Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages

by Неизвестный

  I was too small, too young, too weak. He was too big, that man. I caught his hand in vengeful jaws, crushed its bones and mangled its flesh, but he beat me off with the other, breaking several of my ribs. I had no choice but to flee that charnel room, that house, that city, into the countryside and then the mountains. I learned later that Farid’s uncle’s hand had had to be cut off but he survived.

  Dawn woke me, a naked, shivering man curled up on myself on rocky ground in the Muqattam Hills outside Cairo, above the necropolis of al-Qarafa. Coming to myself, I found my discarded clothing and weapons a few steps away. Dressed but still chilled through, I began to remember the events of the night.

  The ghuls were gone, vanished like dreams to their graves or tombs. The sand and soil of the vale below me showed their passage and passion, as if disturbed by the hooves of a multitude of goats. Of al-Hakim bi Amr al-Lah, caliph of Islam, remained only the rags of his garments, black wool and white linen stained rusty by blood—not even bones.

  I turned east toward the sun and the holy city to which the Hajj had not yet brought me, and I knelt. I performed tayammum, then as-salah al-fajr. During my prayers, the caliph’s donkey returned ambling from whatever sanctuary it had discovered in the night. It approached the heap of rags as if it smelled its master, then shied back from the scent of blood.

  The caliph’s donkey was no concern of mine. The caliph’s death was not my concern, his blood did not stain my hand or steel or teeth—the fatal light he contained all the years of his reign had passed to his young son in the palace in Cairo, under the regency of his wicked aunt.

  I went away from that place. Going wide around al-Qarafa when I reached the plain, I found my den and slept dreamless through the heat of the day. At dusk, I dug up my hoard of gold, distributed the coins among purses and pouches about my person. And then, avoiding the gates of Cairo and the other habitations of men, I set out afoot on the road to Beirut.

  The Good Shepherdess

  S. J. Chambers

  May __, 1431

  My very dear and kind friend, the seignior and Baron de Rais, Marshal of France, the Maiden sends you her last final message via this courier, Jeudon. The Voices have told her with whom you fought in glorious battle at Orleans, Jargeau, and Paris that you have abandoned her to her fate, and that you believe the lies that the Maiden did not serve the King of the World, but a Dark Prince.

  But what her inquisitors do not understand is that there are no Kings or Princes of this world; only the Great Old Ones who know nothing of Love, and only of Domination. And for France to remain free and pure from the British swine they control, Jehanne the Maiden had to give Him her soul.

  The Voices tell me how to speak, how to move, whom to sacrifice. They have silenced my reflections, devoured my pieties, and possessed my tongue, forking and gilding it in blasphemies of our Lord and Mother. When my thought is effortless, it is their thought. For my thought is . . . buried . . . buried under my service to them. They disguise all I say within semantics, and in an effort to protect me, make my meaning obscure. Unless it is about war—on that they have always been clear.

  I used to be a pious girl; but what I have learned from battle, Gilles, is that our God is a delusion, and what we serve is more terrible than that wrath the Church teaches us to fear. There is no forgiveness in resurrection—only hunger, only servitude.

  The Maiden knows why the Marshal flees Rouen—he saw things about the Maiden too terrific to explain to himself, much less before the Magistrate. The Baron’s account is cast in a doubting veil leading to darkness. But the Voices have always shown the Maiden the way; and now they want to show you—who witnessed her fall thrice, and her rising thrice—they want to explain.

  What I want to tell you is that I am not guilty of evil, nor am I guilty of miracles. I heard the call, it is true, when I was thirteen, when the stars seiged my family’s pasture. It was dusk, and I was wandering back home after herding our flock to the next meadow, and I saw in the lavender sky several stars appear, twinkle, and then fall, their fiery tails whipping overhead and bombarding the field. One landed behind me, and I was taken under.

  During Orleans, there was an arrow in her neck that brought forth little blood. While others around her grappled and died from their penetrating shafts, the Maiden merely snapped it from her throat, while still charging the Anglo savages, leading her flock to victory against les Tourelles. At the battle’s end, de Rais saw nothing but a slight pink lump under the Maiden’s healed neck.

  I awoke face down in a water trough. My clothes were charred; my arms and legs were raw and red. My right leg dangled over the trough’s edge—the bone snapped in twain—but I felt no pain and found I could walk with the lame leg dragging in the dirt. I wandered homeward, passing scorched pastures filled with black-baked sheep, until upon a hill I was accosted by a robèd-priest. He held a spade, and when I tried to pass him, he raised it to halt me.

  “Do you love France, Maiden?” he croaked. I struggled to ignore him, to pass by him as quickly as my lame leg would allow, but something within me seemed to burst forth:

  The Maiden would die for France.

  “What of your soul, Maiden?”

  I succeeded in silencing myself, but this angered him and he grabbed my arm, clapping his palm right over a burn, but all I felt was the dull and slimy texture of his webbèd hand.

  “Would you give France your soul, if you knew it would save Her?” I wrestled from his grip, but he held up the spade, and in the moonlight I saw my face—or what had been left of it after the starry blast. My long hair, uncut for twelve years, had been singed to the skull. How had I survived?

  “Here, Maiden, take this, for it is from the King of the World, who demands you do his bidding and go forth and fight. With this, you will live a thousand lives, and die a thousand deaths—you will be resurrected and live through Him, and in every battle you will be victor and all of France will be in your debt. Go to Glory, Maiden, go to Him. You can sit and weave wool and bear children who will be captured and tainted by English blood, or you can go forth and bear arms and save all of France’s children from tyranny.”

  Then there was the battle of Jargeau where after ducking a cannonball, the Marshal heard the cold crunch of stone against armor. The ball had stuck the Maiden’s armored skull. She stood before him, her armor covered in British blood and her helmet dented where the cannonball had landed. She was merely stunned.

  The monk pulled back his cowl, revealing a round and noseless face whose amphibious features would have been disconcerting had I not been distracted by his pale, bald pate gleaming in the moonlight.

  The Baron de Rais shouted after her in between gutting a British page and beheading a fallen cavalryman. He saw her take off her helmet, lick the flesh off her sword, and return the Baron’s gaze, smiling and winking at him with the common bloodlust of friend-soldiers.

  And that baldness was more than a naked skull—it appeared succulent, somehow appetizing—like a plucked chicken, a debristled boar, a sheared lamb, braised frog’s legs. I knew he was lying to me about something, about his King of the World, about the War, and in my mind swam a drowning vision of a battle under seas, of gilled soldiers charging with our heralds, blue and gold, yet in the middle the fleur-de-lys seemed garnished with animated arabesques that reached up to me through the water trough I had awakened in.

  I wanted to run from this man, return to the warm hearth of my family’s farm, but the same instinct that forced my voice.

  Hunger.

  forced my hand into taking the spade.

  The Maiden became hungry with the soldier’s appetite—for blood and flesh sacrificed to the Mother Country, to the Dreaded Father. It was an appetite that appealed to the Baron de Rais, that allowed him to assist the Maiden and look the other way.

  He was calling to me, Gilles, and spoke to me of life and death on this Earth, and spoke to me of our Mother Country, and how my answer would render me His puppet, and lead France and Him t
o victory.

  Finally, running at top speed in a charge on Paris, the Maiden was penetrated again by an English bolt to the knee. Rather than topple like a hunted fawn, her pace was unhalted, the bolt unnoticed, and she outran the pages, splitting the skulls of several British swine in twain with her sword hilt, not once letting the Herald brush against the soil or become speckled with their blood.

  Victorious at battle’s end, the Maiden congratulated her soldiers and sent them to the farmer’s fields to gather the night’s dinner. She stayed behind, and knew not the Marshal tarried to inquire about the still protruding bolt in her knee. Before he could speak to her, he saw her sever and hold before her one of the split-skulls, which she shelled and slurped—like an oyster— he muscle from within. Then, hiding himself, the Baron de Rais watched her graze among the corpses, her cuts and lesions erased from her skin, and the precarious bolt pushed out from the bone and muscle, extruded from healing tissue, until it simply fell to the ground.

  The priest knelt, placing his salient pate before me. He began chanting words from another time, another era, and while they fell on my ears foreign and brusque as English, within me the words translated: “Eat,” he said, “For He waits—.” Then he looked up at me teary-eyed:

  “I am the good Shepherd,” he said. “The good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

  The Hunger then became overwhelming and I fell upon him and with strength never before experienced, I broke his skull. I pondered the grey oozing muscle—so this was what was inside mankind—and devoured it.

  Afterwards, I looked at my reflection in the bloodied spade and saw my face restored. My leg was healed, my wounds sealed, the only remaining traces of my devastation were my ruined clothes and singed hair.

  A Philosopher in Chinon once told the Maiden at court that scholars have always wondered where the soul was. He scoffed when the Maiden told him it rested in the mind.

  I fled to the woods, and in an open field under the blinding light of the moon the Voices began. They began as one—the priest’s voice spoke to me in a language not of this Earth, not of Christ’s kingdom, and well outside the Mother’s loving grasp; yet I understood, and they guided me through visions and instructed me on how to speak, how to move, whom to sacrifice, whom to save—all to ensure the Maiden would lead the Mother Country to Victory.

  All one can do is serve—is sacrifice—a soul for country—.

  They are to burn the Maiden at the stake.

  I am relieved to go to the fire. To be relieved of these Voices, of these souls, of Him.

  But be not afraid, Baron de Rais, the Dreaded One is calling, and he is calling for you.

  I am the good Shepherdess.

  The Maiden begs of you to build an army of souls for the Great One—and save all of France’s children from Burgundy, Britain, and the Old Ones they serve.

  The good Shepherdess giveth her life for the sheep.

  Jehanne

  The Fledglings of Time

  Carrie Laben

  You have to be careful, especially of the little ones. They’re clumsy but they’re faster than they look. Half-grown ones like to throw rocks at things. Also watch out for the ones who drink too much. The crazy ones. The angry ones. Sometimes they go crazy-angry together, from bad teeth I guess. Teeth are a burden feathered races are well rid of. Nothing but trouble.

  The crazy-angry ones start by killing each other, not in the normal thinning-the-flock way, or pecking the sick to death like the rooks do, but groups of them travel about killing each other. It seems like good times because there is plenty to eat, but it can turn bad in a hurry because crazy-angry doesn’t stop, and sometimes they get to where they kill anything they catch, not just each other. Then there are fires. The ones that survive sit in the ashes with dogs they’ve caught, or cats or sheep or their own young, gnawing on their heads. Easing the pain in their teeth with grinding on a skull, like we polish our beaks.

  The upside to the crazy-angry ones is that if you find one dead—really dead, it’s important to make sure, the best sign is if the head’s smashed in—they’re the tastiest. They’re soft and come apart like they’ve been rotting for weeks, but they haven’t been picked over by the dogs and rats already. The eyes, the genitals, all the good bits of the guts, still right there and waiting for you. Gobs of fat and marrow, and the brains, the brains are sweet and rich, not like any other brains you’ll ever taste.

  Of course, you don’t see them go crazy-angry very often any more, sometimes in the dark north when the winters have been mild and every so often near Porton Down. The crazy-angry ones went the way of the wolves and wildcats. But there was a time when crazy-angry humans appeared in great herds, and even came into the city itself.

  We lived in the tower then, not yet banished to the countryside in favor of the Clipped-wings who gobble up their mutton and strut for them now and imitate their bleating calls for attention. I had a story from our grandmother, who had it from twenty-three generations ago. It was a strange time, only a season long, and yet on the strength of it our family has dreamed of going back to the tower ever since.

  Underneath the tower, you see, there was a head. The head of a human, full of teeth, buried with all the meat still on in their wasteful way. This human was attacked by a crazy-angry enemy, and so weakened that his followers pecked him to death with their swords. They cached his head beneath the ground, and built the tower around and above, and burned the rest of his body. This annoyed us. We wanted to taste his sweet brains.

  Years went by, generations, and though we knew the brains were probably rotted and gone, we never forgot the site of the cache. There were plenty of other humans to scavenge—they left their dead lying about more often in those days, not bothering to lock them in boxes or poison the bodies as they do now. Sometimes they even hung a soft rotting corpse in a cage for us, like they hang out seeds for the smaller birds. I don’t know why they stopped. The world was better in those days. But sometimes, gorged on dead humans or on pigs or horses or the other rotting things they brought in their wake, one or two of us would scrape the earth and stones with our beaks, just to see if the earth was shallow enough to turn up its treat.

  At the time of this story there were two human nestlings in the tower, being watched over by their uncle, much as I watch over you while our parents are foraging. We took some interest in these boys, though the young of families with shiny plumage were usually given prompt burials, not left about to be eaten. We were more immediately interested in the many beheadings that went on in those days. But it was important to keep an eye on the doings of the humans with the rich plumage, because you could follow them to the sites where plenty of humans and horses lay dead. They were better than wolves in this way. These nestlings were also worth keeping an eye on because they were boisterous and prone to give chase and, as I told you, the small ones are faster than they look.

  There was also a drunk one—well several drunk ones, there always are, but a drunk one in this well-plumaged family, who we also kept one eye on. You always have to keep a lot of eyes, and that is why flock and family are so important. We were half keeping an eye on him as a threat, and half because it seemed likely that he might fall into a ditch and not be retrieved for some time. The other brothers did not look out for him as brothers should.

  Our very own many-greats-grandmother, she was the one tasked with keeping an eye on the oldest living human brother, the one who had brought the nestlings to the tower. She’d been watching him since he first came to the tower, when his older brother was still alive. Sometimes she would follow him for great distances—this was when she was a nest-helper, before she mated, and finding the scenes of battles meant not only the chance to gorge but also an opportunity to meet plenty of young males, some of whom might even have territories of their own. This wanderlust has always run strong in our family, and it’s served us well because every time we’ve been evicted—from the tower, from the city, from the rich plowed fields and the sunny so
uthern lands—we’ve been able to survive. In time, to return. I suspect this is why we are so fond of humans, though they chase us and throw rocks as you’ve discovered. They, too, bounce back.

  And our greats-grandmother was very fond of the human she watched. The way she told the story she liked his face—it was a bit more intelligent, more bird-like, than the faces of the other humans, and the way he moved likewise, with just a trace of a strut and not so unnaturally erect as the others. At times, when she fell to daydreaming about a nest of her own and young, she’d have to resist the temptation to stuff choice bits of meat down his throat. He’d started riding into battles when he was little more than a fledgling himself by human standards, and she’d followed him many times thinking that she might end up feasting on his eyes, but as it didn’t happen, she grew more and more attached. That was the only defense she could ever offer for what she did.

  The nestlings, yes. I’m getting to that. At that time our greats-grandmother’s older half brother, himself still a nest-helper as well, was watching the nestlings. He’d been attached to the drunk brother, before, and seen him drowned in a barrel; sharing his sister’s fanciful nature, he was prone to mope about this, and his new humans were too young to follow into battle—in fact, they never left the tower. Moreover it was a stormy year, and everyone was roost-weary and bored. The nest-helpers decided to go and dig for the legendary cache that they’d heard so much about.

  The earth was rain-wet, soft and rich with insects. They had few other duties; thanks to executions in that year their youngest brothers and sisters were well-nourished without their parents needing to range too far from the tower. They made more progress than anyone had before towards uncovering the cache. And then the human nestlings, bored themselves, I suppose, for humans do bore easily, came wandering out into the yard.