by Tim Lebbon
“Go on,” Curt said.
“Why?” Marty asked.
“Suck it up or bail, pothead! I wanna know.”
Dana looked around—at Curt, her friend who still seemed to have become a dick, and the others—and finally at Holden. He gave her a small nod.
We should have closed the hatch and nailed it back down, she thought, and then she flipped forward a few pages and continued reading.
“‘I have found it. In the oldest books: the way of saving our family. I can hear Matthew in the Black Room, working upon father’s jaw. My good arm is hacked up and et so I hope this will be readable, that a believer will come and speak this to our spirits. Then we will be restored and the Great Pain will return.’” She looked up, breathing a sigh of relief because she was almost at the end. “And then there’s something in Latin,” she said.
“Okay, “ Marty said, “I am drawing a line in the fucking sand here—do not read the Latin.” He frowned, looking around as if a bee had buzzed his ear. “The fuck...?” he said, waving one arm around his head. Marty started across the room toward Dana, face set, hand coming up to snatch the book from her hand.
Curt stepped forward, planted a hand on Marty’s chest and shoved him back. He went sprawling, crashing into a bookshelf and covering his head as books fell on him in a shower of dust and dead, curled-up spiders.
“Fucking baby!” Curt shouted.
“Curt...” Jules said.
“It’s a diary!” he shouted, louder. “Just a diary!”
“It doesn’t even mean anything,” Dana said, desperate to defuse the situation. Marty looked scared, and Curt looked... he looked mean. Tall, angry, and mean. “Look,” she continued.
“Dana...” Marty said, voice tinged with hopelessness.
Dana shook her head and tried to laugh, but it didn’t work. So she simply read the inscription to show Marty—to show all of them—that they’d been creeped out for no reason. Get this done and get the fuck out of this basement, she thought. Yeah, that’s right. Get the fuck out and...
“Dolor supervivo caro. Dolor sublimes caro,” she intoned. The words read, she closed the book.
Nothing happened.
Someone sighed, then started quietly sobbing. And when Holden gently took her arm and guided her back up the staircase, she realized that it was her.
•••
Outside the cabin, in the forest where free will could not hold, there was movement.
The forest floor was soft with layers and layers of old leaves, those on the surface still almost recognizable as such from the previous fall, those deeper down little more than mulch. Deeper still, soil and mud, through which things crawled and ate and mated and died. There was no breeze and yet the surface leaves shifted, pushing upward in a small mound and then breaking apart as something forced through. Gray and gnarled, a hand, fisted around the haft of a rusted knife.
It rose further and bent at the elbow, lying flat across the ground as the body below heaved itself upward.
Elsewhere, rising from shallow graves, other bodies came. One, a boy, carried a scythe. Another, an obese woman, bore a broken, ragged saw. A man, followed by a huge form—a zombie, by any commonly recognized definition, dead people rising again under unnatural animation—which shrugged itself free of leaves and mud. The journey up from the ground had not been difficult. The graves were not deep, the leaves above them not so old.
A final shifting in the forest gave birth to a one-armed girl. In her one good hand, a hatchet. Anna Patience. Her eyes were far deader than those of her likeness.
They stood for a while like trees, and from a distance in the early evening darkness that was what they resembled. Dead trees, perhaps, broken off below the branching, just stumps, home to insects and spiders and slugs, waiting to rot and crumble and fall. But though some of that was true—they were home to small creatures, and all had gone some way toward eventual disintegration—the image of trees vanished quickly when they began to move.
Anna Patience was the first. A stumbling step, her one good arm swinging and slashing the air with the hatchet it bore.
Her teeth bared by the shriveling of her lips, she made for the light of the cabin.
FIVE
On screen, the zombie family had come together and were shambling their way toward the cabin. They didn’t acknowledge each other, because perhaps they couldn’t. But obviously there was an instinct at play here, and perhaps a need, because as they drew closer to the cabin they started to groan and grumble... almost as if in excitement.
Sitterson shivered, then smiled. And turning away from the large viewscreen he spoke loudly.
“We have a winner!”
The crowd cheered in anticipation. They surrounded him and Hadley. Pretty much everyone was there, as always, waiting to see how the bet would play out and who would win the wad of cash even now clasped in Hadley’s hand. It was a pivotal part of each event, and once it was done they could move on.
“It’s the Buckners, ladies and gentlemen! Buckners pull the ‘W’!” Most of the crowd groaned in disappointment. Betting slips were torn and thrown, and Sitterson glanced at Lin in amusement as she watched the littering with barely restrained disapproval. They milled and muttered, shrugging and offering one another sad smiles of loss.
But at the back of Control, close to the banks of computers, several men in work clothes and with tool belts clasped around their waists threw up their hands and cheered in triumph.
“Don’t be sore losers now, folks,” Sitterson said affably. “Looks like congratulations go to Maintenance!” The guys nodded to him and grinned, and he eased back his chair and scanned the betting board.
It was the same every time—disappointment and celebration. And it was always at this moment that he drew into himself a little, backing away from his surroundings and the people filling them to muse upon what all this really meant. The betting board seemed glib and amusing, a physical acknowledgment of what they were doing here.
The first column listed every department that had chosen to bet: Electrical, Engineering, Security, Zoology, and several more. At the bottom of the column were persons whose departments declined to take part, but who as individuals couldn’t go a cycle without being a part of the big wager.
And listed in the next column, as if in a confession, were the eternal options: vampires, werewolves, floating witches, aliens, zombies, Kevin, clowns, wraiths, scarecrows, angry molesting trees, mutants...
Sitterson closed his eyes and breathed deeply.
What all this really means... he thought, and he opened his eyes again. No need to dwell on it. He had work to do. So he turned to the crowd again.
“And Maintenance split the pot with... Ronald the intern!” he continued. He handed a handful of cash to one of the cheering men from Maintenance, and Ronald the intern sauntered over from the back of the room, beaming with delight but looking shyly at his shoes, to collect the other wad.
The cheering died down, and people began filing from the room, some shaking their heads and others muttering under their breath. The excitement over, it was time to get back to work.
Sitterson and Hadley exchanged a smile. The pot had been good this year, and their ten percent commission would sit well in their pockets.
Then they turned back to their control panels. Sitterson tapped his keyboard and was just about to access a lakeside camera when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
He turned to face a short, pretty woman with brunette hair tied in a tight bun behind her head. She wore a lab coat, and a mask hung around her throat. Her striking blue eyes were wide, and the beginnings of a charming smile froze and died on his face as he sensed her simmering anger.
“That’s not fair!” she said. “I had zombies too!” Sitterson’s smile rose again, because he knew he could deal with this. And off to the side he sensed Hadley’s sudden interest. He stood and went to the betting board, even picking up a long thin pointer because he thought it would make him look more off
icial. He heard a chuckle from his friend but chose to ignore it.
“Yes, you had ‘zombies.’ But this is ‘Zombie Redneck Torture Family.’” He tapped the board to indicate what he meant. “Entirely separate thing. It’s like the difference between an elephant and an elephant seal.”
The woman opened her mouth to protest, scanning the felt-marked phrases he was pointing to. Then her shoulders slumped and she turned to go, and Sitterson felt a pang of regret that she hadn’t argued more. She was cute. Maybe she’d have started to swear. He liked cute women who swore.
“There’s always next year,” he offered as she went. Still no cursing.
Truman stepped aside to let the woman through the door and closed it behind her, checking through the viewing port to make sure she really was walking away. By the fucking book, Sitterson thought. When Truman turned back and stared at the screen, he saw the soldier’s fear beneath the cool slick surface, and the doubts that must be plaguing him were something known to Sitterson. He had struggled through the same fears and doubts his first time. And though he might silently mock the man, right then he empathized. “They’re like something from a nightmare,” Truman said.
“No,” Lin disagreed. She’d remained in Control after everyone else had left, observing the betting and the results, waiting for the high-jinks to be over so she could get on with her job. “They’re something that nightmares are from. Everything in our stable is a remnant of the old world, courtesy of...” She pointed down. “You know who.”
“Monsters, magic...” Truman said, his voice trailing off.
“You get used to it,” Lin said, and she almost smiled. “Should you?” Truman countered. Lin did not reply, Truman returned to watching the screen, and Sitterson turned his back on both of them.
He’ll have plenty of sleepless nights after this during which to philosophize, he thought, recalling again his first time. Plenty.
He walked across to Hadley, who was staring up at the screens, despondent now. Sitterson knew exactly what was eating him.
“I’m sorry, man.”
“He had the conch in his hands!”
“I know. Couple more minutes, who knows what would have happened.”
Hadley sighed, frustrated.
“I’m never gonna get to see a merman.”
“Dude, be thankful,” Sitterson said. “Apparently those things are terrifying. And the clean-up on them’s a nightmare.” Hadley nodded and shrugged, but Sitterson knew that he’d react like this every year until he had his way. Still...
“So, the Buckners, huh?” Hadley said, pointing at the monitor.
“I know,” Sitterson muttered. “Well, they may be zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots, but... ” And he smiled.
“They’re our zombified pain-worshipping backwoods idiots,” Hadley said, grinning again as they walked back to the control panel.
“Yeah! And they have a hundred percent clearance rate.”
“True. We may as well tell Japan to take the rest of the weekend off.”
“Yeah, right,” Sitterson said, laughing. He glanced over at Lin. Still not smiling! Maybe she really is a fucking robot. Has one of them escaped? “They’re Japanese. What are they gonna do, relax?”
“I don’t know,” Hadley said, sitting back down at his console. “Maybe they can do some group calisthenics or something.”
“Ha!” Sitterson said. “So, let’s see how they’re doing then, eh?” He went to his desk and accessed his computer, and a moment later the big screen in the middle of the wall flickered from an image of the cabin’s basement to a clinical, well-lit school room.
There was movement at the top—it looked like a black and white mass shifting and throbbing in the corner of the room—and then several Japanese school children broke from the mass, running terrified as a young girl floated through the air toward them. It looked as if she was hanging from an invisible noose, but Sitterson knew better.
Her bloated, pale face and black eyes spoke volumes, and her long black hair, sopping wet and dripping as though soaked by an invisible hose, dragged along the floor behind her, shimmering as if with a life of its own.
The school kids tried to open the classroom door but it was locked.
Behind the floating girl, in the far corner, several black and white shapes were also splashed with red.
“Hmmm,” Sitterson said. “Looking good.” But he couldn’t help feeling a simmering jealousy.
He tapped a key and brought the image back to the cabin. The kids were back up from the basement. The blonde was slipping a CD into the stereo. The basement hatch was down, the dining table and chair dragged to sit on top of it.
As music blared, Sitterson spoke.
“And so the end begins.”
•••
Marty took the armchair. He was alone, after all. He puffed determinedly on his joint, watching everyone else through a haze of smoke, and wondered what was going on. Closing his eyes, he tried to move back from where he was. Concentrate on things without the pot affecting his judgment. But still the music pounded through his senses, and the impact of dancing feet vibrated through the floor, and he opened his eyes again without arriving at any conclusions.
It was some blandly modern rock crap that Jules had slipped into the CD player. Marty didn’t even know the band’s name, though he’d heard the music enough times, blaring from the music systems of those who didn’t know better. Its members were probably multi-millionaires who owned six houses and who finished each and every gig in the shower with a dozen girls each, all of them willing to do something different. A production line of sex. He chuckled silently to himself, but the idea seemed more disturbing than funny. Music without soul and balls was not music at all, it was noise.
Dana would think the same. He watched her on the couch, reading the book she’d found and leaning against Holden, but the frown on her face had nothing to do with the vacuousness of the thundering vibes. It was something altogether different, and Marty sat up straighter as he tried to translate her expression.
She knows there’s something weird going on, too, he thought. He took another toke on the spliff, and for the first time in a long while wondered if he was smoking too much.
Jules was dancing around the large room. She sure could move, he’d say that for her. She had a gorgeous body—which he’d once had a brief opportunity to explore with his own two hands, though his memory of it, as with most of his memories, was somewhat hazed—and she was working it now, thrusting out her chest, shaking that long newly-blond hair, wiggling her ass, stomping her feet, then using the MTV-friendly guitar solos to grind her hips and work her groin. There was a film of sweat on her face which only made her glow more, and she’d popped a couple of buttons on her shirt to expose more cleavage. Her bra was visible, and the mounds of her breasts moved heavily in time with her movements.
“Sweet,” Marty muttered, his voice lost to the music. But maybe it was too sweet. Jules was cute and all, a little air-headed maybe, but generally decent and honest. He’d never thought of her as desperate.
Curt was dancing with her in that awkward, self-conscious way most guys had. He wasn’t a natural mover, but he was doing his best, following behind Jules and cupping her butt when she wasn’t writhing and twisting too much, squeezing, and running his hands up and down her stomach and chest from behind when she gave him the opportunity. She was the seductress and he was the poor, led fool. It would have been pitiful if Marty didn’t know Curt well enough. Last thing he was, for a fact, was desperate. He was going along with it because he wanted to go along with it, and that was that.
Jules moved into the seating area, knocking the table slightly with her legs and spilling a slick of beer, arms raised and hands entwining each other like dancing snakes, hips twisting. She moved in front of Holden and performed a quick, suggestive lap-dance for him, bending over to wave her ass in his face, then turning and stretching one foot up onto the couch’s back right next to his head. She flexe
d to and fro, running both hands along her leg to her foot and back again.
Dude, you look so awkward, Marty thought as he watched Holden. The guy was looking anywhere but at Jules—though Marty thought he did see his eyes flicker just briefly to her cleavage a couple of times, and once to her crotch, denim shorts stretched tight by her movement. He looked sidelong at Dana, who was still involved in the diary but obviously not too thrilled at the display.
“Go baby, oh yeah!” Curt called. “That’s the goods right there, fuck yeah!”
“This is so classy,” Marty said.
“Like you wouldn’t want a piece of that,” Curt scoffed.
“Can we not talk about people in pieces anymore tonight?” Marty held up his joint, raised his eyebrows as if to make a point, then took another puff.
Jules slipped away from Holden, and his relief was obvious. She turned on Marty this time, moving luxuriously, running her fingertips up her stomach and over her chest. Her nipples were obvious against the strained shirt.
“Oh, are you feeling lonely, Marty?” she asked. She plucked the joint from his fingers and sucked hard. “Marty and I were sweeties in our freshman hall,” she said over her shoulder. “We made out once,” Marty said. “I never did buy that ring.”
Jules pouted.
“But we’re still... close.” She blew smoke in his face, lips close to his, and then handed him back the joint. She’d smoked a third of it in one hard puff, and he wondered how the hell she wasn’t coughing her guts up on the floor. She danced away, back to the open area between sofa and dining table, where Curt awaited her with his questing hands.
“You know, I have a theory about all this,” Marty said.
“That’s our cue to bail!” Curt cried out, throwing up his hands and showing the sweat patches on his tee-shirt. “Tommy Chong has a theory. You can tell it to Egghead Holden here, if he’s not too busy devirginizing Dana.” Dana pressed her lips together, stood, and dropped the book on the couch. She paused for a second, looking into the fireplace at the fire that was burning down because no one had thought to add any more logs.
