by Tim Marquitz
Rooted to the ground, the hose soaking my boots, I tried my best not to make a sound, to not even breathe. Didn’t really matter much. They knew I was there. They could probably smell my poop.
And once the dead broke loose of their holes, they turned toward me all at once. Their necks popped like bubble-wrap and their red eyes flickered as they settled on me. The corpses stood in silence, just staring, their moans drifting off with the wind. Their lifeless eyes appraised me as though I were a choice on a menu. I just kept thinking meatloaf.
The moment lasted forever, or at least it felt that way. But at last, their dead eyes swung away and I gulped in a deep breath of rancid air. It tasted like Heaven.
While I stood there trembling, the dead ambled off into the darkness and left me behind.
Next thing I remember, I was on the ground bawling. It took me a little while to talk myself into getting up. My legs were having none of it. Finally, I managed to haul my ass back to the maintenance shop. My hands still shaking, I put in a few calls to the sheriff, the fire department, and my pastor, in that order. None of them answered.
Too afraid to do anything else, I barred the door and went back to dialing the sheriff over and over until my pointing finger bled all over the numbers. I never got through. Finally, I just gave up and sunk into the corner as the receiver swung abandoned on its line.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but suddenly I heard the wailing of the dead. They’d come back. Though I doubted they could hear me over the ruckus they were making, I didn’t dare to make a sound. I just sat there, still like a corpse should be, as they prowled about outside. At last, the moans died off and the quiet of the night returned. I just stayed put.
I waited ‘till morning before I braved a look outside. Despite the sense that it had to have been a dream, I guess I wasn’t too shocked to see it was still very real.
The cemetery looked like it had been bombed. The sunken graves stood out dark beside the scattered piles of dirt on the grass. Twitching bodies laid everywhere, curled up beside the graves, rotten flesh glistening in the dawn light. Even though my stomach roiled, I couldn’t pull my eyes away. Not until I saw the wet blackness that covered their faces in a glistening sheen. Blood.
That was all it took to light a fire up under my ass. I unbarred the door and swung it open fast, asshole and elbows unleashed. I stuck to the cemetery road and made for the gates as fast as my old legs could take me. There weren’t any land-speed records broken that morning, but I made it without blowing out a hip.
The entire cemetery looked the gory same as it blurred past; open graves surrounded by the bloody dead. Once I got outside the gates, I had a sinking feeling things weren’t gonna get any better. Trails of blood led off toward Main Street, as though left by a twisted Hansel.
I continued on a ways when I saw a car, its hood wrapped in a horseshoe around a telephone pole. Radiator fluid pooled beneath the wheels and its bitter tang was sharp in the morning air. The driver’s door was open and a body was hunched over the steering wheel. Gooey red ran down its legs and seeped from the floorboards, dripping onto the street. The red dots defied the fluorescent green lake below, daring not to mix.
I looked a little closer. The man’s face had been removed, gnawed clean from his skull. His only remaining eye hung oozing from its socket, its cord wrapped twice around the shifter.
That was pretty much all I could handle. I added yellow bile to the colors shading the street. When the spasms finally stopped, I staggered away from the car and down the road. I didn’t know how much more I could take, but I had to see it. I had to see it all.
I regret that decision to this day. The entire town was dead, eaten alive, and I was its only living witness. I think that scared me worse than what I’d seen. Knowing there was only me left, with nightfall coming fast, my heart started pounding in my chest. If it was warm flesh the dead were craving, I was dinner by default.
Nowhere to go that felt safe, I stumbled numbly back to the cemetery. I figured, if I was gonna die, might as well do it there. The graveyard was pretty much all I had anyway.
I got there just a few minutes before the sun slipped below the horizon. As I walked toward the shop, I saw the dead stirring. Their hoary voices rose up and sent a chill down my spine. I could hear their bones creaking as they walked. Their advancing eyes were like glowing coals. The end had come.
I’d put enough of them in the ground, I figured it was only fitting they return the favor.
But not brave enough to watch it happen, I closed my eyes and hunkered down. Much as I wanna tell you I was ready to take it like a man, it just wasn’t gonna go down that way. At the first hint of tooth, I knew I was gonna up and bolt like a corn-holed rabbit.
But the biting and gnawing death never came. Just like the night before, they looked me over for a few moments and moved on. I opened my eyes a crack and watched as they headed toward town. I couldn’t believe it. I was still alive.
Not willing to press my luck, I locked myself inside the shop until after they came back. I watched from the window when they did. They weren’t alone. The victims from the town came with them.
The cemetery milling with wailing corpses, I stared dumbstruck as I spied one of my bosses amongst the walking dead. I felt a smile stretch my lips before guilt wiped it away. Well, part of it, anyway.
Becoming strangely disconnected from it all, I watched until the dead wound down and curled up beside the graves. Their eyes dimmed to tiny pinpricks and their voices quieted. Once they settled as best they would, groaning a dull murmur until dawn, I found a spot on the floor and did the same.
Morning came quick. As the sun shimmered through the shop’s dirty window, I wondered why the dead had chosen me to live. Of all the people in town, why me?
It wasn’t that night I figured it out, or even the next. Probably not even the one after that, but I finally got it.
When the dead returned to the cemetery that next night, I was waiting for them. Instead of cowering in the shop, I met them at the gate, shovel in hand. They stared at me a moment before black-lipped smiles broke across their drooping faces.
We understood each other at last.
Every night thereafter, when the dead returned to Pleasant Hills, the blood of the living staining their rotten teeth, I was there for them. And like I’d done for the dead most of my adult life, when the lights in their eyes flickered into black, I eased them into their holes…
…and tucked them in.
Meat
Originally published in Fifty Shades of Decay 2013
Amy stared at the door of the nondescript shop. Its tinted, bare windows reflected her doe-eyed stare above the glowing open sign. Her heart thundered a cannonade, beating faster every time a car drove past. She’d stood on the sidewalk for the last twenty minutes, willing herself to knock, but her arms hung limp at her side, hands trembling. Despite the chill in the air, sweat dotted her brow. She let out a wispy sigh as yet another vehicle crept past, imagining their eyes on her, shame threatening to set her feet to scurrying. Amy clenched her teeth and turned back to the shop.
A young woman stared from the open door. “Can I help you?”
Amy’s hand flew to her mouth. It was a long moment before she could force sound from her throat. “I…I—”
The woman smiled and Amy’s cheeks warmed. “You’re here to see him, aren’t you?”
“No, I uh…” her voice trailed off, and she nodded.
A soft smile broke across the woman’s lips. “It’s okay.” She waved Amy inside, the subtle scent of anesthetic and incense leading the way. As the door closed behind them the woman looked to Amy, eyes narrowing. “I’m Carol. I think I remember you from the club before…well, you know.”
Amy nodded. The Zombie No-pocalypse people called it: A government experiment gone wrong, people returning from the dead to infect the living. It lasted all of a month before the CDC put a cure in motion; one they’d apparently been working on since George
Romero first released Dawn of the Dead. The end of the world fizzled, less than 100,000 people zombified across the whole of the planet.
It was the best thing to ever happen.
The tiny storefront was dimly lit and sparse, two chairs set out on the white tile floor. A lacquered counter stood near the back, pink drapes decorating the walls. The looming darkness of a doorway hung behind their soft veil.
“You are here to see him, right?” Carol asked, slipping behind the counter. Her tanned face was expressionless but her blue eyes were wary.
Amy dug in her pocket and produced the card she’d been given. She walked quickly across the room and handed it to the woman. Carol smiled at seeing it, the tension in her shoulders easing.
“Just had to be sure.”
“I understand,” Amy squeaked out, barely a whisper, though she wasn’t really sure she did. All this had to be illegal, but she couldn’t imagine who would care. She wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“All I need is a credit card, and he’s all yours,” Carol grinned, “at least for an hour.”
Amy handed the card over without hesitation, doing her best to hide the trembles that made it dance at the end of her fingers. Carol was professional enough not to mention it. Once she had the card, she pulled aside the drapes and motioned for Amy to follow her into the dark hallway beyond. Amy coerced her feet forward, the shadows deepening as the drapes fluttered shut at her back. Her breath clung heavy to her lungs as she followed the woman past a dozen closed, steel security doors, each with a tiny porthole set in their center, until she came to stop at the end of the hall. Carol blocked the view of the magnetic lock and keyed in a code, the beeping rhythm echoing in the corridor. She leaned back, her hand on the latch.
“He’s not exactly the same as he used to be, you know?”
Amy sighed. She didn’t know. As often as she’d gone to the club to watch him dance—to watch him strip—she’d never managed anything more than a couple of quick gropes while she plied him with dollar bills as he strutted by. He’d never shown any interest in girls like her. Amy clutched to her chest, her small breasts little more than speed bumps on the way to her narrow hips. She adjusted her glasses and looked to the busty Carol, but kept quiet. None of that mattered anymore. She’d forked over her money like all the rest. He’d have to pay attention now.
“Have a good time, but whatever you do, don’t remove the mask or the straps. Understand?” Carol waited for her to nod before pulling the door open.
The sharp tang of disinfectant stung her nose as Carol ushered her forward, the air noticeably cooler. Amy stumbled inside, her vision tunneling before she’d any sense of the room’s size or décor. Carol shut the door behind her, but Amy hardly noticed, the quiet thump miles away. Her eyes were on him.
He laid spread eagle on the bed, leather cuffs tight about his pale ankles and wrists. Amy’s pulse whirred in her veins. It was really him. She forced her feet forward, the vague pressure of being timed spurring her on. She’d imagined this moment so many times it blurred in her mind until she had a hard time remembering what was real and what was fantasy. He would never know just how much she loved him, how she longed for him, but he would know her passion, she promised.
She drew up close and set a hesitant hand on his shin. Goose bumps sprang to life when she touched his cold skin, prickling her arm. Her gaze trailed up his naked thigh, and she felt a cloying wetness swelling between her legs at what she saw. There, in all its glory, stiffer than she’d ever seen it, his erection pointed at the ceiling, thick and towering; a skyscraper standing over the skyline of his smooth crotch.
Memories flashed as she felt herself drawn closer, her trembling fingers seeking the massive member she’d dreamed of so often. Her hand wrapped about his cock, and she was surprised to find it was warm and pulsing with life in defiance of all she imagined. She slipped her other hand around him, one too small to completely encompass him. Amy felt a shudder run through her, her legs shaking. She’d wanted this forever, and now here he was; hers at last.
She glanced up at his face for the first time, strangely surprised to have not noticed it wasn’t there. In its place was a bulky, green gas mask that enclosed the entirety of his head. The lenses were tinted so black she couldn’t see inside. Slim plastic tubes ran from either side of the mask to disappear under the pillows at the head of the bed. Amy sighed. She’d wanted to look him in the eyes, wanted to know if somewhere deep down he might recognize her, might remember, but it was a small wish amongst the whole of her desire.
She could wait no longer. Amy hurriedly undressed, tossing her clothes into a pile on the floor, and climbed onto the bed. She could hear her heart in her ears, the roaring wash of waves pummeling her as she crawled to squat overtop. Patience faded in the heat of her passion, and she lowered her sex onto his massiveness without hesitation. The tip slid in with ease, she was so wet. She was suddenly full of him. Her nails dug into his hips to hold her steady, but her legs threatened to give way as she felt herself ready to burst. Amy gave in to gravity and swallowed all of him inside. Her knees sunk onto the bed as the first wave of orgasm hit, anticipation pushing her over the edge. She shuddered and twitched, impaled upon his cock, grinding into his pelvis.
When at last she could open her eyes, she steadied herself and straightened, drawing stuttered breaths. She’d barely gotten over the shakes when she heard a quiet hiss. Her eyes snapped to the translucent hoses. A whirling mist tumbled through them, spilling into the mask. There was a sudden twitch beneath her, and Amy couldn’t hold back her moan as he inched deeper inside her. She tightened her grip as he bucked again. His hands clenched and tugged against the creaking restraints, but Amy had no time to wonder at their security. The hissing continued and he responded to its serpentine call. Where he’d lay still beneath her at first, now he twitched and shook, pressing up into her with abandon.
Amy’s vision blurred as he slammed his crotch against hers, the length of him piercing her deeper and faster than she’d ever known. Unable to catch her breath, her legs tangled in his, she helplessly rode him as he thrashed beneath. Despite fear—despite everything—Amy felt yet another orgasm rattle through her, and then another, and another. She gasped as he continued to fill her, his hips pounding into her with an animalistic fury. The room spun around her as she came, over and over.
A quiet snap wormed its way past the ringing echo of her throaty moans, but she’d no place for it in the throes of her primal ecstasy. She’d wanted him like no man before and now she had him; every inch. Amy felt his fingers tangle in her hair, pulling her closer. She gave in, her breasts pressed hard against his cold chest. An electric thrill shot through her, and she heard him grunt his pleasure.
“I love you, too,” she told him as he muttered against her neck, the nip of teeth scraping skin.
#
Carol heard the woman scream and ran to the door, whipping open the viewing porthole. She slammed it shut and swallowed hard, her stomach tangled in knots at what lay inside. Her gaze snapped to the magnetic lock, breathing a sigh at the green flutter of light. She dug in her pocket and pulled out her cell phone, dialing with quick stabs of her finger.
The other end picked up after the second ring. “It’s Carol, sir,” she breathed into the receiver. “Meat’s killed another one.”
A Night to Remember
Originally published in American Nightmare 2014
Jeb watched the rain patter against the windows, tiny halos of light against the glass. Like dying stars, they faded and fell victim to gravity, pooling in the shallow depression of the sill.
The sun had been out when Jeb first came to Lucy’s Diner, but it had done nothing to chase the chill from the air. He’d seen the storm approaching, clouds looming on the horizon, billows of gray and black leeching the white from the sky. Still he’d come, hoping, praying, that Malcolm would hold true to his word and bring the boys.
“I’ll be there at five, Pops,” Malcolm’s voice had said over
the crackling telephone. “I promise,” had been the last words he’d said before the line went dead.
Jeb didn’t even need to glance at his watch to know five o’clock had passed long ago. The jukebox cycled through its songs every hour he’d learned. Its motor hummed through the speakers as the needle reset, a momentary lull before the sharp-edged blast of “Heartbreak Hotel” erupted out of nowhere, startling him every time. It filled the diner with a discordant vibration that set his spoon to rattling against the plate, the singer’s voice sinking lower and lower in his throat as to be almost incomprehensible as the song progressed. Jeb had heard it four times since he’d sat down at a table furthest from the jukebox, but that distance did nothing to lessen the impact of the lyrics his ears plucked from the air, their sorrow too appropriate to be coincidence.
Not ten years ago, he would have scoffed at the idea of loneliness, of depression, a grown man wailing like a dog left out in the rain. He’d spent years at war, munitions exploding overhead while he clung to life and watched his fellow soldiers die just feet from where he hunkered down and had never felt the touch of either. Carol and Malcolm had been safe at home, there for him when he returned. What more could he need?
The intervening years answered that question with all the subtlety of a Nazi blitzkrieg. Less than six months after he’d returned to the States, Carol collapsed. A blood clot triggered a stroke. She was dead before Jeb reached the hospital, and he’d never gotten to say goodbye. Suddenly, it was just him and twelve year-old Malcolm. He soon learned war had been the easier of the two responsibilities.
“You want another cup, hon?” The waitress’ voice startled him as she came up alongside the table. Her narrow lips brightened with a smile as she leaned over his shoulder.
“I better not, Barb.” He slid his hand over the mug on instinct and motioned toward the window with his chin. “Should probably get going before it gets any worse. I don’t swim as good as I used to.”
