Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales

by Norman Partridge

He had just managed to close his eyes when the binoculars smashed into his bloody brow.

  Screaming. God, she was screaming.

  She must have realized the truth.

  Nathan struggled to his feet just as Ronnie's cries were punctuated by gunshots. He leaned against the balcony and tried to focus on what was happening on the beach.

  But they weren't on the beach. The big gate stood open, and the dead pilot was inside the compound, backing Ronnie across a patch of stunted grass. She fired the Heckler and cocaine puffed from one of the packets taped to the thing's chest. She got off three more shots that destroyed the zombie's left shoulder. Its left arm came loose, slithered through its shirtsleeve, and dropped silently to the grass. The thing stared down at its severed limb, confused by the sudden amputation.

  Ronnie retreated under the jutting balcony.

  The zombie followed her into the house.

  Nathan stumbled through the bedroom doorway. Ronnie wasn't screaming anymore. That sound had been replaced by subtler but no less horrifying noises: the Heckler clicking, empty, the zombie whispering Ronnie's name. Dizzily, Nathan reached the top of the stairway just as Ronnie mounted the first stair. He tried to grab her but the pilot got hold of her first and tugged her away.

  It stared at her for a moment, still pleading, as if it only wanted her to take delivery, but as it pulled her closer its expression changed.

  Its nostrils flared.

  It pushed her down onto the stairs and held her there.

  Its mouth widened, but no words were left there.

  Its eyes were wild, suddenly gleaming.

  Hungry.

  Dry teeth clamped Ronnie's left breast. She squealed and pulled away, but the thing punched its fingers through her left thigh, holding her down. An urge had been triggered, and suddenly the gut- bucket was insatiable. Its teeth ripped Ronnie's flesh; it swallowed without chewing; it was a shark in the grip of a feeding frenzy.

  Nathan backed away, staring at the zombie, glancing at the empty pistol on the hallway floor. Another gut-bucket shambled forward from the shadowy bar. This one had something in its hand, a machete, and Nathan was suddenly glad that he was going to die because he didn't think he could bear living in a world where you couldn't tell the living from the dead, where fucking corpses could talk, could remember, could fool you right up to the moment when they started to bite and tear and swallow....

  The rusty machete cleaved the pilot's head from his shoulders; the dead thing collapsed on top of Ronnie.

  The holder of the machete stared up at him, and Nathan froze like a deer trapped by a pair of headlights.

  "Christ, boss, don't worry. I'm alive," Buck Taylor said, and then he went to close the gate.

  Buck said he couldn't eat or drink so soon after cleaning up the remains of Ronnie and the gut-bucket pilot. Instead, he talked. Nathan tried not to drink too much Cuervo Gold, tried to listen, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the puzzle of the pilot's strange behavior.

  "So the storm was coming down in buckets, splattering every damn inch of soil. Pablo was drinking coffee, and I'd had so much that I just had to take a piss, but it was really coming down—"

  The rusty machete lay before Buck on the oak tabletop; his fingers danced over the blade as he spoke. He had once been a center for the Raiders — Good Old Number 66 had never missed a game in seven seasons of play— but Nathan couldn't imagine that he'd ever looked this bad, not even after the most desperate contest imaginable. His bald pate was knotted with bruises, and every time he touched them he looked wistful, like he was wishing he'd had a helmet.

  " — so I hacked my way into the forest and got under a tree, that kind with leaves like big pancakes. And I started to piss. And just then I heard the engines. Holy Christ, I got zipped up quick and — "

  The twin sixes on Buck's football jersey were smeared with slimy black stains. There was a primitive splint on his left arm, held in place with strips torn from a silver-and-black bandana. The massive biceps swelling between the damp strips of wood was an ugly color much worse than the blue-green of a natural bruise. It reminded Nathan of rotten cantaloupe, a sickly gray color. And the smell coming from the other side of the table was —

  " — pissed all over my leg. I ain't ashamed to say it, because the left wing tore off just then and I thought I was dead for sure, with the plane heading straight for me. So I dived — "

  Quickly. The pilot had been able to think quickly. He'd ripped off his shirt to show Nathan the cocaine. He'd gotten Ronnie to open the gate. And even though he'd lost an arm to Ronnie's gunfire, he'd acted as if he believed that he was still alive until he got close to her, the first live human he'd encountered since reanimating. That confrontation had triggered his horrible —

  " — second thoughts, but there wasn't time. The broken wing flipped around in midair like a piece of balsa wood. No telling where it was gonna end up. Then the 'stream slammed sideways into a big stand of palm trees that bounced it right back onto the landing strip. It rolled and the other wing twisted off. And the wing that was still in the air — "

  Came down on the machete. Buck's fingers did. Nathan watched them, and he slid away from the table, eased away from Number 66.

  "I could see Pablo in the van. Even through the storm. I saw him trying to find a place to set his coffee. And then the wing hit the van, and the damn thing just exploded."

  So the van had exploded. That was why the zombies hadn't been burned. The plane hadn't even caught fire — its fuel tanks were probably near empty after fighting the storm. But the van had had a full tank.

  "I'm ashamed about that, but there was really nothing I could do. The fire was so intense. Even the zombies didn't go near it, and by the time it burned itself out there wasn't anything left of the van or Pablo."

  Nathan's fingers closed around the pistol. He remembered the pilot ripping open his shirt. He remembered the pilot grabbing Ronnie, the momentary confusion in his muddy eyes, the excited gleam as he surrendered to the feeding frenzy. Buck was in control now, surely he was. But what would happen when he came close to his boss?

  Nathan raised the Heckler. Buck grinned, like he didn't quite understand. Nathan looked at Buck's wounds, at the untouched glass of beer in front of him. Good Old Number 66 wasn't drinking, and he hadn't wanted any fried chicken. Maybe he didn't want fried chicken anymore. Maybe he didn't realize that yet, just like he didn't remember what had killed him.

  "Buck, I want you to go back outside, back out with them," Nathan said, speaking as he would speak to a child. "You see, risking temptation is the dangerous part. It'll make you lose what's left of your mind."

  "Boss, are you okay? Maybe you should get some sleep, stop thinking about Ronnie for a while. Maybe you should — "

  Oh, they were smart. Getting smarter every minute. "You can't fool me. Buck. You can fool yourself, but you can't fool me."

  Nathan aimed and Buck jolted backward, out of his chair, scrambling now. The first bullet exploded his left biceps, shattering the makeshift splint as it exited, but Buck didn't slow because football instincts die hard. He sprang to his feet, tucked his head, and charged across the kitchen.

  His eyes shone with vitality, but Nathan was certain that it was the vitality of death, not life. Buck launched himself in a flying tackle and together they crashed to the floor. Nathan raised the Heckler, and Buck couldn't fight him off because the wound in his left arm was too severe, so he fought back the only way he could. He bit Nathan's shoulder, set his teeth, and tore.

  Nathan screamed. White blotches of pain danced before his eyes.

  Nathan's finger tightened on the trigger.

  A bullet shattered the skull of Good Old Number 66.

  Nathan saw it this way:

  The crash had killed them instantly. All of them. And when they opened their eyes they found themselves on Grimes Island, just where they were supposed to be, and they imagined themselves survivors. They wandered through the lush forest, across the coral beach
es, finding nothing to tempt them, nothing to trigger the horrible hunger.

  Trapped in a transition period between death and rebirth, they retained different levels of intelligence but were limited by overwhelming instincts. Instinctively, they knew enough to stay out of the sun. It was a simple matter of self-preservation, for the tropical sun could speed their decay. The instinct to devour the living was strong in them as well, but only when they were exposed to temptation. Nathan was sure of that after his experiences with Buck and the pilot. He was also certain that as long as temptation was absent, up to the very point that the feeding frenzy took control, the dead of Grimes Island could still function at a level that separated them from the gut-buckets. Oh, they functioned at different sub-levels, as he'd seen with Kara North, the pilot, and Buck, but in some cases, they functioned just as well as the living.

  Perhaps something in human flesh, once devoured, triggered the change in behavior. Maybe something in the blood. Or perhaps it was the very act of cannibalism. Nathan didn't know the cause, didn't much care.

  His wounded shoulder was scarlet-purple and swollen. Five days had passed since Buck had attacked him, and he couldn't decide if the bite was worse or better. Just to be safe, he'd injected himself with antibiotics, but he didn't know if his first aid made the slightest difference.

  He didn't know if he was alive, or dead, or somewhere in between.

  To clarify his thoughts, he noted his symptoms on the legal pad he'd hidden in his desk after the plane crash. Many were perplexing. He wished that he could consult with a scientist or a doctor, but his first attempt at stateside communications had proved fruitless, and soon he was afraid to communicate with anyone. He didn't relish the idea of ending up as a science project in some lab, and he didn't want an extermination squad invading Grimes Island, either.

  The thing that bothered him most was that his heart was still beating. He couldn't understand how that was possible until he remembered that Buck's heart had been beating when he'd shot him — Nathan had felt it pounding against his own chest as they wrestled on the floor — and he was certain that Buck had been dead. Looking at his wounded shoulder, remembering the fire in Buck's eyes when he'd attacked, Nathan was positive of that.

  There were other symptoms, as well.

  He couldn't eat. Every evening he cooked some fried chicken, even though the smell made him gag and the oily feel of it made him shiver. Last night he'd forced himself to eat two breasts and a thigh, and he'd spent the next five hours coiled in a cramped ball on the kitchen floor before finally surrendering to the urge to vomit. And he couldn't keep down Pepsi or Jose Cuervo either. The Cuervo Gold was especially bad; it burned his throat and made him miserable for hours. He did suck ice cubes, but only to keep his throat comfortable. And he'd started snorting the cocaine that Ronnie's mule had brought in, but only because he was afraid to sleep.

  Cocaine. Maybe that was the problem. They said that cocaine killed the appetite, didn't they? And he'd started using the stuff at about the same time that he'd stopped eating. But five days without food... God, that was a long time. So it had to be more than just the cocaine. Didn't it?

  He closed his eyes and thought about hunger, about food. He tried to picture the most appetizing banquet imaginable.

  Nothing came to him for the longest time. Then he saw Kara North's mangled hand. The pilot's severed arm. Buck's ruined head.

  His gut roiled.

  He opened his eyes.

  The facts seemed irrefutable, but somehow Nathan couldn't bring himself to leave the compound or, conversely, let the Grimesgirls enter. They were on the beach every night, enjoying themselves, tempting him. Miss November and Miss February sang love songs, serenading Nathan from the wrong side of the glass-encrusted walls. He watched them, smiling his wry smile on the outside, inside despising his cowardice.

  He was bored, but he didn't risk watching television, either. If the networks had returned to the airwaves, he would certainly find himself looking straight into the eyes of living, breathing people, and while he seriously doubted that such a stimulus could trigger the feeding frenzy, he didn't want to expose himself, just to be on the safe side.

  He didn't want to lose what he had.

  So he snorted cocaine and wrote during the day. At night, he watched them. They all came to the beach now, even Teddy Ching. He had no legs; that's why he'd taken so long to cross the island. But Teddy didn't let that stop him. He dragged himself along, eagerly pursuing the Grimesgirls, his exposed spine wiggling as happily and uncontrollably as a puppy's tail. Three cameras were strung around his neck, and he often propped himself against the base of a manchineel tree and photographed the girls as they frolicked on the beach below.

  More than anything, Nathan wished that he could develop those pictures. His Grimesgirls were still beautiful. Miss July, her stomach so firm, so empty above a perfect heart-shaped trim. Miss May, her skinless forehead camouflaged with a wreath of bougainvillea and orchids. The rounded breasts of Miss April, sunset bruised and shadowed, the nipples so swollen. The sunken yellow hollows beneath Miss August's eyes, hot dry circles, twin suns peering from her face with all the power of that wonderful month.

  Twin suns in the middle of the night.

  She walks in beauty, like the night... in beauty, like the night... of cloudless climes and... starry skies and all that's best of dark and bright...

  And all that's best of dark and bright....

  Nathan couldn't remember the rest of it. He wrote the words on his yellow pad, over and over, but he couldn't remember. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them the sea was hard with the flat light of morning.

  He hurried inside long before the sunshine kissed the balcony.

  The beach was deserted.

  A Keyboard Built For One

  I attended Sacramento State University in the late seventies and early eighties, majoring in English with an emphasis on American Lit.[27] While I was there I took a few writing classes from Mary Mackey, a novelist who's worked both in the mainstream and fantasy market. While studying with Dr. Mackey I wrote a sword & sorcery screenplay which will never see the light of day, and I ran a bunch of paper through my typewriter while pretending I had idea one about writing a novel, and I took an independent study class in which I wrote several short stories that will never escape my filing cabinet.

  In short, I groped around trying to find my direction. Along the way, Mary Mackey taught me quite a bit about the basics of constructing fiction. She was a great teacher, and I learned a lot from her.

  I met a couple of guys in her screenwriting class whose interests ran along the same lines as mine. Bruce and John were science fiction fans, and I was into horror... but, hey, we were in the same ballpark. They'd read some Lovecraft and King, and I'd read a bunch of Bradbury and Matheson (which was pretty much as close as I ever got to sci-fi in those days). All three of us had seen most everything movies and television had to offer in the way of science fiction and horror in the sixties and seventies. Heck, we'd even paid money to see those bad Edgar Rice Burroughs' adaptations with Doug McClure and a bunch of rubber dinosaurs. So we spoke the same language, and that gave us plenty to talk about.

  Before I got to know them, Bruce and John had put out a little magazine in conjunction with the college science fiction club. I think it was called Star Probe. I just spent about a half hour digging around in a file cabinet hunting for my copy, but it looks like it has been lost to the sands of time.

  Star Probe was probably the first saddle-stapled 'zine I ever saw. It was laid out on a typewriter and printed at a local print shop. The cover image was a spaceship, done in a kind of Vaughn Bode underground comics style (hey, this was the seventies). Inside were three or four stories ranging from science fiction to heroic fantasy. I can't recall if the magazine contained any obligatory student-generated sci-fi poetry or not, but odds are good that it probably did.

  I'm pretty sure that both Bruce and John had stories in the first issue. Seeing
it, I instantly regretted that I hadn't had a chance to submit a story of my own. I asked about doing a story for Star Probe #2 only to discover that a second issue didn't look likely. My friends had gotten funding for their magazine through the college Science Fiction Club, and the club had pretty much gone the way of Doug McClure's rubber dinosaurs by then.

  Still, they talked about trying to get Star Probe going again. Those conversations forged us into a three-member writers' group for a while. We'd get together after class and talk about the magazine, and books we'd read and movies we'd seen, and our big plans for the award-winning writing careers that awaited us after college. Most of it, of course, was just talk... usually with beers and pretzels thrown in.[28]

  One night our discussion turned to a new movie called Apocalypse Now, which had made a big impression on all of us. The general consensus was that Francis Ford Coppola's reinterpretation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness wasn't really a Vietnam War movie at all—it was really a horror movie.

  I can't explain why that seemed such an important distinction to make on that particular night, but it did. We talked about it at length, and then our conversation turned to some of the stranger stories we'd heard from returning Vietnam vets. A lot of those guys were working their way through college on the G. I. bill during the late seventies, and when they got to talking... watch out. That stuff was weird.

  It was one of those nights when I felt like I should be sitting around a campfire with a flashlight held under my chin. We were telling spooky stories... only these were spooky war stories. And pretty soon our discussion led to an idea: why didn't we all write horror (or science fiction, or fantasy) stories that took place during the Vietnam war? And while we were at it, why didn't we see if we could get a second issue of Star Probe going with those stories as the core contents?

  Well, it sounded like a pretty good idea at the time. John planned to write a vampire story. Bruce was going to do something science fictional. Me, I didn't know what I was going to do. But I kept thinking about the idea—while I was walking to school, or sitting in class, or cooking dinner in my shoebox apartment. I tried to spur my imagination every way I knew how. I read some books about Vietnam, listened to music from the era, even went and saw Apocalypse Now a second time. But I was coming up dry.