The Awakening

by McBean, Brett

A young zombi walked past me carrying a bundle of thick cane stalks. He walked towards a cart already half filled with bundles of cane and heaped his bundle on.

  “Wait here,” Marc told me.

  I stood staring at the cane stalk. Marc wasn’t gone long. When he came back, he was holding a machete.

  “Now, watch and learn.” He strolled over to one of the towering cane stalks. “With each stalk of cane, you have to chop the top off and chop it at the bottom. First you chop the cane down, like so.” Marc hacked the cane stalk a few times. The stalk fell to the ground. “Then you chop off the leaves.” Marc proceeded to slice off the leaves. “Got it?” he said, turning to me.

  I nodded. Somehow, I understood.

  Marc walked over to me and handed me the machete. It was heavy, strong and lethal.

  “Okay, get to work.”

  I walked into the towering sea of cane stalks. Stopping at one of the reeds, I lifted the machete and hacked into the bottom of the cane. It made a small nick, but that was about it.

  “Tough son-of-a-bitch that cane,” Marc laughed.

  I tried again, harder. I made a sizeable cut, but still the cane didn’t fall. With the third chop it came down.

  “That’s it,” Marc said.

  Next I lopped off the top. What was left on the ground resembled a thick cylindrical stick.

  “Now, after you’ve got enough canes, pack ‘em up in a bundle and put them in the back of one of the carts.”

  Marc left and I continued cutting down the sugar cane. I worked all day, one cane after another.

  But I didn’t complain. I didn’t care. All I knew was that I had a job to do. At some point, another man arrived at the field and this man, tall, strong looking, about the same age as Marc, started shouting at the slaves and hitting us with a thick, broad stick, yelling at us to work harder, faster.

  The sun was beginning to sink when a shrill whistle blew. I stopped what I was doing and stood there. I watched as the other zombis shuffled out of the field, machetes and hoes resting on their shoulders, blank faces unaware of their own existence. But I had no instruction. So I continued working.

  The angry man with the painful stick had already left, so it was a little while before Marc came striding down into the field. “That whistle means work is over for the day and you can go back to your hut.”

  I stopped cutting cane and started walking.

  “Keep your machete with you and bring it with you tomorrow for work.”

  In my white cloudy haze, I ambled back to the small hut. Inside, the young zombi was still picking at his wounds—including fresh ones that were on his face; the old zombi sat staring at the floor.

  I sat down on the hard earthen floor and stared at the flimsy wooden door.

  I don’t know why that door held so much fascination for me. Maybe, deep down, I knew it meant escape. That if I wanted to, I could just open the door and walk out.

  But I had no desire to escape.

  Soon after I arrived back, a zombi came into our hut. He was probably ten years younger than me, and was carrying two bowls.

  The zombi placed one down in front of me and the other in front of the old zombi. Then he turned to leave.

  The young zombi leaped up and tackled the zombi. They landed on the ground, the younger zombi landing on top of the older one. I glanced over, saw the zombi trying to bite its brethren on the neck, but disinterested, turned back to see what food I had been given.

  As the zombis continued to struggle, making ugly, throaty grunting noises, I stuck my hand into the bowl and scooped the cold mush of plantains into my mouth. It was bland, but it was good to finally have something to eat.

  It seemed the fighting was loud enough to attract attention and soon Marc came in and upon seeing the tussle, drew his stick out and started hitting the younger zombi. It took a lot of hitting before the snarling, drooling zombi stopped fighting the older one. He scampered back to his corner, a mean look on his face.

  “That’s it, you’ve had it,” Marc said.

  The young zombi bared his teeth and growled.

  “Come on,” Marc ordered the older zombi and then stormed out. The older zombi, dazed and covered in dust, got up off the floor and followed Marc.

  I concentrated on eating my meal. Finished the whole bowl, which wasn’t much, in a few hungry mouthfuls.

  The old zombi was taking his time.

  Soon night came and the hut was plunged into darkness. The old zombi had stopped munching on his meal, the only sound now coming from the young zombi softly growling under his breath.

  Suddenly the door burst open and light flooded our tiny abode. Marc and Raoul came in holding pine torches. Our master followed.

  “Get him,” he ordered.

  The two younger men ventured towards the troublesome zombi. He started to snarl, but soon stopped when the two men drew out whips and started hitting him.

  The zombi cowered, trying to shield himself from the blows. Finally the two men stopped whipping, then bending down, tied rope around the young zombi’s feet and hands. The zombi didn’t put up any fight. With his face, chest and back now one big open wound he just lay down and let them restrain him.

  Then the two men dragged the zombi out of the hut.

  When they were gone, the master said to us, “Let this be a warning to you both. Obey us and don’t cause any trouble and you won’t be punished.”

  The master left, slamming the old wooden door.

  Now it was just me and the old zombi. Without the younger zombi picking at his wounds, it was deathly quiet. We didn’t speak, nor breathe. Aside from some occasional gas passing through our bodies, neither of us made a sound nor moved for the entire night.

  I didn’t sleep.

  I wasn’t tired and I had no desire to rest. From the time I shuffled into the hut after work, until the sun rose the next morning, I simply sat on the floor, doing nothing.

  Sounds incredibly boring, I know, but it wasn’t. I didn’t have the capacity to feel boredom. I was like a faithful dog waiting for my master to return.

  Being it was so quiet inside the hut, I heard other noises, some faint, like dogs barking and roosters calling; others close by, like groaning, or gentle whimpering. One time I heard snarling and what sounded like a fight.

  That first day cutting sugarcane and that first long night in the hut was prototypical of all my days and nights on the plantation. Every day and every night were the same—work all day in the cane fields, then at dusk head back into my hut where I’d get fed a bowl of cold, unsalted plantains and then be left in utter darkness until morning came.

  There were only two events that offered any variance—before the uprising that is. The first happened the following day after the young zombi was taken out of our hut.

  The door opened, sunlight poured in, but instead of the usual, “Time for work,” Marc said, “Outside, and stand in front of your huts.”

  Diligently, the old zombi and I got up and walked outside. The cane looked like columns of yellow candy in the sun, the mountains were gold-capped monsters that seemed to box the plantation in like the walls of a castle.

  As Marc had ordered, when I stepped outside I stopped in front of my hut and didn’t move. The old zombi stood beside me.

  All around, zombis stood in front of their huts. Some had two to a hut, like us; most had three, a few even four.

  There must’ve been around twenty zombis, of all different shapes, sizes and age, some wearing barely a stitch of clothing, standing outside the collection of huts that sat on the edge of the cane field. While most were in fairly good condition, I did notice one zombi had half his face missing, like he had been shot in the side of the head. His right eye, cheek and half his jaw was missing; what was left was a gaping hole where his teeth, jagged and discolored, could be seen. Another had marks all over his face and arms, red welts and burn marks. I wonder, now, how I would’ve looked to the other zombis, the way my neck was crooked and the raw scrape down the sid
e of my face.

  But it didn’t matter that you had half your face missing, or that your head was more horizontal than it was vertical; as long as you could swing a machete and carry loads of cane, you were perfectly fit to be a slave.

  Which, as I saw once my lazy brain and eyes finally settled on it, the young zombi that had been taken from my hut last night was now most certainly not.

  He was hanging from a tree. There was a thick rope noosed around his neck, the other end was strung to a thick branch above. His hands were tied behind him and his legs were bound together.

  His face, now a bluish-black tinge from lack of blood in his head, was puffy. His torn clothes were filthy with blood.

  It looked like he had been beaten and whipped even more after being taken away, but he was still alive.

  One eye, the one that wasn’t puffed over like he had just gone twelve rounds, twitched and flickered open, gazing emptily out at the gawking masses.

  A living human would’ve been dead long ago. If not from the beating, then the rope around their neck would have already strangled them, if not broken their neck outright.

  But this was no ordinary living person. This was a zombi, one of the undead. He couldn’t be killed, not unless the bocor that had turned him into a zombi broke the spell, or if the zombi was hit in the brain.

  But it looked like the young zombi who had acquired a nasty itch would be left hanging for however long the master wished; unable to work, unable to scratch his wounds, unable to eat, unable to die.

  From the main house came the master. He stopped before the huts and surveyed the zombis with a satisfied grin. “This,” he said, his deep voice booming, “is the price you pay for misbehaving. If you continue to obey me, work hard and cause no trouble, you will be fed and housed. Look upon this fellow slave each time you leave for work in the morning, and whenever you come home at night. Fear him, fear me.” He turned to Marc. “They’re yours now. Try and keep them under control, son. You are, after all, the head foreman.” The master left.

  I saw Marc scowl at his father after he was gone. “Crazy old fool,” he muttered. Turning to us, he said, “Okay, everyone go to work. Move!”

  So that’s what we did. I cut the cane, just as I was told to do. Day in, day out. And each day as I passed by the tree, I glanced up at the zombi dangling, and I felt fear ball up inside me, but it went away as soon as the tree was out of sight.

  As the days became weeks, the young zombi’s face became grotesquely bloated, and both his eyes started bulging out of his head. His clothes started to hang off his bones, until finally, his body wasting to nothing, they dropped off. He was a pitiful sight. Body as skinny as a twig, face like a round black balloon. It would only be a matter of time before his head popped clean off.

  He no longer thrashed around, or even jerked. He hardly made any noises, other than the occasional whispery groan, which I heard at nights when all was quiet.

  I didn’t feel sorry for him. No, he was simply a symbol of fear. A visible reminder of what would happen if we disobeyed either of our masters.

  Then one night, Marc came into my hut. It was not long after dinner. Whip in one hand, flaming pine torch in the other, he looked like a ghost the way the torch sprayed his face with firelight. “Both of you, get up,” he said.

  Me and the old zombi got to our feet.

  He pointed to me. “You, leave the machete.” He pointed to the other zombi. “You, bring your hoe. Both of you, follow me.”

  We followed Marc outside.

  The moon was a round hole in the sky. The zombi hanging from the tree was barely visible as a dark shape seemingly hanging in mid-air.

  Marc walked over to another hut, stopped in front of it and opened the door. “You, go inside. It’s your new home.”

  The old zombi shuffled in and the door was closed.

  “You, come with me.”

  I limped behind the young master. We walked past the huts, up a path leading to the main house.

  The master’s house was big, a solid-looking wooden house with a wide veranda and a nice garden. We stepped through the door. Inside was lit by kerosene lamps, and it smelled different than the hut—cleaner.

  “You have a new job,” Marc said, facing me. He had doused the torch and placed the club on a side table. “You are to be the master’s personal slave. Bring him whatever he wants, clean whatever he asks, any time, day or night. You’re also to prepare the food for the slaves and bring them their dinner, as well as clean the huts and the mule and horse pens. Our last personal slave was, well, let’s say severely injured tonight, so he’s incapable of performing his duties any longer. You’re the oldest zombi here, apart from that other one you were roommates with, but he’s too old and slow. So you’ve got the job. It’s a good job, it’s less work than being out in the fields, so don’t mess around or cause any trouble or else you’ll be swinging next to your other roommate, understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good. Okay, wait here.”

  I waited and soon Marc came back into the room. He was holding a bell. “Whenever you hear this noise...” He rattled the bell and it jingled with a high-pitched sound. “...that’s the master calling. Come, I’ll show you around the house and your living quarters.”

  The house, although much bigger than the huts, was still basic, consisting of six rooms altogether—a kitchen, a toilet, a dining area, the master’s bedroom, Marc’s room near the back of the house, and a room Marc called the ‘forbidden room’, its door always locked. As I was shown these rooms (except for the master’s, as he was sleeping, and the forbidden room; which, I was told, I was never to enter), Marc explained to me what I was to clean, and, in the kitchen, where the food was kept. The kitchen was cramped, full of dishes, alcohol and spices. There was a fridge, which housed mostly meat, eggs and milk, but I was forbidden to eat any of the food, especially the meat, or else I’d be punished worse than the zombi hanging from the tree.

  He asked if I understood, I nodded and then he showed me to a small room off the kitchen, barely bigger than a broom closet. Aside from a few boxes and other assorted junk, there was a blanket on the ground.

  “This is where you stay,” Marc said. “It’s a little smaller than the hut, but it’s all yours and it is warmer and comfier. So be thankful you have this job. Okay, I have to go and get some sleep. Wait here until you hear the bell. That means the master has woken. Then go to him and see to his needs.”

  Marc left.

  I stayed in that storage closet-cum-home until I heard the jingle of the bell.

  I walked out of the closet to the master’s bedroom, opened the door and stepped inside. The master was sitting up in bed. When I came in he placed the bell on a side-table. “So you’re my new personal slave. Okay, get me some coffee, black, no sugar, and a plate of fried eggs. Hurry.”

  I left the bedroom and hurried back into the kitchen.

  That first attempt at making breakfast for the master was a bit of a disaster. The part of my brain that dealt with instinct and memory was intact enough so I knew basically what I had to do, but with my muscles stiff and my head the way it was, it took me some practice to get something as simple as eggs and coffee right. I broke a few eggs and spilled a lot of coffee over the counter, but finally—and after a few scratchy “Hurry ups” and “What the hell are you doing in there?”—I brought the master his breakfast.

  I waited patiently as he forked some egg into his mouth, then took a sip of coffee. He nodded, took another bite of the eggs and mumbled, “Not bad. Not bad at all. You’re a better cook than the last one. Okay, go outside and clean up the dog shit, then come back inside and see me and I’ll give you some more chores. There should be a shovel outside in the shed, that’s if that no-good zombi you replaced put it back as he should have.”

  I left the master to his eggs and coffee and headed outside.

  The backyard wasn’t huge, but it was big enough. A mangy wooden fence encircled the yard and an even mangier
dog was over near the shed in one corner. The mongrel was playing with a bunch of rags, biting and throwing its head from side to side. It was growling with happiness, but the moment I stepped outside, it stopped, looked up at me and began growling with suspicion. It started barking and leaving its plaything, bounded towards me.

  Bile and blood flicked from its teeth-baring mouth. The area around its mouth and nose was matted with dark blood.

  I began mewling, not understanding why this creature wanted to attack me, yet knowing, deep down, that it was probably more scared of me than I was of it.

  I took a step forward—I had to get to the shed and get the shovel—and the moment I did, the dog stopped barking and backed away.

  I took another step, and the dog high-tailed it back to the thing it had been gnawing at when I first came out.

  The dog dragged it away from the shed, to another part of the yard. Suddenly the lump moved, groaned, and sat up.

  The dog jumped back, like it had been scorched by fire, but then, seeing the zombi posed no threat, went back and continued feeding off of it.

  I found the shovel in the shed—which was dark and smelled of dust and mold and housed a lot of other tools and farming equipment—and went about scooping up all the bits of dog shit I could find.

  Whenever I got near the dog and his play-thing the dog snarled and eyed me with fear and uncertainty. Unlike the poor zombi who could no longer walk or defend itself I was something to be feared. I guess, thinking back, the dog knew I was an abomination, not of this world. It probably sensed death on me.

  After I had cleared the backyard of the dog’s waste, I went back inside and the master told me to first clean the dishes—which included yesterday’s lunch and dinner as well as that morning’s breakfast—and then to clean all the zombis’ waste from the huts. After I had finished all that, I was to prepare lunch.

  So I got to work and began my first full day as the master’s personal slave.”

  Mr. Joseph downed another half-glass of rum. The bottle of Barbancourt was nearly empty.

  “So,” Toby said. “That old zombi you stayed with, in the hut, was that...?”