Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the deputy followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet, flame-wrapped, streaked through the night in the direction of the graveyard.
“I panicked a little,” Jebidiah said. “I should have been more resolute. Now he’s escaped.”
“I never even got off a shot,” the deputy said. “God, but you’re fast. What a draw.”
“Look, you stay here if you like. I’m going after him. But I tell you now, the circle of power has played out.”
The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out and there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.
“What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first place?”
“Evil,” Jebidiah said. “When he got close, the pages broke into flames. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as with most of God’s blessings, it doesn’t last long.”
“I stay here, you’d have to put down more pages.”
“I’ll be taking the bible with me. I might need it.”
“Then I guess I’ll be sticking.”
* * *
They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They could smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as cool and silent as the graves on the hill.
Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah could see that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that dipped down deeper into the ground.
Jebidiah paused there. “He’s made this old grave his den. Dug it out and dug deeper.”
“How do you know?” the deputy asked.
“Experience… And it smells of smoke and burned skin. He crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little.”
Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest streak of pink on the horizon. “He’s running out of daylight, and soon he’ll be out of moon. For a while.”
“He damn sure surprised me. Why don’t we let him hide? You could come back when the moon isn’t full, or even half full. Back in the daylight, get him then.”
“I’m here now. And it’s my job.”
“That’s one hell of a job you got, mister.”
“I’m going to climb down for a better look.”
“Help yourself.”
Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the grave, moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down on his knees and stuck the match and his head into the opening.
“Very large,” he said, pulling his head out. “I can smell him. I’m going to have to go in.”
“What about me?”
“You keep guard at the lip of the grave,” Jebidiah said, standing. “He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out behind you for all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we speak.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Jebidiah dropped the now dead match on the ground. “I will tell you this. I can’t guarantee success. I lose, he’ll come for you, you can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight as William Tell’s arrows.”
“I’m not really that good a shot.”
“I’m sorry,” Jebidiah said, and struck another match along the length of his pants seam, then with his free hand, drew one of his revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the match in the hole and looked around. When the match was near done, he blew it out.
“Ain’t you gonna need some light?” the deputy said. “A match ain’t nothin’.”
“I’ll have it.” Jebidiah removed the remains of the bible from his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in his coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the burrow. The moment it entered the hole, it flamed.
“Ain’t your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?” the deputy asked.
“As long as I hold it or it’s on my person, it won’t harm me. But the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it’ll blaze. I got to hurry, boy.”
With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.
In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to push the bible pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light would be brief. It would burn longer than writing paper, but still, it would not last long.
After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He could hear the sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which in fact, greased his path as he slid along on his elbows until he could stand inside the higher cavern and look about. The last flames of the bible burned itself out with a puff of blue light and a sound like an old man breathing his last.
Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He could hear the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up the night sky, let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.
Jebidiah’s ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against the cave floor. Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn’t think it was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to the floor, and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace. The hair on the back of Jebidiah’s neck bristled like porcupine quills. He felt his flesh bump up and crawl. The air became stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh. Jebidiah’s knees trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket, produced a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.
At that very moment, the thing stood up and was brightly lit in the glow of the match, the bees circling its skin-stripped skull. It snarled and darted forward. Jebidiah felt its rotten claws on his shirt front as he fired the revolver. The blaze from the bullet gave a brief, bright flare and was gone. At the same time, the match was knocked out of his hand and Jebidiah was knocked backwards, onto his back, the thing’s claws at his throat. The monster’s bees stung him. The stings felt like red-hot pokers entering his flesh. He stuck the revolver into the creature’s body and fired. Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth.
Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had already fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders, and the thing still had hold of him.
He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the thing released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark. The bats fluttered and screeched.
Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to his feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the darkness.
Jebidiah found another match, struck it.
The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock. Jebidiah eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed a dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began to drop to the cavern floor. The hive in Gimet’s chest sizzled and pulsed like a large, black knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled, but otherwise didn’t move.
Couldn’t move.
Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised the pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The knot exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it startled the bats to flight, drove them out of the cave, through the burrow, out into the remains of the night.
Gimet’s claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around him, then he was still and Jebidiah’s match went out.
Jebidiah found the remains of the bible in his pocket, and as he removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the two pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages and dropped them into Gimet’s open chest. The body caught on fire immediately, crackled and popped dryly, and was soon nothing more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up bright as day.
Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the biblical fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down, squirmed through it, came up in the grave.
He looked for the deputy and didn’t see him. He climbed out of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy had lasted until the bats charged out, that was most likely the last straw, and he had bolte
d.
Jebidiah looked back at the open grave. Smoke wisped out of the hole and out of the grave and climbed up to the sky. The moon was fading and the pink on the horizon was widening.
Gimet was truly dead now. The road was safe. His job was done.
At least for one brief moment.
Jebidiah walked down the hill, found his horse tied in the brush near the road where he had left it. The deputy’s horse was gone, of course, the deputy most likely having already finished out Deadman’s Road at a high gallop, on his way to Nacogdoches, perhaps to have a long drink of whisky and turn in his badge.
THE SKULL-FACED BOY
by David Barr Kirtley
David Barr Kirtley is the author of dozens of short stories. His work frequently appears in Realms of Fantasy, and he has also sold fiction to the magazines Weird Tales and Intergalactic Medicine Show, the podcasts Escape Pod and Pseudopod, and the anthologies New Voices in Science Fiction and The Dragon Done It. His story “Save Me Plz” was selected for inclusion in Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition.
Kirtley wrote this story during the summer of 2000, when he was on a horror-writing kick and wanted to try a zombie story. “I tend to identify with individuals who are looked down on and mistreated because they’re different,” he says, “so it was natural for me to start thinking about telling my story from the point of view of a zombie.”
The other inspiration was a falling out Kirtley had with one of his best friends a few months before he wrote the story. “I felt he was really mistreating his girlfriend and was just generally acting like a complete jerk,” Kirtley says. “And all of our friends were mindlessly going along with whatever he did and repeating whatever he said.”
Like the zombies in this story.
It was past midnight, and Jack and Dustin were driving along a twisted path through the woods. Jack was at the wheel. He was arguing with Dustin over Ashley.
Jack had always thought she had a pretty face—thin, arching eyebrows, a slightly upturned nose, a delicate chin. She’d dated Dustin in college for six months, until he got possessive and she got restless. Now, Jack thought, maybe she was interested in him.
But Dustin insisted, “She’ll give me another chance. Someday.”
“Not according to her,” Jack said, with a pointed look.
He turned his eyes back to the road, and in the light of the high beams he saw a man stumble into the path of the car. Without thinking, Jack swerved.
The car bounced violently, and then its left front side smashed into a tree. The steering column surged forward, like an ocean wave, and crushed Jack’s stomach. Dustin wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He flew face-first through the windshield, rolled across the hood, and tumbled off onto the ground.
Jack awoke, disoriented.
A man was pounding on the side of the car, just beyond the driver’s side window, which was cracked and foggy and opaque. Jack pushed at the door, which creaked open just enough for him to make out the man’s face. The man stared at Jack, then turned and started to walk off.
Jack shouted, “Call for help.”
But the man didn’t respond. He wandered toward the woods.
“Hey!” Jack screamed. He brushed aside a blanket of shattered glass and released his seatbelt. He pushed his seat backward, slowly extricating his bleeding stomach from the steering column, then dragged himself out the door and onto the ground, and he crawled after the man, who continued to walk away.
Finally Jack found the strength to stand. He lurched to his feet, grabbed the man by the shirtfront, shoved him back against a tree, and demanded, “What’s wrong with you? Get help.” Jack glanced about desperately and added, “I have to find my friend.”
The man gave a long and wordless moan. Jack stared at him. The man was very pale, with disheveled hair. His face was encrusted with dirt, and his teeth were twisted and rotten. His eyes were… oozing.
Suddenly Dustin’s voice burst out, “He’s dead.”
Jack turned. Dustin stood there, his nose and cheeks torn away. Two giant white eyeballs filled the sockets of his freakishly visible skull. Scraps of flesh hung from his jaw. Jack screamed.
Dustin stumbled over to the wrecked car, to where one of its side-view mirrors hung loosely. He tore off the mirror and stared into it. For a long time, he neither moved nor spoke.
Finally he called out, “That man has come back from the dead. Look at him, Jack. He’s dead, and so am I.”
Jack shuddered and backed away from the man.
Dustin’s eyeballs fixed on Jack’s stomach.
Apprehensive, Jack looked down. He lifted his blood-drenched shirt to expose the mangled mess beneath.
“And so are you,” Dustin said.
Jack and Dustin set out on foot. They climbed to the top of a high bluff and watched the bodies of dead men stumble through the grassy fields below. Dustin sat with his back turned, so that his ruined face was lost in shadows. He said, “It’s everyone. Everyone who died is coming back.”
The dead man who had caused the accident was following them. He stumbled from the trees and regarded Jack vacantly.
Jack approached the man and said, “Can you talk?”
The man paused a moment, as if trying to focus, then gave another inarticulate groan. He wandered away.
Jack said to Dustin, “Why is he like that, and we aren’t?”
Dustin said, “He dug himself out of the ground. He’s been dead a long time—rotted flesh, rotted brains.”
“Are there others like us?” Jack said.
“I don’t know.” Dustin leapt to his feet and called out to the valley below, “Hey! Can you hear me? Can you understand what I’m saying?”
The warm and fetid air carried back only wails. Dustin shrugged.
He and Jack followed the road until they came to a small house with its lights on.
Jack suggested, “We can call for help.”
“What help?” Dustin said. “We’re past that.”
But he followed Jack toward the house, whose front door was open wide. They paused on the porch. They could see into the kitchen, where a woman stood clenching a baseball bat. A dead boy had backed her into a corner, and he shambled across the yellow linoleum toward her. Dry dirt tumbled from his sleeves and fell in a winding trail behind him.
He spoke, in a faint and quavering way: “Mom… help me.”
“Stay back,” she warned, her voice cracking. “Stay away from me. You’re dead. I know you’re dead.”
Jack started forward, but Dustin held out an arm to stop him.
“Mom,” the boy said. “What’s wrong? Don’t hurt me…”
“Stop it!” the woman shrieked, but her arms shuddered and she collapsed, sobbing. The boy fell upon her. He clawed at her hair, and she thrashed. He tore at her scalp with his teeth.
Jack cringed and turned away. The woman screamed, then gurgled, then was silent. When Jack looked again, he saw that Dustin was regarding the gruesome scene with fascination.
Jack growled, “What’s wrong with you? We could’ve stopped it.”
“We’re dead now,” Dustin said. “We help the dead, not them.” He gestured at the woman.
“You’re crazy,” Jack said.
Dustin ignored him. “I want to see this.”
“You—” Jack stopped as the woman rose, her head a cracked and bloody mess. She stepped clumsily forward.
She moaned.
“You’d be like her,” Dustin whispered. “Mindless… hungry. If that first one had gotten into the car, chewed up your head, before you rose.”
Jack strode into the kitchen, eased around the woman, the boy, and the blood-splattered floor, and stepped toward the phone.
“I’m calling home,” Jack said, lifting the receiver. “I have to call my dad. Tell him I’m—”
“What?” Dustin said darkly. “All right?”
Jack hesitated.
Dustin said, “Jack, you’re dead. You’re lost to him. He’ll never take you in.”
Jack paused a moment, then began to dial. Dustin turned and stepped out into the night. The phone rang once, and instantly someone answered.
“Jack?” It was his father’s voice.
“I’m coming home,” Jack said. “I… can’t stay on the line.” He hung up.
He snatched some keys off the counter and slipped from the house. He spotted Dustin, who had walked out into the fields among the great crowds of the dead and was shouting to them, “Can you understand me? If you can hear me, step forward. If you understand just that much.”
Jack circled the house, to where a car was parked. He took the car, and drove north for an hour, along Interstate 95, toward Waterville. He stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His face was jaundiced, discolored and sickly, but if he covered his gaping stomach then in dim light he might pass for living.
He pulled up in front of his house and got out of the car. In the front yard lay a dead man whose forehead had a bullet through it. Jack shuddered, and circled around back. The old wood steps creaked as he stepped onto the back porch and knocked. He hung back in the shadows. A curtain was drawn aside, and faces peered out.
From inside the house someone called: “Jack! It’s Jack.”
The door opened, and Jack’s father stood there, clutching a rifle. He stared, then gasped and dropped back, raising the gun.
Jack cowered and said quickly, “Dad. Listen. Please. I’m not like the others.” The rifle was now aimed straight at Jack’s forehead, and Jack stared into the depths of its barrel. Then the barrel slowly sank, as his father lowered the gun.
Finally his father said, “Come inside, son.”
Jack stepped into the house.
His father chained him to the rusty pipe that ran out of the side of the garage and into the ground, and said, “I’m sorry. It’s only for the night. It’s the only way they’ll let you stay here.” Nine people were holed up in the house—Jack’s father had taken in some vacationers.
Jack whispered sadly, “I understand.”
The Living Dead Page 42