Three Zombie Novels

by David Wellington

  She looked down the street again, this time looking at the shadows. All the places she could hide in the midnight hour. She saw a doorway that had her name written all over it and she stepped into the moonlight, ready to hurry across the street as quickly as she was able. She got about three steps before she heard the dog whimper in pain again. She caught a flash of golden energy out of the corner of her mind’s eye and whirled to face whatever had stalked her.

  “Excuse me. Excuse me, Miss!”

  The teenaged boy stood not ten yards away, one hand barely holding the dog down from jumping on Nilla and tearing her face off.

  Nilla froze. Jagged spikes of violence tore through her brain. She knew what she was supposed to do. What she had to do. She didn’t know why she was delaying the inevitable. Her muscles wouldn’t obey her brain, though.

  “It’s after curfew, Miss. Do you have ID? A driver’s license or something?”

  Nilla turned slowly, a big, warm smile on her face. “I guess I left them in my other pants,” she said, shrugging helplessly. If she wasn’t going to fight she would have to bluff her way out of this. Act stupid, she thought. Not very difficult—she’d just completely blown her cover. “I’m just on my way home now, I promise.”

  The boy moved to stand a few feet away and frowned sympathetically. “Look, Miss, you’re obviously not dead, I mean they don’t talk and all. I still have to see some ID, though. It’s that or I lose this job.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t want that,” Nilla said. She stepped closer to him.

  Ice filled up her body, ice cubes sloshing around inside of her like a cooler at the end of a long beach party. She felt her skin might just fall off, she was shivering so much. She stared deep into his eyes and saw that playing sexy wouldn’t get her out of this one. He had a gun, and the dog, and he was going to kill her in a second when he realized his mistake. He was going to see her dead energy and make the connection. Still she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t attack. The mindless dead did it all the time—what was her problem?

  He was only a foot and a half away. She could make out every pimple on his face, she could see the pulse beating in his jugular. He was exactly the same height as her, she realized. Then something happened. He got even closer and suddenly she wasn’t looking at him with her eyes, anymore, but with the hair on the back of her arms.

  His energy was so bright and so golden. It called to her. Something snapped inside of her. Some part of her heart breaking, maybe. More likely just a half-dead neuron firing long after it was due, a connection finally being made.

  She could do it. Oh, yes. Everything else disappeared as his energy got closer and closer to her. His delicious energy.

  She reached up and knocked his hat off, into the street. She could do this.

  “What the fuck did you do that for, you stupid bitch?” he demanded as he bent to retrieve it.

  “I didn’t want to get blood on it,” she said, and grabbed him around the neck.

  From: BIGSkyPILOT (Moderator)

  Re: Tips for Keeping Water Clean and Potable

  There’s so much government spam now, isn’t anybody real still posting? I’ve only got power two hours a day now but I’ll keep the server running on generator as long as I can. [Forum post from www.bigskypilot.net, 4/11/05]

  “That woman is a lunatic,” Clark announced, between panting breaths.

  The Civilian had recovered from the lethargy that had possessed him early and was leading his wonk through the crowded streets of Washington. His stated intention was to buy Clark dinner at “a really amazing titty bar I know just around the corner”. Apparently the Russian waitresses barely spoke English and didn’t yet know you weren’t allowed to touch them. Clark was looking for a way to gracefully bow out but in the meantime he had to hurry to keep up with the Civilian’s long strides. Compared to the (erstwhile) laid-back streets of Denver, everyone seemed in a hurry in Washington.

  “Purslane? Oh, she’s nuttier than the combined scrotums of the Boston Red Sox. She’s also a close personal friend of the Second Lady. The Veep loves Purslane Dunnstreet and when the Veep loves somebody the SecDef loves them too, and as for me, well, I love everybody. Hating people is such a timesuck. Come on, last one there buys the lap dances.”

  Clark followed the Civilian into a dark, smoke-free den of booming techno music and strobing lights. A skeletal woman in a tight dress printed with hammers and sickles handed Clark a plastic martini glass. “O, Kapitan, my Kapitan,” she sighed, and dug her fingers inside Clark’s uniform shirt to touch the skin above his solar plexus.

  Clark was paralyzed by the sudden contact. He hadn’t thought it possible for anyone to get that close to him that quickly. The Civilian crammed in between the two of them. “You’re wasting your time, sweetheart. He’d rather be cleaning his own weapon, if you know what I mean.” He lead Clark to a bar at the back of the room where a number of suited men sat deep in conversation. A woman wearing nothing but panties and a Russian fur hat swayed back and forth listlessly over their heads.

  Clark recovered himself, slowly. He grimaced and tried again to convince his benefactor of the danger. “I assure you, the plan we just heard will fail,” he shouted over the music. The Civilian waved a finger at the bartender. “I’ve seen how these things fight. I’ve shot them myself. Dunnstreet’s ideas are useless to us.”

  “Harsh words, Clark, from the great hero of Denver. You proved it’s possible to prevail against the dead, didn’t you? Not one man lost. You should be more proud of your accomplishments.”

  The lights in the strip club dazzled Clark. He looked at the martini glass in his hand—it was dry to the touch.

  “You’re supposed to fill it up at the bar and bring it back to her. That means you want to take her upstairs to the Martini Room.”

  “What happens in the Martini Room?”

  “Many men wish to know exactly that,” the Civilian barked. “But only the rich ever find out.” His smile fell when he realized Clark didn’t understand. “They fuck you, Clark. For money.”

  Clark set it carefully on the bar, out of the way of the dancer. He suddenly and pangfully missed the Brown Palace’s restaurant, with its nineteenth century decorum and its perfect slabs of beef. Gone now, most likely forever. With the rest of Denver.

  “If anything,” he said, quite careful of his word choice, “I proved that it is possible for the most heavily-armed, best-trained veteran warfighters in the world to survive in the midst of these things, and that’s assuming they can bug out when things get too hot.”

  The Civilian scowled at him, a cold, reptilian look that made Clark’s skin feel filthy. Clark had the sudden and repugnant thought that he was finally seeing the Civilian’s true face, the one behind the epoxied-on smile. It was horrible to behold. “You’re talking as if there were an alternative.”

  “There may just be! And anyway, anything would be better than that Dunnstreet’s battle orders! How can you take her seriously?”

  The Civilian gestured for a woman wearing a Soviet tank commander’s soft helmet to come and sit next to him. She pulled her dress up over her head and he leaned into her breasts, rolling his face in her skin, inhaling long and hard. “Well, now, there is actually a good reason for that.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” Clark replied.

  The Civilian nodded as he sucked at his drink. “Because it’s the only plan we’ve got,” he said, slipping a fifty dollar bill into the woman’s thong. “Nobody else has ever thought it through. I’m serious. No policy group, no strategic envisioning team, nobody at the Pentagon or West Point or OpFor or anywhere else has ever bothered to really sit down and figure out how to fight a war on American soil. It has always been unthinkable.”

  “Nobody?”

  The Civilian gulped at neat vodka while he answered. He seemed almost desperate to get as much alcohol into his system as humanly possible. “There have been wargame scenarios published, where Canada invades New York State, say, or France attacks wi
th nuclear weapons. It’s all Dungeons and Dragons shit and meanwhile Purslane Dunnstreet was toiling in solitude waiting for her big day, making the right friends, playing the game. Bannerman, sometimes you have to drink the Kool-Aid. You’ve just heard what we have planned. It’s time for you to decide which team you’re playing for. Listen, I gotta go piss away all the Red Bulls I drank this morning. Keep the girls warm for me, will you?”

  The Civilian got up and pushed his way through the crowd. Not without some difficulty Clark ordered a scotch and soda from the bar and sipped it in morose quietude. He studied the crowd with his eyes—he’d never been in a strip club before and he was curious, well, mildly curious as to what sort of person patronized them. Studying the customers was less embarrassing than looking at the staff, though. The sight of so much naked flesh made Clark blush.

  He was not the only uniformed officer in the club, nor was he the highest ranking, but the vast majority of the men wore the black suits of career civil servants. He recognized several, or thought he did—he couldn’t see clearly more than a few dozen feet in the strobe-shattered darkness.

  Despite the general chaos Clark managed somehow to be surprised when a young woman dressed like a Colonial era town cryer walked into the club ringing an enormous handbell. She had a clipboard under one arm and she read from it without much enthusiasm as she rang her bell. “Hear ye, hear ye, good people, it’s time to get your bets in. All bets must be placed by midnight tonight. Today’s deadpool is for Cleveland, Ohio. Double your money if Cleveland is overrun before midnight tonight! Hear ye, hear ye!”

  Clark had blushed before. Now he blanched. He put his drink down on the bar and shoved through the patrons, needing to get out into the clean air. A completely naked woman with a red star tattooed on either of her nipples grabbed him around the waist but he wriggled free.

  As he bumped past the reveling wonks of Washington he finally looked a few of them in the eyes and he realized what was going on. These people weren’t just jaded cynics willing to sacrifice the country for their own self-interest. They were suffering from threat fatigue, just as they had after September Eleventh. Too much horror that required your full attention, all of the time. Too much demand on one’s sense of gravitas and it broke, snapped, fell to pieces.

  That wasn’t a good enough excuse, he decided. They needed to regain their composure and get back to work. But he wasn’t the one to tell them as much.

  Out in the evening air he breathed deeply and stared up at where the stars would be if they weren’t obscured by the light haze of the Capital.

  The Civilian spilled out of the door behind him, a dewy can of beer in his hand.

  “There’s so little time left—did you hear? Cleveland is about to fall,” Clark told him, his hands tight fists in his pockets. “I have no doubt the Epidemic has already spread to Asia, across the Pacific. It will be in Europe soon enough and then it will have covered the entire globe.”

  “A very wise man said something to me once. ‘Laddy,’ he said, ‘time’s only valuable to them that are counting it.’ I guess that means the dead don’t need watches. This is it, Bannerman, the big D, the big A maybe.”

  Doomsday, the Civilian meant. The big A was either Armageddon or Apocalypse—you could take your pick. Clark shook off the idea. He had one more card up his sleeve. “There’s a girl out there somewhere. In California, maybe, though I imagine she probably got out in time. She’s dead, but she can talk.”

  The Civilian popped open his can with a noise halfway between a fart and a gunshot.

  Clark went on. “Denver was lost because the dead somehow managed to organize their behavior enough to get over a ten-foot fence. Disease spread through the relocation camps far more quickly than any of our models can account for. There’s a deeper game at work here than we think.”

  “There always is,” the Civilian told him.

  “Don’t you understand? We know how it spreads now. If we find the girl we’ll know even more. It’s a longshot, but we have to take it!”

  “You want me to back your play? I’m truly sorry,” the Civilian said, pausing to hiccup, “if you feel like you’re being shorted here. But tell me, how much should I trust a by-the-numbers Captain of the Guard who comes busting in here telling me that he and he alone can save the world? Come on, walk a mile in my shoes. Hmm.” He looked down. “I could use a shine, actually. Get ‘em shined while you’re walking in them, willya?” He giggled and nearly choked on another hiccup. “Come on. I know a place where they jerk you off into hot towels. My treat.”

  Bannerman could barely work up enough revulsion to shake his head. He stared down the alley. The people he’d seen inside—the wonks and the generals, the policy-makers and the people who knew all the secrets. They didn’t have a plan. Not a real one.

  He did. He had to make the Civilian see it. His benefactor saw him as a token in a broader game. He saw him as a way to cover Defense’s collective ass. No matter how bad things got the Pentagon could claim they’d been doing everything in their power—and Clark would be the symbol of that wasted effort.

  It was time for Clark to become a player in that game, instead of just a pawn. He summoned up every bit of resolution he possessed.

  “We can save the world but you have to believe in me,” he said.

  The look on the Civilian’s face was completely sober. It was a look of cold calculation. “Because some Californian blonde wasn’t quite as stupid as the usual brand of dead people.”

  Clark understood just how serious the question was. “Yes.”

  The Civilian wiped at his face with his big hands and pushed back his hair. “Alright. But what am I supposed to tell the President?” he asked.

  “Well,” Clark said, feeling his heart pound in his chest, “you can remind him I am the Hero of Denver.”

  Light spread across the Civilian’s face like a rush of blood. His eyes went wide and his mouth fell open. “George Fucking Washington’s ghost!” The Civilian held his beer out toward Clark in salute.

  “I take it that’s a yes,” Bannerman said, sighing in relief.

  “Hells, yes. We can send you back west tonight. And you know what? I’m coming with you.” He smirked when he saw the look that brought to Clark’s face. “You think—hic—I want to stick around here and wait for Purslane to get us all killed, too?”

  SOS DAUGHTER SICK HELP ANYBODY [Message mowed into a field of corn in Iowa, 4/12/05]

  It had happened so quickly, Nilla hadn’t really thought it through. Blood was everywhere. It had pooled beneath the boy, ruining his clothes. He stirred with a spasmodic movement beneath her and she felt his dark energy like an ice pack pressed against her flesh. Nilla recalled waking up in a puddle of her own blood, not so long ago. She wondered what he felt, if anything.

  Behind her the dog barked up a cacophony of irritation. She wanted to enjoy the feeling the boy’s energy gave her, the feeling like she was alive again. The dog wouldn’t let her do that. She reached for its collar, intending to shut it up, and stopped herself.

  Mael might own most of her soul, she decided, but not all of it. The dog had done nothing to hurt her. She wouldn’t kill it just for being annoying.

  Still. The damned animal wouldn’t stop barking. Someone would come looking to find out what was going on. She had to leave before then.

  She got up and she moved on, taking the boy’s brown baseball cap with her. She thought it would shade her eyes and help hide her face. She moved quickly, almost running—faster than she’d been, more nimble than since the day she died. The boy’s life energy thrummed through her, his gold coursing down the wires of her nerves. She stuck to the shadows, trying to look inconspicuous whenever she passed through a patch of streetlight.

  Behind her in the darkness the dog stopped barking. She heard gunshots and thought of the boy. They had found the boy she’d eaten, what was left of him, and put him down like a rabid animal. She only hoped no one had recognized him before they started shooting.
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  She felt an irrational urge to go back and check. Stupid, she knew. She kept moving, though she spared a glance over her shoulder to see if anyone was pursuing her. Nothing there but dim shadows and the watery reflections of streetlights in dull windows, the orange pulse of a DON’T WALK signal that suddenly turned white. She turned around to get moving again and—

  “Hey! Hey, you, come over here!”

  Nilla froze in place.

  Three men wearing brown caps stood at the back of a panel truck. The letters LVCC had been stenciled on the driver’s side door. Two of them men wore surgical masks and latex gloves. The other one was staring at her with hot eyes.

  “I fucking told you, get over here! I’m not waiting around all night while you figure this one out, asshole. Come on.”

  Nilla moved toward him. He had scars from a childhood illness all over his face and very long eyelashes. He had a gun holstered at his hip. If she didn’t act fast enough, if she didn’t strike hard enough he was going to kill her and even then, even if she took him down she had to worry about his two friends. This was it—the chain-link fence at the end of the dark alley. Endgame.

  Before she could attack, though, he stepped toward her and held out his hands. “Here,” he said, and shoved something at her. A mask and a pair of latex gloves. “You’re on Plague Patrol tonight. I don’t care what you were doing before, I’m three men short and I’ve got a schedule to meet.”

  Nilla had no idea what was going on but she pulled the mask over her mouth and nose. Maybe he wouldn’t be able to see what she was through the thick paper. She fumbled with the gloves but managed to get them on somehow.

  “Okay, up there, the balcony there. You take units B through G. It looks like it’s going to be a bad one, tonight.” A feathery thin layer of sympathy in his voice startled her. “St. Rose Dominican Hospital is already full up. We’ll need to take this bunch all the way out to UMC.” Nilla looked up and saw a split-level apartment complex with a red tile roof. The doors looked close together, each separated from the next by a single rectangular window. Blue flickering light came from most of the windows—probably the wavering campfire glow of television sets.