A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

  I got lost again, but eventually made it back to the rocky point just as the sun was coming up. Poor Boylan was right where I’d left him, white as a piece of blank typing paper. His chest was moving, but just barely. He moaned. One tiny bubble of spit squatted on parched lips. I tried to get him to drink, but he wouldn’t. The day grew hot. The island stank and so did his wound. The damned Jap soldiers didn’t bother to come looking for me. I guess they didn’t much care for their commanding officer.

  Time passed. Boylan held on. Suffered. I ran out of water again, but the idea of crawling back down the mountain filled me with terror even though scared don’t help a God damned thing. I held myself tightly and rocked back and forth. Everything was flies and stench and a numbing fear.

  I talked to Boylan, tried to tell him what happened. What would happen when he was gone. What I now understood about the truth of things. Sometimes I believed he was listening, even answering in a frail voice but, thinking back, I doubt he ever woke up. At times I wondered if I was going mad. The sun came up and went down and came up in an endless cycle. Life killed and ate and shit and ate all around me. Things got quieter and quieter.

  I came to believe that island was a living thing, an evil thing, and that it was enjoying snuffing itself out.

  The Japs went mad one night and started shooting at each other, lighting up the beach with flashes of light and screams of pain. They went at it hard.

  Boylan was gone by then, so the next morning I crawled back down the mountain. I was very weak, and had lost all track of time. When I got to the beach the Nips were dead. Every single one. Murder or suicide. Some shot, some stabbed, even a couple who looked strangled. A few officers had disemboweled themselves. At the center of their camp stood a huge pile of bones, some with scraps of flesh still attached.

  Come on, Doc. You’ve figured it out by now, I know you have. They were down to killing and eating each other. And I guess that particular night things kind of got out of hand. Or maybe they’d had enough and just couldn’t stand it anymore.

  It took some doing, but I lived off them for quite a long time.

  I went through their supplies, stayed half drunk, figured out how to cure the meat and make jerky like Uncle Denny showed me, drying it on a rock so it would last. By the time the PT boat showed up, I had been there for I don’t know how long, just surviving and laughing and talking to Boylan, trying to explain what happened; why I ate him first and then all the others, telling him all about the meaning of life. Asking for his forgiveness.

  Life eats itself and shits itself out again, Doc. It’s an endless cycle. Matter cannot be destroyed. It just reassembles itself into something else. Lives and dies, goes on and on and on. As the Jap officer said, this is karma, neh? And that’s why I do it.

  Now do you see? Do you understand?

  I have to cover myself in it. Have to. God, I hate when you stop me. Sedate me. I must do it whenever I get a chance, roll in my own shit, anyone’s shit. Because it’s where we begin, what we are, and what we’ll all become. It is both the beginning and the end of life and the only way to the truth.

  I’m not crazy. I do it for Boylan, for that crazy Jap officer, for all the dead and dying boys everywhere who are out fighting and dying in these useless fucking wars.

  I have to show them that they will be back.

  _______________

  “When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me…”

  —John Donne

  Jailbreak

  with Steven W. Booth

  “Say again?” Sheriff Miller slid worn boots from the edge of the desk, slammed them down on the messy floor. The antique office and jail were both in the middle of yet another round of remodeling. Paint cloth whispered. Dust rose, spread and slowly settled. The old style radio crackled with static. Outside, night was spreading like a dark blanket over the little town that crouched further down the road.

  “I said he killed Miss Barbara by the library, Sheriff,” Deputy Bob Wells said. He spoke rapidly, baritone voice thick with panic. “He killed her with his bare hands, so I shot him.”

  “Slow down. Shot who, damn it?”

  A long pause. More static. “It was old man Grabowski, Sheriff. Sure as shit.”

  “Lazlo Grabowski is dead, Bob.”

  “I know.”

  Sheriff Penny Miller blinked and straightened her long legs. She leaned forward over the desk, stomach tingling. “You okay, Bob? You been drinking?”

  “I ain’t had a drop, Sheriff, I swear. It was the strangest damned thing I ever saw. Old Grabowski came out of the bushes while I was talking to Miss Barbara. Looked like shit, some sort of zombie. He tackled her and started... biting. I tried to pull him off her, but his arm came right out of his shoulder. Jesus, blood come out of her quick as a double-dicked bull pissing on a flat rock. Miss Barbara was screaming. He wouldn’t stop, so I shot him. He kept on biting anyway. I shot him again, in the head this time, and then he quit.”

  “And Miss Barbara?”

  “Bled out like a pig. Then I saw some more of ’em coming and I ran.”

  “Some more of what?”

  “Of them,” he repeated, as if that explained everything.

  I’ve got a lunatic in uniform out on the township streets with a loaded gun, the Sheriff thought to herself. Great.

  “Deputy Wells, where the hell are you?”

  “I’m in the car, on the way back. Sheriff, this gets worse. All kinds of people are out on the street tonight, kind of stumbling around all drunk-looking. They look like…well, zombies. And, yeah, I do know how this sounds. I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Zombies?” Sheriff Miller said. She sighed into the radio. “Come on, Wells, what’s really going on?” She stretched the microphone cord, went around her desk and stepped over some lumber to get her gun belt. She fastened it on as she spoke.

  “I’m serious as liver cancer, Sheriff,” came the static-clouded voice through the speakers. “Dozens, maybe a hundred of them. A handful attacked Mrs. McCormick’s store, clawing and chewing. They flat-out ate her alive. I shot two or three with the Remington, but they just kept coming, so I had to light out for base.”

  The sheriff heard Wells sounding panicked as hell, so she knew that whatever was happening, the deputy thought it was real enough. “What’s your position?”

  “Like I said, in the cruiser. I’ll be back at the station in two minutes tops. Leave the prisoners locked up. We got to get out of here. Shit!” The radio popped. Wells stopped transmitting.

  Miller wasn’t sure she bought the story. Maybe it was a prank, but that wasn’t like Wells at all. Big old serious redneck sonofabitch like him wasn’t prone to joking around. So something was going on out there, but freaking zombies? Whatever it was, Miller knew she had only a few minutes to prepare. She was the Sheriff and had her duty. She rounded the desk and grabbed her broad-brimmed hat off the rack. She jogged out of her office, past the construction mess and into the small, old-fashioned western jail. The big key turned smoothly in the brand new lock, the barred door swung open with a creak. The two prisoners looked up as she approached the cells.

  “Get up,” Miller said.

  “Time for my strip search, darlin’?” The closest prisoner swung his feet off the edge of his cot. Bowen was busily tattooed; a large biker with long, stringy hair, a scraggly beard and a darkened bandage on his head. He hefted his sweaty bulk off the cot and approached the steel bars. “I’m sure I’ve got something in here you’d like,” he said. He leered and began to paw at his crotch.

  “Shut up.” Miller produced a pair of handcuffs. “That little thing wouldn’t scare a gnat into buying a diaphragm. Now get over here and put your hands through the slot.” She indicated the large rectangular hole in the barred door. “Move it. We got us somewhere to go.”

  “Where?” the second prisoner, Stillman, asked. He was a tall, wiry, foul smelling man with a ta
ttooed head and surprisingly delicate hands. He approached the door of his cell. If it weren’t for his weirdly tattooed head, Stillman could have passed for an accountant, rather than a Hell’s Angel. How he wound up in a motorcycle gang, Miller didn’t care to know.

  “Sheriff, where we going?” he asked again.

  Miller paused. She hadn’t yet considered that part of it. “We’re moving you to another facility,” she said. The lie didn’t come easy. She usually preferred to play it straight, even with the cons. “Come on, I don’t have all day.”

  Bowen smelled trouble. “What’s the rush?”

  Before the Sheriff could answer, Wells burst through the door. “They’re fucking everywhere, Sheriff!” The former high school athlete was out of breath, uniform dark with sweat; clearly sorry he had let his gut get the better of him. “I saw more coming out of the woods as I was pulling up. We ain’t got much time.”

  “Who’s coming, a lynch mob? Are they coming for me?” demanded Stillman. He gripped the bars of the cell door, a sudden nervous tic making his face twitch. Sheriff Miller could smell the guilty sweat from two yards off. Stillman was accused of drugging and sodomizing a minor. His wide eyes gave him away.

  “Never mind. Put your hands through the slot,” Miller commanded again. She was surprised by the strength in her voice. She didn’t feel very strong. Zombies? The hell?

  “What’s going on, Sheriff?” Bowen spoke calmly. He stepped away from the door and crossed his arms. Stillman stepped back, a reluctant imitation of his leader. “We ain’t going nowhere ‘less you tell us the truth.”

  Wells huffed with frustration and fear. “Sheriff, leave them. They’ll be safe in there.”

  She stared at him.

  “Probably,” he shrugged.

  “I’m not leaving my prisoners,” Miller said bluntly. “We have our duty.”

  “We don’t have time for this.” Wells turned his attention to the big motorcyclist and drew his club. “Okay, do what the Sheriff says, asshole, or I’ll come in there and crack your skull again. Then the zombies won’t have a problem getting at your shit-for-brains.”

  “Zombies?” Bowen released a sharp laugh. “Oh, bullshit! What’s really going on? Some family members coming for my friend here?”

  In his cell, Stillman wilted.

  “What is going on,” Sheriff Miller said, “is that we need to get you two to safety. We don’t have time for any macho posturing. Now, present your hands.”

  “Holy bat shit, Scratch.” Stillman muttered, peering out his small, high cell window. “You really got to check this out.”

  Wells and Miller exchanged glances. “Get the shotguns ready,” she barked. Wells ran for the gun cabinet.

  Meanwhile, Bowen stood on his own cot and looked through the barred window. “Whoa, what the fuck is that?”

  “I told you,” said Wells from across the room. He was loading two shotguns as fast as possible. “Zombies.”

  “Damn.” Bowen hopped down from his cot immediately. He slid his hands through the slot. “Move,” he ordered Stillman. “We gotta go.” Miller snapped the cuffs around each of their wrists. She opened the cell doors, ushering the two prisoners out. As they headed down the hallway, Wells jabbed Bowen with his stick. Bowen stumbled a bit.

  “Watch it, dickhead, or I’ll turn around and break you in two,” snapped Bowen.

  Wells raised his stick, ready to strike. The convict glared back like a pit bull.

  “Wells!” The deputy turned to see Miller with genuine rage in her eyes. “They are our prisoners. Knock it off.”

  Wells opened the door to the parking lot and stopped short. The last sunlight was fading out, a yellow ball dipping down into a huge pond of black ink.

  “My God,” Wells gasped.

  Miller swallowed. “We ain’t gonna make it to the cars.”

  Bowen and Stillman stepped forward to look. It was a living nightmare. The things were everywhere, covering the blacktop around the isolated sheriff’s station. Feet shuffling, throats moaning. Features were distorted, clothing ripped. They could have been anybody; townspeople, tourists passing through, distant relatives. Tattered clothing, gaping wounds and blood splatters covered their bodies. Dozens of zombies with missing limbs staggered forward in broken formation. The moaning sound floated on a low breeze that carried the stench of rotting meat. The three men stared. Miller looked down at her hands. They were not trembling. Her mind plotted strategy. She looked up again. The closest zombies were perhaps twenty yards away.

  Wells leveled the shotgun at a man in a dark suit. He fired, the noise making Stillman jump. The zombie fell heavily to the ground.

  “Now, watch this,” said Wells. “It ain’t dead for real, not yet.”

  Bowen snorted. “Hell he ain’t.”

  After a moment, the creature picked itself up and began lumbering toward the station, dark intestines sliding from its gut.

  “See what I mean, Sheriff?” Deputy Wells said, terror in his eyes. “I do believe we are in some pretty deep shit.”

  “All right!” snapped Sheriff Miller. “Everyone back inside. Lock the door, Wells. I think we’re staying put.”

  They locked up. She turned the lights on outside to give them better vision. Peering out through the window, Miller didn’t like what she saw. The army of creatures approached relentlessly from all sides, groaning with a terrible hunger. Miller rallied her deputy. They fired through windows and doors as best they could. Soon Miller wished she had put in earplugs when she’d had the chance. The steady gunfire hurt like hell.

  “Aim for the head,” called Bowen. “It’s the only thing that works.”

  “I am aiming for their heads, smartass,” shouted Wells.

  They fired and fired. Meanwhile, Stillman sat handcuffed to a chair at Wells’ desk in the lobby, the receiver stuck between his ear and his shoulder. He dialed furiously. Prisoner Bowen had gone back into his cell for security. He was visibly shaking. His eyes were wide and white.

  “They’re getting closer,” Wells hollered. “This keeps up, these motherfuckers might be yanking our zippers down pretty soon.” The bodies of several of the seemingly endless stream of undead were piled in a rough semicircle around his position at the barred back window. Wells paused for a moment to reload.

  “Shit fire!” Bowen jumped back as a rotting, three-fingered hand appeared at the barred window, grasping at his head. “Holy damned Jesus Christ on a jet ski!” He stumbled backward off his cot, tripped on the toilet and banged his already bandaged head on the cinderblock walls of the small cell. “Ow!”

  “Shut up,” said Miller. She peered though the smoke in Bowen’s general direction. “Bob, how are you holding up?”

  Wells fired the shotgun again. Steel balls ripped the head off another zombie. A wide cloud of blood, brains and skull resulted. The zombie, a little girl in a puffy white dress, went over backwards, tumbling over other bodies. A moment later, an old man began clambering over the rapidly growing wall of undead. They kept coming. The floodlights threw long shadows past them, like long black ribbons running off into the desert.

  “Not good, Sheriff.” Wells looked over his shoulder at Miller, then down at the growing pile of empty ammo boxes and shell casings. “Running low, here. Fact, I’m down to about three boxes of ammo, and there are more coming. Maybe we been et by a bitch wolf and shat over a thousand foot cliff.”

  Miller began to worry, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She was doing only slightly better on ammo, but just because they had stocked more 30.06 than shotgun shells last month. Miller sighted another zombie, a decaying Mrs. McCormick, and fired. The right eye imploded, a reddish-grey cloud blooming at the back of its head. The woman fell forward, only to be replaced by another female limping behind her. Miller called to Stillman. “Any luck with the phones?”

  “There’s a ring, but no one picks up. I’ve tried every number in your book, and a few of my own. I get a machine or one of those God-damned automatic messages
every time.” He slammed his fist on the dusty drop cloth. Dust rose from Wells’ desk. “Whole world must be screwed up. Bet those Goddamned A-rab terrorists done this.”

  “Man, we’re running out of time,” said Bowen. He paced to and fro in his cell, fondling the bandage on his head.

  “If you have any brilliant ideas,” Miller said coolly, targeting the next zombie, “now’s the time to share.”

  “Sure I got one. Let me and Stillman loose and give us a couple of them scatter guns.”

  “Not a fucking chance!” Wells, reloading again, turned his weapon on Bowen. “We ain’t letting you anywhere near those weapons.”

  “Bob,” said Miller quietly, without looking up, “cover your position and shut up.”

  “You ain’t seriously thinking of arming this piece of shit, are you, Penny?”

  Miller looked, turned her Remington rifle on him and screamed, “Duck!”

  Wells dropped to the floor, scattering red plastic shells. Miller fired at the huge zombie, a tourist in Bermuda shorts, hitting it in the fat belly. The thing didn’t even notice it had been shot. It reached down to Wells and grabbed him by the shoulder. Wells brought the muzzle of his pump-action shotgun under the zombie’s chin and fired. The resulting boom was deafening. The zombie’s head exploded and the escaping shot shattered the window above. Glass fragments, splinters and vaporized brains showered down on Wells. On the edge of sanity, he giggled. His broad-rimmed hat protected his face from the fallout, but his uniform was red and soaking wet. Wells pushed the zombie out the window, out of sight.

  Stillman suddenly shifted. “Behind you, Sheriff!”

  In one smooth movement, Miller drew her pistol and stuck it in the mouth of a child zombie coming in through the window. She winced but pulled the trigger, and the dead boy—one she didn’t know, thankfully—slid below the windowsill with a hole in his brainstem.