Divine Fantasy

by Melanie Jackson

  I shook my head. Fly a plane? That wasn’t on my resumé. I had few skills that were of use in this situation. If he had any need for an expert in Microsoft Word or using a Cuisinart to make cookie dough, though, I was his girl.

  “Why? I mean, why wouldn’t we be able to use them?” I asked. “If they weren’t smashed.”

  “Because one of the other side effects of the Dark Man’s treatment is that I short out all electrical equipment I come in direct contact with—microwaves, cell phones, computers, CD players, all of it.” He paused. “And I’ve been…helping you. Keeping your heart steady. I think that I have probably messed up your electrical field a bit. Still, there was a chance.” He stood up and looked around.

  So, he had been keeping a very close watch on this heart of mine? I had almost suspected as much. I had never felt as strong as I did when near Ambrose.

  “Oh well.” I didn’t know what else to say. I believed him. When my heart went wonky it took drugs and a defibrillator to get it back online. Something had pulled me back from the brink of disaster several times that day, and it wasn’t my faulty mitral valve finally grabbing its own bootstraps and heaving itself back on course.

  Ambrose dragged the bodies into the courtyard. He pulled his fancy rifle out of one—it was covered in brown gore—doused the corpses with kerosene and then, by some means, lit them. There were three in the pile. I had somehow managed to miss his killing the third.

  At the time I told myself that he used some kind of flare to start the fire, but I know now that he was able to call at will the heat and lightning right out of the stormy air. He could also direct the storm’s currents into my heart. I don’t think any flares were needed with so much electricity in the air. He was simply willing the corpses alight with some kind of pyrokinesis.

  “I wish we could send the bodies back to wherever they came from,” I said. “To their graveyards or families.” I was on my feet again and trying vainly to scrape the drying cherry muck off of my shirt and jeans. I left my face alone; it was regaining mobility but still hurt. This was also when I noticed my sore knee and finger.

  “Me, too. But then we’d have to explain what we were doing with them. Frankly, though I’ve written fiction for more than a century, I think it is a tale that is beyond me to tell.” Ambrose pulled off another shirt, wadded it up and tossed it into the blaze. Zombie-fighting was hell on the wardrobe.

  I nodded, punch-drunk. Returning them would also cause their families pain when they were rein-terred. And would they feel compelled to change their headstones? I could just imagine:

  JOHN DOE, BELOVED FATHER

  BORN 1952 - DIED 2006 (AND 2009)

  Ambrose interrupted my thoughts. “That should do it. They burn well once the bones catch fire.”

  “So, mangroves next?” I looked out at the horizon as I asked this. The sun had disappeared again and a wind, audible because of the peppering sand it carried, assaulted the front of the building where the resort lobby was located. I was glad we were on the lee side and protected from the worst of it. I noticed something odd about the trees, then. The upper limbs were alive with frogs, lizards and small crabs hanging on for dear life as the violent wind whipped them about.

  “But no birds,” I murmured.

  Ambrose glanced upward. “They’ve fled. If these poor creatures had wings, they’d leave too.” Reminded of our danger, the look he gave me was frustrated and a long way from the admiring one I desired. I understood, though. He wanted to keep me safe, and there was nowhere safer than at his side. He was my literal life-support system. I had no choice but stay next to the lightning rod and risk becoming collateral damage.

  “Look, I won’t freak out on you,” I said. “It isn’t fear that makes me faint. It’s my damned heart overexerting itself—and you can deal with that.”

  “I realize this fact and am not at ease. A little fear from you would be reassuring. You keep rushing in where angels fear to tread.”

  “Hey, I didn’t rush in back there. I got jumped. And I killed it! Anyway, I have a little fear. I have a lot of fear. I just don’t allow myself to get hysterical, because it makes me pass out. I have had no choice but to learn self-control. I’d have died in childhood if I hadn’t.”

  He actually glared at me. “You are the damndest woman.” But then he sighed, and this took any heat out of the comment. “All right. Stay behind me. Keep checking our back trail and shoot anything that moves. Saint Germain can take over animals and birds, and we can’t assume that anything or anyone is a friend.”

  I thought about the giant croc and swallowed. I wasn’t sure that shooting it would do any good if it decided to come after us. I was barely able to kill a human zombie, and they were slow and weak compared to the crocodile.

  “I heard a story once that the peasants of Scotland believed a corpse would bleed in the presence of its killer,” I said randomly, wanting to think about something else but not having much success with a mental change of subject. “I wonder what these bodies would do around Saint Germain.”

  “They’d probably get up and walk again. That’s why we’re burning them,” replied Job’s comforter. “Let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

  Witch, n. (1) An ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.

  —Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

  The ineffable dunce has nothing to say and says it—says it with a liberal embellishment of bad delivery, embroidering it with reasonless vulgarities of attitude, gesture and attire.

  —Ambrose Bierce on Oscar Wilde

  I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

  —Oscar Wilde

  Chapter Nine

  We found the crocodile right off. She was lying on her favorite sandy beach by the wooden walkway, and something approximately man-size was thrashing around in her belly. Saint Germain’s sword was stuck in the sand about five feet away. I was unable to stop my hands, which dug out my camera and took a couple of photos, though at the time I rather doubted they would actually capture the sheer horror of what we were seeing. One of the photos caught Ambrose in profile. His face was calm but grim. It wasn’t the kind of thing you sent to your friends with a caption like WISH YOU WERE HERE!

  I want to make a pitch for Nikon cameras here. My little digital camera had been tumbled down a muddy mountain, sodden with rain and had canned cherries crushed on it, albeit through the filter of my clothing, had had sand thrown at it, and the darned thing was still working. I was terribly impressed. Later. Of course, at the moment we ran into the crocodile digesting her golem dinner I wasn’t feeling much of anything except a sort of disassociated horror that would require proof before I or anyone else would believe it.

  “I knew a Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff back in college. He played football and they had to wrap his name around the shoulders of his jersey.”

  I don’t know why I said this. Perhaps it was just that my brain had finally had enough of morbid things and was refusing to contemplate any more awfulness. My body was also sore and tired by the unaccustomed physical activity and multiple falls. I am not fond of exercise and, when I do indulge, I don’t do it ferociously. I was completely unprepared muscularly for what we had been forced to do.

  Ambrose pulled his gaze away from the crocodile by turning his head in my direction. I could see it took effort. And it was right about then that I noticed the lingering smell of rot in the air.

  The crocodile belched.

  “I wonder if she’ll throw him back up. I would,” Ambrose muttered. He didn’t comment about my athletic friend with the world’s longest name.

  “Do you ever lie?” I asked absently, staring into his dark and mostly unreadable eyes until they blinked and focused on me.

  “Constantly, and it’s damned
exhausting. I think it’s why I spend so much time alone. You?” He sounded like himself again. I was relieved. I didn’t like the idea that anything could shock Ambrose. I was counting on him remaining a superhero until we escaped from the island.

  “Rarely. I expect I would lie more often if I cared more. Or if I had any really good secrets,” I added. “You know, I’m getting hungry. I don’t know why—today has been a total gross-out. It couldn’t have been worse if I’d started the morning with a bowl of turd soup.”

  Ambrose gave a quiet laugh.

  “What?” I asked. “I’m serious. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The crocodile has eaten him and he’s not dead.”

  “I know. Never mind,” he replied. “I doubt you’d understand why this is funny to me.”

  “My sense of humor does seem to have been impaired.”

  “Understandably.” He sighed. “You and I have a real problem here.”

  I was encouraged by the you and I, even if I didn’t want to hear about any more difficulties.

  “We can bury our dead, bury our mistakes and even our memories. But there is no guarantee that they’ll remain discreetly hidden until the final trumpet if we do.” He looked about the mangrove and then back at the crocodile who belched louder this time. A clear handprint—the right one, I assumed, since I had shot the left one off—appeared briefly in the croc’s side, causing the scales to bulge. I thought he was going to say more on the subject, but instead he shook his head and added matter-of-factly: “We’ve got to find the rest of the ghouls and zombies and put them down. Then we’ll decide what to do about Saint Germain or his golem—if he’s still kicking. Burning is the only solution, but I’m damned if I know how to get him out of her.”

  I stared at the crocodile, unable to come up with any solution that didn’t involve killing the beast. She was big and scary, but I hadn’t forgotten that she saved my life.

  Ambrose nodded, as if understanding. He finished, “Afterward we’d better get out of Dodge—and all before nightfall. We’ll deal with the nightmares and your heart later.”

  I was sure he wasn’t speaking metaphorically, about my growing affection for him, but decided not to ask what he thought needed to be done about my coronary challenge. It was my second least favorite subject.

  “Okay—ready when you are.” I was getting to be such a liar, myself.

  The ghouls and zombies were not difficult to find. After all, their mission was to discover and eat us. Or eat me. Ambrose thought they were trying to capture him alive for genetic experiments, I remembered. Either way, they weren’t trying to be quiet and sneaky.

  “Are you really ready?” Ambrose asked, his skin changing tone as once again we felt the temperature drop and ozone build in the air. I could detect no breeze, but his hair shifted uneasily as if stirred by an invisible wind.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  I looked at the zombies staggering through the sand and felt like I’d dislocated my brain. I wasn’t panicked because Ambrose was near and keeping me calm, but my mind insisted that I had to be looking at something that was a trick, a distortion of reality. It couldn’t be real. The things came shambling down the beach, a lumbering funeral procession until they smelled us; then they lifted their heads and began an eerie sort of hissing and redoubled their pace.

  None of the zombies were exactly skeletons, but there wasn’t a whole lot of flesh and bone left after their prolonged stay in the water. Gender was difficult to determine, since much of the identifying sexual characteristics had been eaten away.

  I pulled up my Colt. It would do a lot of damage, especially at close range—as I had seen. The things shuffled on, getting closer, uncaring of our weapons or perhaps not comprehending what they were.

  I chose a man, a white stick figure with a mustache like Tom Selleck’s. He had on swimming trunks and what used to be a Hawaiian shirt. As I watched, an eel wriggled out what was left of his stomach and dropped onto the ground where it thrashed helplessly. Which made it hit home then that these things really were rotting corpses of once-living human beings, and I had to swallow hard against my rising gorge. These were zombies, the walking dead. And they were looking at us like we were the first stop at the free, all-you-can-eat buffet.

  I had some range with the handgun, but I waited, not wanting to waste any ammunition. When the first was close enough, I looked into the creature’s blank, watery eyes and felt relief. The soul had already departed from this bloated being. I was shooting flesh, but it wouldn’t be murder. I told myself this fiercely and repeatedly: You can’t murder what’s already dead. I’ve since wondered if someone will one day look into my eyes and think the same thing. Some people’s definitions of “us and them” can be pretty exclusive. Would I someday be seen as a monster?

  Ambrose pulled the trigger of his rifle. It was surprisingly quiet, and I realized that it was silenced. The zombie in a filthy white dress standing next to my rotting Magnum P.I. snapped back, a small bloodless hole appearing in her gray head. She managed another step, but Ambrose fired again, putting a second round into her heart. He was quick, clean and efficient. The creature crumpled to the sand without a sound. I thought about complimenting Ambrose on his marksmanship, but decided what he really wanted to hear was my Colt dealing with our approaching enemies.

  I swallowed again and then let fly. As I had hoped, my gutless Magnum zombie and the sexless creature behind him both fell over, blown back by what looked like a violent wind but was in fact lead bullets traveling at murderous speed. There was no blood on either in spite of the wounds, though an amazingly awful smell filled the air as the monsters were blown open.

  Aim, fire, retreat and reload. Repeat as necessary. It was actually over quickly—five minutes at most—and yet I felt like I spent an eternity there. I’d had some bad nightmares before that day, but I knew that new ones were coming. I’d never think of the beach in the same way again.

  There’s always a price, isn’t there?

  Two ghouls, drawn by the zombies’ baying and the sound of gunfire, rushed us from the overgrowth to the left, but Ambrose was swift in dealing with them. The gun couldn’t kill them, but even ghouls have trouble attacking when their heads are blown off.

  The wind, never entirely still, kicked back into action and blew the smell of gunfire away in one last angry gust. I was sorry to see it go, since what replaced it was nauseating.

  Silence fell. It was not complete, of course, since the ocean was always moving, but an unnatural quiet fell over the island that had previously been filled with birdsong and the croaks of happy amphibians and the drone of insects.

  I’d never been completely surrounded by death before. Few people in the modern, industrial world have. Historically there have been slaughters and plagues, but outside of that really bad tsunami in 2006, most of us modern-day urbanites face our corpses and mourn our deaths one at a time. But now I was surrounded by casualties, more fatalities than I had ever imagined could happen at one time and in one place. I was completely encircled by the dead. And they were indeed just corpses now. Whatever had been animating them was gone. Maybe this was because the croc had finally succeeded in digesting Saint Germain’s golem, or maybe because the real wizard had decided to retreat and take a moment to rest before beginning round two of his assault.

  On the bright side, Ambrose and I were alive and mostly unhurt, and we were about to handle these corpses so that they would never trouble anyone again. It would have been easier to shove them into the ocean and let the sea creatures do our work, but what might happen to animals that ate zombie or ghoul? Contaminating the water seemed a bad idea of Titanic—as in the doomed ship—proportions. Nor could we leave them rotting on the beach. Leaving aside the matter of land scavengers dining on them—again, the worst idea since Pandora said “Let’s open this little box”—eventually the staff would return to the island and, though loyal and well-trained and used to doing without police, this many bodies would require an explanation, probably of
an official nature since many of them had bullets in them.

  “They might also get up again if Saint Germain calls them,” Ambrose remarked, clearly following my train of thought. We seemed to be communicating on an inaudible wavelength, though he was smiling and in control while I was not. For a moment I wondered if he was high on something.

  He said quietly: “These aren’t like the zombies I saw in Mexico. These are far stronger. We just can’t take the chance they’ll follow us back to the main island when we go. We have to burn them all.”

  I nodded wearily and began dragging driftwood into the nearest fire pit.

  “The situation could be worse,” I remarked.

  “But only with an act of God.”

  “Or the other guy.” I paused before adding, “It hasn’t been your garden-variety vacation, that’s for sure. But it has certainly been memorable. Even without the pictures, and those are going to make it extra special.”

  “If being near me hasn’t ruined your digital camera,” Ambrose warned, hefting the first body into a fire that had sprung up from nowhere.

  The crabs began falling from the trees as soon as the zombies all were set afire. They landed awkwardly, crustaceans not being built for skydiving, then crawled for the shoreline as quickly as their damaged bodies would carry them. I took this as a good sign. If they thought it safe to get back in the water then maybe the invasion was done.

  Not wanting to stress myself unnecessarily and therefore be unable to haul bodies, I went back to my cottage to see what could be salvaged. As I’d noted before, my laptop had survived the onslaught, along with my passport, which I had for some reason put in my computer bag. Chalk another one up for modern technology and microfiber bags. My clothes were another matter. Feeling repulsed at the slimy and torn fabric, I gathered everything up by clean corners and took them outside to be burned with the rest. I wasn’t surprised to find Ambrose doing the same thing with his clothing. He was leaving no scent for bloodhounds to trace.