I emerged from slumber this morning like a man blindly feeling his way through a dense bank of fog, the horrific attack replaying over and over again in my head like a film stuck on an endless loop. The shed was heavy with a peculiar odor that I hadn’t noticed before; it smelled like death.
I’d had enough of this place. The thought of spending even one more minute in the shed after what had happened the night before made me feel claustrophobic. I wasn’t sure whether Ron could walk in his condition, but there was only one way to find out. I shook his arm gently until he finally woke up. “We need to get out of here,” I declared, gesturing toward his swollen knee. “Can you travel?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Good,” I replied. “Let’s give Anthony a proper burial and get the hell out of here.”
I went to the shed’s door, absently thinking about how best to fashion a makeshift crutch for Ron, and was surprised to discover that it was locked. Shouting angrily, I jammed my shoulder against the door in an attempt to force it open, but it wouldn’t budge.
“What’s wrong?” Ron asked.
“Son of a bitch locked us in.” I pounded on the door with my fist, hollering to get Coffey’s attention, but eventually gave up when there was no response from outside. I peered through the keyhole, which afforded a limited view of the area in front of the shed, but Coffey was nowhere to be seen. There was a small, horizontal hatch at the bottom of the door that looked like a mail slot, but the opening was only a few inches high—far too small to fit through, even in my emaciated condition. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to prevent my anxiety from boiling over. There had to be some other way out of the shed—I just needed to find it.
But I began to feel desperate when my search came up empty. Despite its shabby appearance, the building we were trapped inside was sturdy; the only way out was through the locked door. I wondered whether Coffey had locked is inside as a safety precaution to ensure that we weren’t infected, or if there was some ulterior motive behind his actions.
I positioned myself at the keyhole again, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening outside of the shed. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that Anthony’s body was lying in the dirt only a few feet away from the shed. When Coffey finally emerged from the adjacent building, I began to rattle the door, shouting for him to let us out. Ignoring the racket, he tied a rope around the corpse’s ankles and dragged it beyond my field of view.
Ron’s face grew taut after I quickly described what I’d seen. “I knew there was something off about that whacko,” I exclaimed. “What do we do now?”
“We wait.” Burning nervous energy seemed pointless, so I followed his lead and sat down on the floor, waiting for Coffey to come let us out. It was only morning, but my tattered shirt was already saturated with sweat from the uncomfortable temperature inside the shed.
By afternoon, my tongue was swollen from dehydration. Ron was in even worse shape, having to endure the pain of his injury on top of thirst. The only way to cope with the heat was to sit still. Just when it seemed as though the air itself inside the shed might catch fire from the heat, the smell of something burning reached my nostrils. My mouth began to water involuntarily as the aroma became more distinct. “Do you smell that?” I grumbled, feeling an unusual sensation within my churning stomach. “What is it?”
“Meat,” Ron explained, meeting my gaze with troubled eyes. “He’s cooking Anthony.”
I was too astonished to respond. I tried to wrap my mind around this grisly idea, but when it finally sunk in my stomach went sour and I vomited a trail of sticky, clear liquid—which was all that remained in my empty stomach. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and buried my face against my knees to block out the delectable smell of cooking meat.
***
Two days later, we were both too dehydrated to move. Night and day intertwined, our discomfort worsening as we waited to see what Coffey had planned for us. The heat was unbearable, so I lay on the dirt floor, praying for this nightmare to end.
A loud creak from the locked door caused me to stir, and I cracked open an eye just in time to see the small hatch at the bottom of the door push inward as a tray slid through the opening. I sat up, fixated by the contents of the tray: a paper plate containing several small strips of dried meat and a jug filled with dirty water.
I lifted the jug to my lips and slurped greedily. Although the water smelled foul, I’d never tasted anything quite so delicious. I had to stop myself from downing the entire jug in a few gulps, and reluctantly carried what remained over to Ron. He had trouble lifting his head, so I had to help him drink. Taking turns, we quickly emptied the jug, but neither one of us touched the meat Coffey left for us.
***
That night, neither of us could sleep. Lying next to me on the floor, Ron stared at the ceiling deep in thought. “He’s starving us…waiting ‘til we’re too weak to fight back.”
“Then why bring us food?”
He paused thoughtfully before replying: “He needs to keep us alive until he’s through eating Anthony.”
It took a moment for this horrible implication to sink in. Ron shifted onto his side, his face badly frightened. “I’m the weakest, so I’ll be the one he targets. Promise me that you’ll help me fight…that you won’t just leave me to die.”
I swallowed hard, grimacing at the prickly sensation signifying the return of my thirst, before croaking out a disingenuous assurance.
***
Coffey returned two days later. I was practically delirious with thirst, and had to struggle to stand when I heard the sound of the door being unlocked, savoring the rush of cold air that blew through the enclosure when the door opened. Coffey loomed menacingly in the doorway, blocking the way out. His filthy clothes were covered by a plastic apron; protective goggles shielded his sunken pig-eyes. “You son of a bitch,” I wheezed. “Let us out of here…”
My feeble threat was buried underneath the deafening whine of the chain saw Coffey pull-started. Ron screamed—his shouts barely audible above the din from the machine. When Coffey began to advance toward us, I fearfully backed away from the whirling chain saw.
Ron tried to crawl away, but there was nowhere for him to hide. Coffey showed no mercy, using the chainsaw to disembowel him before my eyes. I screamed, cuffing my hands to my ears to block out the terrible sound of Ron’s evisceration.
When it was over, Coffey pointed the blade of the chainsaw at me, warning me to keep away. Although the door to the shed stood open a dozen feet away, I was too terrified to move. I watched in horror as Coffey seized the carcass and removed his kill from the shed, slamming the door and again locking me inside.
When he was gone, I staggered toward the spot where I’d last seen Ron. Suddenly lightheaded, I collapsed to the ground near where he’d been killed, falling into the pool of sticky crimson that was slowly being absorbed by the dirt floor
***
I woke up some time later to find the left side of my face encrusted with dried blood. I felt nauseous, but couldn’t tell whether that was a function of dehydration or shock.
The heat inside the shed caused the opposite wall of the shed to shimmer like a mirage.
***
I’m so thirsty. I afraid to close my eyes for fear that Coffey will return while I’m asleep. No matter how hard I try to stay awake, I occasionally slip into periods of black nothingness that give me a temporary reprieve from the hell of imprisonment, even though I no longer dream.
I surface from one such spell to discover that Coffey had been there while I was unconscious. I crawl like an animal toward the tray lying near the door, clumsily grasping the water jug with hands I can barely control anymore.
I reach for one of the pieces of meat on the tray, devouring it without hesitation.
***
I’ve lost track of time. Indistinct forms hide in the shadows, maddeningly scuttling out of view every time I try to look at them.
I can’t let them distract me…I have to be ready
when he returns.
I can’t remember his name anymore.
When the door opens, I crouch in the corner like a caged beast. My fear is gone, replaced by a visceral, single-minded determination to escape this prison.
An inhuman growl wells within my throat, not unlike the sound the walkers make before they attack. I can hear them through the open door, wandering just outside the compound on the other side of the electric fence, tirelessly searching for a way inside. Their disembodied moans are swallowed by the thunderous noise of the butcher’s chain saw when it roars to life.
Tom Yde is 44 and lives outside Chicago in the friendly little town of Roselle, Illinois with his beautiful wife, Shirley and his two terrific sons, David and Eric. Tom has been writing since his late teens while paying the bills as an office zombie in a cubicle in corporate America.
“Respect for the Dead” is Tom’s first ever submission and now his first published work. It has given him the confidence to keep trying to refine his skills and publish the endeavors of a hobby he loves. If you like “Respect for the Dead” keep an eye out for more from Tom as he’s still pounding away at his laptop keyboard trying to flesh out the wacky ideas that keep popping into his mind.
Shambler or runner? Infected or supernatural? Screamer or moaner?
These days, readers of the zombie genre can easily find themselves overwhelmed with an endless a selection of living dead fodder to choose from. But fear not! Tom Yde explores a simpler kind of zombie, or zom as the kids are calling them these days. Through the eyes of one young man, Tom offers us a unique take on the living dead, and how we relate to them in very human ways. In Tom’s world, the zooms are a lot like the Alzheimer stricken elderly, only with bigger appetites. Placid, slow moving and easily spooked, these zoms are by no means dangerous, but at the same time they are still somehow hazardous to humanity as a whole.
Mr. Yde brings a whole new meaning to the phrase, Respect for the Dead.
Respect for the Dead
By: Tom Yde
The first time I saw one in real life, I thought it was just a bum. I’d seen them on TV and on YouTube since freshman year. But spring of my junior year, that was the first time I saw one for real right downtown by the movie theater.
We were hanging out in the parking lot on a Friday night without much anything to do and no money to afford to see a movie or to go get anything to eat. We were hoping to maybe catch wind of a party or at least find something fun to do. We weren’t looking for any trouble, but then we saw this guy come walking along the sidewalk like he was drunk. The guy wore a pretty nice suit, but he looked like he had been rolling around in the dirt. He seemed really out of it, like he had somewhere to get to but he couldn’t remember where it was or how to get there.
“My hand to God, that’s a frigging zombie,” Zach told us. Zach’s full last name is Zachowski, but we call him Zach. I think his real first name is Ivan or Igor or some shit like that. In school, the teachers always called him by his initials, I.L. Zachowski. But we called him Zach.
“There aren’t any zombies around here,” I told him. Zach swore up and down it was a zombie.
“Should we call the cops?” Thalia asked. They told us at school if we ever saw one, not to touch it and to call 9-1-1. So of course, that’s exactly what Thalia wanted to do. But we knew you couldn’t catch anything from them, so we moved in for a closer look.
The funny thing about zoms is they’re there but they’re not. It’s like they’re coasting on autopilot.
“Hey, buddy” Zach said to the zom, “nice night, huh?”
Zach snapped his fingers in front of the zom. It has about as much effect as teasing the monkeys at the zoo. The guy was just in a different world and he ignored us, like we weren’t even there or he had something more to think about.
I was bored, and I still thought it was just a drunk, not a zombie. He didn’t smell bad. So I gave it a shot. I stood in his path and he tried to go around me. I put my arm out to block him. He glanced up at me, and just for a brief moment I saw something in his eyes, like there was something he wanted to say but he couldn’t find the words. I was a little afraid he was going to lunge forward and take a good bite out of my arm.
Our eyes met and there was a moment where somebody was in there again, but then it faded and he just looked confused and disoriented. He tried to mutter something but he just mumbled something incoherent. I leaned forward to try to understand him and he looked at me again and this look of fear seized upon his face. Not just a little afraid, but shit your pants and run for your life terrified. He shrieked and we all jumped. Everybody acts like it didn’t scare them, but every single one of us just about jumped out of our skins. The zom held his head in his hands like that Scandinavian painting of the guy screaming or that little punk kid from the Home Alone movies.
He just shrieked and took off running away from us as fast as he could. He sprinted into the middle of the street and two cars swerved around him. He just kept running in the street like the cars didn’t exist and the only threat was whatever terrified him that we couldn’t see. He made it about sixty or seventy feet down the street before he got flattened by a flatbed truck.
We laughed our asses off, partly out of relief from getting scared ourselves and partly because it was the funniest thing we had ever seen.
The truck driver who hit him freaked out. He drove his truck into a light pole, and the pole keeled over and took out three cars on a new car lot, which we also thought was pretty funny. Somebody called the cops and within minutes they were all over the place with squad cars and flashing lights. The zombie was deader than dead. He was pieces of mangled roadkill now. No way he was getting back up and walking away from this one.
A detective, I don’t remember his name, was acting like we had killed the guy.
“He was already dead, sir,” I said. I knew we were in enough trouble to be respectful to the detective. We fought to stifle our laughter, partially out of nerves, but also because we still thought it was pretty funny. At least I know I did.
“You think this is funny, kid?”
“No, sir,” I said, but I couldn’t wipe the smartass grin off my face.
“That was a person,” the cop told me. “That was somebody’s family, somebody’s coworker, somebody’s neighbor.”
“Relax,” Zach said, “they probably already had a funeral for him. They might not even know that he got back out of the ground.”
That was it. Zach had really pissed the detective off. They brought us in. I never rode in the back of a squad car before. I thought the cuffs were a bit much, until my dad showed up. Then I was hoping the cops would keep me in the little cell they had me, Zach, and Mike in. Thalia and Deb were somewhere else, probably in the women’s lockup.
My dad walked in with this look on his face and I knew I was in trouble.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I expect these shenanigans out of a punk like Zach. But Jesus, Chris, we raised you better than this.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, but I didn’t really mean it. The zombie had already been dead. No one got hurt. Insurance would pay for it all. And as far as I was concerned, we had a hell of a story to tell at school on Monday.
We hadn’t broken any laws. So even though the cops acted like we killed the guy, they didn’t have anything to hold us on. We hadn’t touched him and we sure as hell hadn’t pushed him out front of that truck like the detective cop kept telling us he was sure we had.
My dad was none too happy with me. I didn’t understand why he was so upset. The guy was already dead. But my dad kept talking about how he used to be a person and how we should treat the dead with respect. I didn’t really understand what he meant, at least not then.
Zoms got a lot more common in our neighborhood after that. Before, it had been a distant problem, something in another state, like wildfires or earthquakes. Sightings were a big deal for a while. Word would spread, crowds would gather, it was almost like a parade. People would line the
sidewalk and watch the zombie like it had someplace to go or it was going to do something interesting.
Funny thing about zombies is they scare real easy. In the old movies, the zombies were always trying to catch and eat people. But when it really happened, that is, when the dead really rose, they didn’t want to eat anybody. They just wanted to get up and move. They’d walk and they’d walk, like they had signed up for some neverending walk-a-thon, until something spooked them, then they’d run. And I don’t mean run like we used to run in gym class. I mean run like something pretty damn scary was closing in quickly behind them.
About three months after that first zombie incident, right before the end of the school year, I had to give a speech about the zoms in my Citizenship class as part of my final. So I had to learn about them and present a bunch of memorized facts. Mr. Lewis was pretty cool, but the final presentation was fifty percent of our grade, so I was more than a little nervous. Mr. Lewis was pretty easy going all semester, but he always said being able to speak in front of a group is an important skill and so he graded hard on the final presentation.
“No one knows exactly what brings them back. Scientists are still looking for the trigger. Maybe it’s a virus, or a bacterium, or a fungus. Maybe it’s an environmental factor like some new chemical we invented. Some people think it’s spiritual, the end of days. Others point to the fact that most cultures have a mythology about life after death and the dead rising and they say maybe it’s something we had all along, it’s just been dormant for a while.”
“What do you think causes it, Chris?” Mr. Lewis asked me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I hadn’t expected the question, so I went back to reciting facts. “Ninety percent of the dead rise again. So it’s almost, but not quite, everybody.”
“Is there a common link among those who don’t rise again?” he asked me.
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