Year of the Zombie [Anthology]

by David Moody

  ◆◆◆

  Deep below, behind the sealed doors of the cryo-chamber, the five thousand slept in chemically-induced comas. The last scientist had set the timer for ten years before Cole had finally caught up with her.

  The inner perimeter of the Ark was still sealed. The breach of the outer doors had engaged the emergency protocols and the cryogenic area was secure. The dead would never reach the sleeping bodies. Pallets of food and supplies sat waiting in the bunker for the wakers. The frozen humans would resurrect in a decade, as long as their cryo-chambers were not ruined by bat shit before then.

  NOCK

  Scott McGlasson

  The feral locked eyes with Stace Tomlinson and moved toward her across the forest clearing. Dark clouds threatened rain again, grey above leeching the autumn colours from the forest all around her. The thing’s ruined clothing and filthy pallor blended in perfectly, making her shot difficult. Watching its decrepit state and slow pace, Stace guessed that it had been around for a long time, maybe even going all the way back to just After. It was a big buck. Probably a well-muscled man once, by the looks of it. Stace and her father had tracked it up the hill after spotting its prints in the sodden earth of a deer trail. They had been heading back to town, but the patrol had been uneventful and the tracks fresh and easy to see.

  ‘Remember,’ her father whispered from just behind, ‘the arrow flies when you’re surprised. Deep breath now...’

  Stace inhaled, filling her lungs with chill October air. Her left arm locked straight, holding an ashwood recurve bow, and her right held the fifty pound pull to her cheek as she focused on her target. The damned thing wasn’t making it easy.

  Oblivious to everything but living prey, the feral advanced on stiffened legs. It moved like an animated length of chain. Each foot fall caused the body to follow in a stilted wave, the upper torso undulated back and forth and the head, the last link, tilted from shoulder to shoulder. The decay on this one was bad. At thirty paces, Stace could see bones pushing through the remains of its grey skin. Where not covered by tattered clothing, the feral’s hide hung off its frame, puddling around joints and jowls, swaying like wheat fronds as it staggered toward her. What hair it had left dangled in knotted tangles down to its exposed collarbone.

  ‘Hold the string with your back and shoulder, not your arm,’ Rob Tomlinson said. ‘Now... breathe out.’

  She exhaled through pursed lips and slowly let her fingers relax, trying not to anticipate the moment when her muscles were no longer tense enough to hold the bowstring taut. The feral’s milky eyes stayed on her, its mouth twisted into a snarl. Stace used that as her focus, drawing a line up from the jaw to a spot just above the nose where the bone would be thinnest. She caught the rhythm of the thing’s swaying back and forth, as her father had taught her, allowing the bow to become an extension of herself, and the world shrinking down to that one spot on the feral’s horrible face. She released the bowstring to thwack on the plastic guard protecting her left forearm. The bodkin-tipped arrow blurred through the empty space the feral’s head had just tilted past.

  Teeth opening and closing, it snarled at her, a rasp that sounded like dry twigs being dropped down a pipe as it continued toward them through the knee-high grass.

  Her father huffed at the miss.

  ‘Again,’ he said.

  Stace held two more arrows in her right hand. With a quick, circular snap of the wrist, she swung a second shaft up, nocking it with index and middle finger while holding the third arrow ready with ring and pinky. She pulled the bowstring to her cheek, grunting with the effort, and sighted on a spot just above the feral’s forehead and released.

  Thwack

  Much closer this time – she actually saw the thing’s dirty hair flutter as the arrow passed by – but still a miss. Failure.

  Stace frowned and lowered her bow, grinding her teeth and trembling with all the lambent fury her sixteen-year-old body could muster. A single thought, a mantra, vibrated through her.

  I don’t wanna be a farmer.

  Ranger field trials were coming up the following week. To fail during Selection was to condemn her to a life of crops and crafts instead of running through the forests outside the security wall. Running was freedom. Running was as far from working the fields as one could get.

  Not taking her eyes off the approaching feral, Stace heard the soft noises of her father nocking an arrow to his own massive bow. She realized he was preparing to drop the creature himself. Frustration flashed through her and tears began to build up at the corners of her eyes.

  I do NOT wanna be a farmer.

  ‘Stace,’ her father said, just audible, ‘you’re anticipating the shot and it’s messing up your aim. You have to concentrate on where the arrow’s going and you can’t think aim if you’re thinking shoot. Again.’

  In one smooth motion born of endless practice and repetition, she raised her bow and nocked her last arrow, pulling it back to her cheek.

  The feral was less than twenty paces away. Stace grimaced, realizing that even her seven-year-old sister could hit a bullseye with every shot from this distance. Her older brother, off with the militia hunting ‘Rauders south of the Ohio River, would have nailed the thing with his first arrow.

  The creature raised its arms, dropped its mouth open wider than any living human could manage, and moaned. The rising and falling noise crossed the clearing and hit Stace with near-physical force. Stace jumped, her fingers slipping from the arrow and the the bow string, which gave a muted tuung as it snapped back taut. She stooped and managed to catch the arrow just before it hit the ground. She stood back up immediately, cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

  The feral’s moan was a killing sound, a howl that promised carnage, and it had reached right down into her gut. Long-buried memories stirred. Images swam and blurred, a fast-forward collage of running, hiding, climbing in and out of vehicles. Adults constantly yelling. Endless fighting and blood everywhere, both free-flowing arterial red and the slower, thicker black. None of it understandable to a three-year-old girl except fear. A tremble that reached across the intervening thirteen years started in her legs and threatened to spread through her entire body.

  ‘Easy now,’ her father said. ‘Most of the ones we’ve got at home move quicker.’

  Stace blinked at that. He was right. The Tomlinson ranch had almost three dozen dociles and there were hundreds more in town, but they were all properly bridled and never, ever moaned. With a bit and halter, a feral became a docile over time. Once broken, it could be made to do basic pushing and pulling tasks that it would continue at forever unless you stopped it or it fell apart. There hadn’t been any horses or mules since Before and precious few cows remained After, so dociles were put to use pulling the wagons, ploughing fields, and turning the wheels that drove Shawnee Lodge’s various industries. Stace had grown up around them and even given her favourites pet names.

  She had become so confident around the undead and so sure with a bow – against hay bales anyway – that she’d begged her father to take her outside the security wall where she could work on the skills necessary to apply to become a Ranger trainee. Getting past the rigorous tests of Selection was the first step toward getting out from behind the high walls of felled timber and scavenged steel, out into the forest where you could run forever.

  The feral moaned again. A loud, plaintive warble that started high and dropped through the octaves. The noise would bring more if any were nearby, but that was unlikely these days. ‘Rauders were more of a threat than the undead, but a Ranger never took chances. A new outbreak somewhere could send fresh ferals into the wilderness and those would be far more dangerous than the shambling wreck coming toward her. That was the prevailing wisdom anyway. In truth, the big buck was the first feral Stace had seen in a long while.

  Ten paces away now. Close enough that Stace could see cracked bone stubs where fingers were missing on the thing’s right hand.

  ‘You told me you could do this,’
her father said, softly chiding, but she could hear his growing disappointment.

  ‘I can do it!’ If you weren’t hovering right over top of me, she added silently. Her father’s direct attention could be a force of nature. Stace had seen grown men wither under that glare. And when it was turned on her...

  She took a deep breath and sighted the bow. Wrist snap, nock. Draw, sight, relax fingers...

  Thwack

  Stace heard the barest sound of air cleaved by the arrow followed by a cracking thud. The feral’s head flew back and it gargled, a fountain of black gore erupting from its maw. Emaciated arms rose to flail at the sky even as it fell. For an instant, Stace saw the white goose-feather fletching standing upright against the backdrop of the forest, then the arrow sank with the rest of the heap, disappearing into tall grass.

  She lowered her bow. Where there should have been elation, Stace felt empty. Numb. The big buck was her first feral kill and she should have been thrilled, bounding forward to cut off an ear for proof and bragging rights back home. Instead, her stomach twisted and her cheeks reddened. Three shots to kill a feral – especially a cruddy, old, slow feral – equaled failure to her father, Shawnee Lodge’s most well-known Ranger and its best archer by a long stretch. He probably wouldn’t even let her apply for Selection after this.

  Her eyes moistened again, but she managed to stop herself from raising a hand to wipe tears away, worried what he might think.

  No, she thought, he’ll take me home and tell mom and they’ll put me to work in the fields. There she would live out her days as a handler to the Tomlinson herd of dociles. Probably have to marry some boring craftsman like that spotty Jerry Reynolds her mother kept mentioning and pop out a bunch of whiny kids. The boring, soul-crushing life of a farmer.

  Not running. Not the freedom and excitement of a Ranger’s life.

  Might as well slap a bit and bridle on me and have me push at the grinding wheel until I fall apart.

  Stace and her father stood for a long moment without moving, listening to the forest for any tell-tale signs that another feral had heard the commotion and was on its way. Birdsong and light wind moved through the trees, the higher tenor of the tall grass waving to and fro in the clearing, but no other moaning. No swish-swish-swish of undead feet dragging through the carpet of dead leaves.

  She sensed her father relax, satisfied that there was no threat, so she turned toward him. Maybe if she didn’t look him in the eyes, he wouldn’t tell her how disappointed he was. Instead she saw his boots and old black jeans. The knee-length brown oilskin coat, what Rangers referred to as a duster, hung open just enough for Stace to see the steel tomahawk and the eighteen-inch scabbard of the pigsticker on his belt. She couldn’t bring herself to look higher.

  Though she was above average height for her sixteen years, Stace’s father towered over her. A remarkably tall and thin man in an age of thin men, so her mother said. Strong as granite and lightning fast, equally at ease moving through the treetops as he was on the ground. Quiet as a bobcat with eagle-sharp eyes set into a face framed by the pure white of his neatly-trimmed beard. A born Ranger, her mom said, though her father had always maintained all he wanted to do was farm. So good was he in the forest that Shawnee Lodge gave the Tomlinsons a monthly stipend of precious milk and eggs to keep him on as one of fifty Rangers that patrolled the entire Shawnee Forest for ferals and signs of ‘Rauder camps.

  Stace brushed a few wayward strands of russet brown hair away. They were blocking her view of the ground. The rest of her long hair was tied back in a braid. Perfectly practical for patrol duty, but if the entire mane of curly, terminally-unmanageable locks came magically free and hid her face from her father right that second, she’d certainly have welcomed it.

  Three shots to kill a feral, she thought. Unforgivable.

  'Sorry, Dad,' she said, barely croaking the words out.

  Her father put a gentle finger under her chin and raised her eyes to his. He was trying to be gentle, she realized, and that made her want cry all the more. He looked down at her from under the wide, floppy brim of his boonie cap, a black hat only Rangers were allowed to wear.

  ‘If this were Selection,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t be me out here with you. It’d be another Ranger. Someone drawn at random.’

  ‘I know,’ Stace said, barely fighting down a sob. She looked away, waiting for the inevitable declaration that he wouldn’t allow her to apply.

  Her father’s hand dropped away and he slotted his massive recurve bow into the quick-release on his backpack. Made from layered ashwood, oiled to a high sheen, its horns were re-tempered leaf spring steel scavenged from an old pickup truck. Every Ranger named their bow and her father called his Flatliner. Stace had always assumed he picked that name because of the lack of arc it had when shooting; the thing had a hundred pound pull on it she could barely budge, let alone draw to her cheek. Shawn, her older brother, insisted that Flatliner was named for a ‘lectric machine from Before that could tell you when something was dead. That had never made much sense to Stace, though. Why would you need a ‘lectric machine to tell you if something was dead? Dead was dead and undead was undead. Either way, it was easy to tell.

  ‘Now, young lady,’ her father said and Stace realized she’d been woolgathering. ‘I know you’re a better shot than that.’

  She looked back at him and waited for the hammer to fall. I don’t WANNA be a damned farmer.

  ‘You’re near as good as I am at fieldcraft,’ – which was knew was an outright lie because nobody in Shawnee Lodge was – ‘and God knows you can run like the wind.’ He crossed his arms and stared down. ‘So... what is it? Did that moan rattle you?’

  ‘No,’ she lied, looking away. Didn’t matter anyway. By the time the cruddy thing had started making noise, she had already missed twice.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  Stace looked down at her boots again. She realized that she lacked the words to tell her father that she couldn’t bear him watching her, that his focused attention made her nervous.

  ‘Think about it then,’ her father said. ‘We can talk about it at home. For now, though, be quick.’

  ‘Quick?’ she said.

  Her father rested his hands on his hips. ‘Your mother and I don’t like talking about how things were Before, but—’

  ‘I know,’ she said, her eyes going wide in expectation. Whenever her father said that, he was sure to drop some new nugget of info about Before, about the Land of ‘Lectric Lights, about the Way It Was. Most of the adults avoided the subject completely – around their kids anyway. However, when they thought no younger ears were listening, the oldsters tended to laugh and cry and talk about things that made no sense at all.

  ‘—back then,’ he continued, ‘people didn’t haggle. We had something called money. If you wanted or needed something, you used money to buy it.’

  Stace smiled. ‘I know about money.’

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ her father said, arching his eyebrows.

  She’d heard plenty about such things from her Uncle Rick, her mother’s brother. He was rare among Shawnee Lodge’s adults in that he had no problem telling stories about Before, after he got a little corn mash in him anyway.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘you know we can’t just hop in a car, drive to some sports store and buy new arrows. What’s the rule on patrol?’

  Despite her curiosity about how one would hop up and down inside one of those docileless carriages the oldsters called cars, she knew where he was going with this and her eyes fell to the ground again. ‘Miss one, find one,’ she muttered.

  ‘And you missed twice,’ he said, smiling. Thunder rumbled overhead and he squinted up at the sky. Storm clouds that had hung low all morning decided to make good their threat and a steady rain began to fall. Her father glanced back at her and nodded in the direction of her shots.

  She started toward the feral’s body, but stopped, turning back. ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yes, hon?’

&nb
sp; ‘Something that always bugged me about money.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if you couldn’t haggle for the best trade, how could you keep the other guy from screwing you over?’

  His face lit up and he grinned ear to ear at her causing a little sunburst in her chest, warming her despite the chill air. Stace loved to see her father smile because he so rarely did. She filed that bit of info away for future use: Dad would smile widely if she made a crude comment that her mother would have a fit over.

  ‘Get going,’ he said, giving her a gentle shooing gesture.

  Stace slotted her bow into its quick-release on her backpack and jogged into the clearing, looking either for where the feral had fallen or the tell-tale orange rings that marked a Tomlinson arrow. Everyone from Shawnee Lodge branded their arrows, making them easier to find if you missed or to claim bragging rights when you hit. In her family’s case, old plastic safety cones, melted down, formed rings of bright orange, set into routed cavities just in front of the fletching. The trick, her father had once said, was to make sure the work was perfectly balanced, straight, and flush with the shaft. Against the various greens of the clearing, she spotted her kill shot right away.

  The feral had sunk to its knees in the final seconds of its miserable existence, falling back on its shoulders, back arched off the ground like a bridge, and there it remained. The rain had slackened to just a steady pitter-patter all around, but there had been enough in the short downpour to make little side-by-side pools where the eyes had sunk in. She saw herself reflected there as she approached and wondered how long it would take crows or turkey vultures to find the body. They always ate the eyes first.

  Remnants of clothing clung to the corpse’s torso and limbs, the smell of mould and mildew strong enough to overcome the faint dead fish smell all ferals and dociles had. The arrow stood at a slight angle over the chasm of its mouth. The bodkin had entered the thing’s right nostril and punched through into the infected tissue behind, snuffing its candle instantly. She grabbed the shaft, careful not to touch the fletching, and pulled it free with little effort. This far gone, the bones in undead skulls were little better than stiff sponge. Her mother said it had something to do with the disease that made them that way in the first place.