Bring On The Dead

by Robert Harterman

  “Never mind all that,” she rasped. “We have to tell her before she sees.”

  “Yea…” he agreed.

  Then she shook her head no.

  “What?”

  “I cannot be asked this,” she said.

  “Shit.”

  That was Ma’am Brickelby for you, he reminded himself. She possessed the odd talent of being the strongest and the weakest person he ever knew. Even when they were kids. He kissed her forehead and began hobbling painfully to the door. When he peered outside, he could see a macabre feast at play—human monkeys, eating corded intestines; some were primitive tool users, smashing open craniums with rocks. It was vaguely insulting to smell his father in here during this, and it was almost too much to see the heps scampering over to his bloated form. He hobbled back away from the door, looking up to find all preparations for his mother’s birthday were set. Dozens of platters, kegs and steins were stacked on the table while big woolen labia and comical carved penises were festooned across the walls.

  Without warning, she emerged from her room.

  Chase halted.

  Leirnes was a thin lady. And a self-proclaimed bitch. In fact she insisted on the moniker. She had smart-looking eyes that questioned everything. Her hair was too white, even for her fifty five years, which normally made her seem austere, regal. Now she seemed deathly frail.

  “Gone to God?” she whispered.

  Chase blinked. He felt the world spin a little. He understood that she knew, but he did not want her to look outside.

  She stared at him, and he recognized the look. It was the special liberty of the living dead.

  As he stepped toward her, blood began dripping from his leg.

  She froze him with a look, trembling as she lifted his father’s homemade zombie weapon, a forty-pound monstrosity with a spike and two axe blades. She was still staring as she began nestling the gnarly pummel between the sturdy planks of the floor. Her serious eyes stayed on him while she positioned the tip of the spike under her breastbone. It was already tearing her dress and sinking into her flesh.

  He had no idea what to do. He could just shake his head no, hoping.

  Then he heard something behind him, and the lady stared past him.

  It was Brickelby. The handmaiden walked in, crying. She sputtered a moment, then stepped between him and his mother.

  “I understand. Trust that much. Life is going be a hard, dirty fuck up the ass with only this simple bastard to provide for us.”

  Chase, eyes wide, nodded in something nearing agreement.

  “But you old bitch, you owe him. Decency demands you kill me first.”

  Bitch Leirnes’ eyes widened too. There was a moment of perfect stillness, then came heavy breathing. And perfect anger. Then the dead silence began falling on the room like snow. They all just stood there. Chase’s leg was starting to cramp, to lock up rigid as steel, but he could do nothing to ease it, nothing to help his mother or assist the naked handmaiden And while the ladies were staring at each other, the bitch lost her balance. Instinctively, she braced herself against the wall. In a sudden lunge, the handmaiden grabbed her, the weapon crashing to the floor as they embraced.

  Then an unmistakable noise barked from the river—the sound of aluminum on pebbles. A chill went through Chase’s forehead. He heard splashing, then the strange bur of subdued voices.

  “Blistering hell,” he whispered.

  That’s why they left. To see which home I entered...

  “You two, get yourselves to the cellar. Sneak out the tunnel. Run. Run for your goddamn life.”

  Leirnes was shaking, hardly able to stand.

  “Now!”

  The handmaiden stroked her head, pulling her toward the cellar door. They paused and looked at him.

  He grunted, palming his thigh. Then he nodded.

  “Go,” he whispered, and Brickelby led the bitch down.

  Chase hobbled to the front door’s little slide and peek and saw what he feared. He spun, panicked. He searched for the shotgun, pain shrieking up his leg. He was starting to shake again. He made a murderous crawl down the earth steps and took up an ambush position, but suddenly the bitch’s grief-stricken wail rose from within the escape tunnel. They were screaming.

  He spun to see two of the longmongers coming down the basement steps.

  Chase squinted in confusion: How had they come in through the door so soon… so quietly?

  The first of them smiled, just standing with his arms open. He motioned for Chase to come with him. The second man chuckled, then hurled a small axe underhanded.

  Chase’s nose burst. The world blinked. Vines of pain crackled across his face as he groped at a worn oak workbench like a drowning man. There was the coppery taste of blood again. Time began passing in waves. More men entered. The women were drug out of the tunnel. He felt himself crawling toward them. But he was not moving. From his sideways view on the floor, some shocked part of his mind was making boasts about killing them all. He could see Brickelby on her stomach, crying. Two men were dragging her. She was grunting, pulling at the bitch’s gowns as they flung them both onto the woodpile. One punched Brickelby, binding one of her wrists over her head as another squatted over her. The others laughed as he dropped his trousers, knelt, and pressed himself into her.

  Then someone kicked him in the eye, and it felt like he was crashing through the floor into the earth.

  He woke, briefly.

  They were gone.

  They had left the front door open, he knew, because he could plainly hear them calling to the zombies, then laughing as the beasts feasted, grunting and hooting.

  The women screamed.

  Then fell silent.

  He let out a moan like a low, rumbling roar that he could feel in his own bones. Then, for some reason, he laughed.

  “Go ahead. Let me live. Yea… you sick fucks.”

  Chapter 3

  __________

  In Chase’s lightless dream, he and a hep are writhing in combat on a rocky beach.

  Soon after, he is awake.

  And confused.

  Chase rubbed his face, but the edges of his dream were still sharp. In his mind, pearls of the beast’s sludgy, rust-colored blood were still swimming slowly down the heft and curve of its muscular frame, pooling in the mottled, sloughing-snake skin. He could still smell the crisp, fetid-meat scent of its breath. As he swiveled onto an elbow, he blinked at the pressed dirt section of floor. He was in his father’s earthen cellar.

  He rolled, very slowly.

  On his back, he stared up. For a long time.

  At first, there were only pain and thirst. Then wooden beams. Then, at the far end of the long dark room, the hearth seemed to come into being; it was making the side of his face sweaty. Trying to orient himself, the first conscious thoughts were of Brickelby, about her running outside to meet him, about something else with his father, then the handmaiden again, with nothing between her pale butt and the lord but an air of confidence. Then a gruesome flash, like in a dream, hit him of each smooth cheek of her ass being eaten like a white apple by a nightmare human-shaped chimpanzee. He blinked again, then rolled onto his side. In the copper band of a beer barrel, a purple-eyed version of himself was staring back. He looked beyond terrible, like a creature an old hunter like himself might seek out. Despite the copper’s distortion, he could see that his nose was jaunty and dark. The eye sockets were grisly starbursts. All the red teeth seemed to be there. But one wiggled when he rubbed it with his incomplete tongue. His hair was sweaty, wet snakes on his forehead and neck.

  He shivered, then tapped the keg.

  The beer was cold, more delicious against his face than in his mouth. Then, careful of his nose, he washed his beard in it. He spent painful eons peeling away the dark tendrils of blood. When he was able to right himself with the top of the keg, he stood. He clung to the wall. But it was all he could do to remain upright. More than once, the spinning forced him into strange dullness.

 
; Memories began splashing, thoughts of smoke and screams. Throughout every thought was a bizarre howl, or roar, like the sound of apes in the distance. His bottom lip quivered into a sneer, briefly. He was not positive he could remain standing. After some slow breaths, he sat.

  Then something moved.

  He stood again. He made a fist, which hurt his leg. Everything was weak and stiff. There was still an arrow in his leg. Dragging the swollen limb, he edged against the wall and looked. It was a zombie, crawling without legs up in the living room. Chase pulled himself upstairs slowly and, ruefully, wasted a 12 gauge shell on what should have been an easy kill with his sword.

  __________

  It was the stillness that slapped him as he stepped outside. The air itself seemed dead.

  Where are the other survivors?

  There were none. Twice as many dead bodies littered the ground as before. He cocked both swollen eyes, looking for the zombies.

  Where were the zombies?

  He had never known heps to leave a meal to the crows and vultures.

  He quickly gave up thinking about it.

  Before long, he found himself staring dumbly at the crows, which had become brazen by the feast before them. They were filthy and wet, perched half-inside the carcasses. One of them was pecking on the remnants of his father’s face. He shooed the bird, compelled now to drag the big fellow into the church. But his face was aching as he bent over him, like it might burst. And tendons seemed like they were snapping in his leg.

  He settled on rolling some canvas out of the pub and covering what remained of him.

  High, thin clouds spun overhead.

  When he sat, he was spent. He looked toward the river at his mother and the handmaiden. The remains looked vaguely female, and in the end he could only guess that they were once Brickelby and his mother. But it mattered little. They would be wild animals in a week’s time, along with his father. Whatever it was that had been unleashed on humanity—whether demons, disease, or some bizarre technology, Chase had no idea—it would gather within their remains, building perversion of the bodies that they were. Whatever the cause, they were gone now, and there was something cruelly soothing in the disgusting truth of it. A morbid, dizzy sense of release washed through him, like his hands were on fire, then chopped off.

  __________

  A half of an afternoon later, Chase stared down the river trail, watching as some hundred or so members of a neighboring compound came. He did not see their lord, an old boy named Bedew. But the old dog didn’t have to be here. As they spilled into town, his well-armed campaigners were marking his claims on Gintypool with their carriage alone. Loud and forward, they arrived on foot, already here from Bedew’s Lady.

  The men nodded grimly to each other, out of respect, but they were already poking around for anything of value.

  A few nodded to him in recognition. These were men once conscribed under Alfurd. He had gone to battle with these men. Which is why, perhaps, they politely acted oblivious of him. That, or they did not recognize his swollen face. Either way, he was glad of their courtesy, glad they gave him a few minutes to honor the survivor’s code, which was: Get your shit. And get out.

  __________

  Stepping inside his own cottage, he shook, angry with himself for being glad to be alive. But such is life, he told himself. It cannot help but put its heel on fallen men and squeeze strange things out of them. Plus he realized he was mad at himself. He wanted to sit. But he knew what his mind would do if he did.

  To business: He needed to get to his uncle’s compound. What would he need to take? Nothing came to his numb mind.

  He hobbled through his house to the lean-to. He opened the door to the comfortable wattle and mud-brick room. The onion bin was tipped. Under it, the diamonds he been hording were dug up.

  Gone.

  “What the four corners of hell?” he whispered. “Cool Laney …”

  He started roaring, his fist in his mouth. But he had to get over it. Had to act. It was a matter of minutes before the new owners came in and started making claims. His most valuable items were blocks of salt and jars of spices, and they might fetch a price, but at the coast of lugging all the jars, then finding a buyer in up in Old Knoxville.

  He kept looking and found little. Some piss jars. Rags and a bowl. A little food. Leave it all, he told himself. Except for the flat wheel of cheese. He went to the bedroom next. It was large, hot. It held the loom, a hobby he had managed to keep secret. Strewn across it was the thickest of several wool packs. It hung alongside the sheath to his best sword. Then he was surprised to discover the sword itself inside it. His father had borrowed it just a week ago, but had brought it back without him knowing. His father … He set it aside and grabbed the wool pack. Testing it, he put the flat of wheel cheese inside and tied it to his waist. It was suitable. He got his best camo. A Kevlar vest.

  Then he realized he had to do something terrible.

  The arrow.

  He sat on the bed and pulled the arrow from his thigh, instantly regretting it. For the next seven or eight minutes, he flopped on the floor, squalling. It would be nastier before it improved. But knowing this was hardly a tonic. Already, the smell was worsening. Breathing like a woman giving birth, he hobbled back into main room and made a crude dressing by mixing vinegar into a pot of antibiotic butter. It was difficult work applying it, and it was incredibly worrisome to see the thin lather sink into the wound.

  When he stood again, he was shaking.

  And he was still angry.

  And he was hurting like fifteen hells.

  He carefully belted the open area with the butter’s cloth and put some more leather bindings around it. Then he went back in the bedroom and put on his pants, belting them to a comfortable firmness. Next, he opened the clothing chest. Inside he found what he needed to make a life for himself over in Goback, his uncle’s compound. A single bar of gold. He had found it up in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It had been just a yellow brick in the middle of I65. He had not even been wise enough to fear a trap. He had stopped, picked it up, and carried along his way. Only later did he realize how fortunate—and foolish—he had been.

  He molded wheel of the cheese around it and slung the pack back on his shoulders. He grabbed his shotgun, a bandolier of shells, a knife, some crackers, some vintage Diet Coke, a small brick of marijuana, and a ninety-year-old pack of Marlboro.

  He looked around one last time.

  It struck him as odd that no one was coming in yet. Were they granting him some time? He doubted it. The way of things was starting to fray, the old order of things. Decency. Respect. They were fairytales these days. More likely, they were giving him time to mull over his own stupidity.

  Which was decent enough, he supposed.

  Chase kept his head down as he left out, embarrassed as he started crying a bit. Then he straightened his back and looked them all in the eye as he left: kick them in the face with every hoof in hell if they didn’t understand.

  Chapter 4

  Goback Compound, West of Oak Ridge

  1 year later

  He smiled.

  For the first time in a year.

  It felt good.

  It wasn’t the boobs, buoyant and unrestrained, enthusiastically given him their best rolling cabbage imitation under that shirt. Not specifically. But all the blood and gore, of seventy seven years of fighting back to gain our place in the wet gray muck of it all—well, sometimes, it comes down to a shirt. The stretched, thinning fabric. Old Navy versus a pair of great, molten bowling balls. Chase watched them as cold winds pelted the torches behind him, casting the tavern in strange angles of light. And while the cold air splashed up his back, he turned from them long enough to see a pair of battered hunters leaving, limping, holding each other up. The first brawl of the night was over. For now. Some nonsense about money. But he knew they can always take it to a more basic level than that. The victor, he was some new fellow like him. He seemed nice. He stood bloodied and depl
eted at the bar. The aqueous, billowing cabbages came to rest on his back. His smile was the smile of the new ones. It didn’t seemed forced. He was half again as muscular as most hunters. But so were half the old dogs in Goback—which seemed to attract every manner of roughneck and scumbag that New Tennessee had to offer.

  One of which Chase was waiting for.

  “Has any one seen Billy?” Chase asked.

  For an hour, he had been lounging about in the sitting room of Goback Pub. Just relaxing, waiting for his friend. The bastard had promised to join him at dinner tonight. Chase threw aside a toothpick, which he had exhausted down to a sliver, and strolled across to a group of old Gundersons. Uncles Jickie, Robo, Gilli, and Kenzo. All were retired, so to speak, but each had once been commandos once, fierce pavers of the great Human Way. They were engaged in a heated discussion with some fellows that were Chase’s age. They were from a nearby fortification of Bastard Hill and armored in tattered Kevlar.

  “Has any one seen Billy?” Chase repeated, uninterested in their dispute.

  “That’s the tenth time you’ve asked that question,” his Uncle Jickie barked, looking up sharply. “The tenth fucking time, Chase. And you’ve got no more information than the ninth!”

  The rest of the table hushed. Jickie’s North Georgia accent intoxicated people. They looked to him to for a humble nod of apology. He gave the boobs at the bar another peak. He looked down at the old boys again, and Jickie raised a brow. Chase raised one back and shrugged as if he were a little lad on his knee and busted up one of his war stories.

  “Sorry.”

  “Hold on, Chase,” drawled Fat Addly. He was a squat dude, the kind of fellow you’d think would have been bred out, seeing as speed was everything. He had friendly eyes and bulging, red cheeks. “You don’t expect Billy?”

  “Here they go…”

  “There’s a small chance they might see a bit more snow, Chase. God forbid, maybe a slight breeze. That lady of his isn’t going to let him out of her vagina on a treacherous night like this.”