Tales of Sin and Madness

by Brett McBean

  He spotted a petrol station below, empty save for a Ute parked beside a bowser, the hose still plugged into its petrol tank, and wondered what had taken place here. Had the zombies attacked suddenly, or had news of the genocide scared them all away?

  Simon glanced at the Stuart Highway and thought of all the thousands of people that the stretch of bitumen led to. What was happening out there? What was the world’s fate? Who was winning?

  He found, not surprisingly, the fate of humanity didn’t really matter to him. Here he was, at what seemed like the end of the world, and all that mattered to him was Tully. The entire journey, six months of scorching heat, dry winds and aching muscles, was all for her.

  It was time to make things right and give Tully the greatest gift he could give her.

  It was time to fulfill his promise.

  He trudged down the incline, his svelte body long since past the barrier of exhaustion, and made his way through the town, spying into shop windows and the occasional above-ground home to see if there were any signs of life, other than the irritating dust storm that assailed his face and hands.

  He wandered past forgotten mining equipment, past touristy opal shops that still displayed their ‘open’ signs, until he finally came upon one of the underground churches Tully had so often talked about. It was funny, her being so interested in such a place, considering she was an atheist, yet that’s where he took her.

  An annex provided shade around the front area, and a cross adorned the clay above. He gripped the doorknob, turned it, and was relieved when the door opened. He stepped inside.

  With the door closed, the smallish room was remarkably cool. A few lamps had been left on; they lit the room in an orange glow. He didn’t expect to find anyone inside, and sure enough, the place was empty. With its white clay walls, rows of wooden pews and figure of Christ nailed to the cross looming behind an unassuming pulpit, the church was simple in style, yet there was an air of beauty and solace that Simon hadn’t felt for a long time. “I have to admit,” he said. “It is quite amazing.”

  He set the sack down on the solid earthen floor, then his backpack, which he opened and grabbed a bottle of water from, and finished it all off. There was no use conserving it now. He still had another full bottle left, for when Tully woke from her slumber.

  When the bottle was empty, he went over to the sack and pulled the strings, opening the sack up and exposing his sleeping wife.

  “Hey there. Guess what. We’re here.”

  She didn’t answer him of course. She was still doped up on morphine, but he had purposely withheld her dosage for the last few days, so hopefully she would come out of her catalepsy soon.

  Simon bent down and lifted her into his arms. She was light – barely 30 kilograms – and she was deathly pale, but she still looked beautiful as she slept. He carried her over to one of the pews and laid her down. He brought over the last bottle of water and sitting down next to her began dabbing the warm liquid onto her lips. “Soon, it’ll all be over baby. Don’t you worry.”

  It was some time later when Tully began to wake. Simon was asleep, dreaming of people shuffling towards him without heads, arms extended, reaching out for him, when Tully’s soft groans brought him back to the world of the living.

  “Tully,” he said, his throat raw with grainy dust.

  She looked up at him with cloudy eyes. She had a hard time focusing.

  He gently lifted her head. Thin tufts of hair were starting to grow back, although it wasn’t a sign of improving health. He placed her head on his lap. “Hey babe. Welcome back.”

  She opened and closed her eyes, her vision trying to regain its full capability after so long dormant. “I…I…”

  Simon bent down and kissed her forehead. “Don’t try and talk. You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

  “Water,” she said, coughing weakly.

  The water bottle he had been using now lay spilled at his feet, but there was enough left, so he picked it up and gave some to Tully. “Not too much,” he said and took the bottle away.

  “I don’t…feel too good.”

  Simon nodded. “It’s just the sickness.” Why bother telling her the truth? Six months in a sack without solid food, that’s not something she needed to know. That was his personal journey. All that mattered was the moment. All Tully needed to know was where she was and that she was safe.

  “We’re in Coober Pedy,” he said, lightly stroking her head. “You’re finally here.”

  “I am?” she said, trying her hardest to smile. But it seemed she didn’t have enough energy left for that.

  “Sure. Look around.”

  He lifted her to a sitting position, keeping strong hold of her. Moistening his hand with the water, he rubbed her eyes. “Is that better?”

  He heard her expel air. “I don’t believe it,” she said breathlessly. “I am here.”

  “Yep. That’s right.”

  “I love it,” she said, expelling more hard-earned air.

  It was a world away from the cold, sterile environs of the hospital. A world away from the vile carnage of the zombie plague. It was Tully’s world. She had deserved it.

  Holding tight onto her emaciated frame, Simon could feel her short breaths. Knew her body wouldn’t be able to cope for much longer. Food wouldn’t do her any good, nor would any drug. It was the cancer, nothing more. It was eating her up, like zombies eating flesh, and she didn’t have much time left.

  “I’ll be right back,” he told her, making sure she was in a secure position before he left. He went over to the backpack and reached in, ignoring all the empty water bottles and canned goods, until his hand finally touched what lay at the bottom, hardly used save for a few zombie snakes and some particularly aggressive human zombies.

  He pulled the revolver out.

  Flipped open the chamber and gazed at the two cartridges sitting side by side. Felt, for the first time in a long while, true happiness, then flipped the chamber back and walked over to Tully.

  “I want you to know that I love you more than life itself,” he said, bending his knees so his eyes were level with Tully’s. “And I always will.”

  “I know. I love you too.” She was having a hard time keeping her eyes open.

  “I wanted to make your dreams come true,” he said. “I wanted to take you away from everything; from all the pain. I wanted to show you beauty.”

  “You have.”

  He raised the gun and aimed it at Tully’s brain. It was the best way, he had learned.

  He recalled what Tully said to him a few weeks before the rise of the New World – “I don’t want to die in the hospital. Not in such a cold, horrible place. Please, whatever you do, just promise me you’ll take me away and let me die somewhere beautiful, somewhere good. Promise me you’ll do that?”

  He had a promise to keep. It’s what Tully wanted.

  “I love you Tully,” he said as he wound his finger around the trigger.

  Tully managed to open her eyes one last time and gaze at the divine surroundings, at life as it should be – simple, honest and beautiful. She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  Then the church echoed with the sound of everlasting peace.

  NOTES:

  This was my contribution to the Delirium chapbook The Rising: Necrophobia.

  I received an email one day from Brian Keene asking if I’d be interested in writing a story based in his world of The Rising and City of the Dead. I immediately said yes – I would’ve been a right idiot if I had said no. I felt it was a great honour, and I was excited to be a part of the project. Until the reality of it set in, and then I started to panic. Writing a story set in another writer’s world? Based on one of the most popular and influential horror novels of the last decade? Ahhhh!!! I didn’t want to screw this up.

  My first decision was to base the story in Australia – not only did it make sense, since I do live in Australia, but I thought it’d be interesting to set an hitherto American-set story in another c
ountry; to see how my country would be coping with a zombie outbreak and the wrath of Ob and his minions.

  I decided to set the story in quite possibly the scariest place in Australia – the Australian outback. Vast, desolate, it’s a horror writer’s dream (and if you’ve seen Wolf Creek then you know what I’m talking about).

  Eventually the panic died down, and I wrote the story. And I’m proud to say it’s probably my personal favourite of all my short stories.

  AMANDA’S GIFT

  The house smelled of death and decay. At least that’s what Julia thought as she stood beside Claire in the kitchen.

  “Somebody should burn this place down,” Claire said. “It’s disgusting. Been empty for years and after what happened…Christ, I’m surprised nobody has already.”

  “Did you remember to bring the tank of gas and matches?”

  “Hardy fucking har.” Claire kicked a crumpled beer can. It skipped through the dense layer of dust, clanging to a stop at the graffiti coated fridge. “Damn college kids and their parties. They treat this place like it’s some cool hangout joint.”

  Julia turned and looked at her sister. Even through the hazy darkness she could still make out her scowl. “It is some cool hangout joint – well at least to them.”

  “They screw as well. Big tough jocks taking their prom dates here to make-out and impregnate them. Little princesses probably think it’s cool and romantic.”

  “Hardly.”

  Claire met Julia’s stare. “For a writer you’re not very perceptive. Look around. You can see the bum prints in the dust.”

  Julia had taken a look around – well, so far only the kitchen and living room. She had yet to explore the rest of the downstairs rooms or any of the upstairs. So far she had learned that apart from the kids who frequented this house – evident by the truckloads of empty beer cans and spray-painted walls – the house was also used by vagrants. She had landed on a mattress on her way inside. Positioned just below the living room window (which was the easiest way into the abandoned house, because the boards that had been put there to keep trespassers out had been pulled off and re-nailed so many times that a light tug was all that was needed to gain entrance) the mattress had been damp and smelled of piss and vomit, and a tattered sleeping bag lay just beyond the rancid excuse for a bed. She had just been glad nobody was sleeping on the mattress when she fell onto it.

  “Would you hurry up and do whatever it is you need to do,” Claire said, rubbing her arms.

  “Cold?”

  “Yeah, it’s like fucking Arctic in here.”

  It was in fact eighty-eight degrees outside, and inside was stuffy and airless. Julia could feel drips of perspiration running down her back and sliding into the crack of her ass, making it itch. She used her pencil to ease the discomfort. “I haven’t got the atmosphere of the place yet. I need more time. I need to get inside this house and its dusty floorboards and cracked walls and…”

  “Ghosts that inhabit the rooms.”

  “There are no ghosts here. You know I don’t write that haunted house crap.”

  “I didn’t mean the Casper type, Jules.”

  Julia turned away from the hard stare of her sister and looked down at the blank notepad. It was begging her to write something down. “You can wait outside if you want. I’ll be okay.”

  “Shit, I thought you’d never offer.”

  “Just keep watch, okay? That is why I brought you along. Lord knows it wasn’t for your sunny disposition.”

  “Thanks a bunch, Sis. Really.”

  “I won’t be long. I promise. I just need to get down a few notes and then we can go.”

  “The sooner the better. I don’t like this place, Jules. Really. It’s evil.”

  “Just because something evil happened here, doesn’t mean it’s haunted. It’s just a house.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Julia noticed the slight grin on Claire. “Yeah, okay, just go wait outside. I’ll be out soon.”

  Julia waited for Claire to leave before stepping forward towards the dark hallway.

  Now I can really concentrate. With no one to bother me I can really soak up the ambience of this place.

  She knew what had happened in this house a few years ago, had read the newspaper articles and felt suitably sickened and sad. It was horrible, there was no denying that, and she did feel guilty about coming here. But she needed somewhere with a strong past, a place empty of people but not of violence and character. And this place, because of its horrid past, had all that and more.

  As she walked down the corridor, the flashlight causing shadows to dance upon the walls, she began to get a tingly sensation in her belly – a mixture of nervous excitement and, yes, fear.

  There was an energy in this place, Claire had been right. Only it wasn’t evil. No, it was something else, something palpable.

  She stopped, shone the flashlight at her pad, and balancing the flashlight, pencil and notepad, began jotting down thoughts at a rapid pace – things such as the look of the house, the feel and smell of the house, what she was feeling, why she was feeling it, possible ideas for characters and story – anything and everything that popped into her head.

  If only I can capture all this in my book. If I can manage to make the reader feel like I do now, I’d have a bestseller for sure…

  She stopped writing. Her body momentarily froze.

  She thought she had heard a young girl crying.

  But it had been so fleeting, so faint, that it could’ve been her imagination.

  “Hello?” she said, her voice stronger than she felt inside. “Anyone here?”

  She waited for a response.

  Nothing.

  It was probably her mind playing games with her. But what if it wasn’t?

  This is the sort of shit you write. You need to experience these feelings, need to experience fear in all forms.

  She started down the hall, towards the room where she thought the crying had come from, her pad and pencil clasped firmly in her right hand, the flashlight slippery in her left. The door was open a fraction. She stopped, waited, listened. Her mouth felt dry and gritty, like she had downed a cup of sawdust.

  She wanted to kick the door open and shine the flashlight into the room, like some groovy detective in one of those pulpy crime stories or Hollywood movies, but instead she inched the door open and waited until it was all the way against the wall before she raised the flashlight and scanned the room, giving any maniac inside plenty of time to prepare and attack. Nobody did. The only movement in the room was a scurrying black spider. It moved away from the glare of the light and into a huge, ornate web, disappearing, destined to remain there until either she left or some unfortunate insect got stuck in its trap.

  Julia stepped into the room, swiping the flashlight over the roof, floor and corners, coming to the conclusion that it had once been a bedroom, most likely a child’s, but now it was gutted save for a few empty beer cans and chip packets.

  No girl.

  Julia waded through the junk on the floor, kicking up volumes of dust, keeping the light on the wall, fascinated by the wallpaper. It was peeling and where there wasn’t the usual spray-painted tags and obscenities, patches of filth that could’ve been shit or vomit or food or blood defiled what had once been pictures of fairies, elves and wands.

  A little girl’s room?

  Julia was suddenly overcome with feelings of loss and sadness.

  Was it that something so pretty and innocent had been so brazenly tainted? Or was it something else, something deeper that had to do with what happened in this house?

  Eyes blurry, Julia turned her back to the wall. She wiped her eyes and let out a quivering breath. “Get a grip, Jules.”

  It wasn’t like her to get so emotional. She was glad Claire wasn’t around to see her blubbering over stupid wallpaper.

  As she cleared the last of the tears from her eyes and stepped forward to leave the room, the light reflected off something o
n the floor. It wasn’t very bright, but the shimmering piqued Julia’s interest, so she wandered over to the other side of the room and crouched down to investigate. Underneath a film of brown dust was a photograph. She gripped one end and shook off the dust, coughing as particles entered her lungs.

  Brilliant Jules. Just brilliant.

  She wiped the rest of the dirt off on her sleeve then directed the flashlight at her discovery.

  The small photo was of a family: a man and woman, both young and attractive, a boy of around ten and a black spaniel sitting beside the boy. They were standing in front of a white weatherboard house with large leafy trees flanking them. A typically modern, upper-class suburban family. Julia turned the photo over, but there was nothing on the back to identify them. The photo was, however, severely creased down the middle, so both the dad and dog had white lines running the length of their bodies. It looked as though whoever owned the photo had kept it folded over for a long time.

  What’s a photo like this doing in here?

  A photo of a young teenager, dropped by one of the many horny trespassers she could understand, but a photo like this seemed out of place.

  A noise from behind made her jump. She whirled around and shone the light into Claire’s face. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” Claire said, shielding her eyes from the glare. “I got nervous waiting outside all by myself. Can you shine that flashlight away from me please?”

  Julia dropped the light to Claire’s stomach. “Well I’m all done here. We can go.”

  “Thank God. This house…”

  “I know it gives you the creeps. I admit, it’s starting to give me the willies too.”

  Claire looked past Julia and scanned the room. Her expression changed from disgust to astonishment in a matter of seconds. “You know, I think this is where they found her. I think this is the room where it happened.”

  “Where what happened?”

  Claire sighed and dropped her shoulders. “What else, the little girl. Amanda Waters.”