Green closed the door and remained standing. “Let’s talk.”
“There isn’t anything to talk about,” Lester whispered through painted lips. He plucked his glasses from his face and set them down.
“That’s not true. You waited for me.”
Lester sighed. “I just want you to tell Diane something for me.”
“You can tell her yourself,” Green said. He gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk. “May I?”
Lester pressed the gun to his chin.
“Dave, don’t.”
“I found Ashlee this morning,” Lester breathed. His voice was thick, wet. “And I can’t even cry. My daughter is dead, and I can’t even give her that.”
Ashlee had been scheduled for transition-via-transfusion in the fall. She’d been in pre-death counseling. She’d seemed fine the last time Green had seen her. “What happened?” he asked, if only to keep Lester talking; for in his mind he was seeing his own son, the same age as the girl, and though his heart could no longer pound nor his stomach tighten, he nonetheless felt the fear, an unfiltered psychic terror that overwhelmed what remained of his senses.
Lester saw it behind Green’s eyes. He smiled sadly. “We’re not adapting, John. We’re just dragging the rest of them into Hell with us. There is no new flesh. It’s all a lie.”
“Everyone has a choice,” Green protested.
“I didn’t give her a choice. I told her the truth. That if she didn’t transition, she was going to be eaten. Eaten. Even if Taylor isn’t ratified, no one has a choice.
“I told her the truth–that if she didn’t transition, I couldn’t have her in my home. That I couldn’t know her. The hunger...” He made a sobbing sound, though no tears came. “She said I wasn’t her real daddy. She said he was dead. And she was right.”
He looked at Green. “She killed herself, with this gun.”
Then there was a muffled POP and Lester’s head jolted back, then forward, and when it came forward, it was without most of its contents. Green saw them splatter against the blinds behind Lester’s desk and run down. He screamed. Guards burst in then, along with Lorraine Russo, and as she pulled Green out into the hall, he did feel something in his stomach, an uneasy stirring. For the first time in ten years, he felt ill.
After the board meeting with O’Bannon, Green took a car out of the city. With Maberly in place of his usual driver, they went to Green’s former home in the suburbs. It was a modest abode in a quiet neighborhood; remarkable people come from unremarkable circumstances, he’d always told Zach. It was a line from his own father, who had died long before there was a grandson to which he could speak his own wisdom. Green thought about his dad during the drive, and about the great plans he had made to love his son in the same way. He’d been working long hours even when Zach was an infant, but had gone into the office at three in the A.M. so that he could be home in the evening with the baby. He remembered swaddling Zach in his suit jacket, cradling him before the fireplace and whispering his own father’s words. He did that often, even if Zach couldn’t yet understand, because he didn’t want to forget them before the boy was able.
When they pulled into the driveway, Green pressed his hands into his stomach and doubled over. He let out a low, quavering moan.
“Sir?” Maberly said.
“It’s the rot.” Green pushed open his door and slung a leg out onto the concrete. “It’s nothing.”
The windows now had bars, and a new security system had been installed, as evidenced by the shrill electronic cry that sounded from the house as Green stepped onto the porch. Maberly would wait in the car. Green had to do it alone. He knocked gently on the door. Behind the glass, the light fabric of a curtain moved aside, and he saw Diane’s eyes. His belly roiled, and he placed a hand against the doorframe to steady himself.
Diane opened the door and stepped back. “John?”
“I’m all right,” he told her, but the concern in her voice wasn’t for his condition.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“I need to talk to you. It won’t take long.”
She frowned. “Zach’s at school. Come in.”
Zach’s at school. Safer there than within his father’s reach. Green stepped inside. “What is it?” Diane demanded.
“I’m not here to make trouble—”
“Then don’t. Please.”
It’s still me, he wanted to say, but those same words had fallen on deaf ears many times before. For a long while he’d told himself that she was the one who had changed, that she’d reneged on her vows. But she still had the same light in her eyes. She was still youthful, smooth and pink and soft. Sexual attraction was foreign to him now—if anything, the hunger had taken its place–but he still saw the beauty in her. She was alive, strange and wonderful, the mother of his son. He would never have hurt her, no matter how bad the hunger could be. He’d wanted to keep the family together.
No one has a choice.
As if hearing the words herself, she asked, “Is it about David?”
“No.”
“Of course not. You didn’t come to the funeral, you didn’t call me when he died, why would you want to talk about it now?”
“I didn’t think you would want to see me.”
She shook her head. “You were afraid.”
“No.”
“Someone called last week,” she said quietly. “He said he was another reporter, but I knew he wasn’t. He asked if I’d reconsidered transitioning.”
O’Bannon. Green gritted his teeth behind his lips.
“Is that why you’re here, John?”
“Yes and no.”
“I told you, John! I told you!” She backed down the hall, hands shaking with anger. He raised his own to try and calm her and saw dark fingertips protruding from soiled bandages. He let his hands drop.
“I told you no!” she screamed.
“Wait!” he coughed. “Just listen! I’m trying to save you!”
She paused in her retreat. Green stayed where he was, not wanting to send her into hysterics. “I told them. I told them how you feel. How we feel. But they want you and Zach. You have to leave. Tomorrow.”
“And go where?”
“You’ve seen the reports about Cuba?”
“I’ve seen the dead there,” she said uncertainly.
“The reports are half-truths. There aren’t any dead on the island. Just Ferriers patrolling the shoreline. People live there, Diane. It’s safe.”
She stared hard at him. “How safe?”
“I don’t really know. But I’m telling you, if you stay here, you’ll be taken. With or without Taylor. They’ll come for you.”
“Prime?”
He nodded.
“Tomorrow?”
“I have everything you need. A boat. Supplies. The weather’s supposed to be clear all day. I’ll take you to my dock just before sunup.”
She shut her eyes. “We have to do it.”
“Yes.”
When her eyes opened, they were glistening. “John...”
“I just want to see him one last time,” he said.
She studied his face in silence. She saw something there, he knew, and whatever it was, it was enough.
“Come in. You should sit down.”
His hands went to his gut when the front door opened. He’d sat in a chair in the living room for nearly three hours, waiting. He wondered if he’d even be able to get up. Maybe it was better he didn’t.
Zach walked into the room, tossing his backpack toward the end table beside the couch. His breath caught in his throat when he saw the dead man.
“Zach? It’s okay.” Diane stepped out of the kitchen.
John Green would have given anything to weep.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked.
Zach nodded slowly. “Do you recognize me?”
“Absolutely.”
Green had been looking at a photo album. He turned it so that Zach could see the page it wa
s open to. “I was going to ask your mother,” he began, and suddenly couldn’t speak—a hundred questions and thousand apologies filled his throat, and his jaw hung slack. His fingers trembled. He would never see his son again after tonight. He didn’t know if this was a reunion or a farewell or if it wouldn’t mean anything at all come their departure in the early hours. He didn’t know how to do it right.
Zach stepped forward and looked at the photos in Green’s lap. “That was last summer. I was shortstop.”
Green didn’t know what to do, or to say, so he just listened.
After four albums and hours of stories, he went out to the car and got a box from the trunk. He showed Zach how to use the radio and the flares. The boy paid attention and asked smart questions. He was the man of the house, had been for a long time.
“When we get there,” Diane asked, “when the Ferriers see us—what do we do? What do we tell them?”
“Just tell them who you are,” Green said.
Through his binoculars, Green spied the dinghy. It wasn’t moving. Diane and Zach sat in the middle clinging to one another–both alive, thank God. But the outboard motor was at a wrong angle, the housing cracked.
Green eased up on the throttle. Shark! Shark! The Cuban Ferriers watched their shoreline, but those crossing the waters to seek asylum did so at their own peril. The beast must have struck the propeller. Something about that didn’t sit right with Green, but he focused on the situation at hand. He cut the engines and made his way from the cockpit to the stern. His guts were burping rudely inside him. He pressed his fingertips into his belly. It felt like his innards were soup. He grunted and raised a megaphone to his lips. “Are you all right?”
They nodded uncertainly. Their faces were bone-white. “Can you paddle?” He motioned with his free hand as he asked.
Diane and Zach both shook their heads. “Do you still have the paddles?” Green called.
They nodded, barely–they were afraid to touch the water, lest they summon the shark back.
“How long has it been since you saw it?” Green asked. They shook their heads. Didn’t know. Zach buried his head in Diane’s shoulder. Her fingers touched her ears, and Green realized even his amplified voice was frightening them. He lowered the megaphone. Then the shark’s black, rotted fin emerged from the water.
It was dead. Christ!
It had attacked the boat intentionally, with no regard for the propeller–a thing consumed by hunger and bloodlust in its natural state; it must have been reduced now to something even more primal, an unthinkable terror. It would not relent.
He’d get Diane and Zach onto the Ramesses II. He’d bear them to safety himself, as he should have. “Hold on!” he hollered, and turned to fetch his pistol from a lockbox in the cockpit.
“DAD!” Zach screamed. Green spun and saw the fin cutting toward the dinghy at full speed. He clutched the railing and bellowed.
The fin dove beneath the water mere feet from the boat. Jesus, what was the thing doing? Did it take as much pleasure in the dance as the kill? Diane was sobbing. Zach stared across the distance at his father. “Wait!” Green shouted, and turned back.
Looking north, he saw a dark blur on the horizon. His guts turned again. It was a chopper. Sky Prime.
Maberly had done his best, Green knew, to keep them at bay, but his people were too shrewd. He’d taught them well.
Green burst into the cockpit and retrieved the pistol. He didn’t know if he was going to try and deal with the shark or the chopper first. Bandages unraveled as he checked the magazine–full–and slapped it into place.
Sky Prime came up on the yacht’s port side. Green was nearly bowled over by the wind as he came out onto the deck. Flecks of salt water struck his face. The chopper slowed to a mid-air halt as it edged past the stern, and he shielded his eyes to see who was hanging out the side. O’Bannon. He had a rifle. And he was training it on the dinghy.
When the truth about Cuba inevitably came out–as it had in the case of David Lester–they couldn’t have John Green’s wife and son among the refugees, could they? They meant to cut their losses down before they reached Ferrier waters.
Green lurched forward and fired at the chopper. O’Bannon jerked his head back, glanced toward the yacht, then turned to yell at the pilot. The chopper rose and turned sharply to shield O’Bannon from Green.
Hadn’t hit the bastard, but came close enough. Green looked to the dinghy. Diane had covered Zach with her body, and though her face was stretched in a scream, Green could hear nothing over the approaching helicopter.
He saw the shark’s fin come around the south side of the little boat, saw the boat rock violently. Diane lost her grip on Zach, hands clawing at the air as she rose up in an attempt to regain her balance, and tottered sideways—Zach threw his arms around her waist and wrenched her back. They both fell to the floor.
Sky Prime swung down between the yacht and the dinghy. O’Bannon was again revealed, and leaned out with the rifle. This time he aimed at Green.
Green shot first. O’Bannon’s left arm slackened, and the rifle nearly dropped from his grip. He pulled himself into the chopper. It turned to face Green head-on, and he squeezed off every last round. “GET AWAY! GET AWAY!”
The chopper’s windshield fragmented. He saw the glow of sparks flaring up inside, then the pilot’s helmet slamming into the glass. The chopper spun through the air like a top, then veered suddenly to the left–and down. It sailed directly over Green’s head with a roar.
One of the landing skids struck the yacht’s starboard railing. The world was pulled out from beneath Green’s feet, and he bounced first off the side of the cockpit, then the railing itself, and fell to the deck as the craft sagged under the weight of the snared chopper.
Sky Prime leaned over the side, rotors slashing at the water. Flames erupted from the open side hatch, but the vehicle did not fall free. The yacht was threatening to capsize. Green crawled toward the stern. He saw the dinghy, rocking; saw his wife and son huddled in its center. He saw the shark circling them, and closing in.
He rose and aimed at it. There was a hollow click from the empty gun.
He had to get closer and drive the monster away. And the fire from the chopper had spread to the starboard deck. He pulled himself along the railing toward the port side, but the yacht was bowing perilously toward the water, creating a slope that he was too weak to ascend. Couldn’t do it...I’m so sorry...
He coughed up a string of dark ichor. His hands slipped from the railing and he fell back. He heard the chopper’s main rotor churning the water. Then he knew.
Green pulled himself over the starboard railing and dropped into the sea. Surfacing underneath the chopper, he was able to grab onto the free landing skid with one hand. With his other, he dug into his stomach, pulling, tearing, until his skin was rent and his spoiled insides poured forth.
“COME ON!” he screamed over the chopper’s whining motor. The water turned brown around him, currents of gore being pulled by the spinning rotor and sent outward. Would it have retained enough of its faculties to sense him? Would it come?
He saw the dinghy in the distance, saw the black fin...it vanished beneath the water.
He didn’t think Diane and Zach could see him anymore. They were staring blankly at the yacht. Perhaps they’d only seen him go over. An ache permeated his being, so hot and so real he imagined the droplets running down his face were tears. I’m still here! I never left.
The fin emerged again. It was coming toward him.
He frantically shoveled what was left from his abdominal cavity. He slapped at the water with his palm. “COME ON!”
It was coming directly at him. The fin rose higher, and he saw the form of the terrible beast just beneath the surface. He hammered at the water and screamed until his lungs were flat and empty. And then the shark hit the rotor.
A geyser of black blood filled the air. Bone shrapnel blistered Green’s face. He lost his grip on the skid and went under.
Pressure built in his head, then gave; and it grew utterly silent. Far away, through shafts of light, he spied the dinghy. It was much smaller than before. He thought he might have seen paddles entering the water. But it was getting dark now, a deep blue blanket enfolding him. Soon the dinghy faded from view. Live well.
Water entered through his throat and his stomach, and Green relaxed his body and was weightless. Words and images passed through his mind and from it. A pair of fish flitted past his face. He watched their strange dance. They were lovers, he thought, and smiled.
* * *
David Dunwoody is the author o the EMPIRE series of zombie novels and short stories, as well as the horror collections UNBOUND & OTHER TALES and DARK ENTITIES. Dave lives in Utah and can be visited on the Web at daviddunwoody.com.
WHERE THE DEAD GO TO DIE
Sheldon Higdon
Fourteen years ago, my wife Tawny was bludgeoned to death with a candelabrum at her viewing. Right there in front of friends, family, our preacher, and me. She sat up in her casket while her Aunt Kathy was shedding tears for her. The next thing I knew, she was shedding her Aunt Kathy’s blood. It was awful and horrific and everyone freaked out. One moment I was mourning her death with tears and a memory of our first kiss, the next moment I was screaming. Looking back though, I’m not sure what I freaked about more: Tawny coming back to life with what looked like fear on her face, or my thirteen-year-old cousin, Paul, bashing her skull in with a fancy candleholder. Probably both.
That day—February twelfth, 1997—was the worst day of my life.
That was until the day I died.
By the time I died the act of returning to life was accepted and expected, so I had no newsworthy return. The whole zombie thing became the norm, it was no longer taboo. Many states passed laws to help us. To let us be us. Many people held strong beliefs that created chaos over the new laws. They formed groups and protested with signs that read: God Hates The Dead!—which I found ironic and perplexing—and the straight-to-the-point: Kill The Dead. Aim For The Head!
Death, Be Not Proud Page 11
