“Yeah, can I help you?”
“Chris, it’s Kathy,” she said with a little catch in her voice. I came awake with a start. Kathy was Sheila’s best friend, still is, though they’re not as close as they used to be what with her going away to the university and all. Kathy and I kept in touch on and off; we always did get on well, and occasionally she had news of Sheila. Plus I figured that we had something in common, having been left behind by the same person.
“It’s Sheila. . . .” It sounded like she was crying. “There was an accident—she was on her way to the airport and . . . oh God, Chris, she’s dead.”
I think I said all the right things then, asked all the right questions, but I’d been lying on the bed quite sometime before anything started to make sense. Sheila dead? My mind started racing, ticking overtime. She wasn’t dead, couldn’t be dead. But I wasn’t really thinking about the senseless tragedy of it all, oh no. I was thinking, Finally, she’s in my league.
It wasn’t long before I said bye-bye to Jeannie and hello again to Sheila. When I called her out of the coffin, I did what I hadn’t done with any of the others. I bent and guided my hand to her lips and let her take more than a few drops of blood. When her teeth began to tear the flesh, I took it away, and she let me. Slowly, her eyes slid to meet mine, and my heart began to speed up. Somewhere in the dull brown was a hint of something familiar, maybe a hint of recognition.
“Sheila?” I asked, but didn’t get an answer.
Since then, I’ve broken all the rules that I made for myself. I feed her raw meat like I did with the others, but occasionally I let her take a mouthful of flesh from me. Never more than a bite. I like to think she’s being careful, that maybe she remembers me. Once, before sinking her teeth into the soft tissue on my arm, she said once in a confused voice “Chris?” But it’s been three weeks.
One day soon, what she takes from me won’t be enough, and she won’t stop at a few bites. I know this and in a sick way, I don’t care. There’s no way I could put her back. She needs me. Me. Sheila dragged me to see a play in London once when we were still going out. Wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I do remember something one of the characters had said. He said it was no good trying to fool yourself about love, that if you didn’t realize that it took muscle and guts, you’d better give up on the whole idea. Of course, he probably didn’t mean it literally. I do.
Death Row
James Reilly
There were three of us on death row: me, Pastor, and Svelski; the guards had long gone.
Pastor sat with his back to the bars and took a long drag off his cigarette. He didn’t pay much mind to the dead thing on the floor outside his cell. Hell, even the blood on his hands didn’t faze him, although I suppose nothing much did these days.
It started a week ago. We’d only gotten the story in bits and pieces from panicked guards and workers on their way out of the jail—out of the city. They left us a few cases of canned fruit, bottles of Coke, and water, and they even set up a television right outside my cell. They wished us luck and left.
After all, we were on death row for a reason.
There were reports about a disease that made people change. The news was flooded with images of riots and mass evacuations. It was chaos out there.
After a day or so, all of the networks had switched to the emergency broadcast signal, except a local access one that ran a continuous loop of bible quotes.
Seemed a little late for that.
Today was the first time we’d actually seen one.
There were slow and clumsy footsteps in the hallway. I figured it was someone else who got left behind. Pastor pressed his face to the bars and looked down the hall.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Down here!”
There was no reply, but the footsteps kept coming. I could see him now, too. He was a short, heavy guy in a gray suit. His left arm hung limply by his side.
“Hey,” I said, “You alright man?”
Pastor shook his head. “This ain’t right at all.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Svelski muttered, and then yelled to the man in his grating, nasally tone. “Hey, get us the fuck out of here! We got rights, you know!”
Hiram Svelski was a Brooklyn boy, thin, dark, and as greasy as a Greek pizza. He wasn’t a hardcore criminal, just a white-collar schmuck who had wanted out of his marriage but had wanted to avoid alimony and child support. He had burned down his house while his wife and three kids slept inside.
In the hall, the man kept coming, and as he got closer, as I got a better look at him, at his face, a prickling sensation ran up my spine.
The man looked up at me. He bared his teeth and let out a deep, guttural moan. I stepped away from the bars, certain he would charge at me, but instead, he lunged toward Pastor, plunging his arms through the bars and grabbing him by the overalls.
“Hey!” Pastor cried as he grabbed at the thing’s hands. “What the fu—?” He let out a howl as the man dug his fingers into Pastor’s flesh. I could see the blood slowly spread across the orange sleeves of Pastor’s overalls. Pastor jerked violently to one side, and I could hear the bones in the thing’s arms snap. Pastor reached around and clasped his hands over the back of its head, pulled it toward him, and anchored his feet against the base of the bars.
“Kick its ass, Pastor!!” Svelski yelled. “Kick its fuckin’ ass!”
Pastor leaned back and pulled the thing’s head through the bars, eliciting a sickening series of grunts, cracks and snaps as its skull caved in. Once he was satisfied that it was dead, Pastor stood back and looked at his blood-soaked hands.
I could see by his expression that this wasn’t the first time he’d seen them like that.
Pastor scowled and wiped his hands across his chest. He seemed more inconvenienced than horrified as he lifted his leg, pressed his foot against the thing’s face and kicked it loose from the bars.
The corpse fell into a heap outside his cell.
“Okay,” Svelski said, staring down at the body, “So what the fuck was that? It’s . . . it’s just a fuckin’ guy.”
I knelt at the bars. “Certainly looked that way, didn’t it?” Twisted toward me, the thing’s face was a pale blue and covered in a web of darker blue veins.
“Ain’t no man,” Pastor said, still catching his breath. “Maybe he was once, but he ain’t no more.”
Pastor fell against his bunk and sat down. He started rubbing at his arms where the thing had dug in its nails.
“You all right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Pastor said. “Peachy.” He threw his legs up on the bunk and leaned against the bars, turning his back to me. As Pastor lit up a cigarette, Svelski ran to the front of his cell and pressed his face through the bars.
“Hey, you got another one o’ those?” Svelski asked.
Pastor didn’t bother answering.
I pulled one from my pack and tossed it across the hall. The cigarette landed a few inches from Svelski’s cell. “There,” I said. I still had a few packs from the carton that my uncle had brought me just before this thing started, and with the way things were going, I’d probably starve to death before I ran out.
“Good man, Steve-O,” Svelski said. He knelt down and reached out for the cigarette, pausing as he looked at the body that lay a few feet away.
“It’s dead, Svelski,” I said.
Svelski grimaced and grabbed for the cigarette. “Smells somethin’ fierce, don’t it?”
“Smells like a dead man oughta,” Pastor said, still scratching at his arms. “I looked into that thing’s eyes. There was nothin’ there. I seen a person’s eyes when life be leavin’ ’em. In that thing? There was nothing at all.”
Still staring down at the body, I repeated what I’d heard on the news. “They said that’s what happened when you got sick. They said it was like everything that made you human, you just lost it.”
“So what was he then, if he wasn’t no man?” Svelski asked, rolling the cigarette between his fingers.
I shrugged. “I know as much as you do, man.”
Pastor said nothing. He just sat there with his back to us, still scratching at his arms.
Just then, a loud buzz emanated from the speakers as the cellblock lights shut down one by one.
Ka-CHUNK Ka-CHUNK Ka-CHUNK
It was an automated evening on death row. Save for the amber glow of the exit signs, the hall was pure indigo.
“So that’s it then, eh?” Svelski lit his cigarette. “I mean, this is really it.” Dancing shadows cast across his angular face as he took a puff and laughed.
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling my way back to my bunk. “I don’t know what to think.”
“’Course you know,” Pastor said from the darkness.
“Oh, here we go,” Svelski muttered.
“This is the reckoning, people,” Pastor’s booming voice sounding weary and weaker than usual. “And God tellin’ us we done fucked up all he given us and now he gon’ wipe the slate clean.”
“Why does everything gotta be about God with you, Pastor?” Svelski asked.
“’Cause everything is about God, little man. And the quicker you realize that, the quicker you can be makin’ your peace with him. I know I have.”
“What, an’ you’re goin’ to heaven, right? Fucking stupid nigger, you’re a convicted murderer! You’re frying like the rest of us, am I right Steve-O?”
“Shut up, Svelski,” I said. I could only see the head of his cigarette bobbing around in the darkness. It wasn’t that I disagreed with him. Me and God, we parted ways a long time ago. I was just sick of hearing his voice, that nasally whine, the way he called me Steve-O.
“What? I’m wrong? You think this big dumb African’s gonna be sproutin’ wings and shit now ’cause he found God on death row? Be-for-fuckin’ real.”
I heard the creak of Svelski’s bedsprings as he slipped into his bunk, and I watched the head of his cigarette fall to the floor. It laid there, its glow almost reassuring as I drifted off to sleep.
* * *
I knelt beside her and brought the statue down upon her head, again and again and again and again. With every blow, she looked less and less like my Lisa. Her face was distorted, mutilated, like raw meat.
Like clay.
I was molding her.
I was changing her.
I was erasing her from my world.
In my dreams, I’d shatter her bones, turn her teeth to powder.
And when I slept, I’d hear her scream.
And scream.
And scream.
* * *
I awoke to the sound of Svelski’s high-pitched shrieks and tumbled out of my cot, falling to my knees just in front of the bars. I’d somehow slept through the night: the cellblock was once again fully illuminated by buzzing fluorescents. As my eyes adjusted, I saw Pastor lying on his back in the middle of his cell, his arms splayed, scratched nearly raw. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth and eyes, and he wasn’t breathing, at least as far as I could tell.
Svelski cried, “He’s fuckin’ dead, man! He’s fuckin’ dead!”
“Just . . . just calm down. Just calm the fuck down.”
“Calm down?” Svelski shrieked. “What if . . . what if it was that thing? Man, I mean, what if it’s spreading in here now?”
I shook my head. “No, no . . . if it was in the air. . .” I thought about it a second. Was it in the air? Then I looked at Pastor’s arms. “No. Pastor, he got scratched. The thing, it scratched him up.”
Svelksi seemed to calm a little. His grip on the bars loosened, and the color came back to his knuckles.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s right. That’s right. He touched it. He touched the fucking thing. I mean, we’re okay then, right? We’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, but how was I supposed to know? “I think we’re okay.”
Just then, I noticed Pastor’s fingers move. At least I thought I did. Was it my eyes still adjusting to the light?
Pastor’s fingers twitched again.
“Svelski . . .” I whispered as calmly as possible.
Pastor’s fingers wiggled some more.
“Svelski . . .”
“What?”
He grabbed the bars again and squeezed his rat face through, twisting his head as far as the bars would allow. “What . . . what are you lookin’ at?”
Pastor’s fingers were no longer moving. Maybe it was my eyes?
Then, suddenly, Pastor’s fists clenched.
I fell backward.
“What are you lookin’ at, man?”
Pastor convulsed wildly.
“Ah shit!” Svelski yelled. “Ah Shit shit shit!”
As Pastor’s arms and legs flailed against the cot and bars, orange foam spewed from his mouth and nose. He hissed and spit and let out a moan that was deep and pained and unearthly. And, in one sudden move, Pastor flipped from his back to his haunches, his hands on the floor in front of him, his teeth bared in a snarl and his eyes . . . dear God, his eyes.
Svelski flew back across his cell and hunkered in the corner, blocking his ears with balled-up fists and rocking back and forth like a scared child. “Oh Jesus Christ, no!”
Pastor stared straight at me. He snorted, and a cloud of red and orange mist burst from his nose, followed by a thick strand of bloody mucous that dripped to the floor. He cried out again and charged, slamming into the bars. He pushed his arms through and clawed at the air, knocking over the stacks of canned fruit and soda cans. They crashed to the ground and rolled in all directions.
“Kill him!” Svelski cried. “Kill him!”
“How the fuck am I supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know, just—oh god! What the fuck?” Svelski covered his head in his hands and kicked at his cot. “What the fuck is he?”
And the question hung in my head. What was he? Who was he? He certainly wasn’t Pastor anymore. Pastor was dead. This thing . . .
This thing was just hungry.
* * *
I could still hear Svelski sobbing, just as he had been all day. He calmed down just about the same time that the Pastor thing realized it wasn’t getting out of its cage.
I watched the thing all day. When the lights buzzed out for the night, I could still see the glow of its eyes, fiery orange, almost ethereal. The thing didn’t close them for a second. Hell, it didn’t even blink.
As I sat there, staring at Pastor, there was a loud bang in the hallway: metal on metal, like cell doors slamming shut.
“What was that?” Svelski whispered.
“No idea. Maybe . . . I dunno . . . maybe help?” I didn’t believe it, but wanted to.
KaCHUNK!
Another bang, followed by the unmistakable sound of shattered glass; whatever was here, it was getting closer.
“Oh fuck. It’s another one of those things!” Svelski said.
“We don’t know that,” I said, even though, deep down, I was just as sure as he was. “Be cool.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Svelski whispered. I couldn’t see him, but I could tell by the sound of his voice that he’d moved toward the back of his cell again. I looked over at the Pastor-thing; it was still standing there, its eyes still glowing back at me. At least I knew where he was.
Down the far end of the cellblock, something banged against the doors. There was a rhythm to it now, slow and steady, but growing louder and harder. Then a brittle cracking sound, the rattle of glass raining onto the tile floor.
Now I could hear them.
“Jesus Christ, Steve. You hear that?” Svelski’s voice sounded pinched, nervous. “Steve?”
“Shhhhh!” I hissed.
They were scratching on the door, fumbling at the latch. Something gave. The door creaked as it swung open. They were in.
I moved to the edge of my cell, pressed my face between the bars, and peered down the hallway toward the shuffling footsteps, the grunts, the deep moaning. My heart sank in my chest, and a wave of panic
washed over me. I fell back across my cell, slammed hard into the cold brick wall, and froze. The shuffling and moaning all but drowned out the desperate prayers from Svelski’s cell as the things drew nearer. The air was thick with the heady aroma of dirty laundry and desert road kill.
Now they stood before us, eyes like those of the Pastor-thing, dozens of them, hanging there like a swarm of fireflies in the darkness. While I couldn’t see it, I could feel their arms plunging between the bars of my cell, disturbing the air as they flailed about, groping for purchase. Svelski’s prayers had given way to shrieks, but I could barely hear him now above the grunts and moans.
They were louder now, more urgent.
They were in a frenzy.
I don’t know how long I stood there, pressed up against the wall, but my muscles ached and my mind worked feverishly, preparing for what I would see come morning.
When the lights finally did buzz back on, what stood before me was much more horrific than my imagination could conjure. Men, women, and children . . .
At least, they used to be. . . .
Their faces were swollen and bruised. Chunks of flesh were missing from some. Entire limbs were missing from others. One of them was nothing more than a torso, its lower half a ragged mess of bloodied tissue, organs, and bone. It slithered across the floor, using its hands to propel it, leaving a snail’s trail of blood in its wake.
These were the faces of the dead.
Yet here they stood.
“Svelski?” I yelled, feeling my way along the wall.
There was no reply. I pictured him cowering under his bunk, praying, eyes shut tight.
“Svelski? You hear me?” I couldn’t see him through the things in the hallway. I looked at my cot and carefully stepped up on it. The mattress sank under my weight, and I felt my body shift forward. I threw myself back, smacking my skull against the brick wall. The pain shot straight through to the back of my eyes, but I managed to keep my balance. Had I fallen, it’d have been right into the waiting arms of the things outside my cell.
The Undead: Zombie Anthology Page 20