by Daryl Banner
“These were once people,” I assert. “He’s scared. I’m sure the other one is scared, too. We’ve invaded their … habitat … without their consent. They have a right to exercise certain precautions.”
“Certain precautions? Like ripping our throats out?”
I shoot John a look. “We need to respect them. They are people.”
“They were people. I don’t know what that is,” he says with a careless flick of his hand. “It was going at me like it wanted to sink its teeth into my neck. This was a mistake, all of this.”
“What?”
“We shouldn’t have come.” John huffs, mad suddenly. “We’re going to die out here in the middle of nowhere. That other one’s going to wait until we’re asleep and it’s going to hunt us and pull our bowels out of our bellies.”
“John …”
He’s out of the cabin the next instant, pushing past Mari, I guess to look for the one that got away. I stare after him for a moment, hurt by his brashness. Is he right? I have to wonder. Have I brought us all out here to die?
Mari’s face reflects a similar trepidation. When my gaze meets hers, I feel my resolve break further. “I know, I know, you’re mad at me too, but—”
“I’m just in sh… shock,” whispers Mari, her voice weary and halfway gone from screaming. “I expected … I expected us to get here and … and embark on a long search through wild, magical wilderness for days before finding proof of the Living Dead. I hadn’t expected to find it so,” her purple eyes meet the creature’s, “quickly.”
I turn back. The boy’s pale, ghostly eyes haven’t left mine, and though his dry, abraded lips still curl with half a snarl contained behind them, I sense a calmness in his face that wasn’t there before. Is he coming to trust me?
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” I tell this creature, who we’ve half-crushed against the wall by a heavy metal crate and stabbed one of his hands in place by a sharp lever that belongs in a computer somewhere. “The four of us are only visiting and will be gone soon. We don’t—”
“Five.”
The sudden word cuts like an icicle to the chest. His voice is unexpectedly deep and crystal clear. “Five?” I shake my head. “There’s only four of us. Myself, Mari—”
“Five,” the creature repeats, then inhales deeply and inclines his head toward the back of the cabin like a dog smelling meat.
Mari, Easton, and I turn our eyes. The darkness in the back of the craft returns our stare with silence.
Then, the shadows speak: “Don’t hurt me.”
East emits a shriek of surprise, backing away.
“Who’s there?” I call out into the dark, sounding about ninety percent braver than I feel. “Show yourself!”
The person—a woman, if I had to guess by the sound of her voice—remains exactly where she is, unseen. “So, so, so, so sorry,” she whimpers. “Please. I didn’t mean—I don’t want to—I was only—”
“Who are you??” I demand.
“It’s me!”
“Who’s ‘me’??”
Then, ever slowly, the darkness parts, and from the shadows of an overturned crate, a thin and bony woman emerges. She is dressed in silks, and her hair is so bushy, it appears like a hundred writhing snakes. Then—
I blink. “D-Dana …?”
Dana the Diviner’s eyes grow wide. “I only meant to speak with you back at campus, and … and I thought that, maybe I’d—”
“How’d you get here??” I gape, unable to place when the hell she could’ve boarded our craft. “Did you follow me? Have … Have you been aboard this whole time??”
“I couldn’t just let you go,” says the woman, her eyes turning dark. “What you did to me was unforgiveable. And what you were going to do—”
“They’re coming.”
I turn to the pale boy, whose ominous words bring my heart to full racing speed without even knowing their meaning. “Who’s coming?” I ask at once.
“All of them,” he answers.
The next instant, John’s reappeared at the opening. “Shut the door and lock up. Now,” he says quickly, out of breath from running. “It’s so dark out there, but I saw other ones approaching. Lots and lots of them.”
“Hair as white as winter …” breathes the boy, his eyes turning hungry and a wicked smile finding his face.
My eyes dart around, having adjusted to the unsettling semidarkness. “The front window is broken,” I point out. “They might pry open the ramp from the outside, I can’t be sure. Oh, no. They could just … They could easily …”
“Crawl in,” finishes the boy, a hint of victory in his deep voice. “Climb in. Claw in.”
“We have to run,” John says and realizes at the same time, and even he can’t hide the terror that’s flooding his eyes. “Pack a bag. Food. As much as you can carry.”
The boy closes his eyes, grinning. “They’re already here, here, here …”
Something slams against the outside of the craft. The groan of a hungry something bleeds through the metal, a groan that sends deadly shivers up my back. At once, I clamber for the opening, desperate to shut it, but John grips it tight and says, “This vehicle isn’t safe! We have to run, Jennifer!”
“No!” I yell out, my knees shaking. “We’re safe in here! We have food! It’s suicide if we leave this vehicle!”
“It’s suicide if we don’t!”
Marianne, making the decision for all of us, plunges out of the vehicle and vanishes from sight. My heart’s ripped out of my chest the moment she goes, and the first horrible thought that passes through my head is: I’ll never see her again. I can’t let that happen, so I seize John’s wrist and charge headfirst out of the hovercraft and into the patient, hungry dark.
I swallow an impulsive shout for Marianne to slow down or let me know how far she’s gone, knowing that my every sound is a weakness when countless Undead are hunting the scent of my delicious Living blood. Soon, I’m running side by side with John through the tall black trees that, in the dark, all seem to be laughing at me. I pray my feet will keep me quick and that nothing underfoot will trip me. Any stumble could mean my death.
There are footsteps behind us. After seeing how fast the pale boy had moved, I know these are not the slowly staggering zombies of fiction and folklore; these people are just like me except they’re … well, dead. They run. They fear. And worst of all, they hunger. I don’t like to venture what they enjoy for a typical supper.
“Light,” breathes John, seeing it at the same time I do.
“Maybe they’re afraid of it,” I say, praying I’m right, but not willing to bet anyone’s toes on it.
We break through the scourge of trees, dumping onto the most dismal beach I’ve ever seen. The sand is the color of dust, like an ashen shore that doesn’t welcome the ocean, but instead seems to push it away as though it were some gross experiment offered to you at dinner by your sweet, well-meaning Aunt Belinda. The water is less appealing than the beach, falling somewhere on the color wheel between blue-grey and the precise color of murk.
“Where’s Mari??” I ask at once, scanning the shore and finding no sign of my friend.
John grips my hand and keeps me moving toward the water. Just before our feet touch the ocean, we pull back, both of us likely sharing the same thought: I don’t want to know what happens to my skin when it touches those foul, contaminated waters.
We turn at the sound of feet kicking sand and find East and the Diviner Dana breaking from the grim line of trees. A moment later, they’ve joined us by the water, and the four of us stare back at the row of needle-sharp, lifeless foliage that wait, silent as death.
“Where’s Mari?” I ask again, my stomach twisting. “East? Did you see my friend?” His blue eyes quiver when he shakes his head no, confirming my fears. “Oh, no …”
“She could still be running,” reasons John. “She might be hiding in a thicket of trees. She might be—”
“Dead.”
The wo
rd comes from Dana. At the sound of it, I snap and round about upon her, furious. “How the hell did you get on that ship??” I demand.
She lifts a hand. “The spirit world spoke to me. I knew precisely where you’d be, and why. I’ve come to—”
“You followed us, liar,” I blurt right back, cutting her off. “I don’t know how, but I know you snuck onto that ship right behind us. How’d I not hear you??”
Dana frowns. “You were arguing at the control panel. There was an empty food crate in the back. I hid.”
“Food!” I cry out, my mind thrust into a different and far more pressing direction. “Oh, no! All of our food is on that craft! How are we going to survive??”
The delivery boy makes a sound and taps a satchel that I only now discover hangs from his shoulders. “I took as much as I could.” He stares at the ground miserably. “It isn’t much.”
I drop to my knees in the sand, staring at the forest in mute horror. I’ve brought us here to die, I tell myself, my favorite thing to tell myself lately. Already, Marianne …
“We can’t stop moving,” says John, “because they sure as hell won’t.”
“The spirit world is awakened,” agrees Dana airily.
“Let’s go, Jennifer. We have to go.”
We resume our hurrying right where we left off, pushing feet into the stubborn sand and moving laterally, skirting the edges of the dark woods. The sand makes running difficult, breaking and crumbling beneath our feet. I keep stealing glances at the woods, terrified that the creatures are going to find us. Their eyes could be hidden between the trees, watching as we make our futile escape.
And every step I take is another step I’m putting between my friend Marianne and I. How can I just leave her out there, running through the woods all alone? What kind of person does that? Likely someone who would hear of her father’s dying and, instead of running to comfort her mother, throws herself right into peril.
I’m a glutton for horror. And a selfish one, at that.
“Keep going,” John calls from behind, encouraging us. “No slacking, Connor. We have to keep moving.”
“They … call … me … East,” the boy replies between breaths.
“They’ll call you dead if you slow down.”
Suddenly, I’ve had it with the guilt in my chest. “No!” I cut away from the others, plunging towards the forest.
John cries out for me, but I ignore him. I won’t leave Marianne behind. I won’t run for my life, not when someone else’s could be lost. Maybe I’m purely motivated by guilt and this isn’t some brave, heroic thing I’m doing. Maybe I’d much rather be lying around in my condo complaining about my professors and the food they serve at the cafeteria and my fast-crumbling thesis. Maybe I’d rather be looking at my mom in the holograph, mourning the loss of my dad and reminiscing on the good old days.
But this is my life’s work. This is the reason I’m alive. And I brought these people here with me to gather proof of the Dead. I won’t let us join them as fellow corpses-with-appetites.
John calls for me again, and from the sound of his voice, I know he’s following me. Better stop shouting unless it’s your intention to draw all the Living Dead towards us, I think just as the world grows dark again and the great deathly blanket of mist above becomes my new and permanent sky.
The trees are endless in all directions, if I can even dignify these dead black things with the word “tree”. I fumble in the semidarkness, my hands thrown up to grab a trunk and prevent my fall. Frozen against the tree, I listen.
John stops running too, coming up to my back and standing still so his feet no longer make a noise. I don’t turn around to see him, knowing he’s smart enough to catch on to my intent.
Nothing, I think miserably to myself. I hear nothing. I scan the twisted environs, searching for a sign of anything alive or dead. I listen with all my might, desperate to catch wind of even the slightest whisper of breath or crackle of branch underfoot.
Snap! I hear it, and charge.
John is right on my heels—and this time, he has sense enough not to shout my name. I don’t even know what I’m racing towards. Is it friend or foe? When I find it, will it greet me with a sigh of relief or try to eat my face?
“Jennifer,” he breathes in my ear.
I see the same thing he sees before another word’s exchanged. In the distant dark, the unmistakable gleam of eyes find mine. Many eyes. Four sets of them. Five … I can’t count. The moment they see me, they move. Well, I’m no good to Marianne if I’m dead, I reason, and with all the bravery I just gathered up, I find myself running away from them again.
“This way!”
East is leading the way suddenly—I hadn’t realized he and Dana were still with us—and our meek and very-alive party of four cuts through the dark in the direction East is taking us. Hopefully it’s a direction with a happy ending.
The trees end abruptly, revealing a long and winding riverbank. The water is shockingly dark with sheets of glossy film that float upon its surface.
East seems not to be daunted by the utterly repulsive sight, thrusting himself through its vile waters to get to the other side. After a quick look at one another, John and I swallow our vanity and go in right after him. The feel of the water against my legs is less like water and more like a thick and strangely icy oil. The further the water comes up, the higher I raise my hands, desperate not to touch any more of it to my skin than I have to. To my waist it comes, then to my chest as I move further and further across the river. Then my feet give away on the soft riverbed, pulling me into the disgusting water up to my chin. I give out a yelp, hearing echoes of my voice slap back at me from all directions, then desperately push myself further and further through the murk.
“John!” I call out.
“Right behind you,” he says. “Keep moving.”
Just then, I lose my balance again—or else the river itself is alive, cruelly taking my feet from under me—and this time I don’t regain any purchase. Submerged totally in the water, I don’t dare open my eyes, flailing my slow-motion arms and kicking my stubborn legs. I can’t even tell which direction I’m going and, unprepared for the fall, I’m quickly losing what remained of my breath.
A strong pair of arms wrap tight around me, and then I feel myself being dragged along. My head breaks the surface just long enough for a single gasp of air before I’m submerged yet again. After another moment of desperate panicking, my head breaks the surface again. I scream, only to have my head pulled under once more, my mouth filled with river water, if I can ever dare call it that.
I’m going to drown in the land of the Dead.
The next instant, I drop onto the bank, coughing and spitting out vile water. The arms let go of me and I turn to find John staring down at me, his eyes pouring with hurt and passion, his mouth gaping with his every heavy breath. I stare up into his eyes for a moment, and my first thought is, I’m so glad you’re here with me. You save my little meaningless life over and over again.
Then I sit up with a start, reminded of our pursuers. To my bafflement, I find a line of five men and women on the opposite riverbank from which we’d come. They each look worse than the other. Among them is the pale boy we’d pinned to the wall of that craft; how he was freed and can still somehow walk, I can only speculate. The five of them stare at us, motionless and stark.
“Why are they just standing there?” John whispers to us, confused.
“The water,” answers East. “I suspected it. When I’d quickly filled my satchel from the overturned crate, a canister of water slipped from my hand and spilled in front of one of them. Its reaction was … well, it was telling. They don’t like water. That canister saved my life. I got out of the craft and tore off running, fast as I could.”
Water? That’s all it takes? I rise, drawing as close to the riverbank as I can, astonished by the fact. Only a hundred feet separates us from the Dead, maybe less. For a while, I can almost convince myself that the five of them
are just dirtied, homeless street beggars. Really, except for a few unsightly characteristics, they look … human.
“We have to find shelter somewhere, somehow,” says John quietly in my ear.
I step into the water, just to where it comes up to my knees. The curiosity throbs in my chest with my every hungry heartbeat. I want to see them even closer. I want to know them. I want to understand them. Do they want to understand me? Surely they haven’t seen a Living person in quite some time. Nothing has lived over here—whether plant or animal or otherwise—in hundreds and hundreds of years, if the Histories are to be believed. I can’t explain why there’s a river here when I thought they’d all dried up, or why we’re able to breathe the air, or why there’s a thick blanket of fog concealing this land from the sun and, yet, somehow it feels as cold as winter. Just that thought makes me shiver, the murky water still dripping from my hair and chin and fingertips.
“Jennifer,” he starts to say again.
I lift my face to the row of Dead, certain they are, in fact, what we suspect they are. “We mean you no harm,” I assure them, my voice quivering and small. “We didn’t mean to disrupt your way of life—”
“You are our way of life.”
The response came from the bald one with one eye who stands protectively near the one we’d pinned to the wall of the ship earlier. Mari was right; the bald one has a woman’s shape. Even despite the lack of hair and the greyness of her skin, she looks almost pretty.
“What?” I return, unsettled by her response.
The woman says nothing more, simply staring at us from across the dark river. The Dead stand so still, one could easily mistake them for another row of lifeless trees, splinters of grey against the black.
I don’t know why I stupidly expected our visit to be so different, as if the Dead were going to welcome us with hot chocolate and marshmallows. I pictured us wandering through a landscape of wonder, visiting quaint villages of happily-living Dead, sitting around campfires and asking about their world. I imagined an exciting adventure that fulfilled the deepest hunger of our curious human spirits; I hadn’t expected us to fulfill something else’s hunger.
