Dawn of the Living-Impaired

by Christine Morgan

  "Please, sir," Zombiella said to the steward.

  "My orders did say every girl …"

  Zombiella sat down and unwrapped her stump. She extended her leg, which ended in an ankle-stump that everyone could see looked like a match … except that her leg was pink and firm and alive, while the foot on the pillow was green and smelly, its zombie toes twitching.

  The steward touched the foot to the stump, and it was a perfect fit. The rot spread quickly up Zombiella's leg and, in seconds, she was revealed to be the mysterious zombie girl that the prince had fallen in love with.

  But the cruel stepmother, understanding everything, knocked the steward away. She grabbed the foot, wrenched it off of Zombiella's ankle, and threw it in the fire. It went up in a sizzle of grease and smoke, leaving only the blackened skull slipper.

  "You'll never prove it now!" she screamed in triumph.

  As the steward was staring in horror at the burnt foot bones and wondering how in the world he would explain to the prince, Zombiella reached into her pocket and brought out the other, matching, skull slipper.

  "Well," Zombiella said, "I do have this, the other slipper."

  That was all the proof anyone could need, so Zombiella married Prince Zombing and they existed happily ever after.

  Davey had gone all drowsy-eyed, but he struggled to stay awake. "Read another one, Mom."

  "Tomorrow night."

  "Pleeeeeease?"

  "Tomorrow night," I repeated firmly.

  "Which one?"

  I flipped another page. "How about Brainsel and Deadel?"

  "Yeah! With the scary live witch and the house made of brains?"

  "That's the one."

  "And they find their way through the woods by dropping --?"

  "Sounds like we don't need to read it if you know the whole story already."

  "No, I want to!"

  I closed the book and leaned over to give Davey a kiss. "All right, then. Good night, Davey."

  "Good night, Mom."

  He snuggled down in his bed and closed his eyes. I checked on Tess one last time. She was sleeping like the dead, not breathing, not moving, her little face peaceful, the thumb stuck securely in her mouth.

  Leaving the kids' door ajar in case they woke in the night, I stood for a moment in the dim hall. The house was quiet. I could faintly hear the television downstairs, and Stu's occasional gargling chuckles. Maybe a rerun of Fear Factor; watching the squeamish living munch on cow eyeballs and rancid fish always amused him.

  Caitlin's door was closed, but there was a line of light beneath it. I rapped twice.

  "What?"

  "It's Mom."

  "I told you, I'm not eating that stuff."

  I opened the door. Her room was wallpapered in posters of actors and singing idols, a shrine to the hunks and hotties of a dead-and-gone world. Caitlin was sprawled on the rug with a pile of fashion magazines. Stu was right, she was skin and bones. Her efforts with makeup might have hidden her greenish pallor, but I knew from personal experience that cosmetics could only do so much.

  "You don't have to, if you don't want to," I said.

  "Tell that to Dad."

  "He's worried about you, that's all. So am I. We just want you to be happy."

  "Like anybody really cares."

  "I care."

  "No, you don't."

  "I know this is hard for you, honey. Nobody ever expected things to turn out this way. It's not what you wanted. Believe me, it's not what your father and I wanted for you. But it's what we have. It's what is. We all have to do the best we can to get along. At least we're all still together."

  "So what?"

  "So what?" I echoed. "So what, Caitlin? I'll tell you so what. We still have each other. We're still a family. That is the most important thing in the world."

  "Yeah." She rolled over, away from me, her bones making a brittle rattling noise. "Whatever."

  "Someday, maybe you'll understand how much you, and your father, and your brother and sister really mean to me," I said.

  "Give it up, Mom," she said. "We're dead. It doesn't matter."

  "Caitlin –"

  She clapped her headphones into place and turned the music back on, cranking it up loud.

  I sighed. "When you're ready," I said, doubting that she would answer, even if she could hear me, "we'll talk."

  Teenagers. And Caitlin was going to be one forever.

  I went into the room I shared with Stuart and sat down at my dressing table. The lights around the mirror showed my reflection with unflattering harshness. The waxy, mossy complexion. The patchy hair that clung to my skull like a bad wig. It had to go. The hairstyle didn't suit me.

  The festering scalp was glued in place by a clammy, gelatinous seal of half-dried blood and fluid. I peeled it away. It made a wet slurping noise as it parted company with my head. Grimacing, I dropped the wad of hair and skin onto the floor. It lay there in a heap, looking like roadkill.

  Where it had been, my own hair was sweat-damp and matted down. I worked my fingers into it, scratching, not caring that the green greasepaint on my fingers was rubbing off. I needed to redo my makeup anyway.

  There was a pot of cold cream on the dressing table. I dunked a cloth into it and began scrubbing in slow circles over my cheeks, chin, and brow. Hatefully healthy pink skin emerged.

  Cosmetics could only do so much.

  No amount of makeup, no matter how skillfully applied, was going to hide the truth much longer. I could douse myself in Charnel No. 5 from now until forever, but the slaughterhouse stench couldn't conceal the fact that my limbs were whole, my flesh solid, my organs inside where they had always been.

  Maybe if I lopped off a finger or two? Knocked out some teeth? Gouged out an eye? Or even take the big step, the final step?

  Whatever I did, I knew I had to do it soon. Some of the neighbors had already been getting suspicious. Look at Don Foster, the nosy bastard. I'd hated having to shoot him, but what if he'd said something to Helen? How could I ever show my face in the supermarket again? What if the cruel gossip got back to the kids, somehow?

  I finished removing my makeup and changed into my nightgown. It was a skimpy little Victoria's Secret number, lace and wisps of see-through silk, revealing almost everything. All that smooth, firm flesh …

  It was a good thing Stu had always been a bit on the kinky side.

  A TOWER TO THE SKY

  In the lands between the rivers

  Lands rich with silt and clay

  Where the fields of barley grow

  Where sheep and oxen lay

  Will a ziggurat be built

  Five-thousand cubits high

  The jewel of Babylonia

  A tower to the sky

  Rilah plucked at the lyre’s strings as she sang, her sweet voice drifting over the camp.

  No one else paid much attention.

  Jehal would have liked to pay more attention, much more. To stop and listen, to smile at her … to hopefully elicit a smile in return, or at least a glance from beneath those long lashes.

  He dared not.

  She was Okmar’s.

  So was Jehal, himself, if in a different way. He worked for the caravan master, that fat and slovenly son of a lame camel.

  Rilah belonged to Okmar. She was a slave.

  A slave, though not from the hill-tribes like the others. Her father had been a merchant, a wealthy and well-respected man, before ill fortune struck the family with poverty.

  By Inanna, but she was beautiful.

  Too good for Okmar.

  Too good for Jehal, for that matter.

  She should have had a prosperous husband, with a fine house in the city, and two or three plump little babies by now. She should have had slaves of her own, pots of alabaster, necklaces of silver and gold. She should have dined on fowl cooked with dates and honey, instead of the bread and onions and lentils that were the caravan’s fare.

  An elbow dug into his ribs. “Quit staring or Okmar w
ill pop out your eyes,” Andu said.

  “I wasn’t staring,” Jehal said, feeling a flush climb his cheeks.

  “Staring like a lamb at the moon.” Andu elbowed him again, grinning. “Come help me with the big one before night falls.”

  They walked past the cook-tent, where other guards and drovers were finishing their meals. The asses, tethered, nosed through bundles of hay. In the purple canopy of dusk, the first stars already sparkled like bright gemstones. Canals and plowed farmlands stretched to either side of the road.

  The slaves huddled in a pen made from ropes strung between tall stakes pounded into the earth. Some wore grubby rags and the tattered flaps of sandals. Others wore only dirt, bruises, and whip-weals. They clung together in family groups. A few wept. None spoke. Most were silent. Those that looked at Andu and Jehal did so with dull, hopeless eyes.

  Unlike Rilah, these slaves came from the uncivilized hill-tribes who lived on the edges of the kingdoms of Sumer. Raiders captured them to sell to men such as Okmar, who in turn took them to the markets held at the great cities. There was always a demand for such labor.

  Jehal pitied them, but knew they would bring a good price. He and Andu nodded to the men who stood watch over the slave-pen and made their way to the big one.

  He was easy to find, not only for his size, but because the rest of the slaves avoided him. The caravan had come across him the day before, the large man stumbling along, caked with dust and dried blood, raving in a language none of them could understand. He’d all but collapsed at Okmar’s very feet.

  No one knew him. No one could guess from what tribe he had come.

  And, to Okmar, always practical, it was as good as found money.

  “Has he eaten?” Jehal asked.

  “Not since yesterday,” Andu said. “I gave him water, but he’d take nothing more.”

  He’d been wounded, as well, when they found him. Scrapes and abrasions covered his body. His face was harrowed by scratches, as if he’d clawed himself with his own fingernails in a frenzy of anguish or grief. Chunks of flesh had been torn from one meaty forearm, leaving raw red marks that looked gouged or gored.

  “I wonder what happened to him,” Jehal said as they approached the place where the big man lay curled on his side.

  Andu shrugged. “Wild dogs?”

  They’d washed and bandaged him before putting him among the slaves. He hadn’t resisted, didn’t seem to know where he was. None of their efforts to speak with him had gained more than meaningless mumbles.

  “If he’s gone mad, he’s gone mad,” Okmar had said. “Doesn’t matter to us. Look at the size of him, the breadth of his shoulders, the girth of his arms. He’s strong as a bull. Someone will pay well for him.”

  The rest of the slaves continued to give the big one a wide berth, leaving a cleared space around him. Andu had brought a small oil lamp to light their way once they’d left behind the cook-tent’s fires. He handed it to Jehal now, who held it aloft.

  “He doesn’t look well,” said Jehal, observing the big man in the lamp’s puddling yellow glow.

  “It’s the fever,” said Andu, squatting to unfold a bundle of fresh bandages, salve, and healing herbs. “Infection. I hope we don’t have to have his arm off. Okmar won’t like that.”

  “No, he looks worse.”

  The big one’s skin, which had been the fertile color of a riverbank after flood season when they’d found him, had a parched and greyish pallor now, more like badly-mixed clay beginning to dry.

  He wasn’t moving, either.

  “Andu, I think he’s dead.”

  “Okmar will like that even less.” Andu poked the big one’s shoulder. When there was no response, Andu poked harder, pushing him over onto his back.

  The big one’s arm flopped out with the peculiar stiff limpness, or limp stiffness, known only to a corpse. His mouth gaped, devoid of breath. A fly alit on his nose.

  Andu exhaled a sigh, swore, and called to Maruk. Maruk joined them, looked, and sent his brother Mabot to fetch Okmar.

  Okmar came to the slave-pen, annoyed at his evening meal being interrupted. He stood there with mutton grease glistening on his jowls and wine-stains on his chest. Jehal, listening to his conversation with Maruk and Andu, couldn’t help but think of pretty Rilah … no doubt waiting in Okmar’s tent.

  “Just leave him for now,” the caravan master said, belching. “He’s not going anywhere. We can see to it in the morning.”

  Andu frowned, but no one dared to argue. Okmar’s irritation made it seem he’d paid good silver for the man, then been cheated by his death, rather than being out no more than the cost of some water and a poultice. He grumbled about it as he stomped off.

  They left him.

  Jehal unrolled the thin mat of woven reeds he slept upon, and rested his head on the pack in which he kept his belongings. He thought of Rilah again. Would his wages be enough to purchase her freedom? Would Okmar sell it? And what of Rilah, herself? She smiled at him, sometimes. He was younger than Okmar, younger and more handsome. If he was not wealthy, he was hard-working and willing.

  His pleasant musings followed him into more pleasant dreams, which made his sudden waking all the more jarring a shock. He bolted upright with screams filling his ears. Startled shouts of alarm sounded from all over the camp.

  It took precious scrambling moments before they realized they were not under attack. The commotion was at the slave-pen. Guards came on the run, armed with spears, sticks, whips, and torches. It took precious moments more until they determined the slaves were not attempting an escape, but were instead in a panic.

  With Okmar bellowing orders, they forced their way through, subduing the terrified slaves. Several had been injured in the scuffle, knocked down and trampled, bleeding.

  At the midst of it –

  “You said he was dead!”

  “I thought that he was!”

  -- was the big one.

  Two slaves tried to crawl brokenly away from him, like crippled insects. A third sprawled with his throat torn open, a crimson river’s pumping, sluggish, decreasing flow soaking the dry earth under him to mud.

  The big one seized a woman by the wrist and hair. He yanked her to him and sank his bloodied teeth into her shoulder. She shrieked. He gnawed. She shrieked again, pulling away. Gristle crackled and bone popped. Her arm twisted off like a joint of roast meat.

  And, like a joint of roast meat, the big one hungrily bit and devoured whole dripping chunks.

  The woman tottered a few steps, blinking in an expression of astonished surprise, and trailing strings of tendon, then fell over.

  “Don’t kill him!” yelled Okmar as the guards closed in. “Beat him down, but don’t kill him!”

  They did as he said, clubbing at the big one with sticks and spear-butts. He fought and thrashed like a madman, biting at them when they pinned his arms and legs. It took five of them to wrestle him to the ground. Andu and Maruk tied him with sturdy rope. Still, he kept thrashing and snapping, making low bestial grunts and groans.

  “You fool of a goat’s dropping!” Okmar said to Jehal.

  “I thought he was dead,” Jehal repeated.

  “He did look dead,” Andu said, in defense of his friend.

  Mabot limped over, twin crescents of ragged marks trickling blood down his shin. “Dead men don’t take bites from your leg,” he said.

  Okmar had the guards haul the big one to his knees and began berating him with threats and warnings. It had no more effect now than before. Less, possibly, since the big man no longer even seemed to be trying to understand or communicate. He voiced none of his unfamiliar words, only groaned again, and slobbered his tongue over his lips.

  “How is it,” Okmar said, shaking his head with disgust, “that, here we are, about to reach the greatest city of Sumer, where a tower tall as the sky is being built to celebrate the founding of a vast empire of all people under one king speaking one civilized tongue … and this --”

  As he sa
id ‘this,’ he sneered and jabbed his finger in the kneeling slave’s face.

  Anything else he might have said was lost in an agonized screech.

  The crunching teeth did not chop clean through the bone, but broke it with a splintering crack. Fast thinking, and faster action, on the part of the guards let them pry the jaws apart. Okmar stepped back, staring in horror at his mangled, bleeding hand. The finger bent off at an angle like a nearly-broken twig.

  Jehal raised his spear, the bronze point gleaming in the torchlight.

  “No!” With his other hand, Okmar slapped it aside.

  “But --”

  “Do you see all this mess?” Okmar demanded, gesturing at the dead, dying, and damaged slaves. “He’s cost me real money, now, and I mean to have something back for my pains!”

  He had the guards pry the big one’s jaws apart again, and use leather cords to hold the mouth wide agape. Then, with a chisel and a stone, they struck out all the teeth.

  The big one struggled, but only in an effort to bite again. He seemed oblivious to the pain, though chips and shards fell like pieces of shattered pottery. Even when only hole-riddled gums filled his foaming mouth, he kept snapping uselessly at whatever strayed within reach.

  “Clean this up,” Okmar went on as Andu bandaged his hand. “Dispose of the dead; tend the rest. Put them out of their misery, if you must. We move on at first light. I want to be to the market early and sell them off, this entire lot of flea-bitten wretches. They’re bad luck.”

  They did as he bade them. Two of the drovers brought their asses and carts to haul away the corpses. One insisted later that the woman whose arm had been torn off hadn’t been dead after all, that she’d revived and grabbed at him, tried to kiss him, but his ass bucked and reared and staved in her skull with a hoof. Given the sour stink of barley beer on his breath, nobody lent much credence to his claims.

  There was little sleep to be had the rest of that night. Jehal was not the only one who returned to his bed, but tossed and turned in a fitful wakefulness. A mood of unease hung over them all. It kept on as they broke camp and set out.

  That the slaves were dispirited was no surprise. They trudged not toward the end of their journey, but toward the start of new lives of hard labor, plowing fields, digging ditches and irrigation canals, mixing straw with mud for the brickmakers, lugging sun-baked bricks for the bricklayers, hauling buckets of water or plaster.