by Brian Keene
“Oh, shit... oh my fucking shit...”
He read the flyer again, hoping that the words might change, but they didn’t. The gun felt heavy in his hands. His ears were still ringing. He looked up. The zombies were peering at him from behind parked cars and bushes. Some still fled. Others banged on the doors of his neighbors, pleading to be let inside.
When he heard the sirens in the distance, Ken ran back into the house and put the gun to his own head. Outside, the shouts increased. The sirens drew closer. He peeked out the window and saw that the crowd was creeping toward his house once more.
“Head shot,” Ken muttered. “The only way to be sure.”
When he pulled the trigger, the zombies ran away again.
STORY NOTE: This was first published as a chapbook from Camelot Books. When I wrote it, I had recently given an interview in which I said that my novel Entombed and my comic book series The Last Zombie were the final things I had to say about zombies, and I probably wouldn’t be writing about them again. After six books and dozens of short stories dealing with the undead, as well as a twenty-five issue comic book series, I couldn’t think of anything else to do with zombies. Except this (and one other story, “Couch Potato,” which appears later in this volume).
I SING A NEW PSALM
1 Blessed is the man who has never known the love of God, for he will never know the pain of a broken heart.
2 And blessed is the man who lives in ignorance of the forces around him, for he can exist in peace.
3 I was such a man, once. I didn’t know the love of God, for I did not believe in Him. God was something for superstitious people. He was like the tooth fairy and Santa Claus. God was a story told to children to give them comfort when someone they loved had died.
4 “Rover is in Heaven now, sweetheart. He is playing catch with God, and one day, if you’re good and eat all your vegetables and follow the Ten Commandments, you will see him again. Just like if you’re good, Santa Claus will bring you a new toy.” Growing up, that was all I knew of God.
5 I did not believe in God or the tooth fairy or Santa Claus. I believed in working hard and succeeding at my job and becoming a partner with the firm. These values were instilled in me at a young age by my father. He worked seven days a week, with one day off for Christmas and a week off for deer season. My father loved me, and although I didn’t see much of him growing up, I know that he worked those hours for me. He wanted me to be the first person in our family to go to college.
6 John Lennon once said that a working class hero is some-thing to be. He was gunned down by a fan who loved him. John Lennon was more popular than Jesus.
7 My father died of a heart attack before I finished law school. My mother followed a year later, from melanoma. Years after the initial grief passed, I still felt unsettled when I thought of their passing. It bothered me how they would never know of my accomplishments, or how I’d repaid my father’s unselfish work ethic in an equally driven manner. He would never know of these things because he didn’t exist anymore. I did not believe in God or Heaven. My father was not with the Father. He was simply dead. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
8 Would they have been proud of me?
9 My co-workers had a party for me the night I was offered a role as full partner with the firm. I drank too much Scotch. Head swimming, I returned home to an empty apartment. There was no solace to be found in the silence. Despite my achievements, I was left unfulfilled.
10 Blessed is the man who finds the love of a good partner, for that is the key to fulfillment.
11 I did not find fulfillment at a singles bar or on a dating web-site or in any of the other places one goes to find love these days. I found it in a church. I found fulfillment in Valerie. We met at a wedding. She was a bridesmaid. I was a guest of the groom. I still remember how beautiful she looked in her soft baby blue chiffon gown. Sunlight came through the stained glass windows and sparkled in her chestnut hair. At the reception, we made small talk over the punch bowl. Later, we danced to the Chicken Dance and the Electric Slide and other wedding reception staples. At the end of the evening, we exchanged phone numbers.
12 What did Valerie see in me? A lost soul, ripe for saving? Her Christian duty? Was it a forbidden attraction, perhaps? A chance to tiptoe over the line to the wild side with a secular atheist type? No, it was none of these things. When she looked in my eyes, I like to think that she saw mirrored the same things I saw in her.
13 Blessed is the man who finds love, for love is the greatest gift of them all.
14 The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.
15 I started going to church with Valerie not out of a desire to know God, but out of a desire to please her. I loved her and it was important to her and I wanted to make her happy. We went each Sunday, but I did not feel the Lord. We sat in the pew together and shook hands with those around us, but I did not feel the Lord. I wrapped an arm around Valerie as we shared a hymnal and sang, but I did not feel the Lord. I read aloud from the bulletin with the rest of the congregation, but I did not feel the Lord. I sat dutifully, listening to the scripture lesson and the sermon each week, but I did not feel the Lord. I tithed, but I did not feel the Lord.
16 When I asked her to marry me, she asked if it would be forever. When I said yes, she asked me to accept Christ as my personal Lord and savior—to ask him to come into my heart so that I could be born again. Valerie said this was the only way we could be together in the world beyond this one. She asked me if I would do this thing and I said yes.
17 That was the only time I ever lied to her.
18 We were married on the last Saturday of March. We stood at the altar in front of our friends and our family and God, and when I looked into Valerie’s eyes and heard the emotion in her voice when she said “I do”...I almost felt the Lord.
19 And then Mark came along.
20 Mark was born four years later, after a struggle to conceive and many visits to fertility clinics and adoption agencies. Valerie was in labor for twenty-five hours. The doctors finally decided on a Caesarian delivery. I knelt beside her in the operating room, whispering into her ear and kissing her forehead. She squeezed my hand and told me that she loved me.
21 And then the doctor asked me if I’d like to see my son. I peeked up over the curtain and there were Valerie’s insides. The skin of her stomach had been folded back like a bed-spread and her insides were on display. The overhead lights glistened on the red and purple and yellow and brown hues, but this barely registered with me, for there in the doctor’s hands was our son. There was Mark.
22 And then I felt the Lord. I felt His goodness and His love and I wept for joy and I praised His name and gave thanks. I prayed. I apologized for my foolish disbelief. I made amends for doubting. For surely, here was proof of His provenance and His love. I wept happily, and my chest swelled as if my heart would burst.
23 An alarm blared over my cry, and through my tears, I realized that something was wrong. Mark was blue, and when I tried to go to him, the nurse whisked him away. Valerie squeezed my hand, but her grip was weak, and when she moaned, I heard the fear in her voice. Then her hand slipped away and the staff pushed me aside. The alarms grew louder, drowning out my prayer.
24 Later, after the alarms had faded and the lights had dimmed and the staff had muttered their sincere apologies, a doctor came to me. I was kneeling in the hospital’s chapel. The doctor was a short, rotund man with a receding hairline and a gentle, kindly face. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and cleared his throat softly. He offered his condolences on the death of my son. I asked him if there was any update on Valerie’s condition.
25 And the doctor said, “We’ve done all we can. She’s in God’s hands now.”
26 Valerie died two hours after Mark.
27 I tried to pray for them both, but my voice was a harsh, ragged thing and my words were ugly.
28 My God, my God, why have you done this to me? Why did you give me the fruits of your love, and show me the pa
th to your light, only to then rip them away? Why are you so far from helping me? Do you hear the words of my roaring? I cry in the daytime, but you don’t hear me. I beg to you at night, but you don’t answer.
29 For the Lord our God is a jealous God. He is a demanding God. You shall have no other gods before Him, and you shall love no other like you love Him. He demands this of us, His creation.
30 John Lennon once said that happiness is a warm gun. He was gunned down by a fan who loved him. John Lennon was killed because he was more popular than Jesus.
31 There was a small bell over the door of the gun store that jingled when I walked inside. It sounded like the chimes of freedom ringing. A heavenly chorus. I bought a shotgun and two handguns, and while we waited for the results of my background check, I asked the proprietor if he clung to God and guns, the way the President had suggested.
32 “We all need something to believe in,” he said. “But I don’t care what they say. I didn’t vote for either candidate. None of them have our best interests in heart. The people in charge never hear us.”
33 You shall hear the words of my roaring.
34 How long did you plan to ignore me, oh Lord? Forever? How long did you plan to hide your face from me? How long must I counsel my own soul, so utterly filled with crippling sorrow in my heart daily? How long do you expect to be exalted over me?
35 Consider and hear me, oh Lord. Look in my eyes before I sleep the sleep of death.
36 I will sing unto you, Lord, because you have dealt unfairly with me.
37 Later, they will say that I have prevailed against you. For I trusted in your mercy and you spat in my face; my heart will rejoice in your pain.
38 You gave and then you took away.
39 Blessed is the man who can play that game, as well.
40 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I do not fear you, for Valerie and Mark are with me. My shotgun and my pistols, they comfort me. Blessed is the man who knows the satisfying weight of such an instrument in his hands. And blessed is the man who finds solace in the handguns holstered to his hips. He shall take comfort in such weapons and through them, he will know fulfillment.
41 I wait in the car as the parishioners file into the church. I watch the greeters shake their hands, and I remember when it was Valerie and me walking through those doors.
42 Eventually, the doors close. I wait until I hear the muted sound of the organ. When the congregation begins to sing, I get out of the car. The guns are heavy but my heart is light. I feel at peace.
43 Hear this, all you people; give ear, all you inhabitants of the world. Listen to the words of my roaring.
44 I shall sing a new Psalm.
STORY NOTE: This story cannibalizes portions of the first chapter of an unfinished novel of mine called First Person Shooter. It was not a fun or easy thing to write. It took me to dark places, and that’s probably why I never finished it. The creation of this short story had the same impact on me. When I do readings or personal appearances across the country, I often choose this story to perform for the crowd, and it is always well-received. Many fans tell me it’s one of their favorites, so that makes the pain of its creation worth it.
CAUGHT IN A MOSH
STORY NOTE: This is one of my earliest published stories, and to me, it reads exactly as such—the work of a young author who has not yet learned the ropes or quite found his voice. I can see seeds of both here, but they’ve got a lot of dirt overtop them. You can also see the prehistoric development of my Labyrinth mythos (the name for the shared universe which all of my work inhabits). I wrote this in the late-Eighties, revised it and published it in the early-Nineties, and had pretty much forgotten all about it until compiling this collection. I do remember writing it, though. A friend and I had gone to a concert much like the one in the story. When I got home from the concert, I wrote the first draft of this story in one sitting. The title comes from one of my favorite Anthrax songs, off of the classic Among the Living. Again, be gentle with this. Much like big hair and pop metal, this story is a product of its time.
It was on a rainy night in early September when Kris and I tried to conjure our first demon. I’d just broken up with this psycho named Angie. Gorgeous girl, but a complete gothic whack job. She was into the occult and all that black magic shit.
When we broke up, I swiped a paperback of hers called The Daemonolateria. Not because I believed in that stuff, but just to piss her off. The book disappeared in my apartment, going to the same void that one of my socks goes to each time I pull my laundry from the dryer. I’d forgotten all about it until Kris found it.
Kris is a telemarketer by day, but at night he sings in this kick-ass band called Suicide Run. Classic and thrash, those boys can do it all. His other talent was coming up with killer weed, some of which we were enjoying that night, along with a few beers.
We were deep into a conversation about which version of Black Sabbath was better, Ozzy or Dio. I took a hit from the bowl and passed it over to Amber. She was a sweet kid. I worked with her stepfather at the paper mill. He was twenty-four, same as me. He married Vicki, who was old enough to be his Mom, but sure as hell didn’t look it. Amber was her daughter, seventeen going on twenty-seven. She had a good heart and was always laughing. She was like a little sister to me, and fun to be around.
Amber took a hit, sputtered, then giggled and passed the bowl on to her best friend Chrissy, a cute little blonde who had a crush on me. Next to her on my ratty couch sat Katie, a heavyset nineteen-year-old Goth with a perpetual sneer and a reputation for giving blowjobs in the local cemeteries.
Jen and Steve were arguing in my kitchen. Jen was Katie’s older sister. I’d always secretly wanted to get with her, but she was always with Steve. Steve had red hair cut close to his head and hidden beneath a backward Jets hat. His baggy shorts always hung down low enough to expose his boxers, and his vocabulary consisted of one-syllable words and hip-hop slang. Steve thought he was from the hood, even though we lived in the fucking suburbs. He really annoyed me, poser that he was. We kept him around, though, because he usually had beer money.
The bowl had made it back to Kris, who dropped his lighter as he was firing it up. He took a hit, passed it back over to me, and then fumbled under the recliner cushions for the lighter. What he found instead was the book.
“What’s this, dude?” He flipped through the pages.
I tore my bleary eyes away from South Park and Cartman’s adventures at the sperm bank, and glanced over at him.
“Oh, that’s just some book I ripped off from Angie.” I exhaled a thick cloud of smoke and refilled the spent pipe.
Six bowls and twelve beers later, the girls and Steve left, and Kris talked me into trying one of the spells. We decided to summon Purturabo, Lord of the Dance. I have no idea why. You do some stupid things when you’re stoned. Kris thought it would be cool, like in the Evil Dead movies. I thought it would be lame. It wasn’t even a real spell book. Those were old and written in Latin with cracked and faded leather covers. This was a cheap paperback that had been bought at Barnes and Noble.
We both kept cracking up at the title “Lord of the Dance”. I was expecting a kilt-wearing Irish demon to materialize, tap dancing on my coffee table. When the giggles had passed, we moved the sofa and the television and rolled back the rug. Kris programmed the CD player with some mood music from Danzig, Slayer, Fields of the Nephilim, and Ministry. Using a black marker, I drew a pentagram on the floor. I wasn’t too worried about what the landlord would say. He’d been threatening to kick me out anyway.
I read aloud from the book. The pot had thickened my tongue, causing me to stumble over the spell’s gibberish.
“Ob... Meeble... Ishtari...”
“You ain’t pronouncing it right, dude!”
I took a swig of beer and shot him an annoyed glare.
“Here, man, you try it,” I said, handing him the book. “I never took Black Magic 101 in school.”
Kris rea
d the spell but fumbled with the strange words too. His voice rose in volume as he reached the end.
“Kandara... Kat... PURTURABO!”
Nothing happened. In the background, Ministry let Jesus build their hot rod.
Disappointed, we put the furniture back in place and jammed to Ozzy. Kris paged through the drawings in the book and asked me if he could borrow it. He wanted to use the artwork for a Suicide Run banner. I told him to keep it and cracked another beer, settling back to listen to the music.
Ministry finished, and Ozzy sang an ode to Aleister Crowley.
• • •
Fast forward now to Halloween night, and the big concert—six regional metal and alternative bands, together for a Battle of the Bands benefit show to raise awareness about school violence.
I had several reasons for going. It was for a good cause, and Suicide Run were the headliners, meaning Kris would’ve been pissed if I hadn’t shown up. Most importantly, there were going to be lots of women there and it had been a month since I’d gotten laid.
I fired up my golden chariot, (which is actually a rusty, gray primer colored, seventy-six Ford van), and went to pick up Amber and the rest. Tonight, Marty and Vicki were trusting me to chaperone their daughter and her friends, all of who were underage except for Steve and Jen, to the concert.
