Best New Zombie [3] - Best New Zombie Tales, Vol. 3

by Anthology

  "But when Bessie died, I don't know, I just couldn't cope with it. I was an old man, what did I have to live for? In the end, I went down to the Cotton End Bridge." Lode indicated behind him with a thumb. Messinger realized the man was referring to a bridge over a railway line that had served the local collieries. The track was long gone. He hadn't even known before now that it had a name.

  "And?"

  "I threw myself under a goods train. When I came to, I couldn't see. I was blind." He looked at Messinger, obviously checking that he was paying attention. "I staggered for a short distance and then gave up and lay down where I was. I could tell by my sense of touch that I was among those tall weeds, the ones with the pink flowers."

  "Rosebay willow herbs," supplied Messinger automatically.

  "Right. And I could also tell by touch that my head was missing."

  Messinger blinked, then slumped and covered his eyes. "Jesus Christ! You had me sucked into your crazy little world then. For a moment, I actually believed."

  "And so you should," said Lode. "It's all true."

  Messinger shook his head. "Oh no. You're not catching me out again. I'm off." He started to rise.

  Lode grabbed his wrist.

  "You're leaving without examining your patient? What sort of doctor are you, eh?"

  "A sane one," he retorted.

  "You think I'm insane? I've been crippled and bedridden since 1952; what d'yer expect? My only contact with the outside world is through Eustace." Lode's eyes flicked meaningfully at the bedroom door. He sat back, breathing heavily. "Please, lad. Stay a little longer."

  Messinger sagged. He hated himself for it, but he wanted to hear the end of the story. He knew that all he had to do was peel back that high collar and examine Lode's neck, but he wouldn't----it would be an admission of gullibility. And on a deeper, more primitive level, he couldn't. "Okay, but it's against my better judgment."

  "Good boy." Lode patted the side of the bed again.

  Messinger sat down obediently.

  "My head grew back," Lode continued, "just as my arm had. I had no idea how long I lay there among them pink weed things."

  "Rosebay willow herbs."

  Lode took the correction graciously. "I recovered enough to find my way here and recuperated over a period of several months."

  "Forgetting for the moment the sheer implausibility of you surviving decapitation and any subsequent regeneration," Messinger allowed himself a smile, "if what you are saying is true, you wouldn't have any memories. You had grown a completely new brain from scratch. You would, mentally, have been like a newborn. Your story has a plot hole I could drive a bus through."

  "We pondered long and hard on that one, me and Dr. Dimmock. He suggested that as cerebral fluid surrounds the spinal cord, it could act as a repository of memories." Lode shrugged and spread his gnarled hands as if he really didn't care. "Anyway, while my body was growing a new head, my old head had been busy growing a new body. Eustace turned up. Eustace, like all my brothers, is me. A clone. It was Eustace that started to call me Mr. Lode. It's a joke, you see----I was Eustace Orr but now he is and I'm the lode. He keeps me crippled and when he wants another brother----"

  "He removes your head and grows another. Brilliant! Can I go now please?"

  "You are being very rude, Dr. Messinger."

  "Frankly Mr. Lode, Orr, whoever you are, I think I'm entitled to be rude after all the crap I've had to take from you." Messinger grabbed his bag and stood. "I shall be sending for an ambulance as soon as I have left here, thereby discharging my obligations to you."

  Lode raised a shoulder and let it fall, a one-shouldered shrug that said it was Messinger's loss if he left now. "Before you go, take a look out of that window, lad. Tell me what you see."

  "What's out there, the tooth fairy?"

  "Just look, will you?"

  Messinger rested his hands on the windowsill and gazed out, blinking at the change of light. "There are a few old guys at the bottom of the garden. Weeding by the looks of it."

  "They'll be tending the vegetables. We grow our own as much as we can. Look closer at them. Notice anything unusual?"

  Messinger narrowed his eyes. He turned back to the man in the bed. He did a double take out of the window and then back at Lode.

  Lode's smile was that of the cat that has found the cream. He indicated the scratches on the wall. "I have spawned 738 of us so far, with another on the way. And some of them have become lodes too, I daresay."

  Messinger licked his lips with a dry tongue. "Why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why would you want to create so many clones of yourself?" Messinger thought about what he had just said, and added: "That's assuming your story had a single grain of truth in it, which it doesn't, of course."

  Lode laughed that bitter short laugh of his. "Haven't you ever dreamed of a world without divides? A world where everyone agreed with one another? One religion, one government, one mind; everyone living in harmony? Eustace has watched the world go to hell in a handcart, watched history repeat its mistakes----correction, he's watched people repeat their mistakes. He's taking steps to put things right."

  Messinger rubbed his eyes. "My predecessor must have been a gullible old fool if he went along with this lunacy. I'm leaving now, and when I get back to my surgery I shall remove the names Lode and Eustace Orr from my panel. As from this moment, you are no longer my patient."

  "I've told you, it's not me you've come to see."

  Messinger made a show of scanning the room. "So where's my patient?"

  Lode motioned with his chin at a deep chest of drawers. "Top drawer," he said. "He's a slow developer, this one. We're a bit worried about him."

  Messinger dropped the bag carelessly and crossed to the drawer in question. Glaring angrily at the heavy-looking brass handles, he gripped them tightly to still the quivering in his hands, his nostrils full of the almost overpowering stench of blood and disinfectant. On the limit of hearing he could hear a gentle sighing, a sound like a damp paper bag being slowly inflated. Was it the soft swish of his own blood pulsing in his ears, or the rhythmic rasp of raw, embryonic lungs pulling air? He whipped his head round and glared at Lode, sitting in the shadows... who grinned right back at him expectantly, his teeth a string of pearls in a peach-fuzzy face.

  I have spawned 738 of us so far, with another on the way.

  "Bullshit," Messinger growled. Annoyed with himself for even hesitating, he snatched open the drawer...

  Going Down

  NANCY KILPATRICK

  Shortly after the Deadies got up to stroll the boards on Manitoulin Island, Paddy ran out of meds.

  She'd been on largactyl for years----brain mangulations, dry gut ruttings, critical BO. The stuff stripped polish off floors and tasted rat-poison sweet so her insides undoubtedly resembled the arm of a kid she'd seen gnawed by a combine. She could've lived with that, though. But when everybody started coming back from the dead and chomping on everybody else, what was the point of taking drugs, even if she had any, with so much good film noir available?

  Still, those asphyxiation-blue tabs had propped up everything crumbling inside her skull. Like the retaining wall that kept water from swallowing the land, her wall had worked pretty good most of the time. But nothing aired on TV anymore. Or radio. The movie theater closed. Her retaining wall was eroding fast.

  Paddy opened Daddy's channel changer and twisted the wires so she could corkscrew holes in her wrist. The vein kept jumping out of the way and she ended up with ten round oozing bloodeyes. She sucked and tasted fresh flesh. Shit, she thought, now that the Deadies trudge the pebbles on the lakefront around the clock, nobody's left to ferry to the mainland. She'd seen all the videos and DVDs on the island. The pills from the drugstore might be gone, but residue floating in her blood stream still broadcast too loud and clear. Anyway, the second Marilyn Monroe got back, that signal would dim. Marilyn would like the Deadies, at least Paddy thought she would.

  God knows, Padd
y liked them. She'd tried to join their club before there was a club and if she'd done it right she'd have been a charter member. ODs. Hemp slung over the beam in Daddy's root cellar, where he used to lower his pants and pull down her... She'd dropped her eyelids once and the screen went blank. Marilyn's steady hand plunged the bread knife into her heart. She missed the projector and Paddy'd been pissed. Her lung felt like badly spliced videotape and that's all. Marilyn refused to visit Paddy the whole time she was in General Hospital. Paddy'd thrown a fit until they gave her more drugs and a new flat-screen TV.

  Life had been tabula rasa with no chalk. But then the Deadies started. Right away Paddy saw they were luckier than her. They never worried about getting aced in the butt by stray emissions and they didn't have to memorize lines. Anyway, did they care why they were chained to this rocky poor-reception island, or wonder who would rip out their liver this week in 3-D, or make them sit in a hair seat and suck in a teen comedy then fuck them doggie style with blurry trailers, or any of the other stuff Paddy worried about all the time? All they thought about was grabbing somebody with their slimy green hands to snack on. She could handle that. She could be a Deadie.

  But the Deadies didn't want Paddy. She stank wrong.

  "It's an insult," Marilyn assured her when she finally deigned to visit. She waved a spotless silk hanky in front of her perfect transparent nose. Paddy was hurt until Marilyn said she had an idea.

  "Shove your fingers past their cold black lips, into a living porridge mouth and let things crawl over your skin. Action!" Marilyn giggled.

  Paddy tried it. No cracked molars clamped. No spoiled tongue licked. The switched-off eyes didn't flicker. "I'm not good enough for them," she whined. Marilyn slapped her silly and shrieked, "I told you before, diamonds are a girl's best friend."

  Paddy felt iced as the black waters rose. The volume increased. Dense moisture plugged every orifice of her body like giant chilled-wax suppositories and the world slipped away on basic hypodermic steel.

  Everybody she knew got to be a Deadie.

  Everybody but her.

  Meryl Streep, Tom Cruise, those anonymous B-zombie brats with mouse-turded hair and kiss-my-deceased-ass grins. Everybody on the island she hated, and that was everybody but Daddy. Even Marilyn got to chat with the Deadies at the Bus Stop and they listened like she emitted extra-terrestrial short waves, but she said it was because she was an Icon and closer to them than Paddy could ever be. That made Paddy real mad, especially when Marilyn signaled Daddy.

  Nobody sent signals to her Daddy but her!

  Paddy tore Marilyn's white arms, legs, and ears off, and pulled the blonde hairs out of her pube until she stopped broadcasting.

  ~

  Paddy squatted on a boulder eating a double box of Twinkies and drinking warm Upper Canada Lager from the big tins. Two Deadies lumbered after Rewind, one of the last living dogs left. The collie belonged to the Woods, who used to run the video shop. As the three got closer, Paddy saw it was the formerly living Mr. and Mrs. Woods lunging at their golden-haired pooch. Rewind bounded like he was having fun. So did the Deadie Woods. To Paddy's camera eye, they made a nice nuclear family.

  Man, she thought, life is incompletely unfair. All the two-dimensionals get everything and people like me who are the truly brilliant and can satellite dish every movie channel are relegated to minor sitcoms. How'd they like to be inside out for a living? Life always tunes you out. It's depressing as hell. She swallowed a couple of Tylenol to the third power she'd found in Mrs. Soles' medicine cabinet. At least they had codeine in them and that was better than nothing, almost.

  She chucked a pill-shaped stone at the stinky mould-grey water and it skipped across the surface. One. Two. Three. Three was the right button. She clicked on a Dolly Parton song, turning up the volume on the old tape player so she could masturbate in peace. The Deadies didn't notice. Mr. Woods had caught Rewind and they were biting each other, which was fun to watch, until Mrs. Woods joined in and blocked Paddy's view.

  As Rewind howled, Dolly wailed about never gettin' what you need when you need it. Yeah, don't I know it, Paddy thought. Her body spasmed. Like killing yourself's easy. She wiped sticky fingers on her filthy shirttail and shoved another Twinkie all the way into her mouth. Everybody thinks it is but that just shows you what they know. If it was easy, everybody would have been dead before she was born and Paddy'd have managed it by now too.

  Shit! She kicked dirt at Fat Eddie the Deadie as he passed. He ignored her, just like he always had. She wanted to be part of the Deadies more than she'd ever wanted anything. Maybe, when Marilyn came for her next visit, she could figure some way for Paddy to get in with them, to make them see Paddy's dead potential. Dolly sang about possibilities. If only Paddy could be a Deadie, she just knew she'd be happy forever like Miss Dolly Parton. She closed her eyes.

  "Take three hundred and twelve: Norma Jean to the Rescue!" Marilyn appeared half naked and boxed Paddy's ears good until she was bored. Finally the sex goddess grabbed the last Twinkie and admitted, "I've been working on a plan."

  "It's about time," Paddy said, wiping blood from her ear lobe.

  Marilyn tilted backwards and hiked up her full white skirt until her pink lips grinned at the camera. She shoved the Twinkie up inside herself and crooned, "Happy Birthday to You."

  Paddy opened her eyes. Rewind, or what was left of him, lay in the background of the shot, a golden prop, much of Mr. Woods' forearm sticking out of his mouth. Suddenly this movie came into sharp focus.

  ~

  Paddy's Daddy wandered home every night by instinct, just the way he used to before he became a Deadie. Not that he needed rest. He never had; he was no different now.

  Paddy boarded up the windows. Marilyn nailed a two by four tornado warning across the door.

  Daddy stared, eyes hungry, same as always. Finally Paddy picked up his mottled hand and hauled him down to the root cellar, the way he'd done with her all her life.

  She lit the hurricane lamp. Bushel baskets of rotting potatoes and carrots and cabbage lined the shelves and the floor was littered with broken jars with pickled foods she'd put away she didn't know when. The place stank, but no worse than Daddy.

  She positioned him on a Peaches and Cream Corn crate. His glazed, half-rotted eyeballs wandered the room aimlessly, like he didn't recognize anything. Paddy was used to that. All the Deadies resided in Bliss, a drive-in theater she hoped to visit real soon.

  Marilyn stood in a corner, legs spread, hands on knees, cleavage scrumptious, waiting for the wind to whistle up her skirt on cue. Paddy nodded. Daddy's head kept bobbing like an antenna in a storm because his neck had snapped so she held it steady and made him look in her direction, but she couldn't get his eyes to stay put. Black mixed media belched from his lips; his digestive juices were working; he must be watching the screen.

  Marilyn hiked her skirt and turned. Paddy, skirt lifted, waved her backside at Daddy's oscillating face, the way he always liked. Nothing.

  Marilyn peeked over her shoulder and pouted her lips into an 'O'. Paddy planted a movie smooch on Daddy's crisp lips. His rotted nose mashed against her cheek and a chunk with crusty stuff inside broke off. A blowfly with eyes like Daddy's emerged. "Thanks ever so!" the fly said. Paddy yelled at Marilyn, "Cut!" MM tossed back her platinum hair, thrust out her tits and giggled.

  Paddy glanced down at her nearly flat chest and felt lousy. Daddy had always hungered for her before and now he didn't and now she was truly alone on the set. She plunked down onto the dirt floor and cried, something she hadn't done since way before she started taking the meds she'd run out of. The leak created micro mud puddles between her legs. The fly dived into one and bathed. He smiled up at her with Technicolor eyes in all his clear iridescent holiness and winked. Paddy found enlightenment. She saw the solution to all her troubles.

  "It's a wrap," she said, but MM refused to vacate the studio. Instead, she straddled a Mason jar of pickled banana peppers and mumbled on and on about misfits
and how some of them like it hot. Paddy fast-forwarded.

  She crawled to Daddy and peeled rotting fabric from his groin. His penis, always so big and full, dangled like a thick black connecting cable with green eyes. The eyes leaked puss-yellow tears that white life forms swam in. Those baby bugs are joining heads to tails! Paddy realized, astonished. The word LOVE flashed onto the screen and a ball bounced along the letters. Wasn't this what Dolly Parton always sang about, and what Marilyn always got? Now Paddy knew exactly what everybody meant.

  She closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

  And bit.

  Daddy didn't complain. He didn't seem to miss his cock.

  Paddy sat back on her haunches and munched.

  Marilyn skipped over with a rotting banana pepper dangling from her wet lips. "When it's hot like this, I store my undies in the ice box."

  Made sense to Paddy. She swallowed the last bits of her Daddy, the bits that meant anything to her. He tasted like all the buttered popcorn they ever ate watching movies together.

  As his head bobbed her way, he grinned like he used to, and Paddy felt proud. At last she'd landed a part in The Deadie Movie. She would play Daddy's Little Deadie Girl and the movie would run forever, or at least until the reel ran out of film.

  Sweetbread