The Living Dead

by John Joseph Adams

  She let the words hang there for a minute. Then she rose and walked to the stairs, gracefully, like brandy pouring from a bottle. With fluid elegance, he thought wryly. He watched her calves flex, enjoyed the way she swung her ass for him. Eagerly, he ran his thumb over the little plastic breasts on the cartoon-inspired swizzle stick.

  “Me, you’ve got figured.” She did the measured over-the-shoulder glance that she’d used three years ago in her Grimesgirl centerfold, then turned and ran long fingers over her naked breasts, along her narrow hips. Nathan’s thumb traveled over the cute swizzle-stick ass; he pressed down without realizing it, and the plastic snapped in two.

  Ronnie laughed, climbing the stairs, not looking back.

  After he’d come, Nathan kicked off the satin sheets and opened the wall safe. He cut three lines on a vanity mirror and presented them to Ronnie, then hurried downstairs because he hated the sound of her snorting. In the kitchen, he popped open a Pepsi and took a box of Banquet fried chicken out of the freezer. He chose two breasts and three thighs, placed them on a sheet of Reynolds Wrap, and fired the oven.

  While he waited for the chicken, he turned on the television and fiddled with the satellite controls until he found something besides snow. Immediately, he recognized the Capitol dome in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, just below the CNN logo. It was a favorite camera setup of Washington correspondents, but there was no reporter standing in frame. There wasn’t a voiceover, either.

  A gut-bucket in a hospital gown staggered into view, then lurched away from the light. Another followed, this one naked, fleshless. Nathan watched, fascinated. It was only a matter of time before one of the zombies knocked over the camera or smashed the lights. Why didn’t the network cut away? He couldn’t figure it out.

  Unless he’d tuned in some kind of study. Unless the camera had been set up to record the zombies. Bolted down. Protected. That kind of thing.

  But to send it out on the satellite? It didn’t make any sense. Then Nathan remembered that all satellite broadcasts weren’t intended for public consumption. He might be picking up a direct feed to CNN instead of a broadcast from CNN. In the past he’d enjoyed searching for just such feeds with his satellite dish—on a location to network feed, you could pick up all the nasty remarks that reporters made about the government gobbledygook they fed to the American public, and you could find out what really went on during the commercial breaks at any number of live events.

  Nathan stared at the CNN logo superimposed in the corner of the screen. Was that added at the network, or would a technician in a mobile unit add it from location? He wished he knew enough about the technical end of broadcasting to decide. He switched channels, searching for another broadcast. When he was sure he’d exhausted all possibilities, he tried to return to the CNN transmission.

  He couldn’t find it.

  It wasn’t there anymore.

  A blank hiss filled the room. Nathan hit the mute button on the remote control. A few minutes passed before he noticed the burning chicken, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it, didn’t want to look at it. Images coiled like angry snakes in his mind, ready to strike, ready to poison him. The explosion, the fleshless zombie on TV, Kara North’s mutilated hand.

  The snakes struck, and Nathan lurched to the sink and vomited Pepsi.

  First he heard her shouts, and he was up off the couch and almost to the stairs before he remembered that he’d left the gun on the kitchen sink. He pivoted too quickly at the foot of the stairway, lurched against the wall, and then ran to the gun, Ronnie’s insistent cries still filling his ears.

  He returned to the staircase just as she began her descent. “He was calling me,” she said, her eyes wild, unfocused. “Outside. I heard him. I went out onto the balcony but I couldn’t see…. But I talked to him, and he answered me! Christ, we’ve got to let him in!”

  “You mean someone’s alive out there?”

  Ronnie nodded, naked, shivering, her hair a sweaty tangle. Nathan didn’t like what he saw any better than what he’d heard. Maybe she was just strung out. Maybe she’d been dreaming. Sure.

  One of the gut-buckets had pounded on the gate and she’d imagined the rest.

  Or maybe someone had indeed survived the crash.

  “We’re not opening up until I check things out,” Nathan said. “Just stay here. Don’t move.” He squeezed her shoulders to reinforce the order.

  Upstairs, he punched several buttons on the bedroom wall before stepping onto the balcony. Deadwhite light spilled across the compound, glittering eerily over the glass-encrusted walls and illuminating the beach. A man wearing a blue uniform stood near the gate. Either the pilot or the copilot. His complexion was sallow in the artificial light, and his chin was bruised a deep purple. He stared up at Nathan and his brow creased, as if he hadn’t expected to see Nathan at all.

  The pilot’s mouth opened.

  In the distance, a wave washed over the beach.

  “Ronnie… I’ve come to see… Ronnie.”

  “Jesus!” Nathan lowered the Heckler. “What happened out there? The explosion… how did you—”

  “Ronnie… Ronnie… I’ve come to see… Ron… neeeee. I’ve come….”

  The muscles in Nathan’s forearms quivered in revulsion. He forced himself to raise the Heckler and aim.

  He fired. Missed.

  Muddy gray eyes stared into the frosty light. Wide, frantic. The thing waved its hands, wildly signaling Nathan to stop. He fired again, but the shot whizzed over the zombie’s shoulder. Hurriedly, it backed off, ripping at its coat and the sweat-stained shirt beneath.

  Nathan’s third shot clipped the thing’s ear just as it ripped open its shirt.

  “I’m expected,” it screeched. “Expected and I’ve come to see….”

  Nathan swore, stunned by the sight of a half-dozen plastic bags filled with cocaine secured to the zombie’s chest with strips of medical tape.

  Ronnie’s mule. Two days dead and still trying to complete its deal.

  The thing moved forward. It was smiling now, sure that Nathan finally understood.

  Nathan took aim—Nathan, stop!—but black lights exploded in his head before he could squeeze off another shot. “You’re crazy, Nathan!” He hit the balcony floor, cutting his left eyebrow on the uneven tile, and his mind had barely processed that information and recognized Ronnie’s voice when he realized that the Heckler was being pried from his fingers. “He’s alive, and you tried to kill him!” He tried to rise and this time he glimpsed the heavy German binoculars arcing towards him.

  He had just managed to close his eyes when the binoculars smashed into his bloody brow.

  Screaming. God, she was screaming.

  She must have realized the truth.

  Nathan struggled to his feet just as Ronnie’s cries were punctuated by gunshots. He leaned against the balcony and tried to focus on what was happening on the beach.

  But they weren’t on the beach. The big gate stood open, and the dead pilot was inside the compound, backing Ronnie across a patch of stunted grass. She fired the Heckler and cocaine puffed from one of the packets taped to the thing’s chest. She got off three more shots that destroyed the zombie’s left shoulder. Its left arm came loose, slithered through its shirtsleeve, and dropped silently to the grass. The thing stared down at its severed limb, confused by the sudden amputation.

  Ronnie retreated under the jutting balcony.

  The zombie followed her into the house.

  Nathan stumbled through the bedroom doorway. Ronnie wasn’t screaming anymore. That sound had been replaced by subtler but no less horrifying noises: the Heckler clicking, empty, the zombie whispering Ronnie’s name. Dizzily, Nathan reached the top of the stairway just as Ronnie mounted the first stair. He tried to grab her but the pilot got hold of her first and tugged her away.

  It stared at her for a moment, still pleading, as if it only wanted her to take delivery, but as it pulled her closer its expression changed
.

  Its nostrils flared.

  It pushed her down onto the stairs and held her there.

  Its mouth widened, but no words were left there.

  Its eyes were wild, suddenly gleaming.

  Hungry.

  Dry teeth clamped Ronnie’s left breast. She squealed and pulled away, but the thing punched its fingers through her left thigh, holding her down. An urge had been triggered, and suddenly the gut-bucket was insatiable. Its teeth ripped Ronnie’s flesh; it swallowed without chewing; it was a shark in the grip of a feeding frenzy.

  Nathan backed away, staring at the zombie, glancing at the empty pistol on the hallway floor. Another gut-bucket shambled forward from the shadowy bar. This one had something in its hand, a machete, and Nathan was suddenly glad that he was going to die because he didn’t think he could bear living in a world where you couldn’t tell the living from the dead, where fucking corpses could talk, could remember, could fool you right up to the moment when they started to bite and tear and swallow….

  The rusty machete cleaved the pilot’s head from his shoulders; the dead thing collapsed on top of Ronnie.

  The holder of the machete stared up at him, and Nathan froze like a deer trapped by a pair of headlights.

  “Christ, boss, don’t worry. I’m alive,” Buck Taylor said, and then he went to close the gate.

  Buck said he couldn’t eat or drink so soon after cleaning up the remains of Ronnie and the gut-bucket pilot. Instead, he talked. Nathan tried not to drink too much Cuervo Gold, tried to listen, but his thoughts turned inexorably to the puzzle of the pilot’s strange behavior.

  “So the storm was coming down in buckets, splattering every damn inch of soil. Pablo was drinking coffee, and I’d had so much that I just had to take a piss, but it was really coming down—”

  The rusty machete lay before Buck on the oak tabletop; his fingers danced over the blade as he spoke. He had once been a center for the Raiders—Good Old Number 66 had never missed a game in seven seasons of play—but Nathan couldn’t imagine that he’d ever looked this bad, not even after the most desperate contest imaginable. His bald pate was knotted with bruises, and every time he touched them he looked wistful, like he was wishing he’d had a helmet.

  ”—so I hacked my way into the forest and got under a tree, that kind with leaves like big pancakes. And I started to piss. And just then I heard the engines. Holy Christ, I got zipped up quick and—”

  The twin sixes on Buck’s football jersey were smeared with slimy black stains. There was a primitive splint on his left arm, held in place with strips torn from a silver-and-black bandana. The massive biceps swelling between the damp strips of wood was an ugly color much worse than the blue-green of a natural bruise. It reminded Nathan of rotten cantaloupe, a sickly gray color. And the smell coming from the other side of the table was—

  ”—pissed all over my leg. I ain’t ashamed to say it, because the left wing tore off just then and I thought I was dead for sure, with the plane heading straight for me. So I dived—”

  Quickly. The pilot had been able to think quickly. He’d ripped off his shirt to show Nathan the cocaine. He’d gotten Ronnie to open the gate. And even though he’d lost an arm to Ronnie’s gunfire, he’d acted as if he believed that he was still alive until he got close to her, the first live human he’d encountered since reanimating. That confrontation had triggered his horrible—

  ”—second thoughts, but there wasn’t time. The broken wing flipped around in midair like a piece of balsa wood. No telling where it was gonna end up. Then the stream slammed sideways into a big stand of palm trees that bounced it right back onto the landing strip. It rolled and the other wing twisted off. And the wing that was still in the air—”

  Came down on the machete. Buck’s fingers did. Nathan watched them, and he slid away from the table, eased away from Number 66.

  “I could see Pablo in the van. Even through the storm. I saw him trying to find a place to set his coffee. And then the wing hit the van, and the damn thing just exploded.”

  So the van had exploded. That was why the zombies hadn’t been burned. The plane hadn’t even caught fire—its fuel tanks were probably near empty after fighting the storm. But the van had had a full tank.

  “I’m ashamed about that, but there was really nothing I could do. The fire was so intense. Even the zombies didn’t go near it, and by the time it burned itself out there wasn’t anything left of the van or Pablo.”

  Nathan’s fingers closed around the pistol. He remembered the pilot ripping open his shirt. He remembered the pilot grabbing Ronnie, the momentary confusion in his muddy eyes, the excited gleam as he surrendered to the feeding frenzy. Buck was in control now, surely he was. But what would happen when he came close to his boss?

  Nathan raised the Heckler. Buck grinned, like he didn’t quite understand. Nathan looked at Buck’s wounds, at the untouched glass of beer in front of him. Good Old Number 66 wasn’t drinking, and he hadn’t wanted any fried chicken. Maybe he didn’t want fried chicken anymore. Maybe he didn’t realize that yet, just like he didn’t remember what had killed him.

  “Buck, I want you to go back outside, back out with them,” Nathan said, speaking as he would speak to a child. “You see, risking temptation is the dangerous part. It’ll make you lose what’s left of your mind.”

  “Boss, are you okay? Maybe you should get some sleep, stop thinking about Ronnie for a while. Maybe you should—”

  Oh, they were smart. Getting smarter every minute. “You can’t fool me, Buck. You can fool yourself, but you can’t fool me.”

  Nathan aimed and Buck jolted backward, out of his chair, scrambling now. The first bullet exploded his left biceps, shattering the makeshift splint as it exited, but Buck didn’t slow because football instincts die hard. He sprang to his feet, tucked his head, and charged across the kitchen.

  His eyes shone with vitality, but Nathan was certain that it was the vitality of death, not life. Buck launched himself in a flying tackle and together they crashed to the floor. Nathan raised the Heckler, and Buck couldn’t fight him off because the wound in his left arm was too severe, so he fought back the only way he could. He bit Nathan’s shoulder, set his teeth, and tore.

  Nathan screamed. White blotches of pain danced before his eyes.

  Nathan’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  A bullet shattered the skull of Good Old Number 66.

  Nathan saw it this way:

  The crash had killed them instantly. All of them. And when they opened their eyes they found themselves on Grimes Island, just where they were supposed to be, and they imagined themselves survivors. They wandered through the lush forest, across the coral beaches, finding nothing to tempt them, nothing to trigger the horrible hunger.

  Trapped in a transition period between death and rebirth they retained different levels of intelligence but were limited by overwhelming instincts. Instinctively, they knew enough to stay out of the sun. It was a simple matter of self-preservation, for the tropical sun could speed their decay. The instinct to devour the living was strong in them as well, but only when they were exposed to temptation. Nathan was sure of that after his experiences with Buck and the pilot. He was also certain that as long as temptation was absent up to the very point that the feeding frenzy took control, the dead of Grimes Island could still function at a level that separated them from the gut-buckets. Oh, they functioned at different sub-levels as he’d seen with Kara North, the pilot, and Buck, but in some cases, they functioned just as well as the living.

  Perhaps something in human flesh, once devoured, triggered the change in behavior. Maybe something in the blood. Or perhaps it was the very act of cannibalism. Nathan didn’t know the cause, didn’t much care.

  His wounded shoulder was scarlet-purple and swollen. Five days had passed since Buck had attacked him, and he couldn’t decide if the bite was worse or better. Just to be safe, he’d injected himself with antibiotics, but he didn’t know if his first aid mad
e the slightest difference.

  He didn’t know if he was alive, or dead, or somewhere in between.

  To clarify his thoughts, he noted his symptoms on the legal pad he’d hidden in his desk after the plane crash. Many were perplexing. He wished that he could consult with a scientist or a doctor, but his first attempt at stateside communications had proved fruitless, and soon he was afraid to communicate with anyone. He didn’t relish the idea of ending up as a science project in some lab, and he didn’t want an extermination squad invading Grimes Island, either.

  The thing that bothered him most was that his heart was still beating. He couldn’t understand how that was possible until he remembered that Buck’s heart had been beating when he’d shot him—Nathan had felt it pounding against his own chest as they wrestled on the floor—and he was certain that Buck had been dead. Looking at his wounded shoulder, remembering the fire in Buck’s eyes when he’d attacked, Nathan was positive of that. There were other symptoms, as well.

  He couldn’t eat. Every evening he cooked some fried chicken, even though the smell made him gag and the oily feel of it made him shiver. Last night he’d forced himself to eat two breasts and a thigh, and he’d spent the next five hours coiled in a cramped ball on the kitchen floor before finally surrendering to the urge to vomit. And he couldn’t keep down Pepsi or Jose Cuervo either. The Cuervo Gold was especially bad; it burned his throat and made him miserable for hours. He did suck ice cubes, but only to keep his throat comfortable. And he’d started snorting the cocaine that Ronnie’s mule had brought in, but only because he was afraid to sleep.

  Cocaine. Maybe that was the problem. They said that cocaine killed the appetite, didn’t they? And he’d started using the stuff at about the same time that he’d stopped eating. But five days without food… God, that was a long time. So it had to be more than just the cocaine. Didn’t it?

  He closed his eyes and thought about hunger, about food. He tried to picture the most appetizing banquet imaginable.