Zombies

by Otto Penzler

  He patted Jean’s belly. “I guess we are two of a kind. Maybe you’d like to throw in with me. I can see some advantages to an arrangement like that. You could lure the pretty young things into my car, help me subdue them. What do you think?”

  She thought that she might start to cry. His offer was just what she had wanted to hear—and he knew it. He knew it, all right.

  But she went along, just in case. “I think I’d like that.”

  “That makes it an even fifty percent,” he said.

  The front of the car tipped upward. Again, Jean’s cheek pressed his belt buckle.

  “You’re the fourth to try that maneuver. Hey, forget about killing me, I’m just your type, let’s be partners. Four out of eight. You’re only the second to confess a prior murder, though. The other one said she pushed her kid sister out of the tree house. I sure do pick ’em. Two murderers. What are the chances of that?”

  “Coincidence,” Jean muttered.

  “Nice try.”

  His right hand continued to fondle her. His left hand kept jogging the steering wheel from side to side as he maneuvered up the hill.

  She could reach up and grab the wheel and maybe make them crash. But the car didn’t seem to be moving very fast. At this speed, the crash might not hurt him at all.

  “Let’s hear the one about your rich father,” he said.

  “Go to hell.”

  He laughed. “Come on, don’t ruin the score. You’ll make it a hundred percent if you’ve got a rich father who’ll pay me heaps of money to take you back to him unscathed.”

  She decided to try for the crash.

  But the car stopped. He swung the steering wheel way over and started ahead slowly. The car bumped and rocked. Its tires crunched dirt. Leafy branches whispered and squeaked against its sides.

  “We’re almost there,” he said.

  She knew that.

  “Almost time to go into your begging routine. Most of them start about now. Sometimes they hold off till we get out.”

  I won’t beg, Jean thought. I’ll run for it.

  He stopped the car and turned off the engine. He didn’t take the key from the ignition.

  “Okay, honey. Sit up slowly and open the door. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She sat up and turned toward the door. As she levered the handle, he clutched the collar of her blouse. He held onto it while she climbed out. Then he was standing, still gripping her collar, knuckles shoving at the back of her neck to guide her around the door. The door slammed shut. They passed the front of the car and moved toward a clearing in the forest.

  The clearing was milky with moonlight. In the center, near a pale dead tree, was a ring of rocks that someone had stacked up to enclose a campfire. A pile of twigs and broken branches stood near the fire ring.

  The Reaper steered Jean toward the dead tree.

  She saw wood already piled inside the wall of rocks, ready for a match.

  And she felt a quick glimmer of hope. Someone had laid the fire.

  Right. He probably did it. He was up here earlier, preparing.

  She saw a rectangular box at the foot of the tree.

  A toolbox?

  She began to whimper. She tried to stop walking, but he shoved her forward.

  “Oh please, please, no! Spare me! I’ll do anything!”

  “Fuck you,” Jean said.

  He laughed.

  “I like your guts,” he said. “In a little while, we may take a good look at them.”

  He turned her around and backed her against the tree.

  “I’ll have to take off one of the cuffs, now,” he explained. He took a key from the pocket of his pants and held it in front of her face. “You won’t try to take advantage of the moment, will you?”

  Jean shook her head.

  “No, I didn’t think so.” He shot a knee up into her belly. His forearm caught her under the chin, forcing her back as she started to double. Her legs gave out. She slid down the trunk, the barkless wood snagging her blouse and scraping her skin. A knob of root pounded her rump. She started to tumble forward, but he was there in front of her upthrust knees, blocking her fall. She slumped back against the trunk, wheezing, feeling the cuff go away from her right wrist, knowing this was it, this was the big moment she’d been waiting for, her one and only chance to make her break.

  But she couldn’t move. She was hurting and dazed and breathless. And even if she hadn’t been disabled by the blow, her position made struggle pointless. She was folded, back tight against the tree, legs mashing her breasts, arms stretched out over her knees, toes pinned to the ground by his boots.

  She knew she had lost.

  Strange, though. It didn’t seem to matter much.

  Jean felt as if she were outside herself, observing. It was someone else being grabbed under the armpits, someone else being lifted. She was watching a movie and the heroine was being prepared for torture. The girl’s arms were being raised overhead. The loose cuff was being passed over the top of a limb. Then, it was snapped around the girl’s right hand. The Reaper lifted her off her feet and carried her out away from the trunk. Then he let go. The limb was low enough so she didn’t need to stand on tiptoes.

  The man walked away from his captive. He crouched on the other side of the ring of rocks and struck a match. Flames climbed the tented sticks. They wrapped thick, broken branches. Pale smoke drifted up. He stood and returned to the girl.

  “A little light on the subject,” he said to her. His voice sounded as faint as the snapping of the fire behind him.

  This is okay, she thought. It’s not me. It’s someone else—a stranger.

  It stopped being a stranger, very fast, when she saw the knife in the Reaper’s hand.

  She stood rigid and stared at the dark blade. She tried to hold her breath, but couldn’t stop panting. Her heart felt like a hammer trying to smash its way out of her chest.

  “No,” she gasped. “Please.”

  He smiled. “I knew you’d get around to begging.”

  “I never did anything to you.”

  “But you’re about to do something for me.”

  The knife moved in. She felt its cool blade on her skin, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t cut. Not Jean. It cut her clothes instead—the straps of her bra, the sleeves of her blouse, the waistband of her skirt.

  He took the clothes to the fire.

  “No! Don’t!”

  He smiled and dropped them onto the flames. “You won’t need them. You’ll be staying right here. Here in the mess hall.”

  Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howled.

  “That’s my friend. We’ve got an arrangement. I leave a meal for him and his forest friends, and they do the cleanup for me. None of this ‘shallow grave’ nonsense. I just leave you here, tomorrow you’ll be gone. They’ll come like the good, hungry troops they are, and leave the area neat and tidy for next time. No fuss, no bother. And you, sweet thing, will be spared the embarrassment of returning to campus bare-ass.”

  Squatting beside the fire, he opened the toolbox. He took out pliers and a screwdriver. He set the pliers on the flat top of a rock. He picked up the screwdriver. Its shank was black even before he held it over the fire. Jean saw the flames curl around it.

  “No!” she cried out. “Please!”

  “No! Please!” he mimicked. Smiling, he rolled the screwdriver in his hand. “Think it’s done yet?” He shook his head. “Give it a few more minutes. No need to rush. Are you savoring the anticipation?”

  “You bastard!”

  “Is that any way to talk?”

  “HELP!” she shouted. “HELP! PLEASE, HELP ME!”

  “Nobody’s going to hear you but the coyotes.”

  “You can’t do this!”

  “Sure, I can. Done it plenty of times before.”

  “Please! I’ll do anything!”

  “I know just what you’ll do. Scream, twitch, cry, kick, beg, drool . . . bleed. Not necessarily in that order, of course.”


  He stood up. Pliers in one hand, screwdriver in the other, he walked slowly toward Jean. Wisps of pale smoke rose off the shank of the screwdriver.

  He stopped in front of her. “Now where oh where shall we begin? So many choice areas to choose from.” He raised the screwdriver toward her left eye. Jean jerked her head aside. The tip moved closer. She shut her eye. Felt heat against its lid. But the heat faded. “No. I’ll save that for later. After all, half the fun for you will be watching.”

  She shrieked and flinched rigid as something seared her belly.

  The Reaper laughed.

  She looked down. He had simply touched her with the nose of the pliers.

  “Power of suggestion,” he said. “Now, let’s see how you like some real pain.”

  Slowly he moved the screwdriver toward her left breast. Jean tried to jerk away, but the handcuffs stopped her. She kicked out. He twisted away. As the edge of her shoe glanced off his hip, he stroked her thigh with the screwdriver. She squealed.

  He grinned. “Don’t do that again, honey, or I might get mean.”

  Sobbing, she watched him inch the screwdriver toward her breast again. “No. Don’t. Pleeease.”

  A rock struck the side of the Reaper’s head. It knocked his head sideways, bounced off, scraped Jean’s armpit, and fell. He stood there for a moment, then dropped to his knees and slumped forward, face pressing against Jean’s groin. She twisted away, and he flopped beside her.

  She gazed down at him, hardly able to believe he was actually sprawled there. Maybe she’d passed out and this was no more than a wild fantasy. She was dreaming and pretty soon she would come to with a burst of pain and . . .

  No, she thought. It can’t be a dream. Please.

  A dim corner of her mind whispered, I knew I’d get out of this.

  She looked for the rock thrower.

  And spotted a dim shape standing beside a tree on the far side of the clearing.

  “You got him!” she shouted. “Thank God, you got him! Great throw!”

  The shape didn’t move, didn’t call back to her.

  It turned away.

  “No!” Jean cried out. “Don’t leave! He’ll come to and kill me! Please! I’m cuffed here! He’s got the key in his pocket. You’ve gotta unlock the cuffs for me. Please!”

  The figure, as indistinct in the darkness as the bushes and trees near its sides, turned again and stepped forward. It limped toward the glow of the fire. From the shape, Jean guessed that her savior was a woman.

  Others began to appear across the clearing.

  One stepped out from behind a tree. Another rose behind a clump of bushes. Jean glimpsed movement over to the right, looked and saw a fourth woman. She heard a growl behind her, twisted around, and gasped at the sight of someone crawling toward her. Toward the Reaper, she hoped. The top of this one’s head was black and hairless in the shimmering firelight. As if she’d been scalped? The flesh had been stripped from one side of her back, and Jean glimpsed pale curving ribs before she whirled away.

  Now there were five in front of her, closing in and near enough to the fire so she could see them clearly.

  She stared at them.

  And disconnected again.

  Came out of herself, became an observer.

  The rock thrower had a black pit where her left eye should’ve been. The girl cuffed beneath the tree was amazed that a one-eyed girl had been able to throw a rock with such fine aim.

  It was even more amazing, since she was obviously dead. Ropes of guts hung from her belly, swaying between her legs like an Indian’s loincloth. Little but bone remained of her right leg below the knee—the work of the Reaper’s woodland troops?

  How can she walk?

  That’s a good one, the girl thought.

  How can any of them walk?

  One, who must’ve been up here a very long time, was managing to shamble along just fine, though both her legs were little more than bare bones. The troops had really feasted on her. One arm was missing entirely. The other arm was bone, and gone from the elbow down. Where she still had flesh, it looked black and lumpy. Some of her torso was intact, but mostly hollowed out. The right-hand side of her rib cage had been broken open. The ribs on the left were still there, and a shriveled lung was visible through the bars. Her face had no eyes, no nose, no lips. She looked as if she might be grinning.

  The girl beneath the tree grinned back at her, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  Of course not, dope. How can she see?

  How can she walk?

  One of the others still had eyes. They were wide open and glazed. She had a very peculiar stare.

  No eyelids, that’s the trouble. The Reaper must’ve cut them off. Her breasts, too. Round, pulpy black disks on her chest where they should’ve been. Except for a huge gap in her right flank, she didn’t look as if she’d been maimed by the troops. She still had most of her skin. But it looked shiny and slick with a coating of white slime.

  The girl beside her didn’t seem to have any skin at all. Had she been peeled? She was black all over except for the whites of her eyes and teeth—and hundreds of white things as if she had been showered with rice. But the rice moved. The rice was alive. Maggots.

  The last of the five girls approaching from the front was also black. She didn’t look peeled, she looked burnt. Her body was a crust of char, cracked and leaking fluids that shimmered in the firelight. She bore only a rough resemblance to a human being. She might have been shaped out of mud by a dim-witted child who gave her no fingers or toes or breasts, who couldn’t manage a nose or ears, and poked fingers into the mud to make her eyes. Her crust made papery, crackling sounds as she shuffled past the fire, and pieces flaked off.

  A motley crew, thought the girl cuffed to the limb.

  She wondered if any of them would have enough sense to find the key and unlock the handcuffs.

  She doubted it.

  In fact, they didn’t seem to be aware of her presence at all. They were limping and hobbling straight toward the Reaper.

  Whose shriek now shattered whatever fragile force had allowed Jean to stay outside the cuffed stranger. She tried to keep her distance. Couldn’t. Was sucked back inside the naked, suspended girl. Felt a sudden rush of horror and revulsion . . . and hope.

  Whatever else they might be, they were the victims of the Reaper.

  Payback time.

  He was still shrieking, and Jean looked down at him. He was on his hands and knees. The scalped girl, also on her knees and facing him, had his head caught between her hands. She was biting the top of his head. Jean heard a wet ripping sound as the girl tore off a patch of hair and flesh.

  He flopped and skidded backward, dragged by the rock thrower and the one with the slimy skin. Each had him by a foot. The scalped girl started to crawl after him, then grunted and stopped and tried to pick up the pliers. Her right hand had no fingers. She pawed at the pliers, whimpering with frustration, then sighed when she succeeded in picking up the tool using the thumb and two remaining fingers of her other hand. Quickly, she crawled along trying to catch up to her prize. She scurried past Jean. One of her buttocks was gone, eaten away to the bone.

  She gained on the screaming Reaper, reached out, and clamped the pliers to the ridge of his ear and ripped out a chunk.

  Halfway between Jean and the fire, the girls released his feet.

  All six went at him.

  He bucked and twisted and writhed, but they turned him onto his back. While some held him down, others tore at his clothes. Others tore at him. The scalped one took the pliers to his right eyelid and tore it off. The burnt one snatched up a hand and opened her lipless black mouth and began to chew his fingers off. While this went on, the armless girl capered like a madcap skeleton, her trapped lung bouncing inside her rib cage.

  Soon the Reaper’s shirt was in shreds. His pants and boxer shorts were bunched around his cowboy boots. The scalped girl had ripped his other eyelid off, and now was stretching his upper li
p as he squealed. The rock thrower, kneeling beside him, clawed at his belly as if trying to get to his guts. Slime-skin bit off one of his nipples, chewed it, and swallowed. The girl who must’ve been skinned alive knelt beside his head, scraping maggots off her belly and stuffing them by the handful into his mouth. No longer shrieking, he choked and wheezed.

  The dancing skeleton dropped to her bare kneecaps, bent over him, and clamped her teeth on his penis. She pulled, stretching it, gnawing. He stopped choking and let out a shrill scream that felt like ice picks sliding into Jean’s ears.

  The scalped girl tore his lip off. She gave the pliers a snap, and watched the lip fly.

  Jean watched it too. Then felt its soft plop against her thigh. It stuck to her skin like a leech. She gagged. She stomped her foot on the ground, trying to shake it off. It kept clinging.

  It’s just a lip, she thought.

  And then she was throwing up. She leaned forward as far as she could, trying not to vomit on herself. A small part of her mind was amused. She’d been looking at hideous, mutilated corpses, such horrors as she had never seen before, not even in her nightmares. And she had watched the corpses do unspeakable things to the Reaper. With all that, she hadn’t tossed her cookies.

  A lip sticks to my leg, and I’m barfing my guts out.

  At least she was missing herself. Most of it was hitting the ground in front of her shoes, though a little was splashing up and spraying her shins.

  Finally the heaving subsided. She gasped for air and blinked tears out of her eyes.

  And saw the scalped girl staring at her.

  The others kept working on the Reaper. He wasn’t screaming anymore, just gasping and whimpering.

  The scalped girl stabbed the pliers down. They crashed through the Reaper’s upper teeth. She rammed them deep into his mouth and partway down his throat, left them there, and started to crawl toward Jean.

  “Get him,” she whispered. “He’s the one.”

  Then Jean thought, Maybe she wants to help me.