Walter would never have known it, as the sounds of his feasting as he attacked his small snack echoed deafeningly. Silence did not return until after the digit was devoured, and only then did Walter look skyward again.

"I want to live," said the man. "I don't want this to be the end of the human race. We have to make some sort of peace, you and I. We have to reach some sort of an agreement. That's why I moved out here and filled these hills with pits like this one. I knew that your kind would eventually sweep out from the cities and find me even here in the middle of nowhere, and I wanted to be ready for you.

"You have to tell the others. You have to let them know. Know that I'm the last. That if you just pluck me off the face of the earth, there will be nothing left, only eternal hunger. Is that something you can understand? Is that something you can communicate to the others? If so, that way they'll let me live. They'll let the human race live."

What the man said was meaningless, as Walter was for the most part beyond words. He knew the word hunger, though, plucking it from the forest of words that were being dropped on him. But that was about it. He could not perceive the man's message, could not possibly pa.s.s it on to others, for as far as his consciousness allowed, even if it were capable of containing such a message, there were no others. There was only Walter, Walter below and his food above-and the food was not getting any closer.

The man pulled his legs up from the hole, and for a moment it looked to Walter as if he was leaving, but instead, there was another thud. Then the man poked his head over the lip, even closer this time, for instead of sitting on the lip, the man was peering down while lying on his stomach. Then the man brought his hands around to show another dangling finger to Walter. Walter leapt unsuccessfully as he waited for the flesh to be dropped.

"I can see that this is the only thing you will understand. Do you see now? If you eat me, then it will all be over. Eternal hunger, with nothing more ever waiting at the other end to quench it. But if we can make a deal, I can help you feed for a long while. I can give you blood, and even some flesh from time to time."

The man dropped his finger, and this time, Walter caught it directly in his mouth. His teeth began crunching on it immediately, but unlike before, he did not take his eyes off his captor. Walter looked up at the blood soaking through the handkerchief in the man's other hand. The man noticed Walter's gaze, and loosened the cloth. He dangled his damaged hand down into the pit, and shook it. The handkerchief unwrapped slowly and dropped softly down. Walter caught it and tossed it into his mouth. He sucked on the blooming stain, the corners of the handkerchief hanging out of his mouth and down his chin.

"Do we have a deal?" asked the man. His eyes were wide, and he was so caught up in his hope that he did not immediately pull back his extended hand. Filled with l.u.s.t at the sight of the wet wounds inflicted there, Walter ran to the wall and leapt up toward them, wedging his feet in the damp mud of the pit wall before the man could yank himself back. Walter's remaining fingers locked around the man's remaining finger, and with his dead weight, Walter started pulling the man, sliding him forward so that more of his body hung over the edge.

"No!" shouted the man. "I'm the last man on Earth! You can't do this! Without me, you'll have nothing! Don't you understand?"

But Walter did not understand, not really, and his screaming and scrambling did little to slow his descent into the hole. Walter pulled him down mercilessly-for he had no mercy, only hunger-and at last, after far too long, the hunger was allowed to run free. Walter began with the man's lips, silencing the urgent pleas, and then he gnawed his way deep into the man's chest, cracking his ribs and burrowing into his heart. Walter's face grew slick with blood as he gorged himself. It had been far too long since he had fed this well, and even though he remained trapped at the bottom of a pit, he had no s.p.a.ce for tomorrow, no thought of saving anything aside for a future day. He savored the flesh and sucked the bones, and then . . . then it was all gone much too soon.

Momentarily sated, Walter looked up at clouds, sniffing out the universe. He listened for the pulse of the planet, and discovered in that instant that his jailor had been correct, though as Walter had not understood the meaning of what the man had been babbling to him, he did not in fact realize that was what he was doing. But indeed, there was no other movement of blood in the world. No others were left.

All that existed for Walter now was a few square feet of ground, his dirt wall, and the sky above. Time pa.s.sed. Walter could not say whether it pa.s.sed quickly or slowly, as he had no true conception of time, just the fact that the opening above regularly darkened and lightened again. During the days, his view was occasionally altered by a bird flitting by, and at night there was the occasional flash of a falling star. Hunger returned and was his constant companion, but there was no longer any point in raging.

Mud and leaves and the detritus of time slowly filled the spot on where he stood. As he paced from side to side, he rose a little each day, so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. He did not realize what was happening until enough time had pa.s.sed that he was finally high enough to peer over each the lip. He pulled himself up to the surface and stood seeing the whole world again for the first time in ages, rather than just a tunnel-vision picture of the sky . . . and the difference didn't really matter to him. For whether he was trapped in a hole or free on land again, nothing had changed. His only companion for now and forever more was his hunger, and since he could no longer smell anything out there with which to quench it, since the world was now a dead beast inhabited only by others of his kind, it mattered little where he spent the rest of eternity.

Strangely, the sky seemed filled with falling stars. And yet, they did not behave the way such things were meant to behave. Instead of vanishing out quickly as had the living human race, the bright spots cross-crossed the sky like embers that refused to die. During the day, the stars still shone, another anomaly he no longer had the brain power to consider. Walter moved on without a destination.

He wandered the world aimlessly, but only until he noticed that the stars themselves were no longer moving aimlessly. The stars were on the move in a purposeful manner, and as he gazed into the sky, he knew where they were heading. With the memory of the last man on Earth forever branded on his lips, he followed the path they made, moving back east across a country that was continuing to crumble, that was transforming from civilization into debris.

The bridge into the city, when he saw it again after what had been hundreds of years, had collapsed into the river. He had to pick his way over floating rubble, still bound together by cables, to move from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. He walked the city streets once more, continuing to watch the sky. When so many stars filled the sky that it seemed impossible to fit any more, their trajectories shifted. When night fell this time, Walter could make out more clearly that they were carving concentric circles in the sky. He walked beneath the heart of them, his hunger positioning him there. Others of his kind joined him.

As he watched, a single star began to drop, pulling itself away from the carefully ch.o.r.eographed dance in the sky, becoming more than just a speck, gaining dimension as it fell. By the time it reached the buckled pavement on which Walter stood, it had grown into a globe several stories high. The fact that it floated there, sprouting legs on which it came to rest, had no affect on Walter. He sensed only dead machinery, and felt nothing, not even curiosity. When the outlines of a door appeared and then opened, that all changed. As a walkway eased its way out from the opening to touch the ground, Walter could feel again that old familiar tingling which had been missing for so long.

A tall, attenuated creature walked down the ramp, followed by a hovering cylindrical machine half again as tall. The visitor, its two arms and two legs garbed in a soft silver, stepped off the ramp into what for it was a new world, and then walked toward Walter and his brethren. Walter, agitated by a humanoid form stinking of the raw stuff of life, rushed forward, only to thud against an invisible wall that surrounded the giant globe. Flesh was close, so close, and Walter was enraged. He could not comprehend why this thing was not already being torn apart by his remaining teeth.

Walter roared, and his deafening anger was soon joined by the keening of the other zombies who ringed the ship. The being removed a helmet, revealing a face which, though off in its proportions, contained all the right elements-eyes, nose, mouth and so on-that signified humanity. This only served to fill Walter with a further fury. The alien surveyed the crowd, looking at the crescent of the undead with all-too-human eyes. He then held a slender hand out toward Walter, who suddenly found himself able to surge forward ahead of the others. Arms outstretched, he raced toward the flesh-his flesh-but stopped short in front of his meal, frozen as if encased in metal bands. Walter struggled to close that final gap, but could not.

Suddenly, Walter was floating a few feet off the rubble. He tilted back, both alien and globe vanishing from his field of vision to be replaced by the sky. He could see the moving stars pause in their flight. The alien stepped closer, and Walter was overcome by the need to open his mouth, to gnaw, to rend, but his body no longer followed the command of those needs. The metal cylinder, which had trailed closely behind the visitor, tilted on its side and floated to Walter's feet. It slid over Walter, engulfing him, encasing him from head to what remained of his toes. He was trapped once more. This time, whether or not his actions would have been as futile as before, he was unable to even bang against the sides of his prison.

The patch of metal before Walter's face cleared to transparency.

"h.e.l.lo," the alien said, in a voice unused to forming the sounds of human speech. It leaned in close to Walter. "We have traveled a long way in search of our ancient cousins."

It waved its thin hands over the exterior of the cylinder, and sequential lights flashed, a rainbow coursing over Walter's mottled skin. He struggled to escape their glow, but regardless of his rage, he moved in his mind only. When the colors ceased, his rage continued on.

"How sad," said the alien. "Our cousins are still here, and yet . . . they are gone. They are all gone."

The words were meaningless to Walter, barely even heard over the angry voices in his head which called him to feed. Then the cylinder pulled away, and Walter found himself upright again, his muscles once more his own. He started to leap forward, but as he was in midair, the strange creature waved its arms, and Walter was back with the others. His momentum there still carried him to complete his trajectory, and he slammed against the invisible shield.

The visitor walked back up the ramp, the cylinder floating by its side, their metal path retracting back into the ship. The creature paused in the doorway and turned. It was still looking toward Walter as the door closed and the force field died. Walter rushed the craft, but it rose effortlessly back into the sky before he could beat himself against its glittering sides.

The bright stars which had up until then formed circles in the sky vanished, but Walter barely noticed the emptiness above. So great was his l.u.s.t for flesh that he was driven to return immediately to his hungry wandering, where he found nothing but that his hunger increased. His hunt through the rubble of humanity would prove fruitless, for his senses never again tingled to tease his immortal desire.

The sun and the moon continued to trade places, but no stars ever returned to move through the sky, and Walter's hunger, which left no room for any other emotions, never faded- -at least not until, eons later, Earth's close and constant star expanded to fill his world with fire and erase his hunger forever.

About the Author.

Scott Edelman has published more than seventy-five short stories in anthologies such as The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, MetaHorror, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, and Forbidden Planets, and in magazines such as Postscripts, The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, Science Fiction Review, and Fantasy Book. His first short story collection, These Words Are Haunted, appeared in 2001. What Will Come After, a complete collection of his zombie fiction, was released May 2010 by PS Publishing. He has been a Stoker Award finalist five times, in the categories of both Short Story and Long Fiction. Additionally, Edelman currently works for the Syfy Channel as the Editor of Blastr (formerly known a.s.sCI FI Wire). He was the founding editor of Science Fiction Age, which he edited during its entire eight-year run. He has been a four-time Hugo Award finalist for Best Editor.

Story Notes.

As you can probably guess from the existence of a collection of them, Edelman has written quite a few zombie stories. This one particularly appealed because it comes close to being a parable of sorts-or several. To quote an ecclesiastical source: The word parable (Hebrew mashal; Syrian mathla, Greek parabole) signifies in general a comparison, or a parallel, by which one thing is used to ill.u.s.trate another. It is a likeness taken from the sphere of real, or sensible, or earthly incidents, in order to convey an ideal, or spiritual, or heavenly meaning. As uttering one thing and signifying something else, it is in the nature of a riddle (Hebrew khidah, Gr. ainigma or problema) and has therefore a light and a dark side ("dark sayings," Wisdom 8:8; Sirach 39:3), it is intended to stir curiosity and calls for intelligence in the listener . . . [Barry, William. "Parables." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911.]

Parable or not, Edelman's "last supper" is, indeed, our final taste of zombie fiction. Hope you've enjoyed the meal!

Publication History.

Francesca Lia Block, "Farewell, My Zombie" 2009. First publication: Black Clock 10, Spring/Summer 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Gary A. Braunbeck, "Glorietta" 2008. First Publication: The World is Dead, ed. Kim Paffenroth (Permuted Press, 2008). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Max Brooks, "The Great Wall: A Story from the Zombie War" 2007. First Publication: Dark Delicacies II: Fear: More Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World's Greatest Horror Writers, eds. Del Howison and Jeff Gelb (Running Press, 2007). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Tobias Buckell, "Trinkets" 2001. First Publication: The Book of All Flesh, ed. James Lowder (Eden Studios, 2001). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Steve Duffy, "Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed" 2007. First Publication: At Ease with the Dead: New Tales of the Supernatural and Macabre, eds. Barbara and Chrostopher Roden (Ash-Tree Press, 2007). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Andy Duncan, "Zora and the Zombie" 2004. First Publication: Scifi.com, February 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Scott Edelman, "The Last Supper" 2003. First Publication: The Book of Final Flesh, ed. James Lowder (Eden Studios, 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Neil Gaiman, "Bitter Grounds" 2003. First Publication: Mojo: Conjure Stories, ed. Nalo Hopkinson (Mysterious Press, 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Nik Houser, "First Kisses From Beyond the Grave" 2006. First Publication: Gargoyle Magazine #51, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Brian Keene, "Three Scenes from the End of the World" 2010. Originally published as three separate stories as "The Ties That Bind" in Unhappy Endings (Delirium Press, 2009), "The Viking Plays Patty Cake," and "Family Reunion" in The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World (Delirium Press, 2008). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Alice Sola Kim, "Beautiful White Bodies" 2009. First Publication: Strange Horizons, Part One: December 7, 2009; Part Two: December 14, 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Joe R. Lansdale, "Deadman's Road" 2007. First Publication: Subterranean, Spring 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Kelly Link, "The Hortlak" 2003. The Dark: New Ghost Stories, ed. Ellen Datlow (Tor, 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Tim Lebbon, Naming of Parts 2000. First Publication: Naming of Parts (PS Publishing, U.K., 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Gary McMahon, "Dead to the World" 2009. First Publication: The Dead That Walk, ed. Stephen Jones (Ulysses Press, 2009). Reprinted by permission of the author.

David Prill, "Dating Secrets of the Dead" 2002. First Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Kit Reed, "The Zombie Prince" 2004. First Publication: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

David J. Schow, "Obsequy" 2006. Subterranean #3, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.

David J. Schow, "Introduction" 2010. Originally published as the "Introduction" and "Afterword" of Zombie Jam (Subterranean Press, 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Michael Marshall Smith, "The Things He Said" 2007. First Publication: Travellers in Darkness: The Souvenir Book of the World Horror Convention 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Kevin Veale, "Twisted" 2009. First Publication: Weird Tales #354, Fall 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Tim Waggoner, "Disarmed and Dangerous" 2009. First Publication: Spells of the City, eds. Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg (DAW, 2009).

David Wellington, "Dead Man's Land" 2009. First Publication: The World is Dead, ed. Kim Paffenroth (Permuted Press, 2008). Reprinted by permission of the author.