21st Century Dead

by Christopher Golden

  As I watched her, I thought of my wife when she had been in the hospital right after Peter was born. The zombie walked like a woman who had just given birth, that kind of dreamy, exhausted intensity. I watched her pale bare feet move through the grass toward our garden. I watched as she knelt down and began to dig in the soil.

  If Peter had been there, he would have aimed and taken the head shot without a second thought; after the zombie fell, he would have gone down and removed the head with an ax or a saw, and it wouldn’t have perturbed him. It would have seemed like the right thing to do.

  And it was. It was the right thing to do.

  When I went to the back door, she didn’t notice me at first, she was so involved. She ran her fingers along the garden soil as tenderly as a fortune-teller reading a palm. As if she was searching for something fragile and precious. Or so it seemed.

  “Hello?” I said. I took a cautious step forward. I couldn’t say what I was thinking, really. I spoke more clearly. “Hello?”

  And then she turned. Her pale, unnaturally cloudy eyes lit upon me, and it was not clear if she saw me, or smelled me, or sensed me in some other way, and she gave a low, trickling growl.

  I put one foot, then another, down the back steps. “It’s okay,” I said softly. “Hi there.” My flashlight ran across her face—which was so torn and ragged that little remained of the cheeks or nose. Perhaps the word face isn’t the right word, though she lifted her head and glared into the light. Looking at those eyes, those bared, lipless teeth, I wouldn’t have said that there was anything human about her. But she didn’t rush to attack. She cocked her shoulder with a kind of dainty puzzlement. Then she stood.

  “Come on,” I said softly. “It’s time to go. Let’s go now.”

  And I began to step slowly toward the gate. “Come on,” I said, and I made a little whistling, kissing sound, like you would do with a dog you were trying to lure.

  I opened the gate wide, like a gentleman, and moved gently into the driveway, walking slowly backward. “C’mon, baby,” I whispered. “C’mon, sweetheart. Let’s go. It’s time to leave now.”

  And after a moment she began to follow me. She held her arms out, and tottered forward, the way that zombies do, a wet, thick sound whispering from her lungs, and I waited until she’d gotten close before I took another step back down the driveway.

  “That’s right,” I whispered. “Here we go. Come on.” And she followed.

  There was something so gentle and hopeful about the way her hands groped forward. I thought of the way that we reach out to try to touch something insubstantial in the darkness. I thought of the way Peter had toddled forward to me when he was first learning to walk, the way his arms stretched out for me to catch him. I thought of my wife the day she had gone into the hospital, the way her hands had risen, pleading and comforting, to touch my face. “I’ll be all right,” she’d said. “Don’t worry.”

  By this time we had reached the street, she and I; I was backing up and she was following, and she was coming on faster, more determined and hungry. I could see Peter’s darkened window above me.

  “Come on,” I whispered. “Come on.”

  What would it feel like to let her embrace me? I wondered. Would it be so bad?

  A MOTHER’S LOVE

  John McIlveen

  COLICKY, FINICKY, and just plain cantankerous, six-month-old Cedric had been trouble right from the moment Dr. Gregiore slapped his too skinny bottom. Marissa prided herself on the patience she had displayed since the birth of her irritable infant, but Cedric had become ravenous four months ago and it just kept getting worse.

  It would have been so much easier if she hadn’t loved her insatiable child. She could have tossed him to the wind like they did in population-controlled nations, or taped him up and popped him in the freezer for safekeeping, or maybe buried him in the backyard … if she’d had one. There had been a time in America when these things weren’t allowed, and the idea of disposable children was unthinkable.

  Just a few months earlier, Uncle Sam had monitored everything: how much you earned, what brands you used, and where you bought them, if your taxes were short, and if your kids were in school and up-to-date with their shots. But things had changed. Now they monitored nothing and all life was disposable … at least all human life. Now you could bury your kid in the backyard. Hell, now you could tie your kid to your car bumper and take him for a spin, because there were painfully few people—if any—who had the wherewithal to monitor you. There were even fewer who gave a shit.

  Marissa moved a little morsel of food around on the plate, sliced off a small section, and dropped it into Cedric’s mouth. It was so much nicer now that he could take small bits of solid food, instead of her having to prechew it, dice it, or somehow break it down. Cedric gnawed on the offered tidbit with great passion, accenting his toothless chewing with the guttural sounds of gnarling hunger. He swallowed and shrieked angrily for more.

  Keeping Cedric fed and happy was a grueling, thankless, and endless task that only got harder as the baby grew older. The fact that food became scarcer by the day only exacerbated matters. In retrospect, it had been easy enough at first. Living flesh had been plentiful. This was Boston, for Christ’s sake. The streets had always been teeming with people of all shapes, sizes, genders, and flavors, so finding a little food for Cedric had been, if not easy, at least easier.

  The pandemic had spread through Boston like hot molasses and then through New England even faster. The CDC, with the full backing of the United States armed forces, the CIA, FBI, and possibly the NFL and AARP, tried to contain it. The last Marissa knew, all flights nationwide had been canceled and a desperate stand had been set up all along the Mississippi River and along the Canadian border in an improbable attempt to control the spread of the plague. Now, three months later, there were no flights at all.

  It had begun with a new species of spider discovered in the rain forests of South America. Apparently, some ambitious young biologist, botanist, or whatever the hell he was, took it upon himself to pack up one of these exotic little arachnids and bring it back to MIT for research. Unfortunately, the scientist didn’t stop to think that his little spider didn’t want to be dissected, was faster than shit, could jump like it had a rocket up its ass, and could make small work of whatever protective materials were covering his hands. He slapped and killed the spider immediately, but that was too little, too late. The deadliest and most contagious toxin ever encountered was on the loose, and the Araneae Plague, or Plague of the Spider, was born.

  After his litter spider kiss, our scientist went home and kissed the wife and his two kids, the wife kissed her mother, and then she made love to her best friend’s hubby while the kids shared their Kool-Aid–filled sippy cups with their cousins. Next thing you know, our scientist is eating the cheerleader next door, and not in the way you brag about. By noon the next day, half of Arlington is sharing their newfound strain.

  Twelve hours from point of infection to living-dead condition. Catch the toxin, spread it everywhere, puke and shit your guts out, and then keel over dead. Five minutes later, up and at ’em and voilà … you’ve got yourself a zombie!

  They tried to be politically correct by calling it “suspended life.” What the hell was that all about? Marissa had wondered. The shit was hitting the fan in copious amounts from every feasible direction, and they were worried that people would be offended by calling a spade a spade. If you’re dead but you’re still walking around all growly and shit and eating everyone from your barista to your pastor, sorry, honey, you’re a zombie.

  At the onset, all Marissa had to do was move fast. Food was plentiful for the living dead, and they moved slowly, but not as slowly as some would think. Regardless, if you were sluggish and had a propensity to dining daily on fast food, chances were you’d become a first course.

  She had found a Smart car that worked pretty well for weaving around, through, and under hard-to-fit spaces, and was near enough to the ground
to push the ravaged bodies of the unfortunate aside. Marissa could jump out of the Smart car, hack a foot or hand off, and be back in the car within ten seconds without a feasting zombie even noticing her, or if they did they didn’t give much of a shit as long as they were eating well. Soon, however, there was far too much congestion from crashed or abandoned vehicles, other debris, and, of course … bodies, for the Smart car to be a long-term solution.

  The second month was more difficult. Cedric was four months old, two months living dead. The survivors had all but disappeared. Whether they escaped out of Boston to safer grounds or had all perished Marissa wasn’t sure, but she would occasionally hear the tortured shrieks of some poor bastard who’d been caught napping. From her eighth-floor condo she could see the rush of the dead as they responded to those screams.

  Now she had to use her wiles when it came to feeding Cedric. She had tried freezing a hefty collection of body parts she had gathered, but Cedric wanted nothing to do with them. Fried, microwaved, blended, souffléd, it didn’t matter. Unlike with the living, frozen meats didn’t quite cut it with the living dead.

  The power had failed shortly after that second month. Despite its being one of the old-fashioned horizontal types with a latching lid, some of the smell did manage to squeeze between the seal and the frame, and there was no way she’d open that freezer now.

  Another reason for not opening the freezer was that Cedric’s daddy was in there. Marissa knew next to nothing about zombies. She had been so focused on Cedric that she hadn’t spent much time studying them, which meant she had no idea if they could starve to death or if their eating was just fueled by memory or a motor function. Nor did she know if they reanimated after being frozen and then thawed. She hadn’t heard any noises from within the freezer, but finding out was not on her list of options or desires. Besides, he was the dumbass who had infected Cedric; he didn’t deserve to get out. Where he got it—the plague—she had no idea, but if it had come from that ho Keisha Jordan it wouldn’t surprise her, the way she kept giving her stuff away to anyone who cared for a sample, rubbing that big old ass all over anyone who looked twice at it. Didn’t matter none, now. Keisha Jordan had been Cedric’s dinner about a month ago. The leftovers had gone out the window and down eight stories.

  “Ain’t you ever full?” she asked her son. Cedric twisted and heaved in response, little impish clicks and snarls spilling from his mouth. His eyes bored straight into her, burning with hunger and an intensity far too direct for his age.

  He was now six months old. Before he’d been infected, his skin had been healthy and unblemished, the powdery hue of cocoa. Now it was as ashen as storm clouds, with splits beginning in the webbing of his fingers and toes and blood seepage from around his eyes and the corners of his lips.

  Marissa lifted him and raised him to her shoulder. The intimacy of motherhood had disappeared upon the acknowledgment of what her sweet baby had become, yet her heart was still tied to him. She patted his back until he released a fetid belch, all the while trying to sink his nonexistent teeth into her shoulder and drooling all over her. She wore a fisherman’s raincoat while dealing with Cedric, though it made her feel and look more like Paddington Bear. Cedric protested loudly, screeching his wrath as she laid him back in the crib, his eyes never swaying from hers.

  “There you go, you little demon,” she said sweetly. She carefully removed her coat, carried it to the bathroom between thumb and forefinger, and dropped it into the tub on top of two others. It was so much easier when there was hot water: she would just turn the shower on full heat and dump in a bottle of chlorine. She gingerly peeled the Playtex gloves from her hands, rolling them inside out, and dropped them into a lined barrel.

  She’d known that Robert, Cedric’s daddy, had the plague before he even knew it; she’d seen it in is his eyes, how they darted back and forth, always wary and shying from the light. When Robert started puking and messing damn near everywhere, even he couldn’t deny it. After Robert had passed out, she’d brained him with his own softball bat, as he had instructed her. It was the same one she had later used on Keisha … a little poetic justice, she figured.

  Needing out of that vile apartment, Marissa had moved the bare necessities up to the eighth floor of the ten-story building and begun stocking it with water, nonperishable foods, medical supplies, and propane to fuel the Coleman camping stove she had set up. She had observed that the zombies had no particular desire to ascend steps unless enticed, so the higher the better. She had also developed a pretty clever route from her apartment to target sites like stores, pharmacies, and even a hospital, snaking through the upper floors of buildings and employing ladders, bedrails, planking, and anything else useful for traveling between buildings and over rooftops, keeping any proximity to the zombies to a minimum.

  By the third month, the living dead had far outnumbered the living alive. The only advantage to this was that the living population that had perished had done it so quickly that it had left plenty of food and fuel for the survivors, as long as they didn’t mind eating canned and dry foods and siphoning gas … and could outmaneuver the zombies. The biggest disadvantages were that there were so many dead the streets resembled Times Square on New Year’s Eve, only without the lights and fanfare, and that living flesh was now so rare that Cedric was eating less and less, though his ferocity remained at the same searing level.

  Marissa’s maternal instincts had kicked in. She needed to feed her baby. Marissa knew that if she was alive, there had to be smarter and more-adept people who had survived as well, especially in a city the size of Boston. Cedric had needed food, which meant that she, just like the living dead, would have to hunt for living flesh. Her advantage was that the survivors knew the mindless dead were after them, but they never expected a gritty, strong-willed mother. The realization that she didn’t have to carry Cedric everywhere with her made things a bit easier, and travels much lighter. He was safe when left behind at the apartment. The dead didn’t want him: he was one of them.

  By the time Cedric reached five months old his appetite was voracious, yet he was an infant, so he still ate relatively small amounts. With no way to preserve the dead bodies and the number of survivors nearing nil, Marissa had been forced to take prisoners, luring them to her apartment and then handcuffing them to the cast-iron steam radiator. She kept them alive and fresh, making sure they survived as long as possible. She’d start small, with the toes and fingers, then the feet and the legs. She didn’t like putting them through all the pain and terror, so she’d shoot them up pretty well, at first with morphine, and then Darvon, Fentanyl, or Sufenta, all of which she had in ample supply thanks to the empty hospitals and pharmacies. You never knew when you might need serious narcotics.

  She found the woman first, practically slammed into her as they both ran across an anonymous rooftop that connected apartment complexes, turning the same corner at the same time in different directions. Sue wasn’t an easy catch. Marissa had to work on her sympathy by telling her that her baby’s head was trapped in the stair railings and she needed help. Damn fine bit of acting, too. Tears, sobs, and all.

  But Sue had tricked her. After drugging her, Marissa had searched her for weapons, but hadn’t thought twice about the Tylenol bottle in her sweatshirt pocket, where the clever young lady had stashed a razor blade. The evening after Marissa had cut Sue’s foot off and fed it to Cedric in small, nibble-size pieces, Sue had slashed her own wrists while Marissa slept and the zombie child watched her hungrily through the prisonlike bars of his crib.

  Marissa didn’t make the same mistake twice.

  She could see the flicker of candlelight around the edges of a window about an eighth of a mile away. It was astounding how dark Boston could become on an overcast night now that there was no electricity. The flickering was like a beacon.

  She waited patiently until morning, sitting on the balcony two stories above her apartment, where Cedric’s shrieks and guttural noises couldn’t reach her. It was a man,
evident by his size and the Celtics tank top, even at that distance. He climbed out onto the ledge, stretched, and stumbled, nearly plummeting six stories down. Marissa jumped around, waving her arms boldly until he noticed her.

  The guy was easy to bait, as most were … or had been. He was a sucker for the lonely woman with her pouting lips and amazingly tight jeans. Promise a man the best blow job of his life and he’d follow you damn near anywhere. Kneeling in front of him also offered the best possible position for jamming the needle into his ass before he could even free his redheaded friend from his Levi’s. She searched him as soon as she had him restrained, feeling a tinge of regret. He wasn’t terrible, a little daft-looking maybe, but he had a fine body.

  But baby came first.

  Troy fed Cedric for nearly two weeks, until fever from all the cutting and amputations overtook him. Only an hour after Troy died, Cedric refused the meat. Dead was dead, and who would know this better than the dead? As she had done with Keisha and Sue, Marissa unlocked the handcuffs and wrestled the body out the window, letting if fall eight stories to the pavement below, hopefully taking out a few of those deteriorating bastards in the process.

  Eight days later, Marissa’s search for food for Cedric kept coming up short. She traveled the rooftops at night, looking for any signs of life. Many of the zombies seemed to have redirected their searches to greener pastures and the reek of death and decay seemed to be lightening, though many bodies were still visible in the streets. Cats and dogs weaved among the ownerless vehicles, every so often yanking a bit of flesh from a corpse, sometimes fighting over some delectable treasure. She herself had plenty of food. The apartment was stocked with Spam, Bush’s Beans, ravioli, rice pilaf, and a cornucopia of other foods, none of which was beneficial to Cedric, who was at that moment shrieking like a siren inside the apartment. It was time for his second feeding of the day.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she said wearily as she hoisted herself through the window and sat on the ottoman near the crib.