Jim took a deep breath. He went down the hill and turned the bear's head using both hands, took a good look at him. He thought the bear didn't really look like any of the cartoon versions of him, and when he was on TV he didn't look so old. Of course, he had never looked dead before. The eyes had already gone flat and he could see his dim reflection in one of them. The bear's cigar was flattened against his mouth, like a coiled worm. Jim found the bear's box of matches and was careful to use a handkerchief from the bear's paw to handle it. He struck the match and set the dry grass on fire, then stuck the match between the bear's claws
on his left paw. The fire gnawed patiently at the grass, whipping up enthusiasm as the wind rose. Jim wiped down the automatic with his shirt tail and put it in the bear's right paw using the handkerchief, and pushed the bear's claw through the trigger guard, closing the bear's paw around the weapon so it looked like he had shot himself.
Jim went back up the hill. The fire licked at the grass and caught some more wind and grew wilder, and then the bear got caught up in it as well, the conflagration chewing his fur and cackling over his flesh like a crazed hag. The fire licked its way down the hill, and then the wind changed and Jim saw the fire climbing up toward him.
He got in the car and started it and found a place where he could back it around. It took some work, and by the time he managed it onto the narrow trail, he could see the fire in the mirror, waving its red head in his direction.
Jim drove down the hill, trying to remember the route. Behind him, the fire rose up into the trees as if it were a giant red bird spreading its wings.
"Dumb bear," he said aloud. "Ain't gonna be no weenie pull now, is there?" And he drove on until the fire was just a small bright spot in the rearview mirror, and then it was gone and there was just the tall, dark forest that the fire had yet to find.
LONG DEAD DAY
She said a dog bit her, but we didn't find the dog anywhere. It was a bad bite, though, and we dressed it with some good stuff and wrapped it with some bandages, and then poured alcohol over that, letting it seep in, and she, being ten, screamed and cried. She hugged up with her mama, though, and in a while she was all right, or as all right as she could be.
Later that evening, while I sat on the wall and looked down at the great crowd outside the compound, my wife, Carol, called me down from the wall and the big gun. She said Ellen had developed a fever, that she could hardly keep her eyes open, and the bite hurt.
Carol took her temperature, said it was high, and that to touch her forehead was to almost burn your hand. I went in then, and did just that, touched her forehead. Her mother was right. I opened up the dressing on the wound and was amazed to see that it had turned black, and it didn't really look like a dog bite at all. It never had, but I wanted it to, and let myself be convinced that was just what it was, even if there had been no dog we could find in the compound. By this time, they had all been eaten. Fact was, I probably shot the last one around: a beautiful Shepard that, when it saw me, wagged its tail. I think when I lifted the gun he knew, and didn't care. He just sat there with his mouth open in what looked like a dog's version of a smile, his tail beating. I killed him first shot, to the head. I dressed him out without thinking about him much. I couldn't let myself do that. I loved dogs. But my family needed to eat. We did have the rabbits we raised, some pigeons, a vegetable garden, but it was all very precarious.
Anyway, I didn't believe about the dog bite, and now the wound looked really bad. I knew the real cause of it, or at least the general cause, and it made me sick to think of it. I doctored the wound again, gave her some antibiotics that we had, wrapped it and went out. I didn't tell Carol what she was already thinking.
I got my shotgun and went about the compound, looking. It was a big compound, thirty-five acres with a high wall around it, but somehow, someone must have breached the wall. I went to the back garden, the one with trees and flowers where our little girl liked to play. I went there and looked around, and found him sitting on one of the benches. He was just sitting. I guess he hadn't been the way he was for very long. Just long enough to bite my daughter. He was about her age, and I knew then, being so lonely, she had let him in. Let him in through the bolted back door. I glanced over there and saw she had bolted it back. I realized then that she had most likely been up on the walk around the wall and had seen him down there, not long of turning, looking up wistfully. He could probably still talk then, just like anyone else, maybe even knew what he was doing, or maybe not. Perhaps he thought he was still who he once was, and thought he should get away from the others, that he would be safe inside.
It was amazing none of the others had forced their way in. Then again, the longer they were what they were, the slower they became, until finally they quit moving altogether. Problem with that was, it took years.
I looked back at him, sitting there, the one my daughter had let in to be her playmate. He had come inside, and then he had done what he had done, and now my daughter was sick with the disease, and the boy was just sitting there on the bench, looking at me in the dying sunlight, his eyes black as if he had been beat, his face gray, his lips purple.
He reminded me of my son. He wasn't my son, but he reminded me of him. I had seen my son go down among them, some—what was it?—five years before. Go down in a flash of kicking legs and thrashing arms and squirting liquids. That was when we lived in town, before we found the compound and made it better. There were others then, but they were gone now. Expeditions to find others, they said. Whatever—they left, we never saw them again.
Sometimes at night I couldn't sleep for the memory of my son, Gerald, and sometimes in my wife's arms, I thought of him, for had it not been such a moment that had created him?
The boy rose from the bench, stumble-stepped toward me, and I shot him. I shot him in the chest, knocking him down. Then I rushed to him and shot him in the head, taking half of it away.
I knew my wife would have heard the shot, so I didn't bother to bury him. I went back across the compound and to the upper apartments where we lived. She saw me with the gun, opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.
"A dog," I said. "The one who bit her. I'll get some things, dress him out and we'll eat him later."
"There was a dog," my wife said.
"Yes, a dog. He wasn't rabid. And he's pretty healthy. We can eat him."
I could see her go weak with relief, and I felt both satisfied and guilty at the same time. I said, "How is she?"
"Not much better. There was a dog, you say."
"That's what I said, dear."
"Oh, good. Good. A dog."
I looked at my watch. My daughter had been bitten earlier that day, and it was almost night. I said, "Why don't you go get a knife, some things for me to do the skinning, and I'll dress out the dog. Maybe she'll feel better, she gets some meat in her."
"Sure," Carol said. "Just the thing. She needs the protein. The iron."
"You bet," I said.
She went away then, down the stairs, across the yard to the cooking shed. I went upstairs, still carrying the gun.
Inside my daughter's room, I saw from the doorway that she was gray as cigarette ash. She turned her head toward me.
"Daddy," she said.
"Yes, dear," I said, and put the shotgun against the wall by the door and went over to her.
"I feel bad."
"I know."
"I feel different."
"I know."
"Can anything be done? Do you have some medicine?"
"I do."
I sat down in the chair by the bed. "Do you want me to read to you?"
"No," she said, and then she went silent. She lay there not moving, her eyes closed.
"Baby," I said. She didn't answer.
I got up then and went to the open door and looked out. Carol, my beautiful wife, was coming across the yard, carrying the things I'd asked for. I picked up the shotgun and made sure it was loaded with my daughter's medicine. I thoug
ht for a moment about how to do it. I put the shotgun back against the wall. I listened as my wife came up the stairs.
When she was in the room, I said, "Give me the knife and things."
"She okay?"
"Yes, she's gone to sleep. Or she's almost asleep. Take a look at her."
She gave me the knife and things and I laid them in a chair as she went across the room and to the bed.
I picked up the shotgun, and as quietly as I could, stepped forward and pointed it to the back of my wife's head and pulled the trigger. It was over instantly. She fell across the bed on our dead child, her blood coating the sheets and the wall.
She wouldn't have survived the death of a second child, and she sure wouldn't have survived what was about to happen to our daughter.
I went over and looked at Ellen. I could wait, until she opened her eyes, till she came out of the bed, trying for me, but I couldn't stomach that. I didn't want to see that. I took the shotgun and put it to her forehead and pulled the trigger. The room boomed with the sound of shotgun fire again, and the bed and the room turned an even brighter red.
I went outside with the shotgun and walked along the landing, walked all the way around, came to where the big gun was mounted. I sat behind it, on the swivel stool, leaned the shotgun against the protecting wall. I sat there and looked out at the hundreds of them, just standing there, looking up, waiting for something.
I began to rotate and fire the gun. Many of them went down. I fired until there was no more ammunition. Reloaded, fired again, my eyes wet with tears. I did this for some time, until the next rounds of ammunition were played out. It was like swatting at a hive of bees. There always seemed to be more.
I sat there and tried not to think about anything. I watched them. Their shapes stretched for miles around, went off into the distance in shadowy bulks, like a horde of rats waiting to board a cargo ship.
They were eating the ones I had dropped with the big gun.
After awhile the darkness was total and there were just the shapes out there. I watched them for a long time. I looked at the shotgun propped against the retaining wall. I looked at it and picked it up and put it under my chin, and then I put it back again.
I knew, in time, I would have the courage.
"The Long Dead Day" was originally published in Subterranean #6. It was later collected in The Shadows: Kith and Kin, a collection of Lansdale's short stories published by Subterranean Press, and The Dead That Walk: Flesh-Eating Stories (Ulysses Press, 2009). "The Long Dead Day" © 2007 Joe R. Lansdale.
MASTER OF MISERY
To the memory of my father, Bud Lansdale
Six o’clock in the morning, Richard was crossing by ferry from the Hotel on the Quay to Christiansted with a few other early-bird tourists, when he turned, looked toward shore, and saw a large ray leap from the water, its blue-gray hide glistening in the morning sunlight like gunmetal, its devil-tail flicking to one side as if to slash.
The ray floated there in defiance of gravity, hung in the sky between the boat and the shore, back grounded by the storefronts and dock as if it were part of a painting, then splashed almost silently into the purple Caribbean, leaving in its wake a sun-kissed ripple.
Richard turned to see if the other passengers had noticed. He could tell from their faces they had not. The ray’s leap had been a private showing, just for him, and he relished it. Later, he would think that perhaps it had been some kind of omen.
Ashore, he walked along the dock past the storefronts, and in front of the Anchor Inn Restaurant, the charter fishing boat was waiting.
A man and a woman were on board already. The man was probably fifty, perhaps a little older, but certainly in good shape. He had an aura of invincibility about him, as if the normal laws of mortality and time did not apply to him.
He was about five-ten with broad shoulders and, though he was a little thick in the middle, it was a hard thickness. It was evident, even beneath the black, loose, square-cut shirt he was wearing, he was a muscular man, perhaps first by birth, and second by exercise. His skin was as dark and leathery as an old bull’s hide, his hair like frost on scorched grass. He was wearing khaki shorts and his dark legs were corded with muscle and his shins had a yellow shine to them that brought to mind weathered ivory.
He stood by the fighting chair bolted to the center of the deck, and looked at Richard standing on the dock with his little paper bag containing lunch and suntan lotion. The man’s crow-colored eyes studied Richard as if he were a pile of dung that might contain some kernel of rare and undigested corn a crow might want.
The man’s demeanor bothered Richard immediately. There was about him a cockiness. A way of looking at you and sizing you up and letting you know he wasn’t seeing much.
The woman was quite another story. She was very much the bathing beauty type, aged beyond competition, but still beautiful, with a body by Nautilus. She was at least ten years younger than the man. She wore shoulder-length blond hair bleached by sun and chemicals. She had a heart-shaped face and a perfect nose and full lips. There was a slight cleft in her chin and her eyes were a faded blue. She was willowy and big breasted and wore a loose, white tee shirt over her black bathing suit, one of the kind you see women wear in movies, but not often on the beach. She had the body for it. A thong, or string, Richard thought the suits were called. Sort of thing where the strap in the back slid between the buttocks and covered them not at all. The top of the suit made a dark outline beneath her white tee shirt. She moved her body easily, as if she were accustomed to and not bothered by scrutiny, but there was something about her eyes that disturbed Richard.
Once, driving at night, a cat ran out in front of his car and he hit it, and when he stopped to see if there was hope, he found the cat mashed and dying, the eyes glowing hot and savage and terrified in the beam of his flashlight. The woman’s eyes were like that.
She glanced at him quickly, then looked away. Richard climbed on board.
Richard extended his hand to the older man. The man smiled and took his hand and shook it. Richard cursed himself as the man squeezed hard. He should have expected that. "HugoPeak," the older man said, then moved his head to indicate the woman behind him. "My wife, Margo."
Margo nodded at Richard and almost smiled. Richard was about to give his name, when the captain, Bill Jones, came out of the cabin grinning. He was a lean, weathered fellow with a face that was all nose and eyes the color of watered meat gravy. He was carrying a couple cups of coffee. He gave one to Margo, the other to Hugo. He said, "Richard, how are you, my man."
"Wishing I’d stayed in bed," Richard said. "I can’t believe I let you talk me into this, Jones."
"Hey, fishing’s not so bad," said the captain.
"Off the bank at home in Texas it might be all right. But all this water. I hate it."
This was true. Richard hated the water. He could swim, had even earned lifeguard credentials as a Boy Scout, some twenty-five years ago, back when he was thirteen, but he had never learned to like the water. Especially deep water. The ocean.
He realized he had let Jones talk him into this simply because he wanted to convince himself he wasn’t phobic. So, okay, he wasn’t phobic, but he still didn’t like the water. The thought of soon being surrounded by it, and it being deep, and above them there being nothing but hot blue sky, was not appealing.
"I’ll get you some coffee and we’ll shove off," Jones said.
"I thought it took five for a charter?" Richard said.
Jones looked faintly embarrassed. "Well, Mr. Peak paid the slack. He wanted to keep it down to three. More time in the chair that way, we hit something."
Richard turned to Peak. "I suppose I should split the difference with you."
"Not at all," Peak said. "It was my idea."
"That’s kind of you, Hugo," Richard said.
"Not at all. And if it doesn’t sound too presumptuous, I don’t much prefer to be called by my first name, unless it’s by my wife. If I’m not fuckin
g the person, I want them to call me Mr. Peak. Or Peak. That all right with you?"
Richard saw Margo turn her face toward the sea, pretend to be watching the gulls in the distance. "Sure," Richard said.
"I’ll get the coffee," Jones said, and disappeared into the cabin. Peak yelled after him. "Let’s shove off."
The sea was calm until they reached the Atlantic. The water there was blue-green, and the rich purple color of the Caribbean stood in stark contrast against it, reaching out with long purple claws into the great ocean, as if it might tug the Atlantic to it. But the Atlantic was too mighty, and it would not come.
The little fishing boat chugged out of the Caribbean and onto the choppier waters of the Atlantic, on out and over the great depths, and above them the sky was blue, with clouds as white as the undergarments of the Sacred Virgin.
The boat rode up and the boat rode down, between wet valleys of ocean and up their sides and down again. The cool spray of the ocean splattered on the deck and the diesel engine chugged and blew its exhaust across it and onto Richard, where he sat on the supply box. The movement of the water and the stench of the diesel made him queasy.
After a couple of hours of pushing onward, Jones slowed the engine, and finally killed it. "You’re up, Mr. Peak," Jones said coming down from his steering. He got a huge, metallic chest out of the cabin and dragged it onto the deck and opened it. There were a number of small black fish inside, packed in ice. Sardines, maybe. Jones took one and cut it open, took loose one of the rods strapped to the side of the cabin, stuck the fish on the great hook. He gave the rod to Peak.
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