The Living Dead 2

by John Joseph Adams

  Counting… recounting, every bloody fist print, foot mark, panicked, frantic forehead indentation. One hundred seventy-six.

  This is what happens when you lose it. Do NOT go there again!

  It always worked, although it always seemed to take a little bit longer. The last time he’d counted down to forty-one. This time was thirty-nine.

  You deserve a drink.

  Getting up was painful. His lower back ached. His knees ached. His thighs and calves and ankles burned a little bit. His head swam. That’s why he’d given up morning stretches. Dizziness was worse than anything. That first time he’d shot up too quickly; the bruise on his face still throbbed from the fall. This time he thought he’d gotten up slowly enough. Thought wrong, moron. Fred dropped back to his knees. That was safer. He kept his head turned to the right; from this angle you always looked to the right! One hand on the rim to steady himself. The other dipped the plastic coke bottle into the reservoir. The water was only a few degrees colder, but was enough to jolt him back to full consciousness. I need to drink more, not just for dehydration, but when I start to drift.

  Four sips. He didn’t want to overdo it. The plumbing was still on. For now. Better to conserve though. Better to be smart. His mouth was dry. He tried to swish. Another bad idea. All the pain washed over him at once; the cracks in his lips, the sores on his soft palate, the staff infection at the end of his tongue he’d gotten while unconsciously trying to suck out any last particles of food between his teeth. Lotta fuckin’ good that did.

  Fred shook his head in disgust. He wasn’t thinking. He’d left his eyes open, and that’s when he made the biggest mistake of the day. He looked left. His eyes locked on the floor-length mirror.

  A sad little weakling stared back at him. Pale skin, matted hair and sunken, bloodshot eyes. He was naked. His janitor uniform didn’t fit anymore. His body was living off its own fat.

  Loser. No muscle, just fat.

  Pussy. Hairy skin hung in blotched, deflated rolls.

  Pathetic piece of shit!

  Behind him, on the opposite wall were the other marks he’d made. Day Two, when he’d stopped trying to widen the twelve-by-twelve-inch window with fingernails and teeth. Day Four, when he’d taken his last solid crap. Day Five, when he’d stopped screaming for help. Day Eight when he’d tried to eat his leather belt because he’d seen some Pilgrims do it in a movie. It was a nice thick belt, birthday present from—

  No, don’t go there.

  Day Thirteen, when the vomiting and diarrhea had ended. What the hell was in that leather? Day Seventeen, when he became too weak to masturbate. And every day, filled with crying and begging, silent deals with God and whimpering calls for—

  Don’t.

  Every day that ended, fittingly, huddled in the fetal position because there wasn’t any room to stretch out.

  DON’T THINK ABOUT HER!

  But of course he did. He thought about her every day. He thought about her every minute. He talked to her in his dreams, and in the no-man’s-land between dreams and reality.

  She was okay. She had to be. She knew how to take care of herself. She was still taking care of him, wasn’t she? That’s why he was still living at home. He needed her, not the other way around. She would be fine. Of course she would.

  He tried not to think about her, but he always did, and of course, the other thoughts always followed.

  Failure! Didn’t listen to the warnings! Didn’t get out when you could!

  Failure! Let yourself get trapped in this little room, not even the whole bathroom, just the closet-sized toilet box, drinking out of the goddamn shitter!

  Failure! Didn’t even have the fuckin’ balls to break the mirror and do the honorable thing you should have done! And now if they get in, you don’t even have the fuckin’ strength!

  Failure, FAILURE!

  “FAILURE!”

  He’d said that out loud. Fuck.

  The loud thumping against the door sent him crumpling against the far corner. There were more of them; he could hear their moans echoing back down the hall. They matched those coming from the street below. They’d looked like an ocean down there, the last time he’d stood on the toilet to look. Nine floors down they roiled like a solid mass, stretching almost out of sight. The hotel must be entirely infested now, every floor, every room. The first week he’d heard shuffling through the ceiling above him. The first night, he’d heard the screams.

  At least they didn’t understand how to open a pocket door. He’d been lucky there: If it had been the kind of door that swung instead of slid shut; if the wood had been hollow instead of solid; if they’d been smart enough to figure out how to open it; if the doorway had been in the back of the outer bathroom, instead of off to the side…

  The more the ones in the bedroom pushed, the more they pinned others in the bathroom helplessly against the rear wall. If it had been a straight line, their collective weight, their sheer numbers…

  He was safe. They couldn’t get in, no matter how much they clawed and struggled and moaned… and moaned. The toilet paper in his ears wasn’t working as well anymore. Too much wax, too much oil had flattened them against the sides of the canals. If only he’d saved some more, and not tried to eat it.

  Maybe its not the worst thing. He reassured himself, again. When a rescue comes, you need to hear the chopper.

  It was better this way. When the moans got too bad, Fred reached for the book, one more bit of good luck he’d found by running in here. When he got out of here, he’d have to track down the original owner, somehow, and thank him for forgetting it next to the toilet. “Dude, it totally kept me sane all that time!” he’d say. Well, maybe not quite like that. He’d rehearsed at least a hundred more eloquent speeches, all delivered over a couple of cool ones, or probably more likely a couple of MREs. That’s what they’d been called on page 238: “Meals Ready to Eat.” Did they really make them with chemical cookers right in the packaging? He’d have to go back and reread that part again. Tomorrow, though. Page 361 was his favorite; 361 to 379.

  It was getting dark. He’d stop this time before his head hurt too much. Then maybe a few sips of water, and he’d make it an early night. Fred’s thumb found the dog-eared page.

  “There’s too many of them!” Naomi shrieked, the sound perfectly matching the skidding of the motorcycle’s tires.

  The Rapeworm

  By Charles Coleman Finlay

  Charles Coleman Finlay is the author of the novels The Prodigal Troll, The Patriot Witch, A Spell for the Revolution, and The Demon Redcoat. Finlay’s short fiction—most of which appears in his collection, Wild Things—has been published in several magazines, such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Black Gate, and in anthologies, such as The Best of All Flesh and my own By Blood We Live. He has twice been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has also been nominated for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Sidewise Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.

  Radiation, a new and exotic phenomena for much of the twentieth century, was seized on by writers as a pretext for all manner of unlikely but exciting developments, everything from giant monsters to Spider-Man. Zombies too, of course: In Night of the Living Dead, it’s suggested that the recently deceased are brought back as zombies due to strange radiation from a passing comet.

  The idea of extraterrestrial influence being responsible for an exponentially expanding plague that transforms ordinary people into a sinister menace is an old one in science fiction. Perhaps the best known example is Jack Finney’s 1954 novel The Body Snatchers, filmed in 1956 as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (and remade several times since), in which lurking alien seed pods grow perfect simulacra of your friends and neighbors, and the impersonators then proceed to murder and replace the originals. Another well-known example is Robert Heinlein’s 1951 novel The Puppet Masters, about sluglike aliens that attach themselves to the backs of human hosts and take control of them. (The novel, which taps into
the anti-Communist hysteria of the time, makes explicit analogies between the alien menace and the Soviet Union.)

  For whatever reason, zombie stories of recent decades have tended to eschew cosmic explanations and have typically blamed zombies on man-made superviruses or else just left the question open. Our next story harkens back to this grand old tradition of zombies from outer space, and reminds us that we should never, ever forget to watch the skies.

  When the rapeworms began to rain from the Ohio skies, I tossed my two boys in the truck with cases of canned food and all our camping gear, and we headed south for the Hocking Hills, far away from Columbus and the other big cities.

  Too many other folks had the same idea. We found a small colony in and around Old Man’s Cave, clusters of tents spilling down the gorge from the shelter of the cave all the way to the Devil’s Bathtub. There were men and women both, which was just plain stupid with the rains coming this far north. Some folks were hostile, but a couple of college kids offered to help us pitch camp.

  Josh hung back at my elbow, fidgeting. When the college kids weren’t looking, he bumped into me and whispered, “Dad, we have to get farther away than this.”

  I looked down at his face, and saw the way he was trying to look mean and strong, and I hoped he wasn’t imitating me. He was only thirteen, and his face still had a few soft edges to it.

  “Don’t be scared,” I said.

  “I’m not scared.”

  “Neither am I,” I lied. “It’s safe out here.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  Josh was a news junkie, had been falling asleep at night with CNN, ever since the spaceship—or whatever it was—passed over Earth and the rapeworms started. At first the scientists thought it was a killer asteroid aimed at the planet. Maybe it would have been better for us all if it had been.

  “Hey,” one of the college kids yelled. “You can leave the kids here, go get your stuff from the car.”

  Nick, my nine-year-old, tugged frantically at my sleeve, his chin trembling. He talked through clenched teeth, punctuating each word with an angry pause. “Don’t. Leave. Us. Here.”

  I put my arm around him and pulled him close, but he struggled against my grip. “I won’t do that. I promise we’ll stay together. We’ll be okay.”

  So I told the college kids we’d just go up to the car together so the boys could help me carry stuff. Then when we got to the parking lot, we ran to the car and headed east on Route 56 toward Lake Hope State Park.

  It was getting dark. When I first saw the man in the plaid flannel jacket on the side of the road, I figured him for another refugee. But then he saw us, and lurched out into the path of the car waving his arms for us to stop. By the way he moved, all stiff and jerky, I could tell that he was infected.

  “Get down,” I yelled at the boys. “Get down!”

  I tried to steer around him, but he moved fast, if awkwardly. I had a brief nightmare of him flying through the windshield like a deer, because that would be it for us then. But I twisted the wheel at the last second, clipping him with the bumper, and he flew off the side of the road while I held onto the wheel and controlled the car.

  “What was that? What was that?” Nick yelled.

  Josh’s voice was calmer. “Did you hit him? Is he gone? Dad, did you hit him?”

  “Don’t worry! Settle down!” I yelled. Fighting every natural instinct in my body to pull off to the side of the road, I put my foot down and hit the gas. “It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”

  Less than a mile up the road, I saw a car crashed into a ditch, which made me wonder: What if that man wasn’t infected? What if he was just an accident victim, injured, looking for help? I pushed those questions out of my mind; I had to assume he was infected.

  When I came to the Lake Hope sign, I drove past it.

  Soon enough, we were on a dark, unpopulated road that led through the Wayne National Forest. If we stayed on it, we’d end up in the university town of Athens, where there were too many people. So when I saw a gate for an old logging trail into the forest, I pulled over and broke the chain on it with the tire iron. After driving the car through, I closed the gate again and poked through my toolbox for a spare lock to close the gate again. Sure, somebody else might come along and break it later, but there was no need to advertise we were here.

  If I’d been thinking ahead, I would have driven all night. South toward Ironton, there were places in the woods as far away from people as we were likely to get anywhere in Ohio, and the rapeworms were unlikely to spread north into the upper peninsula of Michigan. But it was November, already after seven at night, and in the dark you can’t see the rapeworms falling.

  Nick was at the frazzled end of his nerves, whining and sucking his thumb, something he hadn’t done since kindergarten. I just wanted to be someplace, anyplace. So we found a clearing, out of sight of the road, and we set up camp. Josh seemed glad to have some work to do. He practically put up the whole tent by himself while I talked to Nick and tried to get him to calm down.

  Well after midnight, when I thought they were both asleep in their thermal sleeping bags, I tiptoed back out to the truck to listen to the radio. There were still stations broadcasting from some of the cities in the north. I sat there shivering, scanning the AM radio channels in hopes of any helpful news.

  WTVN out of Columbus was dead, but I was able to pick up WJR out of Detroit. Snatches of news came in through the static.

  “…scientists are still trying to understand the alien biology of the parasite infection that is sweeping the globe…”

  “…officials report that the nuclear device exploded over Orlando, Florida, has sterilized the threat there, and will prevent the spread of further contamination…”

  “…meanwhile in Ohio, the governor has extended martial law to the highways. All personal travel is forbidden as long as the crisis lasts. Cars on the highway may be shot without warning…”

  When that signal faded, I tried a Cleveland station with no luck. I could pick up a couple Christian stations out of West Virginia, but I couldn’t stomach their message. If we survived, if I saved my kids, then it wasn’t the end of the world.

  I was lost in these thoughts, watching the breath frost from my nose, when a tap at the window made me jump, and I jerked up my gun and aimed it at my attacker.

  It was Nick. He was standing there without his coat on, bawling.

  I started sobbing even before I opened the door and gathered him into my arms. I rocked him and told him how sorry I was. Snot ran from my nose while static poured out of the tinny speakers.

  After a few moments, we both stopped crying. He snuggled down into my arms. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “I’m listening to music.”

  I reached out and hit the scan button, looking for something to distract him, but we only caught snatches of news, mostly from the Christian stations in small towns still unaffected by the plague.

  “…the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven fallen unto the earth: and there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss…”

  “…and the rest of mankind, who were not killed with these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands…”

  “…hallelujah! Salva—”

  I punched it off. Then I turned off the car, to save the battery and the gas. I started to sing to him, “Bye, bye, Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the Levee—”

  “Dad, that’s an old song. It’s so lame.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, tousling his hair.

  “Why couldn’t we bring Schrody?”

  “Schrody’s a smart cat. He can look out for himself.”

  “But who’s going to change his litter box?”

  I hugged him close, looking through the window as the dashboard light faded. The trees formed a black wall around us, like the sides of a pit, and the darkness of the sky made the stars seem to twitch like maggots. “We get to camp out and pretend we’re Indians. Won�
�t that be fun?”

  “Where’s Mom? Is Mom safe?”

  I checked my cellphone to see if my ex had called, but the battery was dead and I had forgotten to pack the dashboard charger. Their mother and I had gone through a bitter divorce, which we tried to keep from the boys, even though we split custody. Tomorrow was the usual day I turned them back to her. She would be frantic with worry when she didn’t hear from us, but I convinced myself it was better to have no contact until the plague passed. The government had censored pictures of what happened to women infected by the rapeworm, but we heard rumors.

  “Yeah, she’s safe,” I promised. “She wants me to tell you that she misses you.”

  His eyes brightened for a second, then he sank back down into my arms. “You don’t really know.”

  I held him until he fell back to sleep. He started to wake up every time I tried to put him down or move him, so I leaned the seat back and fell asleep myself.

  When I woke up in the morning, the windows were frosted over with ice, and the sun coming through them was bright and harsh. Josh was in the car too, in the passenger seat, curled up with his head against my arm.

  They both looked untroubled in their sleep, the way they always had until just a few months before. I knew I would do whatever I had to do to keep them safe.

  After we woke up, I checked our supplies. We had our fishing gear, and I had my grandfather’s old single barrel shotgun in the trunk, with a couple boxes of shells. There was also his old .38 Special revolver, the one he bought to protect his store and then never needed. I had just the rounds inside that, and no extras. I didn’t like guns, and wouldn’t have owned these if I hadn’t inherited them.

  I checked out our supply of canned foods. If we were careful, we could get through the next few weeks until things settled down.