“Quiet,” I said. “You like being this way?”
“What about you? We’re the same, we’re part of The Power now. He’s going to rule the world in a month.”
“Don’t get caught up in that fellow’s delusions of grandeur,” I said.
“You know it’s true. You can feel it. I know you can feel it. All us zombies, we’re connected, man.”
“Hush. Your father is here.”
“You just don’t know,” Jenna said, “it’s Daddy’s fault we’re like this now!”
“Jenna!” the Senator cried out. He stopped when he got a good look at his daughter and me: walking corpses on a sunny day and not smelling anything like a bed of roses. “Sweet baby Jesus,” he said, stumbling. Jill and one of his bodyguards caught him. “Dear Lord,” he moaned, “you’ve been turned into one of those monsters.”
“And you’re the monster-maker, Senator,” said The Power.
I have no idea where his voice came from; it boomed like there were hidden loudspeakers. The Power and his men emerged from the ground, where they had buried themselves. They moved fast, overtaking Rush’s two men before they could react, breaking their arms and legs and necks with an admirable swiftness.
Then they took care of Jill. She screamed, she tried to fight them. She died in a great deal of pain, and The Powers men took delight in her agony and blood. I have to admit I felt a tinge of glee myself, after the snotty way the woman had treated me during our last encounter. Then I recalled what Rush had told me: find his daughter, I could have Jill in bed. I wondered if Jill was like Miss Melfile and preferred dead men over live flesh.
There were four of us standing in a face-off: Jenna and her father, The Power and yours truly.
“What on earth are you?” asked the Senator as The Power took a step in his direction. “You’re one of those things from the flying saucers, aren’t you? I read the Roswell report.”
“Don’t you recognize me, Mr. Rush?” said The Power. “I used to be human, until you and your rich compadres sent me and my buddies to Vietnam.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t lie, Daddy,” Jenna said.
“What have you done to my daughter, you sick bastard?!?”
“Exactly what you did to me,” said The Power.
“What you did to all of us,” said The Power’s crew in unison.
“Listen, whatever in blazes you are,” Rush said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“My name is Lieutenant Steven Carl Fitzsimmons,” said The Power. He took a soldier’s stance of attention and saluted. “Sir!”
The other five also saluted and yelled, “Sir, yes, sir!”
The Senator’s jaw dropped and his face turned…gray.
“Ahhhh,” said The Power, “recognition.”
“This isn’t possible. You and your platoon…are dead.”
“Yes, yes we are. And we happen to be here for some payback. You see, Mr. Gideon,” and The Power turned his rotting skull my way, “Senator Rush is on what you would call a Black Project Committee, a little unknown wing of the Intelligence Arm of the Senate. And our people’s representative here championed a nifty little project to create an unstoppable, unkillable Marine. Well, the Marine could die in combat, but he’d come back. Usually takes two or three days for the stuff they injected into us to take effect. And what did they put in our blood? Activated only when the heart stops beating? Something cooked up in a secret buried lab? No. An ancient recipe he got from a voodoo priestess from Haiti. She gives him the recipe, she and her family get to come to Florida and prosper as bona fide United States citizens. Was that the deal, Senator?”
“You keep your mouth shut,” said Rush. “You’re discussing top secret information. You signed an oath of—”
“Yeah? And what will you do to me? Have me executed for treason?”
The Power and his men laughed.
Jenna Rush laughed.
I started to laugh.
The Power continued: “Well, my platoon was selected as lab rats. They injected us, told us it was in case we got bit by bad insects in the jungle. Fucking liars, but what do you expect from the government? To cut to the nitty-gritty, Senator, the recipe worked. Me and my men were killed in an ambush. A few days later we rose from the dead and we hunted down those gooks who killed us and them a bunch of zombies too.”
“You went MIA,” said Rush.
“We came home, for payback.”
“You need to report back to your unit, your base. Immediately, Lieutenant! I can have you tossed in Leavenworth for this!”
The zombies laughed more.
“When I heard your daughter was a runaway,” said The Power, “well, I came up with a grand idea for revenge.”
“It’s horrible what you did to these cool guys, Daddy,” Jenna said. “But in the end, it all works out. I like being a zombie. It’s the most far-out thing ever.”
“Oh my God,” said Rush. “Oh no.…”
“And now you’re going to join us,” said The Power.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
The Power’s men held the Senator down.
“My sweet dear little one,” The Power said to Jenna, “would you do the honors?”
“I’d love to.” Jenna picked up a large rock and approached her father. “It’ll hurt, Daddy, but in a couple of days everything will be all right and you’ll thank me.”
The Senator screamed and his daughter cracked opened his head and began to eat.
I turned and started to get into Miss Melfile’s car.
The Power joined me, sitting in the passenger’s seat.
“Ahhh, brains,” he said. “It’s like candy to a girl. What do brains taste like to you, private eye guy?”
“Steak.”
“Pork to me. I’m a bacon man.”
“Can I drive you anywhere?”
“Nah. So you’re not pissed off?”
“What can I do now?”
“It’s all his fault,” and he gestured to the body of Rush.
“War mongers,” I said.
“You understand what’s happening,” said The Power.
“All of Miami will be zombies within the week.”
“And the state, and the country, and the world.”
“With you as leader?”
He shrugged. “Who knows.”
“I’m not a follower.”
“I see that now. Join me anyway.”
“I have my own life to live,” I said, “as a zombie.”
“Well,” he said, “you know where to find me.”
VII. “ZOMBIE LOVERS”
There were zombies everywhere in the city and it wasn’t so bad; I was one of them and getting used to their presence.
I drove home. Lissa Melfile wasn’t there.
I picked up the phone but the phone line was dead (no pun intended here).
I drove to my office.
My secretary was there, and she was naked.
“This is a sight,” I said.
“I wanted you to see me like this,” she said.
“I like what I see.”
“I don’t. Arty, I don’t. You know what I want, what I need. Right?”
I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about it.”
“It’s some sort of form of evolution,” she said. “And I’ve been waiting for this all my life.”
* * * *
Two and a half days later, she woke up in bed. Her flesh was no longer white and pink. Her brains, I must admit, were delicious, the best I’ve ever had.
“Oh, Arty!” she said, holding out her arms.
I went to her and we made love the way zombies do it, and let me tell you: it’s the best I’ve ever had.
Later, I asked her, “What happens when the whole world becomes a race a zombies? What do we do then?”
“We grow,” she said, and she was right.
—September, 2003-September
, 2007
San Diego, Borrego Springs, Los Angeles, Seattle
THE ARRANGEMENT WITH MR. GREEN
I.
Mr. Green pops into the back of the town car with me; he does that sort of thing, just zips in and out of reality with a chime from his old wood flute, being a supernatural creature; I don’t think I will ever get used to it; it’s a good thing the partition between me and the driver is up; I imagine a car crash if the driver looks into the rearview and sees this seven-foot tall humanoid with a leafy green head and smooth green skin wearing a tuxedo.
Yeah, he’s wearing a tux, like I am. He thinks that’s funny: Mr. Night on the Town, ha, ha.
“Off to the big banquet to get your award, eh, lad?” he says.
“Where have you been?” I ask.
“Here and there, doin’ this and that. I enjoy New York.”
“I thought you weren’t ‘keen’ on big cities.”
“They’re growin’ on me like a lean moss,” he says, and laughs in that high-pitch chuckle I have come to adore.
“Are you going to accept the award with me?” I am hopeful.
“Now that would be quite the sight, eh, lad?” I see he has his mug a lager in his right hand, as always, the old wooden flute in the left. He’s consistent if anything.
I want him to do it, to come with me and show the world the truth. I want to disclose it all, no matter what it would do to my life. I am tired of living this lie that is now my career and existence; I can’t tell anyone what is going on because that one time I did, when I told someone I loved, she looked at me like I was completely nuts and left me because she knew I was serious.
Mr. Green holds up his mug. “Just wanted to congrats you, lad. You deserve it!”
“You mean you do.”
“I’m the mouth, you’re the writer. Your name on the covers.”
Am I really a writer? When was the last time I used my imagination?
“We still have much more work to do,” he says, “and many more awards and attention to grab. But you won’t have to feel like such a fake no longer, because I am handin’ the reigns over to your brain.” He places the wood flute to his mouth and plays the three notes I have come to know all too well these past years.
II.
I arrive to the awards banquet of the International Fantasy Society. Hundreds of people look at me: there he is, Danny Boyd, best-selling author of The Green Man Chronicles. I accept the Best Novel Award with a smile, and nodding when the audience asks if there is a next book coming out soon. There are eight more in the cycle, correct? A new book every nine months? I clutch the award—a silver angelic being holding a mighty sword—close to my chest and nod and say, yes, yes, there are many more adventures of the Green Man coming.…
I feel like a fraud, because I am.
III.
I was twenty-eight and washed up. I had “promise,” publishing my first science-fiction story at sixteen and pumping out a hundred until I was twenty-two, when I switched to fantasy. My book publisher was not happy at first, but pleased as plump pumpkins when the first fantasy novel sold better than my science fiction.
A couple of trilogies later and at age twenty-eight, I hit a wall of emptiness. I had writer’s block, really bad writer’s block; I once could sit down and whip out two chapters before lunch, a short story before dinner; but when the block came, I simply stared at the blank screen for hours, days, weeks, and then months; I tried it the old fashion way: purchasing a 1970s Olympia manual like one of my influences, Harlan Ellison, used, but the end result was my staring at a blank sheet of twenty-two-weight white paper for hours, days, weeks, months.
The first year was true hell, and I had to accept the fact that this was the end; I had milked the creative cow dry. Sure, with some smart investments, I could take my royalties and live frugally for the rest of my life, never having to worry about getting a job; that was a different kind of hell I did not want.
A fellow writer friend suggested I go to Hollywood and take script jobs: revising or fixing dialogue, something that did not require too much brainpower, and perhaps it would jump start the flicker to a flame. I tried that: rented an apartment in Santa Monica, my New York agent talked to his sub-agent in LaLa Land; all my books had been optioned, right, so that was something (although there was no word on further development); I took some meetings, got a few jobs, but I couldn’t do it.
Another writer friend suggested composing erotic romance under a female pen name: take on a persona, the genre was flourishing. Tried it, but I was too mentally impotent to create scenes of romance and soft porn.
Two years, then three; I was thirty-one. My agent sent me a tearsheet from one of the trades, headline: What Happened to the Promise of Daniel T. Boyd? “Yeah,” my agent scrawled over the text, “what’s going on?” I had to tell him; he suggested drugs, sex, booze, anything. No, no, and no. Then he suggested getting out of the United States, travel, go to Europe. “I know the perfect place you can borrow for the season,” he said, “a wonderful cottage in the Scottish countryside that I am sure will bring you back. It’s owned by your British publisher.…”
IV.
The cottage was located on the outskirts of the town Crinan in the Argyll and Bute coastal region of Scotland. There was this marine layer warmness from the gulf breeze that I found immediately appealing, after too much time spent in large American cities. I felt as if I had been transported back in time, surrounded by giant, gaunt trees hundreds of years old, ancient fortresses that must have dated back to Arthurian times, antediluvian castles atop distant hills, a variety of small islands off the fogy coast. I expected Tolkein’s Hobbits to come running out of the shires and forests, leading me to some wild adventure that would be my next book.
And that sort of happened.
The first week there I went exploring, walking deep into the Crinan Woods and the Argyll Forest Park, even considering climbing the Arrochar Alps and Loch Goil Mountains (if I’d had the equipment and physical stamina), exploring the outermost land of Castle Stalker and Castle Sween, Fincham Castle and Carrick Castle, imagining the old stone structures filled with kings and princesses, knights and maidens, evil wizards and ghastly dragons; I took a ferry to Isle of Bute and walked long trails from one end of the isle to the next; I tried to summon the ghost of the handless piper that was said to haunt the Duntrune Castle north across Crinan Loch; pictured the line of kings who were crowned over time at the hill fort of Dundadd, each with the heavy burden of monarchs awaiting them—oh, their stories I could tell!
The townsfolk of Crinan paid me no mind; it seems Yanks often came here at the behest of the London publisher who often opened the place up to writers who needed to get away from it all and refresh their batteries.
The third week, I felt I was ready. I would write a novel about brave knights and nasty, multi-dimensional beings, a tale of honor and courage; but when I sat down at the laptop, nothing came forward except the first line: The roar of the Corrievrekam whirlpool was as fierce as the unearthly cries of the marching army of zombie elves.
I got drunk on the twelve-pack of Guinness I had purchased in the local store, which was better than running to the nearest coastal cliff and plunging myself deep into the Scottish sea.
V.
The sound of three notes from a flute woke me up; my head was pounding hard from the alcohol and I wanted to vomit. In the main room of the cottage I could make out the familiar pat-pat-pat of the laptop keyboard, and what seemed to be a high-pitched giggle. An intruder, I thought, looking around the bedroom for something I could use as a weapon.
Empty-handed, I walked out of the bedroom and saw, in the dim light from the fireplace (I had not ignited it), sitting at the card table, was a large shadowy figure slumped over my laptop and typing. I noticed there was what appeared to be an old, wood flute on the table, and a large, warped drinking mug that was also made of wood.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked, my voice hoarse.
“There you
are,” this person said in a squeaky Scottish or Irish voice. “Tied one over, eh, lad? Well, no worries, we’ll get your career back on track.”
At first I thought it might be my British publisher who owned this cottage, come to check on me, wearing an odd hooded jacket, but when this person turned and the light of the burning embers showed me a better view, I could only stare in a dumbfounded, hung over state, my mouth agape like a cartoon character, at this person who was not a human being.
He—it, whatever—was green from head to toe, with regular human features of eyes, nose, and mouth, but instead of hair there was a growth of foliage, branches, and leaves from its head; instead of skin on the body was a fuzzy green moss; and instead of feet were giant leaves. It wore a loose tunic and loincloth that appeared soiled and ancient, with a bentwood dagger tucked in a vine rope belt around the torso.
“Don’t scream, lad,” he, it, said.
“I won’t,” I heard myself say.
“I will explain more tomorrow evening. Meanwhile, take a look at what I have put down on this mechanical contraption. Keen, I say, but nothing can beat a quill and parchment to tell a real story. Ah, I yield to progress, lad, if this is what it is called! I planted that first sentence in your head, the way a farmer plants a seed, when you were taking a stroll through the woodlands, hoping it would give you inspiration to make something up. You cannot create lies out of the truth, yes? So I will help you. Yes, there was a war between the undead elves and the peoples of the forests long, long ago. You can read about it.…”
He stood up, I backed off.
“Tomorrow,” he said, picking up the flute and placing the instrument to his mouth; out came the three notes that had woken me up, and the leafy green man vanished in front of my eyes.
He left the drinking mug.
I made myself some tea (green tea, nonetheless!) and it took me an hour to gather the courage and gumption to sit behind the laptop and peer at what was on the screen, sloppily typed on the word processing program, a narrative after the sentence I had left.
The Chronotope and Other Speculative Fictions Page 12
