Zombies

by Otto Penzler

  Without giving von Verheim the opportunity of replying to this indictment, Rhymer nodded to the officers behind, who promptly seized both the Boches and handcuffed them.

  So expeditiously was this accomplished that the prisoners were afforded little, if any, opportunity of resistance.

  “Now,” he exclaimed, “Inspector Brown will read the warrant.”

  While this formality was being discharged, von Verheim and his accomplice maintained a forced attitude of indifference, and not until the two officers began to lead them away, did either of them evince any further sign of protest. Then, with a look of malignant “hate,” von Verheim, turning towards Rhymer, shouted:

  “I hate your country! I loathe your government! Let them murder me and my comrade. What do we care?—Bah!—We defy you, even now.—Kill the body—yes—and you release the spirit to live and effect a greater vengeance—inflamed by the unquenchable fire of eternal ‘hate.’ ”

  A casual observer might have construed this furious tirade as nothing more or less than an outburst of rage proceeding from a man baffled in the pursuit of a long-prepared scheme of revenge. But to Rhymer it conveyed an extremely subtle threat, beneath which lurked an element of significance, far deeper than anger alone could account for. However, he made no comment, beyond a significant motion of his head directing the instant removal of the prisoners, which was promptly effected through the garden door.

  Then turning to Brown he abruptly exclaimed:

  “We mustn’t lose a minute, for there’s no knowing who may be lurking about this place, though I believe we have taken these spies completely by surprise. Lock both doors, please, and be ready for any emergency.”

  Brown did as he was requested, after which Rhymer opened the safe again with his skeleton key, and securing the notebook, placed it in his pocket.

  “Now,” said he, “as soon as we get back to our hotel, I’ll acquaint you with all the facts I’ve collected during the last few days. But, before we leave this unhallowed spot, I want to search for another piece of evidence.”

  He approached the open mummy case, where it stood propped up against the wall, closely examining the gaping mouth with its row of discoloured teeth. A few seconds later he turned to the inspector, his eyes sparkling with satisfaction.

  “Have you got that little box,” he cried, “you showed me at our first meeting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me have it, then—quick!”

  He almost snatched the box from Brown’s hand as he produced it from his pocket, and opening the lid took out a tiny piece of some discoloured-looking substance, pointed at one end, carefully placing it between the leering lips of the mummy.

  “The exact counterpart!” he cried, a moment later, in a tone of triumph. “Look, Brown, don’t you see what it is?”

  “Well, I thought it was a piece of bone,” he ventured with indecision, “which the surgeon took from one of the victims’ necks.”

  “Of course it’s a piece of bone, or rather ivory, and what’s of more consequence still—a piece of one of the canine or eye-teeth of this preserved corpse. Don’t you see it fits the broken stump, and must have previously been snapped off? It’s a BROKEN FANG!—doesn’t that suggest a clue?”

  “Great Scot, sir! Why, the brute must have bitten that poor fellow, and broken off one of its teeth in the effort! Good heavens! Surely the Thing’s not a vampire?”

  “That’s what I’ve suspected it to be all along.”

  “But I always regarded vampires to be purely mythical,” said Brown.

  “When you become acquainted with the contents of this book,” patting the incriminating article in his breast-pocket, “you’ll alter your opinion. However, let me point out something else relating to this Thing here. Look at the skull. Do you see those two small holes?”

  Brown signified assent.

  “Well, you can’t deny that they are bullet holes; therefore the natural inference is that this nondescript Creature met its death, originally, by shooting, which summarily rejects von Verheim’s assertion that it is the corpse of an ancient Egyptian. Firearms weren’t used in those remote times.”

  “But don’t you remember,” Brown hazarded, “shooting at the Creature in the lane—mightn’t that account for the bullet holes in the skull?”

  Rhymer regarded the detective for a moment with a half-suppressed look of amusement.

  “By Jove, Brown,” he cried, “you’re waking up at last to the psychological probabilities of the case,” and slapping him on the shoulder, added:

  “So now you begin to realise that this corpse, like the other we saw, is not quite so defunct as normal conditions would infer. But don’t be too cock-sure yet. You’ve fallen into one error, for I told you I shot that other ‘freak’ through the body, and there is no corresponding bullet mark in the abdominal region of this corpse.”

  Brown scratched his head in evident perplexity, then, with a bantering smile, observed:

  “When I passed a remark in front of von Verheim, the other morning, upon the apparently well-preserved condition of these mummies, you promptly shut me up.”

  “I admit the charge,” Rhymer responded, “but I had a good reason for doing so, as you will soon realise. But come,” he continued, “let’s examine a few more of these grotesque coffins before we make tracks.”

  Two or three were accordingly wrenched open (they were all fitted with modern locks) and their occupants exposed. An exceptionally hideous specimen was eventually uncovered, which, upon closer inspection, revealed a small hole in the abdomen, with a corresponding bullet flattened firmly against the spinal column behind.

  “Now, Brown, what do you think of that? Seems as though more than one agent was employed in these crimes, eh?”

  “Looks uncommonly like it.”

  “Holloa! What’s that?” Rhymer suddenly exclaimed, as his keen glance happened to fall upon a long, dark cloak suspended from a peg in the corner. With a few strides he reached it, and taking it down examined the garment. A moment later his hand was in his pocket, and out came a letter-case, from which he produced a small piece of cloth, and comparing it with the cloak, exclaimed:

  “Here you are, Brown, another piece of evidence.”

  “What’s that?” the inspector inquired as he crossed over to where Rhymer was standing.

  The latter, by way of reply, spread out the cloak, exhibiting a gap in the hem from which a piece of the material had been torn.

  “See that?” he inquired.

  “By Jove!—yes, and you’ve got the missing fragment?”

  Rhymer triumphantly waved aloft a small piece of frayed cloth, exclaiming:

  “This is the identical piece I found in my hand after my ‘scrap’ the other night with the vampire.”

  “And it matches the ulster.”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Well, I’m—”

  “No, you’re not yet,” Rhymer hastily interrupted, “but let’s get out of this, or there’s no saying what might happen. It’s a confoundedly rum spot,” and buttoning up his coat, he switched off the light, and, followed by the inspector, made his exit through the garden door.

  “IT IS QUITE evident,” said Rhymer in the course of a conversation with the detective later the same night, “that any one who investigates the phenomena of psychology, will, at some time or other, come across complicated influences devoid of explanation by common or garden theories. Now the case we have in hand seems to be one of these. Of course you’ve heard of the widespread and ancient belief in vampires—bodies which the earth has rejected, and, therefore, do not properly decay?”

  “Yes, but as I recently remarked, I only regarded them as fairy tales.”

  “Well, as I said before, I think you’ll alter your opinion, if you haven’t done so already, when you’ve heard all I have to tell you. To begin with, vampires are accredited with sucking the life-blood from their victims, and, as you have already told me, the police-surgeon attributed the death of the
Blankborough victims as primarily due to some blood-sucking process—”

  “Yes, by Jove! But you’d never get a judge and jury to accept such a theory, let alone convict on it.”

  “I’ve no intention of asking for a conviction on that count; but do let me get on with what I have to say. This manuscript contains sufficient evidence to convict both our prisoners as dangerous spies, without introducing these murders or any psychical proof at all. Von Verheim is a distinguished German scientist and psychologist, so I fished out when in London, whose decease was falsely reported many years ago, and who has been residing in this country all the time, unsuspected.”

  “Then he was naturalised under the name of Holtsner.”

  “Naturally, and being employed by the German Secret Service, was supported by them in his deception.”

  “That shows the war has long been contemplated by the Huns,” said Brown.

  “There’s no doubt about that.—But, confound it all, what a chap you are to interrupt.—Well, so much for von Verheim, and now we come to Otto Krupp. He was an old pupil of the former, and a qualified chemist. A shrewd fellow, too, who has obtained a complete mastery of the English language—”

  “That’s very evident,” said Brown, “for he took us both in, pretty neatly, at the King’s Arms the other evening, with his cockney speech and accent.”

  Rhymer, ignoring the interruption, continued:

  “There is a very brief but sufficiently clear record in von Verheim’s notebook, of a monstrous scheme for the importation over here of the corpses of German soldiers killed in battle: these bodies having previously been immersed in some special preparation—discovered by him—for definitely arresting decomposition—”

  “Now I see why you wanted the chief to have all cargoes examined, coming through neutral ports.”

  “Exactly, for these bodies were to be sent over, camouflaged as Egyptian mummies, and delivered at the private residences of various naturalised Germans. These wretched aliens are described by von Verheim as ‘mediumistic’ and capable of freeing, at will, the spirits from their bodies, and then, by ‘possessing’ these preserved corpses, convert them into vampires, ‘controlling’ them to commit any atrocities their Teutonic imaginations might devise.”

  “Then that’s what von Verheim was up to in the museum when we interrupted him.”

  “Undoubtedly, and by means of this demoniacal agency, they hoped to commit wholesale murders with little chance of discovery.”

  “What on earth did they hope to achieve by such a course?”

  “An expansion of the Boche mania for ‘frightfulness,’ I imagine; although the written evidence reveals that only fit men of military age were to be attacked by these vampires. This looks as though they were plotting to diminish the strength of our fighting units as well.”

  “Then the mutilating business was evidently a cunning attempt to conceal the vampire element?”

  “Exactly.”

  “The whole thing seems too horrible,” Brown exclaimed, aghast, “it’s barely credible.”

  “I repeat, nothing is incredible where the Boche is concerned; we’ve already had sufficient proof of that.”

  “I wonder why Krupp made that convicting admission about the missing knife at the King’s Arms the other night?”

  “Presumably with the hope that some one might have chanced to pick it up, and overhearing to whom it belonged, would promptly return it to him or his master.”

  “He little thought that it would lead to their ultimate detection.”

  “No; but they were on the alert. The figure you followed last night hadn’t a knife, so they evidently abandoned the mutilating ‘stunt’ as too risky. I’ve also ascertained that the fourth victim, murdered last night, was not mutilated.”

  “But do you believe this scheme could have been extensively worked?”

  “Most decidedly. The assassinations would have spread broadcast, and these vampires, whose strength—when possessed with temporary life—is prodigious, would have played the very deuce, if once the evil had got a firm hold. For though the Boche has yet to be born whom any average Britisher would fear to tackle, and knock out into the bargain, still, there is a limit to all human endurance: and even the bravest amongst us would look askance when faced with a supernatural menace like this.”

  “That I readily admit.”

  “Exactly. Well, vampires are invulnerable, and unless unearthed and literally dismembered or burnt, when in a condition of inactivity, they cannot be suppressed. So the only effective remedy for the evil is that which we are adopting, in discovering the whereabouts of the living fiends who are ‘possessing’ these vampire bodies, and forcibly removing them out of harm’s way.”

  “It’ll be a difficult job to find the others,” said Brown.

  “I think not, for von Verheim was the head and moving spirit in the entire scheme, and by now he and his accomplice will be safely under lock and key. The notebook, remember, contains a list of those aliens over here concerned in the conspiracy, as well as an entry of the four Blankborough victims—we saw von Verheim enter the last—which I shall send to your chief. In addition, documentary evidence here proves that von Verheim and Krupp have been involved in conveying important information to the enemy, which has been puzzling the authorities for some time past. This evidence, alone, is sufficient to convict them. However, unless I’m much mistaken in your chief, the remainder of the gang will soon be interned or even more efficiently disposed of.”

  “It’s a good job I sought your assistance when I did, sir,” Brown exclaimed with an expressive nod of his head, “for though we shan’t be able to satisfy the public as to who the perpetrators of these atrocities are, we have, undoubtedly, knocked on the head a very grave menace to the country. A great pity the B.P. won’t know this, since they’ll be sure to blame us police for apparently failing to bring home these crimes to the real culprits.”

  “Never mind,” said Rhymer, “console your official mind with the knowledge that you, your chief, and I have learned the truth, and we shall shortly get our own back in the satisfaction of knowing that von Verheim and his gang have got their deserts.”

  “After all, that’s some recompense,” Brown admitted—still hankering after public recognition.

  “Some?—A great deal, I call it, since a widespread catastrophe has narrowly been averted. And our job, after all, is to serve King and Country, and if we’ve done that to the best of our ability, ‘then,’ say I, ‘hang public opinion.’ ”

  BORN EDWARD HAMILTON WALDO (1918–1985) in Staten Island, New York, the author’s name was legally changed at the age of eleven when his mother remarried. He had a variety of jobs before becoming a full-time writer, including circus performer, sailor in the merchant marine, hotel manager in the West Indies, construction worker in Puerto Rico and elsewhere, advertising copywriter, and literary agent. He sold several nongenre stories before making his important first sale to Astounding Science Fiction, “The Ether Breather,” in 1939, becoming a regular contributor to it and its sister publication, Unknown, as well as other pulp magazines and, later, the digest-size science fiction magazines that replaced them.

  Sturgeon had serious literary talent and was admired by, and was an influence on, his peers far disproportionate to his success with readers. Among the writers who acknowledged his influence on their work are Harlan Ellison, Samuel R. Delany, Ray Bradbury, and Kurt Vonnegut, who based his character Kilgore Trout on Sturgeon. He wrote only about a half dozen novels, not counting hackwork novelizations of motion pictures, such as The King and Four Queens (1956) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), and the hoax I, Libertine, under the pseudonym Frederick R. Ewing, which had been promoted by a radio talk show host as a modern erotic classic and, as demand for nonexistent copies built up, Sturgeon was hired to write it; most important, he wrote More Than Human (1953) and Some of Your Blood (1961), a neglected masterpiece of vampire literature. He frequently wrote for such television series
as Star Trek (inventing the shibboleth “Live long and prosper”) and Land of the Lost.

  He gave his name to what is now known as “Sturgeon’s Law” when he first uttered the truism, “Ninety percent of science fiction is crud, but, then, ninety percent of everything is crud.”

  “It” was first published in the August 1940 issue of Unknown.

  IT WALKED IN the woods.

  It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and in darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living.

  It crawled out of the darkness and hot damp mold into the cool of a morning. It was huge. It was lumped and crusted with its own hateful substances, and pieces of it dropped off as it went its way, dropped off and lay writhing, and stilled, and sank putrescent into the forest loam.

  It had no mercy, no laughter, no beauty. It had strength and great intelligence. And—perhaps it could not be destroyed. It crawled out of its mound in the wood and lay pulsing in the sunlight for a long moment. Patches of it shone wetly in the golden glow, parts of it were nubbled and flaked. And whose dead bones had given it the form of a man?

  It scrabbled painfully with its half-formed hands, beating the ground and the bole of a tree. It rolled and lifted itself up on its crumbling elbows, and it tore up a great handful of herbs and shredded them against its chest, and it paused and gazed at the gray-green juices with intelligent calm. It wavered to its feet, and seized a young sapling and destroyed it, folding the slender trunk back on itself again and again, watching attentively the useless, fibered splinters. And it squealed, snatching up a fear-frozen field-creature, crushing it slowly, letting blood and pulpy flesh and fur ooze from between its fingers, run down and rot on the forearms.