Nights of the Living Dead

by Jonathan Maberry

Then walked into the liquor store, nonchalant as you please. Grabbed two pints of Jack and a carton of Marlboro Red, just in case. Smiled at Gus, the cheap-ass Filipino motherfucker behind the counter, as I gave him exact change.

  And walked out, feeling like the king of the world.

  Next thing I knew, I was barreling down El Dorado at sixty per, daring the red lights to stop me. Made it all the way to Standard Ave., where there was a scene out front of the Sacred Revenant Church of the Almighty that made me slow down hard.

  Sacred Revenant was one of them wackjob outfits that believed Christ was gonna come back any second now. They kept setting the time. It kept not happening. So they’d set it again. Like, for forty years and counting.

  Me, I didn’t believe none of that crap. I knew Christ wouldn’t be back till shit hit the fan for real. He didn’t show up for football games, no matter how much you loved your team. He didn’t show up just because the new Pope had a thing for losers and pussies and faggots. He didn’t even show up if you poured every speck of your righteous prayer into the most righteous causes of all. That wasn’t his job.

  His job was to inspire us to do His work, so that when we finally fulfilled His prophecy, and all the groundwork had been laid, the real deal could go down. The battle lines were not just to be drawn, but to be executed with ruthless precision.

  Only then—only then—would Christ return to smite the unholy, only hopefully more like Thor or Odin than that sad sack hippie on the cross. And whether we survived the ultimate conflagration or not, we would glory forever in Heaven. Or Valhalla. Or wherever. Past there, the details weren’t exactly clear.

  That being said: in the Sacred Revenant parking lot, there was maybe fifty screaming people in their Sunday best. And they was backing up toward the street in a slow-moving wave. I couldn’t see what they was backing away from. But I had a pretty good idea.

  So I whipped past the right lane, tore ass into the parking lot, slammed into park about ten yards behind the wave, and jumped out, engine still running. This time, I brought my favorite AK with me, name of Ursula, on account of her Russian design.

  The women were almost all dressed in black, and they shrieked as I pushed through the crowd. The men didn’t put up much resistance, neither. Didn’t take but twenty seconds to cut all the way through.

  And then, oh lordy, there he was.

  I recognized Pastor Luke at once, although the first thing I thought was don’t he look like himself? With his funeral makeup caked on, and fresh blood and meat smeared across his maw like chocolate cake on a two-year-old, he mostly resembled a nightmare mannequin from some old monster movie, all spastic herky-jerky in motion. And his eyes as dead as night.

  I’d almost forgot that he died last week. Heard about it in passing. My joke was, “Well, looks like he got to Jesus before Jesus got to him!”

  But here he was, and it didn’t look like Jesus had nothing to do with it. The blood on his hands was as thick as the blood on his mouth. It was my guess he wasn’t the only dead person at his funeral anymore.

  There were a couple of terrified guys behind him, pacing him but afraid to jump in. The second I brought up Ursula, their eyes went even wider. And the second I waved her barrel at his face, they wisely ducked to either side.

  Pastor Luke didn’t give a shit. All he saw was walking meat, as he set his dead eyes upon me.

  “Listen up!” I hollered loud enough for all to hear, then fired a couple shots over Pastor Luke’s head. I spun around to make sure no one was sneaking up on me. One was. He backed the fuck off quick.

  “Just so you know: he ain’t the only one back from the grave. I took down three in the last forty minutes. Whatever this is, it’s all over town. Maybe all over the world, for all I know.”

  Pastor Luke was getting a little too close. I knew that. It was part of the excitation, the crazy thrill I was feeling at that moment.

  So I turned back to him, brought Ursula to bear, and shot him straight through the heart. Everyone shrieked, then gasped and whimpered when he didn’t go down. Staggered on impact. Then just kept coming.

  “This is not God!” I howled. “This is the Devil! You tell me if I’m wrong!”

  I put three more holes through his chest and out the back. It jitterbugged him around some, but only made his focus clearer.

  “Are you seeing this?” I turned to clock their faces, streaming tears and blank with shock. He was less than three feet away now. I could feel his closeness in my bones.

  I turned around, smiling, switched to full auto, and made a hasty vapor pudding of his skull. Even then, it took a full three seconds for Pastor Luke’s body to give up the demon ghost.

  The crowd went silent as he hit the ground.

  “This is what we’re dealing with, people,” I said. “This is how it’s gonna be from now on. Satan don’t care if we’re good or evil. Except the better we are, the more he wants us. Which means we gotta fight harder, if we’re going to win.

  “So I’m going downtown, to that mosque full of Muslims, and wage me some holy war. Because if there’s anyone who’s anti-Christian, it’s them fucking jihadis. And anti-Christian equals Antichrist, last time I checked!”

  The first True Believers snapped out of shock, gave me my first hallelujah.

  “You want Christ to come back? Then let’s give him a reason! Let’s show Him we mean business!”

  That brought a howl. The crowd was catching on quick. You could see their eyes light up with the holy power of belief.

  “So how many of you people are packing?”

  “I got a hunting rifle in my truck!” yelled a sixty-year-old hardass.

  “Shit, I got three!” yelled a kid toward the back. “In my rack!”

  “All right!” I whooped. “So are we down?”

  And that’s when I became a king with an army.

  On the way back to my truck, this hot little number came trotting up behind me, and I was like, damn. Milky-white just-this-side-of-jailbait redhead in a black funeral dress that didn’t leave a whole lot left to imagine. From what I gather, it’s hard to run in high heels, but she was making some serious haste.

  “I’m riding with you,” she said. It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a challenge.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. “Just don’t slow me down.”

  She cackled. “Oh, dude. I don’t slow down for nothing.”

  “Well, all right, then.” Opening the door for her, like a gentleman should. Suddenly hard enough to cut glass.

  “You got some firepower for me, right, Jack?”

  “It’s Jimmy Jay,” I said. “You know how to shoot?”

  “I bet I blow your little mind, old Jimmy Jay.”

  “Oh, it’s like that, is it? And what’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know!”

  I laughed. She cackled some more, and the challenge was on. I shut the door behind her, circled around my dinged-up fender, felt her bright eyes upon me through the windshield glass.

  It had been months since the last time I fucked—since Jeanine caught me with that waitress, left me high and dry—and it felt like Jesus and the Good Luck Fairy just decided this was “National Jimmy Jay Baxter Day.”

  The second I hopped in, she held up a pint of Jack and said, “May I?” I nodded my head, strapped in, hit reverse, pulled a tight half-donut, and was peeling out and then left onto Standard before she had the screw top off.

  “Well, all right then!” she howled, swigging hard, then offered it to me. I waved it away, running a red light at sixty. Traffic was sparse. Another blessing. At this rate, we were five minutes away, tops.

  She took another swig, then punched my stereo on. Old-school Nordic Thunder, baby. Born to Hate. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought to crank the music before. So up in my own head.

  But the music was our soundtrack, as we whipped down the miles, not stopping for nothing. And it was perfect. Savage, ragged, and righteous. A punk rock White Power triumph of t
he sonic will. It felt exactly the way I was feeling, said everything I had to say.

  She head-banged in her seat beside me, revving up to the groove. Whipping me up, as well.

  The next time she offered me the bottle, I chugged that fucker hard, right through a red light, barely dodging a Charger that honked and veered at the very last second.

  It was clear sailing till two blocks from our destination. We saw the bottleneck on Main a block away, and I screeched left on a side street, took it down to the next intersection. That one was blocked, too.

  She turned down the music as I looked for parking. The only curb left was marked fire hydrant red.

  “Let it burn,” I said, pulling in.

  And she was looking at me. I could feel her gaze, and it burned with meaning. Like maybe I had some sort of answer. Or was some sort of answer, to a question she’d been asking herself a long time.

  I cut the engine, took a very deep breath that filled the silence where Nordic Thunder just rang. In the time it took to pull the key out, she had one hand on my thigh and the other on my cheek, turning my face toward her.

  “Jimmy Jay,” she purred, as I popped a bone that could crack Fort Knox. “I would like some guns now, please.”

  I always wondered what it would be like to fuck for what you knew was the very last time: be it a meteor coming in, or an invading army, or a nuclear bomb, or what have you. Would that last fuck be the ultimate summation and culmination of every fuck you ever had, or hoped to? Would all of your life’s long-squandered sexual energy wind up focused in that moment, like a laser beam, resulting in the biggest bang of all?

  We went into the back. And there, surrounded by my Armageddon stockpile, I am here to tell you that it was all that and more. We went at it like there was no tomorrow, mostly because there probably wasn’t; and if her eyes-rolled-back screams and convulsive shudders were any indication, she erupted roughly as volcanic as me.

  Fifteen minutes later, we staggered weak-kneed out and back into the world. She looked amazing with straps of ammo crisscrossing her funeral dress, popping her boobs out, M-15 in her hands. Black heels, red hair, and semiautomatics, dude. All she needed was an SS hat and a swastika on her panties, and I’d be hers for life.

  “You ever gonna tell me your name?” I asked her.

  “When the time comes, you’ll know it,” she said, popping in a fresh clip. “Now let’s take out some assholes.”

  Couldn’t argue with that.

  The reason for the traffic congestion came clear as we rounded the corner, and the turrets of the mosque loomed into view. Not only were cars gridlocked far as the eye could see, but the sidewalks were packed with flipped-out pedestrians, radiating panic.

  I headed straight toward the middle of the gridlocked traffic, roving between the cars. It was the straightest way in, and she followed me. An Open Carry Parade of two. The handful of gawkers we ran into moved out of our way, the second they saw what we were packing.

  The crowd at the end of the cars in the road was sparser. Just a handful of people blocking traffic. All white. All of them armed. All the ones who beat us to it, knew today was the day. None of them facing our way.

  All of them aimed at the mosque.

  That’s when I saw the ring of infidels with machine guns, all pointing them straight back at us.

  I guess I didn’t realize how many white-hating, heavily armed Black Panthers already lived right here in town, pissed off and ready to defend all the Middle East sand nigger refugees we let in when Uncle Sam invited the whole world’s terrorist population straight up his liberal candy ass. Was used to the protests of the latter camp, bleating “But you don’t understand us!” as they tirelessly worked to undermine and destroy us from within.

  It was another to see forty loaded gun barrels aimed straight back at you. Forty sets of enemy eyes, staring you down. It made me wish I’d plugged that nigger at the liquor store. Cuz his eyes were just like that. If he’d been armed, I’d be a corpse back on El Dorado. No doubt about it in my mind.

  “Holy fuck. It’s on now!” she laughed, over my shoulder. I could barely hear her over the din.

  There was a good thirty yards of space between the front line of white Christians and the heathen horde, all of them yelling back and forth. The cars caught between were well past the horn-honking phase: mostly empty, their drivers and passengers having bailed from the firing line. Thinking about their bullet hole insurance coverage. While everybody took up sides.

  People flashed me White Power symbols. Flipped me off. Hurled curses. Started chanting eight different things at once, only some in English. All turning to mush in my head.

  That was when the crowd parted off to my left.

  And the dead transsexual what-the-fuck staggered into the breach between us.

  I couldn’t say if it was black or white, because the only color I could see was red, splashed all over it from ankle to skull. It had a long beard and a short dress, great tits and broad shoulders. It dragged a picket sign behind it, with the words SHARE HAPPINESS scrawled in rainbow letters freshly spackled with blood.

  But the second it looked at me, I knew it was gone.

  It turned its back to me, aimed its blank gaze at the Islamist horde, looked back again. Like it couldn’t remember which side it belonged to anymore. Which, frankly, was neither.

  If there was one thing we had in common with the fucking Muslims, it was that none of us were real big on the fags. They were the loneliest ones of all. Because there wasn’t a god or religion worth mentioning that wanted to admit having anything to do with them.

  When it finally staggered toward us, I pushed to the front of the line, Ursula up and ready. The second I stepped forward, it came for me, like I was the only person in its world.

  And when I took aim, it was like taking out every last worthless speck of the whole human race that I wanted no part of, in one single shot.

  It was the greatest single feeling that I have ever known.

  I squeezed the trigger, and the world erupted in gunfire even before he/she/it collapsed from view, forehead gone forever. Felt a bullet whistle past my ear and laughed, firing back with a withering spray. Focusing on the Panthers right in front of the door. Watching one of them cave in, sawed in half. And a dozen others scrambling, barrels blazing.

  That was when my lungs blew eight holes through my chest.

  Not from in front. But from behind.

  The pavement came up fast, with no seat belt this time. I hit face-first. The world shattered to black.

  Next thing I knew, I was staring up at a clear blue sky, laced with fluffy white. But big dark ominous clouds were closing in from all sides, crawling across the heavens. The pain was unbelievable, the shock like a drug that only barely helped halfway.

  That’s when my D-Day Fetish Queen leaned over me, M-15 still smoking. Used the red-hot barrel to turn my other cheek toward her. Made sure she had my full attention.

  “Thanks for the guns, you stupid fascist sack of shit,” she said. “And no, you don’t get to know my name.”

  Then she pulled the trigger.

  And I was gone.

  Sending me straight back to Jesus, or Odin, or whoever will finally hand over my well-earned and just rewards. Although it seems to be taking forever.

  Like I said: the end of the world is what you make it. But frankly speaking, I’m feeling a little ripped off by the end game.

  No Heaven. No nothing.

  And lord almighty, is it hot.

  JOHN DOE

  by George A. Romero

  Within the early months of the twenty-first century, even before the terrorist attacks of 9/11, most hospitals, nursing homes, and police departments in the United States—those sophisticated enough to be computer-equipped—were mandated to join the VSDC (Vital Statistics Data Collection) network, a cyber-system that received and instantly downloaded information to a division of the Census Bureau known as AMLD (American Model of Lineage and Demographics). Joking
ly referred to as “A Matter of Life and Death.” Whenever a birth or a death was recorded anywhere in the country, the doctor, nurse, registrar—whoever was doing the local filing—simply had to click on a link that copied the statistic directly to the VSDC.

  John Doe’s VSDC case number, 129-46-9875, was recognized by the system twice on the night he died. It was initially forwarded by St. Michael the Archangel, a Catholic hospital in San Diego, California. The second entry, the one that made the case notable, came in almost three and a half hours later from the Medical Examiner’s Office in San Diego County. It reached the VSDC at 10:36 p.m. but went unnoticed for another forty-eight hours, until statisticians at the department started to search for abnormalities in recently entered files.

  Thousands of similar files were received over those forty-eight hours. Statisticians only began to focus on John Doe’s case when they finally tried to determine when the phenomenon actually began. As sophisticated as the VSDC system was, it was unable to automatically organize entries by date and time. Statisticians had to search manually. John Doe’s dossier—temporarily catalogued in a file labeled Beginners—predated any of the others that were found. There may have been earlier cases, but they went undiscovered because the statisticians simply stopped looking.

  After only four nights—four nights after John Doe’s death, when the whole thing seemed to have started—there were only two men and one woman left at the VSDC. They remained there, alone, working around the clock, clinging heroically—or perhaps stubbornly—to the idea that their work was in some way essential.

  After another forty-eight hours nothing seemed essential. One of the men, John Campbell, shut down his computer, went home, and shot himself in the head. At the end of the seventh night, the remaining man, Terry McAllister, made one final entry in his log. It read, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Appropriate, as Christmas was in two weeks. He and the woman, Elizabeth O’Toole, left their computers running when they walked out of the bureau for the last time. They went to the man’s apartment in Georgetown, shared two bottles of Don Julio, and fucked with abandon until the sun rose on the eighth day.