Re-Animated States of America

by Craig Mullins

  “You just might be right, Jehovah,” Hebert said, but it was too late, as the robes had enveloped them. They moved as one, flowing like a dark pool. In a panic, Jehovah slid quickly behind Herbert, his height easily below that of the shortest being, and began to jump, trying to keep his head above them.

  Herbert and Jehovah were drowning fast in a sea of robes and black wings. Jehovah let out a sound that no dog could ever make, and was now completely out of sight.

  With Jehovah gone, Herbert focused on saving himself, but he was going down, darkness all around him. Arms flailing, he managed to pull back one of the hoods before disappearing beneath the masses, and what he saw staring back at him sent shocks through even his hardened mind.

  The creature—if it could be called such—had a hideous countenance, crisscrossed with pulsing veins and wisps of dark hair. Its eyes bulged, as if being pushed out from the inside. The lower lip drooped, drool pouring from it.

  The robe continued to slide back, the opening large to accommodate the oversized head, until it fell to the ground, revealing a mangled misshapen body, legs and arms wizened, stomach protruding, skin splotched with bed sores and disease. Metal braces on its appendages gave the creature mobility that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

  A different kind of darkness took over Herbert as he slid to the ground, and his mind sloughed off into the Dreamlands…

  The first thing Herbert saw when he opened his eyes was that Jehovah was leashed to a hot water heater and that he was chained to the wall. He tugged at the chains, but they were quite secure. The room they were in was white—or used to be white before rot and ruin took over. Bars covered the one window he could see, and the room was sparsely furnished with only a chair and small table visible.

  A man entered the room, his chin jutting out and his nose hooked, creating what looked, for lack of a better term, like a bird’s beak. When he spoke, it was a high-pitched squawk.

  “Welcome,” he said. “My name is Dr. Kroh. I trust that my children didn’t hurt you. They can be quite forceful.”

  As if on queue, several of his children entered the room; curiously absent, Herbert noticed, were their wings.

  “From the contents of your backpack,” Dr. Kroh said, “I can see that you are a doctor of sorts yourself.”

  Upon hearing that his pack had been searched, Herbert pulled on his chains with renewed vigor. Jehovah, too, had started chewing on his leash, but neither could break their bonds.

  “If you’ve damaged any of my things…” Herbert said, but the threat was minimal.

  “Your things are quite safe, I assure you,” Dr. Kroh replied. “But where are my manners? It’s late, and I’m sure you both must be tired.”

  He turned and moved for the door. “We’ll continue this conversation in the morning. Come, my children,” he said as he left the room.

  As his children followed, one of the armed individuals entered, his talon-tipped spear bobbing up and down, a cobra ready to strike.

  “Jehovah,” Herbert said. “I have an idea.”

  The creature seemed to pay no mind as they talked, but its movements were quick every time one of them shifted in their bonds.

  “You know what to do,” Herbert said, and Jehovah began to run from side to side, as far as his leash would allow.

  The creature swung. Jehovah dodged, and the clawed spear severed the leash. Freed from his bondage, Jehovah ran behind the creature, turning it around until its back was to Herbert, who had begun swinging his legs out until he was able to wrap them around the creature, who swung the spear blindly behind it. The swing went wide and gouged a huge chunk of drywall, weakening the area around the anchor securing one of Herbert’s chains.

  Herbert pulled, and the chain broke free, the wall cracking across his back, allowing him to free his other arm with one great pull.

  Not knowing which was the bigger threat, the creature started swinging the spear in a circle, trying to hit Herbert and Jehovah, who was still running around the room trying to distract the thing.

  The chains still attached to Herbert’s arms, he began swinging one of them, the anchor weighting the end.

  With the creature paying attention to Herbert, Jehovah jumped up and, getting a mouthful of robe, pulled it down, exposing the head for one of Herbert’s roundhouse swings, which found its mark.

  The creature let out a shriek as its head exploded in a spray of blood, bone, brain and a viscose fluid that looked to be mostly water.

  “Let’s get out of here, Herbert,” Jehovah said, short of breath but still full of energy, “before more of those things come back.”

  “I’m not leaving without my notes, my work is too important,” Herbert replied, and he bent down to pick up the spear, then was out of the room and heading deeper into the structure.

  Having no other options, Jehovah followed.

  Most of the rooms in the building were more of the same: sparse, off-white and darkly lit. The occasional light, like the light in their room, was flickering candlelight. Seeing a fat tube of wax, the long wick tipped with a strong flame, Herbert grabbed it and continued on, Jehovah hot on his heels.

  Up ahead, a door revealed a strong light from the space between it and the floorboards, and without hesitation, Herbert rushed through it, revealing horrors that would leave a lesser man trembling.

  Creatures in various states of undress (both clothing and skin) lay upon tables; some strapped down, others not needing to be. Organs occupied trays and jars, chest cavities gaping, brain pans relieved of their treasures, and Dr. Kroh standing in the middle like a conductor, lording over a sick and twisted orchestra.

  He turned, without much surprise in his appearance, but it was possible that he couldn’t express surprise with such a face.

  “You are more resourceful than I gave you credit for,” he said, and turned to face them. “They don’t usually bring back adults when they hunt for food, but things being what they are, they don’t exactly have the option of being choosy.

  “And as for you,” he continued, looking directly at Jehovah, “I’ve never seen the likes of you in all my time.”

  “If you and I could have met under different circumstances,” he was speaking to Herbert, while still looking in Jehovah’s direction, “we might have learned a great deal from one another.”

  “These, these children suffer from Hydrocephalus, do they not?” Herbert asked, his scientific mind getting the best of him.

  “Indeed they do, among other things,” Dr. Kroh replied, his attention solely on Herbert.

  Jehovah had taken the opportunity to slip behind the doctor and retrieve Herbert’s backpack, hoping that its contents were still intact.

  “Some of them were normal once, but experiments need to be conducted for the good of all, and you of all people can understand,” he said. “I’ve been looking through your notes, and I see that you’ve done some experiments of your own, including your little friend there.”

  “Enough,” Herbert exclaimed. “I grow weary of your rambling. We are nothing alike. What you’ve done here is an abomination of science. Nothing like my work, my research.”

  “It ends now,” Herbert said, and tossed the candle into the room, his target, several shelves of what he correctly assumed were flammable chemicals that burst into an all-consuming flame.

  Dr. Kroh screamed and launched himself at Herbert, who had found his notebook amongst the doctor’s papers, and tossed it in the direction of Jehovah.

  “My work,” he cried, as he was knocked off his feet by Dr. Kroh. “Save my work.”

  “Herbert,” Jehovah said with a shortness that spelled trouble. “We have company.”

  In the doorway stood several of the creatures, these without robes or wings, their spindly bodies a grotesque representation of humanity. The flames seemed to be keeping them out, but they blocked the only exit from the room, so their presence still confounded things.

  The doctors struggled on the floor, Herbert reaching for the spear
he had brought in the room, but being dragged away from it by Kroh. In response, Herbert kicked, trying to free himself, and connected with Kroh’s face, a sickening crunch as his nose was broken, blood flowing freeing from the wound.

  “You’ve ruined everything,” Kroh said, and removed one of West’s syringes of re-agent from his lab coat. With a wild swing, he jabbed the syringe into the swollen head of the closest specimen and emptied it.

  “What have you done?!” Herbert screamed, and clawed for the spear, grabbing it and swinging in one anger-fueled motion.

  It struck Kroh, but only glanced off his upper thigh, sending him into a table and onto the floor.

  The flames had intensified and were now crawling across the ceiling and down the opposite wall.

  A crash demanded their attention as the dead creature stood and struggled to walk.

  “I command you to kill them, kill them both,” Kroh demanded.

  The creature turned and fell into the doctor, grabbing him by the neck and lifting with unimaginable strength. Kroh flailed and pushed against his captor, but he couldn’t match the creature’s strength, and it stood upright, dragging the taller doctor toward the flames and into them.

  Kroh screamed, then fell silent as the sound was choked out of him, the flames enveloping his clothing.

  “Herbert, we need to get out of here,” Jehovah said, already running for the door.

  The creatures that had been blocking the door had begun shambling into the room, but paid Herbert and Jehovah no mind, as they walked into the conflagration that was Doctor Kroh.

  Free of obstacle, Herbert and Jehovah ran down the hall and out the first exit they found, and kept running until a considerable distance lay between them and the asylum.

  “Do you think they’ll follow?” Jehovah asked, but Herbert ignored him, as he was going through his pack, checking over the contents with utter concentration.

  Finally he stood, looked at Jehovah, and said, “It’s all here, save for the re-agent.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then he said, “No, I think we are quite safe. Fear of Dr. Kroh kept them going, and now that he’s gone, I think his children will finally be at peace.

  “Let’s go, Jehovah,” he said quietly. “I’d like to find out where that road will take us.”

  As they walked away, the asylum collapsed, and so with it, Doctor Kroh and his children…

  Blank Stares and Broken Dreams

  The moon hung full like a mushroom cap: pale, bloated, and ready to burst, threatening to send its toxic spores raining down on the city below. The streets were dark, save for the moon’s glow. Above, the Milky Way looked close enough to touch, the constellations, to wage war. Insignificant in all this, Herbert West and Jehovah were perched upon the blasted shell of a once regal building watching the monster procession beneath them. From what they could see, the creatures paid each other no mind, as if blindly being summoned by some unseen piper. Huge, bulbous eyes, rotting, gnashing tusks, misshapen horns, writhing tentacles and more things indescribable were all on display, as beings the likes of which this world has never seen walked, crawled, slithered and slimed along. Herbert leaned over the edge and looked through a pair of night vision goggles he salvaged from an Army Surplus store, and Jehovah stood, his front paws on the ledge, his neck sutures straining to the point of bursting. Several times they were forced to take cover as the heads of creatures (if they could be called such) rose above the roof they occupied.“Now where do you think they are going, Herbert?” Jehovah whispered, a quizzical look on his face.

  Herbert looked down at him, paused, then replied, “I don’t know, but I suppose we should go in the opposite direction.”

  He returned his gaze, and forgetting for a second about the creatures that lurked just beyond the roof top, he surveyed the ruined city. Ever the scientist, he turned and said, “These ruins, this rubble, give no indication of those who came before us, of those whose blood and sweat went into their creation, unlike the wonders of the Ancient World that continue to speak from beyond aeons. These concrete and steel skeletons speak out to no one.”

  Herbert heard Jehovah say something in return, but his words were lost behind the din of beasts, so he turned to see Jehovah jumping up and down, panic in his face, and then he saw it: a Night-gaunt. Black, rail-thin, rubbery and featureless, it looked like something out of an old stop-motion fantasy film, silently hovering just above the rooftop, its wings beating and its body jerking up and down and side to side. Having no face, it was hard to tell just who the creature was looking at, but it seemed to be favoring Jehovah, so Herbert moved to intercept it, but in one fell swoop, it rushed past him and grabbed Jehovah from the roof.

  “Give me back my dog, you damned buzzard!” Herbert yelled, the command sounding odd even to him.

  Jehovah screamed, but the wind stole his voice, so all he could do was watch his friend Herbert West and the building below him become smaller and smaller until it, and the city around it, were no more.

  The creature had him secured in its hind claws, which were gripping him tightly around the stomach, and he could feel them puncturing his rot-softened flesh. He dared not fight, because his body could be ripped to shreds; or worse, he might be dropped into the darkness below.

  He tried to turn his head so he could look up at the creature, but being that his head and body were a mismatched set, it was a motion he hadn’t quite mastered. When he did manage to tilt his head enough to see the Night-gaunt, he found that it had bent its own neck at an impossible angle, and its blank stare met his own.

  His eyes began to sting from the rush of wind in his face and he was getting lightheaded from the dizzying heights, but the ride was invigorating, considering the situation. He looked down at the moonlit ground, and it was an amazing sight to behold—a patchwork quilt of fields, mountains, forests and desolation.

  They continued on their course, flying into low-lying clouds that, if he was not mistaken, were beginning to take on shapes; shapes that the Night-gaunt did nothing to avoid. An expanse of forest came into view, and Jehovah was unsure whether the clouds took on the shapes of trees, or gave way to them. The trees looked like emaciated worshippers reaching for some uncaring god, and hanging in each, he could see a headless body bathing in sickly blue light, a rotting rope tied around the chest of each under the arms.

  As the Night-gaunt took him closer, swerving at speed through the trees, he could see that this wasn’t just any headless body; it was his own…at least his old one. It was the body he once took for granted. The body that Herbert West decided he was better off without.

  Without thinking, he looked up, and in doing so, realized that his dog’s body was gone, and with it, the Night-gaunt. He was nothing more than a disembodied head floating through a dead forest taunting him with the corpse of his old life, his old dreams.

  The freedom of movement pleased him, and it felt good to be away from the thing, from the body that Herbert West had chosen for him.

  Many times he wondered why Herbert had attached his head to a dog instead of reviving his human body whole, but he had never asked for fear of sounding ungrateful. Maybe his body was beyond repair? Was it a power-play, so Herbert could maintain his feeling of superiority, while gaining a companion in the strange new world? The body hanging in the tree seemed well enough, and with that thought it came to him—why not reclaim what was rightfully his? After all, he wasn’t a possession of Herbert’s, and if he didn’t want him around after he had abandoned his dog-body, then they would simply go their separate ways.

  He willed his head to fly towards the closest tree, the closest body, and in the moment before he reached it, it changed, and the trees reached no more, having been replaced by a vast cyclopean city consisting of immense stone Pyramids and structures that resembled tusks, carved from the bones of giants. Standing 30 feet tall if he was an inch, in the center of that city was Herbert West holding his headless body, the rope clenched in his right hand. Herbert reached out to him,
offering it to him.

  “Come, my friend. Take it. I know deep down you’ve resented my choice,” his voice boomed. “Now I can make amends.”

  Jehovah flew to it, hope in his eyes.

  West put his other hand out, cupping it, and cradled Jehovah’s head, and while he held him, Jehovah watched in horror as his body melted like wax from a candle, the wax coalescing into a headless dog, which circled Herbert’s feet.

  Behind Herbert, Jehovah heard a sound, and the source chilled his skull. Taking form in a dust storm between two of the larger Pyramids, a headless corpse walked towards them, its chest barred and blasted. Blood bubbled up from its severed trachea, as did that insane cackle. At its feet, a hoard of crab-creatures scurried about, one using a skull as a shell. The corpse stopped, arms outstretched, and one of the larger crab-creatures mounted its leg and climbed, rising over its shoulders and seating itself upon the host’s severed neck like a throne. Once seated, it spread its claws, mimicking the corpse’s arms.

  Herbert West stepped aside, realizing he was no longer part of this play, and the crab-corpse stepped forward. It spoke to him, in his head, and what it told him sent Jehovah screaming skyward in search of a body, any body, that he could claim his own.

  Rain began to fall from the moonlit sky. He looked into it, let it cleanse him of the feeling that maybe he would have been better off dead, and not some godless experiment by a demented scientist. The rain continued, and became a torrent, until water was all he could see. Then, once more his surroundings changed, and Jehovah found himself standing at the edge of a pond, his human head—and dog body—intact once more.

  At first he was relieved, but that relief became disgust, and he splashed the water with his paw. His face rippled away, only to be replaced by that of the Night-gaunt, and he was back in its clutches, flying towards that pale, bloated moon. He had all but given up when the black, faceless horror dove, and in front of them he could see the city, the city that he and Herbert had been residing in for the last few days while they recovered supplies and the good doctor made a new batch of his elixir.