by D A Madigan
The General never really had any idea just how he'd been tricked. The plow on the front of his huge vehicle had hit the Jeep Cherokee and sent it smashing back into the uppity goddam nigger with enough force to turn the lying black bastard into guacamole. The General had made no attempt to brake; his plow could go through anything and that dinky little hedge behind the nigger wouldn't even slow it down. He'd smash on through, take a hard right and get out to the road and find whoever else it was -- that black bitch of a gramma, for one -- that had run off with the boy and run them down, too. And then --
The General screamed in shocked surprise as the front of the snow plow abruptly dropped six feet. He was thrown forward onto the straps of his seat belt as the plow cabin pointed straight down for a second or so before the plow hit the mingled wreckage of the Jeep Cherokee, the remains of a man the General had once dubbed 'Lieutenant Blackface', and the 2003 Chevy Suburban that had been parked there nearly a month before this by someone who was doubtless long dead.
Dorothy, concussed and half conscious, had never fastened her seat belt. She was thrown forward into the windshield by the plow's sudden nose dive, and the General clearly heard the sound of her neck breaking -- as if someone had snapped a popsicle stick in two a few feet away from him.
The plow crashed, smashed, seemed to stop for a second -- and then, its back end, pushed forward by the still turning rear tires, came off the concrete wall as well. The plow toppled forward with another rending crash of smashed and tortured metal and shattered glass, completely upside down now; its front elevated on a hill of crushed and bloody wreckage above the level of the remainder of the vehicle. Its engine continued to roar and all four wheels continued to turn furiously. Its halogen headlights had all been smashed, so the upended plow itself was in darkness, although the beams from the trailing plow, which had come to a shuddering, screaming halt bare inches from the precipice, were cutting through the cold night air directly above the plow like purplish white lasers.
A gentle fall of snow had started to come down.
In the cabin of the wrecked plow, the General hung against his straps. He was alive, by God and Sonny Jesus... but as the hand of the Lord here on Earth, he'd expected nothing less. The Lord would provide, and what he had provided in this case was a chastening lesson in humility, for sure. The General had been overconfident and he had paid the price for it. But he had survived, and with the Lord's help, he would yet triumph over all adversities. And at least he'd smashed that lying nigger piece of shit into...
The General heard a rattling moan from the darkness off to his right.
From where his daughter had been sitting.
Dear sweet Jesus, if she was still alive...! The General prepared to utter a prayer of thanks to the Lord for not only his own deliverance, but the deliverance of his daughter, as well --
Then, out of the darkness -- a scream.
The General's blood went cold. That wasn't the scream of a living human being. He'd heard screams like that far too often since the Rapture. Only the soulless Hellspawn --
And the thing that had once been his daughter scrambled, head flopping on a broken neck, through the darkness of the wrecked plow's cab, to where he hung helpless against his seat belt straps.
Somewhere, in some way, the creature that had once been a 14 year old girl named Dorothy must have known this was her daddy. She did not bite him on the face, the neck, the arms, the legs, or the torso.
Instead, her grabbing hands tore his fatigue trousers off his body -- and her snapping, biting, gobbling mouth went straight for her one time father's crotch.
The General screamed -- but not for long.
vii.
Dan pulled the plow up in front of his house on Douglass Boulevard, put the huge gearshift into neutral, unstrapped his seat belt, and opened the door. His relief, a grizzled old black man named John Kingsolver, was waiting on the sidewalk. John's shift partner, Lisa Tennant, was already scrambling into the back of the plow as Dan's partner, Bennie Guiterrez, jumped down.
"Burn many?" John said as he pulled himself up into the cab after Dan had climbed out.
"Actually plowed more snow than zombies," Dan said. "I dunno. Maybe the cold weather does something to 'em."
"Gonna need more gas," John said. "I'll take it down to the Kroger's and see what the scavenging teams have brought in today." He waved, and pulled the door closed.
They always needed more gas. Even after siphoning the tanks of every abandoned vehicle inside the four block chunk of the Highlands they'd managed to fence off, they still needed more gas. Vivian was on the Council -- he and Skip had both turned down offers to be on it, too; survival was hard enough work without throwing politics into it -- and she said they were considering plans to extend the perimeter down Bardstown Road, or possibly up Taylorsville, to the first service station they could get to. Skip thought they'd eventually decide to go the Taylorsville route, because Bowman Field was up that way and should have a lot of fuel left in its underground tanks... plus, aircraft. You never knew when a light plane or a chopper might come in handy.
But Dan wasn't going to worry about that tonight. Not tonight, or tomorrow. Tonight he was going to go inside where he couldn't hear the revving engines of the patrol vehicles, or the occasional blasts from the General's converted vacuum cleaner flame throwers, or even the roaring of the generators in his side yard. He was going to go inside, and sit down, and eat something, and relax... and celebrate with his family.
Vicki barreled into him just inside the door. "Daddy Daddy Daddy!" she screamed, semi hysterically. "Look! The tree's all lit up!"
Dan had actually seen it from outside, coming up the walk. He was glad they'd managed to get another generator set up. Seemed wasteful, having one just to run the lights on the Christmas tree, but you couldn't underestimate the survival value of morale.
Skip waved to him from the end of the leather couch they'd salvaged from a much nicer house two blocks up the street. New furniture had helped him and Vicki distance themselves a little from losing Sheila... although they wouldn't want too much distance. Neither of them wanted to forget her... they just didn't want to be reminded of her everywhere they looked. New furniture had helped a lot with that.
"Get yourself some Christmas spirit," Skip said, holding up a glass full of something frosty. The beer from Kroger's, the Walgreen's, and the CVS was being rationed by the Council, like everything else, but they'd decided to increase everyone's allotted amounts a little bit for Christmas.
"I'll get some of that hot chocolate I smell," Dan said, closing and locking the front door behind him. The fence was kept pretty tight, and zombies really did seem to have gotten scarce since the first hard frost, but you never knew. All the windows on the first floor had metal security grilles over them now, too; something they'd never needed on Douglass Boulevard before.
"That's nana's hot chocolate," Skip said, "and you best be careful of it. It'll clear your colon right out."
Vicki had gone back into her bedroom, which she shared now with Jameel and Shymala. They couldn't be doing too bad a job, Dan reflected, as he walked down the hall to the kitchen, if they'd brought three kids through this nightmare safe and sound. So far, at least.
Vivian and nana were sitting at the kitchen table chatting. Dan kissed nana on the cheek, then Vivian on top of her head. Vivian started to get up and Dan pushed her gently back down. "I can get my own hot chocolate, Viv," he said.
"You know you oughta rest that hand when you ain't drivin," Vivian scolded him. "Don't you lie to me, neither. I can see it's painin' you."
"I'll take some ibuprofen," Dan said. "Anything to eat?"
"There's a sandwich for you in the fridge," Vivian said. "Made the bread myself today. More Spam. Sorry. But we got that canned ham for Christmas dinner tomorrow."
Dan wanted to make a face but didn't. Everyone was tired of Spam, but it really was about the last of the canned meat they had left... it, and the carefully hoarded canned hams th
at had been saved back for Christmas.
The Council was talking about sending a few parties to hunt in nearby Cherokee Park... they'd actually seen some deer on the other side of the fences, up Douglass a few blocks... but they hadn't been able to figure out how to send torches along with a hunting party. Eventually, maybe, they could fence off the entire park... well. Maybe they could send a party out to a farm and bring back some cows. Pigs. Chickens. Something.
He wasn't going to worry about that, though. Not right now, anyway. Their little island might be only four square blocks and require constant patrols, but it was safe... and they had enough food, with rationing, to get them through the winter.
Hell, he'd even learned to sleep with the sound of the generators constantly running. And that had taken some doing.
Vicki, Jameel and Shymala had all come into the kitchen, asking when the gingerbread would be ready. Dan had smelled it when he'd come in... a pleasant, homey scent, like the pine needles from the tree he and Skip had sawed down, that had once stood as part of a decorative fringe around the St. Paul United Methodist Church. Thank God he'd put that electric stove in for Sheila last summer; if they'd still had a gas range it would have been useless.
The kids had trooped back out again, with promises that the gingerbread would be brought in as soon as it was out of the oven and had been allowed to cool enough to eat without burning anyone's mouths.
Now Vivian was looking at him. "I hear that Jennifer Bolitary been givin' you the eye lately," she remarked.
Dan shook his head. It was much too soon after Sheila's death for him to even be thinking about anyone else... and Jennifer Bolitary was maybe all of 17 years old.
"Well, I'll leave that alone fo' a while," Vivian said. She exchanged a look with her nana, and Dan knew that 'for a while' might last through early February... if he was lucky.
Well, screw the zombie apocalypse. It was Christmas.
"So, when's that gingerbread going to be ready?" Dan asked, picking up his sandwich.
viii.
The dead waited.
The snow was not particularly deep. Some winters it didn't even snow at all in Louisville, and it was a rare winter that saw a snowfall of more than a few inches that lasted more than a few days. Of course, with most of the human race dead, an overwhelming majority of its many many heat producing machines had gone still and silent, so it was possible that global warming had slowed... or perhaps even gone into reverse.
At the very least, so far, this had been the coldest winter in a long, long time.
In the buildings of the largely abandoned city sprawled like an ungainly corpse all around the newly fenced in island of life and light running from the 2400 block of Bardstown Road to the 2400 block of Douglass Boulevard, the dead waited patiently. Mostly still, almost entirely silent, hardly stirring at all in the cold. Not all were inside the ruined, empty buildings. Some sat in doorways or propped against walls, some lay in the streets with snow on them, some slept in the front and back seats of crashed out cars and trucks, or underneath them. But they were there. They were there by the hundreds of thousands, and when warmer weather returned, as it inevitably would, they would stir again.
In the shrubs and bushes beyond the fenceline at the edge of the Kroger's parking lot lay the remains of a man who had once reinvented himself under the title of 'the General'. Against his chest he cradled the body that had once been his daughter. He did not think, this creature that had once called itself the Hand of the Lord... but something stirred within his brain, some vague semblance of an intellect, some slow yet sly mental process of a significantly higher order than was possessed by most of the dead.
The zombie bacterium that reanimated his flesh worked more efficiently on his dead brain than most, perhaps.
Or perhaps it was simply God's will that all sinners die.
The General knew where they were. The ones who had tricked him. The ones who had sent him to his death. He knew.
The hand which did not rest, more or less gently, on the back of the undead thing that had once been his daughter, tightened its fingers, gouging into the face on the head of the one the General hated most.
The head that had once belonged to a beloved grandson and brother named Derrick... groaned.
Derrick had had friends... family. People he had loved, when he was alive.
Soon, the General would rise, and with his one-time daughter on his left hand, and the screaming head of the man who had murdered him in his right, he would lead the legions of the righteous dead against all those who sinned against the will of the Lord by continuing to live, when the Lord had declared that all that lived must die.
By God and Sonny Jesus, he would.
D.A. MADIGAN has written a dozen other science fiction/fantasy books. This is his first horror novel, but probably not his last. He can be reached at
damadigan at gmail dot com.
