The Living Dead

by John Joseph Adams

  “Silly bitch,” said Eddie.

  “Whoops,” said Calloway.

  She was at the edge of the stage now, haranguing him.

  “Got all you wanted now, have you? This your new lady-love is it? Is it?”

  She was trying to clamber up, her hands gripping the hot metal hoods of the footlights. Her skin began to singe: the fat was well and truly in the fire.

  “For God’s sake, somebody stop her,” said Eddie. But she didn’t seem to feel the searing of her hands; she just laughed in his face. The smell of burning flesh wafted up from the footlights. The company broke rank, triumph forgotten.

  Somebody yelled: “Kill the lights!”

  A beat, and then the stage lights were extinguished. Diane fell back, her hands smoking. One of the cast fainted, another ran into the wings to be sick. Somewhere behind them, they could hear the faint crackle of flames, but they had other calls on their attention.

  With the footlights gone, they could see the auditorium more clearly. The stalls were empty, but the Balcony and the Gods were full to bursting with eager admirers. Every row was packed, and every available inch of aisle space thronged with audience. Somebody up there started clapping again, alone for a few moments before the wave of applause began afresh. But now few of the company took pride in it.

  Even from the stage, even with exhausted and light-dazzled eyes, it was obvious that no man, woman or child in that adoring crowd was alive. They waved fine silk handkerchiefs at the players in rotted fists, some of them beat a tattoo on the seats in front of them, most just clapped, bone on bone.

  Calloway smiled, bowed deeply, and received their admiration with gratitude. In all his fifteen years of work in the theatre he had never found an audience so appreciative.

  Bathing in the love of their admirers, Constantia and Richard Lichfield joined hands and walked down-stage to take another bow, while the living actors retreated in horror.

  They began to yell and pray, they let out howls, they ran about like discovered adulterers in a farce. But, like the farce, there was no way out of the situation. There were bright flames tickling the roof-joists, and billows of canvas cascaded down to right and left as the flies caught fire. In front, the dead: behind, death. Smoke was beginning to thicken the air, it was impossible to see where one was going. Somebody was wearing a toga of burning canvas, and reciting screams. Someone else was wielding a fire extinguisher against the inferno. All useless: all tired business, badly managed. As the roof began to give, lethal falls of timber and girder silenced most.

  In the Gods, the audience had more or less departed. They were ambling back to their graves long before the fire department appeared, their cerements and their faces lit by the glow of the fire as they glanced over their shoulders to watch the Elysium perish. It had been a fine show, and they were happy to go home, content for another while to gossip in the dark.

  The fire burned through the night, despite the never less than gallant efforts of the fire department to put it out. By four in the morning the fight was given up as lost, and the conflagration allowed its head. It had done with the Elysium by dawn.

  In the ruins the remains of several persons were discovered, most of the bodies in states that defied easy identification. Dental records were consulted, and one corpse was found to be that of Giles Hammersmith (Administrator), another that of Ryan Xavier (Stage Manager) and, most shockingly, a third that of Diane Duvall. “Star of The Love Child burned to death,” read the tabloids. She was forgotten in a week.

  There were no survivors. Several bodies were simply never found.

  They stood at the side of the motorway, and watched the cars careering through the night. Lichfield was there of course, and Constantia, radiant as ever.

  Calloway had chosen to go with them, so had Eddie, and Tallulah. Three or four others had also joined the troupe.

  It was the first night of their freedom, and here they were on the open road, traveling players. The smoke alone had killed Eddie, but there were a few more serious injuries amongst their number, sustained in the fire. Burned bodies, broken limbs. But the audience they would play for in the future would forgive them their petty mutilations.

  “There are lives lived for love,” said Lichfield to his new company, “and lives lived for art. We happy band have chosen the latter persuasion.”

  “There was a ripple of applause amongst the actors.

  “To you, who have never died, may I say: welcome to the world!”

  Laughter: further applause.

  The lights of the cars racing north along the motorway threw the company into silhouette. They looked, to all intents and purposes, like living men and women. But then wasn’t that the trick of their craft? To imitate life so well the illusion was indistinguishable from the real thing? And their new public, awaiting them in mortuaries, churchyards and chapels of rest, would appreciate the skill more than most. Who better to applaud the sham of passion and pain they would perform than the dead, who had experienced such feelings, and thrown them off at last?

  The dead. They needed entertainment no less than the living; and they were a sorely neglected market.

  Not that this company would perform for money, they would play for the love of their art, Lichfield had made that clear from the outset. No more service would be done to Apollo.

  “Now,” he said, “which road shall we take, north or south?”

  “North,” said Eddie. “My mother’s buried in Glasgow, she died before I ever played professionally. I’d like her to see me.”

  “North it is, then,” said Lichfield. “Shall we go and find ourselves some transport?”

  He led the way towards the motorway restaurant, its neon flickering fitfully, keeping the night at light’s length. The colors were theatrically bright: scarlet, lime, cobalt, and a wash of white that splashed out of the windows on to the car park where they stood. The automatic doors hissed as a traveler emerged, bearing gifts of hamburgers and cake to the child in the back of his car.

  “Surely some friendly driver will find a niche for us,” said Lichfield.

  “All of us?” said Calloway.

  “A truck will do; beggars can’t be too demanding,” said Lichfield. “And we are beggars now: subject to the whim of our patrons.”

  “We can always steal a car,” said Tallulah.

  “No need for theft, except in extremity,” Lichfield said. “Constantia and I will go ahead and find a chauffeur.”

  He took his wife’s hand.

  “Nobody refuses beauty,” he said.

  “What do we do if anyone asks us what we’re doing here?” asked Eddie nervously. He wasn’t used to this role; he needed reassurance.

  Lichfield turned towards the company, his voice booming in the night:

  “What do you do?” he said, “Play life, of course! And smile!”

  STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

  by David Tallerman

  David Tallerman’s stories have appeared in a variety of publications, such as Flash Fiction Online, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Pseudopod. He’s also sold work to Aoife’s Kiss, the anthology Barren Worlds, and the British comic Futurequake. He is a graduate of York University, where he specialized in the literary history of witchcraft.

  “Stockholm Syndrome” follows an unnamed protagonist who has survived the beginning of the zombie apocalypse, but at the cost of his family, his home, his whole way of life. “While he’s not a bad guy, he’s not really a good guy either,” Tallerman says. “Stuck on his own with no one to talk to and not much to do, he has to confront that for maybe the first time in his life. He sees some uncomfortable similarities between himself and the walking corpses out in the streets, which has to be a harsh awakening for anybody.”

  Tallerman argues that facing a single zombie is usually just funny, but if you get a hundred of them, or a thousand, then suddenly they don’t seem so funny anymore. On the other hand: “It’s easy to forget the threat of a lone zombie,” he says. “At least un
til he’s chomping on your guts.”

  One of them, I called him Billy—he was more, what’d you call it? More animated than the rest. Mostly they just wander about. Occasionally they’ll pick things up and then get bored and put them down and go back to wandering again. They don’t make much noise. I guess they know that there’re people around, for a few days at the start they bashed at the boards up over the windows and tried to push against the doors. They can’t climb and they ain’t got much in the way of strength, so eventually they gave that up. And after that they just shambled about, or sometimes just lay there.

  It’s funny how sometimes they look like people and sometimes they don’t. The first ones, the ones who came up out of the ground or wherever they were, guess what you’d call the first generation—some of them are pretty normal looking. But the way they walk, that lumbering, slowly like they’re taking baby-steps and watching their feet all the time, that’s what makes them so different. ’Course, the other ones, the ones that the first generation got to, some of those are real messed up: bits hanging off and big messy wounds, sometimes their faces are half off. They’re just like dead people who’re up and walking about. They’re easier to deal with I guess, even though it’s pretty crazy to see them like that. But at least you know where you stand.

  So anyway, I was talking about Billy. Billy, he was first generation through and through. I don’t know what his story was, but when he turned up about two weeks ago he was wearing a suit, a real nice suit, he even still had a carnation in his buttonhole. I don’t know, maybe they was burying him when it happened. You’ve got to wonder what they’d have thought, when they was burying him and he got up like that.

  Anyway, he cut quite a figure when he walked up of Main Street in that suit. Well, not walked, y’know, I guess he shambled as much as the rest of them, but somehow he seemed kind of smarter than the others—more alert. And in that suit, he reminded me of my kid, when we buried him. That’s why I named him Billy.

  Billy made himself at home pretty quick. It didn’t take him long to figure that there were just two houses with people in, mine and the place over the road. Both of us had boarded ourselves in pretty good. Actually, I shouldn’t go taking the credit for that—when I got here, after my car came off the freeway a couple of miles up, I found this place pretty much like it is now. They’d got in through a window and it was still left open—a couple of them had got in and then I figure the other two must’ve been the ones whose house it was. Four’s about as many as you could handle, up close like that—I had my old revolver still on me. I guess I was lucky though, getting them before they got me. Guess it could have easily gone the other way.

  I hauled the bodies out the window and boarded it up again before the others figured out what’d gone on. All in all, I was real lucky—there was a rifle here with one of those telescopic sights, and a whole load of tins, all sorts of things. They was all set to wait it out, and then they just must have got careless. It can happen. It ain’t easy to keep concentrating all the time, not with things the way they are. I’ve tried not to mess with their property too much—it wouldn’t be decent. That gun and the food’s all I really need.

  But I’m getting off the subject again—this is Billy’s story, it ain’t mine. And the thing was, as soon as he’d walked into town like that, you could see that something was different. I guess I should have known that he meant trouble, but you get bored, with nothing to do all day and the radio and TV giving out nothing but static. I should have just shot him right then. At first, y’know, you take every shot you can get—but after a while you get to realizing that there’s always gonna be more of them than you got bullets. However many bullets you got there’ll always be more of them.

  So, maybe that’s what I was thinking when I didn’t take my shot on Billy. Or maybe it was because he’d looked so much like my kid when he was walking up Main Street. Or maybe it was just that I was bored and here was something happening. I suppose it don’t matter much.

  Either way, you could see that he was a bit smarter, that he wasn’t just gonna settle down to blundering about with the rest of them. First off, he walked all round the house across the road, and every so often he’d bang on a board or something, like he was testing the place. Then, when he got done with that, he came and did the same to mine—I could hear him scratching on that window where I’d got in. I got to say, I was impressed. You get sick of the stupid way they act, they’re like dumb, lazy children, and it starts to grate on your nerves after a while. It was nice to see one of them showing a bit of initiative; even if it did look like it was gonna spell trouble.

  I wasn’t too worried for myself—I checked the boards every morning, and every so often I’d hammer up another couple, more for something to do than anything, ’cause like I said they’d pretty much given up on trying to get in. But I didn’t know about the family across the road; I didn’t know whether they were taking precautions or not. The place looked okay from the outside. Sounds kind of stupid now, but I didn’t like to pry too much. I knew that there were four of them, I figured they were a husband and wife and two kids, but that was as far as I’d got. It’s a wide street, I couldn’t see much without the sight, and that just felt too much like—I don’t know—like I was some kind of pervert. Even with everything all screwed up like this, people have got to have some right to privacy, haven’t they?

  There wasn’t any way we could talk to each other, if the phones had been working then I could have just looked them up in the book I guess. Or maybe I could’ve put a sign up, but I didn’t know if they’d have any way to read it. So, I just tried to leave them alone as much as I could.

  Billy obviously got it into his head that they were a better bet, because after the first day he didn’t bother with me too much. But I kept my eye on him, ’cause he was interesting—least he was compared with the others, and because they were everywhere, as far as you could see, they were about all there was to look at. It was the same for them, they were curious, as much as they could be—who was this, walking around like he had some kind of an agenda or something?

  In the meanwhile, Billy had taken a project on himself—the second day after he walked into town, he picked himself out a particular window, round on the right-hand side of the family’s house, just after where the porch ended. Even with the scope, I could barely make him out there. There was the porch, and a big old tree in the way, and I could just about see him moving around but that was it. ’Course, I could guess what he’d be up to—he must have decided that there was a weak spot, he thought maybe if he kept going at it he’d be able to get in sooner or later. I didn’t give much for his chances. There was no way they wouldn’t have heard him there, and if they thought there was any chance of him getting through they’d be hammering up two new boards for every one he managed to get off—least, that was what I’d of been doing.

  Probably he’d get bored after a day or two, and go to sitting and wandering like the rest of them. That thought made me kind of sad, somehow. I mean God knows it wasn’t like I wanted him to succeed or nothing—I just didn’t want to have to watch him give up either. Shit, I don’t know, maybe it was like I wanted to see him make something of himself; I didn’t want him to wind up like my Billy did. Yeah, it sounds pretty stupid, I know that. I guess I don’t know what I was thinking—just seemed like it would of been a shame is all.

  When I got up the next day, he was still at it. But it wasn’t just that—he’d gathered himself an audience as well. A lot of the others—maybe there was a hundred, maybe even more—had gathered about on the lawn. Some of them were standing but a lot were just sitting around, like he was putting on a performance for them or something. I still couldn’t make out exactly what Billy himself was up to. It got to be frustrating—what could he be doing to get all of their attentions like that? After a while I started hunting around for a better view, and then I remembered there was a ladder to the attic, and sure enough once I got up there, there was a big window looking
out over the street. The room had been converted, looked like it was a kid’s room but then the kid had left and the parents hadn’t wanted to change it any.

  The window was so big that I could sit up on the ledge. And from there, sure enough, I could see Billy pretty clear. It was quite a shock. I ain’t ever seen one of them go at anything the way he was at those planks—tearing at them with his hands, over and over. His fingers were all bloody; with the sight I reckoned I could make out bits of bone where he’d torn the ends clean off. He was a mess, but that wasn’t slowing him any—I guess he wasn’t even feeling it. He just kept tearing at the planks, not paying any attention to anything else. He’d got a couple down already; they were lying on the grass next to him. I didn’t figure it was gonna do him any good though—the family would put up more on the inside, and if he started on those they’d just have to put up some more. Even if he was a bit stronger and a bit smarter than the rest, he still wasn’t about to keep up.

  Still, the way he was going at it, it was hard to take your eyes off. Apart from a break at lunchtime I watched Billy all day, ’til it started to get too dark. The last I saw, he was about halfway there on the outside planks. He was still at it when I left him—I suppose the dark didn’t bother him too much.

  I got up early the next day, and shifted all my supplies up into the attic room, along with a gas stove I’d found. It was like he’d become the center of my life all of a sudden—I remember thinking how I was just like those other dumb bastards who were sitting out there on the lawn with him, watching him like he was the star attraction in a freak show.

  Only, when I got up to my perch on the sill, they weren’t sitting anymore. They were in a big mass now, with Billy right there in the center in that nice suit of his, and every single one of them was after getting into that window. Maybe twenty of them were clawing at the planks, all together, and I could tell straight away that whatever the family was doing on the inside there wasn’t anything that could stop that—the sheer weight of all those bodies all together.