by Joe McKinney
“What in the name of—?” Cavazos started to pull away, panicking now himself as the Negro grabbed him by the arm and tried to bite him.
Cavazos kicked the man in his injured leg, knocking him off balance enough to pull the blade free. The Negro staggered forward, his ruined leg barely able to hold his weight. Cavazos side-stepped him, and the Negro fell face-down in the sand. With the grace of a man raised with a sword in his hands, Cavazos spun the blade a half turn in the air, so that the tip of it was pointed at the flailing man, and ran it through the back of his head.
The Negro’s body went instantly still.
And with that stillness came a silence as all the men stared from the dead man to each other, looking for answers to questions too strange, too wild to put into words.
“That man was dead,” one of the soldiers said.
Rivera scoffed. “Impossible.”
“He was I tell you. I saw his eyes.” The soldier looked at the others around him. “You all saw him.”
“I saw,” said another man.
“And I,” answered still another.
Rivera sounded angry now. “Impossible. You don’t move when you’re dead.”
“A devil,” said Lacayo, the Franciscan.
That made everyone pause. A few men muttered nervously, while here and there others crossed themselves.
Lacayo held his olive-wood walking stick up, the stamped brass ball catching what was left of the daylight and glinting with a lurid russet light. “I knew it when I beat him. A devil.”
The men were silent, even the wounded.
“I knew the man was possessed.”
“Be quiet,” Cavazos said.
“You cannot possibly ignore what you have seen with your own eyes. Your eye is the lamp of your body, and when—”
“I said be quiet!”
Cavazos reached for his sword and yanked it out of the dead man’s skull with a great show of one-handed strength. He turned on the friar and was about to order him to make himself busy when de Vega moved close to Cavazos and whispered.
“Sir, over there. In the tree line.”
Cavazos looked de Vega in the eye, then scanned the wall of vegetation that marked the beginning of the jungle.
A face peered back at him—a young boy, terrified, wide-eyed, his brown, almost round face streaked with ochre paint. The boy knew he’d been spotted. He jumped up and ran into the jungle at a full sprint.
“Get him!” Cavazos said. “Hurry!”
De Vega took off into the jungle with a few others close behind. He could see the boy slipping through the heavy, damp vegetation, moving with incredible speed, like an animal. De Vega was clumsy. He slapped at leaves as big as a man’s shirt, falling farther and farther behind in the pursuit, tripping over tangled vines at his feet.
Then he unexpectedly burst through the vegetation and teetered at the edge of a ravine, swinging his arms for balance with his toes over a sheer face of rock some forty feet down.
Rivera appeared beside him and nearly went over the edge, and would have, had de Vega not caught him and pulled him back.
“Careful,” de Vega said.
Rivera’s eyes went wide, staring down at the fall he could have had. “Yes, sir.”
Two more soldiers dragged up noisily behind them. De Vega heard them coming before he saw them, and he realized that they weren’t going to catch any jungle Indian boy who had spent his life hunting and playing in this place. They made too much noise. He turned and looked at them as they stepped out of the leaves. One was hurt badly from their trek across the clam beds. His right leg was shredded from mid-thigh to below the knee, and his boot was glistening with his blood. The man’s face was awash in sweat, and his eyes had turned piss yellow. He was coughing, gagging.
“Where did he go?” the other soldier said.
“We lost him somewhere back there,” de Vega said, pointing toward the jungle behind them.
“Captain,” the man said, “he was just a boy. There are probably others. A village, maybe.”
De Vega didn’t give it his full attention. The wounded soldier was swaying on his feet, still coughing, his pupils rolling up into his head. His tongue looked swollen and black.
De Vega was about to tell the man to sit down for God’s sake when the soldier suddenly doubled over and vomited something that looked like fish guts onto the ground. De Vega wrinkled his nose at the smell, and then, before he could do or say anything, the wounded soldier teetered toward the ravine, lost his footing, and tumbled down the rocks.
They watched him fall, saw him land on his back on the rocks below, heard his spine snap. The man was bent over backward and his body lay motionless, a wreck.
“What was wrong with him?” Rivera said.
De Vega thought, The clams. That’s what’s wrong with him. He looked down at his own palm and felt the pain anew, a sharp stabbing pain in time with the thump, thump, thump of his pulse. Blessed Virgin, he prayed, keep me safe.
They stared down at the soldier, the three of them silent.
When the body started to move, Rivera gasped.
De Vega didn’t even blink.
The man pulled himself to his feet, his mangled, misshapen body moving unnaturally. He staggered to the edge of the ravine and clawed the air between himself and the men watching him from the edge of the ravine’s wall.
“That can’t be happening,” Rivera said. “That man... Captain?”
“Let’s go,” de Vega said. “Come on.”
He turned and trudged his way back to the beach, the others turning reluctantly from the edge of the ravine, the dead man still reaching for them, and followed de Vega in stunned silence.
De Vega told Cavazos that they lost the boy in the jungle and that another soldier had died in the ravine, but didn’t tell him about what came after that. About two dozen men were injured to some degree by their walk across the clam beds, and they were starting to show signs of fatigue that worried de Vega. They were lethargic, absent-minded, their eyes turning yellow and bloodshot. Even Cavazos, ordinarily a man of limitless energy and drive, was breathing funny, and sweat had popped out all over his face.
De Vega looked the men over, at the injured and the healthy, then went to where Caval still sat on the flat black rock, nursing the cut on his leg. He looked better than most of the others, but he was pale, his eyes dull and out of focus.
“What’s wrong?” Caval said.
“We have a problem,” de Vega said.
§
De Vega was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. With nightfall, the wind off the ocean picked up and whipped the hair around his face in a constant, bone-chilling roar. He shivered against it, all the while listening for... what? He wasn’t sure, exactly. It was hard to think clearly. He only knew that something was inside of him, and whatever it was, it terrified him.
Caval whispered to him. De Vega rolled over and looked at him through the moonless dark. Glinting sparks of light danced at the edges of de Vega’s vision.
“We’re going to die out here, aren’t we?”
“I don’t think so,” de Vega said.
“Don’t lie.”
“I won’t.”
There was a long, quiet moment.
“Are we going to die?”
“We’re soldiers,” de Vega said.
“Soldiers are supposed to fight for honor. There’s no honor out here. Not like this.”
De Vega closed his eyes.
“Andres?”
“Go to sleep,” de Vega said.
§
De Vega woke several hours later to a pitiful moaning. He tried to push himself to a sitting position, but the pain in his hand had turned his blood to fire in his veins and he winced, biting his lip to keep from yelling out. He rolled over onto his side and used his good hand to sit up.
The Franciscan, Lacayo, was sitting on the sand, holding himself, rocking back and forth like a mother in mourning.
“Be quiet,” Cavazos hisse
d at him.
“I’m cold.”
“We’re all cold. Be silent. Be a man.”
Lacayo’s eyes were those of a scolded child. “But I’m cold.”
From where he knelt in the sand, de Vega could see Lacayo and Cavazos in detail, but the sleeping shapes beyond them were only dark humps on the lighter shade of dark that was the beach.
Motion caught his eye, and de Vega saw one of those dark humps sit up.
Cavazos saw it too.
“Go back to sleep,” he said to the man, his voice suddenly quiet, gentle, paternal.
But the man sat there, silently, his back straight, hands down at his side. Another man, three humps over, sat up, too.
As de Vega watched, two men to his left sat up also, and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Something was wrong. The something that he’d been dreading was finally here.
He shook Caval by the shoulder. Caval murmured grumpily, and de Vega shook him again.
Caval’s eyes fluttered open.
He stared up at de Vega, then turned and saw the others.
He moved slowly, reaching for one of the two heavy lengths of drift wood he and de Vega had secreted away before nightfall.
“Go back to sleep,” Cavazos repeated.
De Vega grabbed the other stick.
What happened next happened very quickly. The dead men moved with amazing speed. They scrambled to their feet and fell on the uninjured men, most of whom were still sleeping.
Screams filled the night, drowning out the breaking surf. Cavazos leapt into the middle of a fight, where two dead men were tearing the windpipe out of a man’s throat with their teeth, and tried to pull one of the dead men away. The dead man turned on him and wrapped him in his arms, and the next minute Cavazos was down.
Lacayo screamed, a high, feminine shriek, a strange sound coming from such a fat man. He pleaded to be left alone, for someone to save him, and as de Vega and Caval fought the dead, swinging their clubs wildly in the melee, one of the uninjured Negro slaves grabbed Lacayo by his armpits and dragged him to safety.
Cavazos threw off his attacker and rose to his feet. He was bleeding horribly from the side of his head, his ear torn off. He wasn’t able to stand up straight and stayed bent over, swaying drunkenly, his arms swinging by his side. Lacayo cried out for Cavazos to save him, but Cavazos couldn’t hear anything anymore. His eyes had turned to blanks, and though it took a great deal of effort for him to stay on his feet, no breath steamed from his mouth in the cold, sharp air.
“Run!” de Vega said to Lacayo. “You have to move!”
The friar stared about him in a panic. Cavazos’ corpse lumbered forward, advancing on him. Lacayo shook his head back and forth violently, like that would make the whole thing go away, but Cavazos still advanced.
De Vega swung his improvised club at a soldier whose teeth were thick with red meat and blood and knocked him to the ground. He swung the club over his head and brought it down on the back of another man’s head. It burst like wildflower in early spring.
“Do something,” de Vega said to Lacayo, and Lacayo did. He staggered backward and nearly fell over the Negro who had pulled him to safety. The slave was fighting two dead men, keeping them at bay, but just barely. Lacayo caught himself on the man’s shoulder, then threw him into Cavazos’ path. He was left standing on his own, at the edge of the fight, and he didn’t waste the chance. He turned and ran into the jungle.
De Vega watched him run, and knew that that was their only chance as well. Caval was next to him, clubbing a dead man into the sand. De Vega grabbed him and pointed at Lacayo slipping into the vegetation. “Follow him!” he said, and pushed him that way.
The jungle was dark, and once they fled into the cover of the underbrush, the noise of the ocean and the fight all but disappeared. They could hear Lacayo crashing through the vegetation, and it was easy to catch up with him.
He screamed when they stopped him.
“Shhh!” de Vega hissed.
“Stop! Don’t touch me! Leave me alone,” Lacayo said.
“Be quiet.”
But Lacayo couldn’t. He swatted their hands away and screamed.
De Vega hit him in the ear with his cupped palm, knocking the fat friar back onto his butt.
The friar looked up at him, his hand over his ear.
“Be quiet,” de Vega said. “They’ll hear us.”
The three of them were silent then, listening to the sounds of dead men moaning as they entered the jungle.
“They’re going to eat us,” Lacayo said.
“Shhh!”
“What’s wrong with them?”
“Shhh!” de Vega said.
They were silent again, listening.
“What are we going to do?” Caval whispered.
“Be still,” de Vega said. “We’ll wait here.”
Lacayo settled in to a rhythm of whimpering noises while de Vega and Caval listened. They stayed there, still as reptiles in the sun, and listened. The dead were entering the jungle now, moaning like ghosts in the pale, false dawn.
“We need to go,” Lacayo said. “Run while we still can.”
“Shhh!” Caval said.
“I want to go. I want to go!”
“Be quiet.”
But Lacayo couldn’t. The man was worm-eaten with fear, he vibrated with it, and de Vega, staring at him, thought to himself, He’s going to run, just as the Franciscan pushed himself up and ran.
“Damn!” de Vega said.
There was enough light that they could see a sort of unorganized skirmish line of the dead approaching through the tangle of twisted vines and leaves and strange black trees. Lacayo’s blind fear had put them in a position where their only choice was to run, and de Vega and Caval tore after him.
The three ran till they came to the ravine, then turned parallel to it, away from the beach. Gradually, the ravine shallowed out, and then disappeared altogether, and they were left with nothing but dense underbrush. They slowed their pace, but didn’t stop. They couldn’t. The dead men were still back there, their moaning distant now, but not that distant.
Lacayo was in front, de Vega and Caval keeping a nervous eye behind them, when they unexpectedly broke through the wall of dank undergrowth into a clearing, the smell of wood smoke in their noses.
They all stopped.
“My God,” de Vega whispered.
Before them was a village of tall, cylindrical huts with grass roofs, a curl of white smoke rising into the air from a communal fire, a bare-chested, dark-skinned woman nursing a baby, a sudden flurry of frightened murmurings from the villagers as they took cautious, uncertain steps forward to get a glimpse of the white men.
“Damn,” de Vega said again.
“Let’s go,” Lacayo said. He stepped forward, wanting to run through the village.
De Vega grabbed him by the back of his robe, and started to pull him back into the jungle.
“What are you doing?” Lacayo said. “Let go of me.”
“There are children here,” de Vega said.
“Let go of me!” Lacayo said. “Stop. I don’t want to go back.”
They advanced into the jungle, the moaning of the living dead ahead of them and also to their right, coming closer, attracted by Lacayo’s screams.
When the ravine appeared, they entered it, climbing over rocks, splashing through puddles of stagnant black water that stank of rotting vegetation, de Vega and Caval both in silent agreement about what they had to do. Lacayo fought them the whole way, screaming to be let go, and soon the dead men were at the edge of the ravine, tumbling down the rocky sides in an attempt to reach them.
“Please,” Lacayo begged. “Please let me go.”
Ahead of them, in the narrowing V of the ravine, was the broken-backed dead man who had fallen into the ravine at the end of their foot chase with the boy with the ochre-painted face. The broken-backed man moved in stop motion, like a series of pictures skipping from one moment to the next, and de V
ega thought of a crab scurrying across the beach in slow motion.
“Oh my Lord,” Lacayo said.
Caval stepped forward and swept the dead man’s legs out from under him with his driftwood club. The dead man fell, and de Vega hit him with his own club, crushing his skull.
The whole exchange had only taken seconds, but it was enough time for Lacayo to break free and scramble up the slope of the ravine.
The dead lumbered closer, clawing their way toward the two captains through the funnel of the ravine. Above them, peering down at them through the walls of vegetation at the edges of the ravine, were ochre-faced warriors, armed with bows and arrows and spears.
The dead closed on them.
“Andres?”
De Vega stared at the faces above them, then at the moaning dead, only a few feet from them now. His head was swimming, a roar like a waterfall gathering just behind his eyes, and he wondered how much longer he’d be able to stand. He certainly didn’t have anything left for a fight.
“You wanted honor, my friend?” he said to Caval, and tossed his club to the ground. “This abomination has to stop here. That is our honor.”
Caval, his eyes heavy and cloudy, tossed his own club down and waited. De Vega looked up at the gallery of dark, round faces, meeting their black eyes.
His gaze settled on one of the warriors.
The man nodded at him.
De Vega nodded back that he was ready, and then the ravine filled with the first volley of arrows.
Jimmy Finder
“Is that your experiment?” Captain Fisher asked.
The infantry captain gestured toward the boy on the other side of the one-way glass. From the look on Fisher’s face, it was obvious he didn’t think much of the kid. He certainly didn’t see humanity’s greatest hope in the war against the zombies. What he saw was a mop-haired runt, too skinny, too short, too awkward, about as far from a soldier as one could hope to find.
“His name is Jimmy Finder,” Dr. David Knopf replied. “I try not to refer to him as my experiment.”