by J M Lassen
Val looked at me, all big blue eyes and wide, surprised mouth. She dove into the car.
She slammed the doors and locked them.
I couldn’t believe it.
“Here!” Patty cried. She shoved a stick into my hands.
A deadie in a California highway patrolman’s uniform came at me, still wearing mirrored cop shades. Its mouth opened and closed in vicious snaps. I swung that stick like I was in the World Series—and missed by a mile. The effort spun me around.
I pulled Patty with me, getting our backs to the car. I hammered on the window.
“Open up! Open up, Val!”
The CHP snagged Patty’s sleeve. She batted at its hand and yodeled a high-pitched cry. I brought the stick down across the deadie’s forearm. Both stick and arm broke in half.
“Val, goddammit!”
Deadies were fighting over the bodies of Sharon and the dog. Others were converging on Patty and me. One snared a handful of Patty’s hair. She flailed as if the clutching hand were a wayward bat. Dry fingers snapped off; they stayed tangled in her hair like grotesque barrettes. She didn’t have time to pluck them out. Another deadie was heading for her with its jaws gaping wide.
A little kid deadie bit my leg. I yelled and punched down, the broken-off end of the stick still in my grasp. It pushed through the top of the kid’s head. Frantic, I probed at my leg and found the heavy denim of my jeans undamaged.
Behind the dirty window, I could see Val. She wasn’t doing anything useful, like maybe getting the other guns and saving our asses.
The deadies pulled Patty away from me. She was reaching out, begging for me to save her. But others had started to rock the car, trying to flip it—trying to get at Val. I shook off Patty’s trailing, grasping hands and wielded my broken stick like a truncheon.
A rifle-crack split the air. A deadie pitched over, skull bursting apart to reveal a brain like a deflated football. The others froze, shoulders tucking up defensively. Patty, gasping and sobbing, scrambled to my side.
More guns went off, a chattering fusillade of them. Puffs of grit kicked up from the ground. Deadies went down in ruins of desiccated flesh.
I stared incredulously as a vehicle roared into view. It was like some sort or prop from The Road Warrior—an SUV painted mottled brown, desert camouflage, with spikes sticking out all over it. Guys—livies—in camo jackets and helmets stood in its makeshift turret, blasting away at the deadies.
And when they had dealt with the deadies, they leveled their guns on Patty and me.
%~<>
An astonished hush fell as I ate and ate and ate.
The handlers struck my rivals with batons, urged them to keep up. The deadie on my right succeeded in swallowing down another half a brain, then paused, its mummified face taking on a queer look. A moment later, the leathery skin of its belly parted and its overstuffed stomach flopped out through the slit, tore free, hit the planks of the platform, and popped.
Masticated gray matter and deadie digestive acid sprayed the front row of the crowd. A split-second later, the same thing happened to the deadie at the end of the line.
And still I ate. Blood and brain-pulp covered me to the hairline, welled in my ears. My own stomach felt hugely bloated, smooth and strained, as if it might burst, too.
“Done!” my handler shouted. “What’s the score?”
“That’s five,” the Fat Man proclaimed from on high, where he had Val pressed against his sweaty folds. “A new record!”
“Sev-en, sev-en!” the crowd chanted. That was my number, the one they’d hung around my neck when I shuffled onto the platform with the others.
“How much time left?” my handler asked. “Still two minutes.”
“What do you say, dead boy? Got room for more?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. A fresh victim was secured, the exposed brain not so neatly prepped this time. They’d run out of pre-made meals. They were grabbing people out of the crowd, doping them and sawing off the tops of their heads just to keep up with the demand.
%~<>
Before I could make sense of it, the guys in the armor-plated SUV had grabbed me and stuffed me in back. Two soldiers stood watch on Patty and me while the rest broke the windows and dragged Val out of the station wagon.
We tried to talk to them, livie to livie. We pointed out that we were all on the same side and should stick together and all that good stuff. Nothing helped.
They took us to the town, which had been ringed with walls and barbed wire and booby traps. At first I thought it was to keep the deadies out. But the defenses were there to keep us in.
The deadies were held in some sort of old barn. They gravitated to the fence of their corral, though never touched it, not after they’d gotten a couple of zaps from the electrified wires. So they just stood there, a handbreadth from the wires, staring vacantly at the activity beyond.
The town was full of livies, most of them prisoners. Some were from town. Others had been nabbed off the highway, like us. The men and women were kept separate. I hadn’t seen Val or Patty since we arrived.
I got the lowdown from a local. Big Joe Callup, also known as “the Fat Man,” had been Joshua Flats’ chief of police until his compulsive overeating and subsequent weight gain had forced him onto disability. Fat? He was beyond obese. He was circus freak fat. He couldn’t even get around on his own, so his men hauled him in the back of his customized pickup. Sort of a post-apocalyptic sedan chair.
When the world ended, Big Joe took the town hostage. He set up his own little kingdom with hand-picked soldiers and weapons from the National Guard armory. Raiding parties brought in supplies, more prisoners, and enough deadies to keep them entertained.
“Entertained how?” I asked, not really wanting to hear. “All sorts of ways,” my new acquaintance said. “He has them fight each other. He maims them, races them. Sets them on fire. Bull-riding. Rodeos. Football games. He’s the emperor, they’re his gladiators, and this is his private Colosseum.”
“What about us? How do we figure in?”
“Us?” He smiled bitterly. “We’re the prizes.”
%~<>
The final buzzer sounded its harsh bray a millisecond after I gagged down the final hunk of my seventh brain.
Seven for lucky number seven. “The winnah!” Big Joe exclaimed.
The livies cheered like they meant it. Anybody who didn’t make a sufficient show of enthusiasm was liable to be put on the auction block for the next event.
I wasn’t concerned about the next event. All that mattered was winning, getting Val, and getting out of here.
The guards had dragged Val around the outside of the electrified fence earlier that morning, their way of advertising her to the deadies as the day’s first prize. In fact, they led her around twice. A shapely or muscular bod usually inspired a better effort from the contestants, and they knew they had something special with her. The deadie that won her would tear her apart, just like the steroid-popping fitness junkie I’d seen pulled to pieces by the winning team from yesterday’s soccer match.
That wouldn’t happen to Val. I couldn’t let it.
I knew I’d only have one chance to save her and escape, before I was revealed as an imposter.
The deadie competitors struggled listlessly as the bar came back up. They were full or falling apart, but either way trained enough to know what came next. Those that were still mobile would go back to their stable. The ones who’d exploded their overstuffed guts would be taken to the edge of town and burned.
I tried to act just like them. I let my shoulders slump, my head loll, my stare go vacant. Inside, though, my pulse was skyrocketing.
I’d won. The prize—Val—was mine.
She was enough to make any deadie feel lively again, all that rosy, lush, firm flesh jiggling about.
The handlers led me toward the Fat Man’s pickup truck. The routine was always the same. They herded me up to claim my reward just like they’d herded the deadie socce
r team.
I tried not to let my excitement show. This was it. This was my chance.
Big Joe lolled in the truck bed like a sultan, on a layer of old sofa cushions and futons. The rig had all the comforts of home. A tarp on metal poles kept out the worst of the sun. A cord snaked through the cab’s rear window, plugging the mini-fridge into the cigarette lighter. The area around him was littered with crumpled pop cans, candy wrappers, and halfempty bags of salty snacks.
He was a human behemoth in sweat pants that could have housed a family of four, and a ship’s sail of a T-shirt with a beer company logo on it. Nearly lost amid the bulges and jowls was a hard, mean face that might have once been handsome.
His arm was still around Val, his greasy hand squeezing whatever he could reach. The up-close sight of him touching her almost made me lose it.
“You won a pretty piece of prime cut, here, boy,” he boomed. It was more for the benefit of the crowd than for me, I hadn’t a doubt. His eyes were bright and merry. Demented Santa Claus eyes.
I snatched a glance at the pickup’s cab. The engine was idling to keep the battery from running down, lest the Fat Man have to suffer the misery of warm soda. The windows were down. No one was in the cab.
Deadie. Had to act like I was a deadie. I gazed at Val with an expression of slack-jawed greed, even while trying to make meaningful eye contact with her.
She wouldn’t look at me.
Deadie. Deadie. I shuffled closer to the truck and let a guttural noise come out of my throat. I belched.
That was a mistake. The heavy churning weight in my stomach sent up a vile bubble, and I was tasting the brain meat all over again. My throat hitched. I suddenly knew I was going to spew a geyser.
Somehow, I held it down.
First, Val.
The Fat Man howled with laughter. “Looks like some boy’s still hungry. Want your prize, sonny?”
All around me, I could hear livies crowding close, cheering, egging me on, placing bets as to what body part I’d bite first.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar, pallid face framed in limp blond hair.
Patty.
The moment I looked at her, I saw that she recognized me. Her eyes got wide, and her mouth dropped open. She was going to screw up everything.
I caught her eye. If ever a guy had wished for telepathy, it was me and it was right then. I silently urged her to stay cool, begged her not to blow my cover.
Her chin quivered. I saw her throat work as she fought down a gag. But then she gave a slight nod. She understood.
Good girl. Smart girl.
Time to move. It was my only chance, the one I’d been waiting for.
I’d have to be quick to take them by surprise. First the handlers, while they were distracted by Val—shoulder them aside. Slam shut the tailgate with Val still in there. Then run around to the driver’s door, jump in, and take off. With Val safe in the truck, and the Fat Man as a hostage, we’d get past the guards and out of town.
Next stop, anyplace but here.
I could do it, I knew I could. They weren’t expecting any surprises from a deadie. The walking meat in the pens had been too well trained. They knew better than to move against the handlers, or livies not part of a contest.
“Here you go, honey bunch,” Big Joe chortled. He nudged Val toward the tailgate.
She stumbled on chained ankles, fell to her knees. A hurt grunt escaped her. She looked up through a veil of hair and saw me. Really saw me. Just like with Patty, her mouth dropped open and my name formed on her lips.
I shook my head, trying to make it look like a nerve-jittering deadie impulse. My hungry-sounding moan was a warning.
“Uh-uh-uh,” Val said, chains clanking as she trembled. She knew me. “Suh… skuh…”
No! No, oh, goddammit!
Sudden spiking fear made my stomach’s heavy cargo slide and bubble. Because that was hope dawning on Val’s face. Hope and joy and all the things I’d always wanted to see in her expression. Just not now!
Val let loose a wavering lunatic’s laugh. She started to smile, started to reach out toward me.
She was ruining everything! People were looking at me more closely, seeing the solidity of my flesh—scrawny, maybe, but not dried deadie flesh.
“Shut up,” I said, low but urgent, under a rising murmur from the crowd. “Shut up, Val.”
Any second, suspicion would turn to certainty, and that would be all she wrote. And all because Val couldn’t get with the program.
A line of phantom pain lanced around my skull. It traced the curve where the bone saw would grind and scream. Poetic justice, they’d think. I would feel the ripping of capillaries as they took the top off my head like a layer of sod.
The stupid bitch! We were so close! So close to getting out of this with our lives, and she couldn’t play along for two minutes?
A glottal howl burst from me. After everything I’d done, after the horrible thing I’d done, this was the thanks I got!
“Scotty—” Val said, but her weak voice was drowned out by my furious cry. No one else could have heard.
But I did.
She called me “Scotty.”
Again.
I lunged for her, shouldering the handlers aside just like in my plan. Even better than my plan, because in my surge of angry strength, I sent them flying. I seized a handful of Val’s thick, dark hair and dragged her headfirst out of the pickup.
The Colosseum, my acquaintance had said. Like in the days of ancient Rome. I remembered something else they did in Rome. After a feast.
I turned my head to the side and stuck a finger down my throat. My body heaved. A torrent of hot cerebral slush surged up my gullet and splattered everywhere.
I had to make room.
%~<>
The handlers took me to the barn. I could barely walk, my gut felt so bloated. I had consumed a lot of fresh meat. I would probably be days picking the strings of her hair out of my teeth.
I hadn’t been able to get through her skull. My jaw just couldn’t apply that sort of bone-cracking pressure. I’d had to go for the neck instead.
And then, once it was clear she wasn’t going to talk any more and give me away, I guess I sort of went a little nuts.
They put me in with the deadies again. I was too stuffed and lethargic to worry about whether my disguise and their training would hold up. One or the other must have, because none of them made a move against me.
Or maybe, on some instinctual level, they left me alone because they recognized me as one of their own. I had never actually died, but inside, I was a deadie all the same. I had to be. No genuine livie could have done what I’d done.
A few days later, when I was finally starting to feel physically back to normal—mentally and emotionally, I was as much a deadie as ever— they brought a new one to the barn.
Thin. Limp hair that might have started out blond. Sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, and skin mottled with stains under the rags of clothes.
Not a bad disguise at all.
But then, I knew Patty was a smart girl.
She stood near me, neither of us speaking, as we stared with the deadies out through the fence at the town and waited for the next event.
P~{)
THE
THIRD
DEAD BODY
NINA KIRIKI HOFFMAN
I didn’t even know Richie. I surely didn’t want to love him. After he killed me, though, I found him irresistible.
I opened my eyes and dirt fell into them. Having things fall into my eyes was one of my secret terrors, but now I blinked and shook my head and most of the dirt fell away and I felt all right. So I knew something major had happened to me.
With my eyes closed, I shoved dirt away from my face. While I was doing this I realized that the inside of my mouth felt different. I probed with my tongue, my trained and talented tongue, and soon discovered that where smooth teeth had been before there were only broken stumps. What puzzled me about this a
nd about the dirt in my eyes was that these things didn’t hurt. They bothered me, but not on a pain level.
I frowned and tried to figure out what I was feeling. Not a lot. Not scared or mad, not hot or cold. This was different too. I usually felt scared, standing on street corners waiting for strangers to pick me up, and cold, working evenings in skimpy clothes that showed off my best features. Right now, I felt nothing.
I sat up, dirt falling away from me, and bumped into branches that gridded my view of the sky. Some of them slid off me. The branches were loose and wilting, not attached to a bush or tree. I used my hands to push them out of the way and noticed that the backs of my fingers were blackened beyond my natural cocoa color. I looked at them, trying to remember what had happened before I fell asleep or whatever—had I dipped my fingers in ink? But no; the skin was scorched. My fingerprints were gone. They would have told police that my name was Tawanda Foote, which was my street name.
My teeth would have led police to call me Mary Jefferson, a name I hadn’t used since two years before, when I moved out of my parents’ house at fifteen.
In my own mind, I was Sheila, a power name I had given myself no one could have discovered from any evidence about me.
No teeth, no fingerprints; Richie really didn’t want anybody to know who I was, not that anybody ever had.
Richie.
With my scorched fingers I tried to take my pulse, though it was hard to find a vein among the rope burns at my wrists. With my eyes I watched my own naked chest. There were charred spots on my breasts where Richie had touched me with a burning cigarette. No pulse, but maybe that was because the nerves in my fingertips were dead. No breathing. No easy answer to that, so I chose the hard answer:
Dead.
I was dead.
After I pushed aside the branches so I could see trees and sky, I sat in my own grave dirt and thought about this.
My grannie would call this dirt goofer dust; any soil that’s been piled on a corpse, whether the body’s in a box or just loose like me, turns into goofer dust. Dirt next to dead folk gets a power in it, she used to say.
