The Living Dead 2

by John Joseph Adams

  And then she waited.

  Pretty soon she heard the tappity-tap, tappity-tap, tappity-tap of little-girl heels coming up the stairs to the attic. And then…

  That’s when you walked in, Arlene.

  You walked in and said the four-word phrase that you said in the first half of that movie, in the scene when your mother was putting you to bed: “Tell me a story.” Most people don’t remember you said that. But you did, in that sweet, soft, cheery voice. Though that’s not what your voice sounds like now. You sound like a record that’s slowly melting as it plays.

  So. Did you like my story, Arlene? It was all about you—and me, too. But I said “Lorraine” instead of “I” because… Well, I don’t really feel like me anymore. But I’m not you.

  I don’t know who I am, where I am or even what I am.

  Hmmm…?

  No, I’m not your mommy, and I’m afraid I can’t help you.

  But who knows. Maybe pounding your head open with this hammer will help me.

  Zombie Gigolo

  By S. G. Browne

  S. G. Browne’s first novel Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament, “a dark comedy about life after undeath told from the perspective of a zombie,” came out in 2009 and was a finalist for this year’s Bram Stoker Award for best first novel. His second novel, which comes out in November, is Fated, “a dark, irreverent comedy about fate, destiny, and the consequences of getting involved in the lives of humans.” His short fiction can also be found in the anthology Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead.

  One of the things that’s appealing about zombie fiction is that zombies used to be us, and we’re just one bite or infected wound away from becoming one of them. That’s a sentiment Browne shares, but he also believes they’re experiencing their current popularity because they’re no longer just the mindless, shambling ghouls we’ve known and loved for the past forty years. “They’re faster. Funnier. Sentient,” he says. “Plus there’s this constant fascination with the inevitability of a zombie apocalypse. I mean, no one ever talks about the werewolf apocalypse. That would be ridiculous.”

  Browne’s own take on zombies, in his novel and two short stories, intended to show a different side to zombies: giving them sentience, viewing the world through their eyes and what they have to deal with. “When you think about it, most zombie films and fiction are really about the people rather than the zombies,” Browne says. “My fiction is about the zombies.”

  Just to warn you, our next story is a little gross. It was originally written for the “Gross Out Contest” at the 2008 World Horror Convention in Salt Lake City. Browne had just sold his novel Breathers, so, for his contest entry, he took a couple of ideas from that and ratcheted them up viscerally. The rules stated that the story had to be between three to five minutes in length when read aloud, so the authors had to be frugal with their words, maintain a decent gross-out factor, and cut out anything that didn’t move the story fast enough.

  Browne didn’t win, but he did come in third, winning him the coveted gummy haggis prize. But if our next story wasn’t gross enough to win, I’m not sure I want to know what did.

  Is it necrophilia if you’re both dead?

  Okay, technically we’re not dead. We’re undead. But semantics tend to take a back seat when you’re banging a three-week-old corpse who’s moaning that she’s about to come just before one of her main body cavities bursts open.

  At first I can’t tell if it’s the abdominal cavity or the pelvic cavity, because honestly when you’re an animated corpse, everything smells like a fecal smoothie. But then I see something that looks like a partially dissolved kidney and the fluid spilling out of her has the consistency of chunky chicken noodle soup, so I’m guessing abdominal cavity.

  I’m suddenly wishing I’d worn a condom.

  Though I suppose it could have been worse. I could have been eating her out. But she didn’t pay for the Surf and Turf.

  Not that this is the first time something like this has happened to me. After all, when you’re a zombie gigolo, you have to expect the smell of hydrogen sulfide and the oozing of intestinal juices and the occasional skin slip. But I should know better than to accept clients who are more than a couple of weeks past their Use By date.

  If you’ve never had your tongue down the throat of a zombie whose liquefied brain suddenly bubbled out of her mouth, you probably wouldn’t understand.

  The Cavity Burster gets up from the bed, apologizing for the mess as she tries to pack her internal organs back into her Lucky Brand jeans, dripping a trail of liquefied internal organs across the concrete floor on her way out. That’s why I use plastic sheets instead of Calvin Klein. They’re easy to rinse off and with the set-up I have in the cellar, I just wash everything down the drain. Otherwise, I’d spend all of my time at the laundromat.

  My two o’clock appointment is less than a week old. A Freshie. Still, she doesn’t exactly smell like Irish Spring. More like summer compost. Her stomach is already starting to blister, she has skin the texture of a greasy banana peel, and when I slide inside her, it feels like I’m fucking a nest of mummified cats’ tongues.

  The thing about zombies is that, other than our internal organs turning to soup and liquid leaking from enzyme-ravaged cells, there’s not a lot of natural lubrication.

  However, for those of us who were fortunate enough to have been embalmed, formaldehyde is the magic elixir that allows us to maintain some sense of pride.

  The Freshie wasn’t one of the fortunate ones.

  In addition to her cracked, bloating stomach and the aroma of rotting eggs that keeps leaking out of multiple orifices, the tips of her nipples are coming off in my mouth.

  Liquid from the deteriorating cells of a corpse can get in between the layers of skin and loosen them. This is called sloughage. It usually starts with the fingers and toes. Sometimes the skin of the entire hand or foot will come off.

  Not a pleasant thought when you’re fucking sandpaper.

  If you’ve never had the skin of your cock peel off like a used condom, you probably wouldn’t understand.

  As I slide in and out of the Freshie, I open my eyes and glance down at her face just inches from mine. Her eyes are closed in ecstasy, her mouth is open in a silent gasp, and greenish fluid from her lungs is oozing out of her nose.

  Morticians call this “frothy purge,” like it’s some new drink at Starbucks.

  Just as I’m about to blow my load, the Freshie sneezes and I’ve got frothy purge on my tongue and lower lip.

  Some zombies are walking Petri dishes, serving host to a plethora of bacteria and fungi. These are the unlucky ones who weren’t embalmed and who suffer the indignities of putrefaction as they slowly dissolve. In zombie circles, we refer to these pathetic creatures as Melters.

  My last customer of the day is a Melter.

  Her skin is peeling away, her body is covered with festering wounds, most of her hair has fallen out, and when she smiles, what few remaining teeth she has are coated in an oily black goo that runs down her chin because she has no lips.

  Before she gets on the bed, I pull out a can of Glade Neutralizer and circle around her, covering her from head to toe. I prefer the Neutralizer fragrance because it works directly toward the source of the odor, though Tropical Mist has a nice, fruity scent.

  The moment I climb on top of her, I’m wondering if I’ve made a big mistake.

  Her breath washes over me like fresh, hot vomit. Her skin is the texture of raw chicken, sliding back and forth and tearing away in my hands. When she drags her fingers down my back, her fingernails detach. Occasionally, the pus oozing from her wounds erupts in an orgasmic geyser.

  Keeping your focus when you’re banging a Melter isn’t easy. It’s enough to deflate even a post-mortem permanent boner. So I think about human flesh and I close my eyes and I keep banging away.

  But with every thrust it feels like I’m fucking mashed potatoes. Like I’m fucking overcooked rice. Like the rice is swarming
around my cock.

  When I pull out, my cock is covered with maggots. They’re swarming around my shaft, trying to eat their way inside. At least I remembered to wear a condom this time.

  I slap at my permanent erection, knocking the majority of the maggots off, but I can feel some of them scurrying across my nuts, tickling my perineum, headed for the nearest point of entry. Before I can brush the rest of them away, I have maggots squirming up my ass.

  I need a bidet.

  I need a Clorox douche.

  I need a turkey baster and some gasoline.

  On the bed, the Melter is picking larvae out of her pubic hair and asking me if I want to clean her carpet. She smiles at me, black saliva dripping from her lipless mouth. She says if I do, she’ll suck the maggots out of my asshole.

  I tell her to get out and to take her infested pussy with her. Then I lock the cellar door, grab a bottle of Jack, put on some Barry Manilow, and try to figure out what I’m going to do now.

  You spend your entire undeath working to cultivate a reputation for affordable, high-caliber, parasite-free sex and in one moment of misguided judgment, you throw it all away.

  If you’ve never had maggots crawling around inside your rectal cavity and feasting on your subcutaneous fat, you probably wouldn’t understand.

  Rural Dead

  By Bret Hammond

  Bret Hammond is the coauthor of the book The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Geocaching and the publisher of Geocacher University (www.geocacher-u.com), a website devoted to providing education and materials to both new and experienced geocachers. This story is his first and only fiction published to date, which originally appeared on the zombie website Tales of the Zombie War. In addition to his interest in geocaching and zombies, he’s also a pastor and has published articles and cartoons in a variety of religious publications.

  The Amish are a Christian community of Swiss-German origin centered in Pennsylvania, perhaps best-known in pop culture thanks to the Harrison Ford movie Witness. Amish culture emphasizes hard work, humility, and family. They dress simply, largely forego modern technology (notably automobiles and electrical appliances), socialize mainly among themselves, and work in trades such as farming, construction, and crafts-making. Their main method of ensuring that members keep to Amish ways is peer pressure, known as shunning. Whether or not an individual is to be shunned is determined by the leadership, and when someone is being shunned even their spouse may refuse to speak to them. In severe cases of noncompliance a person may be expelled from the community, though they are always welcome to return if they mend their ways.

  Many schisms have developed in Amish communities over the years over what rules are to be followed and how severe shunning should be. The Supreme Court case Wisconsin v. Yoder established the precedent that Amish are exempt from many American laws, including those involving compulsory education (Amish children are not educated past eighth grade), child labor, and Social Security. The Amish are also extreme pacifists, and once faced severe penalties and abuse for refusing to fight in America’s wars.

  Our next story, which is a bit more wholesome than the last one, takes a look at how this unusual and close-knit community weathers a zombie apocalypse, and what happens when extreme pacifism collides with extreme circumstances.

  We’ve blocked off the reference room in the small community library for these interviews. Otto Miller sits across the table from me, his arms folded tightly against his chest. He is an elder in this small Amish community and looks every bit the part. I ask him to state his name and he simply stares at me and then looks down at the digital recorder I’ve placed on the table. He strokes his beard a couple times and then folds his arms again. I can see we’re going to get nowhere with this.

  I click the device off. That’s not enough. I put it back down in my satchel and pull out a yellow legal tablet. As I click my pen he begins to speak.

  “I have nothing against you, English, nor your devices. But you have to understand us. We don’t cling to your machines, we don’t participate in your ways, we don’t ask anything of you. But you and your…things…your ways…they are constantly thrust upon us. Even your plague.”

  He points his finger squarely at me. I’ve heard of “righteous indignation,” but I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen it. “I read your newspapers, listen to your broadcasts. You think this plague was the hand of God? Wouldn’t that be convenient? If all this were simply the divine pouring out judgment and wrath upon the world? No, this was your own doing. You—you English—you played with the natural order of things and this was the result. Like breeding your livestock in one family line, sooner or later the results will haunt you. They haunt all of us.”

  I’m eager to get the interview on track. “Why don’t we back up a bit, Mr. Miller. When was it the infection first touched your community?”

  Otto Miller looks out the window for a moment and gathers his thoughts. “You are from the city, yes?”

  I smile. “Yes. New York. My home is very far removed from what you have around here.”

  “You might think that we’re completely isolated from the rest of the world, but it’s not true, that’s not our way. Separate but not isolated. We are not yoked to the world the way you are. So we were aware of the sickness, the “African Rabies,” as they called it. We read the reports in the newspapers, listened to the radio and even watched the news on the television in the store in town. As more and more truth came out about what the disease truly was we were…cautious. But it seemed as far removed from us as…well…as New York City.

  “It was in March, after that first winter. It was a hard winter, and I suppose if it hadn’t been we would have seen them sooner and maybe been able to prepare ourselves better. I was up at 4:00 a.m. preparing for my morning chores. I was walking into the milking barn when I heard an odd sound in the pasture. I raised my lantern and that’s when I saw my first…plague victim.

  “In life he had been Jonas Yoder, a Mennonite from up the road. Jonas was a good man, I had known him all my life. There he stood in my pasture, mouth open, moaning, and what must have been a pitchfork wound through his chest.”

  Elder Miller looks deep into my eyes to the point of discomfort. “I suppose something you need to understand, being from the city, is that the first victims we ever saw were our friends and neighbors. People we had known our whole lives. I’ve read your ‘survival guides’ with faceless pictures of the undead. These were faces we had known and welcomed into our homes for years. You need to understand that to understand us.”

  I nod, and he continues. “It was still an hour or so from daylight, so I was very aware of the need to get back inside. I wasn’t sure how Jonas got into my pasture, but I felt sure he couldn’t get back out on the side closest to my home. I went back inside, locked the door and waited for sunup with my wife.

  “Sunrise brought a horrifying sight. Jonas wasn’t alone. There was Rebecca his wife. Further out in the pasture I noticed members of the King family, the Beilers and a few people from town—some of them familiar, others not. I also saw the gaping hole in my fence on the side closest to the road. That’s how they had gotten in.

  “Even worse they had gotten into the barn through some loose planks I had intended to fix in the spring. They were in the stalls with my work animals. The sounds were awful. I could hear my horses crying out as their flesh was torn. The sound drew the undead into the barn to feed. By the time my son arrived there must have been over thirty of them in the barn.”

  “So what did you and your son do?” I ask.

  Otto Miller chuckles. “We simply did what needed to be done. We fixed the fence.”

  I laugh with him. Here was a man who faced the worst disaster in history with the simple truth he had learned all his life—if there’s a hole in the fence you have to fix it. The world was going to hell but the Amish remained unchanged.

  “We knew enough not to get close, we knew about the danger of the bites. But they were in the barn, so
my son Amos locked them in and we went to work fixing the fence. We couldn’t afford to have any more on our land so we strengthened the fence, added braces and chicken wire.

  “So at this time it was just you, your wife, and your son?”

  “He had brought his wife and two children with him. After we fixed the fence he went out to the neighbors and brought back everyone he could find and convince to come. We are blessed with a large home that was often used as a meeting place. By the end of the day there were sixteen of us. We were able to bring a few more of our fellowship in over the next week or so. We grew to thirty-three members in our home.”

  “That seems like a lot of people to house, let alone feed.”

  Mr. Miller straightened in his chair. If I didn’t know of the humility of these people I would have thought there was a touch of pride in his response. “To be Amish is to know how to provide for your family and those you are in covenant with—even in the most difficult times. That is simply our way. Your infection simply allowed us to do for one another what we had always prepared to do.

  “Canned goods were brought from other homes. There were still chickens in the coop, so we had eggs and the occasional fowl. We had to keep the birds inside the coop most of the time, though, their movement attracted too much attention from the infected and—we feared—would attract attention from survivors as well.”

  “You saw other survivors from outside your community?”

  “Occasionally. It is very difficult to know the intentions of those outside of the fellowship. We did our best to remain out of sight—as we always had—but occasionally they would come to the house looking for help or refuge.”

  “Did they get any?”

  “We wouldn’t turn them away empty, English. That wouldn’t be Christian. But we would give them some food, some water and send them on their way. ‘A cup of cold water in Jesus’ name’ is what the Scripture commands. They received that and more.