As I shook her, her eyes snapped open – windows onto madness.
I heard Tari again, calling me desperately, pleading.
I tried to call back through the noise, to hold onto the sofa. “Tari!” Around me, rising smoke, the stamping ankles of the huge machines, the stumbling human figures that were now surrounding me, coughing and crying, groping through the carnage. Did I know them – faces familiar, there for a second, then lost in the smoke?
There!
There was Rob, there was Tari, stumbling and hopeless. They were caught, held in line by some harsh-voiced, decorated officer. I tried to reach them, but the smoke swirled, blinding and choking me, and they were gone.
I shrieked, “Tareeeeeee!”
As if in response to her mother’s name, Lyn’s head swivelled like an automata, her eyes blazed with live horror. The doll in her arms was smiling at me; it had teeth like the cat’s.
Got you. Just like the others. You’ll fight for us now.
I tried to reach for it, dash it away, but the little girl started to stand up, her eyes alight with fire and machine. She held the doll close and her skin blazed higher, her hair stood out like a nimbus. The room spun harder.
Sleepwalking. Jesus.
Somehow, I hung on to the sofa like a woman drowning in madness. For Tari, for Rob, for little Lyn. The television was still that way, over there; the poker was still in my other hand.
Cold iron. Anchor.
This is beyond insane! I will not believe this!
Was I there, on the carpet? Slumped like Rob had been? Was the girl’s living nightmare even now sucking my mind from my body? My body into the dream?
If I touched her, would I too, vanish into this world of warfare and never be seen again?
With a banshee-like shriek, the last yowl of the damned, I threw the poker at the television, watched the image shatter into a thousand tumbling fragments.
Shards of light, spinning out into the darkness.
The machine-world around me shattered, the sounds exploded into a flare of white noise.
But the madness barely flickered. My sight cleared and the screen was undamaged; the climatic stamp of the machines unabated.
“No!”
The war still roared, the smoke still seethed, the room still spun, the little girl held her doll. They stood in the centre of a battlefield that defied my human mind in its power and scale.
Fading fast now, lost in a dream, I saw the poker rebound and tumble slowly, end over end, though the smoky air.
It seemed to fall forever.
My anchor. My sanity.
My world had shattered like thin glass. My friends had been swallowed alive by this nightmare horror, and it had taken me too.
The sofa was gone from my grasp, spinning away; the gentle sanity of Tari’s house swirled into the smoke and was gone.
The machines screamed round me.
Stumbling, blinking, I picked up a sidearm.
But when I raised it to my shoulder and turned back to Lyn – a last, desperate measure – even she had gone.
And there was only the war.
The little girl called Lyn woke on the sofa.
The house was quiet, the morning sun shone behind the living room curtains and Smoke was standing on his hind paws, buffeting her hand. He meowed again.
Lyn fussed his ears. He purred, but his meow was most determined. It was breakfast time.
“Mummy?”
Sitting up, Lyn saw that the television was smashed into pieces and she shrank back, pulling the duvet round her tightly.
“Mummy?” Louder this time.
The house was silent.
“Daddy? Aunty Katy?”
Scared now, Lyn huddled, holding her new doll tightly to her. Daddy had found it, it had come in a packet with a new DVD – he’d said something about a man who was selling them from the back of his car. Helen had one, next door; Dawn, a little further up the road. Zizi and Sean had them too, they’d been playing Robot Machines in the playground.
Lyn looked at the doll.
Its eyes were shining at her. It was warm, comforting. With it held to her, she was able to face the smashed television and the quiet and get up. Smoke padded after her, still meowing.
Somewhere in her head, Lyn could hear Aunty Katy, calling frantically between sobs. Please, she was saying, please. I know you can still hear me…
Shrugging, little Lyn, still in her nightie and with the doll in her arms, padded outside to knock on her closest neighbour’s door.
She waved absently at Helen, wrapped in her Dora dressing-gown and standing on the steps of old Mrs. May’s house. Helen had her doll with her, too.
When Jean King answered the door, Lyn said, “My Mummy and Daddy have gone and I’m very tired. Please, can I sleep here?”
And the doll was pleased with the question.
TALES FROM THE ZOMBIBLE
by
IAN WATSON
Meanwhile, in another universe just next door in the Manifold Many-Worlds Multiverse where all is, not merely possible, but mandatory…
Gather round, young Grubs, and get religion, and a bit of biology! You’re growing up as fast as blotchy puffballs. High time you learned how you came to be.
So hear this. A lady Zombie sucks a gentleman Zombie’s corrupting testicle into her like she’s slurping an oyster. Down goes that oyster testicle into her bellywomb unchewed. The eggworms that are already inside her burrow into that rotting testicle, then nature’s alchemy gets to work, and behold: the woman’s worms and the worms in the testicle, which are called sperms, blend into tiny little Grubs. Worms and sperms, that’s the trick. The hungriest Grub gobbles all its brother and sister grubs, putting on weight. Then Master Greedy slides down the venus tube coated in slime, hangs on at the very lip, and climbs up like a slug to her titty to suck on her ooze. The lady lets you suck; she doesn’t suck you. That’s motherhood amongst us Zombies. Your lady Zombie mother won’t have a craving for another testicle matured like year-old blue cheese, not for a while. More worms need to breed first of all in her bellywomb.
Remember that, any of you? No? New Grubs rarely do. After you’ve sucked for a month at her titty and swollen more, that’s when our Zombie awareness usually dawns. We’re hungry for grub. Next of all, you may recall you Grubs get fed dead bodies of beasts, birds, fish, whatever till you learn your words from Mummy’s mumblings. Remember that part? Many ways we’re a lot brighter than disgusting Chinese-style babies in the unzombie parts of the world. An evolutionary improvement, you might say. Those ‘liveborn’ things in the Chinese Empire just carry on till they finally die after 60 or 70 years or so. Whereas us, we’re dying all the time from the very start. We regenerate rottingly, we rot regeneratingly. Rot and regeneration all the time. Yes Grubs, we Rot `n` Roll! Rot `n` Roll, ever since the time of Jeshua, the first of us all. Bits fall off all the time, but new stuff buds. And rots; and the rot feeds more buds.
Once upon a time, little Grubs, things were a whole lot otherwise. Back in the time before Jeshua, the years BJ. Jeshua who, like I say, began us two thousand years ago. All of which is in the Zombible. Many zombscribes’ fingers fell off in the service of writing our Zombible, before we got printing presses established, so pay attention.
Well now, Jeshua was a leper. That means bits of Him were dying while He was alive. Flesh, fingers, toes. The live people didn’t much like lepers, so they cast lepers out of their towns. They made laws that lepers must keep away. Lepers must ring a bell, clang clong, to announce where they were.
You do know what live means? That’s right, just like sheep and horses. Hot blood, beating hearts, breathing. Just like our foes the fiendish Chinese and Nipponese – well mumbled, Grub!
There’s no need to mention the Other World Across The Vast Ocean whose Aztechs sent three sailing ships to our shores in 1490ish Anno Zombi, one ship escaping, and that’s the last us Zombies heard…
Well then, Roman conquerors invaded Judahla
nd, where Jeshua’s people the Judes lived, and the Romans made a stronger law: any leper who came near any live person would be crucified, nailed to a wooden cross as a warning. No Roman wanted to catch leprosy. After that most lepers stayed well away from any Romans.
But Jeshua felt He had a special mission to stir things up. He appeared in public and spake, saying, “Blessed are the Palsied, the Poxed, and the Putrid.” Twelve other lepers followed Him faithfully. Jeshua caused disturbances in towns. Soon came the day when Roman soldiers put on all their armour to protect themselves from leprosy, and arrested Him, and took Him to a hill and nailed Him high on a wooden cross as threatened. They used a lot of nails in case parts of His body broke off. Thonk thonk thonk.
After He stopped moving or breathing – yes indeed, live bodies have air going in and out of them all the time – well then the Romans ordered the Twelve to unnail Jeshua and carry Him away to put Him in a hole in the ground and cover Him deep with soil so He could rot completely.
Maybe a whole lot of Kozmic Rays hit Jeshua while he was exposed on that cross, or maybe the shock of being crucified caused his leprosy to mutate suddenly into zombieism. Or the pain caused a radical retreat from horrible sensations, which a leper could experience in parts of himself. Leprosy and zombieism are a bit similar, although pieces don’t rot and fall off lepers due to the leprosy itself. Yet a leper certainly loses an amount of bodily sensations, which we fortunately hardly even have `cept for a greed for raw flesh and guts – same way as our noses don’t smell nothing, although we still have noses or bits of noses because that’s the shape our regenerating remembers, right?
Or maybe there was something special in the soil where Jeshua was buried, that worked the transformation. Viruses or bacterias.
Or else His shock ‘retreat’, as I call it, may have been like a regression – yes, Grub, I said regression – to an earlier, more flexible cellular state – no, just listen to me, will you? – which living people and mice and rats and whatnot lose after a few days from coming into the world. A resetting of morphogenesis, plus rotting to provide material to rework.
Warra I mean? You think I’m able to speak too many words, eh Grub? Is that it? Maybe that’s on account of I have had nearly 2K years of this rotting `n` rolling-onward.
Two thousand rotting regenerating years of it, me being the Wandering Zombie, whom Jeshua bit infectiously with His blessing, and to whom I responded, in Aramaic, Fuck Off!
In fact I was ruder than that because his bite really hurt me. I could hurt a lot in those days – although soon I would hurt no more, or not so as you’d notice much.
Whereupon Jeshua said unto me, I myself shall dissolve, yet you shall remain, as shall a whole lot of other Zombies whom I do now create at first hand, as in your case, or whom I shall cause at second or third or twenty-fifth hand.
Jeshua said ‘at first hand’ because he’d used his nails to rip the skin of my cheek before biting the wound, and ‘at first mouth’ isn’t a phrase in common parlance. You may find it advisable to use your nails before you use your teeth if you ever come across a living Chinaman, for instance.
And when Jeshua spake Zombies– in Aramaic – that was the very first use of the name for our kind; so therefore I am a custodian of the Word for all of you growing and rotting Grubs; and of many other words besides.
Why will you dissolve, fucker, if the rest of us don’t? I had asked unto Him, though he had bitten me, not fucked me, but I felt sorely that this was still fucking with me.
Because, He replied unto me, I am a filter of the strength of the renewing rot inside of Me. Myself, I am too extreme. Therefore I give to each of you a diluted dosage of Me.
This has nothing, I hasten to add, to do with homeopathy.
Therefore, He continued, for he was proficient in making speeches before He was crucified, forty-four days from now I shall dissolve myself in the Dead Sea, where those who wish to be of my kind may bathe if they have no wish to be bitten. For verily bitten they will be otherwise.
And indeed, as our Zombible relates, forty-four days later I would witness the shores of the Dead Sea crowded with Zombies and some pre-Zombies, as Jeshua waded into the water. The great hunger of those hundreds of Zombies, which is our one powerful physical sensation which we must harness and control, is expressed metaphorically as The Miracle of the Flesh and Rotten Fishes, even though few fish, perhaps none, could tolerate the salinity of the Dead Sea.
Harness and control, I say! Our harnessed hunger is what sent us forth throughout the known world, resulting in a vast increase in our numbers, otherwise the earliest of our kind might simply have wandered aimlessly round in circles, simultaneously rotting and regenerating. So we must all be very thankful for our constant hunger.
Our hunger caused us to convert the Roman Empire. Accordingly in due course Zombie legions triumphed over and converted into zombiekind the savage Germanians and Caledonians and Hibernians and Scandians and Sarmatians and so on and so forth east and west and north. And when Arabians living in vast deserts of mostly empty sand suddenly sent armies of fanatics forth against our lands, waving scimitars and screaming about a god and a prophet, hordes of Zombies engulfed those Arabian armies. Maybe a million Zombies ceased in the sense that they were chopped too small to regenerate, but millions more remained to prevail and convert the surviving Arabians who shambled back to their Mecca for a big munch.
Jeshua was very perceptive to envisage our future and cause it to happen. So in later years it was claimed that although His eyeballs hung upon His cheeks, yet that He could see clearly. If so, this would indeed be a miracle, since eyes hanging loose on cheeks is physically impossible due to the short length of an optic cord even if the cord is softening due to rot. Of no other subsequent Zombie Saint is it true that eyeballs literally hung down upon cheeks! None of the great Zombie painters depicted Jeshua thus. Instead, they mostly used a sickly yellowish green pigment for his eyes which remained in his head. But anyway, I attest that mine own eyes were upon Him during the time when He shambled upon the earth. Upon Him, in the sense of beholding Him. And His eyes were indeed in His head.
Notwithstanding, after two centuries a Great Schism did arise between the Eyes-on-Cheeks Heresy and our Eyes-mouldering-greenly-in-their-Sockets orthodox truth. This arose in North Africa where the sunlight is very bright, and where consequently some Zombies might prefer if their own eyes were perpetually downcast. And in that epoch Zombie army staggered against Zombie army, pulling each other apart, until the Truce and Treaty of Tripoli and the agreement that African Zombies could paint eyes upon their own rotting cheeks if they really wished to do so. Paradoxically, from this sprang the artful skills that would eventually enable the works of Zombiangelo and Zombidavinci to be made, Zombi being a prefix of praise awarded only to the most notable of us. Such as Saints and MartyrSaints too, for instance. MartyrSaints were Zombies who were spreading zombification the most hungrily amongst live persons and whom live persons burned in a bonfire or a furnace or an oven. Which caused a certain smell to arise. This Odour of Sanctity is a genuine mystery to ourselves, since us Zombies lack any sense of smell. However, the live persons reported this smell vociferously every time they burned a Zombsaint, even though they wore pegs upon their noses or hung highly perfumed roses around their own necks.
Yes indeed, young Grubs, a zombody can be destroyed forever by being burned or minced or staked out in a sandstorm – as well as, given a sufficient number of centuries, due to entropic attrition or regenerative errors. So it is blessèd that sufficient replacement Grubs arrive, down the venus tube then slug-crawling up to the tit.
Did those heretic Zombies come up with their crazy idea of eyeballs-on-cheeks because the hot African sun had cooked their brains? Why, you’re a bright young Grub!
But no, that isn’t exactly the answer. It’s quite true that we rot more slowly in a cold climate, and it’s equally true that we never freeze solid so long as we’re above minus-fifty degrees. That’s because w
e have a natural antifreeze inside of us like some fishes do, which is just one of our endowments that Jeshua’s bite passed on. But Jeshua Himself lived in a climate that could be as hot as Africa during the summer, which is when he was crucified by the Romans, in the middle of August, a month named after an earlier Roman Emperor. The natural genius of Jeshua’s zombification was that the fluid in his body became very naturally chilly just as if it was night-time. So in fact African Zombies’ thinking-mush remains quite cool, as you’d know if you ever tasted any. As I myself did during the anti-eyeballs-on-cheeks crusade; yes indeed I was there – being the Wandering Zombie I’ve been around quite a bit. Chilliness is a characteristic of the Zombie antifreeze inside us – and that’s a stable chilliness. It’s homeostatic, which has nothing do with homeopathic.
So how do we radiate excess heat away, such as at midday in a desert? We do so by rotting parts of us away! That’s like the way the live-Chinese do their ‘sweating’, which means salty water coming out of their skins, but we go in for this is a much bigger way, by losing bits of superhydrated flesh itself. Grubs, it’s cool to rot! There’s a quantumbiomechanical explanation for this, which Zombeinstein finally thunked. Thunking is more powerful than normal Zombie thinking. You can tell that from the word itself. Think-think-think is like a little birdy picking up seeds, while thunk-thunk-thunk is more like an intellectual elephant. Bright Grub, you might be a Thunker one day! Up there with Zombiehawkins who rotted so much he needed a wheelchair to get around, pushed by faithful Zombie assistants who wrote down his thunks with palsied fingers.
Why, Grub you even want to know the quantumbiomechanical reason? Well, it’s all to do with…
Hey, what’s up?
Why, the steam railway’s delivering us a Chinese take-away! Our Zombie forces in the Far East have taken live-prisoners and they’ve sent some all this way as grub for us to convert! Grubs, pay full attention: this doesn’t happen often!
You, Bright Grub, how do you think us Zombies get to the Far East nowadays? Since shambling on foot would take a long time. I’ll give you a clue, Bright Grub. I’ve mentioned his name already.
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