The Mammoth Book of Zombies

by Stephen Jones

  We lay down in the long grass using a soft mound as a pillow and I held Kathy by her shoulders and kissed her slowly. She moved like a lizard beneath me and we hugged each other so fiercely a bright pain flared up at the front of my skull. We were both still virgins, but not for very much longer. I whispered my love to her. She responded, "I need you, I need you." We had so far had precious few opportunities to go beyond the limit of our meagre experience, taking advantage of evenings when her parents and sister went out, but never quite to the full.

  Kathy was wearing a white T shirt with Peugeot written across the chest and a pair of baggy shorts. As our kissing became more and more urgent I slipped my hand inside her T shirt and touched her breast, squeezing it and then slipping two fingers inside her bra. With the sun beating down on my back and in the knowledge that we were completely alone I was becoming almost unbearably excited. But still I was nervous and shy. I couldn't bring myself to be adventurous. After a couple of minutes Kathy sat up and peeled her T shirt over her head and undipped her bra, pulling it off and dropping it on the grass.

  I was shocked by so much bare flesh. We had previously made our limited explorations of each other's bodies in semi-darkness, due partly to shyness and partly to guilt. If we did it in the dark it wasn't so bad. It was that sort of logic.

  Shocked but turned on in a way I never had been before I reached out and touched her.

  It wasn't awkward and fumbled, nor was it over in seconds and all something of a disappointment. Rocked in the sun's honeyed embrace we pushed out slowly into the furthest reaches of sensation and soared to such heights of emotion as neither of us had imagined to exist. Afterwards we clung to each other and wept. Over on the runway the thrust of jet engines propelled hundreds of helpless passengers time after time into the skies. Gnats danced crazily above our heads as the slowly sinking sun dried the moisture on our bodies. We whispered promises to each other, believing in them with utter conviction. Tiny playful crucians splashed their tails and fins clear of the surface of the pit. If I'd had my fishing basket we would have used my penknife to carve some message into the bark of one of the trees, and we would have taken photographs of each other - one each only. But we sensed it would prove to be an unforgettable afternoon even without photographs. There was a solemnity about us as we got dressed and sat with our arms around each other to watch the sun go down. Then we walked once round the Crucian Pit and regretfully made our way through the bushes and undergrowth to climb back down the embankment and return to a world which would now be transformed.

  I was still standing beneath the trees studying the exact spot where we had lain ten years earlier when I heard the faintest of noises behind me and then felt hot breath on my neck. I turned to face Nicci standing right behind me. I was too surprised to speak.

  "This was where you made love," she said, laying a light hand to my shoulder and raising her eyebrow a fraction in that way that was not entirely hers.

  Head bent again over the soft mound of earth I could only nod silently amid a storm of questions. How did she know that? How had she found me? How had she approached so quietly?

  I don't know how many minutes passed but it seemed like there had been an ellipsis in time - almost as if I had blacked out - before I turned round again to find myself alone. "Nicci," I called, my voice tearing through the idyllic scene like a vandal destroying a painting. "Nicci. Where've you gone?" There wasn't a single sign that she'd been there at all, except for a slight chill on the back of my neck. I spun round looking in every direction but couldn't see her. She couldn't have vanished so quickly. Had I imagined her?

  Then like a punch in the chest it hit me and I ran, tearing my way through the gorse and trees at the airport end of the pit to get to the thick hedge which led to the paddock. Branches whipped this way and that as I forced my way through. A jet took off from the runway barely a hundred yards away with a great whoosh and its engines screaming. I shuddered with fear.

  Imagining her so clearly that I even felt her breath on my neck could only have been a premonition. She was in danger.

  I jumped over the low wire fence into the paddock and suddenly everything seemed to slow down. I felt completely exhausted. The long grass drained the energy from my legs and I wanted to lie down. The jet that had just taken off banked steeply so that it seemed to be nose diving towards the paddock. I just wanted to sleep but my legs kept moving. I struggled to reach the fence and somehow found the strength to climb it.

  I landed in a crouch and scampered in a crab-like fashion down the embankment, then ran across the main road which was empty, although I had hardly given it a glance. The little track was slippery with gravel underfoot and I was fortunate to stay upright as I sprinted breathlessly to the Citroen. From a distance it looked empty and I prayed it was an optical illusion. When I reached the car and saw that it was no trick I became hysterical - chanting out loud in the thick warm air of the lengthening evening - praying that Nicci had just gone for a walk. I flung open the driver's door and looked at the floor in front of the passenger's seat. Her bag was gone. I looked in the back. The cassettes were still strewn over the back seat where she had tossed them.

  My heart beating furiously I looked in the rear view mirror for any lingering shadows but all I saw was my own distraught face, mouth twisted in panic.

  Sometime later I found myself walking dejectedly back across the road and mounting the embankment. The Crucian Pit was now as still as the paddock had been earlier. No fish jumped and the clouds of gnats had dispersed. I became aware that I was crying. For some perverse reassurance I patted the inside pocket of my jacket. It was still there, the photograph I'd carried for ten years. Over on the runway a jet fired up its engines for maximum thrust then allowed them to die down, presumably in receipt of some instruction from the tower. I sat on the soft mound where Kathy and I had opened ourselves up to each other and contemplated the leathery surface of the pit. The sun had fallen beneath the horizon but the sky was still aglow. As I looked round in case Nicci was about to slip out from behind a tree like some sprite I slipped the photograph from my inside pocket and ran my fingers over its surface. I knew each crease that had appeared in the ten years since I had taken it. I knew every minute detail of the image but I always carried it nevertheless. It was like an act of faith, the patient work of an unquestioning servant. And now the waiting was almost over. It was time to put the past behind me time to lay all the ghosts to rest. I'd heard their cries in my head every day for ten years.

  I continued to fish the Crucian Pit after Kathy and I had christened it. The small carp were still lining up to take my bread punch but as the summer stretched into early September my visits were fruited with the fungus of melancholy. Kathy had bowed to pressure to go with her family to Massachusetts for a year off before she took her place at Southampton. There were tears every time we saw each other after that decision was made. We went for long walks on the Edge and sat on the huge, flat, overhanging rocks for hours dangling our feet into nothingness. I would notice movement out of the corner of my eye and know that Kathy's shoulders were shaking as she sobbed. My own face would crumple like an expiring balloon, but not before I had put my arm around her shoulders and drawn her to me. She would know but not see that I was crying too: We walked by the river south of the Edge, meandering in our conversation too: looking back over the summer and forward to our own personal ambitions. We would keep in touch, we both promised - indeed, Kathy said she would write every day - and, after all, a year was not a long time.

  But we both knew that back then it was a very long time.

  In an unguarded moment one evening as we sat watching the old men play bowls on the green behind my parents' house Kathy said, "You'll find someone else." I broke down and cried until long after the men had packed up their bowls in their little brown leather cases and shouted their good-byes to each other across the darkening grass. Of course, I didn't want to find anyone else, but the suggestion that I might raised the spectre I ha
d not dared to confront: the near certainty that some handsome freshman would sweep Kathy off her feet and she might never come back. I imagined her returning here grey-haired and pudding shaped to share her early memories with the good grey man that college kid had grown into…

  I was crying for more than a lost love though. I was going away too and would have some growing up to do. The summer we'd enjoyed together was the last one in this part of my life. I'd never recapture these scorching afternoons playing the eager, flighty carp as I had. The Crucian Pit was already a memory before the summer was over.

  I looked at the photograph in my hand and felt a brief chill invade my chest.

  I still don't really know what made me take it; some deep instinct, a need to seize the last guttering of the candle before an indifferent draught snuffed it out. Some compulsion made me delve into the basket for the camera.

  It was going to be my last visit to the Crucian Pit in any case. Two weeks into September the carp were neither as hungry nor as lively as they had been. I was trying to concentrate on the fishing but my mind was on other things. Planes took off throughout the afternoon and, whereas normally they hardly impinged on my consciousness, today the constant noise was giving me a headache. I was ready to pack up and go when it happened.

  I was watching a plane which had just taken off, at first because its engines sounded different and then because it banked steeply and lost altitude suddenly. The pilot seemed to try to bring the nose around so that he could land again. I heard a bang and saw flames licking out of one of the jet engines at its rear. I stood up though my legs had gone weak and I felt sick. In that moment I was more terrified than I had ever been and I was transfixed. Hundreds of people were about to die and I would be a witness to it and yet could do nothing. I don't know if I imagined it later or if I really could see faces at the porthole windows lining the fuselage. It was only the realization that the crashing plane was heading towards the Crucian Pit that enabled me to move. But before running for my life I thrust my hand into my basket and took out the little camera. I pointed it and took one picture. Then I ran.

  I was at the bottom of the embankment when it hit, so thankfully I didn't see the impact. What I did see was an enormous fireball which burst gloriously into flower above the trees and, of course, I felt it. I was thrown to the ground and hit my head, knocking myself out. When I came to there were people around me shouting things, brushing my hair out of my eyes, asking if I could see straight. Apparently I just kept screaming, "Was that the one? Was that the one she was on?" They didn't know what I was talking about. I found out later it was the one she was on. It was no coincidence I was at the Crucian Pit the day she was to fly to Massachusetts. Where else could I go? What else could I do? It was one of those things you don't really have any choice in. It was the obvious place to be. I wouldn't know which plane she would fly out on but I would be right there, as close to her as I could be until the last moment. The idea was it would be better, more appropriate and less painful than saying good-bye in the airport itself.

  The plane plummeted into the Crucian Pit and everyone on board, passengers and crew, died on impact, they said. The fire had spread to the cabin before the crash. Because of the fire and the nature of the crash and resulting explosion no actual bodies were recovered. For once the papers were sparing with the detail. The decision was made not to drain the pit and construct some elaborate memorial, but to leave it all pretty much as it was. The accident investigators never arrived at an explanation for the crash, though they did rule out the possibility of a bomb. Pictures of the disaster site appeared in the press but there were no pictures of the plane in the air.

  While I'd been sitting on the grassy mound fingering the photograph the sky had slowly got darker. There was still a glimmer however and I pored over the photograph as I had countless times before. I never showed the picture to another living soul; not only, was there my private grief but I felt it would be an invasion of some sort into the lives - the lives as they were lived in their very last moments - of all 326 passengers and crew. Time and time again I thought about taking it to a newspaper. As an image it seemed to me to hold great power but I could never work out whether it was potentially a power for good - for healing - or for bad. Would it simply cause fresh hurt to the bereaved? I played safe and kept it to myself. But the pressure told and I knew the day would come when I would have to let go of the past.

  The day came. I sat there by the pit as the darkness thickened in the trees like a web. The surface of the water, now black like a pool of engine oil, waited. I took a last look at the photograph -the cigar like fuselage, the punctuation marks of tiny windows, the terror smeared on faces glimpsed for the last time, the lick of flame - and skimmed it gently on to the water's surface. I watched it drift towards the centre of the pit until the water seeped over the image itself- as if tasting it - and swallowed the photograph.

  There. I had let go.

  In the same way that some mornings I just cannot get out of bed, I found I couldn't leave the waterside. Not so soon after unloading my secret cargo. I sat very still, resting my head in my hands, until I felt part of the landscape. It was by now quite dark. The runway lights were largely obscured by the trees and gorse bushes. I wasn't surprised when I heard the first splash. I supposed this had been at the back of my mind all along and was the real reason why it had taken me ten years to come back.

  They say when you take a photograph of someone you steal a small part of their soul.

  Now I was giving back what I'd taken.

  There was no great frenzy of activity, nothing to match the accident itself, just the sounds of water parting and subsiding, little splashes and trails of drips. I didn't look up but stared at the ground between my feet feeling as if my body and my skull had been completely scoured. I didn't know what I really felt deep down. There was the terror of responsibility but there was also -and I was ashamed and sickened by this - a dull thrill, a terrifying excitement.

  I felt something wet brush the back of my neck and rest on my shoulder. I moved my head a fraction and saw a small hand smeared with mud and dripping water on to the front of my jacket. All feeling left me and I rose to my feet. Without focusing on any of the figures in the trees and bushes around me I walked as if in a dream round the edge of the pit towards the thick hedge that led to the paddock. Several times the hand was removed from and replaced on my shoulder.

  Passage through the hedge was easy. I scaled the fence with the automatic ease of one who has drunk so much they will attempt -and achieve - any physical act. This was how I was feeling now: dissociated from the world and just passing through it. I clearly recognized the sounds of accompaniment behind me as I descended the embankment. I knew she was there but I couldn't bring myself to turn round and look at her. Crossing the main road I had the impression I was in a corridor which led back to the car. I was beyond fear. I heard water dripping off her body; her shoes made a damp, sucking noise with each small step.

  When I reached the car I just opened my door and got in. She did the same. Still I hadn't looked at her. I was sufficiently conscious of what was happening to keep my eyes averted. To that extent, then, I was terrified, but I managed to function. The car started and I backed out of the little track on to the main road. I changed into first gear and started to move forward. Looking up I saw the darkness swarming down the embankment and into the road and I felt a tug of panic. "What about them?" I heard myself say. "I've got to do something."

  Kathy spoke for the first time. In a voice dredged up through sediment, slurred and distorted by water and mud in her lungs, she said, "Just drive."

  I drove.

  11 - Brian Lumley - The Disapproval of Jeremy Cleave

  "My husband's eye," she said quite suddenly, peering over my shoulder in something of morbid fascination. "Watching us!" She was very calm about it, which ought to say quite a lot about her character. A very cool lady, Angela Cleave. But in view of the circumstances, a rather odd statement
; for the fact was that I was making love to her at the time, and somewhat more alarming, her husband had been dead for six and a half weeks!

  "What!?" I gasped, flopping over onto my back, my eyes following the direction of her pointing finger. She seemed to be aiming it at the dresser. But there was nothing to be seen, not anywhere in that huge, entirely extravagant bedroom. Or perhaps I anticipated too much, for while it's true that she had specified an "eye," for some reason I was looking for a complete person. This is perhaps readily understandable - the shock, and what all. But no such one was there. Thank God!

  Then there came a rolling sound, like a marble down a gentle slope, and again I looked where she was pointing. Atop the dresser, a shape wobbled into view from the back to the front, being brought up short by the fancy gilt beading around the dresser's top. And she was right, it was an eye - a glass eye - its deep green pupil staring at us somehow morosely.

  "Arthur," she said, in the same breathless, colourless voice, "this really makes me feel very peculiar." And truth to tell it made me feel that way, too. Certainly it ruined my night.

  But I got up, went to the dresser and brought the eye down. It was damp, or rather sticky, and several pieces of fluff had attached themselves to it. Also, I fancied it smelled rather, but in a bedroom perfumed as Angela Cleave's that was hard to say. And not something one would say, anyway.

  "My dear, it's an eye," I said, "only a glass eye!" And I took it to the vanity basin and rinsed it thoroughly in cold water. "Jeremy's, of course. The… vibrations must have started it rolling."

  She sat up in bed, covering herself modestly with the silk sheet (as if we weren't sufficiently acquainted) and brushed back a lock of damp, golden hair from her beautiful brow. And: "Arthur," she said, "Jeremy's eye was buried with him. He desired to be put to rest looking as perfectly natural as possible - not with a patch over that hideous hole in his face!"