The Undead (Zombie Anthology)

by D. L. Snell

  I’m about to do the same to the next body when I realize that I know her. This is what’s left of Judith Landers, the lady who lived one door down. Her husband was a narrow-minded prick, but I always got on with Judith. Her face is bloated and discolored and she’s lost an eye, but I can still see that it’s her. She’s still wearing the ragged remains of her work uniform. She used to work part-time on the checkout at the hardware store down the road toward Shenstone. Poor bitch.

  As she reaches out for me, I instinctively raise the machete. But then I look into her face, and all I can see is what she used to be. She tries to grab hold of me, but one of her arms is broken. It flaps uselessly at her side. I push her away in the hope that she’ll just turn round and disappear in the other direction, but she doesn’t. She grabs at me again, and, again, I push her away. This time, her heavy legs give way. Her face smashes into the pavement, leaving a greasy, bloody stain. Undeterred, she drags herself up and comes at me for a third time. I know I don’t have a choice, and I also know that there are now eleven more corpses around me, closing in fast. Judith was a short woman. I flash the blade level with my shoulders and take off the top third of her head. She drops to her knees and then falls forward, spilling the heavily decomposed contents of her skull onto my overgrown lawn.

  I have carried the key to our house on a chain around my neck since the first day. With my hands numb and tingling, I pull it out from underneath my shirt and shove it quickly into the lock. I can hear dragging footsteps just a couple of meters behind me now. The lock is stiff, and I have to use all my strength to turn the key. Finally, it moves. The latch clicks and I push the door open. I fall into the house and slam the door shut just as the closest body crashes into the other side.

  I’m almost too afraid to speak.

  “Georgie?” I shout, and the sound of my voice echoes around the silent house. I haven’t dared to speak for weeks; the noise seems strange. It makes me feel uncomfortable and exposed. “Georgie?”

  Nothing. I take a couple of steps down the hallway. Where is she? I need to know what happened here so that I can—wait, what’s that? Just inside the dining room, I can see Rufus, our dog. He’s lying on his back, and it looks like he’s been dead for some time. Poor bugger, he probably starved to death. I take another step forward, but then stop and look away. Something has attacked the dog. There’s dried blood and pieces of him all over the place.

  “Georgie?” I call out for a third time. I’m about to shout again when I hear it. Something’s moving in the kitchen, and I pray that it’s her.

  I look up and see a shadow shifting at the far end of the hallway. It has to be Georgie. She’s shuffling towards me, and I know that I’ll be able to see her any second. I want to run to meet her, but I can’t. My feet are frozen to the spot. The shadow lurches forward again, and she finally comes into view. The end of the hallway is dark, and for a moment I can only see her silhouette. There’s no question that it’s her—I recognize her height and the overall proportions of her body. She slowly turns towards me, pivoting around on her clumsy, cold feet, and begins to trip down the hall in my direction.

  Every step she takes brings her closer to the light, which comes from the small window next to the front door and reveals her in more detail. I can see now that she’s naked, and I find myself wondering what happened to make her lose her clothes. Another step and I can see that her once strong and beautiful hair is now lank and sparse. Another step and I can see that her usually flawless, perfect skin has been eaten away by decay. Another step forward and I can clearly see what’s left of her face. Those sparkling eyes that I gazed into a thousand times are now cold and dry and look at me without the slightest hint or flicker of recognition or emotion. I clear my throat and try to speak.

  “Georgie, are you . . .?” I stop when she launches herself at me.

  Rather than recoil and fight, I try to catch her and pull her closer to me. It feels good to hold her again. She’s weak and can offer no resistance when I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight. I press my face next to hers and try my best to ignore the repugnant smell. I try not to overreact when she moves, and I carefully tighten my grip. I can feel her greasy, rotting flesh coming away from her bones and dripping through my fingers. I don’t want to let her go. This was how I wanted it to be. It’s better this way. I had known all along that she would be dead. If she’d survived, she would probably have left the house, and I would never have been able to find her. I would never have stopped looking for her. We were meant to be together, Georgie and me. That’s what I kept telling her, even when she stopped wanting to listen.

  * * *

  I’ve been back at home for a couple hours now. Apart from the dust and mildew and mould, the place looks pretty much the same. She didn’t change much after I left. We’re in the living room together now. I haven’t been in here for almost a year. Since we split up, she didn’t like me coming around. She never let me get any further than the hall, even when I came to collect my things. Said she’d call the police if she had to, but I always knew she wouldn’t.

  I’ve dragged the coffee table across the door now so that Georgie can’t get out, and I’ve nailed a few planks across it, too, just to be sure. She’s stopped attacking me now, and it’s almost as if she’s got used to having me around again. I tried to put a bathrobe around her to keep her warm, but she wouldn’t keep still long enough. Even now, she’s still moving, walking around the edge of the room, tripping over and crashing into things. Silly girl! And with our neighbors watching too! Seems like most of the corpses from around the estate have dragged themselves over here to see what’s going on. I’ve counted more than twenty dead faces pressed against the window.

  It’s a shame that we couldn’t have worked things out before she died. I know that I spent too much time at work, but I did it all for her. For us. She said that we’d grown apart and that I didn’t excite her anymore. She said I was boring and dull. She said she wanted more adventure and spontaneity. Said that was what Matthew gave her. I tried to make her see that he was too young and that he was just stringing her along, but she didn’t listen. So where is Matthew now? Where is he, with his fucking designer clothes, his city center apartment and his fucking flash car? I know exactly where he is—he’s out there on the streets, rotting with the rest of the fucking masses.

  And where am I? I’m home. I’m sitting in my armchair, drinking whiskey in my living room. I’m at home with my wife, and this is where I’m going to stay. I’m going to die here, and when I’ve gone, Georgie and I will rot together. We’ll be here together until the very end.

  I know it’s what she would have wanted.

  Reapers at the Door

  Eric S. Brown

  Scott was torn from sleep by the blaring of alarm klaxons. His worst nightmare had suddenly become very real. The alarm could only mean one thing: the war had reached the Talon VIII station at last. He rolled out of bed, dragging on his uniform as he clumsily tried to open a com-link to the bridge. The attempt failed, and he guessed that no one up there was either able or had time to answer his hail.

  Visions of Reaper war-pods filled his head. At this moment war-pods would be attaching themselves all over the station’s hull and spilling their cargo of moving, violent, rotting flesh into the corridors. The Reapers didn’t fight space battles. Their ships dropped out of nether-space already breaking up, spewing thousands upon thousands of boarding pods at the enemy target. Nor did the Reapers personally engage in combat. Only one out of a hundred pods contained a Reaper shock-troop. The rest were crammed full of dead humans, which the Reapers had acquired at the start of the war by using biological weapons without warning against the outer colonies. They possessed billions of human corpses, which, thanks to bio-manipulation, had become the perfect foot soldiers. The reanimated dead attacked anything that was alive and that wasn’t a member of the Reaper race.

  Scott knew the Talon’s defensive systems would have thinned out the number of pods befor
e they reached the station, but Talon VIII was from the Old Earth era and was mostly automated. Counting himself, the crew totaled twenty-three. From the second he had heard the alarm, Scott knew they were all as good as dead. The Reapers never sent less than five thousand boarders regardless of the target and its strength. They firmly believed in overkill rather than taking chances. Besides, the dead were expendable and easy to reanimate or replace.

  Scott darted from his quarter and headed straight for the armory. Call it a human thing to do, but he didn’t intend to sit around and wait for death to come to him. As he rounded the corner of the corridor, which led to the lifts on the lower level, a section of the corridor wall melted away in front of him, opening up into a Reaper war-pod. Stinking like spoiled meat, men and women poured out into his path. Their rotting flesh was a pale grayish color, but their eyes glowed orange and locked onto him with a feral rage.

  He cursed loudly, spinning around to head back the way he had come with the shambling dead giving chase. Scott nearly ran head-on into the Talon’s security chief, Heather. Her battle armor was tattered and blood leaked openly from claw and bite marks covering her body. “Get out of here!” she yelled at him. “Everybody else is either dead or cut off.” She shoved a pulse rifle into his hands as he stared at her, amazed that she could even be standing, let alone barking orders. She moved past him, firing her own rifle at the approaching horde, which howled for the taste of his flesh. Scott snapped out of his shock as she screamed back at him. “Blow the damn core!” Then she vanished from sight as the wave of the dead washed over her.

  Scott started running again, gripping the weapon in white knuckled hands, his boots pounding on the metal floor of the passage. A smile began to creep over his face. Of course, he thought, the core. He and his crewmates may be destined to die out here in the void aboard the Talon VIII, but at least he could take some Reapers and drones with him.

  Scott skidded to a halt outside the blast doors to the main core. His fingers danced over the keypad, entering the access code. The huge doors dilated, and Scott found himself face to face with a real, living, breathing Reaper. The thing stood nearly nine feet tall and was all yellow scales and muscles. It hissed, spraying venom over his face and eyes. Scott cried out as he felt his eyes melting inside their sockets. His skin smoked where droplets of the saliva had made contact. A huge two-fingered hand and thumb closed around his neck, lifting him from the floor with the sound of cracking bone. The Reaper dropped Scott to the floor and stepped back as the dead approached. The Reaper flicked its forked tongue through the air. Things had gone very well, and its pets deserved a treat. It made no move to stop the dead as they converged on Scott and tore and ripped at his flesh with hungry teeth.

  The Diabolical Plan

  Derek Gunn

  Lieutenant Peter Fowler turned up the collar of his heavy watch coat as the cold wind whipped spray against his face. Strolling to the starboard side of the HMS Swift, he looked through his telescope to steal a final glance at their quarry before darkness descended and left them alone in its ebony embrace. The French frigate was still there, cutting through the swells like a knife and keeping the distance constant between them. Fowler looked up at the top gallants and sighed. The sails glistened as the soaked material caught the fading sunlight, but their beauty didn’t help them on their desperate chase.

  “She’s still there, Captain,” he shouted over the clamour on deck. One of His Majesty’s frigates was always a hive of activity as crew raised and shortened sails in answer to the changing weather, as they set rigging or practised gun drill—anything to keep their two hundred complement busy on the long days at sea.

  Today, however, there was more activity than normal. The Captain had ordered every piece of surplus baggage to be thrown over the side once night had fallen. Men lined the deck with anything not bolted to the floor—chairs, tables, even the Captain’s desk—ready to cast the items overboard before running to repeat the process. Fowler raised an eyebrow when he saw a few men hacking the surgeon’s blood-stained table into pieces so they could get it through the door and out onto the deck.

  “Thank you, Mister Fowler,” the Captain replied in his gruff, deep voice. “Carry on, Mister Winfield.”

  The second lieutenant delayed an instant, and the Captain glared at him. The man paled and then ran to the taffrail, shouting orders through his speaking trumpet.

  “He is young yet,” Lieutenant Fowler came to stand beside the Captain and nodded at the activity below. “It is an unusual order,” he ventured, watching his superior for any indication of his stormy temper.

  The Captain seemed to stiffen briefly. Then he relaxed and grinned.

  “It is that, John, but if we don’t catch him before he gets around the Cape, we will lose him. This is the only place we can be sure of his position come dawn.”

  Fowler nodded and saw the strain on his young Captain’s face. Once again, he was thankful that he did not yet have his own command.

  “Mister Flynn,” the second lieutenant’s shout found the midshipman ready and the fourteen year old turned to his crew and barked orders in a high-pitched, yet authoritative, tone. The men immediately pulled at one of the twelve-pound guns, manhandling the cannon backwards and then pushing the weapon along the deck to the entry port before tipping the gun over the edge.

  As the gun displaced water and sprayed his men, Captain Thomas Butler wondered yet again if this was the best plan.

  He had agonised over the decision for days now, but he was in command and could not ask anyone else to take the burden. Out here, he was closest to God, and all responsibility fell on him. He was gambling, not just his own life or his crew’s, but possibly every soul in England.

  He heard the splash of a second gun and wondered briefly what the Admiralty were going to say about dumping their expensive weaponry over the side. “Dead Men walking indeed,” he imagined Sir John Powel’s deep baritone as he ridiculed the young captain’s report. His very success, if he were indeed successful, would ensure that there would not be any proof of the abomination in the hold of the ship in front of him. If he failed, then it would not matter.

  He could very well lose his Captaincy, but he had witnessed the impossible. He had seen the French prisoner die, and then get back up. It hadn’t taken long, merely an hour or so after death. The prisoner had been confined to sick bay and was fading fast. He had been left to the side while the surgeon had attended the other wounded from the skirmish. It already seemed a lifetime ago. His wound had been fatal and the doctor had pronounced him dead some time later.

  Three crewmen were called to throw the body overboard, and it was while they struggled up onto the deck that Perkins had dropped the body with a scream of pain. His two shipmates laughed at him and other men teased him for his clumsiness. It wasn’t until they saw the blood pumping from Perkins’ arm that they stopped and went to help him.

  The shouts for the doctor had attracted Butler’s own attention, and with incredulity he had watched the dead man sit up and climb, somewhat drunkenly, to his feet. The men closest to the prisoner yelped in surprise and crossed themselves as they retreated across the deck. The doctor arrived on deck and went white as he saw the prisoner stagger towards him. Butler had seen the doctor stumble over a coil of rigging and fall heavily. The prisoner drew nearer, and Butler had shouted for the marines.

  The doctor had continued to scramble away from the prisoner on his hands and knees, too frightened to regain his footing. The prisoner had remained silent the whole time, the pitch of the frigate sending him to and fro as if he had lost his sea legs.

  The marines had arrived, three of them armed with muskets. A volley of shots sent the prisoner crashing back against the main mast. The Marine Captain had turned to help the doctor to his feet when a cry of warning snapped every head on the ship back to the main deck.

  The crumpled figure of the prisoner had begun to move again. First his head lifted from his chin. Then his arms moved to the deck. The
whole ship had looked on in shock as the Frenchman regained his feet and approached Perkins, who still lay whimpering on the deck with his arm held to his chest.

  The Marine Captain bellowed an order and his men reloaded and took aim. Two rounds drove into the Frenchman’s chest and he staggered, but didn’t fall. The third man took an extra second to aim and the shot took the Frenchman between the eyes. The man crumpled and fell to the deck, unmoving. At least a half-hour passed before anyone approached the still form. The men wore thick coats when they lifted the body and threw it overboard.

  The shock and fear had gripped the ship for the rest of the day, but what they had learned later provided more than enough resolve to catch and destroy the enemy ahead of them.

  Perkins’ death (the bite had festered and the fever had killed him yesterday) only fueled the crew’s hatred and disgust for the frigate ahead. Nobody had wanted to wait and see if Perkins, too, would get up and attack his former shipmates, so they had beheaded his body and buried him with a quick service.

  Butler watched the activity on deck.

  “Do you think it will be enough, Captain?” Fowler came up beside his Captain and spoke in a low whisper.

  “I pray it is, Mister Fowler. I pray it is.”

  They had chased the French frigate for four days and had slightly gained on her. They had spent a day and a half becalmed, with the frigate frustratingly close. The sun had baked down on the men, turning the wooden deck white in its merciless glare. Water had been rationed savagely, but the men had worked, driven relentlessly by their officers. Boredom was dangerous in a ship, especially when many of the crew had come from prisons, or were running from debt or the hangman; it was always hard to fill a ship‘s compliment, but especially so in times of peace when the press could not be used to conscript the unwary or the drunk.