Zombie Raccoons & Killer Bunnies

by Martin H. Greenberg

  Plucking a leaf from one of the few undamaged peppermint plants, Cullen gave it an experimental lick. “You’d think it would have plenty of nice, tender herbs to eat where it comes from,” he noted with a grimace, wiping his fingers on Chekres’ pelt.

  “It probably does,” Isien answered. “But you know how cattle are, they’re always after fodder in somebody else’s field. And there’s lots of very lovingly druid-tended fodder here.” Her outstretched arm took in all of Tara’s herb gardens.

  Brae glanced around with a thoughtful expression. “Funny how it only mucked about in Moifinn’s patch then, isn’t it?” she asked, with a sneeze as Cullen waved the crushed peppermint leaf under her nose.

  The others frowned at her. “How’d you mean?” Tierney demanded. “There’s dung everywhere.”

  “Sure, but that was just from the herd wandering around. We saw them, remember? Mostly the cows just munched away on the grass around the fence line, but the bull went straight for Moifinn’s patch.”

  “So what’s so special about it?” Isien asked.

  Brae shrugged. “It’s all vetch to me,” she said with another sneeze. “Nasty to smell and just as nasty to eat.”

  “You know who we have to ask then, don’t you?” Isien said.

  As one, her three siblings nodded glumly.

  “But we don’t all have to be here when she answers, do we?” Cullen asked with a hopeful expression.

  Brae rounded on him with a snarl, and Tierney stepped quickly between them. “Yes, pup,” he said to his little brother in a firm tone. “We all have to be here.”

  “Catnip, peppermint, dragons blood, cinquefoil, and thyme. That was the worst of what got eaten.”

  Moifinn glared down at Bala as if the whelp had been responsible for the damage, and Isien moved forward before Brae could take offense at the unfair accusation and say something that they would all regret.

  “So, what would all that do for a bull?” she asked brightly.

  “Give it a bad case of the runs,” Moifinn replied in a sour tone.

  “Looks like it succeeded then,” Cullen noted, wrinkling his nose.

  Tierney shook his head. “That’s what it’s always like,” he whispered.

  “Ew.”

  “Enough,” Isien snarled at them both. “I meant, what are they usually used for?”

  “Many times many things; the same with all herbs,” Moifinn snapped. “Cleansing potions, love potions, creating a psychic bond with your cat. Do you think it has a cat?” she asked, the dangerously sweet tone in her voice once more. “Protection, prosperity, to cure nightmares or cure impotency. Don’t you dare laugh,” she warned, glaring at Tierney and Cullen.

  “We weren’t,” Tierney protested.

  “Bollocks, you weren’t.”

  All four siblings stared at her, trying hard not to break up laughing, and after a moment the Druid allowed herself small chuckle. “Yes, well, I suppose that was a bit funny,” she allowed, then frowned. “You say it was a faery bull?”

  “A legendary faery bull,” Brae explained, quickly recounting Cnu Deireoil’s tale of Finnbhennach.

  Moifinn glanced down at her garden thoughtfully. “Cinquefoil, thyme, and dragons blood are all important elements in strength potions, useful if one was to fight another creature of equal or greater ability. Peppermint and dragons blood again are used for change. And catnip is most particularly the key ingredient in magical shape shifting.” She nodded to herself. “It’s preparing for battle.

  “But that’s notwithstanding,” she added with a scowl, “you keep that great roast of beef out of my sacred herbs or he’ll become just that: a great roast of legendary faery beef.”

  “So, now we know what it is, and why it’s here,” Isien said, ticking the points off on the tips of her fingers. “But we still don’t know how it got here or how to get rid of it.” Throwing herself down by the break in the north field fence, she wrapped one arm about her hound Keenoo’s neck, laughing as he turned around to swipe at her face with his tongue.

  “How do cows usually get where they aren’t wanted?” Cullen asked, joining them on the trampled grass. Chekres immediately dropped his head in his lap, scratching at him with one huge paw until he dug his fingers into his ruff.

  “They just break through the fence and go, like here.”

  “So, what fence did they break through to get here, in the bull’s past that is?” Tierney asked as Tukre head butted him until he sat as well.

  Isien shrugged. “Probably the portal grave entrance. Everyone says they’re magical, and we used one like it ourselves last year to get to Ynys-Witrin outside normal time, remember?”

  “But this one’s been plugged up and undisturbed for years.”

  “Err . . .”

  As one they all turned to Brae.

  “Actually, it hasn’t,” she admitted ruefully as Bala began to dig in a pile of cow manure at her feet. “I was up there, um . . . the day before yesterday, and Bala was rooting around the entrance. I thought she’d found a rabbit hole or something, so we both had a go at it until we starting scratching about in that stand of catnip. Then I pulled her off.”

  “So, you broke through the fence?”

  “I guess. We threw up a lot of stones. But I didn’t think we’d thrown up enough to let an entire herd of cows get through.”

  “Think again.”

  “So, should we try to seal up the entrance again?” Brae asked, peering anxiously over Cnu Deireoil’s shoulder.

  The four siblings had returned to nag him with questions about portal graves until he’d finally set the sheet of music he was reading aside and returned with them to study it for himself.

  “I don’t think you can,” he replied, bending down to peer into the collapsed entrance tunnel. “Such places were sealed magically as well as physically, and the spells have long since been lost. Whelp . . . what’s your name?”

  “Bala,” Brae supplied.

  “Bala, remove your nose, thank you.” Cnu pushed the whelp to one side as she tried to shove her head between him and the entrance.

  “Even the most accomplished of Druids would have difficulty resealing the entrance to any degree today,” he continued. Crouching, he ran his hand along a clump of young catnip sprouts cropped almost to the ground, and behind him, Brae sneezed. “Likely they were drawn to the catnip at the entrance, and, once that was consumed, they followed the scent to more in Moifinn’s garden.” He glanced up. “You could try planting a faery ring at the entrance. It’s believed that cattle will not step over one, but I don’t suppose that any of you know how to do that.”

  All four siblings shook their heads.

  “And Moifinn . . . ?”

  “We’d really rather not ask her,” Brae said hastily. “If we could help it. She’s in a bad enough mood already what with having to replant all her herbs and shrubs.”

  “Not to mention bullying someone else into shovel ing up all that cow dung on her paths,” Cullen added.

  “And with all your knowledge and all your books . . .” Isien began.

  “We thought maybe you might do it,” Tierney finished. “Please.”

  Four Fianna and four brindle hounds all looked at him hopefully, and Cnu sighed. “I’ll see what I can dig up on the subject,” he promised. “But it may take some time to set it in place,” he added, raising his hand to forestall a premature celebration. “A day or two even. You’ll have to do what you can to guard Moifinn’s garden in the meantime. And if you can’t keep them out of it, I can’t help you with her reaction.”

  Four Fianna and four brindle hounds all slumped unhappily.

  “Think it’s holding?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. It should be. Cnu’s very smart.”

  “But he’s not a Druid.”

  “No.”

  Five nights later, the four siblings and their hounds crouched behind a low rise where they could keep an eye on the portal grave. They’d been there every night since the Bard
had set his faery ring in place, and so far there’d been no sign of cows, faery or otherwise.

  Now Brae gave a wide yawn. “Finnbhennach might have eaten all he needs to,” she noted, pulling absently at Bala’s ears. The whelp echoed her yawn, showing a mouthful of pointy, white teeth, before settling back with her head in the crook of Brae’s arm.

  “Either way, the company’s leaving for Drombeg first thing in the morning, so after tonight it won’t be our problem,” Tierney answered from where he was lying stretched out with his head on Tukre’s flank.

  Cullen snorted. “I hate waiting like this,” he complained. “Couldn’t we start out early? We could be advance scouts.”

  “We might have been able to if we’d thought about it sooner,” Isien replied. “But Goll won’t appreciate being woken up on the eve of a long day’s travel. We’ll have to wait.”

  Cullen slumped against Chekres. “I wish we could time travel,” he muttered.

  “No you don’t.”

  The sudden overloud sound of cracking from the portal grave’s entrance cut off their argument at once. Jerking upright, Brae gaped at the huge creature who suddenly appeared standing with one large, front hoof squarely planted in the center of Cnu Deireoil’s faery ring.

  “Guess it didn’t hold,” she breathed.

  Isien craned her neck so that she could peer over her sister’s shoulder. “That’s not Finnbhennach,” she noted in an awed whisper.

  “No.”

  “That’s a brown bull.”

  “Yes. And he’s a lot . . .” Brae peered out at the animal. “Older,” she finished.

  Tierney and Cullen joined them at once. “Think that’s Donn?” their younger brother asked.

  “If he is, it’s a good thing for Finnbhennach that he ate all the catnip and such from Moifinn’s patch already,” Tierney answered.

  “But Moifinn’s spent the last four days replanting it.”

  “Yes, but it won’t be ready yet.”

  “Then why’s he here?”

  Tierney shrugged. “There are other herbal patches at Tara besides Moifinn’s.”

  “Think he’s headed . . .”

  Isien snapped at them irritably. “Be quiet,” she hissed. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  The distant lowing of Duir’s cows in the field sounded faintly over the trees, and as they watched, the brown bull lifted his head and sniffed the night wind with two great breaths from his huge nostrils.

  Tierney chuckled. “Watch and learn, little brother. Food isn’t the only thing a bull might break through a fence to find.”

  The bull’s body began to ripple like quicksilver in the moonlight; then, from one breath to the next, a vast, brown dragon suddenly towered above the field, its long, red tongue darting out from between its flashing teeth to taste the wind. As all four hounds began to bay hysterically, it launched itself into the air. It circled over the portal grave with a great pumping of leathery wings, and the four Fianna got a excellent look between its legs before its black silhouette disappeared over the trees.

  Tierney coughed. “Well,” he began, shouting to be heard above Tukre’s deep bass barking. “It certainly won’t need to worry about . . .” He paused.

  “Shape shifting?” Brae offered as she tried unsuccessfully to calm Bala down.

  “Right, shape shifting, that was what I was going to say.”

  “Wish I had shape shifts like that,” Cullen noted, then yelped as Isien smacked him on the back of the head. “I’m just saying he was very . . . older,” he added.

  Isien turned to Brae. “Shouldn’t we do something about this?” she shouted, then turned with an exasperated expression. “Keenoo, shut up! It’s gone!”

  Her hound subsided with a resentful look, then turned on Chekres, nipping him in the ear. Cullen’s hound yelped, then slunk quietly behind the youth’s legs.

  “Like what?” Brae asked, finally just clamping her hand around Bala’s mouth to silence her.

  “I don’t know,” Isien continued, glaring at Tukre, who quieted at once. “Warn Duir maybe?”

  “About what?” Tierney laughed. “I don’t think it plans to eat them.”

  “Dragons do eat cows,” his twin pointed out.

  “Yes, but bulls don’t.”

  “Do bulls mate in the springtime?” Brae asked with a frown.

  “I think they mate whenever they want to, but it’s an otherworldly bull; it probably doesn’t matter.”

  The timbre of the distant lowing changed to something that was definitely not fear, and all four Fianna grinned widely.

  “Well, I guess that answers that question,” Tierney chuckled. “So,” he asked, stretching his back out. “What do we do now, go watch?”

  Brea yawned. “Oh, yes, that’s so tempting. No. If we’re not going to go tell Duir that his cows are cavorting with a strange bull, we might as well get some sleep.” Stripping off her tunic, she tucked it under her head. “Tomorrow we leave for Drombeg, and when we next come to Tara, I’ll bet Cnu has a whole new chapter in his story about Donn and Finnbhennach.” She yawned again. “I wonder if we’ll be in it,” she added sleepily. Then, changing as fluidly to her Sidhe hound form as the brown bull had changed to its dragon form, she nudged Bala up against her stomach and closed her eyes.

  One by one, her siblings followed her lead until four white hounds and four brindle hounds fell asleep to the distant lowing of satisfied cattle.

  DEAD POETS

  By John A. Pitts

  John A. Pitts is a transplanted Kentucky boy living in the Pacific Northwest. He’s a long time writer of speculative fiction whose work has appeared in such magazines as Talebones, as well as the DAW anthologies Swordplay and the forthcoming The Trouble with Heroes. John recently signed a three-book deal with a major genre publisher. Visit his website at www.japitts.net

  Offal, carrion, rot, and decay. Panic rises in Katie as she staggers across the living room to shut the French doors. The stench of death rides the autumn wind.

  For a moment, she stands frozen, staring out at the rose garden, searching in vain for the source of the stench. With eyes watering and throat clenching she shuts the doors and reels to catch herself on the back of the couch.

  Dear God in heaven.

  She crosses to the kitchen, one hand over her mouth. The urge to gag flits through her as she runs a cloth under the tap. Once she covers her mouth and nose with the damp cloth, she rifles the cabinet for anything to overcome the smell.

  Half a can of air freshener later—Piney Woods—she collapses on the veranda and flips open her cell phone.

  No signal, of course. She lays the phone against her forehead and watches the dust motes dance in the last rays of sunlight. The breeze has blown across the garden for days now, and the intoxicating aroma of heat and roses has teased her mind with memories of her childhood and days with no end.

  Now, something, or someone, has been eviscerated in the garden and fermented in the heat of the day. With the evening’s shifting of the breeze, she now suffers the full brunt of the carnage.

  Her stomach churns, adding the tang of bile to her already overloaded senses. This is not what she wanted. Nothing in her cute little house seems appealing any longer.

  The odor slithers into her psyche, addling her thoughts. What in the verdant grove could be . . . She sits bolt upright. Oh, it couldn’t be!

  She slips on her sneakers and holds the cloth to her face with one hand, grabbing the fireplace poker with the other. “Please don’t be Grandma,” she whispers as she flings the doors open again. The odor has subsided a bit, or perhaps she’s just getting used to it. In either case, she steps gingerly from her house and stalks around the path through the three trellises flowing with wisteria. The raucous call of a crow causes her to jump, smacking the fireplace iron against a trellis with a bang.

  “A raven caws in the gloaming night,” she whispers, clutching the poker to her chest.

  “our darling girl stands a’fright abattoir�
�s wind has come of late blows the ire of Sweeney’s gate”

  Three years of English literature and her fear thrills with hackneyed poetry. The sigh that escapes her lips buzzes behind the drying terry cloth. Death lingers nigh, she thinks, walking beneath the wisteria.

  She clears the end of the hedgerow and crosses the lawn. No bodies strew the lengthening shadows. The windows of her grandmother’s house are open, and she hears singing from the kitchen.

  Okay, Grandma Eloise has not been butchered. That’s good.

  Her heart lightens somewhat as she walks the path beneath the growing dusk, careful to step on only the white stones. Safe, she thinks, when her feet touch the porch. Safe at last.

  The door squeaks a bit as she opens it. Grandma straightens from the oven and places a beautiful bundt cake on the counter. The overwhelming smell of sugar and eggs, vanilla and . . . lemon of all things . . . washes away the blight of death.

  “Playing robber?” Grandma asks.

  Katie smiles behind the terry cloth and shrugs, placing the fireplace poker on the table beside the cake. “Sorry, Grams. Something horrid has happened in the garden, and I thought perhaps you’d been murdered.”

  “Oh, my,” Eloise says with a shake of her head. She places the oven mitts on the countertop near the sink and rinses her hands. “Murdered, you say?”

  “Yes,” Katie says with a vigorous nod. “The smell is overwhelming.”

  Grandma laughs then, a light, airy trickle that causes her eyes to scrunch up and a rosy glow to brush her cheeks. “Oh, my child. It’s that fool butcher bird.”

  Over jasmine tea and steaming lemon poppyseed cake, Katie learns of the shrike that nests among the thornier hedgerows and its proclivity for impaling its victims on the long thorns of the hawthorn hedge. How scrumptiously morbid.

  “It’s nesting now,” Grandma assures her. “But after a few weeks the little ones will be gone, and the aroma will die back.”