Still of Night

by Jonathan Maberry

  So, I used another metal can to build a fire to boil some water and brewed some actual coffee. Nothing has ever tasted better in my whole life. I drank five cups. After a while my eyes were twitching and I was able to smell colors and taste sounds. Who cares?

  I split the rabbits with Baskerville and after dinner I prowled the office again, hoping for more hidden goodies. There was no more food, but in the executive office, I found a handgun and a nearly full box of shells. It was a Springfield XDs 45 ACP. A small-frame gun, the kind useful for concealed carry. Decent stopping power but it’s for up close and personal defense, and it has a single stack magazine that holds only six rounds. I didn’t need another gun, but I took it anyway, because what I needed at that moment and what I might need later were vastly different things.

  While I wandered the office, I thought about the cache of supplies I’d gotten here. If I could find a good-sized cart, like one of those big laundry hampers, all that spring water, the coffee and the gun might make a nice gift to bring to Happy Valley when I got there. Church would appreciate the gesture.

  And that’s when the universe decided to get weird on me. Not nasty weird, which is the route it usually takes, but downright coincidental to the point of being weird.

  I looked up from the gun I’d taken from the head honcho’s desk and there, on the desk, was a lease agreement for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse in Happy Valley.

  I shit you not.

  I set down the pistol and snatched up the lease, then went searching for a map. There were several and I matched the mailing address to the map and there it was. Maybe fifteen miles from where I stood. My heart pounded in my ears and I wanted to run for the door but did not. It was late, and there had been dead ones wandering around this little town. Morning was safer.

  ***

  We left at first light.

  There were only two of the dead in sight, both of them looking more confused and sad than scary. A teenage boy in sweatpants and Nike sneakers, and a bald older man wearing a hospital gown. Both of them had visible bites and were missing important pieces of meat. The fact that they were mostly intact was likely due to having been attacked by only one of the living dead. It takes a while to chew your way through healthy flesh. And for some reason I don’t understand, the zombies stop eating shortly after a person dies, and won’t take so much as a small nibble of their own kind. Maybe it has something to do with the way Lucifer 113 was bioengineered. The parasites needed sustenance, but the imperative of the design was to attack healthy hosts and spread the disease. Before Dr. Volker changed it, the base bioweapon had been designed to have an enemy population infect itself in as short a time as possible, leaving the physical assets of buildings and resources intact.

  When I think about that I wonder if we actually deserve to survive, and that somewhere Charles Darwin is spinning in his grave. The flip side of survival of the fittest is extinction of those who maybe should go into history’s dust bin.

  Cheery thought. Call me Mr. Sunshine.

  The zombies weren’t a threat to me, but I killed them anyway because they might be a threat to someone else. There was a lot of good stuff in this area, and survivors should have a chance to use it. I found my cart, though. A big landscaper’s plastic bin that rolled on four low-pressure rubber tires. Good for hauling small trees with their root balls. Now it had as much bottled water as I could carry, and all of the damn coffee. And three paperback novels I found in the break room. One by James Moore, one by Christopher Golden, and one by Mary Sangiovanni. Horror novels, but hey . . . it was in keeping with the world around me.

  We made a stop in a PetSmart and I loaded up with maybe a hundred pounds of canned dog food. I opened two of them for Baskerville and he was in doggy heaven. All of the bags of kibble had been torn open and devoured by rats and raccoons, but vermin still haven’t figured out how to work a pull-tab. Also found a six-pack of light beer, but . . . fuck it . . . the world may have ended but I still wasn’t that desperate. I left it in case a hipster had survived.

  We headed west, going out of the small town and through farmland. According to the map, Happy Valley was not actually in a valley, which was one of the reasons it had been hard for me to locate. It was on a hill that backed up against a pretty steep mountain. There was a small river that came down from the mountain bringing snow melt, and the gated community was surrounded by a very dense and very deep section of protected land. No public roads passed it, and the only ways into it were two small private roads. One was a service road that wound around to the back corner and might as well have had “tradesman’s entrance” painted on it. The other was a crushed shell road that was probably quite lovely once upon a time. Pink shells, lined with decorative stones. But it was not easy to find because someone had gone to great lengths to plant a bunch of fast-growing weeds and shrubs in front of the entrance, and over the last six months it had all grown wild. The decorative rocks had all been pushed aside and the shell gravel raked away. I found traces of it, enough to know what it had been.

  “Someone’s being very careful,” I said aloud. A squirrel dropped an acorn on me. Not sure how to interpret that.

  Baskerville sniffed around and seemed content that all was kosher, but then a breeze rolled our way from deep within the trees. The dog lifted his big head and sniffed it and immediately went into his aggressive fighting stance—wide-legged, head lowered, ears pivoting to hear everything, nose sniffing out the complexities of odor. I smelled it, too. A sickly-sweet stink I knew too well. Rotting flesh. But there was something else mixed in, an underlying strangeness or something.

  The dead rot for a bit, but they don’t completely decay. The genetically-altered parasites prevent that, keeping the infected in a state near death but not actually dead. You see, that’s the thing. There are the living, the actual dead, and the living dead. It’s a third state of existence. The body is in a semi-hibernative state, with all nonessential organs and tissues shut down so that the essential systems can stay online. There is actually some respiration and blood flow, though it is almost impossible to detect. Otherwise the zombies would have rotted to piles of goo within a week or two after the outbreak.

  The upshot of this is that the stench of decay for them is different than that of an ordinary human body left to rot. It isn’t as sweet because the parasites need the energy of those sugars.

  The smell riding the forest breeze was very sweet. Which meant that it was not infected flesh. It could be an animal, although most animals have their own aromatic signature if you have the experience to discern one from the other. This smelled like human flesh.

  I touched Baskerville’s shoulder and bent low to whisper to him. “Find. No hit.”

  He was off like a shot. In the months we’d traveled together, I’d spent hundreds of hours teaching the mutt a lot of tricks. Verbal commands, finger snaps, and silent hand signals. He didn’t yet have the vocabulary that my first combat dog, Ghost, used to have, but Baskerville was learning. He was a damn smart dog, and we were a pack now. As he vanished into the woods I took a moment to look around and let my own—admittedly less acute—human senses do their jobs. There were a lot of birds singing in the trees, including two noisy crows. There were no moans that I could hear; no voices or cries for help, either.

  I left the cart where it was, loosened my sword in its sheath, and followed Baskerville.

  The smell was too strong to have traveled far, and within a couple of minutes I came upon the big dog standing just inside the shadowy woods on the edge of a clearing. His ears twitched as I came up behind, but his eyes were set and fixed on what was inside the clearing. The smell was much stronger here, and now I could tell that there was more than one kind of rot troubling the air. The sweetness of human rot and the stranger, muskier stink of zombies undergoing their ultra-slow process of decay. The closer I got the more of that I smelled.

  As I crept up behind Baskerville, I could hear sounds, too. Moans, but oddly muffled, and some creaking
, rasping sounds. And the buzz of flies. Hundreds of them. Thousands.

  Baskerville and I peered through a break in the leaves and stared into the mouth of hell itself.

  — 17 —

  DAHLIA AND THE PACK

  Dahlia stood at the edge of the big clearing. Neeko stood facing her across the open space, and several of the others were there as well. A skinny black girl named Bailey; Pepe, a squat, broad-shouldered Chicano; and one of the last kids from Dahlia’s old school, Skye. The interior space of the clearing was filled with all kinds of devices rigged by Mr. Church. Pieces of logs balanced by ropes, camouflaged pits, trip wires, and dozens of small targets made from paper plates dripping with fresh white paint. Control wires snaked out in all directions, each of them held by other members of the Pack. Scattered throughout the clearing were bundles wrapped in cloth or old newspaper. Weapons or other tools.

  The exercise was a bitch. Dahlia and the others had taken a real beating during it several times over the last few weeks. She could still feel the bruises. And it was never the same way twice. So far none of them had gotten all the way through. There were no set rules except Church’s expectation that everyone did it and anyone participating in the exercise try to get all the way through. No quitting.

  Church did not give his combat or survival exercises names, but Neeko always did. He called the drill with blindfolds and Sharpies “Ghosting.” This was the Arena.

  “On deck,” called Church. He stood just inside the wall of shadowy trees.

  Dahlia eased forward into a crouch, exactly the way she’d been taught—knees bent, weight shifted to the balls of her feet and equally balanced, hands loose and ready, eyes focused on the whole clearing instead on any one object. A phrase hung in her consciousness. Mushin no shin. A Japanese word for “mind of no mind.” It was a concept Church had been teaching them all. To be ready for anything while being without expectations or preconceptions. A pure, reactive state that allowed a warrior to fight the actual fight rather than what he or she expected. It was Zen, not Jedi, but it amounted to much the same to Dahlia. A mind trick.

  She waited for the moment to tell her what was happening so that the long weeks of training could allow her reflexes and muscle memory to dictate how to move. It was even harder than it sounded.

  “Go,” said Church. He did not shout it. He said it quietly, almost conversationally.

  Neeko and Dahlia moved into the clearing first, breaking right and left as they entered. The goal was to find a small bundle, the contents of which were different every time, and then escape the Arena with it intact.

  There was a sound—a faint whisper of something—and Dahlia shifted, turned, ducked, then flattened completely as a branch was released from a tether and snapped through the air where her stomach had been. The painted plate missed her back by half an inch, and she immediately rolled sideways and came up fast, following the branch, grabbing it above and below the plate and giving it a savage wrench. The green wood cracked, and she spun off it to see Neeko twist himself nearly in half avoiding a bunch of small stones that fell from a net bag released by one of the Pack. One stone struck his forearm and he cried out but kept moving. The stones weren’t soaked in paint, and therefore indicated injury but not an infected bite.

  Pepe, Skye, and Bailey moved in now, treading carefully, looking for traps.

  Skye made it three steps before stepping on something hidden under leaves. A pint of paint dropped from the “ceiling” onto her head with a heavy splat.

  “Shit,” she cried. Immediately the three Pack members closest to her side of the clearing began counting out loud. Infection was quick, and quicker still when someone was moving fast and pumping blood. Increased heartrate spread the parasites throughout the body too fast for amputation or any other preventative method. Church allowed them fifteen seconds in the drill, after which they would have to play zombie and try to attack the others. Before the world ended that would be a fun, if weird, game of tag; now it usually resulted in heavy bruising and the occasional broken bone.

  Pepe grabbed her and shoved her toward a pair of paint-soaked plates hung on wires. Skye set her jaw, leaped at them and tore them down, bearing both to the ground so Pepe could run past her and get clear.

  Dying are either a burden or an ally to the living. One of Church’s many combat sayings. If a soldier was injured during a really intense firefight, then helping him would draw resources from the battle. A medic and stretcher bearers. Two to three soldiers. If the team was badly outnumbered and the injured person could somehow fight, then Church said they were obliged by honor to do so. The concept was horrific and made Dahlia sick to her stomach, but she knew that Church was right. Anyone bitten would become a zombie, sooner or later. There was no cure and no hope, so what was actually the most humane choice? To endanger others or save them?

  She recited another of the sayings in her head as she moved deeper into the circle. The war is the war.

  Awful, but true. And this was war.

  Two branches suddenly broke free of their tethers and slashed at her, but Dahlia stepped into them, bashing one down with her left forearm so that the paint spattered the ground; and catching the other with her right hand and shoving it backward. She twisted it and broke the branch. Broke its neck. It sagged down and she moved. She had paint droplets on her, but not an impact splash. Not a bite.

  “On your six,” yelled Church, and Dahlia whirled to see three Pack members in white boiler suits come rushing out of the woods. This was new. They reached for her with hands that dripped with fresh paint. The attackers looked weird, too big, and she realized that they were wearing padding under their clothes.

  Dahlia darted to the right so that she was on the outside of the line rather than letting them all come at her like a wave. She slap-parried a reaching arm and then stepped in and shoved the outside attacker with all of her considerable weight. Although she wasn’t as heavy as she used to be, Dahlia carried a lot of mass, and beneath the fat there were newly trained and very tough muscles. The outside “zombie” crashed into the others and they all went down. As they fell she spotted a wrapped bundle on the ground. Not the prize, but a tool. She dove for it, rolled with a measure of grace, ignored the thump of her shoulder on the ground, and came up with the prize, whipping off the rags as she did so. Inside there was a plastic water pistol but it was nearly empty. How many squirts? Two? Three?

  She brought it up and almost fired it, but stopped. Three squirts meant three bullets. Not a lot of ammunition but a lot of noise. With a growl she thrust the water pistol into her pocket, snatched up a piece of broken branch and ran over to where the three faux zombies were trying to untangle themselves. She jabbed the closest one twice on the back of the skull.

  “Dead,” she cried, and the zombie collapsed down.

  Dahlia knelt on him and reached over his bulk to repeat the action with the second.

  “Dead.”

  The third was thrashing and she hit him four times before she got good placement on the temple.

  “Dead,” she cried.

  “Miss!” called Church. “The temple is lethal to humans, not to the dead.”

  She cursed. Church was always a stickler for accuracy. It wasn’t just any part of the brain that killed the zombies; only a few specific areas would work. So she climbed over the two “dead” ones, ignoring the grunts and cries of the Pack-members inside the padding, pushed the third zombie’s head down and stabbed really hard on the brain stem.

  “Ow!” cried the zombie.

  “Dead,” yelled Dahlia.

  “Don’t wait for applause,” said Church. “Move!”

  She moved.

  Everything in the Arena seemed to be in motion and she tried not to focus on any one part. Mushin no shin.

  “Thirty,” yelled someone, and suddenly Skye wheeled on Pepe and grabbed him. She bent forward to try and bite his neck, making it look way too real. Pepe howled in pain and surprise as he shoved her away, and then the Pack mem
bers began a new count. For him.

  Then Bailey was there, and she had a ten-inch length of plastic garbage hose that was taped at one end. A training knife. She stepped up behind Skye, grabbed her paint-smeared hair, pushed her head forward and stabbed her four times in the back of the neck.

  “Dead!”

  Pepe was still standing there, a hand pressed to his neck. Red leaked between his fingers. Skye had actually bitten him. From the ground, Skye cried out, “God, I’m sorry.”

  Then another branch was released, smacking Bailey and Pepe both with gobs of paint. The Pack members howled and began counting in total confusion. Dahlia started in that direction, then spotted a large bundle on the ground.

  Fuck, she thought, torn for a split second with indecision.

  The War is the War.

  She dove for the bundle as another branch whipped a paper plate at her. It painted a skunk-tail of white along her back, but there was no straight impact. Still no bite. She dropped to her knees by the bundle and snatched it up, surprised at how heavy and awkward it was. When she tore off the wrapping her heart nearly froze. Inside the bundle was a waterproof canvas bag filled with water balloons, and tied to the front of it was the plastic face of a doll. A baby. The water in the balloons was warm, and Dahlia immediate understood. This was a child. Alive.

  God.

  In that moment the bundle in her arms was alive. The part of Dahlia that was the ironic and caustic chubby girl in high school wanted to scoff at the feelings that rose up in her. The aspect that was Dahlia, who created the Pack and survived the apocalypse, wanted to dismiss the bundle as a burden, as a liability.