Zombies: The Recent Dead

by Paula Guran

  “Then what,” Dana cries as destiny closes in on her; she is laughing, crying, singing in a long, ecstatic giggle that stops suddenly as all the breath in her lungs—her soul—rushes out of her body and into his, along with the salty blood from her cut lip, the hanging shred of skin. “What will you take?”

  —Everything.

  Dana . . . can’t breathe . . . she doesn’t have to breathe, she . . . Lifeless, she slips from his arms as her inadvertent lover— if he is a lover—staggers and cries out, jittering with fear and excitement as emotion and memory rush into him. Shuddering back to life, he will not know which of them performed the seduction.

  “Oh my God,” he shouts, horrified by the sound of his own voice. “Oh my God.”

  That which used to be Dana Graver does not speak. It doesn’t have to. The word is just out there, shared, like the air Dana is no longer breathing. —Who?

  My God, my God I am Remy L’Hereux and I miss my wife so much! For my sins, I was separated from my soul and with it, everything I care about. For my sins I was put in the grave and for my sins, my empty body was raised up, and what I did that was so terrible? I ran away with the houngan’s daughter. We met at Tulane, we fell in love and believe me, I was warned! My Sallie’s father was Hector Bonfort, they said, a doctor they said, very powerful. A doctor, yes, I said, but a doctor of what? And without being told I knew, because this was the one question none of them would answer. I should have been afraid, but I loved Sallie too much. I went to her house. I told him Sallie and I were in love. Hector said we were too young, fathers always do. I said we were in love and he said I would never be good enough for her, so we ran away. I laughed in his face and took her out of his house one night while he was away at a conference.

  MY Sallie left him a note: Don’t look for us, she wrote. We’ll be back when you accept Remy as your own son. The priest we asked to marry us begged us to reconsider; he warned us. “You have made a very grave enemy, and I . . . ” He was afraid. We went to City Hall and the registrar of voters married us instead. Silver bracelet for my darling instead of a ring. Hector did not swear vengeance that I heard, but I knew he was powerful. Nobody ever spelled out what he was. I knew, but I pretended not to know. Sallie and I were so much in love that I took her knowing he would come for me. God, we were happy. God, we were in love.

  Sallie, so bright and so pretty with her whole heart and soul showing in her face, we were so happy! But we should have known it was not for long. When Jamie came he was the image of both of us. Our little boy! The three of us were never happier than we were in New York, as far away from New Orleans as we could go. I couldn’t stay at Tulane, not with Hector’s heart turned against me. In New York, we thought we could be safe. There are always flaws in plans cobbled out of love. Hector found out. Then he, it. Something came for me. I got sick. I fell into a coma, unless it was a trance. I didn’t know what was happening, but Sallie did. She prayed by my bedside. She cried.

  We were torn apart by my death, I could hear her sobbing over my bed in the days, the weeks after I fell unconscious but I couldn’t reach out and I couldn’t talk to her. I heard her sobbing in the room, I heard her sobbing on the telephone, I heard her begging her father the houngan to come and release me from the trance. I tried to warn her but I couldn’t speak. Whatever you do, don’t tell him where we are. Then I felt Hector in the city. On our street. In my house. Deep inside my body where what was left of me was hiding. I felt the intrusion, and that before he ever came into my room. It was only a matter of time before his hand parted me down to the center, and I was lost. I was buried too deep to talk but I begged Sallie: Don’t leave me alone! Then Hector was in the room and in the seconds when Sallie had to leave us alone—our son was crying, Jamie needed her, she’d never have left me like that if it hadn’t been for him—when Sally left I felt Hector approaching—not physically, but from somewhere much closer, searching, probing deep. Reaching into the arena of the uncreated.

  Sallie came in and caught him. “Father. Don’t!”

  “I wasn’t doing anything.”

  “I know what you were doing. Bring him back!”

  “I’m trying,” he said. It was a lie.

  Then he put his ear to my mouth, his ear and my God with the sound of velvet tearing, my soul rushed out of me. “Father,” Sallie cried and he thumped my chest with his big fist: CPR. Then he turned to her.

  “Too late,” he said. “When I came into the house Remy was already dying.”

  She rushed at him and shoved him aside. Before he could stop her she slipped her silver bracelet on my wrist. I was almost gone but I heard her sobbing, “Promise to come back.”

  The grief was crushing. It was almost a relief to descend into the grave with my sweetheart’s tears still drying on my face and the bracelet that bound us rattling on my wrist, forgotten. Until now. My God, until now!

  What have I done?

  I was better off when I was no more than a thing, like that beautiful, cold woman rising from the bed but it’s too late to go back. Where I felt no pain and no desire, desire is reawakened.

  I want to go home!

  I have go. Go home to Sallie, the love of my soul, and I want to see Jamie, our son. I miss them so much, but I can’t! I have been dead and buried and I don’t know how long it’s been. I would give anything to see them but for their protection, I have to stay back. Sallie wants to see me again, but not like this. The hand I bring up to my face is redolent of the grave and when I open my mouth I taste the sweet rot rising inside of me.

  I can’t go back to them, not the way I am,

  I won’t.

  I have to. I can’t not go because with the return of life comes the awful, inexorable compulsion. Better I throw myself in front of a train or into a furnace than do this to the woman I love. I know what’s happening, the rushing decay because to live again means you’re going to die, and when you have been dead and buried, death comes fast. I have to stop. I have to stop myself. I . . .

  The creature on the bed does not speak. It doesn’t have to. —Have to go home.

  I have to go home. In a return of everything that made him human—love, regret and a terrible foreboding and before any of these, compulsion—in full knowledge of what he has been and what he is becoming, Remy L’Hereux turns his back on the undead thing on the bed, barely noting the fraught, anxious arrival of Billy Wylie, who has no idea what he’s walking into.

  That which had been Dana Graver sits up, its eyes burning with a new green light and its pale skin shimmering against the black nightgown.—Then go.

  I’m going now.

  About the Author

  Kit Reed has stories appearing in Postscripts, Asimov’s, Kenyon Review, and several invited anthologies this year. A collection from PS Publishing is scheduled for 2011. Publishers Weekly praised Enclave (2009) as “a gripping dystopian thriller.” Other novels include The Baby Merchant, J. Eden, and Thinner Than Thou, which won an ALA Alex award. Often anthologized, her stories appear in venues ranging from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s SF, and Omni to The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review and The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Her collections include Thief of Lives, Dogs of Truth, and Weird Women, Wired Women, which, along with the short novel Little Sisters of the Apocalypse, was a finalist for the Tiptree Prize. A Guggenheim fellow and the first American recipient of a five-year literary grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation, she is Resident Writer at Wesleyan University.

  Story Notes

  Booklist’s review of Reed’s collection Dogs of Truth had this to say about “The Zombie Prince”: “There’s even a story, the almost-sweet creepy . . . in which zombies get to be something other than moaning hulks out to eat brains . . . ” True enough.

  There’s also, to me, something particularly disturbing about the human in this tale, Dana.

  Selected Scenes from the End of the World:

  Three Stories from the Universe of The Rising

  B
rian Keene

  I: Family Reunion

  “Where are they?” Stephen Smeltzer yawned.

  “Maybe they got delayed,” Carl suggested. “Traffic could be bad.”

  “No.” Stephen shook his head. “They would have called.”

  “This is your family we’re talking about,” Carl grunted. “Do you really expect your mom or stepfather to pick up the phone and let you know they’re running late? That would indicate common courtesy on their parts.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I mean your mom was mentally abusive to you all these years, and your stepfather used to beat the shit out of you both. Why would they feel the need to call and let us know they’re late?”

  “Okay,” Stephen replied. “But they’re still my family, and I do love them, despite everything. My step-dad; he’s been trying to make up for all of that ever since he got diagnosed with prostrate cancer. And Mom has mellowed with age.”

  “They’ll have to prove it to me. We’ve been together eighteen years, Stephen, and I’ve seen just what your family is capable of. I hate the way they treat you, sometimes. Just because your step-dad has suddenly been humbled by his own mortality, doesn’t excuse the fact that he’s a bully.”

  Stephen watched the pier through the rain, looking for his mother and stepfather’s car, or his sister’s van.

  “Besides,” Carl continued, “if your mom is as psychic as she claims, wouldn’t she have seen whatever delayed them in advance?”

  “Cheri would call at least. She’s got Dad with her.”

  Stephen’s real father had his leg amputated the year before, and now spent his time in a wheelchair, popping pain pills and drinking himself into oblivion. He was coming to the reunion with Stephen’s sister, Cheri.

  The raindrops whispered against the boat’s deck, and plunked into the waters of Lake Vermilion. In the distance, they could see the town. Stephen’s family was supposed to arrive around dawn, after driving all night, for the annual family reunion. The gathering was held each year at Stephen and Carl’s place on Ghost Island. The lakeside dwelling was accessible from the mainland only by boat.

  Carl reached out and squeezed his hand. “The weather probably slowed them down. That’s all. Everything will be fine.”

  Stephen smiled at him, and tried to relax. That was easy to do with Carl at his side. They’d met when Stephen was nineteen and Carl was thirty-two, and Stephen still thanked God every day for putting Carl in his life.

  The boat rocked slightly as Carl walked over to the radio and turned it on. Stephen watched him as he moved past—the Richard Gere type, with thick, gray hair and a solid, healthy build. The past eighteen years together had been wonderful, and Stephen looked forward to many, many more. Carl had helped him get over so much; so many shadows from his past.

  Were it not for Carl, he’d never be able to host these annual reunions. Some things never stayed buried.

  His past—his family—was one of those things.

  Carl turned the dial, searching the airwaves. Curiously, there was no music, no traffic reports, no zany morning show antics. Each station featured announcers talking in the same grim, somber tones.

  Federal authorities were not commenting on why a government research center in Hellertown, Pennsylvania had been shut down overnight. The Director of Homeland Security assured the reporters that the situation was under control, and that there was no danger to the public, but due to national security concerns, they couldn’t say more at this time. Terrorism was not suspected.

  In Escanaba, Michigan, over twenty people had been killed, and dozens more injured, when an apparent riot erupted during a rock concert.

  Stranger still, some form of mass hysteria seemed to be springing up at random across the country and, according to some reports, throughout the world. The reports didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and it was apparent that some of the newscasters were skeptical as they read them.

  Stories of the dead coming back to life—in morgues and at funerals and in the back of ambulances and on the battlefield.

  “Sounds like those movies you always watch, and the stuff you read and write,” Carl laughed. “Where the corpses run around and eat people?”

  “Yeah,” Stephen replied, shivering. “Weird, huh?”

  Headlights pierced the early morning gloom, and a moment later, his sister’s van pulled up, followed by his mother’s car.

  Stephen took a deep breath. Goosebumps dotted his arms, and he wondered why. He chalked it up to the dampness in the air.

  Carl led him across the deck. “Come on. Brave face. It’s only one weekend.”

  They climbed onto the dock and slowly walked towards the parking lot. Nobody got out of the vehicles. As they got closer, Stephen grew alarmed. There was a jagged, splintered hole in the car’s windshield, and the van’s front grille was crumpled. A splash of red covered the white hood.

  Stephen broke into a run. “Oh God! There’s been an accident!”

  He could see his sister’s silhouette behind the rain-streaked van windshield, but couldn’t tell if she was hurt or not. As he dashed around to the driver’s-side door, Carl opened the sliding door on the side.

  Stephen’s father rolled out on top of him, and sank his teeth into Carl’s ear.

  Cheri burst from the vehicle, slamming the door into Stephen’s legs. He collapsed to the ground, skinning his palms on the wet asphalt. Cheri giggled. Somewhere out of sight, his parent’s car doors creaked open.

  “Sorry we’re late, Stephen,” Cheri croaked. “There was a major fender bender in Duluth, and then we stopped for a bite.”

  His sister was a grisly sight. Her nose was a swollen, broken bulb, and a portion of her scalp had peeled back, revealing the pink meet between it and her skull. She reached for him, and Stephen gaped in horror. His sister’s hand was broken at the wrist, and twisted into a deformed claw.

  “Cheri,” he gasped. “You’re hurt!”

  Carl shrieked.

  “Wow,” Cheri snickered, “I haven’t seen Dad this active in awhile.”

  Stephen stared in horror at Carl’s ear dangling from his father’s clenched teeth.

  His mother, stepfather, and sister advanced on him. His mother’s right arm was missing from the elbow down, and his stepfather’s face was split in two.

  Stephen cast one last, shocked glance at Carl. His father had his face buried in Carl’s neck, burrowing into the flesh.

  Then Stephen fled. Eighteen years of comfort and bliss were forgotten, overridden by blind panic. Carl’s agonized final screams echoed in his ears. Stephen jumped onboard the boat, started the engine, and sped away across the water.

  Back at the house, the radio and television talked about the chaos spreading across the world—worsening by the hour.

  Later that day, Carl and the others arrived on the island, dripping wet from their long walk along the bottom of the lake.

  And then they had a family reunion.

  II: The Ties That Bind

  “I wonder what time it is.”

  “Time for you to die.”

  “Stop that.” Philip got up from his bedside chair. The alarm clock in the bedroom broke during the struggle. The power was still on—although sporadic. He walked into the kitchen, glanced at the microwave clock, and saw that it was after midnight. Outside, the distant sound of far-away thunder rolled across the sky.

  Champ brushed up against his leg. Philip bent down and scratched the dog’s back end. Champ wagged his tail in delight. Then Philip readjusted the wet handkerchief tied around his face. It helped block out the smell.

  He sighed. “It’s very late.”

  “It is indeed,” Denise cackled from the bedroom. “Too late for you all! Humanity’s numbers are dwindling while ours grow. We are more than the stars. More than infinity.”

  Philip rubbed his tired eyes. They were out of coffee and tea—almost out of food. He was physically and mentally exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. The couch hurt his
back, and the bed—the bed they’d slept in—was out of the question. Denise had been tied to it for almost a week now, and she was leaking.

  Slowly, he walked back into the bedroom. Champ trotted after him, stopping at the bedroom door. He refused to enter the room. Instead, he stood at the door and growled.

  Denise was strapped spread-eagled to the bed frame with bungee and extension cords. More cords bound her torso to the mattress. There was a horrible bite mark on her arm. It was black around the edges, and oozed a stinking, yellowish-brown fluid. The bite was what had killed her—one of the neighborhood kids, dead but hungry. Philip had destroyed the zombie with a garden hoe to the back of its head, but that changed nothing. Infection set in. Within days, Denise was dead, as well.

  “Getting a good look?” the zombie rasped.

  Philip stared at her. Denise’s bathrobe was stained and crusty. Her abdomen had distended and then burst, and her bowels had evacuated. Her white cheeks were sunken, and her eyes looked hollow.

  Despite all of this, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  “Why did this have to happen?” he asked. “Why to us? We were happy, weren’t we?”

  The zombie groaned. “I’ve told you. I have your wife’s memories and your wife’s body, but I am not your wife.”

  “No,” Philip shook his head. “You are. To me you still are. If Denise’s memories of us together still exist, then she still exists. What are we, if not memories? You are my wife, Denise, and I still love you.”

  A worm wriggled out of the corner of Denise’s left eye. Philip tried to ignore it.

  “You know what I miss the most? The little things. Watching a movie together or taking a walk. Talking—not like we’re doing now, but really talking to each other. You know? Holding your hand. Watching you while you sleep.”

  He leaned forward.

  “What are you doing?” Denise snarled.

  “Holding your hand, the way I used to.”

  Her left hand fluttered against the bedpost, tied right at the wrist and again at the elbow. He took her hand in his. The skin was cold and clammy, but still felt like Denise. If he closed his eyes, he could picture them walking around the lake together, hand in hand, just like this.