Land of the Dead

by Robert Swartwood

  Steven opened his mouth but could not speak.

  The zombie smiled. “Though even if I were to hurt you, you wouldn’t actually feel anything.”

  The owl in the tree hooted twice, flew away.

  “That was meant as a joke,” the zombie said, his smile fading. “A poor joke, I know, but a joke nonetheless. Please, say something. I’m risking my life talking to you, the least you could do is say hello.”

  Steven didn’t want to say hello. He wanted to run away. But he knew that if he did the zombie would chase after him and tear him apart limb by limb. He stood motionless.

  The zombie said, “You’re about ten years old, aren’t you?”

  Steven nodded.

  “You came out here because you heard it calling you.” The zombie motioned with his head at the rock on the ground just behind Steven. “Am I right?”

  Steven found his voice. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said before? I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “What do you want?” Steven said, and took a step back, looked around at all the trees, searching for the quickest escape.

  The zombie sighed. “I don’t even know what I want anymore. A long time ago I used to think it was possible for the living and the dead to exist side by side. But now ...” He shrugged. “Now this is the land of the dead, and it will always be the land of the dead.”

  Steven took another step back, the heel of his sneaker bumping the rock. He looked down at it, looked back up at the zombie. Hesitantly he asked, “What’s inside it?”

  “What do you think? It’s your heart.”

  “My ... heart? But that can’t be. My heart”—he pointed at his chest—“is right here.”

  “Okay,” the zombie said, smiling again, “it’s not really your heart. But inside that cube is life. The thing that will make you just like me.”

  “I don’t want to be just like you. You—you—you’re a monster. You don’t deserve to exist.”

  “You really have no idea, do you? Say, how many colors are there?”

  Steven hesitated again, looking every which way, wishing his parents were here with him right now, wishing Hunters would come to his rescue.

  “Colors?” he said. “There are ... three. Black, white, and gray.”

  The smile had faded completely from the zombie’s face, his expression now somber. “I really do pity your kind. You miss out on all the little things. Like feeling the sun when it’s shining down on you. Or the wind against your face. Smelling the honeysuckles in the spring and tasting a pinch of sugar.” The zombie shook his head. “Do you realize the rest of the earth hasn’t moved on? It’s just mankind and all the animals. You’ve all decayed, become what you are. You’ve all become blind, and those like me, the living, are one-eyed men. We’re kings.”

  “Please,” Steven said, and this time his voice cracked even more. He wanted to cry but didn’t know how, and his lower lip trembled, his hands still shook, and without thinking he bent down and grabbed the cube-shaped rock, held it close to him as if it offered some form of protection. “Please, I just want to go home. I don’t ... I don’t want to expire.”

  “If I were you,” the zombie said, “I wouldn’t want to expire either. Not until I experienced everything this world has to offer. Because to see the true color of the sky, and its brilliance when the sun sets ... to experience that for even a second is worth all the fear of being hunted down and destroyed.”

  “Please,” Steven said again, holding the pulsing cube in his hands, and it was at that moment the Hunters came out of the shadows.

  They wore black uniforms and masks and carried broadswords. The zombie heard them coming—their heavy boots striking the earth sounded like thunder—but he made no effort to escape. He simply stood there, staring back at Steven, and said, “Don’t accept your existence for what it is. Question it. Question everything.”

  One of the six Hunters stepped forward. He raised his broadsword and swung it.

  Liquid splattered Steven’s face as the zombie’s head was severed from the rest of its body. He’d heard about living blood but had never known it to exist until now.

  The Hunters took the zombie’s body away. Steven was taken back home, where his parents scolded him. His father said some very mean words. His mother cried but shed no tears. They sent him up to his room and told him he wasn’t to come out until they said so.

  Sitting on his bed, the cube in his lap (he’d managed to hide it from the Hunters and his parents), Steven stared out his window at the rising sun. It was gray just like the sky. Just like the trees. Just like everything.

  The cube-shaped rock in his lap continued to pulse. The sound was so loud it almost drowned out his parents’ arguing downstairs.

  He placed his hands on the cube and held it tight. The cube pulsed even more. And slowly, so very slowly, the cube began to dissolve until there was nothing left at all.

  Steven closed his eyes. None of it made sense. The sound was gone but still he felt the beating—which now came from within his chest.

  • • •

  He opened his bedroom door with caution and tiptoed the length of the hallway toward the steps. Downstairs his parents continued arguing, and though he only caught a few words, he knew their dispute involved him. They were worried—not only had their son tried to run away tonight, but he had almost been expired by a zombie—and they wanted to protect him but weren’t sure just how to do it.

  He stood at the top of the stairs much longer than he’d intended, staring at the pictures on the walls, at the carpet, even the border that ran near the ceiling. Each was a different color, a different shade. Nothing like the gray he’d become accustomed to his entire existence.

  Everything had changed the moment he realized his heart had started beating. His body had somehow absorbed the life inside the cube. A warm tingling in his chest had spread throughout his entire body, down his legs to his toes, down his arms to his fingertips, and when he opened his eyes again, he had watched with a kind of wonder as the black and white and gray of the world began receding around him, until the floor, the walls, the ceiling, everything was painted with color.

  He had fallen back onto the bed then, his body shutting down temporarily, the muscles and tendons which had never really been used before having to recharge. Even his lungs had begun to work, and he breathed oxygen for the first time, taking large gulps of air until he became acquainted with this new experience and began breathing regularly.

  As he lay there he sniffed the stale air, could smell what he somehow knew internally was a mixture of dust and decayed skin and hair and laundry detergent. He knew other things internally now too, as if a door to new information in his brain had just been opened.

  Somewhere below him now, probably in the kitchen, his parents continued their argument, though there was less intensity now, less garbled and guttural shouting. He knew what they were arguing about. His father wanted to send Steven away for psychiatric help, while his mother wanted to just ignore it, pretend like the entire thing hadn’t happened. Eventually they would arrive at a decision and come to see him. And when they did, what would they find?

  Their son—a monstrosity, a crime against nature.

  A zombie.

  He shuddered at the thought, feeling a chill race through his soul, and found it both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. It was a feeling he’d never experienced before, and he wanted to feel it again. How many more feelings were there? How many more colors? He remembered the zombie mentioning something about smells and tastes. How many of those were there?

  A gasp pulled him away from his thoughts.

  He glanced down the stairs to find his parents standing at the bottom. Unlike Steven’s skin which had become pale and smooth, theirs was decayed and brownish gray, their eyes and hair pitch black.

  Steven’s mother had been the one who gasped. She held her hand to her mouth and stared up at him with wide black eyes. His father s
tood beside her, slowly shaking his head.

  “I’m very disappointed in you,” he said, his voice scratchy and rough. The sound of his words caused another shudder to pass through Steven’s body, though this one wasn’t as pleasing.

  “Oh sweetie,” his mother said, “what have you done?”

  When Steven didn’t respond, his father said, “I have no choice. I have to call them.”

  He turned away and disappeared from Steven’s sight, leaving only his mother to stand there with her hand still to her mouth. She shook her head, her dull eyes expressing no emotion—though Steven thought that if she were alive they’d show sadness, maybe even tears.

  She opened her mouth to speak. Steven expected to hear her gargled voice again, but nothing came out. She shook her head and waved him toward her.

  He started down the steps, taking them one at a time, finding the sound his sneakers made on the wood pleasant in a strange sort of way. When he reached the landing, his mother fell to her knees. She gripped his shoulders, wrapped her arms around him. Her body reeked of rot and decay and Steven tried to step out of the dead embrace.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, holding onto him tightly. Her breath, he knew internally, smelled of rancid fish. “Your father’s calling the Hunters. They’ll be here any minute. Why would you do this? Didn’t we raise you properly? Didn’t we give you everything you ever needed? Why, Steven? Why?”

  He stared into her dead eyes and tried to find something there, some kind of life. He had no answer for her and simply shook his head.

  His father returned.

  “They’ll be here soon, Steven. Make it easy on yourself and don’t try to fight them.”

  Body now trembling, he felt wetness underneath his arms and something churning in the pit of his stomach. His mother’s dead hands squeezed his shoulders briefly once more and he glanced back into her dry colorless face, into her black depthless eyes.

  Her cracked lips moved, forming just one word, and though she didn’t use her damaged voice, he heard the word clearly in his mind: Run.

  Steven hesitated. He glanced at his father and saw that his father had seen what just passed between mother and son. His father’s black eyes became impossibly large. “No,” he growled, and started forward, and Steven backed out of his mother’s embrace, bolted for the door.

  • • •

  The first thing that struck him outside was the sunlight, and he had to pause, had to allow his eyes to adjust to the sudden brilliance. He lifted his face to the sky, closed his eyes, enjoyed the warmth for only an instant before he remembered he should be running. Opening his eyes, he saw that indeed the sky wasn’t gray but blue, lighter than his T-shirt, speckled with white puffs of clouds, and all around him was green—in the trees, in the grass, even on some houses.

  Scents wafted through the air, mixed scents his new internal mind picked out and pieced apart and gave names to: fresh grass, motor oil, dog shit, dandelions.

  Across the street, two dead children played in a front lawn. Steven had once known their names but they, much like his own parents, were now strangers to him. They’d been running around, using large plastic broadswords to play Henry the Hunter, neither noticing him until one paused and stared across the street, then said something to the other and pointed.

  Two sets of wide dead eyes stared back at him.

  The door behind him opened. He heard his mother’s voice, begging his father to stop, to please let her baby go. His father told her to shut up, that he would deal with her later. Then there was the sound of his father’s heavy footsteps on the porch, his father yelling at him to stop.

  Steven ran.

  The two children across the street saw him coming and screamed, their voices harsh and flat as they scrambled away.

  He reached the street and paused, uncertain where to go next. He thought about the zombie from last night. It had been old, about Steven’s father’s age. How had it survived so many years?

  Sunlight glinted off something shiny down the street. It was a Humvee, one that he had seen only hours before when it had brought him home. The Hunters were coming.

  He turned and sprinted in the other direction, hearing shouts from houses where the dead inside saw him and cried out. Sweat ran down his face, as did tears, tears he now shed because he knew it was hopeless, that he wouldn’t outrun the Hunters, that he could never outrun them.

  The street came to an end, a bright red stop sign signaling that the driver must either turn left or right. Beyond the bisecting street were trees and bushes and tall grass.

  Steven continued forward.

  He glanced back after he’d passed a couple dozen trees, saw the Hunters back there, all spread out, all heading in his direction. Before him the woods stretched on for miles, seemingly endless, taunting him with the promise of freedom. He tried keeping his focus on what lay before him but he kept glancing back over his shoulder, each time finding the Hunters gaining more and more ground.

  Steven ran, tears and sweat in his eyes, until suddenly there was no ground beneath him. A rut, a simple hole, and it twisted his ankle, caused him to fall.

  He tried getting up but fell back down, his ankle denying him any support. He glanced back, saw that the Hunters were even closer.

  Fresh tears came, forced by the pain—by real pain—by the realization that he was soon going to die, but also forced by a surreal form of happiness. He didn’t know how many minutes had passed since his body had absorbed the life inside that cube, but he wouldn’t change it for anything, even if given the chance.

  The sound of thunder grew stronger as the Hunters neared.

  Steven tried getting up once more before falling back down. He looked around him for some kind of help but only saw the grass, the trees ... and he noticed a bush he hadn’t seen before, a green bush covered with many small white and yellow flowers. Something inside him whispered they were honeysuckles, and without thinking he crawled the few yards to the bush and reached out, took one of the flowers from its branch and brought it to his nose, to his tongue.

  The Hunters surrounded him, their broadswords drawn and ready. The lead Hunter—the one that had taken the zombie’s head only hours before—stepped forward.

  Steven hardly noticed. The sweet pure scent and taste of the flower was more than anything he had ever wished for. Despite the pain, despite the tears, despite the knowledge of his impending death, he closed his eyes and tried to keep this moment fresh in his mind, tried to keep it with him forever.

  THE HUNTER

  In July of 2011, swedishzombie.com published the following short story. They had commissioned me to write an original zombie story, preferably set in the world of Land of the Dead. After some consideration, I realized I wanted to delve more into Philip’s backstory, and in doing so uncovered a startling revelation.

  —R.S.

  It was almost midnight, and his sister was still missing.

  Amy hadn’t been missing very long—only eight hours—but his parents were making a big deal out of it. Even though he was only eight years old, Philip understood the reason why. After all, Amy always came home straight from school. She was never late.

  “Call them again,” his mother said.

  They were in the existing room, his father in the recliner, his mother on the couch, Philip on the floor in front of the TV playing Henry the Hunter 2: Revenge, the video game that all dead children were required to play every day. He played more hours than was required, navigating the gray world overrun by zombies as the video game’s hero Henry, the greatest Hunter to every exist, cutting off each of the living’s heads with his broadsword.

  “No,” his father said. “They already told me they can’t do anything until twenty-four hours pass.”

  “But she’s just a child!”

  “I told them that. They said it didn’t matter.”

  Earlier tonight his mother had been busy on the phone, calling all of Amy’s friends, while his father drove through the neighborhood. Phi
lip had volunteered to ride along with his father but his father had told him to stay in the house in case his mother needed him for anything. But his mother barely paid him any attention, so he went and played his video game and here he was, hours later, still playing.

  “I’m so worried,” his mother said, her decayed hand touching her decayed face.

  His father started to speak, stopped, looked at him and said, “What time is it?”

  Philip glanced at the clock. “Three minutes past midnight.”

  “Why are you still up? You should be in bed.”

  “But there’s no school tomorrow.”

  “I don’t care. Get your butt upstairs.”

  “Lloyd,” his mother said.

  “Gillian, stay out of this.” His father leaned forward and glared back at Philip with his black eyes. “Go.”

  Philip knew better than to argue. His father could be mean at times, and it didn’t help that he was stressed now because Amy was missing. Even though his older sister could be annoying, Philip liked her and hoped she was okay.

  As he turned off his video game and headed toward the stairs, he heard his mother murmuring, “She’s barely even ten years old and ... and she might be expired.”

  “Don’t say that,” his father said.

  “But it’s true. She may have been kidnapped. She may have been—”

  “Shut up!” his father roared, and Philip, already on the stairs, paused. He waited to hear the creaking of the recliner as his father stood up and approached his mother and slapped her, but there was no sound.

  His father said, “Damn it, Philip, get to bed now!” and Philip started moving again, as quickly and as quietly as he could, up the stairs toward his room.

  • • •

  He awoke to voices.

  It was his parents downstairs, and it sounded like they were arguing, though he couldn’t quite tell what it was they were saying.