Land of the Dead

by Robert Swartwood

  praise for USA TODAY bestselling author ROBERT SWARTWOOD and LAND OF THE DEAD

  “One of the smartest, most exciting zombie novels in many years. I absolutely loved it.”

  BRIAN KEENE

  “Land of the Dead is simply brilliant, and its telling a superb achievement. Robert Swartwood has given us a wonderful twist, not only on the zombie novel, but on the dystopian tale as well. It’s like Brave New World meets Logan's Run, but with a bite all its own. Strongly recommended!”

  JOE MCKINNEY

  “Land of the Dead is one of the most original and gripping zombie novels I have ever read, offering a glimpse into the life of a zombie in a world turned backwards, where zombies live and humans are feared. Highly recommended!”

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  “Robert Swartwood gives the word ‘zombie’ a new meaning.”

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  “One of the most unique zombie novels I’ve ever read ... a must-read.”

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  LAND OF THE DEAD

  ROBERT SWARTWOOD

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This novel was previously published under the title The Dishonored Dead.

  Contents

  Land of the Dead

  About the Author

  Contact Robert

  Also by Robert Swartwood

  “In the Land of the Blind”

  “The Hunter”

  Copyright

  LAND OF THE DEAD

  For Holly

  They were of one sort—creatures—but so grotesque and misshapen as to be more like a child’s drawings upon his slate than anything natural.

  — George MacDonald,

  The Princess and the Goblin

  prelude

  IN THE LAND OF THE DEAD

  He could hear the zombie in the dark up ahead—what sounded like an adult, saying, “How many colors are there in the world?”—and his first thought was they had a multiple attack. Then he heard another voice, one which belonged to a dead child, and he knew the situation had just escalated.

  “Colors?” the boy asked hesitantly, his cracked and withered voice full of fear. “There are ... three. White, gray, and black.”

  He slowed and raised a fist, signaling the other Hunters to take their time. Now that a child was involved, they had to be even more cautious.

  “I really do pity your kind,” the zombie said. “You miss out on so many different things. Yes, in the land of the dead only those colors exist. But would you like to know how many colors there are in the land of the living?”

  He could just now make out the two figures—definitely an adult and child—through the trees, standing in a small clearing. He placed his hand on his broadsword, pulled it silently from its sheath.

  “Thousands,” the zombie said. “More colors than you could ever imagine ... though, of course, you can’t imagine anything, can you?”

  Moonlight shone through the trees and illuminated the two of them, and he could see the boy standing beside a freshly dug hole, a pile of dirt beside it. In his trembling hands was a shovel.

  “Please,” the boy said, looking quickly around him, “please don’t hurt me. I don’t—I don’t want to expire.”

  “If I were you I wouldn’t want to expire either. Not until I’d experienced everything this world has to offer.”

  The rest of the Hunters having taken their positions surrounding the zombie and the child, he knew it was time to act. There was about five yards between the two of them, which meant that if they went in fast, the boy would be safe.

  “Do you realize the rest of the earth hasn’t moved on? It’s just mankind and the animals. You’ve all moved on, decayed, become what you are. But Mother Nature”—the zombie now shaking his disgusting head—“she hasn’t given up on you yet. She still wants you to find your way. And when you do—when all of you do—I think she’s going to hold her breath in anticipation for what happens next.”

  His broadsword gripped tightly in his right hand, he raised his left hand to signal the other Hunters.

  “In the meantime, do yourself this one favor. Don’t accept your existence for what it is. Question it. Question everything.”

  He brought his hand down and at once the Hunters hurried forward, tightening their circle around the clearing. The boy looked around even more frantically, surprise overtaking the fear in his black eyes.

  He strode right up to the zombie who just stood there completely motionless, staring down at the boy. Less than ten yards away, now less than five, he took in everything about the scene—the shovel in the boy’s hands, the hole, the pile of dirt, a square rock on the ground beside the hole shimmering in the moonlight—and raised his broadsword.

  But stopped.

  For a moment there was a heavy silence. The only sounds were that of dead insects chirping and a dead owl hooting in the trees. Then the zombie looked back at him, said, “Well?” and that was when Philip stepped forward, his own broadsword raised, and severed the zombie’s head from the rest of its body.

  part one

  HUNTING

  1

  Conrad was no stranger to living blood.

  Ever since he was ten, had begun his training, he understood that blood was the final step in every hunt. A zombie ran, you chased it, and once you cornered it, walked right up to it, you raised your broadsword and took its head, releasing blood. Even when his father, the greatest Hunter to ever exist, had passed down his own broadsword to Conrad on the day of his graduation from Artemis, he had embraced him and whispered in his ear, “Make sure every time you hunt, this sword tastes blood.”

  And it had tasted blood, so much living blood over the past twelve years. Mostly children, sure, because that’s what most of the zombies today were: boys and girls no older than ten years old, always running away from him, always crying and screaming until he stopped their tears and silenced their screams forever. It was his job and he was good at it, great at it, and he always made sure every time he hunted he followed through with his father’s wishes.

  He made sure every time he hunted, his broadsword tasted blood.

  He made sure it was covered in it.

  But tonight something had gone wrong. Tonight his sword should have tasted blood, but it hadn’t, and this, Conrad knew, was bad news. Very bad news.

  Sitting alone in the locker room, an irregular dripping coming from the showers, Conrad stared down at the broadsword in his hands. He just didn’t understand it. He didn’t know what had gone wrong. Never before had he hesitated, never once, but this morning he had, and with no way to explain it even to himself, no way to rationalize this egregious error.

  The locker room door opened and in walked Philip, the second lieutenant still wearing his uniform but not his mask. Without looking at Conrad, Philip went to his locker, opened it, started to take off his uniform. Conrad continued staring down at his sword until Philip had slammed his locker shut and walked toward the showers, a towel now wrapped around his waist. He paused before entering, turned back, and Conrad shifted his gaze up from his sword to Philip.

  The man was well built, his shoulders wide, his chest expanded. A tattoo of his broadsword was etched over his right pectoral.

  Philip glared back at him, his black eyes intense. He opened his mouth, started to speak, but then shut it, shook his head and entered the showers.

  When the hiss of water started up a moment later, Conrad got to his feet and went to his locker. He ra
ised a fist, meaning to smash it into the panel, but stopped himself at the last moment. He opened the locker, intending now to slam it shut again, and found his family staring back at him, his wife and son smiling in the gray pictures taped there: one of Denise, one of Kyle, one of the two of them together, Denise in a hospital bed holding a newly-animated Kyle in her arms.

  He thought about everything he had been able to provide for his family, how they had never been forced to go without, and how his simple mistake this morning could change it all.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered to them, closing his eyes and touching his forehead to the pictures. “I’m so sorry.”

  • • •

  Captain Norman Rydell’s office door was open when Conrad made it to the top floor. He knew it was an invitation but still he waited just outside the threshold and knocked on the frame. Norman didn’t even look away from his computer monitor when he motioned him inside.

  “Shut the door, too,” he said.

  Conrad sat in one of the two chairs facing the captain’s desk. Aside from the humming computer on the desk and the ticking clock on the wall, the room was silent.

  After a moment Norman turned away from the computer. He looked at Conrad and tapped the stack of papers in front of him. “Do you know what this is? It’s your file. Every single thing about you since your time at Artemis until this very moment is in here. Every kill, every commendation, everything, I’ve printed it all out and here it is. And unfortunately today I have to add something to it. So I’m going to ask you just once. What happened this morning?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “You don’t.”

  Conrad shook his head.

  “Would you like to know what Philip told me?”

  Conrad waited.

  “He said you froze. That you approached the zombie and raised your sword but did nothing else.”

  Conrad shifted his eyes away. He thought about the day he’d graduated. About how up until that point nobody knew who his father truly was—not even Denise—and how on that day his father had embraced him for the very first time in front of the world and told him to make sure the sword always tasted blood and now today for the very first time it had not.

  “Well?” Norman said.

  “I ...”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “That’s not an acceptable answer.”

  The computer on the desk continued to hum, the clock on the wall continued to tick.

  Conrad said, “Sir, if you would like my resignation, I would be more than willing to—”

  “Stop. Just stop right there.” Norman leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Yes, what took place this morning shouldn’t have happened, but it’s not the end of the world. You’re my first lieutenant and I have never questioned anything you’ve ever done. But what happened this morning, I want to know why.”

  Norman was fifty-two, twenty years older than Conrad. He had short gray hair and a thin gray mustache. He came from a line of honorable Hunters—his father a Hunter, his father’s father a Hunter—and the fact that the line would end with him had always been a sore point. Norman and his wife (Beth, who’d expired three years ago) had never been able to conceive after their first child, a boy who’d expired when he was two, and though nobody had ever come out and said it, the truth was always there: Norman had let his family down.

  “It’s Kyle,” Conrad said.

  “What about Kyle?” An expression of worry creased the captain’s decayed face. “Is he okay? He hasn’t ...”

  But Norman didn’t continue. He didn’t have to. The unspoken question was whether Kyle had become infected with some kind of parasite. It seemed children were most likely to become infected, and it was almost impossible to extract a parasite once it had taken hold. That was why children were given more shots and vitamins than adults, who took half the amount. That was why parents were encouraged to give them the proper lotions for their decayed skin, to keep flies from laying maggots, to keep any other parasites at bay. Because when a child became infected its body began to decay at a very rapid rate, first the hair falling out, then the skin, until that child expired completely, leaving a very fat and well-fed parasite.

  Norman and his wife had witnessed this firsthand with their own child, watching their son withering away and not being able to do anything about it.

  “No,” Conrad said, “nothing like that. It’s just that, well, his animation day is coming up. In two weeks.”

  “It’s his tenth, isn’t it.”

  Conrad nodded.

  “Yes, I can see why that would make you worry. But it should be okay. Kyle’s a good boy. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”

  “I hope so, sir. But when I went to kill that zombie this morning, I looked at the boy and for some reason it made me think of Kyle.”

  “Speaking of the boy”—Norman glanced at his computer monitor—“it appears the zombie managed to infect him with a parasite. It doesn’t look like he’ll make it through the day.”

  Conrad closed his eyes, placed a hand to his head.

  “Don’t beat yourself up about it. You did everything you could.”

  Conrad knew the captain was right. An anonymous tip had come in, giving them the location, and they had made it to the suburbs in record time, managed to track the zombie’s trail into the woods, and as far as Conrad had seen the zombie hadn’t once touched the boy. Still ...

  “Has the boy been questioned?”

  “You mean regarding the hole?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said he and his friends had buried something there a year ago, some money, and he wanted to dig it back up. Then he said the zombie came out of nowhere and tried to attack him.”

  “Are you sure? Because it sounded like the zombie had been talking to him for a while.”

  Norman squinted at the computer monitor again. “Well, yes, the boy did say the zombie said some things, but he couldn’t remember much of it. You have to keep in mind, the parasite in his body is already eating away at him, and he ... he wasn’t very lucid when he was interviewed. Awful, awful thing for his parents.”

  “What about the adult zombie?”

  “What about it?”

  “There hasn’t been an adult zombie attack for months.”

  “We’re looking into that, too.”

  There was a silence.

  Conrad said, “Are you sure you don’t want my resignation? The other men, they ...”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think they can trust me after this.”

  Norman didn’t answer right away. He sat there a moment, watching Conrad closely. Finally he said, “You’ve always been fighting a losing battle. It’s because of your father, who he was, what he was. Henry the Hunter, the world’s greatest Hunter, who will forever exist in movies and TV and video games.”

  Norman grinned at the absurdity of it all—he knew Conrad saw it as an embarrassment, his father selling out so that nobody would forget him when he expired—and then quite abruptly the grin faded.

  “Everyone’s expected so much from you, and believe me, you’ve delivered. Over nine hundred kills since you became a Hunter, and that’s not counting all those you killed when you were training. Not quite up to the five thousand on your father’s belt, but I’d say you’re the best Hunter in the world right now.”

  “If you don’t want my resignation, sir, then why did you call me here?”

  Norman closed Conrad’s file and set it aside. He picked up another, held it up for Conrad to see. “Can you read what’s written on this?”

  The words TOP SECRET were printed on the white folder.

  “Not very conspicuous, I know. But this is the real reason I wanted to speak with you. I think ... well, I think it’s time for you to move on.”

  Conrad shifted in his chair. “Move on?”

  “To whiter pastures. It’s a program that’s been around for decades. Only those men who are
Hunters can do what this job entails, and it’s not just any Hunter. They have to have honor, integrity, intelligence. Your name actually came up a few years ago for this program, but there was no way we were going to give you up. Now”—Norman shook his head sadly—“now it looks like I have no choice.”

  Norman placed the file on the desk, tapped the two words with a decayed fingernail.

  “But this right here? This isn’t a joke. Even before I show this to you, I must have your word you will never tell anybody about it. You can never tell Denise, you can never tell Kyle, you can never tell anyone. I’ve been involved in it for nearly twenty years and never once told my wife, even when she was on her expiration bed. Do you understand?”

  Conrad, staring at those two words on the file, nodded.

  “I need to hear you say it. I need you to say you understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. Because if you think being a Hunter is the most important job there is, I’m sorry to say you’re wrong.” He tapped the file again. “It’s this. This is what truly keeps the world safe. So if you’re prepared to take on that responsibility, take the file. But keep in mind that if you do, there is no going back. If you have any hesitation at all, it would probably be best that you do resign right now, leave this building, and never look back. Understand?”

  Conrad did. His fears of losing his job, of not being able to provide for his family, had quickly left his mind. Still, as he kept his gaze level with Norman, as he leaned forward to take the file, his thoughts returned to his son. Kyle would turn ten in less than two weeks, and it was at that age when children were the most susceptible to turning.