Zombie Pulp

by Curran, Tim

  This is when people started to worry.

  And when they saw the video of the naked little boy with the glaring black autopsy stitching running from throat to crotch feeding on the dead cat or the bloated woman breastfeeding her swollen, blackened infant while grave maggots wriggled in her dirt-clogged hair…well, panic ensued. The authorities denied it all, but still the stories spread and nobody believed what they were told because by then, they had all seen the walking dead. Biocom overflowed the graveyards and deceased loved ones came washing out, knocking at doors and windows in the dead of night with grim appetites.

  Six months later…the world was gone.

  Biocom was the great eraser that washed the blackboard clean. A world that had been a struggling, unruly child lost its innocence almost over night and became a deranged adult that shit and pissed itself hourly, its mind lost in a sucking black whirlpool vortex of dementia, madness, and resurrection.

  The plague filled the cemeteries and emptied them again and that’s the way it was. Many contracted the plague, but survived it. But even survival left a little parting gift: sterility. No man or woman over the age of thirty came away able to reproduce. The young and virile became something to protect and covet. Without them, there was no children and with no children, no future.

  And that had been five years ago. Five long, hard, cruel years.

  This was the reality that Cabot and the others in Hullville lived with day in and day out. It was a bitter pill to swallow. Some people just couldn’t keep it down. They lost their minds, they raged, they pulled into themselves, they became sightless breathing shells. And more than a few slit their wrists or ate the gun.

  But for all those, many more did not roll up like frightened pillbugs. They survived. They accepted. They adapted and overcame. Not just in Hullville, but in towns like Moxton and Pick’s Valley, Slow Creek and Nipiwana Falls. They accepted the reality that the new world was not the world they or their parents had known. The new world offered the survivors nothing; everything from food to shelter to a bucket to piss in had to be fought for, had to be wrenched free from the hard earth or taken from those that held it.

  Survival.

  A simple concept and one the human race was very adept at.

  Graveyards and ghost towns.

  A few struggling pockets of humanity trapped in-between. In Hullville, things were run by the Council. They made all the decisions. Guys like Cabot didn’t like the idea of driving the sick, the weak, the old and diseased out to the Deadlands and ghost towns, but there was no other choice. If the Wormboys weren’t given meat, they’d come for it.

  So Cabot, like so many others, did what he was told.

  For in the end, it was always better to be in the front of the truck than in the back.

  *

  The ghost town came up out of the fog like a clustering of tombs blown with fingers of white vapor. The headlights speared through the mist, but neither man looked too closely at what they might reveal in the deserted lots and leaf-blown streets. A pall of age and shivering malevolence hung over the town, just as thick and palpable as the fog itself.

  “This is it, kid,” Cabot said, his voice dry and rasping. “This is where we dump our load.”

  Blaine said nothing.

  He hadn’t said a word in some time now. He was just as still and silent as the mist-shrouded streets spreading out around them. Cabot had been keeping an eye on him and, mile by mile, he had gotten more tense, every muscle drawn taut, his jaws clamped tight, sweat beading his face.

  Cabot pushed the truck further into the ghost town.

  Out of the corner of his eye he caught shapes pulling back into the fog, thought he saw eyes once that reflected red in the headlights. He’d done this so many times but it never got any easier. He fumbled another cigarette into his mouth with a shaking hand, his fingers trembling so badly he could barely fire it.

  The Freightliner’s lights revealed the town inch by diseased inch: the dusty windows of empty shops, the spiderwebbed windshields of abandoned cars rusting at curbs, rotting houses leaning precariously on lawns gone wild with weeds. Everywhere, desertion and desolation, the American dream gone to rot and ruin.

  In the back of the truck, the cargo was thumping and bumping around in the darkness, trying to shake off a drugged stupor.

  Cabot pulled off his cigarette, pretending he could not hear them back there. Pretending he could not feel the flat, evil atmosphere of the town invading him and turning him cold and white inside.

  “Another block,” he said. “We’ll be in the village center. That’s where we’ll get rid of our load.”

  Blaine muttered something under his breath.

  “What’s that, kid?”

  He swallowed, then sighed. “I said it hasn’t changed much. Just older. Decaying.”

  Cabot looked over at him. “You been here before?”

  Blaine nodded. “This is Mattawan. This is where I came from. This is where we were running from that night our van puked out.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say so?”

  “Nobody ever asked me.” He shook his head. “Whenever I started talking about it, people shut me up. In Hullville, they all shut me up. You’re here now, they’d say. Where you came from don’t matter. We all came from somewhere.”

  Cabot didn’t like this. He was getting a real bad feeling stirring in his guts.

  “We hid out in a basement for three years,” Blaine said. “We foraged by day. The dead were in the streets then, too, but not as bad as at night. Ever notice how they’re so sluggish and stupid during the day? But then at night—”

  “Kid, you should’ve told someone.”

  “Nobody’d listen. Now I’m back. I’m home.”

  Cabot was wiping sweat from his own face now. “Sure, kid. But this ain’t home. Not anymore. It’s a graveyard.”

  And then Blaine reached over and quickly popped the lock on his door, threw it open and leaped out. Cabot cried out, caught the kid’s elbow, but he pulled free and was gone.

  “Shit!”

  Cabot hit the brakes and brought the truck to a stop. It rocked back and forth on its leaf springs. He shut the kid’s door, smelling the vile and polluted stink of the mist out there.

  Then he jumped out himself, looking around in every direction.

  “KID!” he called out. “GET THE HELL BACK HERE! DO YOU HEAR ME? GET THE HELL BACK HERE!”

  His voice echoed off into the misty darkness, but there was no reply. Fog filled the headlight beams and brakelights, swirling and steaming. Shadows clustered in warped doorways, the air damp, heavy, and moldering.

  Cabot wiped a dew of sweat from his face, his breath coming fast.

  Maybe Blaine was naïve and just plain stupid, but he was not. He knew this was not just some empty dead town. They were out there and they were out there in numbers. Even now he could feel their malefic eyes crawling over him, sizing him up.

  They wanted what was in the back of the truck.

  But they would take whatever meat they could get.

  Cabot started first this way, then that, stopping each time, daring to go further. There was a park across the way. He could make out the shapes of slides, swingsets, an upended teeter-totter rising up in the fog like a derrick. This more than anything said all that needed saying about the wasteland the town now was, the extinction of the people who’d once lived there.

  A little house bordered the park and Cabot wondered if maybe the kid had gone in there, wondered if it could be that simple.

  He stepped over the curb into the long yellow grass that climbed up above his calves. His breath would barely come. He could hear the truck idling, a stray breeze in the trees overhead. Shadows were crawling everywhere and death waited in each one. The house was sagging, weathered and gray. A lone monolith wreathed in darkness.

  He moved further into the yard, the crackling of dry leaves under his step making something pull up tight inside him. He saw a birdbath in the yard. It was sprout
ing withered creepers. The front door of the house was hanging from its hinges, the darkness beyond sinister and pooling.

  That’s when Cabot saw he was not alone.

  From one dusty window above, a white face was staring down at him. Its eyes were black and glistening. He almost fell over backing away. The figure up there began slapping its hands against the window violently.

  “Shit,” Cabot said and ran back to the truck.

  He got inside and threw the locks, started breathing again.

  He was shaking worse than the kid himself now, everything inside him gone loose and watery. He knew how things worked. He knew exactly how they worked. The kid was valuable to Hullville. They needed the young and the strong because they could still bring babies into the world and Hullville needed babies. They needed a next generation or they were done. He would be sixty himself come next birthday and his procreating days were long over. He was just as sterile as the rest. Not as valuable as the kid. He wasn’t old, but it was coming and when you no longer had a use in Hullville you went in the back of the truck.

  That’s why the patrols went out.

  They needed bodies. They found anyone they could and brought them in. Then the Council decided whether they were useful or not. Lots of them were. People with trades, doctors, carpenters, bricklayers, engineers. But others…alcoholics, drug users, the old, the lazy, criminals, the sick…they were culled off, went into the back of the truck for the trip to the ghost town. That kept the Wormboys happy.

  And now Cabot had fucked up.

  He had lost the kid.

  The Council wouldn’t like that. He thought about calling it in, but he was afraid to. He could hear Chum now: You lost the kid? Well, that’s a real pisser, Cab. He was set to marry up with Leslie Rule next month. They’d a had some beautiful babies, I’ll bet. Oh well. Shit happens. Dump your load and head in. Council will want to talk to you.

  Shit.

  Council will want to talk to you.

  “Like hell,” Cabot said under his breath.

  He pulled a pump shotgun from the rack and filled his pockets with extra shells.

  He was going out there.

  Out into the graveyard of Mattawan.

  He was going to find the kid.

  *

  Night and fog.

  Cabot moved through the mist, having no idea where he was going. It was a fool’s errand and he knew it, but to go back empty-handed…well, that just wouldn’t do. He eased by picket fences spotted with black mold, crossed overgrown yards where children’s plastic toys bleached colorless by the grim roll of years were tangled in weeds. He slipped by rows of rotting houses with broken windows and rooflines fringed with mold.

  So far, so good.

  He scanned the darkness with a flashlight, the beam reflecting back off the rolling fog. Sometimes he saw shapes out there. Sometimes they were just trees or bushes and sometimes they were something else. He used the flashlight sparingly, turning it on and then clicking it off just as quick. The Wormboys were out there. Mattawan was dark, lit only by the mist and the pale moonlight filtering through it. Light of any sort would draw them right away like moths to a streetlamp. They didn’t like light much, but they knew it meant prey when they saw it.

  Cabot tried to focus his mind, tried to come up with some sort of plan.

  Where would the kid have gone? He had lived somewhere in this gutter, only he was never particular as to where that had been. And what had happened in the truck? Had he been planning this all along or had the sight of the place just unhinged him?

  He couldn’t have known we were going to Mattawan. Nobody calls it that anymore. Ever since it died it’s just been the ghost town.

  But there was no time for that.

  Cabot decided right then and there that all he could do was sweep around the general area, be quiet about it, then make for the truck before he became lunch. If he couldn’t find the kid—and he was starting to feel pretty sure he wouldn’t—then he’d make up some story, anything to throw him in a good light and shade the kid in a bad one.

  Sound thinking.

  Cabot moved down a street that was crowded with rusting cars and trucks. Some were smashed up against trees, others had popped the curb and died on lawns. Many had bird-picked skeletons behind the wheels. The town was wild, hedges and bushes consuming lots, ivies engulfing garages, yards lost beneath uprisings of weeds and straw-yellow devil grass. Tree limbs had fallen everywhere.

  He kept moving, keeping a wary eye out for anything alive…at least, anything moving. The mist distorted everything. Turned trees into stalking figures, shaped fire hydrants into crouching forms.

  He stopped.

  Behind him there were footsteps…slow, measured.

  He whirled around, tucking the flashlight into his pocket, both hands on the shotgun now. He waited behind a hedgerow, ready, ready. A warm stench like spoiled pork wafted through the air and sweat ran down his face. He caught a momentary glimpse of a hobbling stick-like shadow melting into the fog.

  The footsteps faded into the distance.

  Cabot waited another few minutes, then he was moving again. Stealthy, alert, his muscles drawn taut like piano wires, his blood pulsing hot in his veins. He moved over grassy lawns, frost-heaved sidewalks yellow with rain-plastered leaves. The mist was damp and chill about him, moving, swirling, encompassing. His heart was pounding in his throat, his temples.

  Off to the left, a branch snapped.

  He froze, unsure whether to go forward or go back.

  There was a scraping sound now…like something sharp dragged over the hood of a car.

  He smelled a sweet and high odor like rotting hay. It grew stronger by the moment. He brushed sweat from his face, licked his paper-dry lips. The world around him was painted gray by the mist. Tree limbs creaked together in the breeze. He looked around, peering through blankets of fog, terrified at what he might see coming at him.

  The stink was overpowering now.

  He turned, ready to run, ready to give up his position by making a mad dash for the truck and then—

  Someone was standing not ten feet away.

  At first, Cabot was not even sure that he was looking at a man. Dressed in a black coat that was feathered with moss, his back twisted and body contorted, he looked like a dead, gnarled tree growing up from the weedy soil, his skeletal hands reaching twigs, his face corded like pine bark. “Please, friend,” he said in a rasping tone. “I am so hungry, so very hungry…”

  Wormboy.

  Cabot just waited there, the shotgun in his fists. “Get the fuck away from me,” he said.

  The Wormboy dragged himself forward, grinning happily. His face split open with it, tissues tearing and tendons popping like dry roots. His eyes were blank and white, rimmed with red, his mouth hanging open to reveal pitted gums and black teeth. A dark slime oozed from his lips like running sap.

  Cabot shot him.

  He caught him in the belly and nearly tore him in half. But what was left, like stringy pink and gray meat, kept crawling in his direction.

  Cabot ran.

  Off into the shadows, trying to find that little park but what he found were shapes, long-armed shapes, dozens of them moving at him out of the mist. They were coming from every direction. He was in a nest of them. Grinning faces bloated with putrescence swam out of the fog. Spidery fingers clawed out for him. Gurgling voices called out. They were ringing him in, gliding forward like swarming insects.

  Cabot turned and fired, ran to the left, fired, to the right and fired again. Fingers tore at his jacket and he swung the shotgun like a club, felt it smash into something soft and pulpy. More were coming and he needed to reload, but there just wasn’t time.

  He dove through a knot of Wormboys, hammered his way clear. He leaped over a hedge, crawled on his hands and knees through the grass. On his feet again, across a yard, around a house, down an alley. Behind him, they were coming, screaming and squealing, the stench of their numbers gaseous and revo
lting.

  He cut through another yard, paused and fumbled shells into the shotgun.

  And then a voice said: “Hey, mister! Over here!”

  Cabot felt his heart gallop to a stop, lurch painfully, then start beating again. He turned and there was a little girl standing there in what looked like a white dress that had gone dark with filth. It hung in rags. Her face was as pale as the mist, her eyes huge and black and glistening with wetness. She held a finger like a skeleton key to her lips, said, “Sshhh!”

  She began backing away between two ruined houses, arching a finger at him to follow. His breath lancing his throat, Cabot listened to the Wormboys gathering out there, sniffing out his trail. The girl could have been one of them and then, maybe not.

  “Hurry! Or they’ll get you!” she said.

  He followed her, some electric instinct telling him to run, that this was a trap, a trap, but he was too scared to listen.

  He followed.

  The girl kept backing away, through the grass, around bushes and trees. Without even turning, she vaulted a heap of dead leaves. Cabot went after her, praying under his breath. He stumbled through the leaf pile and there was a sudden, unbelievable explosion of white agony in his ankle.

  He went down, screaming, fighting, the shotgun going one way and he going the other.

  The girl turned away, made a high whistling sound like a wind blown through catacombs. And as she did so, Cabot saw in his pain that the back of her head was mostly gone. Strands of dirty hair fell over a gaping, rotten chasm that boiled with meat flies.

  She whistled again.

  Dear God, she’s signaling the others, calling out to them…

  Cabot thrashed, trying to break free.

  The pain tossed his mind into darkness and then yanked it back out again. His eyes irised open, blinking away tears, and he saw the girl. Just standing there, giggling softly, looking very pleased. Her eyes were larger than ever, oily and moist, filled with a raw-toothed hunger. A fly ran over her threadbare lips and she caught it with a gray tongue, sucked it into her mouth. Then she ate it, gums shriveled away from teeth that were black and overlapping, filed sharp.