Malcolm’s grandmother, who’d remained quiet for most of the conversation, tugged at her grandson’s sleeve. “That stuff . . . it hasn’t gone near the tool-shed, Sonny. Why do you suppose that is?”
Malcolm couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed before. The general and captain were still arguing about Plan B, not even listening.
“What’s in the shed, grandma?”
“The usual stuff,” she replied. “Shovels, rakes, fertilizer; the birdhouses that your grandfather use to make that scared all the birds away. Not much else, I guess. It’s been awhile since I’ve been in there.”
“I need to get into that shed,” he whispered with a quick glance at the two military men. “And I need to do it before the government puts us into quarantine or lines us up in front of a firing squad.”
He stepped away from the crowd and wasn’t even noticed as he sneaked along the side of Mr. Haversham’s house toward the back corner of the yard. Luckily, his grandmother’s tool shed was in the rear corner, close to the fence separating the two properties.
Climbing the fence, he glanced around. Sure enough, the slime had advanced to about a foot from the shed on all sides, then stopped.
Can I make that? He didn’t think so. But if he could jump onto the roof of the shed, then he could probably lower himself down safely.
Unfortunately, the gung-ho captain chose that moment to glance around from the exchange with his superior, spluttering commands as he spotted Malcolm. Malcolm lost his balance, falling toward his grandmother’s yard. The thought of being devoured by the stuff was enough to send an unconscious spasm to his legs, which kicked off from the fence seemingly of their own volition.
He hit the roof, clawing for something to hang on to as he began to slide down.
The roof gave way beneath him, collapsing into the shed interior. A pile of sheep fertilizer helped break his fall.
He took a deep breath and glanced around. The contents of the shed were pretty much as his grandmother had described: lawn implements of assorted shapes and sizes hung neatly from hooks on the wall, dusty jars of nuts, bolts and screws, several bags of unopened fertilizer.
Still unsteady, he slid off the pile of sheep poop and stood up. He slowly opened the door to the shed, sighing in relief that the gunk had remained where it was.
“What the hell are you doing, son?” the general shouted. “I’ll have you court-martialed for this!”
“I ain’t in the military, general!”
“Are you okay, Sonny?” his grandmother shouted.
“My name’s not Sonny,” he mumbled, but then smiled. “I’m fine, Grandma,” he called back as the general continued to bellow orders. The military man even mixed in a few four-letter words until Emma Brown kicked him in the shin.
Malcolm turned back to the shed’s interior. “It has to be the fertilizer,” he mumbled.
Finding a small garden spade, he punched a hole in one of the bags, pellets spilling out across the floor.
He grabbed a handful of the fertilizer, walked back to the door and tossed the manure onto the oily slime.
Nothing happened.
Some of the fertilizer simply sunk into the ooze, while a few other particles simply floated on top of the liquid.
He’d been so sure . . .
He looked around the tool shed once again. There had to be something in here that the sludge didn’t like. He began hurling items through the door in sheer frustration, hoping that something would have more effect than to simply sink into the gunk.
Malcolm finally stopped and stood in the doorway, panting as the small crowd stared at him as if he were a lunatic. Half of the shed’s contents was heaped outside, sitting in the midst of the slime like a work of abstract art.
He leaned against the door, then spotted a single box at the back of one of the wooden shelves. An old box of rat poison, complete with skull and crossbones. He picked it up.
Hadn’t someone discovered stuff like mold had an antibacterial action? Wasn’t cancer treated with chemotherapy which was basically poisonous to the human body?
He had nothing to lose.
A moment later the tossed half of the contents out into the sludge. The result was instantaneous. The slime tried to withdraw from the granules of rat poison, but was only partially successful. Several inches of the ooze simply disintegrated, rising like dust into the air.
Malcolm grinned, carefully stepping from the shed as he scattered the remaining rat poison with similar success.
He glanced up at the crowd.
“Get me every drop of rat poison you can find,” he yelled and held up the empty box in triumph.
***
General Maxwell Taylor sat in a small sealed-off lab located at Fort Riley, Kansas. He turned to the tech specialist, who was dressed in a neatly-pressed white lab coat.
“Be careful with that stuff, son,” he said as the tech placed the sealed vial into a Styrofoam container. “That stuff is going to give me another star . . . hell, maybe two.”
“Goddamn,” the general whispered. “We can knock out half the Middle East with this stuff and they’ll never know what hit ‘em.”
***
Malcolm Brown sat at his grandmother’s Formica kitchen table and nibbled on freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, sipping from a tall glass of cold milk.
He glanced out the huge bay window and smiled at his grandmother’s backyard, greener than it had ever been.
He took another sip of milk, debating whether he wanted to return to Florida or not. He missed the warm weather and the beach. Winter was quickly approaching. On the other hand, Rockbridge had decided it was time to reinstate town elections . . .
“Mayor Malcolm Brown,” he whispered to himself. “Sort of has a nice ring to it.”
He finished off the still-warm cookie and gazed out into the yard.
“Looks like it’s time to get out the old lawn mower,” he said. He pulled on an old Phillips 66 baseball cap he’d found in the hall closet and walked outside.
The grass was lush and soft beneath his feet.
As he neared the tool shed (with recently repaired roof) he hardly noticed the lawn was much softer in one small area.
Beneath the surface pooled a small pocket of oily sludge.
Waiting . . .
Waiting . . .
I AM DISEASE
Jen Finelli
Jen Finelli—formerly Veldhuyzen—ghosted four books and published hundreds of blogs, articles, and other science-culture-health things that don’t matter here. (Visit petrepan.blogspot.com for her resume.) What matters: she loves you and wants you to get better, no matter what you’re getting better from. She’s getting better, too.
It’s dripping from my lips, like wine. It crunches between my teeth, at once smooth and rocky, like chunky peanut butter. Sometimes it’s old, rotten, or diseased, and smells like cheese. Today it’s got a warmer, more metallic, raw smell. This is the only time I am happy. Happy, damn it, happy . . . happy eating human brains.
I actually don’t remember what happy means—or damn, for that matter. Words play through my head without order, memories, or sentences. My lips, peeled so far back from my gums, cannot form the sounds to speak those words, but I hear much better now; my head pounds, throbs with the tiniest click or hiss. My throat aches unless I fill it; otherwise I just groan, my emotions waxing and waning with the hormones from my infected endocrine system. Sometimes I’m trying to talk—to say those basic things upon which all human economy is founded, like “this is mine,” “I want,” “I am hungry,” and “I want yours—how do I get it with minimal cost to myself?” Sometimes I’m just expressing my pain.
Everything is falling apart. I don’t know why. My muscles burn, my bones stiffen—a few have snapped, either from “interactions” with my still-living dinner, or from simple wear-and-tear. I don’t care. I have a hunger, an unbearable power, an endurance that surpasses every injury or obstacle. I fly like a tiger across vast spaces; I cover th
e wall, or a chain link fence, like a spider. But always in pain. I could use a massage.
This particular meal—fingers still twitching, fresh and rich—didn’t require much perseverance. But I am not grateful. I am hungry. In pain. Irritable. My broken finger won’t dig into this—stupid—stupid—skull—stupid finger—stupid technical difficulties—
Why does my computer always freeze up just when I need it? Why won’t my car start? Stupid inconveniences, stupid wife, stupid dangling finger! Bend, finger, bend! Work, you worthless piece of junk—why won’t the IT department respond to my help ticket?
I’ve had it.
My teeth rip off my broken finger. It shrieks, crashing, radiating pain up my entire arm.
Why did I do that?
Your temper, your stupid temper. I am not grateful. I can’t help it. This is me, this is how I am—I’m an addict, it’s who I am, born this way, not a choice—
Brains. It’s okay—there are brains. I sigh, relaxing as the taste comforts me and the texture soothes my throat. That finger doesn’t get in the way anymore as I dig—
Dammit. Dammit, my finger’s bleeding into my dinner. That’s disgusting. It reeks. Now I can’t eat it.
The arm’s still good though. Tendons string apart like spaghetti, salty and iron-rich, sweet—a little sweet.
I hate this so much. But it feels so good for just this tiny bit of time. I need it—need it—need, beg, yes, eat, rage, yes, chew, tear, yes, groan, yes, yes, YES!
Finished. I’m off my climax, sighing, out of breath and full. Just for a bit. I close my eyes . . .
Oh I hate myself. Something in me aches for something, as if once upon a time I was made for more—for food that brings health, for friends who don’t moan and reinforce my bad habits all the time, for desires that don’t leave me feeling sick and selfish. For purity, beauty, philosophy, art, science, God . . .
Heh. Funny words in my head. Words describing things I don’t believe I’ve ever known. God is dead, like me. It’s funny. It’s funny how I don’t care.
It’s normal, this every day mealtime cycle: hunger, hunting, feasting, climax, empty peace, longing glimmers, and apathy. The inside ache passes, as it always does; I feed my flesh, and my spirit squeals—
Ha. I feed on flesh. Lol. Spirit. Ssssspiiiirit . . .
Doesn’t really sound like a word anymore.
Whatever.
Hungry again, dammit.
The sides of my head pound—a footstep!
The center of my head pounds—a smell! Salty, sweet brains. Alive.
My head snaps back and forth like a hammerhead shark’s as I open my mouth, smelling the air with my tongue like a snake. I can’t see him yet, but he’s infuriating me already. I begin to bounce up and down like a parakeet, rasping. He’s destroying my head with his blasting footprints, his sharp breaths like fingernails across a chalkboard. I clench my teeth in agony—I want to rip his throat out. My entire body tingles. What a tease, smelling that way—he knows what I want, the little skank! He’s reeking just to tease me with his delicious body, his hot, steamy brains—
I see my tormentor. Shotgun down in one hand, chainsaw looped over his back, creeping in a low, slow crouch as he looks around him—does he really think he’s being quiet? No, he’s just torturing me. Each slow step boxes me in the head; the slower he moves, the more faint and wispy the tantalizing, gut-wrenching, spasm-inducing smell. Just a few more feet—
“Ah, there you are.” He turns. His eyes meet mine. He steadies his stance, lowering the shotgun and raising a pistol. His eyebrows knit. The side of his mouth rises. I see sweat beading on his forehead. He waits.
I wait. My belly presses to the ground, limbs coiled like springs.
His finger slips to the trigger. Stupid.
I charge—not at him, but to the side, so he misses! I leap off the alley wall towards him. Angles—angles catch brains.
He rolls to the side as I hit the concrete. He slips in the broken glass as he scrambles to his feet, fumbling with that pistol. Too stupid to just use his shotgun. I snatch at him, screaming.
He makes it to his feet and runs.
I’m slower, but he’ll tire out.
He makes it about thirty meters ahead of me. He whirls, plants himself, does something to his gun. I’ll be there soon. Dragging my broken leg, lunging forward, my hands swimming through the air—almost—
“If there’s anything in you—any longing to be more—this will work,” he mutters. “You made for somethin’ more? Just need a little cerebral cortex, just a little.”
His lips curve up as his brows raise. A happy face. Why? What kind of face—why doesn’t he struggle—dance for me, dance, you piece of meat—
He fires.
Ha! His shot hits my arm. I don’t feel it at all—I scream and lunge, and my fingers snatch his wrist. Hungry, hunt, feast, climax! Hungry and—
Longing. My muscles give out before my teeth can touch his skin. I want to be. My fingers close around his sneaker as my body bounces like a sack of potatoes on the cement. I want to be like him. Made for something more. My closing eyes recognize that lip-curve—
It’s a smile.
***
It took a few days for the cure to work. Of course, I didn’t know that until I woke up chained to the hospital bed with my zombie-hunter grinning ear to ear besides me, fingering the pistol that fired the darts full of medicine.
“I want to read something,” I croaked. “I want to read.”
And I read. I wrote. I explored. I learned, drew, gardened, and cooked. We’ve rigged up an old gaming console. We’re building a library. Many of the halls of the old hospital still ring with undead moans, but our wing expands like an ivy vine every day, conquering the fetid death and rubble. I’m still butt-ugly, and I can’t eat chunky peanut butter without barfing, but my lips at least cover my gums.
I long for more, every day, and every day fill that longing. Sometimes it’s almost worse, now that I do understand beauty and purity, philosophy and love, science and art, and God, because every now and then that old hunger grips me. Sometimes it just makes me irritable, but other times I’m standing next to my hunter’s child, drooling and gripping the balcony, table, or the wall until my fingernails bleed, fighting back the brain-eater inside.
Once, just once, I bit my friend.
But he still goes almost everywhere with me, chatting, dreaming, laying a hand on my shoulder. We save zombies together; I’m becoming a fighter like him. He’s a good teacher, but he’s a better friend, with open arms for a solid, warm, brotherly hug when my healing hurts.
I’m not the only one who wants this. There are others of you, out there, living out your mundane routines, your cycles of climax, apathy and addiction. When you hear my shot in the night, or see my flare go up, I know you come running, drooling for flesh, but I think somewhere within you there’s a longing like mine.
Come at me, my brothers.
SKY OF BRASS, LAND OF IRON
Joe McKinney
Joe McKinney has been a patrol officer for the San Antonio Police Department, a homicide detective, a disaster mitigation specialist, a patrol commander, and a successful novelist. His books include the four part Dead World series, Quarantined, Inheritance, The Savage Dead, Lost Girl of the Lake, Crooked House and Dodging Bullets. His short fiction has been collected in The Red Empire and Other Stories and Dating in Dead World. In 2011, McKinney received the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. For more information go to http://joemckinney.wordpress.com.
For Robert Garza, it started on a cool, breezy night in early May. He was driving home on Texas Farm Route 181 when he saw the first one moving across the road from left to right with a slow, loping gait. At first he didn’t recognize it as a coyote. It didn’t look right. It didn’t move right. Coyotes were supposed to move like dogs. But there was something different about this one. It almost seemed to hop. More like a rat than a dog. Garza watched it move across the road
and thought it was odd, but not particularly alarming.
Two more went by, disappearing into the cedar thicket off to his right.
A fourth went by a moment later.
He waited to see if there were any more, but none came. The night was perfectly still and quiet, save for the burbling exhaust of his idling truck. He could smell the faint tinge of wood smoke on the night breeze.
He shook his head and chuckled, dismissing the encounter as just another strange thing you sometimes see on empty country roads in the middle of the night.
He drove on.
At the time, it didn’t occur to him to worry.
***
Garza’s best friend was a man named Frank Resendez. They’d known each other for almost ten years, going back to when Garza was a rookie detective assigned to the San Antonio Police Department’s Homicide Unit and Resendez was his sergeant. It was Resendez, in fact, who’d talked Garza into moving his family out to Espada Ridge.
Garza would be the first to admit that Resendez was a genius. And he wasn’t alone in that belief, either. He’d watched, like the kid brother of somebody famous, as Resendez’s skill as an investigator and police administrator made him a law enforcement legend all across South Texas. Those same skills also earned Resendez the coveted lieutenant’s position overseeing San Antonio’s Homicide Unit, a job he still held, and did exceedingly well, despite everything else he had on his plate. For as successful as he was in police circles, he was even more successful writing about it. His textbook, Criminal Investigations for the Texas Peace Officer, was now in its fourth edition, and the money he made from that allowed him to reinvent himself yet again—this time as a major player in South Texas real estate.
Now, looking out over the 3400 acres that Resendez planned to turn into the Espada Ridge Estates, Garza felt a renewed awe for the scope of the man’s vision. It was a beautiful, but hard country. Espada Ridge formed a fat crescent around the north corner of Worther Lake. Its gently rolling hills were densely covered with cedar and hardy Spanish oaks, and close to the water, there were occasional meadows that, in April, burst forth with wildflowers. In a few places, Resendez had added old-fashioned split rail fences to demarcate available lots. And, of course, there was the lake itself. Right now, it was dappled with late afternoon sunshine, a rich tapestry of yellows and reds, a pool of molten bronze.
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