by Youers, Rio
His hands tightened around her throat, and he slammed her against the brick wall. Struggling for breath, Marisol pulled at his wrists to break his grip; when that failed, she beat down on his arms, then reached out to scratch his face. Josh responded by squeezing even tighter. Her eyes bulged in terror while her mouth frantically opened and closed as she fought to pull in air.
“You fuckin’ whores,” he snarled. “You don’t know nothin’, do you? You think just ’cause you’re pretty every guy in the world must wanna fuck you, an’ if you run into one who don’t then they gotta be a fag or somethin’, right?” He leaned forward, applying greater pressure to her windpipe. Marisol’s struggles began to lessen; her arms dropped limply to her sides. “Well, there’s more t’life than just fuckin’, sweetheart. There’s a thing out there called ‘true love.’ There’s a thing out there called ‘findin’ your soul mate.’ An’ I just happen t’be the kinda guy who believes in that shit, all right? Stuck-up whores like you always laugh when a guy like me says it, but I know the right girl is out there somewhere. An’ one’a these days, so help me, Christ, I’m gonna find ’er.”
He gave her neck one last powerful squeeze. Marisol’s eyes rolled completely up in her head, until he was only looking at milky white orbs. “An’ in case you ain’t figured it out yet, bitch,” he whispered in her ear, “you ain’t the one.”
He opened his hands and let her slide down along the wall to a sitting position. Whether she was dead or alive meant little to him; he was just happy to have finally dulled the edge on that sharp tongue of hers.
It took him a few seconds to regain his composure, and by then the Laundromat zombies were starting to close in. He grabbed hold of Marisol’s ankles and dragged her to the center of the alley, then rolled up her T-shirt to fully expose her stomach and breasts, to ensure the Carrion Crew would see all that fresh meat and stop for a quick bite instead of electing to pursue him. He thought again of the butchered pigs in the Ecuadorian bakery, and smiled as he gazed down at the woman sprawled at his feet.
“I bet this wittle piggy tastes like woast beef…” he said with a childish grin. Then he turned and ran, heading away from the zombie-choked avenue.
He was halfway down the block when he heard Marisol screaming. So he hadn’t killed her after all, he realized, just choked her into unconsciousness. Well, he told himself, like the old saying went, some people were just too mean to die. Unless you fed them to a bunch of hungry corpses, that is.
“Enjoy your meal, boys,” he whispered to the darkness. “There’s a lotta meat on that ass.” He laughed. “An’ don’t forget to try the Ginsu-tongue. It’s extra spicy.”
* * *
By the time he tumbled through his front door, the neighborhood had erupted into full-blown chaos. People ran through the streets, pursued by ravenous chowhounds. Panicked drivers plowed their cars through both living and dead, littering the asphalt with broken limbs, crushed organs, and unspooled intestines. A couple of avenues over, a fire had broken out in one of the apartment buildings; from the way it was raging, it looked as though it would consume the entire block before the Fire Department ever reached it. If they ever reached it.
Josh locked the dead bolt on the door and switched off the porch light, suddenly grateful that it had been the only lamp he’d left on when he headed off to the Drip ’n’ Dry. A darkened house, he hoped, might increase the odds he’d be overlooked when the army of the dead came marching through his block. For good measure, though, he jammed a metal folding chair under the doorknob. Then he headed for the kitchen for a beer. Right now, he needed a drink—a big drink. Maybe a whole six-pack if the world was really coming to an end. And from what he’d experienced tonight, who’s to say it wasn’t?
He was all of two steps from the refrigerator when he heard the light footfalls on the brick patio in the rose garden.
Shit! he thought, unconsciously holding his breath as he stared at the back door. Those fuckers can jump six-foot fences?
The footsteps continued back and forth along the patio, as though whatever was out there was looking for something. They’d walk a few paces, stop, then move to another location.
After a minute or so of the constant shuffling, curiosity got the better of Josh. Maybe it wasn’t a zombie, he thought. It could just be one of his neighbors hiding out from the massacre—but then why the hell didn’t they just knock on the door and ask to be let in? And what could they be looking for?
Or, he suddenly realized, it could be a burglar, looking to take advantage of the situation and break into some houses while everybody was going nuts out on the streets. He grabbed a large carving knife from the utensil drawer as he eased up to the window that overlooked the rose garden. Just to be on the safe side.
It took him a few moments to recognize who was prowling around out there in the moonlight. The last time he’d seen her she’d been a hell of a lot more active than the shuffling, rotted flesh-bag she’d turned into—active enough to have kicked him hard in the balls when they had their falling out—but the red hair was a dead giveaway.
It was Siobhan Tennant. She was covered in dirt and clumps of fertilizer, there were rose petals and thorny stems tangled in her hair, and her creamy pale complexion had faded to an ugly, almost metallic gray, but the red-sprinkle freckles could still be seen on her sunken cheeks—if you looked hard enough.
And yet despite her appearance, even after spending a couple of months in the ground, goddamn if she still wasn’t the sweetest, prettiest ten-year-old girl Josh had ever laid eyes on.
“Siobhan…” he whispered, and found himself smiling wistfully.
He really thought she’d be the one: the love of his life, his perfect match, his soul mate. That was why, even after she’d spurned him, even after he’d choked the life from her, he’d never had the heart to just dump her body into the Newtown Creek like he had with the other little girls: Cindy Speers and Angelica Crichton and Eugenia Rodriguez. Siobhan had been special, and a special girl needed a special resting place; that was why he’d dug her a small grave behind the rose bushes.
The green velvet nightshirt he’d buried her in—the same one she’d worn that night when he’d snatched her from her bed while her parents slept in the next room—hung in tatters on her small frame. Some of the rips looked new, probably from the cloth snagging on the rose thorns as Siobhan dug her way out. But it wasn’t the gown that held his attention, so much as the glimmer of moonlight being reflected from a small metal band that encircled the third finger on her left hand.
She was wearing his ring.
The toy ring he’d bought from the gumball machine; the ring he’d thrown out of the bathroom window in a fit of anger just a few hours ago. That, he realized, was what she’d been searching for during her circuit of the backyard.
Josh smiled. He’d meant it as a token of affection, as a way of proving his sincerity—that, in spite of the terror he instilled in her, in spite of the things he did with her, the things he did to her, he truly loved her. And if he’d hurt her in any way while he’d tried to strengthen the bond between them…well, didn’t being in love always involve some kind of pain?
She hadn’t understood; none of the girls had. And that’s what always made him so goddamned angry, what always loused him up: that no matter how much he opened his heart to them, they refused to see him as anything more than a monster. They’d scream at him, curse him, strike out at him, and then he’d eventually lose his temper and do something rash. Only later, after he’d disposed of their bodies, would he come to regret his actions. Like with Siobhan—ending their relationship had been just about the most difficult thing he’d ever done.
But none of that mattered now. She’d come back to him, was even wearing the ring he’d bought as a peace offering for her. Maybe she had loved him, although she’d never come right out and said it while she was alive. Just like he’d always believed. Just as he’d always hoped.
He placed the knife on the windowsill, opened
the back door, and slowly stepped into the yard. Siobhan turned to face him. Her lips pulled back in a cold, feral smile, and she ran to him. He opened his arms wide to welcome her, and grunted contentedly as she slammed into his chest. And when her teeth began gnawing into his throat, he couldn’t help but laugh and hold her even tighter.
What could he say? He was a fool for love.
And after all, didn’t being in love always involve some kind of pain?
Provider
TIM WAGGONER
“Looks like we got a flopper over there.” Kenny said.
Robert nodded. He put Smoky Joe into low gear and pressed on the brake. The truck juddered to a stop––damn thing was overdue for a tune-up––in front of 3298 Chestnut Avenue. There was a large oak tree in the yard. Its branches stretched out over the street and its leaves, while still green, were tinted gold, red and brown. Not quite ready to start drifting to the ground yet, but almost. Fall was Robert’s favorite time of the year. It made him think of beginnings, much more so than January first. There was the first day of school, and the start of football season, of course. And given the way stores advertised, it was the unofficial start of the Christmas season, too.
At least that’s the way it had been back when the word dead meant a corpse that didn’t move, didn’t walk, didn’t try to sink its teeth into the living.
Robert put Smoky Joe in park, but he didn’t turn off the ignition. They needed to leave the truck running so the furnace would keep burning. If it went out it was a bitch to get started again, and if the temperature in the back got too low the furnace wouldn’t be able to do its job effectively. He opened the door and stepped down the street. He removed his gloves from the pocket of his coveralls and put them on while he waited for Kenny to come around and join him.
Kenny walked around the front of the truck. He never walked around the back if he could avoid it, and Robert couldn’t say as he blamed the man. Kenny already had his gloves on, and his clear plastic face mask, too.
“I can’t believe you still wear that goddamn thing. You’ve been on the job six months now.”
“Five,” Kenny corrected. “And I don’t care if I’m still doing this stinkin’ job five years from now, I’m gonna wear my mask and I don’t give a shit what anyone says about it.” Kenny’s breath caused condensation to mist the inside of the mask around his mouth.
Robert thought the breath-fog made him look kind of stupid, but he didn’t remark on it. No one commented on basic biological processes anymore, whatever they were, not even burping or farting. They were signs that you were alive, and no one made fun of that.
Kenny was a skinny middle-aged man with a scraggly white mustache and wispy white hair that brushed the tops of his shoulders. He had long, tapering fingers (hidden by his work gloves at the moment) that constantly trembled. Robert didn’t know if it was due to stress or whether Kenny had a drug or alcohol problem. Of course, these days, the real problem for users was getting hold of recreational chemicals.
Greasy black smoke curled forth from the chimney pipe atop the truck, and flecks of ash drifted through the air. In addition, a nauseating odor somewhat like a backed-up sewer filtered through the neighborhood. Not so many years ago people would’ve complained like hell about the pollutants and the stench Smoky Joe pumped out. But that was in the old world. Today, there weren’t any such things as environmental protection laws. Well, not unless you counted the kind of work people like Robert and Kenny did.
“Let’s go take a look,” Robert said.
Kenny grunted assent, though he didn’t look too pleased.
They walked up to the oak tree and examined the flopper bound to the trunk. It was held fast against the bark by strong rope, but whoever had put it out hadn’t slipped a muzzle on it. The thing gnashed its teeth at them, straining forward, eager to bite off a hunk of flesh. Robert looked into the corpse’s eyes but they might as well have been made out of glass for all the emotion they displayed. They were fish eyes, dead eyes.
“Fresh one,” Robert commented. No visible wounds, no signs of rot. “Probably died of a heart attack or a stroke last night.”
“I don’t give a shit what killed him,” Kenny said. His voice held a strained edge to it, as if he were on the verge of hysteria. He always sounded like this when they had to deal with a flopper. “I hate it when they tie them up like this.”
The preferred method of preparing someone for pick-up was to put a plastic muzzle over their mouth so they couldn’t bite, then to bind their wrists, ankles and legs with plastic ties. Prepackaged kits were readily available and free to any resident. Robert and Kenny had a bunch stashed under the seat of their truck. They’d handed out four kits so far today during their rounds.
“Some people can’t bring themselves to truss up their friends and family like a bag of trash,” Robert said. Though once they Went Bad, as the euphemism went, that’s exactly what they were. A scene from an old Monty Python comedy flashed through his mind then: John Cleese pulling a wooden cart through the muddy streets of a medieval village, ringing a bell and shouting, Bring out your dead! He wondered how long it had been since he’d seen a movie. Years, he supposed.
“And this is any better?” Kenny nodded toward the flopper who was straining more vigorously against his bonds. He started making a high-pitched keening sound in the back of this throat. It was the sound deaders made when they were hungry––and they were always hungry. Luckily, deaders weren’t any stronger than the living, and no matter how hard the flopper struggled, he wasn’t going to get out of those ropes. Whoever had tied him up had done a good job of it.
He looked to be––to have been––in his early thirties, thin (most everybody was thin these days, since food wasn’t nearly as plentiful as it used to be), black hair, clean-shaven. He was dressed in a blue suit, white shirt, maroon tie and polished black shoes. Sometimes relatives dressed them up, like they used to do when the dead stayed still and were buried in boxes beneath the ground.
“Why couldn’t they have done us a favor and bashed his skull in?” Kenny asked. Robert noticed his hands were trembling again, so hard it looked as if he might vibrate right out of his work gloves. Rumor had it that before he’d gone to work as a pick-up man, Kenny’s girlfriend had Gone Bad, and he’d had to put her down. Robert had never asked––it wasn’t the kind of thing you could ask––but if it were true, he wondered why Kenny would do this kind of work. As a way of expunging his guilt, maybe? Or perhaps he was one of those people drawn to that which terrified him, like a moth to the flame.
“It’s not easy to desecrate the body of a loved one, even when you know its going to Go Bad soon,” Robert said. The only sure ways to kill a deader were to destroy its brain or burn the damn thing to ash. Not too many folks could bring themselves to do either to the remains of someone they cared about.
Kenny glared at the deader, fear and disgust mingling in his gaze. “Fuckin’ zombie,” he muttered.
Robert didn’t respond. Instead, he turned and walked back to Smoky Joe. He opened the toolbox bolted to the side of the truck and pulled out a rusty crowbar. He walked back to the oak tree, his thick work boots thump-thump-thumping on the ground.
“Oh, man,” Kenny whined. “Can’t we use the gun?”
“He’s an easy target. No need to waste the ammo.” He held out the crowbar to Kenny. “Would you like to do the honors this time?”
“Hell, no. I got the last one.”
Kenny hadn’t gotten the last one, but Robert decided not to make an issue of it. “Better step back then.” Too bad this fellow’s family didn’t truss him up right, Robert thought. If they had, then Kenny and he could’ve popped the flopper into Smoky Joe’s furnace without having to “kill” him. Ah, well. Every job had its shitty side, he supposed.
He glanced at the house. The blinds were closed, and he didn’t see anyone peeking out. Good. It was easier when relatives weren’t watching. Robert took aim and swung the bar at the deader’s head. Metal
struck hair, flesh and bone with the same sickening sound as a sledgehammer smashing a watermelon. The deader jerked and shuddered with the first blow, but it took three more before the damn thing finally stopped moving.
When he was finished, Robert lowered the crow bar. His arm was tired and he was breathing heavily. He needed to get more exercise. He wiped the crow bar off in the grass, then held it out to Kenny.
“No way am I touchin’ that fuckin’ thing, man.”
Robert was starting to lose his patience. “You’re a pick-up man, damn it. Do your job.”
Kenny looked as if he might protest further, but in the end he grabbed the crow bar and headed back to the truck.
“Get a knife out of the toolbox while you’re at it, will you?” Robert called over his shoulder. “These knots look pretty tight, and I don’t feel like messing with them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kenny muttered.
Robert looked down, saw that the front of his coveralls was splattered with blood. He checked his gloves; saw a few more splatters. Despite razzing Kenny for wearing his facemask, Robert now wished he’d taken the time to put his on. No one was really sure why the dead came back, or why their bite could make someone living Go Bad. He’d heard lots of theories over the years––a genetic weapon cooked up by one government or another, microbes brought back by a space probe, even a mutation of the AIDs virus. But whatever the reason, they did know one thing: it was infectious as hell, and if you weren’t careful, you could Go Bad too.
He removed his right glove, reached up to touch his face… and found it dry.
Robert let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Looked like he was going to stay human another day. He put his glove back on, grabbed hold of the corpse under the armpits, and began dragging it toward Smoky Joe.