Zombies-More Recent Dead

by Paula Guran (ed)

  The young man pointed.

  “There, you’ve helped.” With that, the Hunter spun and marched to his car, muttering about who was going to poke their nose into his business next. The car was an old, clunky thing that drunk down petrol and didn’t even have air-conditioning. But it got them out of the small town soon enough.

  The Hunter drove in silence, following the road, eyes intent. Chase waited until the older man gave a deep sigh. “A woman.”

  Chase looked at him but did not ask. Whatever the Hunter wanted him to know, the Hunter would say.

  Chase had learned the Hunter’s quirks quickly, after the weathered, scowling man had taken him away from family and friends. Even got him out of school. All his talk about destiny and the struggle for the future of mankind had impressed his parents well enough. Must have worked on his teachers too.

  After two months following the guy around, it would be nice if it had rubbed off on Chase. Would have made things a whole lot easier. But as it was, he couldn’t shake the feeling that this apprenticeship was all one big mistake.

  “Not many women Necromancers, not many at all.” With one hand the Hunter riffled through the glove box and found a glass bottle of lukewarm water. He tossed it into the boy’s lap without looking. “Drink, it’s hot out here. Easy to get too dry.”

  Chase obeyed, wrinkling his nose at the stifled taste.

  “They just don’t have it in them, the need for control that drives a man to raise the dead.” He shook his head as the boy offered the bottle of water. “No, you don’t see many women Necromancers at all, let alone one who would raise so many, so indiscriminately. It doesn’t make sense.”

  Dry, orange earth sped along beneath them. Thin trees, bent and drooping, spotted the side of the road. At one point a small flock of emus ran in the distance. Chase watched the sheer monotony of it all and tried not to breathe too loudly. Not while the Hunter was thinking.

  “Why would she have them follow her? She’s raised cities and left them there, so why are they following her now? It makes no sense.”

  The Hunter braked suddenly and turned off the road. The movement threw Chase against the window, and as he rubbed the bump forming on his forehead, he strained to look out the back. Half a kangaroo hopped beside the trunk of a termite-hollowed tree. Wire wrapped around its tail and snagged on the bark.

  It was not struggling to hop along the road, instead it headed into the bush. The way the Hunter was driving. Not on any path, over fallen logs, and hard, cracking dirt.

  “No sense at all.”

  He hasn’t been dead that long, but it’s hard to recognize him. Guess that’s what the car did. Took off most of his face, and his body doesn’t look the same either. It’s missing something in his back that made him stand straight, so he slouches to the side. His remaining green eye has gone cloudy.

  He doesn’t know me.

  The old woman sits me in a chair and pushes a plate of rock cakes at me. I just stare at him. He stands at the doorway, hands still raised where he had been holding my shoulders, eye looking straight ahead.

  “Eat something, dearie. You’re looking a little thin.”

  Finally, I turn to glare at her. Rock cakes and their china plate shatter as I knock them from the table. “Bitch.”

  “Now, now.” The old woman smiles, one hand fiddles with a large silver ring on a knobbly finger. “You shouldn’t be speaking to me like that, should you? Or haven’t you learned yet?”

  I pull back, fold in on myself like she’s slapped me.

  “Have you found what you were looking for?” She collects a small, round stone and strokes it. I feel my back straighten, my knees draw together like a good, polite girl. A great shudder runs through me.

  “No. But you know that.” I want to turn around, to point. So I do, but only once she’s put down the stone. “You had him all along.”

  The old woman nods. “Convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Why would you do that?”

  She shakes her head. “Maybe you haven’t learnt anything after all. You came into my house, dearie. You made demands like you owned the place, didn’t you?”

  When I don’t respond she glances at the white stone. I nod, but don’t trust myself to speak. I just don’t seem to say the right things. “A dead husband’s quite an ask, even for an old witch like me.”

  She cackles her laugh. “You can’t have expected it for free.”

  I look down at my knees. The memory is hazy, mixed with alcohol and grief, and dwarfed by weeks of shuffling undead. I remember stumbling up front stairs, somewhat less rundown than the entrance to this house. Slamming an almost empty bottle of vodka—God, I can’t even remember if it had a flavor—on the table. Shouting at her, crying at her. Her little, twisted smile. Yes, I remember that.

  She gave me a stone, pretty, shaped like a rose but black. And then she asked her price.

  “You knew I couldn’t give it to you.” A life for a life, I guess. But a baby? And someone else’s baby at that, because I had none of my own, and she wasn’t willing to take the risk.

  Her eyes sharpen and pin me down like a butterfly on a board. “It was too late by then.” She is disgusted by me; I can see it in the wrinkling of her nose. “And you still used my stone.”

  I swallow, and for a second consider standing up. How far would I get if I tipped up the chair and ran for the kitchen door? Before she had time to pick up one of her damned stones?

  She collects a stick from the table and runs it over her weathered palm.

  I don’t bother, what’s left to fight for anyway? “Yes.” My shoulders sag forward, a little more with each word. “I took it to his grave. I placed it there, like you said. Planted it into the earth, as deep as I could dig. But he didn’t come out. I waited, I waited until they surrounded me and I couldn’t breathe for the smell.” I had pushed my way through a cemetery’s worth of dead to get out of that place, and not even the cold sea spray coming up from the cliffs could clean away the stench. They had watched me, empty eye sockets, sagging skin and gaping, grinning mouths. They followed until I came to the road, until I passed shops and people. Then . . . then they had started to feed.

  But never on me.

  “There is always a price.”

  “My husband had just died, I was drunk—”

  She snorts, very unladylike. “Doesn’t give you the right to steal from me.” She looks me up and down, out of the corner of her eye. “So you’ve been walking since then? Coming all the way out here, trying to get away from everyone?”

  “Trying to save them.” My mouth tastes like orange dust.

  “How very noble.” Sounding bored, she pushes away from the table. Perfume drapes over me as she rests her cold hand on my head. “I wonder how many people died, before you thought to do that.”

  She steps back. I raise my head, slowly. Open my eyes and turn to her. Have I been crying? The world between us, between me and him, is wavering.

  “Now I just have to decide.” She folds the last flap of a velvet cloth over her stones and places them gently in a white handbag with a faux-gold clip. “If I want to keep him.”

  She lifts a hand and my husband, my dead husband, leans his cheek against her skin.

  I stand, quickly, chair toppling to the floor. Outside, tires skid to a stop over dust and gravel.

  The Hunter knew the zombie was there before Chase saw it in the hallway gloom. He grabbed Chase with one hand, pulled him back, forced him behind, and drew his blade with the other. Didn’t even give him the chance to find his gun, but then, what was the point?

  But the creature didn’t rush at them. Stooping in the doorway, it turned and grinned with half a face.

  The Hunter breathed in sharply.

  “Let him through.” A crackly voice commanded, and the zombie stepped aside to reveal a small, ancient-looking woman.

  “Who are you?” The Hunter edged forward, sword extended, voice tense and clipped. Chase held back. He fumbled his g
un out of its holster and held it high.

  The crone laughed. “Come looking for your Necromancer, have you?”

  The Hunter stepped onto faded plastic tiles; Chase hung in the darkness of the hallway. One hand clung to the doorframe. The derringer’s barrel was cold as he leaned it against his cheek, the only way to ensure he held it steady.

  The Hunter’s blade twitched between zombie and old woman. “How do you—?”

  “She’s right here.” The old lady gestured. A younger woman stood by a wooden table. Her face was ruddy with sunburn; she was dressed in tattered jeans and a filthy shirt. Her hands shook, and she clasped the edge of the table as though that was all that kept her upright. “That’s your Necromancer, Hunter. Aren’t you going to do justice for all those her undead killed?”

  The young woman shook her head. Straggly blond hair caught in sweat on her forehead and chin. “No.”

  The Hunter hesitated. His sword pointed at her, and the young woman closed her eyes. Slowly, the Hunter turned back to the little old lady. “I know Necromancers. I can feel them. She is no Necromancer, although she stinks of the dead.”

  The blond woman’s eyes snapped open. They were sharply blue. “Now you.” The Hunter straightened his arm, leveling his sword with the old woman’s smiling face. “You I can feel. But . . . you’re not quite right.” Chase could hear a scowl in the Hunter’s voice.

  The old woman cackled. “Pity.” She clutched at a pale handbag, fiddling with the clasp. “If you don’t want to play, Hunter, you should leave. You’re out of your depth here. Can you feel that?”

  “I do not think so.” The Hunter raised his sword. “Tell me what you are.”

  “Too strong for the likes of you.”

  The zombie lurched forward, hands outstretched, and the Hunter spun. The young woman screamed as his blade shot out, as the zombie fell, headless. The old woman was laughing again, hand in her bag. She withdrew a single, white stone.

  “Don’t let her—!” The young woman shouted.

  Chase jumped forward, aimed at the small, old woman, and pulled the trigger. The derringer clicked, hollow and empty, and Chase realized he had never reloaded it. He just hadn’t remembered.

  The Hunter gave a gargling cry as his sword turned back in toward his own, living, neck.

  I watch David fall; watch his head hit the ground a moment before his body. Even under all that laughing, I can hear it “splat” against the floor.

  I need to go to him. I need to hold him and know that he is truly dead. I hope that he has, perhaps, found a kind of peace now. After I denied it to him.

  But I can’t. I shout as the old woman pulls a stone from her bag, as the man’s solid face breaks into shock. She will not make me responsible for his death too.

  The porcelain shard is sharp, it cuts my hand. But as the man slices at his own neck with his long, strange sword, I don’t care. I grip it tightly, I feel the blood, and I bring it down into the old woman’s shoulder.

  Her laughter becomes a shrill scream. The man’s sword clatters to the ground and he staggers backward. I cut her again. And again. Until her fingers release the small, white stone, and she doesn’t breathe. Doesn’t move.

  When she is dead she, thankfully, doesn’t rise in my presence. I guess she thought I had learnt my lesson after all.

  Standing is too hard, so I shuffle over to David’s body. He doesn’t look right without his head. I arrange it as best I can.

  “Who are you?” The man is also on the ground, leaning against the wall while a teenage boy hovers at his side. The boy’s face is pale, his eyes terrified, but he doesn’t say a word.

  “Jane.” Not really an explanation.

  The man holds a white cloth up to his neck. There is a small nick there, just enough to bleed. I stare down at his discarded sword. So close. “I am the Hunter.” He nods to the boy. “My reluctant apprentice.”

  The boy grimaces.

  “We have been tracking you. It was you, wasn’t it? Raising the dead.”

  “It wasn’t my fault!” I had only wanted to raise one. Just one. That’s okay, isn’t it?

  The Hunter looks meaningfully at the old woman. “Stone witch, wasn’t she?”

  I shake my head. I’m not really sure. She was the crazy old woman down the street when we were kids, the one we called a witch. When we grew up she had changed in our eyes, become eccentric and a little sad. But you don’t forget those childhood fears, those stories you tell yourself.

  And at the worst point in my life, she was there. Door open. Bag of stones in her hand.

  “She is. Powerful creatures, much stronger than a Necromancer.” He clears his throat, carefully. “I’m not too sure on them myself. Those stones are supposed to be lives, I heard. The younger the better. At any rate, they are not an easy kill.” The Hunter is staring at me. Grimly, I meet his gaze. His eyes are hard, but thoughtful. “Pretty good for a first kill. Think you’d like some more?”

  I frown. “More?”

  “You know what it’s like. Seen it first hand now, I’ll warrant. You know why the dead should stay dead, why those who raise them should be brought to justice.”

  I picture the petrol-station worker, backed up against the window as the zombies fed. I only looked back that once. Slowly, I nod. “Yes. I do.”

  The Hunter smiles. Wrinkles crinkle beneath his stubble, his dark, serious eyes are almost friendly. The boy has gained some color in his cheeks and looks relieved.

  “Tell me.” The Hunter catches his sword with the tip of his boot and drags it closer. With a wince, he picks it up, turns it around, and holds the handle toward me. “Have you ever held one of these?”

  The Death and Life of Bob

  William Jablonsky

  Bob Jarmush is dead.

  We do not even notice Bob’s empty chair until Marlene tells us, just after eight, when we are all settled in. It happened early Saturday morning, she says, her thin face devoid of its usual condescending smile. Bob collapsed while pruning his hedges, and by the time the paramedics arrived it was too late.

  His funeral is on Thursday; Marlene and her executive assistant Cayla will make a brief, dignified appearance. We may also attend if we wish.

  We set about erasing Bob from the office. Jeremy, the IT kid, clears his password from the system; Cayla slides the Star Wars statuettes, R2D2 pencil sharpener, and framed picture with Mark Hamill into an empty office-paper box. Bob has no family, so there will be no awkward, somber-faced presentation of the box of junk at his front door. For this, we are thankful.

  His voicemail has forty-seven messages on it—deranged school board members complaining that our science textbooks teach evolution, or that our history texts have too few white people. We decide to leave them to his replacement, whoever that may be.

  When we are finished, Cayla bows her head low, says a prayer for Bob. We do not listen; our gaze drifts to the newly embroidered pattern on her brown corduroy skirt—ivy, perhaps, or a giant green centipede—we cannot tell. Her fashion transgressions are many and we have given up trying to decipher them.

  She says, “Amen,” and we’re done.

  We stare at Cayla’s skirt some more, attempting to make sense of the embroidery before it haunts our dreams.

  Tuesday

  As we hang our coats on the rack, we hear a piercing scream from outside. We run to the window, thinking we are about to look upon a mugging, or a rape. Nothing so exciting has happened here since Roger’s ex-wife caught him with Charlotte and chased him down the street with a Ginsu knife. But when we reach the window, we see only Cayla on her knees in an empty parking space, an entire tray of her dry, flavorless poppy seed muffins scattered on the blacktop. Someone probably ought to help, but this would require speaking to her.

  When we turn around, Bob is standing in the doorway, silent, his face devoid of expression.

  His eyes are dull, recessed and deflated in their sockets, lips dry and cracking, skin an indefinable pinkish-bluish-gray.
His face sags from his skull as if the skin is detaching from his hairline; his dingy iron-gray mustache clings to his face, and beneath his kelly-green oxford shirt is the shadow of a stapled Y-incision.

  For a few seconds, we muse that he doesn’t look that different. Then it hits us, and we stand paralyzed at our desks. He lopes toward us across the 60s-era gold diamond rug. Our bodies tense: at the first guttural moan it’ll be every man for himself.

  Instead, Bob’s blank expression explodes into a big sheepish smile.

  “Morning, kids,” he says, his voice a low raspy whisper. “How was your weekend?”

  Someone in the first row of cubicles passes wet gas—probably Roger, who has colitis—and a smell like rotten pork fills the office.

  Bob tosses his threadbare tan touring cap and windbreaker on the rack, sits down at his desk, stares at the empty desktop like it’s alien for the first time in eighteen years. His eyes are still clouded over, and when he looks up, we cannot bear them upon us. “Anybody know where my stuff is?”

  We say nothing; Roger gets up and runs to the bathroom.

  “Hello?” Bob says again.

  The tense silence is broken when Cayla comes inside, clutching her silver crucifix, her skirt covered in muffin crumbs and parking-lot dirt. She tiptoes up to Bob, as if that will escape his notice; hand quivering, she reaches out and touches Bob’s shoulder with one fingertip.

  He smiles again. “Good morning, Cayla.” She crumples into a ball on the floor, spewing gibberish. (Cayla goes to the church that used to be a Sav-A-Lot, where they speak in tongues, so no one is surprised.)

  Finally—because he is the only one who can move—Jeremy runs down the narrow aisle to Marlene’s office.

  We can only see them through her window—Jeremy’s arms flailing, Marlene stoic in her big leather chair, as if she thinks he’s just taken a hit of meth. Then she looks, and her eyes go wide. After a long, deep breath, she wills herself to her feet.

  Marlene tosses her long, layered, salt-and-pepper locks, pushes her spectacles up her nose. She is beautiful, imperious, more like a museum curator than a textbook sales rep. It is clear that she is the only one capable of handling this.