Year of the Zombie [Anthology]

by David Moody

  Her father slowed to a brisk walk, his path angling to the right and skirting the wall of the fort. Both of them took long controlled breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth. Stace grinned to herself. She wasn’t tired in the least and felt like she could run around the world twice before dinner.

  A helmeted head popped up halfway along the nearest wall, more than a full body length above them.

  ‘Ho there, Ranger Tomlinson,’ the man said, waving. He turned and gestured to someone on the ground inside.

  ‘Ho there, Sergeant Hosberg,’ her father replied, waving back and slowing to a walk.

  Thunder rumbled in the west. True thunder, not more Shawnee Lodge pyrotechnics. Stace looked up, realizing that ash-grey thunderheads were rolling into the area. Darkness would fall early today.

  ‘Don’t bother with the gate,’ her father said to the man on the wall. ‘We’re not stopping. Any news?’

  Brad Hosberg took off his helmet and leaned on the wall, resting a standard-issue militia spear between the pointed tops of the logs.

  ‘Nothing since the signals,’ he said. ‘I sent a runner to see what the Commandant wants us to do. Tell you the truth, I have half a mind to just get the whole bunch’a us back to The Neck. Figure we could do more good there than out here. Orders are orders though. Do y’all need water or anything?’

  ‘Thanks, but I want to get back,’ her father said. ‘I’ll make sure your runner sees Commandant Edwards and heads right back here.’ With that her father waved to the militiaman and gestured for Stace to pick up the pace.

  ‘Thanks for that. And good luck,’ Brad called after them.

  The Tomlinsons rounded the corner of the stockade and jogged on to the old, cracked pavement of Shawnee Road. The years After hadn't been kind to the old highway. The people of Shawnee Lodge kept the potholes filled, but it could still be a bumpy ride if your wagon didn’t have shock absorbers. Easy to twist a careless ankle too, Stace thought.

  A big flatbed trailer rattled by, bouncing along on big, rubber-shod wooden wheels. It was one of the big ones, designed for pulling heavy freight, even old car wrecks. Stace frowned when she saw that the deck on this one was completely empty. Merchants equated empty trailers with losing money.

  A quick count showed the man was driving a team of twenty dociles, both bucks and does, yoked in pairs to the long rod that pulled the wagon. The merchant gave his team another couple of rough taps with the reinpole and the wagon increased in speed. Loose reins made out of rope or leather didn’t work on dociles. They needed a solid thump in the back to get them going and another on their chest to get them to stop. The reinpole, a long, thin piece of wood with crossbars spaced to match pairs of dociles, could do both.

  ‘Come on,’ her father said, tugging at her shoulder. She joined him, again trying to match him step for step, knowing that if she did, it was because he was slowing down for her. She didn’t care; she had to make up for the missed shots at the clearing, had to show her father she could cut it out here. They continued south on Shawnee Road, past the flat, cleared area around the fort and back into the forest crowding in on both sides. The trees grew right up to the pavement on this stretch of road, creating a dim tunnel of interlaced branches that still held most of their leaves. Thunder rumbled again and Stace figured if it started raining now, they would stay relatively dry. She dismissed the thought and concentrated on her stride and controlled breathing. One-two-in, one-two-out, over and over.

  A hundred yards along, they passed a small rickshaw pulled by four huge dociles, heading in the opposite direction. An elderly man and woman sat on the bench, both dressed in the faded denim overalls common to the town of Jasper. Stace and her father raised their hands to wave as they went by, but the couple wouldn’t look at them. Her father grunted at that, but continued on. They encountered two more docile-drawn vehicles before the next bend in the road. Both were in a hurry to get out of the area.

  Lightning flashed through the trees in the direction of town, peals of thunder following a second behind as father and daughter continued south. Soon, the forest fell away on the eastern side of the road and Stace spotted the neighbouring homesteads of the Midos family and old Tim Campbell. One of Shawnee Lodge’s few fully-trained doctors, Sedin Midos and his family lived inside a log palisade on a patch of ground that was rumoured to have its own swimming pool. As far as Stace knew, Mister Campbell lived alone inside his walls. He was an expert woodworker who owned a shop on the Roosevelt Lake boardwalk back in town. Unlike the Midos family, he had actually owned the orange-roofed house Before. Doctor Midos had been awarded his homestead by the council when the previous owners hadn’t returned After.

  ‘You holding up?’ her father asked. Her stride had been so easy, she hadn’t been aware her mind had wandered. She felt like she could do this forever.

  ‘You betcha!’ she yelled back, smiling wide.

  ‘Good,’ he said, ‘let’s take it up a notch,’ and increased their pace. Stace matched him, thrilled that she could keep up.

  They were halfway home.

  ◆◆◆

  Shawnee Road bent gently left and right as they ran, continuing generally southeast. They came to an area recently worked by a team of lumberjacks. Workers had cleared a broad swathe of trees on the left side of the road, stacking the logs end to end in rough pyramids to provide material for this autumn’s addition to the security wall.

  Stace kept her feet moving, her arms pumping, and her breathing controlled, but she allowed her eyes to roam along the length of stacked timber; a contoured, rough-textured wall of grey bark that would probably make a pretty good barrier just like it was. After all, the top layer of logs was easily over her father’s head.

  Are we ever gonna get the real wall finished?

  Something about the end of the last stack of logs looked odd to her, but she wasn’t sure what she was seeing...

  A flash of nearby lightning threw bright light over the entire area, followed almost immediately by thunder so loud that it hit with physical force. Her father’s arm shot out across her chest, stopping her immediately.

  ‘What—?’ she started.

  ‘Shh!’

  She looked closer and saw something at the end of the logs move a little bit. Her eyes grew wide. It was a boot. It was a boot. A militia boot, and the person wearing it was laying or sitting at the end of the last stack of logs.

  Still feeling the buzz of the run, Stace tried to control her breathing as she had been taught. Her father, a light hand on her shoulder, led her around the end of the stack, giving wide berth to whoever was there. They rounded the corner and froze. Stace blinked, struggling to make sense of what she was seeing. Another brilliant flash of lightning lit the area.

  The boot belonged to a woman in a militia uniform, sprawled on her back. Her mouth moved slowly, as if trying to form words, and her eyes fluttered open and closed without focusing. A middle-aged bald man crouched over her, applying pressure to a bloody wound on her belly. Then Stace saw the man reach inside the woman and the entire body twitched in response. Realization hit Stace like the all-over shock of jumping into ice-cold water. Details bloomed in her mind, rapid-fire like the green fireworks she had seen going off over the hills.

  Fact: the woman was Piper Ewing, one of her older brother’s friends. Fact: the feral had a bald head and a thick, brown beard. Fact: Mister Campbell, the woodworker who lived nearby, had a bald head and a thick, brown beard, now caked with gore. Conclusion: Mister Campbell was eating Piper Ewing alive right in front of her. He – it – pulled out a mass of blood-soaked entrails with a sound like a boot coming free of mud, then shoved them into its mouth.

  Chewing and tearing noises made Stace’s stomach turn, but she couldn’t force her eyes away. Shawnee Lodge bred rabbits to feed their dociles and Stace had fed the Tomlinson herd plenty of times. But this... she knew she should do something, should act, should kill the thing, but no matter how her mind roared, her arms and legs refused to ob
ey.

  There was a skittering noise off to Stace’s left, but she still couldn’t look away. The straps of her backpack tightened across her chest and shoulders and she was suddenly weightless, confused as the sky traded places with the ground a couple of times. Breath punched out of her as she landed hard on her left shoulder, her face rebounding off wet grass. Instincts backed up by long sessions of wrestling with her father and older brother allowed her to roll without thinking, bouncing back up on to the balls of her feet. Her father had thrown her with all the apparent ease of tossing a shirt into a laundry basket. She looked to him, wanting to know why, only to see him side-stepping away from her with his gaze locked toward the stacks of logs. Shadows moved there, dark against the overcast sky, lacking any real detail until the lightning strobed. People – no... ferals – were vaulting over the top log or running along the apex, going right at him. There had to be half a dozen of them and they were fast, quickly closing in on her father. His attackers too close for the bow, he pulled his tomahawk and pigsticker, a wooden pommel holding an eighteen-inch steel spike.

  ‘Stace,’ he yelled, ‘RUN!’

  She stood transfixed as the first three ferals landed on the old pavement and ran right at him, shrieking. There were more shapes moving, climbing, jumping on the far side of the stacks, sending a bolt of fear through Stace she realized she had no idea how many of of the foul creatures there were. Two more dropped from top of a stack, joining the rush at her father.

  Her breath coming in short gulps, Stace glanced at the bearded feral hunched over Piper’s body. It hadn’t moved, still focused on its horrible meal, completely detached from the mortal struggle just yards away, content just to gnaw and chew. That might have been what finally did it. She wasn’t sure why and never would be, but something clicked in her mind, breaking through any hesitation, any self-doubt. White-hot anger boiled up, unfamiliar and raw, and snapped her into action. Stace drew her bow with her left hand and grabbed a handful of arrows with her right. In one smooth motion borne of endless practice, she brought her bow up, nocked the first arrow and let the others hang loose in her fingers. She could already imagine the first shot, striking the first target as she pulled and released, exactly has her father had taught her.

  Thwack

  The arrow blurred through the air and smashed through the bearded feral’s head. Stace was already moving before it started to fall forward over its kill.

  She spotted her father over the backs of the attacking ferals and hurried toward him. He screamed taunts as he backpedalled, drawing the pack away from her, a tactic she knew he called kiting.

  Two ferals were down. Lightning flashed, glinting off the sharpened edge of her father’s tomahawk as he swung and buried it handle-deep in the closest head. The rest of the pack trampled over their fallen in the rush to get at him. He ran toward the logs, never taking his eyes off his pursuers. Stace saw that he was trying to loop around back to the stacks, to put something between himself and the charging pack. He glanced at her, surprise clouding the concentration on his face before his eyes snapped back to his attackers.

  ‘Stace!’ he yelled, shoving his pigsticker into the face of the nearest buck, ‘I said run, dammit!’

  The bone-deep compulsion for a daughter to obey her father weighed like a physical pressure on her. She hesitated and almost stopped moving. The urge to follow his command warred with anger for Piper, anger at missing the cruddy feral back in the clearing, for the utterly dreadful life of a farmer laid out before her, the years spooling out with excruciating predictability.

  Her lips curled in a snarl, her decision made.

  Stace moved toward him, heel to toe like he had taught, the best way to keep her upper-body stable while still moving quickly. She picked her targets among the ferals, who moved away from her in nearly a straight line. Lined up just like the hay bales back home.

  Flip the wrist, nock, pull.

  Thwack

  A feral doe in faded red coveralls crumpled forward and rolled to a stop.

  Flip the wrist, nock, pull.

  Thwack

  A skinny, shirtless buck stopped suddenly, standing straight up. It fell forward, stiff as a plank, its face slamming into the pavement with a sickening crunch.

  Flip, nock, pull... stop.

  No clear shot available without a chance of hitting her father. He had pulled Flatliner out and was swinging the massive recurve bow like club. Three more ferals were on the ground, their skulls a reddish pulp of bone and hair. Only the largest buck in the pack remained, but it was right on top of him, inside the swing of the heavy bow’s frame and pulling him to the ground.

  ‘Daddy!’ Stace sprinted towards him.

  A doughy weight hit her from high on the right side and she suddenly realized that she had no idea how many of the cruddy things were nearby. Once again, all the time spent rough-housing with her father paid off. Stace rolled with the weight as it took her down, tucking in her arms in to cradle her bow against her chest. The arrow she had been about to shoot was pushed back against her torso as the feral rolled with her. Pain exploded in her right ear as the bodkin tip pierced skin and cartilage. She screamed as the two of them rolled to a stop, side by side on the pavement.

  The thing grabbed for purchase on her jacket, trying to pull her close. Lightning flashed as foetid teeth slammed closed inches from her face. Holding her bow against the feral’s chest, she shoved with everything she had, screaming with the effort. The feral screamed right back and black spittle sprayed across her cheek as it continued to pull and snap at her. She forced just enough space between them to get her knee up onto its chest, keeping its jaws away from her face. It screamed frustration at her, grabbing her shoulders and pulling, straining its neck forward until their noses were barely a hand’s width apart.

  She couldn’t release it without losing the battle for leverage, allowing it to bite her. Her pigsticker was pressed between her side and the ground, useless. She grabbed the only weapon she had left, pulling the arrow free of her ear, screaming at the renewed agony as it ripped free.

  Stace swung the arrow from the side of her head, seeing her own blood on the tip. She lowered the shaft away from her face and down into the small space between her and the feral. She got the bodkin point under its snapping teeth and shoved upward as hard as she could. The tip pierced the feral’s throat just behind the jawbone, slamming up into the roof of its gaping mouth, and into its skull. A torrent of slimy, red-black goo erupted from its maw and nose, showering over Stace’s face and shoulders. Gagging, she felt the tip skitter across the inside of the thing’s skull and pushed harder, not realizing the feral had already gone limp. The arrowhead broke through the top the creature’s skull as Stace pushed it off and rolled away, bounding up to help her father.

  Four ferals lay still between them, one with her father’s pigsticker jutting from its head. The large buck had him pinned to the pavement, growling and sputtering as it pushed snapping teeth towards his face. Rob Tomlinson fought back, but the creature’s weight and leverage slowly overpowered his efforts to keep it at bay. Stace ran at them, but she knew she would be too late.

  The feral’s head shot forward, burying its teeth in her father’s neck and she screamed. She wasn’t sure if her bow had been damaged so she let it fall. Running full blast, Stace pulled her pigsticker from the scabbard on her thigh and dove at the creature, needle-sharp steel leading the way. It heard or otherwise sensed her coming and snapped its head around just in time to take the spike through its right eye. The point slid easily through the milky eyeball, punching through the diseased tissue behind and out the back of its skull. It gave an almost surprised-sounding grunt as Stace ploughed into it, both of them rolling away from her father’s prone form. She threw her hands out, trying to control her tumble, and scraped both palms on the cracked pavement. The buck’s body rolled a couple more times and stopped.

  Stace got a knee under her and rose, holding her burning hands against her chest as she wat
ched to see if the feral had any fight left in it. It lay face down with six inches of her pigsticker propping it up from the surface of the road. The weight of the thing’s head forced it to slide down the steel shaft until nose and brow gently rested on the concrete. Stace grimaced with disgust and climbed to her feet.

  Nothing moved save a slight breeze rustling nearby trees. Lightning still flashed every few seconds, throwing the feral bodies into stark, blue relief. The thunder had moved off to the east, having passed by without a storm.

  Stace blinked and took deep breaths, trying to calm the trembling in her arms and legs. Her right ear throbbed and both palms felt like they were on fire. She looked down at them and saw streaks of blood, vibrant red blood, blood of the living, smeared across both hands. The cuts weren’t long or deep, but there were at least a dozen on each hand. She folded her arms and pressed her palms to her sides as the first sobs bubbled up. She clamped down hard and bit her lip, knowing if she let one out, she wouldn’t be able to stop from bawling.

  Movement off to her left made her freeze. She looked over and saw her father’s leg twitch. A bite was death. Everyone knew that. Tears flooded and this time there was no stopping them as they ran down her cheeks. Sniffling, Stace called out and heard him moan. She rushed to where he lay against the logs, dropping to her knees at his side.

  She looked for a horrible tear in his neck, to see him bleeding out on Shawnee Road right in front of her, already starting to go feral. When she got close, she saw his duster lying open and a ragged tear in the leather armour at his neck, a piece of gear that Rangers and militia called a gorget. The big buck had taken a bite, but the thick leather had done its job. One of her father’s most often-quoted mantras echoed through her mind: ‘take care of your gear and your gear will take care of you’, and Rob Tomlinson was always painstakingly careful about this.