The Undead: Zombie Anthology

by David Wellington

  Upstairs, Bernice paced anxiously in front of the closed cellar door. The crashing and banging and gunshots drifting up through the floor sent her into a whole new conniption of hand wringing. Then a new sound pierced the house, filling her with a panic she’d never felt before.

  It was her front door bell.

  “Oh, no!” She gasped. “The Woman’s Auxiliary!”

  Calmly sliding another steel-tipped bolt into her crossbow, Sr. Bliss drew back the string and took careful aim. A zombie shambled towards her, arms outstretched, a low moan escaping from its cavernous mouth filled with brown, rotting teeth. She squeezed the trigger, sending the bolt through the zombie’s milky left eye.

  McForman glared at her as she shot him a satisfied smile. Reaching into his jacket, he withdrew a nickel-plated .357 Magnum. He was standing in a ring of zombies, the space between himself and the undead quickly diminishing as they closed in, moaning, drooling. Returning her supercilious glance, he raised the pistol and fired, moving in a tight circle. Six skulls exploded as the shells ripped through the bone. Five corpses fell to the concrete floor; the sixth teetered on its gray mottled feet before toppling over, revealing a headless seventh corpse, which had been standing directly behind it. It, too, joined its comrades in the messy pile on the floor.

  McForman smiled at her. “Well?”

  “Eh,” she dismissed him and returned to her own work. The piles were much neater on her side of the basement. However, there were still plenty of zombies for the two of them to contend with, as the undead continued pouring in.

  A large crash disrupted the uncomfortable silence in Bernice’s sitting room. Five women, all in their golden years, smiled uneasily at each other, not sipping their tea, not nibbling a single pristine lady lock. Bernice wanted to crawl under the rug and die.

  “So, Blanche,” she smiled sickly. “How’s the hip?”

  * * *

  “How big is this fucking basement?” McForman’s dagger was lodged in the jawbone of a still-moving zombie. He’d slipped on a kidney and mis-delivered the uppercut blow. The zombie was still grasping for him as he struggled to dislodge his blade.

  Across the room, Sr. Bliss sat on the washer, reloading her crossbow, holding a zombie at bay with the toe of her boot pressed to its scarred and disintegrating chest. Its arms flailed as it struggled to reach her. Stifling a yawn, she raised her bow and squeezed the trigger. The bolt passed straight through with a satisfying punch, coming to rest in the cement wall across the room.

  McForman was starting to hate her.

  “Watch the spray, Simon,” she said, examining her long crimson nails. “The walls look like they’ve just been painted.”

  “Lousy woman,” he muttered under his breath. He gave a final wrenching tug and the dagger came loose; the jaw skittered across the floor. With the dagger free, he was able to finally deliver the deathblow to the skull, sending the zombie back to the land of the truly non-moving dead.

  Catlike, Sr. Bliss slid from the washing machine and stood coolly, taking out a remaining trio of shamblers, her back to the gore-covered heathen. MacForman growled and slammed another clip into his .45. The sudden motion, combined with the slick conditions beneath his boots, caused his feet to fly out from under him. His face turned into a comical mask of surprise as he flipped backwards and landed with a heavy crash on the wet floor. “Ugh,” was his assessment of the situation. He didn’t even attempt to regain his dignity; the fall hurt.

  As expected, Sr. Bliss glanced over her shoulder at her prone rival, a slight smile on her porcelain face. Simon was tempted to shoot her, but she turned her dark brown eyes away from him, and he suddenly felt weird about shooting her in the back. He struggled to get to his feet, but with all the innards beneath him, it was like wrestling in cold oatmeal—not that he’d know anything about that, of course.

  That’s when the thing crawled out from under the stairs: a zombie—no, half a zombie. It was cut off at the middle, obviously run over by a truck or similar vehicle capable of severing a body in two. Its eyes were milky, teeth rotting. It opened its mouth, let out a hiss, and began to crawl towards Sr. Bliss. Her back was toward both Simon and it, and it was moving fast.

  Simon raised his hand to finish it—he’d help her, but he’d be damned if he was going to warn her (that made sense to his oddly-wired brain)—only his hand was empty. The .45 lay in a pile of brains a few feet away. An inarticulate growl escaped his lips as he reached for his gun, but the zombie was gaining ground on the sister. Simon found some leverage in the corpses around him and lunged forward, his hand closing around the end of intestine that the zombie was dragging behind him.

  “C’mere, you!” He yanked back on the organ. The zombie didn’t slide back with it. Instead, the intestine gave, and a foot more slid out of the body cavity as Simon fell back from the unexpected slack. “Hey!” He began grabbing the intestine hand over hand, but more lengths spilled from the body. Simon felt like he was unraveling a sweater, remembering with dismay that there was something like fifteen miles of intestine in the human body. Screw this, he decided, yanking intestine and reaching for his gun.

  At the other end of the innard, the zombie was suddenly aware that it was somewhat snagged. It looked back at Simon, intestine hanging off his shoulders and covering his lap. The zombie hissed at him and the exterminator glared back. “Oh, shut up,” he muttered as his hand finally closed around the .45. Swinging forward, fighting through the gut-pile, Simon aimed at the half-zombie.

  A crossbow bolt exploded through its skull from behind. The half-zombie collapsed to the floor, its insides stretching clear across the length of the basement. Rage welled up inside MacForman, his arm trembling, the outstretched pistol vibrating in his hand. This was precisely the reason it didn’t pay to try to do anything nice for anyone.

  He was coated, absolutely coated with stale blood and gore and bits of brain. Ordinarily, he would have been proud of a job well done. But Sr. Bliss was standing over him, looking smug and pleased with herself. She was completely clean. Not a spot, not a speck of bone marred her pristine leather jumpsuit. Her grin stretched from ear to ear.

  The grin faltered as she glanced down. “Oh,” she said, bending at the waist, giving him a teasing glimpse at her ample cleavage. Tearing a scrap of cloth from a dead zombie’s shirt, she quickly wiped away a dime-sized spot of blood from the toe of her polished thigh-high boot. Righting herself, she nodded. “That’s better.”

  Just then, a clot of gore struck her in the face, clotting her hair. Simon smiled up at her with a toothy grin.

  And clouds came over her smiling face. Her dark eyes narrowed, ruby lips parted revealing tiny white, sharp teeth. Simon’s grin disappeared.

  “Now wait a minute—” was all he had time for before she leapt on him.

  “Yes, thank you. I’m so glad you came. I’ll bring the recipe next week. Oh certainly. I’m terribly sorry for the noise. Yes, the soufflé was a tragedy. Oh well, there’s always next time. Yes of course. Why, thank you. Goodnight.”

  With a lunge, Bernice slammed the door behind the last of her exiting guests, leaning against it with a sigh. The meeting had gone horribly. She’d never live this down. The humiliation was too much to bear. They must think she was the filthiest housekeeper, to attract zombies like that. Then to call such low, common gutter trash to clean them out. Oh, she could never show her face at her bridge club again.

  But downstairs, all was silent. Bernice held her breath as she listened. No moaning, no crashing, none of that dreadful cursing. Just quiet.

  She sighed, daring a smile. Finally, she heard clomping footsteps coming up the basement stairs. As the door flew open, her smile vanished completely as her mind refused to comprehend what she was seeing now.

  “Clean as a fucking whistle,” MacForman announced.

  A nightmare. Her worst fears imagined. The pair of them, red from head to toe. Red dripping from their clothes, caking their boots. Standing in her hallway. On her white an
gora carpet!

  “My carpet!” it was a low whisper, between outrage and incomprehension. The terror welled up inside her. First the humiliation, now this! “My carpet! Henry!!!”

  Simon had a sneaking suspicion he wasn’t going to get paid.

  Donovan’s Leg

  Eric Shapiro

  Stop thinking. Your thoughts are going haywire. There’s no forward momentum. Stop it. Hold still. Meditate. Clear yourself.

  No use. My mind’s on a conveyor belt to hell. I’m all the way out here in the desert, far from all forms of technology, yet my body’s producing enough electricity to power a whole city. The electricity knows its way around. It finds my fingertips and back teeth and every last hair on my body.

  This is panic. A wire of black energy runs through me. The sun doesn’t help much. Before I got out of my car, the radio said it was 115 degrees. This is not the earth. I don’t know what planet I’m on. Scratch that; I do know. Welcome to Planet Arizona.

  I left California because I had debts. There were men coming after me. Knocking on my door in the middle of the night. They wouldn’t have killed me; these aren’t that kind of men. But they’re not to be reckoned with, either. They would’ve broken my arms, cut my nose off, made me ugly (which is not to say I’ve ever been handsome). So, seeing as these men have never been all that mobile, I decided to head east. New York? Boston? I would figure that part out later.

  Now I’ll never figure that part out. Oh, fuck. Don’t wander down that tangent. You may not die out here. Look around the inside of your head. Try to find some optimism.

  Christ, I’ve never been optimistic before; how could I start now?

  Shut up. Fuck that. You are optimistic. That’s why you gambled. You saw possibilities.

  But you lost, you piece of shit. You fucking lost over and over again, and you had to run away like a lowlife scum. And now you’re gonna lay out here on the sand and get eaten alive. Unless you die of shock first.

  Shit. Don’t say that. Cool your head. Think. Do something. Do people actually die of shock, or is that just a rare occurrence?

  Fuck you; you know it’s not a rare occurrence. Nobody ever told you it’s a rare occurrence. You’re making that shit up, you fucking liar. So many lies have passed through your teeth, it’s amazing that they’re not broken.

  Maybe I should kill myself. Take matters into my own hands. Do I have a sharp object on me? No, of course not. I never carry anything on me, except for my sorry, empty wallet. Your only option is to snap your own neck. What would be worse: snapping your own neck, or getting eaten by the Indian? The first choice would make you a quitter, the second choice would make you a submissive victim.

  This is all Shannon’s fault. Word got around that I was leaving town, and she called me over for one last fuck. I shouldn’t have gone. I didn’t even feel like it. Shannon’s sexy and all, but I haven’t really been getting hard lately, what with the collectors knocking down my door. Anyway, I went and fucked her. She begged me not to leave. Both of us cried. I said, “So long,” and headed for the door. Then she said the magic goddamn words: “Don’t forget to bring water. It gets hot out there in the desert.”

  So I lined my passenger seat with six liter-bottles of spring water. Shannon was right, of course. My throat got real dry real fast. But then, less than twenty minutes after the deejay said, “115 degrees,” my bladder started struggling. Next thing I knew, the liquid had filled up my dick.

  I pulled over onto the first wide piece of shoulder I found. The traffic was nonexistent; it’s Wednesday afternoon. Nonetheless, I didn’t want my manhood hanging out too close to the freeway. Something uncivil about that. So I took a little walk, maybe forty or fifty yards into the desert. My pores got all leaky. I’m overdue for a haircut, so sweat dripped from my scalp onto my forehead, making annoying puddles on top of my eyebrows. Had to piss fast. But before a squirt of liquid left my body, I looked over my shoulder and saw the Indian.

  My bladder sighed. I zipped up and turned around. The Indian was midway between the interstate and me. He was making some intense eye contact. My heartbeat skipped. I said, “Sorry, sir, I had to use the bathroom.”

  The words came out without thought. They were a product of my unconscious mind. Why did I apologize? Why did I even address him?

  The guy looked ancient. Well, maybe not ancient, but definitely not current. He wore feathers and moccasins and white paint on his face. His black hair hung down to below his knees. He seemed preternaturally calm, as if the modern world had never laid its hands on him.

  I made a mistake. I approached him. Worst thing I’ve ever done. Probably one of the last things I’ll ever do. I didn’t know what I intended to say to him. Some primal curiosity made me want to figure him out, especially since he’d failed to answer me. I got within five feet of the Indian before I turned around and ran.

  I hadn’t run so fast since high school gym class. My speed was so aggressive that my heels hit the ground before my toes did. The Indian’s face molested my mind: white paint, no mouth; dark pink pupils.

  While I ran across the desert, I looked over my shoulder to check him out. He was not running. He didn’t seem to be moving at all. Maybe he had progressed one or two steps. I stopped short. My sneakers scraped against the sand. The hot air offended my lungs. I bent over at the waist and tried to catch a good breath or two. Upon looking at my pants, I noticed that I’d wet myself. Desperate scumbag that I am, I thought of wiping my hand against my dripping crotch and licking the piss. My tongue was dry and hard like a toad’s back.

  That’s when my brain started getting soft. Back in the car, I was nice and sharp, but now my head was turning into sludge. “Fucking idiot,” I called myself. It was stupid to run away from him. I should’ve circled around him and gone back to my car. Whatever; it’s not my fault. My instincts had taken over.

  I looked at him. He was a dot in the distance. My car was an even smaller dot behind him.

  Think. Don’t fuck up. My chest was burning; I needed lots of water. The guy didn’t seem to be a runner. But then again, how had he appeared behind me from out of nowhere?

  You can’t over-calculate this; you’re not a scientist. Come on, shithead, act before you think. Otherwise you’ll be toast out here.

  So—retard that I am—I ran back toward the Indian. My intention was to make a wide pass on his left and fly into my car. My chest turned to stone as I ran. I had hot coals where my lungs belonged. Do this right, I told myself. This will not be the end of your life. While running to my car, I couldn’t make out the Indian’s expression. From this distance, he seemed curious, as though I was a zoo exhibit. His posture indicated patience and composure. But his eyes—his stirring, colorful eyes—had indicated anything but.

  When I tripped, somehow I knew that my leg would break before it did. It happened so fast that my mind’s understanding ran ahead of my body’s experience. The snap brought giant icicles to mind. Despite the weather, my blood went cold.

  The break is high, between my knee and my hip. This is no modest fracture we’re dealing with. I’m up against an honest-to-God break. The only things holding my leg together are flesh, veins, and muscles. The only thing holding my mind together is the fact that I’m still alive.

  The Indian has been approaching me for over an hour now. He takes a step, then waits for a minute or so, then takes another step. This seems to be his natural speed. I have no clue how he snuck up on me before. He’s less than twenty yards away from me, and I can make out his face pretty well. As it turns out, he does have a mouth. It’s just obscured by bulbous lip tumors. The tumors, like the rest of his face, are painted white, but they stand out because of their shine.

  I screamed for the first few minutes after I fell. My pain and fear and regret blended into a pretty impressive howl. But there’s no echoes in the desert. Only dim, judgmental silence. The thick air was pleased to prevent my shrieks from traveling too far. That ruled out any hope of a motorist coming to my rescu
e. And the Indian didn’t seem daunted by my sound. I wonder if he has ears behind his hair.

  My screaming stopped when a new emotion overcame me. Despite the fact that I’ve been alive for twenty-seven years, this emotion was foreign to me before now. Dread. Crushed ice piping through my veins. Fire burning out my skull.

  Christ, Donovan. You’re a fucking pussy. All your life, you’ve admired the nobility and heroism of movie characters and historical figures, but when reality calls you out onto the playing field, you fail every fucking time. Be resourceful, you slave. Instead of pondering your own dread, why don’t you do something? The Indian is slow. He’s giving you time to think.

  I try to move. High-pitched bells toll from my leg. My kneecap quakes. I grunt, pick up some sand, and throw it at the Indian. Half of the sand flies back in my face. Half of what flies back in my face ends up in my mouth. The Indian pauses. Through moist eyes, I take note of his chest. Something seems to have sliced it. An axe or a carving knife. The wound isn’t fresh. In my non-expert opinion, I would guess that the wound is older than my great-grandparents are.

  “You fuck! Leave me the fuck alone, you son of a bitch!”

  My nervous system is uncoiling.

  “I’ll fucking crush your skull if you come over here!”

  There’s an idea. Is there enough adrenaline left in my system for me to fight? Or will the pain bring me down? Part of me wants him to hurry up. I’m eager to test the fighting idea before I forget I had it.

  The Indian pauses again. I can really see him now. He’ll be on me in ten more paces. From the looks of him, he seems to be thinking. Not with much complexity; more like with a grave single-mindedness.

  His mouth drops open. The blackness behind his teeth is dark and oily. It looks as if he has no tongue. But then a drop of beige saliva falls from his lower lip. My whole torso contracts.