Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  She had rehearsed the speech several times during the night, knowing the first thing he would do is threaten to kill or maim her. She thought she had delivered it well.

  Big Boss eyed her thoughtfully, lips pursed. “What do you want to know?” he finally asked.

  “I just want to know what happened to my family. Tell me what happened to them and I’ll talk.”

  “I told you what happened.”

  “Yes, you told me what happened. I want to know how it happened. Did they suffer?”

  For the first time he looked uncomfortable in her presence, maybe even a little ashamed, like a child who didn’t want to fess up to a broken window. “Answer one question first,” he said sullenly.

  “What is it?” Soma asked, careful to keep the elation she felt from her expression. She had bested him, but he would renege if she acted as if she knew she had bested him. He would rather kill her – and his questions go unanswered – than admit, even to himself, that she had scored a victory over him, trivial as it was. It was just the type of man he was.

  “Did you see anything when you died?” he asked. He lowered his voice when he said it, as if he were embarrassed. “A bright light, an afterlife… anything?” She saw a strange combination of hope and fear in his eyes when he said it.

  “No,” Soma said, shaking her head. “I was sick for several days after I got bit. Fever. Hallucinations. Muscular spasms and pain. Typical symptoms of the Phage. Then everything began to go dim, like the world was slipping further and further away from me. It was like going to sleep. The pain went away and I just drifted off. And then I woke up.”

  “Like this?”

  “No, I was no different than any other zombie at first. There was no me when I came back, just hunger, instinct, pain. I was an animal, no thoughts, no sense of self. Only…”

  “Yes?”

  “I sensed there was something missing,” Soma said. Her brow furrowed as she tried to recall exactly how she’d felt when she first reanimated. It was difficult. In many ways, her zombie persona was like a completely separate being, a clone perhaps, but an incomplete one. “I couldn’t think, but I sensed a part of me was missing,” she finally said. “I sensed the absence of my higher reasoning. It was infuriating. It’s like having a word on the tip of your tongue. You know you should know it, but there’s a blank spot there in your brain. A malfunctioning circuit. Your mind just can’t pull it up. Only it was more than just a word. It was me. My memories. My personality.”

  “How long was it before you… came back to yourself?”

  “Years. I wandered alone for a while, then fell in with a herd, and then one night I… well, I remembered my husband. It was like a dream. I remembered something he had said to me, and I saw his face, and then I remembered who I was. It all came rushing back to me.”

  “And you came here to find him?”

  She nodded. “I met Perry along the way. Perry is the guy your people shot in the woods. He saved me from a feral dog, took me in, brought me up to speed on what had happened to the world while I was gone. We became friends. He offered to help me find my family. I had wandered all the way to Illinois by that time. We got some supplies together, and then we left. He was pretty excited about it. He wanted to have an adventure.”

  “And here you are,” Big Boss said.

  “Now tell me what happened to my family,” Soma said. “I need to know what happened to them before I die again.”

  “You won’t like it,” Big Boss warned her.

  “There’s not much to like in this world anymore,” Soma said.

  Perhaps it was her passivity, or her fatalistic tone, but Big Boss responded to it as the sadist responds to vulnerability, or the bully to fear. He set the plate of raw meat on a nearby shelf and leaned against the doorway, crossing his arms.

  “We were just passing through,” he said after a moment of thought. “Our gang, the Highwaymen, we were travelling south for the winter -- bound for warmer climes, as the saying goes -- before winter came and the weather turned ugly on us. We came across a boy walking down the side of the road about five miles north of here. Good enough kid, turns out. I think you met him. His name is Randal, but everybody calls him Chigger because he’s small and he can get under your skin pretty quick. He was eating an apple when we pulled up, told us he was headed to Fort Wayne to look for his girlfriend. He looked a little young to have a girlfriend in Fort Wayne, or anywhere for that matter, but it was the apple I was more concerned about. I asked him where he got that apple and he said he’d stayed the night with a farmer and his family just down the road. Said they took him in, fed him, gave him a warm bed to sleep in. Chigger tends to run at the mouth. He don’t mean any harm by it, but he couldn’t keep a secret if his life depended on it. He told us about the old man’s farm, where it was, how generous the folk living there had been to him. Said the old man had fruit trees and a big garden, greenhouses and livestock. We were dog-tired and half-starved, road weary from wandering, so we decided to take the old guy’s farm and stay there through the winter.”

  Takers, Soma thought with disgust. The world was full of them. She might once have tried to come up with some cheesy platitude about givers and takers and how you had to have both for the world to go ‘round, but it would have been just that: a cheesy platitude. Truth was, the world would be a lot better off if God just scooped all the takers off the face of the Earth and tossed them into the nearest black hole. The only reason there was war and deprivation and murder and rape was because some people believed they could take whatever they wanted merely for the wanting of it.

  “And then what?” Soma prompted him. She didn’t want to know – didn’t know if she could bear to hear all the gruesome details – yet she had to have it all. She needed to know what had happened to them. She didn’t think she would ever be able to move on with her life, or die peacefully, if she did not.

  “Oh, we tried to be nice about it at first. We threw Chigger in the trailer with the Puss – uh, ladies. Rolled on down the road to the farm. Drove up and tried to come to an arrangement with the old fellow. Him and his brown buddy came out and we all sat down and had a palaver. He told us we could stay the night. Said they’d be more than happy to feed us, let us camp out in the yard, but we’d have to be on our merry way the next morning. ‘Just ain’t enough food for everybody,’ he said. ‘Wish there was.’ I said I understood, and I’d take him up on his offer, and we’d bid him goodbye when the cock crowed in the morning, and then we all had a nice dinner. Us, the old man, his wife and his son-in-law.”

  “Was there anyone else there?” Soma asked. “Any children?”

  “Kids?” Big Boss asked. When Soma nodded, he shrugged and said, “No, we didn’t see any children. And none of them mentioned having any kids, dead or otherwise. I don’t know what happened to your young one, but there were no kids on the farm when we took over. Must have died before we got here. It happens. The Phage was rough on the little ones.”

  Died, or they hid her, Soma thought.

  Her parents would have hidden Aishani at the first sign of danger. When she was still alive, Soma and her mother had hidden in the fallout shelter with Aishani on several occasions. Deadheads were predictable. They were really only dangerous in herds. It was the survivors you had to worry about. They were always desperate – desperate for food, desperate for shelter, desperate for women -- and desperation made men unpredictable. And they were always armed to the teeth.

  “So what happened next?” Soma asked.

  “You answer a few more questions,” Big Boss said. “Then I’ll finish my story.” He grinned. “Quid pro quo.”

  “All right.”

  “You called yourself a Resurrect,” Big Boss said, cocking his head. “By that you mean a smart zombie, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Is the name something you made up or something you heard?”

  “The second.”

  “How many Resurrects are there?”

  “I
don’t know.” He waited, so she elaborated. “I don’t know how many deadheads have regained their memories. There isn’t a Bureau of Zombie Intelligence out there, but it seems to be happening at a quickening pace. I’ve personally seen several hundred of them myself. They’re coming together in groups, settling into towns. Behaviorally, we’re basically the same as we were before, apart from the hunger, and people have always tended to congregate in communities.”

  “They still eat the living?”

  “Some of them do. I never did. Not after I awakened. And neither did Perry.”

  “You were a couple of the good ones, hmm?” He didn’t seem to believe it.

  Soma tossed her head defiantly. “Yes, we were. Perry raised rabbits. That’s what we ate.”

  “And they’re actively hunting living human beings?” Big Boss asked. “These zombie communities?”

  “Tribes.”

  “Tribes?”

  “That’s what they call their groups.”

  “Tribes, then. So do these tribes still hunt the living?”

  “Some of them.”

  “What’s the nearest tribe of these Resurrects? And how much of a danger do you think they are to my group?”

  “There’s a community about five hours south of here,” Soma said. “Three or four hundred, heavily armed. I’m not sure they’re a danger to you unless you threaten them in some way. I don’t think they actively hunt the living. We only stayed there a couple days before we continued on our way.”

  “You said they were heavily armed. So it’s more of a military organization than a town?”

  “A little of both, I’d say.

  “We’d heard rumors about smart zombies,” Big Boss said. “Enough to give the rumors some credence. I never suspected there were so many of you though. Several hundred, hmm? It might be time we ran for Home.”

  Soma nodded. “It might be.”

  So they knew about Home. Did they also know how relentlessly the region surrounding the city was patrolled by the Zombie Nations?

  Let them find that out for themselves, Soma thought. The hard way.

  It was not a kind thought.

  “So what happens when one of you smart zombies bites someone?” Big Boss asked. “Does that person come back as a dumb zombie or a smart zombie?”

  “I don’t know,” Soma said. “I haven’t bitten anyone since I awakened.”

  “Aside from Ronald,” Big Boss corrected her.

  “Yes,” Soma admitted. “I didn’t mean to. It was an instinctive reaction. It’s very difficult to control the hunger around living human beings. How is he?”

  “He’s dying,” Big Boss said. He arched his eyebrows at the look of distress on her face. “That bothers you? That you infected him with the Phage?”

  “Of course it does! I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone. You think I like being this way?”

  “I guess not,” Big Boss said, and for the first time an expression of sympathy softened his features. He looked down on her with faint pity. Then his eyes went hard again and he grinned mirthlessly. “At least we’ll find out what happens when a smart zombie bites someone. I have to confess, I’m dying to see how he’ll come back. Will he be smart? Will he be dumb? It’s a kind of immortality, isn’t it? What you are. So long as nobody shoots you in the head.”

  “We’re not immortal,” Soma said. “We die just as easily as the living.”

  “But that’s not true,” Big Boss insisted. “I’ve seen your kind torn to pieces and still going. I’ve seen zombie heads – completely decapitated -- that will try to bite you if you come too close to them. You don’t really stop until something destroys the brain.”

  “It hurts,” Soma countered. “All the time. The hunger is always there, throbbing in your guts, burning in your veins. You can’t make love. You can’t even cry. If you think this horror is some higher state of being then you are sadly deluded. You don’t want to be what we are. It’s the most horrible thing you can imagine.”

  The look of anger that flashed in his eyes was very informative. He caught his anger and stuffed it in his pocket, but not quickly enough. She had seen it, and seeing it, she felt she understood him a little better. Now she knew why he was so interested in catching a “talker”, why he was asking her all these questions rather than just killing her out of hand. Even her captivity presented a mortal danger to his group – not just the threat of violence, but that of plague as well – but he was afraid of dying, and he had some crazy notion that the Phage might offer him a chance at immortality, some sort of out he could use to escape the inevitable.

  To die and come back with all of your faculties: it was a sort of immortality, but the price was high. The price was so very high!

  She did her best to keep the insight from showing in her eyes. She did not want him to know that she had figured him out, that she knew his motivations now, his weaknesses and fears. She took note of his jaundiced complexion, the moon-shaped bruises beneath his eyes, the way his skin was very finely wrinkled, as if he had lost a significant amount of weight recently. He was sick. Cancer or hepatitis, most likely. Probably only had a few months to live.

  (Good!)

  “Will you tell me how they died?” Soma asked. She exaggerated the plaintiveness of her request, trying to distract him from his momentary lapse.

  He blinked his eyes at her beseeching tone, coming back from his thoughts.

  Like a cat that hears a can opener, she thought.

  “Sure, yeah,” Big Boss said distractedly, then glanced at her ruefully and asked, “Where was I exactly? I lost my train of thought.”

  “Dinner with my family,” she prompted him.

  “Yeah. Well, that was about it. We broke bread with the old man and woman that night. The tall skinny guy – I assume that was your husband?”

  “Husband.”

  “He wasn’t too friendly. In fact, I’d have to say he was downright cagey, kept looking off toward the barn. I wasn’t sure what they were hiding in there, but it must have been something precious the way he kept peeking over there when he thought no one was looking. Your parents, on the other hand, were gracious hosts. It’s a shame we had to kill them. I liked the old man. Liked him a lot. We talked half the night, after dinner was over. We talked about sports and fishing and books and… hell, I don’t remember what all we talked about but it was late when I finally retired to the camper to catch some shuteye.

  “We waited until all the lights in the house went out, and then we snuck across the yard to see what was in the barn.”

  “What was it?” Soma asked, her heart in her throat.

  Big Boss shrugged. “Nothing. We searched the barn from stem to stern, but there was nothing in there. Just an old milk cow and a couple pigs. Maybe that was what your husband was worried about. The livestock. Maybe he was afraid we’d steal his bacon. I don’t know. You tell me.”

  Soma shook her head. She hoped it was Aishani, that the girl had seen them coming and snuck away, but she couldn’t know for certain. “It’s been five years since I lived here,” she said. “It could have been anything or nothing. Maybe you were projecting your deceit onto my husband. Liars are always paranoid they’re being lied to.”

  “Could be,” Big Boss shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. If there was anything in there, we would have found it by now. We didn’t find anything that night, and now the barn is gone. Storm got it earlier this year. The barn and the greenhouses. Windstorm came up and tore them apart.”

  “My family?” Soma nudged him. She didn’t care about the barn or the greenhouses.

  “Oh, yeah… Well, we waited until the moon had sank behind the trees and everyone was fast asleep, and then we snuck into the house and killed them in their beds.”

  “How?” Soma hissed. His words had struck her heart like a bullwhip, but she didn’t want him to see the pain he was causing her, each word like the lick of a whip, slicing her open, making her bleed.

  “Jim Bob and Ray went to your parent’s bedro
om and shot ‘em while they were sleeping. I hate wasting bullets, but they were good to us. I didn’t want them to suffer unnecessarily. I don’t guess they knew what hit them, although your mother sat up and yelled something in sand nigger right before her head exploded all over the wall.”

  “What did she say?” Soma whispered. “Can you remember the words?”

  “Iwanna or Ishanti, something like that.”

  Aishani.

  “And my husband?”

  “Donald did it,” Big Boss answered. “He did him with a knife. Cut his throat from ear to ear. Your husband knew what hit him. Donald said the guns went off right as he was leaning over the bed to cut him. Your hubby’s eyes flipped open, and he started to sit up, and Donald had to jump on him and hold him down to cut him. Donald was covered head to toe when I saw him. The blood went everywhere. Donald said it took your husband several minutes to die, as he didn’t get a clean cut. He was fighting too much. Said it was kind of horrible. He flopped around in that bed like a fish, he said, and then he rolled off the bed and tried to crawl to the door. Guess he was trying to get away. Or go help your mother and father. Didn’t get very far, though. Ronald was waiting out in the hallway in case anything went wrong. Donald called his brother in as your husband was crawling to the door, and the Duck Brothers stabbed him in the back a couple-twenty more times. He finally bled out and collapsed about halfway to the door. Took us a week to clean up the room. There was blood splashed all the way up to the ceiling.”

  And Aishani, who was probably in the barn when her parents broke bread with their killers… where was she hiding when the Highwaymen murdered her family?

  The woods, Soma thought, back behind the barn. She would have seen them coming across the yard, seen them sneaking through the moonlight toward her bolt hole, and she would have rabbited out the side door. Those long, gangly legs would have carried her to the woods in seconds. She had always been nimble on her feet, even when she was a child. Built like a track star, her grandfather always said. That’s where she would have stayed. She would have hunkered down in the woods and watched the house until daylight.