Neverwake

by Amy Plum

  Sinclair raises an eyebrow. “I don’t seem to remember a chainsaw in that film, though.”

  Fergus nods, biting his lip. “They all get mixed up in my dreams.”

  “So I guess that would be . . .”

  “Leatherface. From Texas Chainsaw.”

  “Perfect. Just perfect. I didn’t see that one coming. You?” Sinclair looks at me.

  I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic. “I’m not allowed to watch R-rated films unless they’re foreign,” I respond.

  “Of course you’re not,” Sinclair says. This time I’m ninety percent sure that’s sarcasm.

  He turns to Fergus and says, “I guess we’re depending on you, buddy. What comes next?”

  “Weapons,” Fergus says, unsheathing his sword. We draw our knives and Sinclair gets ready with the crossbow.

  “Do you know what’s going to happen?” Cata yells to be heard over the noise of the chainsaw. Heavy feet pound on the porch.

  “No,” Fergus yells back. “With these dreams, I never fight back. I’m always hiding or running.”

  “Well, that’s about to change right . . .” begins Sinclair as the door explodes in a shower of splinters, “. . . now.” His crossbow twangs.

  A huge man wearing a weird leather mask sewn together with big black sutures crashes through the door and comes to a standstill as Sinclair’s bolt plants itself firmly into the middle of his forehead. He roars in pain and fury, dropping the chainsaw as he grabs for the projectile sticking out of his head. The power tool thrashes around the floor like it’s alive, and Sinclair has to scramble to get out of its way.

  “Run!” yells Cata. She grabs my arm and drags me toward the bathroom.

  “Not that way! Trust me!” yells Fergus, sticking out an arm to stop us. He pulls us toward the door, shoving the flailing masked man out of the way. The man stumbles to the side and slumps, motionless, over a chair.

  Curiosity pulls me a step closer to the man, in spite of my fear. “Is he dead?” I ask.

  “No one is ever truly dead in these films,” Cata replies, and yanks me away.

  Sinclair has already grabbed the doorknob, and pulls open what remains of the door. The four of us run outside into a dark, wooded landscape.

  In front of us is a lake, the water black as ink. A full moon hangs low in the sky. I shiver from the cold and wrap my arms around myself.

  A small rowboat is moored by the water’s edge, and to our left is an archery range with four bull’s-eye targets sitting in a row. Sinclair turns to Fergus. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Something moves out in the middle of the lake, its epicenter spawning circles of waves. “What was that?” I ask, my heart in my throat.

  “You don’t even want to know,” Sinclair replies.

  “So this stuff is all straight out of various horror films?” I ask.

  Fergus turns to me. “I’ve seen them all. Repeatedly. I have a lot of material to draw from.”

  “Why?” I ask. “You told George you don’t even like them.”

  “Probably distracts from your less-than-perfect home life,” murmurs Sinclair.

  “Oh my God!” says Cata. She gives Sinclair a shove.

  “What?” he says, shrugging. “His other dreams are about killing his dad. Or his dad killing him. I can’t imagine it’s all sunshine and roses at his place.”

  Fergus ignores him and pulls me into a protective side-hug as we set off into the woods ahead of the others. I don’t flinch. Yay, me.

  “It’s desensitization,” he says. We speed-walk side by side as he explains. “It’s so I won’t have a cataplectic attack. The fainting thing I did back in the Void. It’s brought on by strong emotions. I’ve pretty much got fear under control. Laughing is still a problem, though. Even after watching all the comedies I could. I might not get freaked out by horrific things, but I have to remind myself not to laugh.”

  “Thus the DFF tattoo,” Cata says from where she matches our pace on the other side of Fergus.

  “What’s the DFF stand for?” I ask.

  “Don’t Freaking Feel,” says Fergus.

  “Except it’s not ‘freaking.’”

  “Correct,” he responds with a sheepish smile. “I guess I thought if I cursed at myself, I’d take it more seriously.”

  Cata laughs.

  “Then why can’t you have a nightmare about a comedy? A little Bill Murray wouldn’t kill us,” says Sinclair.

  “Unless it’s Zombieland,” Fergus responds under his breath.

  I’m not getting any of the references here. It’s like Fergus and Sinclair are speaking in code. It’s not the first time I’ve felt left out. But I wish we weren’t run-walking because I want to jot them down in my notebook so I can look them up later.

  “Does that mean you’re not scared?” I ask.

  “Sure, I’m scared. But not terrified. That doesn’t mean these things can’t kill us, though.”

  “Like what?” I press. “What could kill us in these woods?”

  “Allow me,” Sinclair says, righting himself after tripping on a tree root. “As I remember from Friday the Thirteenth: throat slit with bowie knife, arrow through the heart, throat stabbed from back to front with a knife, face smashed by ax. There might have been a machete. But all I know of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, since this is a Fergus movie mash-up, is the obvious chainsaw and something about huge meat hooks.”

  “There was a hammer and a freezer,” adds Fergus.

  “Helpful to know,” murmurs Sinclair.

  Just then, a cherry-colored balloon floats by. I see a red clown wig poke out from behind a tree.

  “Um . . . Pennywise,” Cata squeaks from beside me.

  “Just ignore him,” Fergus says. “He won’t come after us. At least . . . he hasn’t chased me yet.”

  Clearing the trees, we approach a winding one-lane road. We crouch below the embankment as an old station wagon sided with fake wood paneling drives past us and up a hill. As soon as it’s safe, we scramble across the road. The landscape abruptly changes.

  We’re in a graveyard. I look behind us, and the road has disappeared, replaced by row upon row of old, crumbling graves. “Where are we?” asks Cata, a tremor in her voice.

  “It could be one of so many different places,” Fergus says. “I can think of about twenty off the top of my head.”

  I’m standing next to a freshly dug grave with what looks like a bucket of blood and a tiara sitting on it instead of flowers. Cata glances at it and yells, “Ant, move!” just as a hand thrusts up from the pile of dirt. I leap aside, my heart beating so hard it feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest. The hand disappears into the ground, the soil where it had broken through smooth and undisturbed.

  “Ugh, Carrie!” Sinclair says. “Well, that’s not too bad, unless her mother’s lurking among the graves reciting Bible verses.”

  Then, from a nearby grave, another hand pushes out of the dirt, followed by an entire corpse that starts rising out of the ground.

  “That one’s not Carrie,” yells Sinclair, fumbling with his crossbow. He points and shoots. The bolt goes wide, sinking into the freshly disturbed soil of a grave nearby, which has its own zombie emerging.

  “We’re not going to be able to fight all of them,” Fergus says.

  Cata shrieks and fumbles for her knife as other graves begin bulging and limbs start sticking through.

  “Get your weapons out!” Sinclair urges.

  “Daggers aren’t going to do us any good,” Fergus says.

  “It’s your dream, Fergus!” I say. “You can make us some weapons!” A moaning sound resonates from all around as an army of corpses starts rising out of the graves.

  “I don’t think I can here! Not in the middle of a zombie attack,” he says. He takes my hand and pulls me away from the staggering corpses. “Just run!” he yells. We struggle back up the hill toward where the road used to be.

  “How do we get out of here?” I ask. The road has disapp
eared, and all I can see is graves for what looks like miles around. Fergus doesn’t answer. He just pulls me along as he darts through the cemetery, looking back from time to time to make sure Cata and Sinclair are keeping up.

  The zombies are doing what I always thought they would: holding their hands either straight out in front of them or dangling by their sides as they stagger along really slowly. They’re even wearing cheesy zombie clothes like an old wedding dress and a farmer outfit with overalls and straw hat. But as I watch the lumbering way they move and hear the groans emanating from their rotting throats, I find myself thoroughly terrified. Add that to the smell—a stench like when Dog dug up the neighbor’s dead cat, who had been buried for three months, and dragged it into the kitchen through the doggy door.

  I know what the smell is: the volatile organic compounds that come from bacteria breaking down animal tissue into gases and salts, like cadaverine and putrescine. But that knowledge doesn’t console me like cold, hard, immutable facts usually do. Because in this case, facts don’t matter. The smell, in my mind, equals evil.

  A crow caws three times, and then others pick up the call, and a whole cloud of them lifts to the sky as more zombies pour out of the ground. One bird isn’t so lucky: a putrescent hand grabs it before it can fly away. I hear it squawk, but I turn away so I won’t see what the zombie does with it.

  Do zombies eat other species’ brains? I wonder. I wish I could write it down so I could look it up later. Not that I really believe in zombies. But it would be interesting to know what the lore says on the matter.

  “No graves this way!” Sinclair says, waving us over to a section that is just an expanse of grass and mud—free of headstones.

  He turns around, pointing his crossbow in the direction we came from, and waits for us to huddle behind him.

  “I can’t run any more,” Cata pants, leaning forward, hands on knees, taking deep breaths.

  “Man, you have to make more weapons. Or do something!” Sinclair says, swinging the crossbow from side to side, waiting for the zombie onslaught. But, besides the distant cawing of the crows, the night is totally quiet. With the imminent danger apparently left behind, we all begin to relax.

  “I have to sit down,” I say, and everyone throws themselves down on the grass, panting.

  “Any idea of what comes next?” Cata asks Fergus.

  Fergus shakes his head. “It could be . . .”

  “Wait!” I say, my hands flying to my face. “Something’s happening.” A numbness is creeping through my body. My lips feel all puffy . . . like at the dentist . . . and then it spreads through the rest of my face.

  “Whoa . . . major hit of narcotics going on here,” says Sinclair, laying full-out on the ground.

  “I feel like after my wisdom teeth surgery,” says Cata, sinking back to lie next to him.

  I can’t sit up, and kind of slump to the side, where I’m practically eye to eye with a barely conscious Fergus. “What’s happening?” I ask.

  “Don’t know,” he mumbles. “This hasn’t happened before.”

  A roar of zombies starts up from far away. “Oh no,” I say, but the words kind of trip on their way out my lips and get lost in the buzzing sound in my head. And then it feels as if someone points a remote control at me and presses off.

  Chapter 18

  Cata

  I PASSED OUT ON A HILL IN A CEMETERY. I WAKE up on the floor of a department store.

  An elevator-music version of “The Girl from Ipanema” is playing over the speaker system. I hear Fergus groan nearby, and I force myself to sit up and look around.

  We’re in a ladies’ sportswear section that looks straight out of the 1970s. The mannequins have shoulder-length, feathered-back hair that looks like my mom’s school photos from junior high. They’re wearing striped sweatbands around their foreheads and wrists that match their knee-length athletic socks.

  Across the aisle from us is the men’s section. The male mannequins are dressed in polyester suits with wide lapels and colorful shirts unbuttoned to frame gold medallion necklaces.

  “Holy Bee Gees!” Sinclair says, squinting at them as if he doesn’t quite believe it. He shades his eyes from the bright white fluorescent lights, and attempts to push himself up to his feet. Reeling, he reaches out to one of the mannequins for leverage. It comes crashing down as he stumbles drunkenly to the side. Propping himself up with his hands on his knees, he asks, “Anyone else have a completely undeserved hangover?”

  “What happened back there?” I ask Fergus, who sits with his head between his knees.

  “I don’t know,” he says, raising his head to look at me. “I thought I was having another cataplexy attack. That’s what it felt like, at least.”

  “Anesthetic,” says Ant succinctly. “I had a tonsillectomy when I was four. It felt just like that when I went under.”

  “But why . . .” I begin, and then it comes to me. “Maybe something happened to us in the real world. Something in the lab.” I look at Fergus for backup.

  “Maybe they are trying to save us,” he says. “They must have done something that necessitated our being anesthetized.”

  “Doesn’t look like it worked,” says Sinclair, holding his arms out and studying himself as if he expects a limb or digit to be missing.

  “Where are we now?” I ask.

  “Still in my dream,” Fergus responds, looking around. “Dawn of the Dead, 1978, from what it looks like.”

  “The Dreamfall took us from one zombie movie to another?” asks Sinclair.

  “At least this one’s a little more comfortable,” says Ant.

  “Not for long,” says Fergus. “Not with the racket Sinclair just made.”

  “Hey!” Sinclair says. “How was I supposed to know Disco Guy was such a lightweight?”

  “Look,” Fergus whispers, and points to the far end of the aisle. A zombie dressed in a security guard costume is staggering around, seemingly searching for whatever made the noise. Its skin is moss green, and blood the color of neon ketchup is smeared on its face and neck.

  We scramble to hide behind racks of clothes, but Ant looks unsure. “That doesn’t look scary,” she whispers. “It looks stupid. I’ve done better zombie makeup than that for Halloween.”

  “George Romero, the director, wanted them to look cartoonish,” Fergus says.

  “They’ll look scary enough when they’re tearing your guts out with their teeth,” Sinclair adds.

  Fergus nods his agreement. “These ones move slowly. But they seem to pop up out of nowhere, and the danger is being cornered by too many at once.”

  “Wait. I think I’ve seen this movie,” Sinclair whispers back. “Aren’t we in a mall that has a gun shop smack in the middle?”

  “We’re in a mall?” Ant asks.

  Fergus nods distractedly. “Yeah, but the gun shop is in the main section of the mall itself. That’s where most of the zombies are gathered.”

  “What we should be thinking about is where the Wall is going to appear,” Ant says, keeping an eye on the lost-looking zombie. “Could it appear in the mall? Or do we need to go out into the parking lot?”

  Fergus shrugs. “It came inside the cathedral, so it’s possible. I think our strategy should be avoiding contact with the zombies for as long as possible until we hear the boom, and then make a run for it.”

  “I like that plan,” Sinclair says. “But it doesn’t look very feasible, seeing that Security Guard Zombie has called for backup.”

  Fergus rises slowly from behind the rack of clothes we’re hiding behind and scopes out the room. He pops back down, frowning. “Two more. Even though they’re slow, they’ll eventually find us.”

  He thinks. “How much time do we have, Ant?”

  “This dream was supposed to last fifty-eight minutes, and we used up about twenty before we passed out. But I don’t know how long we were unconscious. It didn’t feel that long, but who knows?”

  “Okay.” Fergus nods. “As much as I hate to say
it, I think Sinclair’s right about the weapons. Our knives aren’t going to be enough. We can make a run for the gun shop, arm ourselves, and then fend them off while we wait for the Wall.”

  “Sinclair, can’t you just shoot these three guys?” I ask.

  “I only have one bolt left,” he says. “I used all the rest on the zombies in the graveyard.”

  I glance over at the display of sports-playing mannequins next to us. “Okay, then you get the one that’s closest to us. We’ll get the other two.”

  “With what?” he asks.

  “Just worry about yours.” The moaning’s getting closer. “Now!”

  Sinclair pops up from his crouch and aims at the zombie guard. I jump up and wrench the golf club away from one of the sports-playing mannequins. “Ant!” I say and thrust it at her. It takes her a second to realize what I’m doing. Then she smiles and flips the club over, gripping it in both hands.

  I grab the softball player’s bat for myself, and Fergus takes what’s left: a tennis racket. He stares between it and his sword, and then props it back against the mannequin’s leg. “I think I’ll stick with the sword,” he says.

  I hear the twang of Sinclair’s crossbow. The zombie security guard crumples to the ground. The others aren’t far off, and, alerted by the first zombie’s death groan, they turn and spot us. “Just hit them hard in the head. That’s enough to bring them down,” says Fergus, and he runs toward one. I hurl myself toward the other, but it’s already closing in on Ant.

  She raises the golf club and watches the moaning, lumbering man uncertainly. In contrast to the green-skinned zombie, this one has an orange complexion with bloodless white eyes and lips. Glancing back at me, Ant yells, “I’m just going to pretend his head is a pumpkin.” Then she swings the golf club with a wicked force.

  It hits his temple, lodging deep inside. He totters and falls. Ant has to let go of her weapon and jump aside to avoid him crumpling on top of her. She watches to see if he’s going to move again. When he doesn’t, she edges up, grabs the putter, and wiggles it free from the cavity it carved in his head. Brains spill out on the department store’s linoleum floor. She squishes her nose in disgust, and then wipes the gore off on Disco Guy’s pant leg.