Soma (The Fearlanders)

by Joseph Duncan

  And immortality was something Big Boss was very much concerned with of late. Had been since he started coughing up blood in May.

  It was just a little blood at first, alarming, yes, but something he could dismiss as a sore throat (or an upper respiratory infection, or pleurisy… lots of things it could have been) after the coughing fit had passed. Just a wispy smear of red in the phlegm he spat into the sink in the morning. It unnerved him enough to give up smoking, and when he started coughing up more blood after that, he attributed the blood to quitting the pack and a half a day habit he had maintained for 38 of his 55 years of life. In the middle of June, he noticed he was getting winded more easily, and a sort of hot tightness in his lungs at times. He also began to experience a stabbing pain in the left side of his chest whenever he inhaled too deeply. By midsummer, he could not kid himself anymore. He was not just suffering from his annual bout of summer allergies. He had lung cancer. By the end of July, he wasn’t coughing up phlegm with a little bit of blood in it -- he was coughing up blood with a little bit of phlegm in it.

  Death, for Rawley Parkins, otherwise known as Big Boss, was an ugly frightening thought. It was one of the few things in the world he’d ever felt real fear of. He was almost phobic about it. Never liked doctor shows on TV. Hated going to funerals. Didn’t like visiting sick relatives at the hospital. The only way he could deal with dying was to trick himself into believing that he was going to cheat Death in the end. Someway. Somehow. That he was going to give Death the slip and thumb his nose at it while Death wandered around in confusion, trying to figure out where ol’ Rawley Parkins had gone. On other occasions, when he forced himself to think more rationally about it, he reassured himself that he wasn’t going to die until he was so old and senile he wouldn’t even know what was going on when it happened.

  But not this!

  Not so young!

  Christ, he was only 55 years old!

  His initial reaction was denial. He tried to stifle the coughing attacks, ignored the blood in the sink, the pain in the chest. He distracted himself with sex, availing himself of the Pusses two, sometimes three times a day. Some of the guys started calling him Boss Hogleg, and cracked wise that they were getting scared to bend over in front of him. When the pussy couldn’t distract him from the fear circling in his brain – like buzzards over a road kill, and wasn’t that a grim image, Granny Gruesome? – he decided God might be a more productive avenue of inquiry. So he found an old family bible and began to flip through it in the evenings. He tried to be a little nicer to everyone. Stopped fucking the Pusses so much. Said his prayers at night. When he did not make a miraculous recovery after two weeks of godly living, his fury was all-consuming. He disavowed god and threw himself headlong into his vices. Resumed smoking. Fucked as often as he could get it up. Drank until he blacked out. The gang began to avoid him like the plague. His moods were violently erratic. One night, in a drunken rage, he beat Chigger with a length of stove wood for… well, he still couldn’t quite remember what the boy had done to piss him off. But he had beaten the kid until a couple of the men had dragged him off the unconscious teenager. The next day, Chigger looked like he’d been caught in a tornado at a brick factory. But all that changed when they caught the talker. When they caught the talker, when he actually got to see one of them up close, speak to it, examine it, he began to think that he might just get to thumb his nose at Death after all.

  At first, there were just rumors. A lone survivor they caught and robbed while on a supply run had mentioned “the talking zombies”. He’d come out with it just before they dropped their pretense of friendliness and murdered him. Big Boss wasn’t with them or he would have gotten a little more information out of the guy before they offed him. When Jim Bob and Ray repeated what the guy had said on their return to the farm, Big Boss wasn’t too sure he believed them. He believed the story Jim told him, that some kid they’d jumped had talked about smart zombies. He just didn’t give the tale much credibility. They had heard many tall tales since the dying of the light – stories about angels saving people and flying them away to some Promised Land in the mountains, stories about vampires feeding on the survivors of the zombie plague. One crazy guy they’d come across swore that the zombie virus was extraterrestrial in origin, that he’d seen saucers hovering silently over his home town, spraying some kind of green mist on the municipality, just before everyone came down with the brain munchies. A little later, they had captured a couple of gals who claimed to be running from a “meat patrol”. These “meat patrols”, they said, were roving bands of thinking zombies who hunted living human beings for their clans. They claimed that these clans were breeding the living like farm animals, that they killed and ate the babies their “livestock” produced. Big Boss questioned them at length, but that was really all they knew. A couple days later, the women killed themselves. Turned out they were dykes, and they’d decided death was preferable to submission. No big loss there. Finally, his group had locked horns with another band of survivors. After shooting at each other fruitlessly for a day or two, they declared a cease-fire and decided it was probably wiser just to swap intel and part amicably. They did some trading – food, weapons, women – and went their separate ways. But before they parted, the leader of their band asked Big Boss what he knew about the “talkers”.

  “Talkers?” Big Boss had said, and he took a swig of the imported beer the man had shared with him, some Nazi brand called Franziskaner Weissbier. He couldn’t pronounce the name, but he had to admit it was good drinking.

  He was just buying himself a moment to think, but he decided, before the belch from the Kraut beer even worked its way up from his guts, that there was no point in hiding what he knew about the talkers.

  So he told the guy what he knew – precious little – and the leader of the other group shared what he knew – little more.

  After that, he decided these talkers weren’t just fairy tales. There were zombies out there who could think, just like their living counterparts. They could talk, strategize, plan for the future.

  And Big Boss, who was coughing up blood every morning by then, now found himself with a glimmering of hope.

  They caught their very first talker not long after. The thing was female, called herself Soma. Before she escaped, she infected two of his men. The first, Ronald, during her capture. The second, his brother Donald, during her escape. Neither of the men exhibited any signs of intelligence after they changed, just the wild viciousness common to their kind. Big Boss had dispatched Donald as soon as they found him down in the bomb shelter where the talker had killed him. He came at them, head hanging on his chest, throat ripped out, gargling blood and swinging at them with his hooked fingers. Big Boss shot him in the head, then ordered a search party to recapture his erstwhile hostage. They never recovered the talker. She had made a clean getaway. He ordered Ronald interred in the shelter in her stead and waited to see if he recovered his mind.

  So far, he hadn’t, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t.

  Sometimes Big Boss thought about letting Ronald bite him, then fleeing into the woods before the Phage could incapacitate him. He would die, of course, but he was dying already. The Big C, his daddy had called it, when he was dying of lung cancer himself. At least with the Phage there was a chance he would awaken, become one of the thinking dead, like the bitch who had escaped him. A Resurrect.

  If some asshole survivor didn’t shoot him in the head first, that is.

  He would be taking an awful big chance, infecting himself. He would have to survive in that horrible mindless state until he reawakened, and how long would that be? Months? Years? Decades?

  Yet the alternative was a sure and agonizing death. He had watched his father wither and die of the exact same disease that was eating him up inside right now. His clothes were already starting to hang off him. A couple of the Pusses had commented on the weight loss, pushing second helpings on him at mealtimes. Alexis hadn’t said anything about fattening him up yet, bu
t she was rail-thin herself, a leggy blonde who seemed to derive all the nourishment she needed from cigarettes and black coffee.

  If only Ronald would “reawaken”…!

  If Ronald woke up, recovered his intellect, Big Boss would have the old boy bite a plug out of him immediately.

  But he hadn’t, and so Big Boss waited, watched and listened as the death clock ticked steadily toward midnight.

  He tried to relax, tried to watch the snow fall as night drew the blue from the heavens and condensed it in midair, tried to derive some enjoyment from the picturesque scene, but he was too restless to sit still for long. He rose with a groan and exited his office.

  Even that small effort made his heart do a little tap dance in his chest, and a pang of agony, needle sharp and quick, pierced his left breast. He stifled an urge to cough and, massaging his chest with his right hand, walked down the hallway into the kitchen.

  Three of the Pusses were in the kitchen, washing the last of the Thanksgiving dishes. Well, two of them were washing dishes. Alexis was leaning against the counter smoking. She was on the chores list for kitchen duty tonight, but she was doing little more than observing the other ladies work, and that with faint interest.

  Sheila and May glanced up at him from the sink. Sheila’s gaze was slightly disconcerting to him now, as her left eye didn’t track properly anymore. Not after Jim Bob nearly stove her head in for refusing to put out. He had knocked out two of her front teeth and fractured the arch of bone just above her left eye -- the ocular orbit, Boss thought it was called. It had ruined her looks for Big Boss, but he let her stay on. She was a hard worker, and she still had a decent body.

  “You hungry, Boss?” Sheila asked, only with the missing teeth it sounded like “both” instead of “boss”.

  “Naw,” Big Boss answered, patting his belly, which was still protruding from the meal he’d eaten about an hour ago. “Thought I might go for a walk outside. It’s snowing, you know.” They peered out the window over the sink, which was darkly reflective. He turned to Alexis. “Care to go for a walk with me?”

  Alexis drew on a cigarette that was as long and skinny as she was. She did not look like she cared to go for a walk with him. A sour moue flitted across her thin seamed lips, but she was a smart lady. She knew that Big Boss’s favor had drawn a circle of protection around her. As soon as he lost interest in her, the men in the house would be on her like a pack of hyenas.

  “Let me grab my coat,” she said. She flicked her ash into the pickle jar lid she was using as an ashtray and vanished into the corridor.

  He watched her walk away, admiring her lanky build. She was not classically beautiful, not by the common standards of female allure, but there was something about her Nordic gangliness that intrigued him. She was thin to the point of boniness, and almost a head taller than he was. Androgynous was probably the best way to describe her. She was, in short, a novelty for Big Boss, and thus exciting. He wondered what it would be like to sleep with her. He could force himself on her, but he would rather she gave herself to him willingly. And he was enjoying the chase.

  As he waited for her to return, Big Boss made small talk with the evening’s scullery maids. Sheila and May were in a fine mood this evening. The Pusses had managed to produce a passable Thanksgiving meal – there was even a turkey, which one of the men had shot in the woods a couple days ago. They were proud of themselves. The festive meal had reminded them all of better times, of the world that used to be. They accepted Big Boss’s accolades with real pleasure, forgetting the snow (and the end of the world) for a moment.

  “Okay. I’m ready,” Alexis said from the doorway. She had wrapped herself in a leather jacket that was trimmed in silver fox fur at the collar and sleeves. She was wearing the same coat when they picked her up in Brookville, rummaging through a dumpster. She had no makeup on and her hair was swept up into a loose beehive atop her head, but she still looked as if she were dressed to attend a hoity-toity Manhattan soiree.

  Big Boss walked to the back door with a nod and Alexis followed, heels clacking on the linoleum floor. May and Sheila watched her depart with thinly veiled resentment. Big Boss equipped himself with a flashlight and a handgun, then swept the door open with a cheerful, “Let’s go!”

  It was still snowing outside. Big Boss paused on the porch, watching the plump flakes descend with a kind of leisurely grandeur. The air was moist and heavy. It did not feel particularly cold, though his breath came out in a vaporous cloud, like a comic book word balloon.

  “Where are we going?” Alexis said behind him. She had a raspy voice. Some day it would be the deep-pitched croak of a lifelong smoker, a frog-like crone’s voice, but for now it was husky and sexy, reminded him of that actress he’d always liked. For a second he couldn’t remember her name. It had been a long time since he’d watched a movie. Then it came to him: Kathleen Turner. She sounded a bit like Kathleen Turner.

  “I thought I might stroll over to the bomb shelter before I turn in for the night,” Big Boss said. “Check on our buddy Ronald one more time.”

  He felt her disapproval at his back like the lambent warmth of a radiant heater. He thought she might say something in complaint, but she held her tongue, even as she crossed the muddy yard in her heels.

  She held her tongue, but she did not hide her annoyance. She walked with exaggeratedly high steps, arms out to her sides, her heels sinking repeatedly in the muck. She made little snarling noises in the back of her throat every time the mud slurped at her shoes.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” he said over his shoulder, his boots squelching in the moist earth.

  “Oh, yeah? About what?” Alexis said.

  “Life, death… life after death.”

  “You mean ghosts?” Alexis asked. “Heaven and hell?” She yelped in displeasure when the mud sucked the shoe off her right foot. She wavered, arms out for balance, and stuffed her foot back in the shoe. She jerked the shoe from the mud with a vulgar farting noise. “I don’t believe in the afterlife,” she said as she hurried to catch up to him. He hadn’t broken stride. The trail of footprints they’d left in the snow was like a strangely moist dance chart. Call it the Muddy Promenade. “This life is all we get, and when it’s over it’s over,” she said. “You just go to sleep and never wake up again.”

  Big Boss, who had always begrudged the time he lost to sleep, scowled at her in annoyance.

  “But it’s not,” he said. “The Phage put the lie to that idea. Five billion people died and returned from the other side. The world is full of the resurrected.”

  “Zombies?” Alexis said. She sniffed. “They’re just sick people. Rabid animals. There’s nothing supernatural about them.”

  “What about the talkers?”

  Alexis paused. “What about them?” She was a shrewd woman. She knew Big Boss wasn’t just shooting the shit. There was something on his mind, and he was feeling her out about it.

  They had arrived at the little brick shed that housed the bomb shelter’s stairwell. Chigger was standing guard at the door, rifle in hand. The tow-headed boy had not noticed them yet, was standing with his head tilted back, mouth open, eyes closed. Trying to catch snowflakes on his tongue, Big Boss thought. It both amused and annoyed him.

  “That snow’s probably radioactive,” Big Boss said, and the kid jumped.

  “Boss!”

  “I see you’re taking your guard duties seriously,” Big Boss berated him.

  The boy quailed. “Sorry, Boss, I was just—!”

  “I know what you were just doing.”

  “Sorry.”

  Alexis caught up with Big Boss as he stood glowering at the boy. Chigger looked to her for rescue, but Alexis wasn’t exactly the mothering type. She had birthed one whelp before the world went to pot, a boy, and he had hated her with a passion from day one. At the age of twenty-five, he had married a woman just like her, moved to Colorado and never spoken to her again. She smiled thinly at the lad’s discomfiture.


  “So how’s our prisoner tonight?” Big Boss asked.

  “I don’t—I haven’t gone down—!”

  Big Boss sighed. “Step aside.”

  He jerked the door open, wincing as the swollen door squalled against its frame. He also winced at the sliver of pain that stabbed into his chest. The short walk from the porch to the bomb shelter had set his heart to racing. He could hear his blood whooshing in his ears and he wondered how long he had before some rotten piece of his insides ruptured and sank the whole boat. Days? Weeks? Months? Not years, certainly. The steadily shriveling death’s head that peered at him from the bathroom mirror now assured him that it was not “years”. Not even close.

  He flicked the flashlight on and stepped down into its sallow beam.

  “Smells,” Alexis said behind him.

  “They all stink,” Big Boss said. “Even the talkers.”

  They descended the stairs, leaving a trail of melting snow and mud behind them. Big Boss paused at the inner door, slid his pistol from its holster and grabbed the latch. The handle turned with a resounding clank and the smell of rotting meat increased tenfold. Alexis covered her mouth and nose with her hand and made a noise that was half cough and half retch.

  Big Boss peered through the doorway cautiously, remembering the grisly fate of Donald Duck. His brother, Ronald, was still securely chained in the center of the shelter. Big Boss pushed the door open wide and strode inside.

  The zombie was naked, pale, like some subterranean creature unfit for life in the sunshine. It was bound at the wrists and neck, with a fourth chain looped and padlocked around its waist. Blinking its eyes in the light, the creature strained forward, chains clanking. Its jaws opened and shut with a snapping sound. It made a dog-like snarling sound.

  “How awful,” Alexis said behind him.