The Living Dead

by John Joseph Adams

  Norman Partridge is the author of the novels Saguaro Riptide, The Ten Ounce Siesta, Slippin’ into Darkness, Wildest Dreams, and Dark Harvest, which was named one of the 100 Best Books of 2006 by Publishers Weekly. He also wrote a media-tie in novel The Crow: Wicked Prayer, which was later adapted into the fourth Crow film.

  Partridge’s short fiction—which has appeared in Amazing Stories and Cemetery Dance and in a number of anthologies, such as Dark Voices 6, Love in Vein, and Retro Pulp Tales—has been collected in three volumes: Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales, Bad Intentions, and The Man with the Barbed-Wire Fists.

  In the introduction to the latter collection, Partridge describes in detail his first experience seeing Night of the Living Dead at the local drive-in. “The drive-in in my hometown had not one… not two… but three cemeteries as neighbors,” Partridge says. “Realizing that, a nasty little idea began to nibble at the corners of my imagination. I couldn’t help but wonder what would happen if the dead folks in those cemeteries clawed their way out of their graves and came shuffling across the road to pay us a little visit.”

  Which sounds to me like the origin of many zombie tales if not this one in particular.

  The beach was deserted.

  Somehow, they knew enough to stay out of the sun.

  Nathan Grimes rested his elbows on the balcony and peered through his binoculars. As he adjusted the focus knob, the smooth, feminine mounds that bordered the crescent-shaped beach became nets of purslane and morning glory, and the green blur that lay beyond sharpened to a crazy quilt of distinct colors—emerald, charcoal, glimpses of scarlet—a dark panorama of manchineel trees, sea grapes, and coconut palms.

  Nathan scanned the shadows until he found the golden-bronze color of her skin. Naked, just out of reach of the sun’s rays, she leaned against the gentle curve of a coconut palm, curling a strand of singed blonde hair around the single finger that remained on her left hand. Her fingertip was red—with nail polish, not blood—and she thrust it into her mouth and licked both finger and hair, finally releasing a spit curl that fought the humid Caribbean breeze for a moment and then drooped in defeat.

  Kara North, Miss December.

  Nathan remembered meeting Kara at the New Orleans Mansion the previous August. She’d posed in front of a bountifully trimmed Christmas tree for Teddy Ching’s centerfold shot, and Nathan—fresh off a plane from the Los Angeles offices of Grimesgirl magazine—had walked in on the proceedings, joking that the holiday decorations made him feel like he’d done a Rip Van Winkle in the friendly skies.

  Nathan smiled at the memory. There were several elegantly wrapped packages under the tree that August day, but each one was empty, just a prop for Teddy’s photo shoot. Kara had discovered that sad fact almost immediately, and they’d all had a good laugh about her mercenary attitude while Teddy shot her with a little red Santa cap on her head and sassy red stockings on her feet and nothing but golden-bronze flesh in between.

  Empty boxes. Nathan shook his head. He’d seen the hunger in Kara’s eyes when the shoot was over. A quick study, that one. Right off she’d known that he alone could fill those boxes in a finger-snap.

  And now she knew enough to stay out of the sun. They all did. Nathan had been watching them for two days, ever since the morning after the accident. He wasn’t worried about them breaking into the house, for his Caribbean sanctuary was a Moorish palace surrounded by high, broken-bottle-encrusted walls that were intended to fend off everyone from prying paparazzi to anti-porn assassins. No, the thing that worried him about the dead Grimesgirls was that they didn’t act at all like the zombies he’d seen on television.

  Most of those miserable gut-buckets had crawled out of the grave and weren’t very mobile. In fact, Nathan couldn’t remember seeing any zombies on the tube that bore much of a resemblance to their living brethren, but that could simply be chalked up to the journalistic penchant for photographing the most grotesque members of any enemy group. It was an old trick. Just as they’d focused attention on the most outrageous members of the SDS and the Black Panthers in order to turn viewers against those groups way back when in the sixties, the media would now focus on the most bizarre specimens of this current uprising.

  Uprising. It was an odd word to choose—once such a hopeful word for Nathan’s generation—but it seemed somehow appropriate, now stirring images not of demonstration but of reanimation. Cemeteries pitted with open graves, shrouds blowing across empty boulevards… midnight glimpses of a shadow army driven by an insatiable hunger for human flesh.

  Nathan wondered what the network anchors would make of Kara North. All theories about media manipulation aside, he doubted that there were many other suntanned zombies besides last year’s Miss December. Stateside, the victims of an accident such as the one that had occurred on Grimes Island would have been devoured by predator zombies before reanimation could occur. That hadn’t happened here, because there weren’t any predator zombies on the island when Kara and the others had perished. So something different had happened here, maybe something that hadn’t happened before, anywhere.

  Kara raised her good hand in what might have been a feeble wave.

  “Freaks,” Nathan whispered, unable to fight off his signature wry smile. “Zombie freaks.” He set down the binoculars—an expensive German product, for Nathan Grimes demanded the best in everything—and picked up his pistol, a Heckler & Koch P7M13, also German, also expensive.

  The sun inched lower in the sky. The waves became silver mirrors, glinting in Nathan’s eyes. He put on sunglasses and the glare flattened to a soft pearly glow. As the horizon melted electric blue and the shadows thickened beneath the coconut palms, Kara North, Miss December, shambled toward the glass-encrusted walls of Nathan’s beachfront palace. Again, she curled a lock of blonde hair around her finger. Again, she sucked the burned strands wet.

  Strange that she could focus on her hair and ignore her mutilated hand, Nathan thought as he loaded the Heckler. His gut told him that her behavior was more than simple instinct, and he wondered just how far her intelligence extended. Did she know that she was dead? Was she capable of posing such a question?

  Could she think?

  The curl drooped, uncoiled, and again Kara went to sucking it. Nathan remembered a Christmas that had come in August complete with the holiday smells of hot buttered rum and Monterey pine, the sounds of the air-conditioner running on high cool and seasoned oak crackling in the fireplace. He recalled Kara’s dreams and the way she kissed and her red nails slashing through wrapping paper as she opened gifts he’d originally intended for Ronnie. And then, when he was fully ready to surrender to his memories, the shifting July winds brushed back across Grimes Island, carrying the very real stink of scorched metal and charred rubber.

  The scent of destruction.

  Nathan covered his nose and raised the pistol.

  Two days ago, Nathan had the situation under control. Certainly, considering the circumstances, the arrangements for evacuating the Grimesgirls from the United States had been maddening. Certainly, such arrangements would have been completely impossible if Nathan hadn’t had the luxury of satellite communications, but such perks went hand in hand with network ownership.

  Two days ago, he was, in short, a completely satisfied man. After all, the foresight which some had dubbed paranoia was paying off, and his contingency plan to end all contingency plans was taking shape: he had his own island fortress, adequate provisions, and a plan to sit out the current difficulties in the company of twelve beautiful centerfold models.

  So, two days ago, he didn’t worry as the hands of his Rolex crossed past the appointed hour of the Grimesgirls’ arrival, for the dangerous part of the evacuation operation had already been carried out with military precision. In rapid succession, a trio of Bell JetRanger choppers had touched down on the roof of the New Orleans Mansion, and the Grimesgirls had been transported without incident to a suburban airfield where a private security force was guarding Nathan’s Gulfstrea
m IV. Needless to say, takeoff had been immediate.

  Of course, the operation was costly, but Nathan considered it a wise investment. He expected that there would be a real shortage of attractive female flesh by the time the government got things under control. The public, as always, would have an immediate need for his services, and he figured that the people he laughingly referred to as his “readers” wouldn’t mind looking at last season’s models, at least until the competition got into gear.

  If there was any competition left. Nathan got himself a tequila—half listening for the Gulfstream, half watching the latest parade of gut-buckets on CNN—and soon he was imagining his chief competitors as walking corpses, one with gold chains circling his broken neck and an expensive toupee covering the gnaw marks on his skull, the other with his trademark pipe jammed between rotted lips, gasping, unable to fill his lungs with enough oxygen to kindle a blaze in the tar-stained brier.

  Nathan grinned, certain that he’d never suffer such a humiliating end. He was a survivor. He had plans. And he would get started on them right now, while he waited.

  He found a yellow legal pad and started brainstorming titles. grimesgirls: our island year. No, too much fun in that one. grimesgirls: from hell to paradise. Better. He’d have to search for the right tone to stifle those who would accuse him of exploitation. And Teddy Ching’s pictures would have to match. Hopefully, Teddy had shot lots of nice stuff during the evacuation—decaying faces mashed against the windows of the Mansion, the French Quarter streets clogged with zombies—shots that stank of danger. Pictures like that would make a perfect contrast to the spreads they’d do on the island.

  grimesgirls: national treasures saved. Nathan stared at what he’d written and smiled. Patriotic. Proud. Words as pretty as dollar signs.

  Wind from the open door caught the paper, and Nathan trapped it against the table. For the first time he noticed the darkness, the suffocating gray shroud that had come long before sunset. The plane was horribly late. He’d been so caught up in planning the magazine that he’d lost track of time. Jesus. The Gulfstream could be trapped inside the storm, fighting it, low on fuel….

  The storm rustled over the coconut palms with a sound like a giant broom sweeping the island clean. Rainwater guttered off the tile roof. It was only five o’clock, but the darkness seemed impenetrable. Nathan sent Buck and Pablo to the landing strip armed with flares. He put on a coat and paced on the balcony of his suite until the thrashing sounds of the approaching Gulfstream drove him inside. He stared into the darkness, imagining that it was as thick as pudding, and he was truly startled when the explosion bloomed in the distance. Ronnie (Miss October three years past) tried to embrace him, but he pushed her away and rushed from the room. It was much later, after the rain had diminished to a drizzling mist, that he stepped outside and smelled the wreck for the first time.

  Buck and Pablo didn’t return. The night passed, and then the morning. Nathan didn’t go looking for the boys. He was afraid that they might be looking for him. He hid his pistol and the keys to his Jeep, and he slapped Ronnie when she called him a coward. After that she was quiet, and when she’d been quiet for a very long time he played at being magnanimous. He opened the wall safe and left her alone with a peace offering.

  Downstairs, he hid the yellow legal pad in a desk drawer that he rarely opened. He closed the drawer carefully, slowly, without a sound.

  That was how it began, two days ago, on Grimes Island. Since then, the living had moved quietly, listening for the footsteps of the dead.

  The Heckler was warm, and as Nathan reloaded it he wished that his talents as a marksman were worthy of such a fine weapon. He set the pistol on his dresser and went downstairs, fighting the memory of the purple-gray mess that Kara North’s forehead had become when one of his shots—the fifth or the sixth—finally found the mark.

  That wasn’t the way he wanted to remember her. He wanted to remember Miss December. No gunshots, only Teddy’s camera clicking. No blood, only a red Santa cap. Sassy red socks. And nothing but golden-bronze flesh in between.

  Nathan took a bottle of Cuervo Gold from beneath the bar. When it came to tequila he preferred Chinaco, but he’d finished the last bottle on the night of the crash and now the cheaper brand would have to do.

  “I saw what you did.” Ronnie confronted him the way a paperback detective would, sliding the Heckler across the mahogany bar, marring the wood with a long, ugly scratch. “You should have asked Kara in for a drink, made it a little easier on the poor girl. That was a damn rude way to say goodbye, Nate.”

  Nathan filled a glass with ice, refusing to meet Ronnie’s patented withering stare, but that didn’t stop her words. “She looked so cute, too, worshiping you from a distance with those big blue eyes of hers. Did you see the way she tried to curl her hair?” Ronnie clicked her tongue against her teeth. “It’s a shame what a little humidity can do to a really nice coiffure.”

  Nathan said nothing, slicing a lime now, and Ronnie giggled. “Strong and silent, huh? C’mon, Nate, you’re the one who blew off the top of her head. Tell me how it felt.”

  Nathan stared at the tip of Ronnie’s nose, avoiding her eyes Once she’d been an autumnal vision with hair the color of fallen leaves. Miss October. She’d had the look of practiced ease, skin the color of brandy, and large chocolate eyes that made every man in America long for a cold night. But Nathan had learned all too well the October power of those eyes, the way they could chill a man with a single frosty glance.

  He pocketed the Heckler. He’d have to be more careful about leaving the gun where she could get at it. Coke freaks could get crazy. He poured Cuervo Gold into his glass and then drank, pretending that the only thing bothering him was the quality of the tequila. Then he risked a quick glance at her eyes, still chocolate-brown but now sticky with a yellow sheen that even Teddy Ching couldn’t airbrush away.

  Ronnie picked up a cocktail napkin and shredded its corners. “Why her? Why’d you shoot Kara and not the others?”

  “She was the first one that came into range.” Nathan swirled his drink with a swizzle stick shaped like the cartoon Grimesgirl that ran on the last page of every issue. “It was weird. When I looked into Kara’s eyes, I had the feeling that she was relieved to see me. Relieved! Then I raised the gun, and it was as if she suddenly realized….”

  Ronnie tore the napkin in half, then quarters. “They don’t realize, Nate. They don’t think.”

  “They’re not like those things on TV, Ronnie. You noticed the way she looked at me. Christ, she actually waved at me today. I’m not saying that they’re geniuses, but there’s something there… something I don’t like.”

  Bits of purple paper dotted the mahogany bar. Ronnie fingered them one by one, lazily reassembling the napkin. Nathan sensed her disapproval. He knew that she wanted him to strap on his pistol and go gunning for the Grimesgirls as if he were Lee Van Cleef in some outré spaghetti western.

  “Look, Ronnie, it’s not like they’re acting normal, beating down our walls like the things on TV do. We just have to be a little careful, is all. There are eleven of them now, and sooner or later they’ll all wander close to the gate the same way that Kara did. Then I can nail them with no problem. And then we can go out again… it’ll be safe.”

  “Don’t be so sure.” He made the mistake of sighing and her voice rose angrily. “They didn’t fly in by themselves, you know. There was a pilot, a copilot… maybe even a few guards. And Teddy. That’s at least five or six more people.” Now it was her turn to sigh. “Not to mention Buck and Pablo.”

  “You might be right. But who knows, the others might be so crippled up that they can’t get over to this side of the island fast, or at all. Or they could have been incinerated in the explosion. Maybe that’s what happened to Buck and Pablo.” Nathan looked at her, not wanting to say that the boys might have been someone’s dinner, and she pursed her lips, which was a hard thing for her to do because they were full and pouty.

  �
�Hell, maybe the boys got away,” he said, realizing that he was grasping at straws. “Took a boat or something. I can’t see the docks from here, so I can’t be sure. It could be that they reasoned with the girls, tricked them somehow—”

  “Are you really saying that zombies can think? That’s crazy! If they’re dead, they’re hungry. That’s it—that’s what they say on TV. And Kara North sucking a little spit curl doesn’t convince me otherwise.”

  Nathan cut another slice of lime and sucked it, appreciating the sharp tang. It was the last lime on the island, and he was determined to enjoy it. “Maybe the whole thing has something to do with the crash,” he said, taking another tack. “I can’t figure it. I saw the explosion, but all the girls seem to be in pretty good shape. Kara was missing a few fingers and her hair was singed, and a few of the others are kind of wracked up, but none of them is badly burned, like you’d expect.”

  “We could drive out to the plane and see what happened for ourselves,” Ronnie offered. “They can’t catch us in the Jeep.” She touched his hand, lightly, tentatively. “We might be able to salvage some stuff from the wreck. Someone might have had a rifle, maybe even one with a scope, and that would be a much better weapon than your pistol.”

  Nathan considered her argument, then jerked his hand away as soon as he realized what lay behind it. “Who was bringing it in for you? C’mon, Ronnie… you know what I’m talking about. Who was your mule this trip?”

  She tried to look hurt. Did a good job of it. “You think you’re quite a detective, don’t you? Well, round up the usual suspects. Ronnie’s a coke freak waiting on a mule. Buck and Pablo pulled a Houdini, or maybe they had a powwow with Kara and her pals, the world’s first intellectual gut-buckets. C’mon, Nate, put it together for me, but do it before those things out there turn nasty and come after us.” She grabbed the remnants of the napkin and flung purple confetti at his face. “Wake up, boss. The party’s over. Me, you’ve got figured, but them… they’re dead, and they’re hungry, and that’s that.”