Zombies: Shambling Through the Ages

by Неизвестный

  William and George had the first shift of sentry duty. Unknowingly, they turned their backs to the colony and watched for movement beyond. Unknowingly, they became meat at midnight.

  There are now seventy men, sixteen women, and six children.

  Henry came to check in for the second shift. He found no one on duty. The only person he saw was Elizabeth, wandering in the yard and scratching. He asked her if she had seen William or George. At first, she looked at him as if she had no understanding of English. Then, she shook her head and walked away. It unsettled Henry when he noticed her looking back at him and licking chapped lips.

  Roanoke, May 1590

  Grossi Gerta has grown tired of stalking children. She was a large woman with a large appetite. She had no way of seducing the men into her quarters; she was old and no longer of child-bearing age. The focus of the colony was reproduction, yet their numbers were dwindling. The few men she had managed to snare had been luck. She needed a stronger strategy.

  She had seen the natives setting traps. In addition to being the grower of crops (crops which were now neglected due to her hunger), she becomes the setter of traps. Silently, she thanks the brown woman for providing her with knowledge and some lessons on knot tying. The brown woman had wanted nothing in return.

  When Gerta has finished her rampage, she will be responsible for the deaths of over twenty men: men who had blamed the “savages” for their hardships.

  Henry heard a scream coming from the woods.

  He had been one of the most successful sentries in terms of number of nights on the job. Something was apparently scaring the other watchmen away; whenever the morning duty arrived, no night sentries could be found. Perhaps the savages were frightening the men so badly that they were turning away from their responsibilities, away from the colony. Perhaps the savages had been kidnapping the men to enslave them.

  Or for reasons that were far worse.

  Henry hated the night duty, but he had always been smart enough to look in all directions and never to keep his back to the compound for long.

  Call it instinct or call it luck: at this rate, Henry would soon be Captain of the guards.

  The scream came again, this time it was cut short. Henry could only imagine what was happening in the wooded area just beyond the fence.

  “This is it,” he thought, he would catch the savages in the act. They could then retaliate with a war they would surely win. They needed proof this time, to avoid another instance of harming innocents. Finding one of the tribe promoting evil would put an end to suspicion and trigger action. But did Henry really want to stumble upon a deadly struggle? His stomach sank and his genitals crawled into his body.

  He lowered himself from his station and moved quietly into the thicket. He was grateful for the bit of moonlight that helped him to navigate his path. He felt as if he were staggering quickly but also moving mawkishly slow at the same time. He wanted to save whomever it was that had been screaming. Why had the screams stopped?

  His question was answered when he came upon a sight too horrible to believe.

  “No.” That one syllable was all his brain could muster.

  He saw his neighbor, Emme, bent over a child. Eating.

  There are now fifty-eight men, sixteen women, and three children.

  Roanoke, June 1590

  Her parents knew, but refused to accept, what she had become.

  Edward had placed Emme inside the structure he had been building as her house for after her wedding. Griffen was a carpenter, but Edward did not trust him to create a stable home for his daughter and future grandchildren. He also could not risk Griffen seeing her in her current condition. Wenefrid had bound her daughter’s hands, hoping the girl would stop scratching her boils. During the day, Emme slept and Wenefrid tested seaweed and herb-based poultices. At night, Edward secured the girl, fearing she was up to evil under the influence of the moon.

  Emme grew weaker and her skin grew worse. Her mother spoonfed her soup, which was immediately regurgitated. Wenefrid then came to an understanding that her husband did not entirely share, and she tried to sneak the girl hunks of raw chicken. Emme was able to keep the chicken down, but it did nothing to satisfy her hunger, nor did it have any effect on the disease that seemed to be eating her alive.

  One restless night, Wenefrid stole into Emme’s prison, only to find that the girl had begun to tear through her bindings. The girl looked at her with such pain, with such desolation, that Wenefrid’s heart broke. She removed the casings over her daughter’s hands and sprung her shackles. Then, she went willingly into her child’s arms.

  When Edward discovered the remains of his wife, along with his daughter no longer confined, he went much less willingly.

  And Griffen, sweet and simple, allowed Emme to approach him in the night. He soon found himself united to her in a way he had never imagined.

  There are now fifty men, fifteen women, and three children.

  “Elizabeth?” He opened the door tentatively.

  Henry knew he should not be paying her a visit alone. He had seen what had become of Emme and he suspected a similar condition was afflicting Elizabeth. He also remembered how he had loved her back home, how he had worked to put aside money so he could propose, but Ambrose had beaten him to it. He had wanted to hate the man, but Ambrose’s love of God made him someone to emulate, not envy.

  Ambrose’s death had been so sudden. Elizabeth claimed she had found him, bludgeoned as if by a hatchet, and desecrated as only a godless savage could dare to desecrate a pious man’s corpse. It had not been possible to bury Ambrose whole. Pieces of him had been torn away, the body was ragged and ripped and if Henry, upon seeing the body, had thought any less of the savages, he would have suspected that teeth had ravaged the corpse. The worst, for Henry, had been the eyes—the eyes had been removed. At that time, he could not imagine what evil the savages had had in store for those eyes. He had heard that savages sometimes consumed the heart of a warrior for strength; what had they hoped to see with Ambrose’s eyes? Ambrose had been a man of letters and a disciple of God; which did they value more: a view of words from their world of blackness, or a glimpse of heaven?

  The other men had not gone easily either. Each corpse told its own tale of depravity. And Henry could no longer attribute the cause to the natives.

  Now that he had seen Emme, now that he suspected what he suspected, Henry faced Elizabeth’s house with a mixture of fear and hope. Perhaps she was not sickly, not a monster. Perhaps he could, in some way, save her. They could leave this place together. They could start somewhere new, somewhere better. Or, they could find a way to go back home. Either way, they would be far away from this evil. More importantly, they would be together.

  He was so distracted by his plan making, as he stepped into his beloved Elizabeth’s home, that Henry failed to see the shadow, armed with a hatchet, moving from the darkened corner toward him.

  There are now forty men, fourteen women, and three children.

  Roanoke, Late July, 1590

  “God will protect the saved from the sinners,” Martyn Sutton opines during the Sunday service. Martyn had taken the pulpit after two of the original religious leaders met a tragic demise. The group knew the time had come to pray fervently. Their combined voices could catch God’s benevolent ear.

  The benches that had been built to accommodate them all were now mostly empty. The women itch and have great difficulties sitting still. “There exists a spiritual and divine light . . . this light shines upon the saved and allows the wicked to see the truth of their guilt.”

  “Amen,” the men say loudly.

  “This light, this divine light, will shine through the forests and lead us to a promised land . . . ”

  “Amen,” the men echo.

  “Alicarl, gaugbrojotr, istrumagi, kamphundr, kamphundr,” one of the women whispers. The others giggle.

  The men’s heads are bowed in prayer. They do not notice the women making a movement, or they have b
ecome accustomed to the scratching and do not notice that this is different. The women have hidden weapons in their skirts and shawls. Some of the women are armed with axes, a few have muskets, all have an insatiable hunger that allows them to quickly overpower the shocked men. The women allow the remaining children to flee.

  There are now no men.

  Roanoke, Early August, 1590

  It has been too long since she has had any sustenance, any flesh; Elizabeth knows she is dying. As she stumbles, gnawing on one of the few remaining bones she could find, sucking its marrow, she carves “Croatoan” into a post. She is not sure if this is the name of the brown woman’s tribe or of the curse. She wants John White to know, when he finds their bodies, that the brown woman had taught her the words. John White had told them to carve a post or a tree; he had told them to add a cross if they had faced anything distressing. She decides to wait and add the cross later; after the scene at their final service, she needs distance between herself and any symbols of faith. She begins to carve the same word into a tree, but only manages “Cro” before she succumbs to her hunger.

  The brown woman had done well. The curse had been overheard from stinking, hairy settlers from many generations ago. These new intruders would no longer be begging for supplies, draining the people of their resources while taking their land.

  The brown woman’s people had been attacked by John White, who had been seeking retribution for his original lost fifteen men. Now White had lost over one hundred.

  By the time some her tribe arrive at the colony, they find twelve women: twelve very hungry women. The brown woman had heard one of the children escape into the woods. He would not survive, and, if he did, no one would believe his story. For all practical purposes, there was no one left.

  The natives knew a boat was coming. The boat would see the smoke; the boat would maybe find some footprints, but nothing more.

  The natives burn the women: spoiled flesh burns quickly. They sweep up the ashes, sending the remnants of the scourge back where it belongs.

  Grit in a Diseased Eye

  Lee Thomas

  We are abandoned. Discovery is under full sail, far across the bay, too distant for our meager oars. Even so, I cannot bear to order the men to cease their pursuit. It is the only hope remaining to them, though I consider their hope an illusion. The effort keeps them occupied, pumping away their dread with the exertion of muscle and bone, postponing an inevitable and tragic flood.

  Icy shores and white fields surround the inlet. No prospects for a hospitable port. The water reflects the gray sky, and our pitiful shallop corrupts this water like a speck of grit in a diseased eye.

  Aboard my stolen vessel, Greene and Juet carry a tale of righteous mutiny, the story of a captain obsessed and obdurate. Lies. After Murphy came down ill and then Tobin, I ordered them quarantined, but Juet insisted on delivering them to the deep. When this was done, a similar demand was made for any man showing signs of infirmity. This I refused. The compromise was hardly kinder. The shallop. Meager supplies. A hasty prayer.

  The source of Murphy’s and Tobin’s particular malady is a mystery: perhaps a heretofore-unknown creature with a peculiar venom, or rations grown rancid during the long winter months. Perhaps it is a madness not yet documented, one that afflicts the mind when faced with such desolation of landscape. My only certainty is that my son, John, much to my misery, has become afflicted, and my refusal to leave him with the other sick men accounts for my presence on this craft.

  John was loaded into the shallop unconscious and barely breathing. Then he revived, and upon waking, my boy endured an absent delirium that looked as much like drunkenness as insanity. He immediately set on Rogers, burying his teeth into the mate’s wrist with so much force, his tooth broke free on the knobbed bone as he ripped away flesh and hide. He squealed in the way a pig squeals at the presentation of its slop as he gnawed the meat. I sought to constrain him, wrapping him in rope to end the flailing of his arms. But Rogers struck out enraged, sending John over the shallop’s edge, and before I could offer my son rescue, Rogers incapacitated me with a vicious blow. I laid dazed in the pitching craft, mourning the loss of my boy, not knowing that he was no more lost to me in the bay than he had been in the craft.

  With only enough strength to hold the rope, not enough to climb, not enough to swim, John remains in our wake, just as we remain in the wake of the Discovery, now a mere toy on the horizon. I see John well and clearly. His face appears just beneath the surface of the frigid bay like a spirit. His mouth remains open. His tongue lolls on the current sluicing his throat. His eyes are washed clean of color and intellect.

  Until the malady afflicted him, my son had such hunger and curiosity in his eyes. A precious and forever questioning soul. The hunger remains there.

  Do I grasp the rope and pull him to me, or do I join him in the frigid bay? I do not know. For now, I wait and write no more. My heart is too heavy to support the added burden of pen and page.

  Henry Hudson, 1611

  Theatre Is Dead

  Raoul Wainscoting

  The stage was set. The crowd quieted to a murmur under the mid-afternoon sun as the narrator appeared. Entering from stage right, he glided regally to the edge of the stage. His handsome costume was new and flawless. He took a moment to study the crowd. The better-paying patrons sat comfortably in the shade on the far side of the Globe.

  Squinting against the light, the narrator spoke. “Good people, hear thee now our tale of woe. The family royal Puglia, rulers of Brindisi, undone by the politics of man, while amongst them the dead do walk.”

  The crowd’s murmur rose briefly. The rumors were true, the play did concern the postvitals. A few amongst them rose to depart, mortified by the idea of using such tragedy as entertainment. Backstage, while the narrator strolled through the introductory monologue, the cast was rushing to complete their preparations. A debut performance was always challenging, but when breaking in a new theatre, doubly so.

  “Come now, into your costume!” William yanked on the cords, tugging the cape snugly about the young man’s neck. “Prince Risoni enters the first scene shortly, boy!” William shoved him forward, towards his assigned post near the stage, to await his cue.

  Henry Darcy, the young man in the costume of the doomed Prince Risoni, cradled his wounded hand, hidden beneath the cape. His brow was damp with pained perspiration, attributed to a mild case of stage fright. He swept the cape aside for a moment, peeking at the hand once more. It had happened in an instant, on the way to the theatre. That foul drunk, staggering along the cobbles, smelled of the sewer. Putrid and stinking, the drunk had crashed into Henry, forcing him to shove him away. As he pushed the stinking body, the old man had bitten him! Now costumed, Henry studied his hand. The arc of small, festering cuts on his palm betrayed the bite mark. But he had to go on. He needed this job, any job, and this troupe was the only one willing to take him. This was his last chance in London.

  Nearby, lurking in a shadowy corner, stood the officer. Quietly, Lieutenant Richard Litchfield, of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, observed. He caught William’s eyes and drew him over. William offered his hand, the pair shook, exchanging looks of tired relief. It had been a maddening few months for both of them. William thought back to their first meeting. His carriage, returning him from family business in Stratford, had struck and been overturned by an unexpected mob of postvitals on the road. His first encounter with the walking dead was terrifying. The staggering mass of rotting corpses had seized upon the coachman and his horses, giving William and the other passengers time to escape. But they were soon being pursued. A slow, relentless chase drove the passengers of the ruined coach across the field, carrying the others that could not walk. It had seemed like hours. The temptation to drop the injured and save himself had been overwhelming. Just when hope had seemed lost, help had arrived.

  Richard recalled their first meeting as well. The outbreak from the small village had gone unchecked for too long. His team, atop
armored horse and with their war wagon carriage, had trampled, impaled and slashed the corpses in quick order. He had personally crushed the lifelessness from the last few corpses with his metal gauntlets around their necks.

  It was then that William, an enthusiastic survivor of the assault, had seized upon his plan. After hearing Richard’s profane complaints of how the citizenry was too stupid to follow a few simple rules for preventing such outbreaks, he had made his offer. “Teach me these rules, as you would have them know, and I shall present them in grand form!” William had said there on the gore-soaked hillside. “Come to London with me, consult on the production of my new play. We shall take the city by storm, entertaining, educating, and making a good name for my troupe. And you, you shall gain allies in your battle.”

  Richard had scoffed at the idea, having no interest in sitting on the sidelines. A rising star in the Royal Navy, he had proven himself at the postvital outbreak in Portsmouth, leading his men, charging the fallen city from the docks. After that, he found himself seconded to the Royal Army, teaching them to roam the countryside, chasing down reports of the increasingly frequent outbreaks. He had no idea the power of this maddening playwright, who had the Lord Chamberlain reach out to have Richard seconded again to this new branch called “Relations with Her Majesty’s Public.” He had spent the last few months in frustrated misery, teaching artistic young fools to stagger and lurch in the manner of the dead. That had been easy, compared to the task of arguing with the arrogant, petulant playwright over details he was supposed to be reinforcing in their play—how to prevent the dead from rising, how to deal with those that had risen, or been bitten or befouled by them. Simple rules, needlessly complicated by their inclusion in this miserable, clichéd storyline of a fictional royal family.

  William smiled. Ignorant of Richard’s true feelings, he was happy to see the loyal officer standing by to the last, ready to assist during the play as needed. “We shall do well, you shall see. Your service here is most appreciated, and I shall make sure your superiors know of it, Lieutenant.” William tossed off a flippant salute and returned to shuffling the cast backstage.