“11:59. Are you done now?”
“No. You must place the heart with Manny. Here…”, and with that Obediah tossed the gold heart to Max. Max thought about running right there and then as he looked at the gold in his hand. He felt how heavy of a chunk it was and thought it must be worth a lot. Although Max had been lost to reverie, he looked up and noticed that Obediah had him covered with a pistol.
“What is this Obediah? I helped you find your brother! Why are you holding that gun?”
“You are the one who buried my brother in unhallowed grounds. You must place the heart before my brother awakes as a zombie. I have spoken the sacred chant and now you must appease him with the placement of the heart.” Distant bells could be heard from a nearby church. The bells had rung in eleven and now they were tolling for the midnight hour.
Max’s mind was racing now as he knew he had been discovered. He also realized that he had been taken in by Obediah’s simple talk and stuttering; both of which were gone now. Max gasped, “How did you know it was me?”
“It does not matter. All is revealed to the inquisitive. Quickly Max! Place the heart with Manny before he rises!” The urgency was escalating in Obediah’s now perfect English as the church bells continued their ringing.
Max thought to himself that this was all crap as he walked over to Manny’s grave. He wondered how Obediah found out about his connection to Manny’s death, but he decided he would go along with the strange black man for now. As Max gazed upon Manny’s corpse in the flickering light, he noticed that the sneer was tighter upon the face now. The chest area seemed to be heaving up and down, a little, as if in respiration. He figured that his eyes were deceiving him in the candle light, but he saw Manny’s skeletal arms lift up out of the grave and the bony fingers started contracting and releasing. Without another thought, Max dropped the gold heart into the open grave with Manny. Just as he did this a shot was fired and Max looked down at his chest in time to see blood spreading quickly on the front of his shirt from an exit wound. This was all he saw before he plunged forward into the grave. He did not feel the dead arms that embraced his body in the shallow grave.
All was quiet after the bells finished their somber tolling. Obediah looked down at the double grave. Manny’s sneer had changed into a grisly smile and both bodies were now motionless in the candle light. Manny’s damned soul had been appeased and all it took was a chunk of lead painted gold and a single bullet. He thought it was funny just how easily some people could be fooled by their own greed. Obediah covered the grave back over with dirt and replaced the makeshift grave maker; then left the abandoned building. He had avenged his brother. His brother could now rest at peace.
There Was A Before
M. Leon Smith
The fire crackled noisily, its damp wood spitting angrily. A circle of hastily placed stones kept the fire from spreading and were used to cook thin strips of meat from the boar they had snared earlier in the day.
The light from the flames lit the faces of three teenagers, two boys and a girl, and that of their tutor. The small group huddled as close as they could to the blaze in a vain attempt to drive the cold from their bodies. Plumes of thick, white breath left their mouths as they exhaled before it dissipated in the heat of their improvised oven and heater.
Just behind them were three tents. Richard, their tutor, had his own as did Donna. Ian and Steve shared one but, although they would never admit it, they had the best deal. The tent itself was no bigger than the others and sleep was a cramped and uncomfortable endeavour but they had the benefit of extra body heat to drive back the frigid November air.
Beyond the tents, about three feet above the ground, was the ubiquitous razor-wire, hooked up to makeshift batteries. A fine layer of winter’s first snow covered the tree tops and before long it would find its way through the thick leaves and sizzle as it hit the bare, charged wire. Cans filled with dry gravel dangled from it to rattle and attract attention if disturbed.
All conversation was held in lowered voices. In the years since the world had forgotten how to die properly, humanity’s survivors had learned to keep the noise down. Every action was carried out in a silence that would once have been thought eerie but now was prudent.
They could hear.
“Tell us,” Ian urged their tutor. At thirty-seven, Richard was the only one to remember life prior to the zombies. In fact, he was one of the oldest people Ian had ever met and he fascinated him.
The tutor flipped his piece of meat with a small stick and looked silently out into the darkness. He seemed lost in thought and it was uncertain if he would talk. Suddenly he said, “There was a ‘before’. I know because I used to live there.”
The trainees, on their first foraging mission outside of the permanent Encampment, leaned forward as one. The rumours were true! Richard did know about the time before zombies and he would, unlike most others, talk about it.
“It was dirty and loud but very beautiful. So many people, so many cars and machines. Everyone carried a phone not a gun. Most weren’t armed.”
At the mention of the word ‘armed’ the three trainees reached for their guns. The idea of not having your own weapon was alien to them, they had been trained from infancy to shoot. Not only to shoot but to be accurate and mindful of when it was advisable not to take the shot. Guns were, after all, loud and sound attracted zombies like moths to a flame. When you brought down one of the undead, it could be an invitation for a hundred others to take its place.
The smile their reaction invoked in Richard was small and brief. They had a chance of surviving if their instinct to reach for the side-arms was so ingrained. He continued, “The cars worked back then, we travelled the county – the world – in them. We didn’t just use them to hide behind, they were transport not just cover. We flew around the world in planes. Imagine that! I’ve actually seen the tops of the clouds. We went to sea on cruise ships. We visited foreign lands. The world was such a small place back then.
“But that caused problems too. We fought over our Gods. We went to war over oil-”
“Nothing’s changed there, then!” exclaimed Steve. The trainees gave short, instinctive, shushes. They were all thirteen, adults in the new world, but sometimes he was so immature.
The ‘wars’ he referred to were the squabbles over the tiny reserves of fuel that still existed. To have diesel for a generator was enough to make you powerful in the new world.
“You’d think you were twelve, the way you go on,” whispered Donna, angrily.
Turning thirteen was such a big deal now, Richard thought. Life was so short, so brutal that he wondered how these kids managed to survive. The short answer, of course, was a lot of them didn’t. The day they were officially recognised as adults was the day they were sent into the ‘Outside’ and expected to live in the wild for three days. Instead of a cake they were handed ammo told not to die. No-one cried if they did. Those who returned did so to a lack of celebration.
It was universally accepted that if you were ‘Outside’ on your own then seventy-two hours was the longest you could expect to live without aid or rescue. The fact they were in a small, and highly unusual, group increased their odds of survival but not by much. If they lived into their fourth day as an adult they would be classed as a useful member of society. ‘Useful’ meant, of course, worthy of feeding and likely to be alive after the next attack.
It was Donna Richard felt the worst for. Three days ago she became an adult and she now had just three years to prove she could be a mother too. The thought sickened Richard, he could remember a time when even thinking that way had been a crime. He missed ‘before’.
“Settle all of you. Listen,” urged the tutor.
All four pairs of ears strained as they tried to pick up the slightest noise. Wind blew through the thick foliage above their heads, rustling leaves creating a sound that was reminiscent of falling rain. A particularly loud pop erupted from the fire and caused the three teens to flinch. Richard remained
as still as the truly dead. There heard no guttural moaning of the undead nor did the gravel cans rattle as warning that something had hit the perimeter wire.
Two, possibly three, minutes passed before Richard was happy they had not been heard and carried on. “We had electricity – lots of that. There were cities where you couldn’t tell the difference between night and day, there were so many lights.
“We had more food than we could eat. We paid for things with bits of paper instead of trading or working. We had houses with locks and we could heat them with the flick of a switch. No searching for wood for a fire, back then…
“It all ended in forty-two days. Thousands of years of culture and civilisation – wiped out in a little over a month. No-one knows where they came from and you’ve all heard the rumours. What do you three think?”
“Infected monkeys,” said Donna.
“I heard that the government were trying to make super-soldiers,” interjected Steve.
Ian was quiet for a little while then said, “It was God. He’s punishing us all.” He avoided the eyes of his team mates. His was the most widely scorned of all the myriad theories.
“The truth is,” said Richard, as he decided the meat was cooked and fished it off the stone with his stick, “no-one knows for sure. It could be any of those reason, or all of them. Or none.
“What you have to understand is that it doesn’t matter. They are here. And they destroyed everything that went before. All that really matters is we learn to survive, mange to scratch out a place for ourselves in the world as it is.”
Richard chewed on rich, gamey meat before he instructed, “Check your guns.”
Without question all three trainees dropped their hands to their hips and pulled their guns from their holsters. With agile, well-trained fingers they checked the weapons were loaded, safeties were off and they had spare ammo about their person. Ian and Donna also checked their knives. Steve didn’t carry one, Richard thought him an idiot for the oversight.
The teens all nodded back to Richard that they were fully prepared. He stood and made his way to the perimeter of the hurriedly constructed camp. No words were necessary. This was the third night of their trek and through a mixture of good luck and well-practiced woodcraft they had avoided all contact with the undead. An admirable performance but one that was unlikely to be repeated when caught ‘Outside’ alone.
Knowing what was to come, Richard walked to the razor wire and disconnected the batteries before he untied it and let it fall to the ground. The camp was now defenceless except for the guns the teens carried. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a flare gun and pointed it to the treetops above the fire.
“There was a ‘before’,” said Richard before he pulled the trigger. The noise and light of the flare would alert every zombie in the area to the presence of the trainees. The fight would be brutal, bloody and to the death. At least one, or perhaps all, of the teenagers would die but Richard hoped they would survive. He buttoned up his coat and walked towards the Encampment.
“But this is now.”
Day’s Work
Matthew Howe
We had the zombies working the south field that morning, picking soybeans. South field’s close to the house, so I was right there when it happened.
At first, it didn’t seem like nothing much, just a schoolbus coming over the rise and up the 109. You don’t see a lot of school busses these days, but enough that I didn’t give it more than a glance.
Then, as the bus approached the farm, it sped up, turned so hard as to nearly go up on two wheels and came roaring up the driveway before I could even think about shutting the gate, much less getting over there and doing it.
I left the gimps where they was and went running for the main house. I saw Yuri and his kids come tearing out of the barn, all of us moving fast as we could. We met up at the edge of the driveway, almost to the house, as that bus skidded to a halt right the hell in front of us, cutting us off.
The bus’ front door was already open, and before we could dodge left or right around it, get into the house and lay our hands on some guns, this gal jumped out.
She was young, early twenties, blonde and beautiful in that easy way magazine models and movie stars had back when there was magazines and movies. As she burst out of that darkened doorway, she caught a shaft of sun spinning down through the dust the bus’ tires had kicked up. For that second, I thought she was maybe the prettiest gal I’d ever seen.
Then, as she turned toward us, I saw half her face was covered in thick, ropey burn scars. War wounds, I’d guess. Didn’t matter, though, she was still beautiful.
Her eyes, though, there was nothing beautiful about them. They was tight and narrow, black with hate.
Even uglier was the pistol she held, a nasty old Desert Eagle in .50 cal. Way too much gun for a gal her size, but she brought it up anyway and pointed that big muzzle right at us.
“Hands up,” she shrieked. The ugliness of her eyes was echoed in her voice, which was sharp and high and grated on you like the screech of bad brakes. But it had power behind it. The voice of a leader.
Yuri looked at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Five of us, one of her. But she had the damned gun. I cursed myself, as I’m sure Yuri did, for not wearing my own that morning, but farm work’s hard enough without lugging iron on your hip.
I nodded to Yuri, he nodded to Misha, Ivana and Vlad, his kids. We all raised our hands.
“Anyone else around? In the house?” the girl asked.
“No,” I said.
“You lie, I’ll kill you.” From her tone, I knew she spoke true.
“I’m not lying to you,” I said. “Five of us is all there is.”
She smiled, smug, brought two fingers to her mouth and cut loose a shrill whistle.
On her whistle a mob of them came pouring out the front and rear door and went running past us. Kids. Kids in their late teens and twenties, some of them with long hair flowing behind, others buzzcut, half of them grinning and laughing like this was some kind of amusement park ride, the other half as serious and pissed off as you’ve ever seen.
The kids all carried bolt cutters, and I knew what they was gonna do. They was fixing to set my zombies free.
I knew because this had been happening at farms around the district in recent weeks. Them owners, many of them friends of mine, had a hell of a time getting their gimps back to work. Of course by the time they did, so many of them had fallen down hills and broken legs, or got shot by scared townfolk, that they was hardly useful at all. Without their undead, them farmers was gonna have real trouble getting their harvests in. And that meant people going hungry.
That’s what these damn kids didn’t understand. Sure it was nasty business using the gimps as forced labor. We all know they used to be human. But the world's a different place. With so many people killed during the war, there just weren't enough of us left to do the work. That meant for crap jobs, like field work, the only workers we had left was the undead.
And we did the best we could by ‘em, kept ‘em housed in clean stalls in the barn, gave ‘em their feed and buried them proper when they finally wore out and had to be put down. I wasn’t saying they was treated like family or nothing, but they was an important part of the operation and we gave ‘em their due.
And now these damn kids was gonna spoil everything.
That leader girl stepped closer to me. That big pistol in her hand was shaking. I didn’t like that. Made me nervous.
“Is this your farm?” she asked.
“It is indeed,” I said. “And I would appreciate it if you and your friends would clear off.”
“You’re unlawfully enslaving these people.” Her voice was so full of idiot righteousness I wanted to slap her.
“Them’s zombies,” I said as nice as I could. “They ain’t people.”
“They were people.” She acted like she was talking to a two-year-old. “They were someone’s mothers and fathers and s
isters and uncles. You don’t have the right to enslave them.” I had her pegged now. City girl, sure as hell. Goddamn smart-ass city girl who’d never done a hard day’s work in her life. How people like that survived the war, I’ll never know.
“Maybe not, ma’am.” I kept my tone civil as I could. “But I still suggest you and your people get off my property fast as you can.”
Her eyes were bright and hateful. “Or what?”
I shrugged.
“Fuck you, hick bastard.” She spat at me. The wad of it hit my shirt and clung there. Yuri glowered at her, but didn’t do nothing. Nor would he, less I told him to. I’d taken Yuri and his family in eight years ago, after I’d lost Martha and the girls. We’d gotten through the war together. He was a good man, loyal. A brother.
The girl turned to her people in the field. “Free them!” she screamed. “Free them all and end this unjust enslavement.”
I knew what them protestors was gonna do. They’d cut the leg shackles off our gimps, then tie the five of us up somewhere in the house while our zombies, our goddamn property, shambled off to raise who knows what kind of ruckus.
At least that was their plan.
I coulda said something, but she wouldn’t have listened anyway, so I just watched as the closest of the protestors stepped up to his gimp and knelt to the leg shackles with his bolt cutters ready. He was a fat kid, with long, greasy hair and a heavy roll of belly peeking out from under his tee shirt. He paused a second, staring at the bare ankle of the creature.
“Hey,” he said. “This one doesn’t have an ID tattoo.”
The gimp, the one we call Chuckie, had been bent over at one of the soybean plants. Chuckie seemed to notice the kid for the first time. He dropped his handful of pods, into the harvest basket I might add because we’d trained him right, then stood, turning toward the kid crouched at his feet.
Chuckie stared at the kid a second, as if trying to remember something. Then his dead eyes lit up, and he opened his mouth.
Undead War (Dead Guns Press) Page 15
