THE DISHONORED DEAD
Robert Swartwood
Also By Robert Swartwood
NOVELS
The Calling
NOVELLAS & SHORT STORIES
The Silver Ring
Through the Guts of a Beggar
In Solemn Shades of Endless Night
Spooky Nook
In the Land of the Blind
AS EDITOR
Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewer
The Dishonored Dead copyright © 2011 Robert Swartwood
“In the Land of the Blind” copyright © 2004 Robert Swartwood
Cover design copyright © 2011 Jeroen ten Berge
(www.jeroentenberge.com)
This E-Book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Robert Swartwood.
www.robertswartwood.com
For Holly
They were of one sort—creatures—but so grotesque and misshapen as to be more like a child’s drawings upon his slate than anything natural.
— George MacDonald,
The Princess and the Goblin
THE DISHONORED DEAD
Contents
Prelude: In the Land of the Dead
Part I: Hunting
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Part II: Tracking
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Part III: Living
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Part IV: Dying
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Coda: In the Land of the Living
Afterword
In the Land of the Blind
Author Interview
Excerpt from THE CALLING
Excerpt from THROUGH THE GUTS OF A BEGGAR
Prelude:
In the Land of the Dead
He could hear the zombie in the dark up ahead—what sounded like an adult, saying, “How many colors are there in the world?”—and his first thought was they had a multiple attack. Then he heard another voice, one which belonged to a dead child, and he knew the situation had just escalated.
“Colors?” the boy asked hesitantly, his cracked and withered voice full of fear. “There are … three. White, gray, and black.”
He slowed and raised a fist, signaling the other Hunters to take their time. Now that a child was involved, they had to be even more cautious.
“I really do pity your kind,” the zombie said. “You miss out on so many different things. Yes, in the land of the dead only those colors exist. But would you like to know how many colors there are in the land of the living?”
He could just now make out the two figures—definitely an adult and child—through the trees, standing in a small clearing. He placed his hand on his broadsword, pulled it silently from its sheath.
“Thousands,” the zombie said. “More colors than you could ever imagine … though, of course, you can’t imagine anything, can you?”
Moonlight shone through the trees and illuminated the two of them, and he could see the boy standing beside a freshly dug hole, a pile of dirt beside it. In his trembling hands was a shovel.
“Please,” the boy said, looking quickly around him, “please don’t hurt me. I don’t—I don’t want to expire.”
“If I were you I wouldn’t want to expire either. Not until I’d experienced everything this world has to offer.”
The rest of the Hunters having taken their positions surrounding the zombie and the child, he knew it was time to act. There was about five yards between the two of them, which meant that if they went in fast, the boy would be safe.
“Do you realize the rest of the earth hasn’t moved on? It’s just mankind and the animals. You’ve all moved on, decayed, become what you are. But Mother Nature”—the zombie now shaking his disgusting head—“she hasn’t given up on you yet. She still wants you to find your way. And when you do—when all of you do—I think she’s going to hold her breath in anticipation for what happens next.”
His broadsword gripped tightly in his right hand, he raised his left hand to signal the other Hunters.
“In the meantime, do yourself this one favor. Don’t accept your existence for what it is. Question it. Question everything.”
He brought his hand down and at once the Hunters hurried forward, tightening their circle around the clearing. The boy looked around even more frantically, surprise overtaking the fear in his black eyes.
He strode right up to the zombie who just stood there completely motionless, staring down at the boy. Less than ten yards away, now less than five, he took in everything about the scene—the shovel in the boy’s hands, the hole, the pile of dirt, a square rock on the ground beside the hole shimmering in the moonlight—and raised his broadsword.
But stopped.
For a moment there was a heavy silence. The only sounds were that of dead insects chirping and a dead owl hooting in the trees. Then the zombie looked back at him, said, “Well?” and that was when Philip stepped forward, his own broadsword raised, and severed the zombie’s head from the rest of its body.
Part I:
Hunting
Chapter 1
Conrad was no stranger to living blood.
Ever since he was ten, had begun his training, he understood that blood was the final step in every hunt. A zombie ran, you chased it, and once you cornered it, walked right up to it, you raised your broadsword and took its head, releasing blood. Even when his father, the greatest Hunter to ever exist, had passed down his own broadsword to Conrad on the day of his graduation from Artemis, he had embraced him and whispered into his ear, “Make sure every time you hunt, this sword tastes blood.”
And it had tasted blood, so much living blood over the past twelve years. Mostly children, sure, because that’s what most of the zombies today were: boys and girls no older than ten years old, always running away from him, always crying and screaming until he stopped their tears and silenced their screams forever. It was his job and he was good at it, great at it, and he always made su
re every time he hunted he followed through with his father’s wishes.
He made sure every time he hunted, his broadsword tasted blood.
He made sure it was covered in it.
But tonight something had gone wrong. Tonight his sword should have tasted blood, but it hadn’t, and this, Conrad knew, was bad news. Very bad news.
Sitting alone in the locker room, an irregular dripping coming from the showers, Conrad stared down at the broadsword in his hands. He just didn’t understand it. He didn’t know what had gone wrong. Never before had he hesitated, never once, but this morning he had, and with no way to explain it even to himself, no way to rationalize this egregious error.
The locker room door opened and in walked Philip, the second lieutenant still wearing his uniform but not his mask. Without looking at Conrad, Philip went to his locker, opened it, started to take off his uniform. Conrad continued staring down at his sword until Philip had slammed his locker shut and walked toward the showers, a towel now wrapped around his waist. He paused before entering, turned back, and Conrad shifted his gaze up from his sword to Philip.
The man was well built, his shoulders wide, his chest expanded. A tattoo of his broadsword was etched over his right pectoral.
Philip glared back at him, his black eyes intense. He opened his mouth, started to speak, but then shut it, shook his head and entered the showers.
When the hiss of water started up a moment later, Conrad got to his feet and went to his locker. He raised a fist, meaning to smash it into the panel, but stopped himself at the last moment. He opened the locker, intending now to slam it shut again, and found his family staring back at him, his wife and son smiling in the gray pictures taped there: one of Denise, one of Kyle, one of the two of them together, Denise in a hospital bed holding a newly-animated Kyle in her arms.
He thought about everything he had been able to provide for his family, how they had never been forced to go without, and how his simple mistake this morning could change it all.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to them, closing his eyes and touching his forehead to the pictures. “I’m so sorry.”
Captain Norman Rydell’s office door was open when Conrad made it to the top floor. He knew it was an invitation but still he waited just outside the threshold and knocked on the frame. Norman didn’t even look away from his computer monitor when he motioned him inside.
“Shut the door, too,” he said.
Conrad sat in one of the two chairs facing the captain’s desk. Aside from the humming computer on the desk and the ticking clock on the wall, the room was silent.
After a moment Norman turned away from the computer. He looked at Conrad and tapped the stack of papers in front of him. “Do you know what this is? It’s your file. Every single thing about you since your time at Artemis until this very moment is in here. Every kill, every commendation, everything, I’ve printed it all out and here it is. And unfortunately today I have to add something to it. So I’m going to ask you just once. What happened this morning?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“You don’t.”
Conrad shook his head.
“Would you like to know what Philip told me?”
Conrad waited.
“He said you froze. That you approached the zombie and raised your sword but did nothing else.”
Conrad shifted his eyes away. He thought about the day he’d graduated. About how up until that point nobody knew who his father truly was—not even Denise—and how on that day his father had embraced him for the very first time in front of the world and told him to make sure the sword always tasted blood and now today for the very first time it had not.
“Well?” Norman said.
“I …”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“That’s not an acceptable answer.”
The computer on the desk continued to hum, the clock on the wall continued to tick.
Conrad said, “Sir, if you would like my resignation, I would be more than willing to—”
“Stop. Just stop right there.” Norman leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Yes, what took place this morning shouldn’t have happened, but it’s not the end of the world. You’re my first lieutenant and I have never questioned anything you’ve ever done. But what happened this morning, I want to know why.”
Norman was fifty-two, twenty years older than Conrad. He had short gray hair and a thin gray mustache. He came from a line of honorable Hunters—his father a Hunter, his father’s father a Hunter—and the fact that the line would end with him had always been a sore point. Norman and his wife (Beth, who’d expired three years ago) had never been able to conceive after their first child, a boy who’d expired when he was two, and though nobody had ever come out and said it, the truth was always there: Norman had let his family down.
“It’s Kyle,” Conrad said.
“What about Kyle?” An expression of worry creased the captain’s decayed face. “Is he okay? He hasn’t …”
But Norman didn’t continue. He didn’t have to. The unspoken question was whether Kyle had become infected with some kind of parasite. It seemed children were most likely to become infected, and it was almost impossible to extract a parasite once it had taken hold. That was why children were given more shots and vitamins than adults, who took half the amount. That was why parents were encouraged to give them the proper lotions for their decayed skin, to keep flies from laying maggots, to keep any other parasites at bay. Because when a child became infected its body began to decay at a very rapid rate, first the hair falling out, then the skin, until that child expired completely, leaving a very fat and well-fed parasite.
Norman and his wife had witnessed this firsthand with their own child, watching their son withering away and not being able to do anything about it.
“No,” Conrad said, “nothing like that. It’s just that, well, his animation day is coming up. In two weeks.”
“It’s his tenth, isn’t it.”
Conrad nodded.
“Yes, I can see why that would make you worry. But it should be okay. Kyle’s a good boy. Nothing’s going to happen to him.”
“I hope so, sir. But when I went to kill that zombie this morning, I looked at the boy and for some reason it made me think of Kyle.”
“Speaking of the boy”—Norman glanced at his computer monitor—“it appears the zombie managed to infect him with a parasite. It doesn’t look like he’ll make it through the day.”
Conrad closed his eyes, placed a hand to his head.
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. You did everything you could.”
Conrad knew the captain was right. An anonymous tip had come in, giving them the location, and they had made it to the suburbs in record time, managed to track the zombie’s trail into the woods, and as far as Conrad had seen the zombie hadn’t once touched the boy. Still …
“Has the boy been questioned?”
“You mean regarding the hole?”
“Yes.”
“He said he and his friends had buried something there a year ago, some money, and he wanted to dig it back up. Then he said the zombie came out of nowhere and tried to attack him.”
“Are you sure? Because it sounded like the zombie had been talking to him for a while.”
Norman squinted at the computer monitor again. “Well, yes, the boy did say the zombie said some things, but he couldn’t remember much of it. You have to keep in mind, the parasite in his body is already eating away at him, and he … he wasn’t very lucid when he was interviewed. Awful, awful thing for his parents.”
“What about the adult zombie?”
“What about it?”
“There hasn’t been an adult zombie attack for months.”
“We’re looking into that too.”
There was a silence.
Conrad said, “Are you sure you don’t want my resignation? The other men, they …”
“Yes?”
Norman didn’t answer right away. He sat there a moment, watching Conrad closely. Finally he said, “You’ve always been fighting a losing battle. It’s because of your father, who he was, what he was. Henry the Hunter, the world’s greatest Hunter, who will forever exist in movies and TV and video games.”
Norman grinned at the absurdity of it all—he knew Conrad saw it as an embarrassment, his father selling out so that nobody would forget him when he expired—and then quite abruptly the grin faded.
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