The New Dead: A Zombie Anthology

by Christopher Golden

  By the light of the moon, which was almost full and shining brightly, and the streetlights lining the road leading down to the wharf, Jeff could see the lobster boats at their moorings. Pappy lit up his cigarette and, leaning forward with both elbows resting on the railing, clasped his hands in front of him as though in prayer. The cigarette dangled from his lower lip, sending up a thin curl of smoke, which made him squint. Moths and June bugs buzzed around the single light by the back door, snapping and popping against the screen.

  ‘So tell me,’ Jeff said, ‘who the fuck is Old Man Crowther, and why’re you so sure it’s him?’

  Pappy inhaled and blew a billow of smoke from his nostrils without taking the cigarette from his mouth.

  ‘Got to be ’im,’ he said, the glowing tip of the cigarette bobbing up and down like a firefly in the darkness.

  ‘This sinker I found - he had a length of chain wrapped around his waist. You’re saying somebody killed Old Man Crowther and tossed him overboard?’

  ‘Either that or he did it to himself.’ Pappy puffed some more on his cigarette as though lost in thought.

  ‘Maybe they’ll be able to tell when we bring ’im up. How long’s this Old Man Crowther been missing?’

  Pappy tilted his head to one side and scratched the white beard stubble on his jowls. His fingernails made a loud rasping sound.

  ‘Oh, I’d say it must’a been . . . maybe thirty years or more since he disappeared.’

  ‘Thirty years ago . . . I was still in high school,’ Jeff said. ‘A body can’t last that long down under.’

  ‘May’ve been even longer ’n that, now that I think of it.’ Pappy turned to Jeff, scowling as threads of smoke rose into his face. ‘ ’Twas back in the early seventies, as I recall.’

  Jeff considered for a long, silent moment. Pappy finally took the cigarette from his mouth after taking another deep drag and exhaling.

  Jeff pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘No way,’ he said. ‘Can’t be him. Someone been down there that long, their body’d be long gone. He’d’a been et by scavengers long ago.’

  Pappy smiled and shook his head as he took one last drag of the cigarette and then snapped the butt out into the darkness. Jeff watched it fly, spinning end over end until it hit the ground in a small shower of sparks.

  ‘I saw the body that’s down there,’ Jeff said, ‘ ’n’ there’s no fuckin’ way anyone’d be in that good a condition after thirty years.’

  ‘You never knew Old Man Crowther. That old cocker had a hide on him’s tough as nails.’

  ‘Sorry, Pappy, but it’s gotta be someone else . . .’

  Jeff finally noticed how dry his throat was and realized he was still holding on to his beer. When he raised it and took a swallow, his throat made a funny little gulping sound.

  ‘You was a kid back when it happened,’ Pappy said, ‘so’s probably you don’t remember.’

  There was something in the old man’s tone of voice that caught Jeff’s attention.

  ‘Remember what?’

  ‘It.’

  ‘What do you mean . . . “it ”?’

  Pappy sniffed and shook his head from side to side as though amused by some private joke or deeply saddened. He reached up to his ear as if to grab another cigarette, then started scratching his head.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I was born in sixty-eight,’ Jeff said.

  ‘Okay, so you would’a been . . .’ Pappy did some quick calculations on his fingers. ‘You’d’a been maybe four or five when it happened.’

  Jeff was starting to lose his patience. Pappy had a reputation for being full of shit, and he cursed himself for letting himself be suckered in. He was positive the old man was bullshitting him now just to have someone to talk to. There was no way it had been Old Man Crowther’s body he’d found today.

  From behind him, he could hear the faint strains of laughter from inside the Local. Even though the evening was warm and pleasant, Jeff wanted to go back inside, where there were people and laughter and aimless conversation. But as his gaze drifted down to the harbor and out to sea, he couldn’t stop thinking about the corpse he had found this morning. A shiver ran up his spine, like invisible fingers.

  ‘So you don’t remember anythin’ ’bout the plague we had back then?’ Pappy asked.

  Jeff almost asked What plague? but a faint childhood memory stirred within him.

  He’d only been a kid at the time, maybe six or seven years old, but there had been a period of time - it might have been a few months, but it could have been longer or shorter, memory being the tricky thing it is - when his mother wouldn’t let him play outside after dark with his friends like he usually did. As big a deal as it had been at the time, it was only a faint memory now, but Jeff recalled hearing talk about how there was something wrong . . . something weird going on in the town. He remembered his parents and maybe some other adults using words like disease and infection to describe what was going on. He had always assumed there was some type of flu bug going around they wanted to protect him from.

  Against his better judgment, instead of going back into the bar, Jeff said, ‘You gonna tell me about it, or are you gonna just flap your gums?’

  Pappy looked at him with a long, vacant stare. His brow wrinkled. One white eyebrow was cocked so high it looked like an albino caterpillar had curled up on his forehead.

  ‘Far’s we know, Old Man Crowther was the last one to be infected,’ Pappy said. His voice was edged with tension. It sounded hollow in the night. ‘Them was bad times . . . bad times, but you know what folks is like ’round these parts. We ain’t gonna talk about it much, and we sure as shit don’t want any outsiders talkin’ about it.’

  ‘But you said Old Man Crowther was infected,’ Jeff said, surprised at the impatience in his voice. ‘Infected with what?’

  He couldn’t put out of his mind how much finding that corpse today was bothering him. It was unlike any other body he had ever found.

  ‘You’re saying Old Man Crowther got sick with . . . with somethin’ so bad he wrapped a length of chain around his waist, tied it to a cement block, and heaved himself overboard?’

  ‘We figure he did it to spare the town more misery . . . to end the situation.’

  Pappy sighed and then was silent for a long moment as he stared down at the harbor. Finally, he nodded.

  ‘Ay-yuh. That’s ’bout the size of it. They found his dory washed up on Black Horse Beach, so everyone figured he must’a done somethin’ like that.’ He turned and looked directly at Jeff with intensity in his eyes that bordered on crazy.

  ‘But you don’t know for sure.’

  Pappy snorted and said, ‘If’n I was you, I’d do the smart thing and leave ’im down there. We don’t need to have that whole fuckin’ situation startin’ up again. ’Twas hard enough containin’ it back in the day. Nowadays - Keyrist! ’ Pappy hocked up a wad of mucus and spit it into the darkness. ‘With cell phones ’n’ the Internet ’n’ all, the whole friggin’ world’ll get involved. Who knows what’ll happen then?’

  Jeff was struggling to phrase a question from the cascade of thoughts that filled his head, but he drew a blank. He wanted to believe that Pappy, as always, was talking out of his ass, but thinking about that corpse’s eyes made him wonder if there might not be something to what the old man was saying.

  Before he could get out his first question, Pappy straightened up and said, ‘Well, I’ll be damned, but a powerful thirst has taken hold’a me. Nice chattin’ wi’cha, boy-o.’

  Without another word, he turned and walked back into the Local, the screen door slamming shut behind him. Jeff realized Pappy didn’t really know if that’s what Old Man Crowther had done. The old man had just been speculating.

  Jeff stayed on the back deck a while longer, staring down at the harbor and trying not to let his gaze shift farther out to sea. Moonlight glittered on the dark water like splinters of silver. It was a beautiful view, but he couldn’t stop picturing
the dead man - whoever the hell he was - sitting on the ocean floor down there in the pitch darkness.

  The moment he opened his eyes and saw the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window, Jeff winced. A hot, needle-sharp pain slipped behind his eyes as he rolled over in bed. Disengaging himself from Marcie, he moaned softly, bringing both hands to his forehead as he swung his feet from under the covers and onto the floor. Marcie’s eyelids fluttered open for a moment, but then she rolled over onto her side away from him and heaved a sigh.

  ‘Do you really have to go this early?’ she said, addressing the wall.

  ‘Gotta. I have to work.’

  ‘On a freakin’ Sunday?’

  ‘Uh huh, even on a Sunday.’

  Marcie was silent for a long stretch as Jeff leveraged himself off the bed and scooped up the jeans and socks he’d worn the day before, which were lying in a crumpled heap on the floor by the foot of the bed. After he’d finished getting dressed without a shower - he’d need one for sure after today’s dive - he leaned over Marcie and kissed her on the shoulder. She didn’t respond. He knew she couldn’t have fallen back asleep that fast, but he wasn’t going to stir things up just now. She could be mad at him all she wanted. It wasn’t just that he had to dive today. He had to go back down there to find out exactly who that man was at the bottom of the sea.

  By the time he arrived at the dock, the place was already a media circus. Reporters, TV camera crews, and assorted rubberneckers lined the stone wharf and dock, making it next to impossible for Jeff to make his way down the gangplank with his diving equipment to the waiting patrol boat. A couple of reporters shouted out questions to him, but he pushed past them, ignoring them.

  ‘Word got out quick,’ Jeff said, as he heaved his air tanks onto the boat.

  Mark Curtis, one of the Coast Guardsmen, frowned and shook his head.

  ‘Wouldn’t be so bad,’ he said, ‘if someone had kept his goddamned mouth shut at the Local last night.’

  Chastened, Jeff climbed aboard. The captain, a guy from Belfast named Harvey Rollins, gunned the engine. Mark and the other crewmen cast off, and the boat started out, leaving behind a heavy, curling wake that rocked the dock.

  After they got to the diver’s marker Jeff had left yesterday, he made one final check of his equipment in preparation for going overboard. His diving partner today, as usual, was Wesley Evans, who was married and lived in Tenants Harbor. They had dived together for more than ten years. Perhaps because they were so used to communicating with each other by hand gestures below water, they hardly ever spoke above water. But they trusted that each of them knew intuitively what the other was thinking or going to do underwater. They were a good team, even though it struck Jeff as rather peculiar that they didn’t hang out together when they were off duty.

  Once he and Wes were ready, after nodding to each other they plunged overboard. Even in June, the ocean water was chilly, but Jeff’s dry suit protected him from the initial cold shock. A wave splashed him full in the face, sending a bracing chill through him. After making sure his regulator was working properly, he swam out to the diver’s marker and grasped the rope he’d tied off yesterday. Running it through one rubber-gloved hand, he kicked and went under, sinking into the embracing darkness with Wes a short distance behind. The daylight shimmering above them quickly collapsed, plunging them into a preternatural gloom, which gradually blended into an inky darkness below. Jeff and Wes switched on their flashlights, illuminating the water below with a diffused glow.

  Down . . . down they went, and the deeper they went, the more a nameless apprehension filled Jeff. He knew what he was going to see when he got to the end of the rope, and he was dreading it. He was wondering if he could handle seeing the dead man’s empty gaze again. Overnight, especially after talking to Pappy, his memory of what he’d found had got magnified by his imagination. He tried to prepare himself mentally for what he was about to see, but he still wasn’t ready for it when the drowned man’s figure came into view.

  Jeff hesitated, treading water several feet above the ocean floor. Wes stopped swimming, too, and they looked at each other for a lengthening moment, neither one of them indicating what they should do next. Jeff thought he saw a cloud of confusion in his diving partner’s eyes, and he experienced a sudden, urgent desire to go back to the surface and talk to Wes before they proceeded. He felt he needed to prepare him for what he was about to see.

  But the moment passed without any communication between them, and they continued on down to the ocean floor. Their movements raised silt from the seabed, causing swirls of sand to rise like dark, billowing clouds that shimmered with flakes of silica in the beams of their flashlights.

  Jeff willed his pulse to slow down as he swept his light over the drowned man until it came to rest on the chain wrapped around the man’s waist. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the man’s eyes. Not yet. With a nod and a quick hand gesture, Jeff indicated to Wes that removing the chain from the block should be their first order of business, but for some reason, Jeff couldn’t force himself to move any closer to the corpse. He couldn’t shake the eerie feeling that the man was staring at him through the darkness.

  Jeff jerked back when he swung his flashlight around to illuminate the man’s face. He told himself it had to be a trick of the light and shadow . . . or the way the man’s head was moving ever so slightly in the deep currents . . . or . . . or something. Whatever it was, Jeff was convinced that as he moved, so too the dead man’s eyes moved, tracking him with a dull, blank stare.

  Wes had swum away from the body and was leaning over, inspecting the cement block tied to one end of the chain. It was sunk deep in the sand and draped with seaweed and slime. As he lifted the chain and shook it, the dull clanking sounds the links made was transmitted through the water. Jeff glanced at his diving partner but then looked back at the drowned man.

  His fear was steadily winding up into a feeling of outright dread bordering on panic. He reminded himself that losing focus underwater was always dangerous. He had to get his shit together - now - or else both he and Wes could end up in real trouble. It didn’t help to remind himself that he had a simple job to do. All he had to do was release this drowned man from the chain holding him down and bring him up to the surface. Let the authorities handle it from there. He had done this too many times to count, but never, never had he experienced such unnerving feelings as he was having now.

  He was still desperate to talk to Wes, if only to calm his own irrational fears. Should he motion to his partner that they had to surface so they could plan what their next steps would be?

  Jeff knew that would be foolish.

  This was a simple dive and recovery. Wes and everyone on the Coast Guard boat might think he was losing his nerve. He had to get a grip on himself.

  Wes’s back was turned to the corpse as he fiddled with the chain, trying to release it from the cement block. The dead man’s arms were still extended, waving gently from side to side in the tidal surge, but it looked for all the world like he was straining forward against his restraints, reaching out to catch hold of Wes from behind while he wasn’t looking.

  Jesus, stop it! Jeff cautioned himself.

  He should have been helping Wes unloosen the chain, not hanging back like this, letting his imagination get carried away with such foolish fears. Once that end of the chain was free, it would be a simple matter to unwind it from the corpse’s waist and then, slowly, carefully, bring him up to the surface.

  It was easy, a simple, clean job a rookie could do blindfolded, but Jeff was ashamed that - for whatever reason - he was allowing his fear to take such firm hold of him. With a new determination, he moved over to Wes, who had just about worked the chain free. With Jeff’s help, it was only a matter of a few more seconds before they finished untying the cement block.

  While they worked together, though, Jeff hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that the whole time their backs were turned to the corpse, the dead man was staring
at them, watching, studying their every move. And Jeff couldn’t stop wondering if the drowned man, whoever he was - whether he was Old Man Crowther or some other luckless fool who had been murdered or decided to end it all because of a broken heart or trouble with the IRS - might be angry at them for disturbing his final resting place. The chain and cement block certainly indicated how much he wanted to stay on the bottom of the ocean.

  What Pappy had told him last night about the strange plague that had afflicted the town years ago came back to Jeff. He wondered if it was possible that this man had been infected by whatever the disease was and had drowned himself to end it all - for himself and, possibly, for the entire town.